Six decades of film Jameses

Yahoo! Today is  "National Classic Movie Day", and I'm celebrating virtually with my fellow classic film bloggers. This year, bloggers are writing about one favorite film from each of six decades of film history as part of a blogathon hosted by Rick of Classic Movie and TV Cafe. Check out all the posts by going to Rick's site here - there really is no better way to build up your watch list of great classics than through recommendations of this group of bloggers!

In addition to being "National Classic Movie Day", May 16th will always be a special day for me - my dad's birthday. So, for my entry in this year's blogathon, I'm taking a cue from Turner Classic Movies - during May their 'star' of the month is "Movie Roberts"-- and building my list of favorites around "Movie Jameses" in honor of my own favorite James. 

1920s: James Murray (1901-1936) The Crowd (1928)

Sadly, James Murray is known for the leading part in this movie and very little else. Originally from New York, Murray's big dream was to have a career in Hollywood, and his dream came true when famed director King Vidor found him in a casting office and, impressed with his skills, cast him in The Crowd. He did go on to make a few more films before falling victim to depression, substance abuse, and homelessness. He ultimately died at only 35 years old after drowning in what may have been a suicide. 

James Murray

Watch The Crowd because...it represents the best of the art of the silent film. It's at once visually stunning and biting in its social commentary ... a story of a young couple struggling to make it in the big city. Opposite James Murray was cast Eleanor Boardman, director Vidor's second wife. Ironically, it was made a couple of years before the stock market crash that launched the Great Depression. Director King Vidor was one of the most prolific directors in Hollywood, and his career spanned the birth of pictures through to the early 1960s. 

1930s: James Cagney,  (1899-1986), Footlight Parade (1933)

Diminutive Irish-American actor James Cagney is, of course, a titan of Classic Hollywood cinema, and a personal favorite. His talents were made for the screen, whether he's singing and dancing (for example, Yankee Doodle Dandy), or rubbing out foes that ran afoul of any number of gangster characters he portrayed (The Public Enemy). Cagney's career really took off in the 1930s, and even though he had many terrific parts in later decades, his pre-Code films are my favorites.

James Cagney (from Wikipedia)

I chose to highlight Footlight Parade, first because Cagney isn't a gangster here, he's an eternally optimistic theatrical producer who can (shock!) sing and dance. And who doesn't like watching him dance? The backstage plot revolves around Cagney's efforts to corral assorted players and sell theatrical "prologues", live showpieces that precede feature films at big-city movie houses. Almost everyone in the Warner Bros. stable is there, with Joan Blondell toning it down a bit but making a wonderful partner for Cagney, Dick Powell, Rudy Keeler (the two of them reprising their romance from 42nd Street), Guy Kibbee, Ruth Donnelly, Hugh Herbert, Frank McHugh, and more. And then there are the fabulous musical extravaganza numbers choreographed by Busby Berkeley. Be aware of some unfortunate dated elements; otherwise, this is a fabulous romp. Directed by Lloyd Bacon.

1940s: James Stewart, (1908-1997), The Philadelphia Story (1940)

James Stewart has little in common with Cagney, but he shares the versatility and screen legend status. Just a bit younger than Cagney, his career really took off starting in the 1940s, and The Philadelphia Story was one of his first major leading man breaks (would you believe he played the villain in the second 'Thin Man' film in 1936?) Stewart was a WWII hero, and upon returning home after the war, found he could channel some of the darkness in his personality into his later roles. He became, like one of his Philadelphia Story co-stars Cary Grant, a favorite of Alfred Hitchcock. 

James Stewart (Wikipedia)

The first time I saw The Philadephia Story I didn't like it. It seemed overly stagy and contrived. Then I had the opportunity to watch a special screening at my local cinema and was completely entranced as the subtleties that make the movie were so much more apparent. Stewart and Cary Grant orbit around society damsel Katharine Hepburn on the eve of her marriage to staid bachelor George Kittridge. All kinds of shenanigans ensue. The witty script and pitch-perfect portrayals by the leads and supporting players alike make this one a must-see. I especially love British actor Roland Young as Uncle Willie. Directed by George Cukor, this was just one of four films Stewart made in 1940. 

1950s:  James Dean (1931-1955), East of Eden (1955)
Here is another titan of film. But unlike Cagney & Stewart, his titan status is based on his potential, as seen in a total of three films he made in 1955, and that wasn't fully realized as he tragically died later that year in a car accident at age 24. (It's really hard to imagine that Dean would be 90 this year). But Dean in many ways emblemizes the 1950s, not least because of the teenage rebellion issue that seemed to capture the public imagination then, so this actor of eternal youth is my choice for this decade.

James Dean (Wikipedia)

East of Eden was actually Dean's first of his three feature films - and it's a meaty role in the film version of Steinbeck's novel which had come out only three years before. And it's not set in the 1950s, but right after WWI, focusing on the generational struggles of a family in the Salinas Valley of California, and the uncovering of secrets. Directed by Elia Kazan, it has an epic feel. Dean was able to showcase the range of attitudes he brought to a character: defiance, vulnerability, sweetness, and roughness. Julie Harris is wonderful as the love interest of both brothers in the Trask family, and Raymond Massey brings life to the difficult character of the father, a role he said was the best in his career.

1960s: James Coburn (1928-2002), The Magnificent Seven (1960)
The Magnificent Seven was a career-launching film for James Coburn, an actor who had toiled in minor parts. Here, director John Sturges cast him as Britt, a knife-thrower and sharpshooter who talks only with his weapons. Coburn has a classic scene in this film in which his wiry body and taciturn nature belies his deadliness when provoked. Coburn went on to a long career in film and television, playing rough-and-tumble types in action or Western flicks. 

James Coburn (IMDb)

I watched The Magnificent Seven for the first time last year. I was afraid that it might be one of those films that didn't live up to its classic reputation. Thankfully, I was wrong. In the hands of director John Sturges, who loved the source material, Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai, it is a compact, beautifully shot piece of Western entertainment. And I readily bought Russian-born Yul Brynner as the mercurial but tough leader of the gang who tries to protect a Mexican village from a group of marauders led by the great Eli Wallach. Steve McQueen is a second lead here and almost succeeds in taking the picture from Brynner. The film is also known for its evocative score by Elmer Bernstein. 

1970s: James Caan (1940-), The Godfather (1972)

And now for the young-un in the bunch: James Caan, who is still with us. A New York native who got his start on the stage, Caan cemented his star status as the lead in the TV movie Brian's Song in 1971. He then won the role of Sonny Corleone in The Godfather over Robert De Niro. His manic, explosive energy was put to good use -- he even had one of the most memorable death scenes in the movies. He garnered a nod for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar along with co-stars Robert Duvall and Al Pacino. He continued as a leading man and supporting actor over the subsequent decades, overcoming substance abuse issues and a rocky personal life. He also dabbled in directing and lived out his tough-guy persona as a Master of Gosoku Ryu Karate.

James Caan (IMDb)

The Godfather ranks as #3 in the American Film Institute of best films, and it set the standard for modern mob dramas. It's character-driven, and epic, running nearly three hours. There are several storylines that criss-cross in mostly tragic ways. In the end, The Godfather is dead, from natural causes, and the reluctant son is stepping into those shoes, poised to become even more of a monster. Despite that, you rather root for these Corleone mobsters, while despising them more for the way they treat the women in their lives than the way they dispatch their enemies. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and followed up by a sequel many consider the original's superior.

For more recommendations of classics through the decades, head over to Rick's Classic Film and TV Cafe for the master list of bloggers sharing their favorites.

James Garner in HOUR OF THE GUN - Western Movie Summer Part 4

HOUR OF THE GUN (John Sturges, 1967) is in the lineup Saturday Aug 27th for TCM's "Summer Under the Stars" tribute to James Garner, and I'm pleased to contribute this post to the "Summer Under the Stars" blogathon hosted by Kristen of Journeys in Classic Film.  

James Garner (left) as Wyatt Earp and Jason Robards as Doc Holliday in HOUR OF THE GUN

Doc Holliday:  "I hear that the Chamber of Commerce has put up $20,000 reward money (for the Clanton gang)."

Wyatt Earp: "For arrest and conviction, not 'dead or alive.'  Not your style, Doc."

Doc Holliday:  "For that kind of money I can be as law-abiding as....you are."

It's fitting that in the summer in which I've devoted to watching and studying Westerns, I write my final post of the season on this late Western, when filmmakers have begun to deconstruct its vaunted heroes.  In a few short years the genre would be almost entirely given over to the 'revisionist' or 'anti'-Western, in response to the Vietnam War and the political and societal disillusionment replacing what was typically glorification of American optimism and romanticism in the classic Western.   In HOUR OF THE GUN, audiences are, at least on the surface, in familiar territory with Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and their cohort, the historical western figures whose story had been told and retold throughout the 20th century.  But we are clued in at once that this one will be a bit different:  the film starts with the Earp cohort marching down a dusty main street toward the infamous OK Corral, punctuated with a pounding drum in the soundtrack.  The legendary gunfight just initiates the action, and the film's narrative is all about what happens after.  

Doomed members of the Clanton gang wait to meet Earp & Co.

For a legendary 1881 occurrence in Tombstone, Arizona that has been the subject of dozens of films and television episodes, it's hard to imagine a time when no one knew about Earp & Co. Yet the 'gunfight at OK Corral' had only become part of American lore in 1920, when the real Wyatt Earp, retired from his life as a lawman, began to hang around Hollywood and tell his story to anyone who would listen. Among others, John Ford listened.  In fact, one of the best, albeit fictionalized, account of Wyatt Earp's adventures is John Ford's MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (1946) starring Henry Fonda.  Fonda as an actor was an early inspiration for James Garner, when the two shared the stage in Garner's first professional acting appearance in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. Speaking about Fonda in his memoir, Garner said, "I admired him so much I even mimicked him.  In MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, he did a little seated two-step in place by leaning back in a chair and pushing off a post....I stole it for SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SHERIFF! (Burt Kennedy, 1969).

When Garner made this film, he was already a big star, playing the leading role in the Western humor series 'Maverick', and in films such as DUEL AT DIABLO (1966).  He had the experience of working with director John Sturges in THE GREAT ESCAPE. A full decade earlier Western specialist Sturges made the more conventional movie about the gunfight, unsurprisingly named GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL, starring Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas as Doc Holliday.  HOUR OF THE GUN was the sequel, and quite different in tone and theme. Garner jumped at the chance to work with Sturges again, and accepted the role without having read the script, and years later acknowledged it was a different sort of a Western.  Here, Earp is a conflicted lawman who first must endure being put on trial for murder after the gunfight, supported by Ike Clanton, played by the inimitable Robert Ryan, in a unfortunately small role. Then when one brother is maimed and another murdered, he begins to step outside the law in an increasing vendetta on Clanton and his gang.  The film narrative follows closely the pursuer and the pursued until the inevitable end -- Earp riding to new adventures and doomed Holliday left in a sanitarium.

Robert Ryan as Ike Clanton (seated) as a witness for the prosecution in Earp's trial

Garner is a steely presence here, embodying Earp with a quiet desperation without ever bending that backbone.  To me, he is a more believable, and human, Earp than Lancaster, who seems a bit stiff, and blustery in the role in the earlier film.  Garner does a good job with Edward Anhalt's script that asks us to look at our heroes more realistically, with motives not entirely pure or actions not always justifiable.  Yet as good as Garner is, Jason Robards was just so much fun to watch in the showier role of Doc Holliday.  He sunk his teeth into the scenery, staggered around the set, emitted witticisms and contributed wry humor to what is overall a dark picture.  Apparently Robards off screen was not unlike Holliday.  In his memoir Garner revealed that Robards enjoyed being on location in Mexico a bit too much (a local bar and whorehouse were implicated) and "was never on the set when you needed him." Sturges, however, knew where to find him, and one day, after another late appearance, dressed Robards down publicly, after which he improved his behavior.  

In another departure from the classic Western formula, there are no women characters.  Literally, none, among the credited cast.  Does anyone know if there is another Western in the classic era without the good woman from back East, or the fallen woman who seeks redemption, or a noble native American woman to redeem the male hero?  I'd be interested.  The film is solid, and Garner and Robards are terrific, but the lack of development of the minor characters makes the narrative drag at times and I found it easy to lose track of who is pursuing whom.   Lucien Ballard's cinematography is fine, and the soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith has a perfectly-suited mournful, elegiac quality.  

As an epilogue, I was reminded of a personal connection to this film from many years ago.  As a Star Trek devotee I remember as a child watching, and being freaked out by, a rerun of the original series' third season episode called "Spectre of the Gun".  This aired in 1968, one year after the movie, and the show's producers were inspired enough by the Sturges film to give their episode almost the same name.  They succeeded in crafting a spooky, surreal retelling of the legendary gunfight in which the main crew of the Starship Enterprise are forced into embodying the Clanton gang against the ghosts of Earp and Holliday, thus facing mortal danger.   This might be the creepiest presentation of the famous gunfight ever recorded -- watch the final few minutes here:

Don't forget to check out the others posts for the "Summer Under the Stars" blogathon, all conveniently collected here.

Sources:
James Garner, with Jon Winokur, The Garner Files, Simon & Schuster, 2001.
Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, Atheneum Press, 1992.