Gone With or Without fanfare

[klondike]

- I've never forgotten it - he made that part huge to me,

JF, that's the only point you ever need to make in championing any performer's role, no matter how small or obscure or peculiar!

[moira finnie]

The above is for JackFavell. Thanks for reminding me of Woodward's brilliant turn in this part as Christmas Present in one of the very best versions of A Christmas Carol starring George C. Scott as Scrooge.

A favorite scene from Breaker Morant (1980) is posted below in which Edward Woodward expressed the bitterness, irony and poetic side of his real life character so beautifully as he recited this poem:

Oh those rides across the river,
but a shallow stream runs wide,
and a sunset's beams were glossing
strips of sand on either side

We would cross that sparkling river,
on a brown horse and a bay;
watch the willows sway and shiver
and the trembling shadows play.

These are memories to be hoarded
of a foolish tale and fond,
'Til another creek be forded,
and we reach the Great Beyond..
[youtube][/youtube]

[JackFavell]

Thanks, Moira! What an incredible clip. He really was wonderful. I feel bad that it takes this event to make me realize I want to revisit his work.

[Lzcutter]

For my generation, he was not only Bat Masterson but also Glenn Howard in the Name of the Game, and now, like too many this year, he is gone:

From the NY Times:

Gene Barry, who portrayed debonair lawmen on television but whose career of more than 60 years ranged from song and dance on Broadway to science fiction, died Wednesday in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 90 and lived in Beverly Hills until about a year ago.

His death, at an assisted-living facility, was confirmed by his daughter, Elizabeth.

As the dapper star of “Bat Masterson” from 1958 to 1961, Mr. Barry sported a derby hat, gilt-tipped cane and spangled vest in the days, as the theme song said, “when the West was very young.” (The real Bat, whose full name was William Barclay Masterson, was a gambler, gunslinger and marshal who spent his later years as a New York newspaperman and died in 1921.)

In “Burke’s Law” (1963-66), Mr. Barry played the equally insouciant Los Angeles police captain, Amos Burke, an independently wealthy crime fighter with a mansion, a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce and a stream of beautiful women. In its third and final season, Burke changed professions and the show was renamed “Amos Burke, Secret Agent.” A generation later, in the 1994-95 season, Mr. Barry reprised the role, this time as chief of detectives.

Mr. Barry starred as a magazine tycoon in “The Name of the Game” (1968-71), in which he rotated starring roles with Anthony Franciosa and Robert Stack. He also starred as a wealthy movie celebrity and secret government agent in “The Adventurer” in 1972-73.

He won a Tony nomination in 1984 for his performance as Georges, the less flamboyant half of a gay couple, in “La Cage Aux Folles,” the first Broadway musical in which the principal lovers were gay men. Mr. Barry “proves a most sensitive foil — far more sensitive than you’d ever guess from his starring roles on such television series as ‘Bat Masterson’ and ‘The Name of the Game,’ ” Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times, adding that Mr. Barry sang his love songs “with tender directness.”

Mr. Barry said at the time, “I’m not playing a homosexual — I’m playing a person who cares deeply about another person.”

In 1999, the 78-year-old Mr. Barry combined musical comedy with show business reminiscences in the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan, in a show that included among other things a Maurice Chevalier impersonation. He had made his nightclub debut in the Latin Quarter in 1962.

Gene Barry was born Eugene Klass on June 14, 1919, in New York to Martin Klass, a jeweler, and Eva Klass. He was attending New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn when he won a singing contest and a scholarship to the Chatham Square School of Music. While studying there, he began singing on the New York radio station WHN.

He soon went from the Catskills to Manhattan bistros to Broadway productions, making his debut in the labor musical “Pins and Needles.” He also performed in a series of operettas at Carnegie Hall and in Broadway productions of “Rosalinda,” “The Merry Widow” and “The Would-Be Gentleman.”

The impresario Mike Todd hired him to play opposite Mae West in “Catherine Was Great” (1944). Mr. Barry met his wife, Betty, who acted under the name Julie Carson, during rehearsals.

He left “Catherine” for the musical “Glad to See You” and then moved on to straight acting roles, winning a Critic’s Circle Award for his leading role in an Equity Library production of “Idiot’s Delight.”

Mr. Barry signed a Hollywood contract in 1951. Two years later he starred in perhaps his most famous movie role, the scientist Dr. Clayton Forrester, in the George Pal production of “War of the Worlds,” based on the H. G. Wells novel. He also had a role in 2005 as Tom Cruise’s ex-father-in-law in the Steven Spielberg remake. His more than 20 movies also included “Soldier of Fortune” (1955), with Clark Gable and Susan Hayward, and “Thunder Road” (1958), with Robert Mitchum.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, Mr. Barry appeared in scores of television specials and series, including “Playhouse 90,” “General Electric Theater,” “The Twilight Zone,” “Fantasy Island,” “The Love Boat,” “Charlie’s Angels” and “Murder, She Wrote.”

His wife of 58 years died in 2003. Besides his daughter, Elizabeth, of Los Angeles, he is survived by two sons, Michael L. and Frederick J., both of Topanga, Calif., three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

In an interview with Nan Jarrett for an Internet fan site in 2000, Mr. Barry recalled that he was appearing in the final season of the television comedy “Our Miss Brooks” when a producer asked him to play Bat Masterson.

“The idea of playing a saddle-type cowboy was repulsive to me,” he said. “Then he told me about the derby hat and cane, and I went by the costume department and saw the outfit that Masterson would wear, and I couldn’t resist.”

[Ollie]

Thanks for finding this very informative article about him. I grew up with BAT MASTERSON as perhaps not a personal favorite, but it was one of the most stylistically-appealing 'different westerns' I'd see. Paladin (HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL) had a very different style, so did MAVERICK, but once Color took over, all the sets were obviously sound-stages with painted backdrops, and nothing seemed too appealing from that point on.

I was too young to appreciate BURKE'S LAW but now, with two volumes of the DVDs out, I can heartily recommend it if only because of the incredble guest-star list. This is like Fantasy-Island/Love-Boat Hollywood-Star guest lists, only for a crime-drama. Someone's murdered, many are suspected, and those are invariably film stars, often in their last on-screen appearances. Even getting killed doesn't preclude the star from appearing in many flashback scenes, too! Quite handy. "No wonder I don't look good - I was killed in Act 1" said Agnes Moorehead in one of her episodes. Then she winks at us - the camera - and the credits role. SO funny, so perfect.

To get an idea of this 'guest star list', the following link is IMDB's "full cast" list...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056745/fullcredits#cast

and just about everyone apparently signed up for at least 2 episodes.

I never would have given Gene Barry much credit for his work, but apparently his BURKE'S LAW was appealing enough for him to have a veritable who's-who show up on a continuous basis.

[jdb1]

Prolific character actor Val Avery passed away last Saturday. Here's the obit from The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/theat ... ry.html?em

He acted on stage, in movies, and on television. Avery played many heavies, but he was also quite a deft comic actor, and I remember him best from appearances on dozens of TV shows. And he'll always be an all-purpose police desk sergeant to me -- he seemed to play one in so many movies and TV programs.

[jdb1]

So -- I suppose this makes the fabled third celebrity for the week - Val Avery, Oral Roberts, and now --

Uncle Walt's favorite newphew (and doppleganger) Roy Disney has passed at age 79:

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?secti ... id=7174503

We all know from past history that this is the time of year when we experience a great many celebrity deaths. Let's hope that there's a recession in that phenomenon as well this year.

[Lzcutter]

Jennifer Jones has passed away.

From the LA Times:

Jennifer Jones, the actress who won an Academy Award for her luminous performance in the 1943 film "The Song of Bernadette" and who was married to two legendary men -- producer David O. Selznick and industrialist and art collector Norton Simon -- died today. She was 90.

Jones died of natural causes at her home in Malibu, according to Leslie C. Denk, a spokeswoman for the Norton Simon Museum of Art in Pasadena.

Jones oversaw the museum following Simon's death in 1993, but she was best known for her movie career.

In all, she starred in more than two dozen films, playing opposite such A-list actors as William Holden, Joseph Cotten and Gregory Peck.

In addition to her best-actress win for "Bernadette," Jones was nominated for an Academy Award for leading roles in three other films: "Love Letters" (1945), a soaper in which an amnesiac is cured through the love of a man, played by Cotten; the western epic "Duel in the Sun" (1946), with Peck; and "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing" (1955), in which she played Dr. Han Suyin opposite Holden. She also was nominated as best supporting actress for "Since You Went Away" (1944), in which she starred with her first husband, Robert Walker.

The tall, sensitive Jones might never have risen to stardom but for Selznick, who was the first to see something special in the beautiful "big-eyed girl" who showed up in his New York office to test -- although not very well -- for the part of Claudia in the 1943 film of the same name. (Dorothy McGuire won the role.) After seeing her second test, he decided she was "the best sure-fire female star to come along since Leigh and Bergman" --referring to Vivien Leigh and Ingrid Bergman, both then under contract to the producer.

He found the young actress a new name and began grooming her for stardom, finding Jones her first big role in "Bernadette" and, afterward, producing or choosing most of her films. He endlessly pestered Hollywood with his memos about her makeup, her camera angles, her costumes. She was his protégé, his obsession, his crusade, eventually his lover and, finally, his wife.

His adoration of her, said film critic David Thomson, shaped the rest of his life and fueled "one of the great gossip-column melodramas of the time."

"She was an ardent young actress before she met Selznick," Thomson wrote in his "The New Biographical Dictionary of Film." "But it is hard now to be sure whether we would know her if his great wind had not picked her up like a leaf."

Jones was born Phylis Isley in Tulsa, Okla., on March 2, 1919, the daughter of the owners and stars of Isley Stock Co., a tent show that toured the Midwest. She became interested in acting during her school years and eventually studied at Northwestern University and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York.

It was at the academy that she met Walker, whom she married in 1939 and with whom she had two sons, Robert Walker Jr. and Michael Walker.

After several failed attempts to break into Hollywood, the two actors settled in New York City, and finally Jones got her chance for a screen test with Selznick.

By that time, Selznick was almost 40 and had already produced the epic "Gone With the Wind" and a string of popular and important films, including "David Copperfield," "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Rebecca." He was looking for another "GWTW" -- and another star to discover.

"It was a sudden fusion of supply and demand. She needed his help, he desperately needed to give it to her," Selznick's secretary, Frances Inglis, would later tell Thomson, who is also author of "Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick" (1992).

"The Song of Bernadette," a 20th Century Fox film directed by Henry King, was the vehicle Selznick picked to introduce Jones to the American public.

It was, everyone agreed, perfect casting. Jones, who was Catholic and had gone to a convent school, had the kind of wide-eyed innocence that made her believable as Bernadette Soubirous, the French peasant girl who saw a vision of the Virgin Mary in a grotto.

"I cried all the way through 'Bernadette' because Jennifer was so moving and because I realized then I had lost the award," said Ingrid Bergman, who was Oscar-nominated for her role in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" the same year Jones won.

At the time, Jones was a wife and mother, but even that tame image was not what the studio wanted for the actress it had playing a virginal mystic. For months, Jones was asked to hide her family life and present herself as a real-life Bernadette.

That changed after Selznick arranged for Jones and Walker to play opposite each other in Jones' second starring film, the World War II tear-jerker, "Since You Went Away." To promote that film, publicity stories were churned out about "Mr and Mrs. Cinderella" and their contented home life with their children.

By then, however, the relationship was a sham, and it was difficult for them to perform the love scenes. The film's director, John Cromwell, said that on two occasions Jones' "emotional upsets caused her to flee the set in tears."

The couple divorced in 1945. Walker, who had starred in "See Here, Private Hargrove" and opposite Judy Garland in "The Clock," died in 1951.

In 1948, Selznick divorced his wife, Irene Mayer, daughter of MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer. Selznick, 47, and Jones, 30, were married in 1949 on a yacht off the Italian Riviera.

More than 30 years later, Jones told the Washington Post of her relationship with Selznick: "I felt appreciated right from the beginning. I felt totally at ease. I don't know whether that's love at first sight."

But she said the stories of Selznick's domination were overblown.

"I had good roles, and I had David to guide me," Jones said.

Selznick's "Duel in the Sun" (1946), a western, earned Jones one of her best-actress Oscar nominations.

Selznick intended "Duel" as a sweeping epic in the tradition of his greatest triumph, "Gone With the Wind."

But the 1946 film, in which Jones played a woman of mixed race caught between two brothers (Peck and Cotten), ran into publicity problems when the Catholic Church issued a statement saying the story "tends to throw audience sympathy on the side of sin" and that Jones "is unduly, if not indecently, exposed." The Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood removed posters of her that showed cleavage, and much was made of the difference between Jones' role in "Duel" and her role as the innocent in "Bernadette."

"Duel," although a box-office hit, today is remembered with some humor by critics. Thomson dubbed it "a masterpiece of the primitive," and Leonard Maltin, writing in his movie guide, called "Duel" a "big, brawling, engrossing, often stupid sex-Western."

Among Jones' other major roles were "Portrait of Jennie" (1948) and, in the 1950s, "Carrie," "Beat the Devil," "Ruby Gentry," "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit," "Good Morning, Miss Dove," "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" and "A Farewell to Arms." She played Nicole Diver in 1962's "Tender Is the Night."

"Talented, charming Jennifer was the most insecure actress I ever worked with," actress Joan Fontaine, who played Jones' sister, Baby, in "Tender Is the Night," wrote in her 1978 autobiography," No Bed of Roses." "Despite her Academy Award for 'Song of Bernadette,' I felt that acting was a torture for her."

Starting in the mid-1960s, Jones went through a bleak period. Her film career was on the wane and, in 1965, Selznick died.

Two years later, on the day her good friend Charles Bickford died at the age of 78, Jones attempted suicide. She was found by sheriff's deputies in the surf at the base of a 400-foot cliff in Malibu, where she had collapsed after taking sleeping pills and, it appeared from evidence at the scene, drinking wine.

"I don't think I wanted to die," she told the Washington Post several years later. "These accidents happen."

Jones' penultimate film, "Angel, Angel, Down We Go" (1969), was so bad that film historian Edward Margulies, co-author of "Bad Movies We Love," referred to the film in labeling Jones "the true standout" among former Oscar winners who "slid into grade-Z trash" in their later careers.

Jones' final film role was a supporting role as Fred Astaire's love interest in the 1974 film "The Towering Inferno."

But by then, Jones life had taken a turn for the better after having met Norton Simon.

The couple -- he recently divorced and she widowed for half a dozen years -- met in May 1971 at a reception in Los Angeles for a New York magazine editor. Simon was 64, and Jones was 52.

At that time, Jones had retreated from Hollywood and was raising her daughter by Selznick, Mary Jennifer, and working with the Manhattan Project, a group of Salvation Army residential treatment facilities for young people addicted to narcotics. Simon said later that, of course, he found Jones beautiful but that they connected because of her activism.

Simon by that time had severed his last managerial ties to his business empire and was one of the world's leading art collectors, mostly of old masters.

By the end of May, the couple had embarked on a trip to Paris together, stopping over in London, where they decided to get married. Their wedding was aboard a boat with a view of the white cliffs of Dover.

"It was very romantic," Simon told a reporter.

Jones said that she had considered museums boring until she met Simon. She changed her mind on a trip to Siena, Italy, with her husband.

"For the first time, I looked at paintings of the Madonna and child and saw them as abstracts, which Norton had been telling me they were all along," she told the Washington Post. "Suddenly the subject matter went away and I could see, for instance, that Matisse had been here."

Jones, in turn, opened Simon's mind to other cultures. According to Times arts reporter Suzanne Muchnic's 1998 biography of Simon, "Odd Man In," it was Jones, a longtime yoga practitioner, who persuaded Simon to take his first trip to India, where he was "smitten by the art of regions he had scarcely considered before." Simon became a major force in the Indian and Southeast Asian art market.

Jones eventually became an important part of Simon's art empire. When he became incapacitated by Guillain-Barré syndrome, he named his wife president of the Norton Simon Museum of Art. After his death in 1993, she became chairwoman of the Norton Simon Foundation Board, overseeing a $3-million renovation of the museum's interior, designed by museum trustee Frank Gehry, and the gardens, by landscape designer Nancy Goslee Power.

Jones herself was surprised at the many turns her life had taken.

"Actually," Jones told the Washington Post in 1977, "every time I stop to think about it, I'm really amazed. I think I've had an extraordinary life. And lots of times I can hardly believe it's me."

Jones is survived by her son Robert Walker Jr., eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Her son Michael Walker died in 2007. In 1975, her daughter with Selznick, Mary Jennifer, committed suicide. Services will be private.

[charliechaplinfan]

I thought Jennifer had died many years ago, I never realised she had just faded out of the film world. Thank you for such a tribute I never knew half of the things you have written about her. She sounds a truly remarkable woman.

[MissGoddess]

Starting in the mid-1960s, Jones went through a bleak period. Her film career was on the wane and, in 1965, Selznick died.

Two years later, on the day her good friend Charles Bickford died at the age of 78, Jones attempted suicide. She was found by sheriff's deputies in the surf at the base of a 400-foot cliff in Malibu, where she had collapsed after taking sleeping pills and, it appeared from evidence at the scene, drinking wine.

Oh, the poor thing! I never heard that before. I'm so glad she found some peace and happiness in her final marriage.

I appreciated reading those temperate words of hers about D.O.S.

[moira finnie]

For the second time this week, I feel as though a friend of the family has died. I have not been paying attention to the news at all today, so this comes as quite a shock. I think that several of her movies will live as long as film. I hope that she and her family are at peace.


In tribute to Jennifer Jones, the January 7th, 2010 schedule on Turner Classic Movies has been altered. (All times shown are EST.)

8:00 PM
Duel In The Sun (1946)
A fiery half-breed comes between a rancher's good and evil sons. Cast: Jennifer Jones, Gregory Peck, Joseph Cotten. Dir: King Vidor. C-144 mins, TV-14, CC

10:30 PM
Beat The Devil (1954)
A group of con artists stake their claim on a bogus uranium mine. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gina Lollobrigida, Jennifer Jones. Dir: John Huston. BW-90 mins, TV-PG, CC

12:15 AM
Madame Bovary (1949)
A romantic country girl sacrifices her marriage when she thinks she's found true love. Cast: Jennifer Jones, Van Heflin, James Mason. Dir: Vincente Minnelli. BW-114 mins, TV-PG, CC

2:15 AM
The Indiscretion Of An American Wife (1954)
An American woman tries to break it off with her Italian lover. Cast: Jennifer Jones, Montgomery Clift, Richard Beymer. Dir: Vittorio De Sica. BW-63 mins, TV-PG

[charliechaplinfan]

It's a pity we don't get TCM America over here. I would love to see her Madame Bovary. I'd recommend Indiscretion of an American Wife, although it is flawed I'm fond of it. Reading her quotes about DOS I need to read the Showman book again, to appreciate them both, it's been a long time since I read it.

[Lzcutter]

And another one passes away, this time it is screenwriter Dan O'Bannon. He wrote, among others, Alien.

From The Wrap:

Dan O'Bannon, a screenwriter and director who left his indelible imprint on the science fiction genre, has died of an undisclosed illness. He was 63 years old.

He may never have been a household name, but even the most casual moviegoer knew O'Bannon's work.

In a career that spanned nearly four decades, O'Bannon wrote the scripts for such films as "Total Recall" and "Alien," in which he created a vision of the future that was often sleek, regimented and ultimately dystopic.

"With 'Alien,' I figured out quite simply that, as an audience member, what you don't see scares you more than what you see," O'Bannon said of his approach to the film classic. "In horror films, the scares that really grab the audience and build the tension for them don't come from the monster jumping out of the shadows. The terror comes from the slow times in between those payoff scenes in which the characters are talking and planning -- waiting for something to jump out at them."

He also tried his hand at directing. O'Bannon's most notable stint in the director's chair was "Return of the Living Dead," a zombie satire with a pounding punk rock soundtrack featuring the likes of The Cramps and SSQ.

O'Bannon got his start at USC film school, where he befriended director John Carpenter. The two collaborated on "Dark Star," a space comedy that O'Bannon wrote, edited and starred in, while Carpenter handled directing duties. "Dark Star" didn't make much of a stir at the box office, but its far-out plot made it a cult favorite and put its creators on Hollywood's radar.

In addition to his work on "Alien" and "Recall," O'Bannon further cemented his geek bona fides by working on the special effects for "Star Wars."

He was rumored to be working on a script for an "Alien" prequel at the time of his death.