Category: Classic Horror

What a Character! 11th Annual Blogathon 2023 Elisha Cook Jr. – Like it says in the newspaper I’m a bad boy

It’s the 11th Annual What a Character! Blogathon. Not only is it my favorite gathering of bloggers paying tribute to actors who deserve our recognition, but it also gives me a reason to dive in and binge their films and television appearances. Thank you, Aurora at Once Upon A Screen, Kellee at Outspoken & Freckled, and Paula at Paula’s Cinema Club  for hosting this year’s wonderful event!

Impish pint-sized, blue-eyed, and baby-faced with a  raspy voice, American character actor Elisha Vanslyck Cook Jr. was born on December 26, either 1903 or 1906 (sources vary) in San Francisco, California.

Cook spent his childhood in Chicago, Illinois, and his first job was selling programs in the theatre lobby. He attended St. Albans College and the Chicago Academy of Dramatic Art, debuting on the stage at age 14, and was an assistant stage manager at age 17. He later traveled with a repertory company as a stage actor, appearing in vaudeville, debuting in the vaudeville act Lightnin.' He worked in stock companies where he got his first big break after Eugene O’Neill cast him in the lead role of his production of Ah, Wilderness on Broadway.

At age 23 Cook debuted on the Broadway stage in 1926 as Joe Bullitt in the musical comedy Hello, Lola. He also appeared as Dick Wilton in Henry Behave 1926, Many a Slip, Hello, Gertie 1926-27, The Kingdom of God 1928-29 – (featuring Ethel Barrymore), and Her Unborn Child 1928  at the Empire Theatre. In 1963 he returned to the stage as “Giuseppe Givola” in “Arturo Ui” on Broadway, written by Bertolt Brecht from The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. The show featured the music of Jule Styne.

Elisha Cook Jr. then moved to Hollywood where he settled in 1936. He made his film debut revising his stage role as the romantic young lead in the film version of Her Unborn Child 1930 alongside Francis Underwood. "A vividly dramatic all-talker of the Broadway stage hit which rocked the nation with its frankness." After Hollywood spotted the young actor’s fun-sized flair, he would not return to the stage until 1963.

The diminutive actor co-starred in over 220 films and television shows from the 1930s to the 1980s. His film career, including his later television roles, lasted almost 60 years. Cook a flexible actor, played a wide range of characters. ‘Cookie’ as his friends referred to him, was cast in a wide variety of genres starting out in musical comedy, westerns, crime dramas, and most notably film noir and B horror movies.

“Few actors could claim to have played as many memorable roles in as many recognized classics or to have become the answer to so many Hollywood trivia questions,” – Robert Thomas, Jr., in a New York Times obituary.

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A Trailer a Day Keeps the Boogeyman Away : Goodbye Andrew Prine Oct 31, 2022

LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL-GOODBYE ANDREW PRINE

It’s sort of poetic that Andrew Prine left us on Halloween… Though the lanky actor is beloved for his supporting roles in classic Westerns (winning the Golden Boot Award in 2001) both in film and television, I’ll always have a strong affection for his contribution to the B-horror, sci-fi and exploitation genres. I think he had it in his DNA to bring his cocky, seraphic sex appeal to the scary screen. (The Invaders 1967,V mini series 1983 and V: The Final Battle 1984, Star Trek: The Next Generation 1993, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 1995, Weird Science series 1994-98) Later on in his career,  he wouldn’t turn his back on a genre that embraced him, looming grim as the nightmarish surgeon Dr. Hopkins who deals in body parts in the outre gruesome Sutures in 2009, also appearing as Reverend Jonathan Hawthorn in Rob Zombies -The Lords of Salem in 2012.

In the 60s Prine was cast in supporting roles in supernatural oriented television episodes of One Step Beyond 1960, Boris Karloff’s THRILLER ‘The Guilty Men 1960’, ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS ‘The Faith of Aaron Menefee’1962’.

You can catch him in the made for tv movie Night Slaves 1970, Kolchak: The Night Stalker ‘Demon in Lace’ 1975, The Evil 1978, and Amityville II: THE POSSESSION 1982.

Personal Quote[on the 70s exploitation films he starred in] “Then I did a couple of headrollers, and I did them for the money – they paid me a lot of money to do them. I was never a guy who was unhappy on a set. I enjoyed the game, the circus – and I enjoyed the girls. We always had a bunch of fun girls on those movies. The only one I regretted making – I didn’t regret The Centerfold Girls (1974) or The Evil 1978, which turned out to be pretty good. But I didn’t like Terror Circus (1973) [a.k.a “Barn of the Naked Dead”]. When I got into that I thought, “You’ve gone too far, my boy.” I couldn’t imagine my way out of it, though they paid me a lot of bucks. I thought, “Let’s not do this again.”

Here are some clips and trailers from a genre that was keen for his charisma!

SIMON, KING OF THE WITCHES 1971

CRYPT OF THE LIVING DEAD 1973

TERROR CIRCUS aka BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD 1973

THE CENTERFOLD GIRLS 1974

THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN 1976

This is your EverLovin’ Joey sayin’ Andrew Prine gets the “Golden Popcorn Bucket Award” here at The Last Drive in

 

Chapter 5 – Queers and Dykes in the Dark: Classic, Noir & Horror Cinema’s Coded Gay Characters:

There is only one possible end. We are monsters. I don’t like monsters.

Diabolique, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, based his film on Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac’s novel “Celle qui n’était plus” (She Who Was No More, which Hitchcock attempted to buy the rights to. The original novel is overt in referring to the two women carrying on a lesbian relationship. Clouzot made this more implied in the film. Boileau and Narcejac then wrote D’Entre les Morts” (From Among the Dead) specifically for Alfred Hitchcock, who subsequently adapted to the screen as Vertigo in 1958.

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1955 French psycho-sexual thriller Diabolique set off a tone of thrillers to come, with its atmospheric looking-glass quality and suggestion of both lesbianism and the supernatural. Véra Clouzot stars as Christina Delassalle, the wife of a cruel headmaster, Michell Delassalle ( Paul Meurisse), at a private boarding school.

His wife, Christina, and mistress, Nicole Horner (Simone Signoret), conspire to kill him and give themselves a perfect alibi. Christina is a fragile sort, with a weak heart, and beaten down by her husband’s physical and mental abuse (he calls her his little ruin). Nicole is self-reliant and aggressive. The two women form a bond with an unspoken tinge of their lesbian alliance. Along the way, Nicole must push Christina to go through with their plans to murder Michel and be rid of Michell, the swine, forever. After his death, there are sightings of him on the grounds of the school. This injects an element of the uncanny into the plot unless there is something more insidious at the core. Throughout the picture, there is a strong sense of Sapphic tension and allusions to the two women’s sexual relationship. In the novel She Who Was No More, the two women were clearly lesbian lovers.

M. Drain Professeur “I may be reactionary, but this is absolutely astounding – the legal wife consoling the mistress! No, no, and no!”

 

Christina Delassalle “There is only one possible end. We are monsters. I don’t like monsters.”

Nicole Horner “If it’s only him, I feel better. I’ll save the grain of sand falling from the hands of providence for my morality lessons.”

Alfred Hitchcock was so impressed with Henri-Georges Clouzot’s French thriller Diabolique (1955) it inspired him to create a dark and psycho-sexual black & white film that would also shock his audience and be a success at the box office.

With his horror film — quasi-noir-tinged Psycho (1960), he engendered a whole new brand of Schadenfreude with his outre creepy film adapted from the story by Robert Bloch about Norman Bates, who personifies the Oedipal relationship between himself and his castrating mother.

The mysterious Mrs. Bates is never seen on screen, except for her voice that croaks out stern remarks from behind her bedroom door. In order to manifest his vengeful mother’s overarching power, he brings her to life by dressing in her clothes and killing anyone Norman has sexual desires for. Norman Bates became the poster boy for the cross-dressing psychopathic killer with latent homosexual tendencies brought about by his over-possessive mother. Though these disparaging visions of gay characters existed on screen, Norman Bates WAS a cinematic prototype and composite of serial killer Ed Gein, who did in fact go on a killing spree in Wisconsin in the 1950s and 60s. Gein wore women’s clothing, and he also wore their skin, sharing Norman’s fascination with taxidermy. He also carried on conversations with his dead mother, which he dug up and kept on the old creepy family farm. In later years, the graphically perverse Deranged (1974), starring Robert Blossom, was released as a direct biographical film about Gein’s life. Later on, it became the interlace of the story, which would be the gory incidentals in 1991, in Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs, where Buffalo Bill would also become iconic and a composite of Ed Gein.

William Castle’s Homicidal 1961 was directed by the king of ballyhoo, who answered Alfred Hitchcock’s horror noir with his own cringe-worthy psycho-sexual film featuring the cross-dressing Jean Arliss as Emily/Warren — another psychopathic gender-bending murderer. The brutal stabbing murder of a justice-of-the-peace sparks an investigation of dark family secrets in a sleepy small town in Southern California. Also stars Glenn Corbett and Patricia Breslin.

A peculiar young man, Warren (Jean Arliss), plots to murder his half-sister, Miriam Webster (Patricia Breslin) in order to collect the family fortune. Miriam is supposed to share her inheritance with her half-brother Warren, who lives with his nanny and now guardian Helga (Eugenie Leontovich), an old woman confined to a wheelchair. Helga has recently been struck down by a stroke and is barely able to move or speak; she can only tap out something like Morse code with her trusty doorknob. Warren is a strange and menacing figure who projects an undercurrent of hostility toward his childhood guardian. Warren and Helga live in the old family mansion where he and Miriam grew up. Helga is taken care of by a pretty blonde nurse, Emily, who seems to have formed a close relationship with Warren.

Miriam Webster: “I remember when we were kids, you took this doll away from me, and I never saw it again.”
Warren: “You want it? Take it.”

Making its departure from gruesome queer killers, Hollywood contributed to the screen another type of threatening’ gay subtext with James Dean, who exuded tragic emotional disturbances, and the tough sensitivity of Marlon Brando, who dressed in worn-out leather to cover up the pathos oozing from his deep eyes and rugged voice. Dyer refers to these actors as the sensitive ‘spectacularized young man.’

In director Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), a most talked about film with homosexual undertones, particularly from Sal Mineo’s (openly queer) portrayal of Plato. James Dean is on fire with teenage angst as Jim Stark, whose father is an emasculated, weak male figure. There is a lot more light that passes through Plato’s homosexuality, as he exudes more than the hero worship of Jim. There’s a tell-tale scene when Plato is combing his hair in the mirror of his locker, decorated with a photo of Gary Cooper. Jim is walking down the hallway, and as Plato catches sight of him, his gaze is eroticized.

The character of Plato is played as an unstable youth, and Jim comes from a family with a domineering mother who emasculates his apron-wearing gutless father… In 1955, the question of homosexuality still had to be handled on screen as a question of deviance; Plato, therefore, must pay for his transgressions with his life.

There is also a moral warning for parents. Represent good role models of a heterosexual ideal, or your kids might turn out either troubled or queer. It is a cautionary tale about paying attention to heteronormative expectations. In the end, the story is sewn up with Jim grabbing his father as he tells him it’ll be alright.

Ray’s film, with its heavily rendered homosexual subtext, avails itself of dialogue that is easily interpreted as sexually ambiguous. “Are you ready to come out yet?”

In Howard Hawk’s Gentleman Prefer Blondes, 1953 Jane Russell does one of her lively musical numbers which suggests a very tongue-in-cheek hint at ‘gay panic’ when her character Dorothy Shaw is surrounded by a chorus of muscle-bound weightlifters in homoerotic swim trunks that pay Dorothy no mind.“Doesn’t anyone want to play?”

In a more deeply disturbing narrative, director Jack Garfein’s The Strange One (1957) is set in a military boarding school. Jocko De Paris (Ben Gazzara) is a manipulative upperclassman who rules sadistically over the other cadets. The root cause of Jocko’s ambiguous violent schemes is suggested to be his latent homosexuality.

the film wallows in a steamy mixture of homoerotic imagery and verbal innuendo. The mise-en-scene is filled with phallic signifiers, such as towers, trumpets, cigars, flashlights, nightsticks, bottles brooms swords and scores of erect young men marching sweatingly through the night… The specter of homosexuality also envelops the characters of Cadet Perrin, and effete poet who idolworhips Jocko and Cadet Simmons, a Peter Lorre look-alike who refuses to date girls or shower with the other cadets. Ultimately all this queerness is dislplace onto Jocko’s violent sadism, a linkage not uncommon in the ear’s medical discourse about homosexuality… Jocko calls Cadet Perrin a ‘three-dollar bill” and repeatedly towel whips his ass its hard not to read the scene as a metaphoric sodomy wherein (Code-sanctioned) homosocial violence displaces (Code -forbidden ) homosexual contact. The story itself is an extended gloss on secrecy in the barracks centering on a bizzare narrative event that also speaks of homosexuality in barely coded ways.(Jeffrey Sconce)

Tennessee William’s Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) conflated homosexuality with the devouring mother archetype, promiscuity, cruising, pedophilia, and cannibalism. It’s a melodrama that could very easily share the shock scenes and denouement with some of the most gruesome horror films.

Not to forget Vincente Minnelli’s Tea and Sympathy (1956), where John Kerr, sewing with the ladies and removed from all sports, is barely veiled as a homosexual, though the picture throws Deborah Kerr at him in one night’s sexual encounter to awaken his maleness. The film is so uncomfortable with itself because it dares not admit Tom’s homosexuality.

Even as the Production Code authorities attempted to expurgate “homosexuality” per se from the film version of Tea and Sympathy 1956“”focusing instead on the euphemism of its young protagonist’s effeminacy this move fooled few spectators and simultaneously reinforced a stereotypical and reassuring blurring of effeminacy and male homosexuality. (Foster Hirsch-The Dark Side of the Screen)

Where homosexuals are either portrayed as deviants or boys who have had their masculinity neutered for them, lesbians have a symbology all their own. In director Gerd Oswald’s psychotronic cult film Screaming Mimi (1958) starring Anita Ekberg, Gypsy Rose Lee plays exotic night club owner Joann ‘Gypsy’ Masters, a veiled lesbian who runs the burlesque show and looks after her girls.

Exotic dancer Anita Ekberg surrounds herself with her Great Dane… Screaming Mimi.

In contrast to coded characters, in Basil Dearden’s Victim (1961), the outed queer character Melville Farr is played by Dirk Bogard. one of the gay men being targeted by a blackmail plot during the 1960s London, coinciding with the death of a young man, whom Bogard had a fling with. The subject of homosexuality was out in the open in Dearden’s bold 1961 film, which deals with homosexuality as the central plot. Yet it drops the characters into a seedy pit of unsavory intrigue surrounding gay men and their criminal affiliations. Victim is one of the first films dealing with homosexuality directly as the central storyline, confronting some of the issues in a serious manner without demonizing its leading character, Melville Farr, yet trying to examine how being in the closet causes so much psychological turmoil and heartache.

Lesbians are often portrayed as harsh and tyrannical or on the femme side; they’re trashy and beaten down. For example, in director Gordon Douglas’ Tony Rome (1967), After 1961, times were changing, and the Code was forced to ease up on policing the content of pictures coming out of Hollywood. One of the first signs of the lesbian innuendo, with more of a kick to it, was in director Gordon Douglas’ Tony Rome 1967. The equation of lesbian love with tyranny is also the strongest impression we get from that scene between Irene and Georgia (uncredited Deanna Lund) in the caravan.

Georgia, the stripper, might be seen as a lady who gets what she wants with no interference, but she also lives in a caravan with Irene (character actor Elizabeth Fraser). In the film, she plays a dowdy, heavy-set, unspoken lesbian lover (who is credited on IMDb as Irma.) The film doesn’t call their relationship out by name, but the dialogue contains sharp innuendo dished out by the smooth-talking Sinatra, who talks to Georgia about an old boyfriend of hers. Tony’s been trying to track him down. Redheaded Georgia (Deanna Lund), a stripper who’s shacked up with her ‘roommate,’ as abusive and whiny as the men who used to beat her.

Tony told Georgia about her ex-boyfriend: “Maybe he was trying to get into the wrong ballpark.”

After Irene, who seems overly possessive, jealous, unstable, and isn’t the most fashionable 60s lesbian, begins smacking Georgia around until they both fall on the small caravan bed as Irene whimpers that she’s sorry for hitting her.

Tony smirks- “You want the lights on or off?… They’re better off.”

Tony Rome is scattered with a few distasteful scenes, characteristic of late 6os cinema; queers were not portrayed in a very good light. While the film has a groovy 60s vibe, some smart-alecky dialogue, and the presence of Sinatra who plays it cool, the decades’ propensity for painting gays with a dirty brush is ever present in Gordon Douglas’ crime drama.

Lloyd Bochner plays an effete drug dealer named Vic. A brief teaser role that seems to have flown under the gay radar. Bochner portrays Vic with a pretentiously fake obstinance, wears an ascot, and listens to classical music in his kitschy pad. Tony shows up looking for a user who will be trying to score from Vic. After he roughs Vic up a bit, Rome prepares himself a hamburger on the stove and asks Vic in a mocking tone, “How do you like your meat?”

The tyrannical relationships between lesbians in the world of the classic film noir where there was more of a power differential, between employer/employee, etc (Rebecca, In a Lonely Place, Walk on the Wild Side for instance) carry over into films where the lesbian characters are not only visible but they are supposed to be each others’ social equal.

The emphasis on lesbians as working women can exhibit keen elements of cruelty and violence of either the servants or mistresses, as with Mrs. Danvers and the second Mrs. de Winter (Rebecca) and Martha to Laurel (In a Lonely Place). But also the dominance that madams show to the ‘girls’ in their stable. This manifestation of iron-handed emotions leaves us suspicious of what the attraction is to women or the object of their affection.

As the Hays Code began to crumble and it was gasping its last bitter breath, the lesbian character was made visible on screen. This is the case of Dirk Bogard in Dearden’s Victim or with George (Beryl Reid) and Childie (Susannah York) in Robert Aldrich’s painfully revealing exploration of an aging dyke in THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE (1968), where lesbianism is out in the open for the audience but not for the character of Sister George who is a beloved soap opera star for BBC. She tries to make her private life separate from her career as a well-loved nurse on the popular television show. But June Buckridge, who plays the character of George, is compelled to sabotage both her private and public life with her shameless reputation for drinking too much and goosing nuns in taxi cabs. She is a belligerent, self-hating lesbian who is trapped within her private closet, trying to hold onto her girlfriend, who is a wandering woman/child.

The sixties ushered in several interesting films that still cast a veil of secrecy over queer cinema before films became franker with gay subjects as the lead story. One of the most flirtatious and entertaining with more than a queer inkling or attentive innuendo is THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN (1960), a homosocial/partly-homosexual buddy film about men coming together to rob a bank. As the Criterion Collection calls it, “precisely calibrated caper… influences countless Hollywood heist films.”

One of the unprecedented aspects of Dearden’s film for 1960 is not only is the narrative steeped in queer innuendo, but homosexuality also is not tangential to the plot; a few of the main characters are ‘queer,’ and they are not stereotypical.

Director Basil Dearden’s impressively quirky British heist movie stars the accomplished Jack Hawkins as Hyde and equally brilliant Nigel Patrick as Major Race. Hyde is a resentful Colonel who was forced into retirement as he was ‘redundant.’ He recruits an eccentric group of disgraced petty criminals, ex-British army officers, to help him pull off a meticulous bank heist that includes infiltrating a military compound. Hyde has the goods on all of their shady pasts and influences them to accept his offer. Race becomes his most trusted ally and implied lover, who used to run the black market in Hamburg. The film also stars some British greats, Richard Attenborough, Kieron Moore, and Bryan Forbes, who went on to direct, and Roger Livesey. Hyde assigns each one a task that matches their expertise.

Women are rarely seen except for the opening of the picture and are not part of the narrative, merely to illustrate that they are not quite essential or actually a drag on the men’s lives. There are no romantic relationships on the periphery, just Attenborough lusting after a pretty young skirt. For the most part, women are not shown in a good light. They are either whores, shrews catering to their doddering old father-in-law, cling insecure older women being used by Forbes; the rest are bitches. Women are the counterbalance of the film’s antiheroes, who form a homosocial circle. However, I wonder if there isn’t a form of homosocial order within a female assembly, like prisons and convents, that have their own shape of erotic engagement. I might call this experience ‘sapphic-social.’

Gentlemen have a definite undercurrent of sexual attraction between Hyde (Hawkins) and Race (Patrick). Often, the two exchange glances and trade coquetry, while there is a seductive ambiance to many of their interactions, especially when Hyde tells Race to spend the night. He also requests that Race drop the old “˜darling’ bit, and then Race calls him Old Dear instead. Their entire relationship is flirtatious,” and when Race dons an apron and does the dishes with Hawkins, it’s divine.

Race looking at a portrait, “Is that your wife? Is she dead?”

Hyde “Oh no, the bitch is still going very strong.”

“One gets into terrible habits at the YMCA,” and “You’d be surprised where I’ve parked my Caravan.” Race tells Hawkins. Race tells him, “You’re spoiling me.” Hyde tells him, “All my men loved me.”

Kieran Moore is being blackmailed, but it is only implied that he is homosexual. ” Well, there are thrills and “˜thrills’ ” he tells his patron whom he is massaging. There is a reference to him by one of the others that he’s an “odd man out.” And Lexy (Richard Attenborough) acts green around the gills because he has to room with him.

For a gripping, black comedic crime thriller, the more than implied queerness makes The League of Gentlemen, a variation on Boys in the Band, a sort of Boys in the Bank Robbery will do nicely!

Then, in 1962, Peter Ustinov directed BILLY BUDD, which was based on the novel by Herman Melville. Billy Budd stars Robert Ryan as John Claggart Master of Arms, Peter Ustinov as Capt. Vere and co-stars Melvyn Douglas, Paul Rogers, David McCallum, Ronald Lewis, Niall MacGinnis, and Terence Stamp as Billy Budd. Billy Budd is an innocent, naive seaman in the British Navy in 1797. When the ship’s sadistic master-at-arms is murdered, Billy is accused and tried. Claggart ( Robert Ryan) has a ‘queer’ fixation on Billy. Laura Mulvey terms this fixation as a case of ‘scopophilia,’ which describes the psychological tendency towards deriving aesthetic pleasure from looking at something or someone in terms of masculinity/femininity and subjectivity and objectivity.

In her book Epistemology of the Closet (1990/2008), Eve Sedgwick, expanding on earlier interpretations of the same themes, posits that the interrelationships between Billy, Claggart and Captain Vere are representations of male homosexual desire and the mechanisms of prohibition against this desire. She points out that Claggart’s “natural depravity,” which is defined tautologically as “depravity according to nature,” and the accumulation of equivocal terms (“phenomenal”, “mystery”, etc.) used in the explanation of the fault in his character, are an indication of his status as the central homosexual figure in the text. She also interprets the mutiny scare aboard the Bellipotent, the political circumstances that are at the center of the events of the story, as a portrayal of homophobia.

The centrality of Billy Budd’s extraordinary good looks in the novella, where he is described by Captain Vere as “the young fellow who seems so popular with the men””Billy, the Handsome Sailor”, have led to interpretations of a homoerotic sensibility in the novel.

King Rat (1965) written by James Clavell (To, Sir With Love 1967, The Great Escape 1963) directed by Bryan Forbes (Seance on a Wet Afternoon 1964, The Whisperers 1967), and astounding Miltonian cinematography by Burnett Guffey (All the King’s Men 1947, From Here to Eternity 1953, Birdman of Alcatraz 1962, Bonnie and Clyde 1967), framing the prisoners steeped in hell. The scene at the end with the collective wide shot of the hollowed-out men not quite connected to the world anymore or their coming release reminds me of the potent image from Paths of Glory (1957). King Rat is a meditation on humanity when British and American prisoners of war are captured and thrown into a Japanese camp in Changi.

In some of the more subtle homosexual subtexts, King Rat shows Dr. Kennedy (James Donald) using an acid tongue with his male nurse, Stevens (Michael Lees). Kennedy’s hostility is the one trace of homophobia in the picture. “˜Stop trying to pretend you’re Florence Nightingale” and “You shave your legs, and you’re a liar. Forbes himself never showed any homophobia in his work, even considering Cicely Courtneidge as a sympathetic lesbian in The L Shaped Room (1962) and Stevens in The League of Gentlemen (1960).

Director Bryan Forbe’s films came to grips with taboo subjects in his realist style of 1960s cinema, in much the same way Robert Aldrich populated his films with misfits and outsiders — The L Shaped Room examines converging stories and social minefields, including unwed motherhood, lesbianism, and race. Forbe’s work delved into humanity in a microcosmic tableau.

But if one were to look at the film objectively, there would be nothing on its face that couldn’t be read one way or the other. George Segal is Corporal King (‘Rat’) who runs a lucrative black market, always scheming and plotting within his close circle of men, the Guards, and the Malay locals to obtain contraband. His position as a black marketeer helps him transcend his rank within that prison camp.

But freedom meant that he would be stripped of his privilege. King lives a better life than anyone else in the POW camp, but he does bring a bit of release and small obtainables, which, to the desperate, become luxuries for the other men. There is a sharp contrast between his freshly laundered shirts, combed hair, and clean face while other men starve and wear soiled, tattered rags. Pete Marlowe begins to respect King, who he comes to see not only as a clever mercenary but also as someone who brings a bit of dignity to the other men.

James Fox gives an astounding performance as Pete, a gentle, fair-minded, upper-class Brit who is also trying to make the best of his captivity. The men in the camp have very little rations, and the extreme heat is enough to dry a man to dust. There’s also diphtheria, malaria, insanity, and undignified death. They are reduced to animals struggling to survive, so beaten down they’ve lost their soul in their eyes. But in the midst of this hell, the nameless King never shows more than sweaty armpits in his freshly cleaned uniform, while the others are half-naked and emaciated. King has fresh eggs, cigarettes, and deals going on with Japanese soldiers to make a lot of money, which makes him feel like a big man. Back in civilization, he was a nobody, but here he flourishes because he is in charge. In this isolated camp, his cunning has made him the most influential and, at times, predatory of men.

Men can sink to the depths of hell when they are treated like animals. The film is an example of a homo-social dynamic of camaraderie against a common obstacle. Homosocial behavior is often seen in films where men are thrown together and must bond, in particular prison movies and war films, where men are dependent on each other and forced to survive.

It is given in both male and women’s prison movies that there might be a sexual relationship out of necessity. With men, it would be because there aren’t any women, and they need someone to depend on and form a close bond with. But once they are free, they go back to their heterosexuality.

What makes King Rat such a strong film coded with homosexual subtext is the bond that Pete and King form at the very beginning. Forbe’s film never comes out and tells us that the two men have fallen in love. On the surface, it is about a strong friendship that grows between the two. But it is obvious, if you look at it through a queer lens, that there is a romantic dynamic between them. Pete is more overtly queer, while King never lets his guard down to anyone; Pete is the only one he takes into his intimate space.

From the beginning, there’s a subtle flirtation. King doesn’t treat anyone else like he treats Pete. At the first meeting, he makes him a fried egg. Pete comments, when does one have to kiss his ass? The men in the hut turn and look at the two of them curiously. King tells Pete, “Never before meals.”

As Pete grows closer to King, it is more apparent that he is effeminate and is immediately drawn to King. Pete moves very fluidly; while everyone wears shorts or long pants, he wears a traditional skirt and walks like a sylph. Very quickly, he falls under King’s spell. The two men gradually fall in love, and as the film progresses, we can see a strong friendship, but those of us who are either in the know or know what they’re looking at will see the homosexual love story.

Hollywood proposes films that appear heterosexual but have suggestive coding. There are many scenes of tenderness, caring, and affection that speak of homo-erotic desire that hasn’t been consummated but lingers around the two men. Pete has a strong longing for King, but once the prisoners are freed, King pushes Pete away not only because he will lose any identification of great importance but also because he will go back to obscurity. Now, he must bury his homosexual feelings and go back to his straight life.

In one scene, when Pete is suffering from gangrene and might lose his arm, King takes his head and strokes his face passionately, caressing his neck and cheeks. King, who always looks out for himself, pays a lot of money to get the medicine to heal Pete. He sits by his bedside and holds his hand; without his usual dress army shirt, King is bare-chested for the first time. It’s a very homoerotic moment when King sits by Pete’s bed, his sweat glistening by the bedside light.

At one point King talks about how he never got the dolls (women) back home, all the fat men with money got the girls. The mentioning of his heterosexuality is a way to appease the censors and draw away the implication that he might be gay. This qualifies his heterosexuality to prepare for the following moment, where he is stroking Pete’s face, taking it in his hands, and bringing his own face close to his in a moment that might erupt in a kiss. Now that King has just talked about looking at dolls, this can be read as a hetero friendship and not a homoerotic one.

Ultimately when the war is declared over, King must deny and dismiss Pete completely in order to shed his homosexuality. But Pete is devastated “”King becomes cold and cruel. Pete implores him “You called me Sir last nightThe war is over, but you and me, we’re just the same.”

But King has already decided to walk away from their “˜homoerotic friendship’ – Peter pleads with him, “People don’t change. I’m not ashamed that you and I are friends. We survived it. Don’t you remember what we had, don’t you remember that? Don’t ask me to forget all that. Otherwise, what’s it all been made of? I’m not different.”

At the very end, Pete actually says King’s (which has merely been his nickname ) last name, which we hear for the first time during the film; it symbolizes the intrusion of the real world on their insulated existence. When King is leaving with the Americans, Pete runs frantically toward him, trying to say goodbye. King looks at him from the truck, and for the last time, he reveals to Pete one lingering stare- a despairing, longing look at Pete to let him know it was real.

Continue reading “Chapter 5 – Queers and Dykes in the Dark: Classic, Noir & Horror Cinema’s Coded Gay Characters:” →

BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 4: The Dark Goddess-This Dark Mirror

BARBARA STEELE- BLOODY WELL BELOVED –

The role Barbara Steele plays in the legacy of Italian Gothic cinema of the 1960s achieving cult status, is arguably her most recognizable contribution to the sub-genre of the horror film. She’s been christened The High Priestess of Horror, Queen of Horror, and The Dark Goddess, the latter, the implication being her prowess is proof there’s a link between beauty (a woman’s power) and evil. Steele’s persona is suitable as a femme fatale, and the sum of her work is extremely feminist.

According to journalist Maitland McDonagh, she is The Face that Launched a Thousand Screams. She is the sadomasochistic Madonna of the “cinefantastique”; the queen of the wild, the beautiful, and the damned.”

“Of all the stars of horror cinema, Barbara Steele may have come the closest to pure myth {“¦} she suggests a kinky and irresistible sexual allure” – (David J Hogan)

“With goldfish-bowl eyes radiating depraved elfin beauty, and what she calls her ‘old, suspicious Celtic soul burning blackly within, Steele played the princess in a dark fairytale.” ‘They sense something in me’ she once said of her fans, but surely it was true of her directors also. Steele followed with ‘Maybe some kind of psychic pain. The diva Dolorosa of the 1910s, reincarnated as a voluptuous revenant.’ – (from David Cairns and Daniel Riccuito for Sight and Sound)

“Angel Carter (1982) named the three surrealist love goddesses as Louise Brooks first and foremost followed by Dietrich and third Barbara Steele. With regards to Steele however, not all the following descriptions emanate from surrealists caught in the grip of amour fou” (obsessive passion).- (The Other Face of Death: Barbara Steele and La Maschera Del Demonio by Carol Jenks from NECRONOMICON edited by Andy Black)

“The very symbol of Woman as vengeful, alien and “˜other’.” (Nicholls 1984)

“Steele perfectly embodies both the dread and the desire necessary to imply alluring and transgressive sexuality.” (Lampley-Women in the Horror films of Vincent Price)

“It’s not me they’re seeing. They’re casting some projection of themselves, some aspect that I somehow symbolizes. It can’t possibly be me.” Barbara Steele quoted-(Warren 1991)

“You can’t live off being a cult.” Barbara Steele

“When did I ever deserve this dark mirror?”

 

Continue reading “BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 4: The Dark Goddess-This Dark Mirror” →

BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 3

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ELSA MARTINELLI

Euro art house director Roger Vadim adapted Blood and Roses in 1960, from Sheridan Le Fanu’s Sapphic vampire novella Camilla, setting down in contemporary Italy.

A lonely and bitter young heiress – jealous of her cousin’s engagement to another woman – becomes dangerously obsessed with legends surrounding a vampire ancestor, who supposedly murdered the young brides of the man she loved (IMDb).

The role of Carmilla was cast by Annette Vadim and Elsa Martinelli plays Georgia Monteverdi engaged to Leopoldo (Mel Ferrer). Camilla is secretly in love with Leopoldo. He and Georgia host a costume party to celebrate their upcoming wedding, which includes fireworks, that wind up unearthing the grave of Milarka, who is Carmilla’s ancestor, a vampiress. Milarka now possesses Camilla and designs to corrupt the lovers. Although the film is in technicolor, Vadim shoots his impressionistic dream sequence in black-and-white with red-tinted blood.

The film stoked the theme of the lesbian vampire, though not explicit, the trope gained traction in the late 1960s and 70s with Hammer Studios. Martinelli also appeared in The 10th Victim 1965.

Hayley Mills

Hayley Mills comes from acting royalty, she is the daughter of great British actor John Mills and the younger sister of Juliet Mills. I happened to have the good fortune of meeting the gorgeous Juliet Mills twice at the Chiller convention here in New Jersey. I have to say that I’ve never met a more kind and gracious actor who has a profound inner glow. Having already been a fan, I’m even more enamored with her.

Hayley was discovered while at her parent’s home in 1958 by director J. Lee Thompson who immediately cast her opposite, of her father in the thriller Tiger Bay 1959. Her breakthrough performance, winning an award at the Berlin Film Festival and being acknowledged in Hollywood by Walt Disney signed her to a five-year contract. There she starred in Pollyanna 1960 garnering rave reviews and a second hit was for The Parent Trap 1961. She went on to do That Darn Cat! 1965 and The Trouble with Angels 1966.

Mills had been offered the role of Lolita in Stanley Kubrick’s film (1962) but her parents warned off the part fearing the sexual nature of the role would taint her iconic image of purity. Sue Lyon was cast in the role instead, but Mills regretted not taking the part.

in Twisted Nerve 1968, Hayley Mills plays Susan Harper who befriends psychopath Martin Durnley (Hywel Bennett) who appears to be a painfully troubled young man, taking on the persona of a six-year-old boy who calls himself Georgie. His mother (Billie Whitelaw) infantilizes Martin. He has a brother with Down syndrome who has been hidden away in an institution. Georgie becomes fixated on the lovely and patiently kind, who realizes there’s something very wrong with Martin who ultimately goes into a murderous rage.

After Twisted Nerve in 1968, Hayley Mills went on to do more psychological thrillers in the 1970s – Once again co-starring with Hywel Bennett in Endless Night in 1972, and Deadly Strangers in 1975.

ANNA MASSEY

Anna also comes from acting royalty being the daughter of actor Raymond Massey. She is known for her role as Helen Stephens in Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom 1960 starring Karlheinz Bohm as Mark, a disturbed young man who films women as he kills them with a tripod sword so that he can get off on their reactions of terror. Anna plays Helen Stephans, the one girl that Mark feels a connection.

Once Mark is drawn to Helen they begin to spend time together. In Helen’s innocence, she remains out of danger from his dark, deranged eye on women’s suffering.

She also appeared in Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake is Missing 1965, the psycho-sexual thriller drenched in paranoia. Carol Lynley reports her little girl missing, but there seems to be no evidence that she ever existed. Anna plays Elvira Smollett one of the teachers at the school where she disappeared.

Massey went on to do two more horror films in the 1970s, Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy 1972 and The Vault of Horror 1973 an anthology directed by Roy Ward Baker.

Continue reading “BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 3” →

A Trailer a Day Keeps the Boogeyman Away! Homebodies (1974) Do You Know Where Your Grandmother Is Tonight?

Homebodies 1974

Homebodies1974 directed by Larry Yust (Trick Baby 1972) features a marvelous ensemble of beloved character actors, Ruth McDevitt ( The Birds 1963, Miss Emily in the 1970s series-Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and a slew of made-for-television movies and popular tv series), Peter Brocco (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 1975, the ubiquitous Ian Wolfe, William Hansen (Fail Safe 1964, The Laughing Policeman 1973, Francis Fuller (They Might Be Giants 1971)  and Paula Trueman (The Anderson Tapes 1971, The Outlaw Josey Wales 1976). With cinematography by Isidore Mankofsky (Trick Baby 1972, Scream Blacula Scream 1973, Carrie 1976 (uncredited). The film features a snappy song – "Sassafras Sunday" that tags along with the credits.

An offbeat black comedy centered around six unassuming elderly tenants being forced out of their homes, evicted from their brownstone, and victims of gentrification. Led by the impish Mattie (Trueman)…

Mattie's trajectory forces the audience to examine where the line between eccentricity and psychosis lies. – Elizabeth Erwin-Short Cuts: Senior Citizens Rage in Homebodies 1974.

They decide to exact retribution in inventive ways, against the ruthless land developers that want to drive them out and tear down the building. The cast is a curious gang of aged assassins who take down the people (Linda March as the unsympathetic Miss Pollock, Kenneth Tobey, and Douglas Fowley) who are trying to wreak havoc on their quiet lives!

TRIVIA:

Paula Trueman was nearly blind when she acted in this movie. Because of her poor eyesight, the car had to be towed to the scene with Trueman driving an automobile.

Peter Brocco spent some time with blind people to research his character Mr. Blakely

This is your EverLovin’ Joey, a homebody sayin’ hope you’re always in your happy home!

BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 2

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JANE ASHER

British-born redhead Jane Asher started out as a child actress who worked extensively in television and film. Her contribution to the horror genre is that of her character, Francesca the unflinching heroine peasant girl who out of six is the only one to survive the plague and begs Prospero to spare her father and brother. She is thrust into the hedonistic Danse Macabre of the castle, as Prospero’s unwilling mistress, in Edgar Allan Poe’s story directed by Roger Corman THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH 1964.

From Roger Corman’s How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime –

“Masque was the most lavish of the Poe films…(part of what made the film so visually stunning with it’s vibrant color scheme is the work of cinematographer by Nicholas Roeg)

Masque was a surreal, philosophical tale set in medieval Italy with Vincent Price playing Prince Prospero, a sadistic debauched Satan worshipper who retreats into his castle and hosts a lavishly decadent ball as his land is ravaged by the Red Death…{…} I had started going out with my Masque leading lady, Jane Asher, and we were having coffee on a Friday. But Jane showed up with a young companion. “Roger”, she said, “I’d like you to meet a friend of mine from Liverpool, Paul McCartney. Paul’s never been on a movie set and he’d like to see what’s happening.” … Jane had been dating Paul but because he was constantly away on tour, she was seeing me in London.” -Roger Corman

She was Paul McCartney’s muse for much of the 1960s; “Here, There And Everywhere” and many other songs were written with Jane in mind. They were engaged for seven months until finally separating in July 1968. -IMDb tidbit

She appeared in the television series – Journey to the Unknown 1968 episode Somewhere in the Crowd. And went on to star in the psychological thriller Deep End 1970, The Buttercup Chain 1970, and the television movie, The Stone Tape 1972. Most notable is her performance in the major motion picture Alfie 1966 co-starring with Michael Caine. IMDb tidbit-By the time she was fifteen, she had appeared in 8 films, made 9 television appearances, over 100 radio appearances, and was in five plays-

Personal quote – “Of all the things I do, acting is the thing that grabs most, but there’s another level on which it strikes me as being a little silly. In the end you’re dressing up and deciding to be somebody.”

Maxine Audley

British actress noted for her perfect diction and for her excellent acting range in classical plays on stage, on television, and on radio. Her contribution to the 60s horror genre is her marvelous performance as Mrs. Stephens in Michael Powell’s subversive Peeping Tom, who can see Mark Lewis’ psychopathic personality clearly though she is blind. She has the instinct to feel that she and her daughter are in terrible danger.

Peeping Tom 1960, The Brain 1962, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed 1969.

Michiyo Aratama

Beautifully shot, suffuse the landscape with haunting and uncanny stories that are chilling in Masaki Kobyashi’s- Kwaidan 1964.

Continue reading “BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 2” →

BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 1

This special The Last Drive in Halloween Feature will conclude with Part 4 and it’s primary focus exclusively on the great Barbara Steele!

‘through the complex changes in society surrounding traditional female roles using the ambivalence of the horror genre’ – Claudia Bunce

The 1960s were plagued by controversy and convulsed with violence. Horror cinema with the exception of Hammer Studio and European filmmakers’ colorful pageantry of Gothic tales, and the colorful dreamlike poetry of Mario Bava, mainly transitioned from classical themes. In the 1950s, B-horror movie narratives were concerned with outside hostile forces, alien invasions, and fear of nuclear war, but the new decade began to explore more interior horror that originated in the home and within ourselves. And many of these movies stand out as women-centric protagonists…

“Widely interpreted as a pivotal moment in the horror genre. Suggestive that monstrosity must be defined as inherent to the bourgeois family structure rather than an arcane social aberration: the crimes of Norman Bates can be read as the consequence of the sexually active mother, not unlike Marian Crane. The film is profoundly subversive.” – source unknown

After Riccardo Freda abandoned Black Sunday, the project went to cinematographer Mario Bava and became his directorial debut. The film was the start of the director’s momentous contribution to the genre with his masterful grasp of mise en scené composition, allegorical visual symbolism imagery, and the bold use of expressionist color, vivid tones, and spectrum of light. Bava directed Kill, Baby Kill! 1966 features a ghostly little blonde girl (actually a boy actor) with a white ball that is the creepy harbinger of a series of violent deaths.

Mario Bava unleashed on us his very dark-hearted black & white Black Sunday in 1960 with jolting scenes of death and a new horror goddess, the provocative, wide-eyed- Barbara Steele. During the decade of the 60s, Steele's ascendance within the genre was part of a broader trend in horror cinema that echoed the real world. Her strong presence and instinct to captivate our gaze, stood head to head with male horror stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing during that period of horror cinema. Barbara Steele inhabited the haunted screen with such a formidable primacy, there's no disputing she is the ultimate scream queen.

The Italian movie industry of the 1960s saw a wave of Italian gothic chillers. Bava's Blood and Black Lace 1964 is best remembered as the first "˜Giallo' a particularly savage trademark of murder mysteries.

Riccardo Freda directed The Horrible Dr. Hichcock 1962 and The Ghost 1963, Margheriti's beautifully orchestrated, eerily atmospheric ghost story Castle of Blood and Ciano's Nightmare Castle 1965. All starring Barbara Steele.

Roger Corman established himself as a successful director. Of course, maverick filmmaker Corman showered us with some of the best campy low budget sci-fi/horror films of the 1950s, and in the 60s we were reintroduced to the splendid Poe adaptations in a series of vivid films of glorious terror and dread, with Daniel Haller's gorgeous hallucinogenic art direction. These films are a series of Gothic masterpieces, – House of Usher 1960, Pit and the Pendulum 1961 and Masque of the Red Death 1964, featuring Hazel Court, another icon of 60s horror, who would command the screen with her fiery sensuality, flexing her bloodlust to offer herself up as Satan's bride in Red Death.

Corman established himself as a successful director with his landscapes as Rodrick Usher says are a "˜feverish and deranged mind' with his colorful more substantial yet still low-budget homages to Poe's series of horror tales. With screenplays by Richard Matheson and cinematography by Floyd Crosby. Reaching its artistic peak with the Masque of the Red Death. Many of the women in his Poe series feature a more incendiary female character. The horror genre especially from the 60s forward would prove to have more provocative roles for women since the femme fatale reigned during the time of film noir.

Instead of the restrained earlier decades, the 60s held up a mirror to the decade’s social turbulence and reflected back to us, with subversive storytelling, its edgy gore, and taboo-breaking narratives that fed a whole new audience who were hungry for more realistic and challenging scenarios. A new vanguard of filmmakers shattered traditional boundaries that restrained on-screen violence and sexuality.

Women's roles in classical horror films of the 1930s & 40s (to my memory for now), with the exception of Elsa Lanchester as the Bride, and Gloria Holden as Countess Marya Zaleska in Dracula's Daughter, initiated most of the leading ladies and supporting actresses, as easily fainting from fright, who screamed with hollow innocence, projecting reductive nuances of helplessness.

Still, there were established directors such as Alfred Hitchcock who caught wind of the changes, inspired by Clouzot's le Diabolique 1955 and impressed by William Castle's popular run of low-budget horror formula (albeit with its use of gimmickry).

Psycho 1960 would be set in safe and secure American suburbia instead of the imposing castles of Europe. The clean-cut serial killer would eclipse the caped swarthy vampire as the screen's new boogeyman. Yet Marion's ascendancy is as much a major element of the narrative as Norman Bates' psychopathy!

Hitchcock offered us the bold cautionary, The Birds, a film Fellini referred to as "an apocalyptic poem" featuring a beautiful woman perceived as a she-devil that ushered in the natural world's revolt.

FROM BARBARA CREED THE MONSTROUS FEMININE:

"Melanie Daniels in The Birds is a single woman in her thirties drifting – who must go through a trial by fire which she suffers, is humiliated and lectured to lower her defenses. She is an outsider who is being shown how social behavior becomes physically agonizing."

The stark black & white Psycho 1960 based on a real-life serial killer, Ed Gein, pushed the boundaries of the Production Code with its shocking scenes of murder and inflected frames of Janet Leigh's bra and slip. Leigh's 30-minute on-screen persona of the immoral Marion Crane was a diverging representation of the traditional leading lady.

The decade also signaled a multitude of black & white psychological thrillers. Hammer split off some of its focus on the gory period pieces- translations of Frankenstein, Dracula, and Mummy, and jumped on the Psycho bandwagon with films like Scream of Fear 1961, Maniac 1963, Nightmare 1964, Hysteria 1965, Die! Die! My Darling! 1965 starring Tallulah Bankhead as the menacing Mrs. Trafoil, not a Medieval crone but a modern-day unleashed psychopath. And, The Nanny 1965 with Bette Davis, coming off of her pair of shockers by director Robert Aldrich, plays a sinister governess terrorizing young William Dix.

After Baby Jane, the industry was rife with menacing Hollywood starlets. I'll be writing about the shattering of the myth of Hag Cinema, down the road. Robert Aldrich set in motion a trend of psychological horror films after he paired Bette Davis and Joan Crawford together in what is considered campy, outrageous at times, sickening – What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962. It was a watershed moment for the genre.

Crawford and Davis in particular in Aldrich's films made the bold and courageous decision to act under harsh white lights, in grotesque makeup, and willing to immerse themselves into a character -eccentric, cringingly childish, and utterly sadistic.

After Baby Jane, Aldrich followed up with Davis, de Havilland, and Agnes Moorehead in Hush"¦ Hush, Sweet Charlotte 1964. Crawford worked with William Castle on Strait-Jacket 1964, and Geraldine Page played a greedy murderess in What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? Co-starring Ruth Gordon. Shelley Winters appeared as the maniacal villainess in the fable-like Who Slew Auntie Roo? 1969 and Winters, Debbie Reynolds, and Moorehead in 1971 topped it off with Harrington's What's the Matter with Helen? A personal favorite of mine.

The second wave of the feminist movement and its emergence and impact began with Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, giving 50s suburban housewives a different vision of domestic enslavement and began to disassemble the myth of that decade's family values. The quaint and complacent sentiment of post-WW2 comfortability became subverted by empowered women who broke free and found new independence reigniting the Monstrous Feminine giving permission to women as represented more freely in film, with more prominent parts, especially fostered in"¦ the horror genre.

The 60s subverted the expectations surrounding the traditional housewife roles. Witches could be well-bred housewives like Janet Blair in Burn Witch Burn 1962 or a malevolent ingénue, Sharon Tate in Eye of the Devil 1966.

“The housewife witches of Burn, Witch, Burn and Season of the Witch use witchcraft to escape the confines of the domestic sphere and subvert their husbands' patriarchal power. Then there is the cult leader witch of Eye of the Devil who uses her femininity to intimidate traditional societal gender roles” – Claudia Bunce

Significant films like Robert Wises' The Haunting 1963, which were suggestive of lesbianism and repressed sexuality, star two very significant central female characters, Julie Harris and Claire Bloom who give intensely complex and reflexive performances. Bloom as the stylish and extraordinarily self-composed Theo is a truly independent woman who lives life on her own terms. There isn’t anyone who wouldn’t shiver while at the mercy of the malevolent forces of Hill House. Director Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face (The French title Les Yeux sans Visage) 1960 has perhaps one of the most graphic scenes of horror, a gruesome fairytale with its medical experimentation with facial transplantation and a lead actress, Edith Scob with her macabre blank mask who floats around the halls like a lost princess swallowed up inside a night terror. The film also stars a stoic Alida Valli, a strong ally to the twisted plastic surgeon in search of a new face for his daughter.

Jack Clayton's adaptation of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, became a screenplay by William Archibald, The Innocents 1961' lead actress Deborah Kerr lies wide open with her distillation of a woman tortured by her sexual paranoia. Dressed in classical clothes, unlike Deneuve's role in Repulsion, where her character Carol's neurosis is flayed and hung out naked on display.

And most significantly, the female-centric role of Mia Farrow as the allegorical heroine Rosemary Woodhouse, hunted down by a coven of upper west side devil worshipers in Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby 1968. Farrow's performance is a striking denunciation of control over women's bodies, a slow burn of paranoia, and a strong instinct for survival.

"but when he (Guy Woodhouse) took control of her reproductive functions, he asserted his dominance over her in the darkest way possible.

Assertion of dominance reinforced his masculinity and the traditional role that men had in relationships. Guy's taking control assuages the fear of women gaining too much independence." – From Jenna Labbie damsels in Distress Analyzing gender in horror movies of the 1960s and 70s

Polanski's earlier released Repulsion 1965 strayed from Hitchcock's black humor drizzled about in Psycho. Repulsion rather has a sense of nightmarish realism and a protagonist, Catherine Deneuve who goes down a rabbit hole of repressive seizures.

Repulsion is an extremely disturbing contemplation on the destructive forces of loneliness, isolation, and paranoia seen through the lens of a sexually repressed young woman, Carol who suffers a homicidal breakdown while her sister and married lover leave her alone for a long weekend. An exit from the cheeky dark humor of Hitchcock's Psycho, Repulsion brushes the screen with strokes of Carol's existential misery.

Michael Powell's groundbreaking shocker Peeping Tom is a hauntingly twisted mood piece about serial killer Karl Bohm who films his victims in the last moments of their death to capture their fear. It features two very strong female leads, Anna Massey and Maxine Audley.

Mexican fright flicks abound with atmospheric gems like The Curse of the Crying Woman 1963, The Brainiac 1961, and The Witch's Mirror 1962, featuring strong female-centric characters played by Rosita Arenas and Rita Macedo. And in Jack Hill's oddball black comedy Spider Baby 1967 benefitted from the quirky presence of both Beverly Washburn and Jill Banner as two bizarre, homicidal sisters.

Luana Anders features significantly in the genre, highlighted in Coppola's Dementia 13 as the independent yet ruthless Louise Halloran and as prostitute Sylvia in Robert Altman's psycho-sexual thriller That Cold Day in the Park 1969. The film stars one of my favorite underrated actors, Sandy Dennis who gives a stunning performance as the disturbed Francis Austen, who holds Michael Burns hostage.

George Romero broke ground with the brutal realism of Night of the Living Dead 1968 which has not so indirect social relevance. 60s horror films were breaking away from Hollywood and being forged by gutsy independent filmmakers with smaller budgets, and an imaginative longing to experiment with diversity, artistic style, and a divergent way to visualize and process gender roles outside traditional cultural norms.

Barbara Shelley

The Queen of Hammer

Ryan Gilbey, in her obituary in The Guardian, praises Shelley’s acting in the Hammer films, considering that she had “a grounded, rational quality that instantly conferred gravitas on whatever lunatic occurrences were unfolding around her.”

The world lost Barbara Shelley in January 2021 at the age of 88. With hair like paprika, Barbara Shelley was born Barbara Kowin. A glamorous gothic leading lady was considered the "˜Queen of Hammer' during the studio's golden age of Gothic horror. A classical beauty, with an air of elegance and self-assuredness, she has co-starred with other Hammer royalty Christoper Lee and Peter Cushing. Shelley was an actress with such integrity and beauty that she transcended the horror genre.

The London-based production company was founded in 1934 by William Hinds and James Carrera who made a string of hit Gothic horror films from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Inspired by classic horror characters like Baron Victor Frankenstein, Count Dracula, and the Mummy and appeared in 104 films and television series until 2000. She was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company between 1975 and 1977.

From Wiki-
{Hammer reintroduced to audiences by filming them in vivid colour for the first time. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies, as well as, in later years, television series. During its most successful years, Hammer dominated the horror film market, enjoying worldwide distribution and considerable financial success.}

"Hammer was like a family, a very talented family"¦ with a wonderful atmosphere on the set and a wonderful sense of humour"

"When I first started doing Hammer, all the so-called classic actors looked down on the horror film. All the other things I did, nobody remembers those. But for the horror films, I'm very grateful to them because they built me a fan base, and I'm very touched that people will come and ask for my autograph. If you went to see a [Hammer] film in the cinema, the gasps were interspersed with giggles because people were giggling at themselves for being frightened, they were frightening themselves, and this is what made Hammer very special."

With her success as a teenage model, she made her minor film debut in Hammer's motion picture Mantrap in 1952 directed by Terence Fisher and starring Paul Henreid and Lois Maxwell.

Shelley took her screen name from Italian actor Walter Chiari who saw something in the actress and suggested that she use the last name as a tribute to his favorite English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. She wound up living in Rome for four years and appeared in nine Italian-speaking films.

She returned to the UK in 1957, starring that year for British Lion Film in her first starring role within the horror genre as Leonora Johnson née Brandt in Cat Girl (1957), directed by Alfred Shaughnessy who set out to borrow from Jacques Tourneur's superior, and innovative Cat People (1942.) Leonora Johnson returns to her ancestral home that is beset with the family curse, that she will be possessed by the spirit of a leopard. The film was a collaboration between American International Pictures and the British Anglo-Amalgamated.

Her first starring vehicle was Cat Girl (1957), Alfred Shaughnessy's offbeat variation of Jacques Tourneur's influential Cat People (1942), and A.I.P.'s first co-production with the UK's Anglo-Amalgamated. The following year she made her first major appearance in a film for Hammer The Camp on Blood Island.

In 1958, she co-starred as a woman in peril at the hands of mad scientist Callistratus (Donald Wolfit). In Blood of the Vampire, Shelley is the picture of fainting beauty chained to the wall, a garish period piece in line with the days of Universal's classic horrors though scattered with gory scenes satiated by fake blood and understated cleavage.

In 1880 Transylvania Dr. Calistratus is brought back to life by his one-eyed hunchback assistant Carl after he'd been executed as a vampire. At the same time, Dr. John Pierre (Vincent Ball) is on trial for killing one of his patients whom he tried to save with a blood transfusion. He is found guilty and sentenced to life. Barbara Shelley plays fiancee, Madeleine, set on finding the truth behind the incriminating letter allegedly proving his guilt, forged by Calistratus.

He is brought to prison for the criminally insane by the mad doctor's hunchback Carl. John is put in a cell, a menacing place guarded by vicious dogs, where Calastratus experiments and tortures his human subjects. In order to prove John's innocence Madeleine poses as Calastratus' housekeeper who winds up chained to a wall and strapped to an operating table!

Shelley was against her body being exploited or appearing in any nude scenes while being menaced by Wolfit. She warded off this endeavor by producers Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman by writing the word "STOP" on her chest. She threatened to sue the studio if it even used a body double.

"I had one or two dissertations on horror sent to me by students, and all the discussion ever seems to be concerned with is exploitation and the licking of blood and a scene of people making love, and it's not right. It annoys me intensely because my career was not built on exploitation and sex. It was built on working very hard."

In 1960, she is marvelous in the heartbreaking role of the tragic mother Anthea Zellerby who has given birth to an unfeeling monstrous alien boy who has uncanny dangerous powers along with the rest of the children of Midwich. All the mothers in Midwich have conceived during a strange blackout where they wind up giving birth to a breed of malevolent telepathic sociopaths.

Shelley's character is earnest in the role of a woman torn between motherhood and sheer terror in director Wolf Rilla's incredibly unsettling moody classic blend of science fiction and horror-Village of the Damned (1960) based on John Wyndham's science fiction novel The Midwich Cuckoos. The film co-stars George Sanders as Shelley's altruistic husband Gordon, who seeks to understand the menacing children with their freaky white hair and piercing eyes and his creepy son David played by Martin Stephans. These dangerous little progeny can get inside people's minds and make them do anything they want, as in making Shelley's character stick her hand in a pot of boiling water. The screenplay written by Stirling Sillipant is quite a disturbing potboiler it total.

She went on to star in John Gilling's turn-of-the-century old dark house mystery Shadow of the Cat (1961)

Some of the outstanding pictures that put her upon the thrown as the reigning Queen of those splendid years of Gothic horror are Dracula: Prince of Darkness 1966, Rasputin the Mad Monk 1966 with Christopher Lee, and The Gorgon 1964 with Peter Cushing. The monstrous Gorgon is portrayed by Prudence Hyman.

"She really was Hammer's number one leading lady and the Technicolor queen of Hammer.
"On-screen she could be quietly evil. She goes from statuesque beauty to just animalistic wildness"¦ She adored Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and loved working with them, that was very dear to her."-Agent, Thomas Bowington

What truly established Barbara Shelley's esteemed reputation as the First Lady of British Horror in the mid-1960s is her collaboration with Terence Fisher. Leaving behind the more exploitative persona of the luscious heroine with inviting bosoms Shelley portrayed the sympathetic character of Carla Hoffman in Fisher's mood piece The Gorgon. Carla is the assistant to Dr. Namaroff (Peter Cushing) and a tortured soul possessed by an ancient evil spirit with serpents for hair and the ability to turn whoever gazes upon her to stone, and Shelley conveys the bleakness of a woman who is held captive by her monstrous alter ego.

Before Shelley turns into the blood-sucking bride of Dracula, she plays her first woman transformed into a monster in The Gorgon (1964). She told the studio "I wouldn't need any makeup"¦ just a green face and the headdress of real snakes." Shelley absolutely let down when she saw what the special effects department conjured up, “They came up with these terrible sorts of rubber snakes dancing around and it just looked awful. It wasn’t frightening at all.” She had said that it was “probably the biggest regret I’ve had in any film I ever made.”

She was absolutely dejected when they chose to substitute Prudence Hyman in the part of the Gorgon, "They came up with these terrible sorts of rubber snakes dancing around, and it just looked awful. It wasn't frightening at all." She called it "probably the biggest regret I've had in any film I ever made" though she admired the look of the picture, noting that "every shot "¦ resembles a Rembrandt painting."

In Dracula: Prince of Darkness 1966, Christopher Lee resurrects the count from Horrors of Dracula 1958. Shelley plays Helen the heroine whom we empathize with as she is trapped by her circumstances, when her stubborn husband Alan (who dismisses Helen's panic), and his brother Charles, both refuse to leave the creepy unwelcoming Castle Dracula after stumbling onto the unattended mausoleum.

They want to stay and partake in a meal laid out for them, but Helen is justifiably spooked by its strange undercurrent. "Everything about this place is evil".

Once Christopher Lee's resurrection, Helen goes through a diverging transformation from the archetypal repressed female to an unrestrained raptorial vampiress liberated from her proper English breeding, in high contrast to her tight up swung hair in a provincial hat, was now wide open with unwound flowing hair and unequivocal breastage. Shelley loved how distinct her character's trajectory was in Dracula: Prince of Darkness. From inhibited, startled gentlewoman to the monstrous feminine as one of Dracula's brides. When she appears at Karlsbad Castle, telling Suzan Farmer, “Nothing’s wrong” through hungry red lips and baring fangs. "Come sister, You don't need Charles"¦" she tempts, with inviting arms outstretched to the innocent Suzan Farmer as Diana. Shelley's virtuous woman who reveals to her Diana that she is now a vampire is lauded by Gilbey in The Guardian as having “traumatized and tantalized” viewers.

Shelley's scream in Dracula is actually dubbed by fellow actress Suzan Farmer (Die Monster Die! 1965 with Boris Karloff) who appeared with her in Dracula: Prince of Darkness and Rasputin The Mad Monk.

A terrifying scene perhaps inspiring Stephen King's Salem's Lot, has Helen tapping on the window in the middle of the night. "Please let me in," she pleads. "It's cold out here. So cold. Everything's all right now."

She was delighted by one of her most potent scenes -when she contends with her adversaries – monks who lie her on a table and hammer a stake through her undead heart.

Shelley told Mark Gatiss in his 2010 documentary series A History of Horror, “The scene that I’m most proud of is when she is staked that’s absolute evil when she’s struggling and then suddenly she’s staked and there is tremendous serenity. And I think that is one of my best moments in the film.”

"… and then suddenly she's staked, and there is tremendous serenity. And I think that is one of my best moments on film."

“Christopher Lee, who was an eloquent Gothic figure of pure evil in 1958’s first adaptation of Stoker’s vampire, had now evolved into a hissing fiend. But Shelley had this to say about the actor -“He brought dignity and veritas. It’s a difficult thing to bring to a fantasy like a vampire. And that is just Chris’ appearance and his personality. He did all that. He used to walk onto the sent and I’d say to him it’s an extraordinary performance, cause we know each other so well and you could hypnotize me. But it was brilliant because he completely dominated the film without a word. Talk about silent movies!”

Shot at the same time was another Hammer horror, Rasputin the Mad Monk with Christopher Lee has dialogue in a more colorful, lurid role, as the mad mesmerist in contrast to his silent, blood-eyed fiend. Shelley falls under the spell of Rasputin. While not willing to do a nude scene in Blood of the Vampire, she was however up to laying bare a seduction scene with Christoper Lee. “That scene was in the script when I read it. The scenes I refused to do was when they would suddenly say to me ‘Oh, you take your clothes off here’ The answer to that was always no” – From an interview with Fangoria Magazine 2010.

One of her beloved roles is her last Hammer feature in Roy Ward Baker's adaption of writer Nigel Kneale's (The Quatermass Experiment 1955, First Men in the Moon 1964, The Witches 1966, The Stone Tape 1972 TV movie) Quatermass and the Pit 1967.

In Quatermass and the Pit, Shelley portrays scientist Barbara Judd who along with paleontologist Doctor Roney (James Donald) and a team of scientists discover an ancient alien race whose spacecraft is found buried in the underground station at Hobbs End during an expansion of London's Underground transport system. Shelley develops a psychic link to the aliens and is taken over by the inhabitants of the alien spacecraft.

She is subjected to images of green gooey decomposing locust-like alien carcasses that in the process of being removed from the tunnels cause her brain to succumb to the electromagnetic influence of the spacecraft, causing her to writhe in pain. She is so totally reasonable as an actress that she brings credibility to her character. Shelly had claimed that director Roy Ward Baker was her favorite of all the filmmakers she worked with.

The way he felt about her goes like this. He told Bizarre Magazine in a 1974 interview that he was "˜mad about her. "Mad in the sense of love," he said. "We used to waltz about the set together, a great love affair. It puzzles me about her. She should be much bigger than she is, but I don't think she really cares whether she is a star or not. She can act, God, she can act!"

In The Avengers 1961 image: Studio Canal

Barbara Shelley would eventually do guest appearances on popular television shows including the British television series Doctor Who playing Sorasta in the episode "Planet Of Fire," starring Peter Davison as the fifth incarnation of Doctor Who. She would also appear on The Saint, The Avengers, The Man From U.N.C.L.E, and Route 66. Later she would play Hester Samuels in "EastEnders."

Shelley's final role in horror films was in the old dark house mystery Ghost Story 1974 directed by Stephen Weeks and co-starring Marianne Faithful.

Her final role on screen was in the Uncle Silas mini-series in 1989. A sinister character brought to life on screen by Derrick De Marney in 1947 with Jean Simmons in the role of Caroline.

Although Shelley ultimately felt framed within the horror genre by the late 1960s, retiring two decades later, she always embraced her devoted fanbase and left behind a substantial legacy. “I realized that my work had been appreciated and that I had – through those horror films – actually reached a far bigger audience than I would ever have done if I’d stuck to the theater.”

The actress was modest about her achievements but happy with her legacy, as she conveyed with typical aplomb to Marcus Hearn: "There's a lovely saying "“ we're given memories so we can have roses in winter. When I look back over my various rose gardens, I'm only sorry I didn't enjoy them more".

"No one told me I was beautiful. They said I was photogenic but no one said I was beautiful. If they had I would have had a lot more fun!"

In an interview with the Express newspaper in 2009, she said she was told at a convention by female fans that they loved her for her strong roles. "Which I thought was a brilliant thing to have said about one. I never thought of it in that way. The fact that I'm still getting mail from my horror fan base really touches me."

TRIVIA

While making the 1961 TV film, A Story of David, she met Hollywood star Jeff Chandler and they began a relationship. Chandler died suddenly the following year. Shelley is later reported to have said that he had been the love of her life

So convincing was Shelley's violently realistic struggle against the stake, she swallowed one of her stuck-on fangs.

With no spares at the ready and a tight shooting schedule, it is reported that she kept drinking salt water until she puked it up.

After the scene in Dracula: Prince of Darkness where she struggles with the monks at the end with her demise, it was so physically demanding on Shelley, that she suffered from chronic back pain.

Barbara Shelley would recall how she and Lee, prided themselves on being "un-corpseable", and would compete to make one another laugh during takes.

Cat Girl 1957, Blood of the Vampire 1958, VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED 1960 THE GORGON 1964,  DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS 1966, RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK 1966, QUATERMASS AND THE PIT 1967

Continue reading “BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 1” →

What A Character Blogathon 2021: Actresses of a Certain Character: Mildred Dunnock & Patricia Collinge

I’m an ordinary person in an ordinary life-Mildred Dunnock

Once again my favorite blogathon has rolled around, giving me the chance to pay tribute to the great character actors who add a certain depth and extra layer to stage, film, and television. Just a brief glimpse of them in a story manages to bring something quite special and undeniably memorable. Thank you so much to Aurora of Once Upon A Screen, Kellee of Outspoken and Freckled, and Paula of Paula’s Cinema Club for the opportunity to take a deep dive into the span of these two women’s careers. Leave it to the finest classic film bloggers to host one of the BEST blogathons there is!

It is with extreme pleasure that I’ll be giving attention to two extraordinary actresses who have contributed a quiet depth of character to both film and dramatic television, Patricia Collinge and Mildred Dunnock. Both actresses were also prominent leading ladies of the theatre.

And coincidentally The Nun's Story co-starred Mildred Dunnock and Patricia Collinge. This was Collinge's last appearance in film.

MILDRED DUNNOCK

NEW YORK CITY – JANUARY 20: Mildred Dunnock was sighted on January 10, 1975, at DJ Nite Club in New York City. (Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images).

A "superb actress who didn't find nearly the roles she deserved" and "suffered the deprivations more keenly than less sensitive artists would have." –Elia Kazan

I WANT YOU, Mildred Dunnock, 1951 Courtesy Everett Collection PUBLICATIONxINxGERxSUIxAUTxONLY Copyright: xCourtesyxEverettxCollectionx MBDIWAN EC033

With the dignity of a weathered carved tree, Dunnock is spare and angular, a handsome yet fey-looking woman with a modest hairstyle and time-worn features. She is an American actress who was prolific in playing spinsters and middle-class mothers. Her weighty performances earned her two Oscar nominations and praise for her performance in Tennessee William's Sweet Bird of Youth. But the role that would garner the most praise, both stage and screen versions, is Linda Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. She originated the role of Loman's hapless wife in Arthur Miller’s classic play on Broadway in 1949. Mildred Dunnock was a founding member of the Actors Studio.

Dunnock was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and acted throughout her college years with the Vagabond Players and the John Hopkins University troupe in Baltimore. She later taught at the Friends School in New York and acted with the Morningside players in their show Life Begins which led her to Broadway, working with the Selwyn Theater in 1932.

Dunnock’s career spanned over four decades, and she was one of the few actresses to have created important roles in the theater by some of the leading playwrights of the twentieth century, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Her theatrical career debuting on The Great White Way at the age of thirty, lasted over 45 years including 23 shows on Broadway. Though she only appeared in 25 feature films, the quality of her work is to be celebrated.

Dunnock's breakthrough role came eight years later, as Miss Ronberry in the original production of Emlyn Williams' hit play The Corn is Green 1940-42.

Mildred Dunnock was cast in the supporting role of Ethel Barrymore who by that time, had a long and successful stage presence. Barrymore inhabited the role of Miss Moffat the spinster schoolteacher who is passionate about transforming the lives of uneducated, proud young Welsh Miners and giving them a chance to lift themselves out of the darkness and reach toward a better life.

Dunnock plays the prissy spinster Miss Ronberry, a reluctant assistant teacher who becomes devoted to Moffat's endeavor. Her performance attracted the attention of Hollywood. Ironically it was Dunnock, and not Barrymore, who was asked to reprise her role on film when Warner Bros bought the rights and insisted their star Bette Davis be cast for the lead in 1945.

When we first meet Miss Ronberry she is eager to become acquainted with the new tenant whom she thinks is a rugged Colonel. She studies his sizable collection of books and includes his "˜virile' wastepaper basket as one of the illuminating artifacts she infers as deliciously masculine. But Miss Ronberry is stunned when the “L.C.” who wrote the letter she receives turns out to be the feisty Lilly Christabel (“L.C.”) Moffat (Bette Davis).

Dunnock also created the role on the stage of Lavinia Hubbard in Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest with Patricia Neal as Regina. The play was the prequel to Hellman's The Little Foxes, which was a story that reflected the assorted lives of a cunning, bourgeois Southern family in the wake of the Civil War. Bette Davis would bring to life the treacherous Regina in the 1941 film The Little Foxes directed by William Wyler. And Patricia Collinge would be cast in the role of Birdie Hubbard, giving one of the most poignant performances of her career. Dunnock's role playing Lavinia went to Florence Eldridge in the film version of Another Part of the Forest in 1948.

Dunnock appeared with Margaret Rutherford in the stage production of Farewell, Farewell Eugene, and co-starred with Hermione Baddley in Tennessee William’s play The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore at the Morosco Theatre. Shown below are the two actresses with playwright Tennessee Williams.

Mildred Dunnock starred in the dramatic television series, The Ford Theater Hour presentation of Night Must Fall in 1948 co-starring Fay Bainter and Cloris Leachman. Based on the play by Emlyn Williams, and adapted to the big screen in 1937 starring Rosalind Russell, Dame May Whitty, and Robert Montgomery.

She continued to turn in stellar performances on stage. In 1945 she had the supporting role of Tallulah Bankhead on Broadway in the comedy by Phillip Barry called Foolish Nation. Also on Broadway, she starred in Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt 1951 where she played John Garfield's mother Tase. Then she appeared in Lee Strasberg's short-lived production of Jane Bowles in The Summer House 1953-54. A "˜surreal and operatic' and "˜darkly funny' (Axel Nissen) work, starring Judith Anderson and Dunnock as manipulative, domineering mothers.

In February of 1949, at the Morosco Theatre on Broadway, Mildred Dunnock premiered in the role that will forever be remembered as her most iconic performance. That of Linda Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, co-starring Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman. In 1951, Dunnock went on to star in the film version directed by Laszlo Benedek, with Fredrick March stepping into the role of Willy Loman.

Mildred Dunnock from the film ‘Death Of A Salesman’, 1951. (Photo by Columbia Pictures/Getty Images)

New York Times' snarky film critic Bosley Crowther wrote of Dunnock's performance that she was, "simply superb, as she was on the stage "¦ For her portrayal of a woman who bears the agony of seeing her sons and husband turn out a failure, supports the one pretension of this drama to genuine tragedy."

Mildred Dunnock was nominated for her first Academy Award in 1951 for Death of a Salesman but lost to Kim Hunter for Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire. Though Dunnock did not win the Oscar her performance in Salesman began a fruitful decade in both film and theater.

After her 1956 performance in The Wings of a Dove (the stage adaptation of Henry James' novel Child of Fortune), Dunnock disappeared from Broadway for almost four years.

In 1957 Dunnock appeared in the dramatic television series Climax! episode ‘Don’t Touch Me’ co-starring Shelley Winters, three episodes of Kraft Theatre 1950-1957, and four episodes of Studio One 1951-1957.

One of my favorite television appearances of Mildred Dunnock is perhaps the most engrossing episode of Boris Karloff's anthology series Thriller. The Cheaters tells the story about a pair of specs that give the wearer the ability to know "˜the truth', to read other people's thoughts, and to see your true self in the mirror. The episode features Dunnock as Mother Alcott, an eccentric little old-fashioned lady who is a spirited kleptomaniac. She stumbles onto the cursed odd spectacles or "˜cheaters' when she lifts them from a junk/antique store. When she puts them on, she is able to hear her nephew and his wife's interior machinations about Mother Alcott's death. They plan to kill off the old biddy for her money.

Dunnock is perfectly waspish as the old gal who is convinced they are putting poison in her tea, which she spills into the flower pots next to her bed as she confesses to her family doctor/companion about her suspicions. However, her prickly neurosis does bear warning and she manages to take matters into her own hands.

Mother Olcott commits murder – death by hat pin- driven by the cheaters’ revelatory powers. which exposes the scheming of her greedy relatives. Dunnock was superb in Boris Karloff’s anthology series Thriller in the episode The Cheaters 1960.

The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959)-My lips are sealed, or “only the evil that men do, live after them!”

She appeared in Roald Dahl’s warped television series Way Out episode – William and Mary 1961. Below is Dunnock blowing smoke into the tank holding the brain of her cantankerous husband, Henry Jones.

Mildred Dunnock in the episode ‘William & Mary’ from the television show ‘Way Out’, March 27, 1967. (Photo by CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images).
L.A. – APRIL 4: Mildred Dunnock as Aunt Ida and Shelley Winters as Carol in the CLIMAX! the episode, “Don’t Touch Me.” Image dated April 4, 1957. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images).

In 1964 Mildred Dunnock brought her reserved white gloved sophistication to the role of Minnie in The Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode Beyond the Sea of Death starring alongside Diana Hyland.

As sure as my name is MonsterGirl, this is a Boris Karloff Thriller! “The Storm”

It was during these years she delivered some of her best and most beloved screen roles in films like Baby Doll 1956, Peyton Place 1957, The Nun's Story 1959, BUtterfield 8 1960, and Jack Garfein's Something Wild 1961. Dunnock co-stars as Carroll Baker's judgmental mother, who goes through an emotional journey to reconnect with her traumatized daughter.

Peyton Place earned Dunnock a Golden Globe nomination, for her sensitive portrayal of the devoted school teacher, Miss Elsie Thornton who is undeservedly passed over as principal. Miss Elsie shares strong felt wisdom,” Allison a person doesn’t always get what she deserves. Remember it.” – "Allison, if there is anything in life you want, go and get it. Don't wait for anyone to give it to you.”

In The Nuns Story (Audrey Hepburn is a strong-willed nurse who struggles with her place in the church and whether taking her vows was the best direction for her humanitarian work ) Dunnock plays Sister Margarita "Mistress of Postulates" or The Living Rule, (which means an ideal example to the novices and other nuns), where she gives a quiet yet powerful performance as the very serious acolyte to the church. Other sisters include our featured actress Patricia Collinge, the great Peggy Ashcroft, and Dame Edith Evans.

Mildred Dunnock had a creative presence on television in the 1950s and though her film appearances were relatively sparse, they were no doubt memorable. Her keen acting style earned her two Oscar nominations, not just for Death of a Salesman but for Elia Kazan's Baby Doll 1956. Kazan's 1956 version of his play was the one dramatization, Tennessee Williams adapted for the screen himself. In 1957, while Dunnock was nominated for an Oscar a second time, It went to Dorothy Malone for Written on the Wind.

BABY DOLL, from left: Mildred Dunnock, Karl Malden, 1956 Courtesy Everett Collection ACHTUNG AUFNAHMEDATUM GESCHÄTZT PUBLICATIONxINxGERxSUIxAUTxONLY Copyright: xCourtesyxEverettxCollectionx MBDBADO EC075.

Baby Doll, is the uncomfortably, subtly amusing, sensually charged, deviant story set in the South about an abusive blustering slob Karl Malden, anxious with explosive sexual frustration, awaiting his virginal bride (Carroll Baker) to reach the age he can consummate his marriage. (Baker should have won an Oscar for her arresting performance in Something Wild.)

Dunnock's part as Aunt Rose Comfort, a Jacobson hat-wearing, ditzy spinster who shuffles around the house like a lost mouse, suffering from far-reaching timidity is a spark of vulnerability. Malden spends the entire film using Rose as a verbal punching bag bullying her, and threatening to throw her into a home. She may have occupied a tangential piece of the story, nevertheless, her contribution is distinctive.

Tennessee Williams considered Big Mamma to be one of Dunnock's most poignant performances in his play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 1955-56, which won the Pulitzer Prize. When the story was adapted to the screen, she lost the role to Judith Anderson. While I think Anderson is a force to be reckoned with, I believe she wasn't the right choice to play Big Momma, the Southern vacuous wife of Big Daddy Pollitt. Dunnock should have been a natural choice. Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt – He says bull when he’s disgusted. Ida "Big Momma” Pollitt – Yes, that’s right. I say bull too, like Big Daddy.

1959 Press Photo Mildred Dunnock in The Confessions of Saint Augustine.

Dunnock took on a rare loathsome role as Gig Young's emasculating mother. In the classic courtroom drama, The Story on Page One 1960 written and directed by Clifford Odets. This puts Dunnock in our view as an oppressive presence and a middle-class dragon in aloof clothing. Mrs. Ellis is a departure from her usual roles and gave her a shot at playing a "monstrous mom", a devouring mother.

Gig Young's defense attorney (Anthony Franciosa), sums up Mrs. Ellis as an- "˜unmitigated monster" A film critic referred to her as "a cruel and voracious she-wolf in deceptively virtuous sheep's clothing."

He is on trial with his lover Rita Hayworth (who gives a fantastic performance) both accused of murdering her drunk and abusive husband played by Alfred Ryder, when Young shoots him in self-defense. Dunnock turns in a chilling performance with her taut strokes of hypocritical correctness, sanctimonious rhetoric, and unfailing selfishness that is an unnerving example of suffocating motherhood, as we watch her compressing the life out of her son.

Dressed in decorous tailored suits, hats, and gloves, Mrs. Ellis spouts banalities, "It's one of the great lessons of life: There's no substitute for breeding."

Dunnocks' role in BUtterfield 8 1960 is closer to her typified mother as she weighs in on her daughter's (Elizabeth Taylor) life as a high-paid escort. Taylor won Best Actress for her performance.

Other films Dunnock made in the 1960s include Sweet Bird of Youth 1962, the adaptation of Tennessee William's play from 1959. The film stars Geraldine Page as the aging screen diva Alexandra del Lago. Dunnock worked with Page once again in the psychological thriller (underscored by Gerald Fried’s menacing soundtrack) What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? 1969. In Sweet Bird of Youth, Dunnock plays Aunt Nonnie the sister-in-law to Boss Finley (Ed Begley) and aunt to Heavenly Finley (Shirley Knight). Dunnock brought to the film her signature "quiet authority and timorous tenderness." (Axel Nissen)

Directed by John Ford, 7 Women (1966) features a dynamic cast, Anne Bancroft, Margaret Leighton, and Betty Field. Mildred Dunnock, along with Flora Robson, plays older missionaries who are seized by ruthless Mongolian bandits. The standout performance in the film is Anne Bancroft as a wildly ‘progressive’ doctor.

CIRCA 1966: Actress Anne Bancroft and Mildred Dunnock on the set of the movie “7 Women”, circa 196. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images).

Dunnock and Lee J Cobb revised their exceptional roles in a television version of Death of a Salesman, for which she was nominated for an Emmy.

LOS ANGELES – MAY 8: DEATH OF A SALESMAN The television adaptation of the 1949 play by Arthur Miller. Mildred Dunnock as Linda Loman, Lee J Cobb as Willy Loman. Air date, May 8, 1966. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images).
1949: Lee J Cobb and Mildred Dunnock in a US production of Arthur Miller’s ‘Death Of A Salesman’. (Photo by Keystone Features/Getty Images).

After What Alice Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? in 1969, she appeared in television series and made for tv movies, like Murder or Mercy 1974 with Melvyn Douglas and The Patricia Neal Story in 1981. The Pick-Up Artist 1987 was her last appearance on the big screen.

Unspecified – 1974: (L-R) Mildred Dunnock, Melvyn Douglas appearing in the ABC tv movie ‘Murder or Mercy’. (Photo by Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images).

She also appeared as Mrs. Rule in the television series, Circle of Fear 1972 once again co-starring with Melvyn Douglas in the episode ‘House of Evil’. Her final show on Broadway, was in Marguerite Duras' play, Days in the Trees in 1976.

Mildred Dunnock remained active in theater through the 1980s, participating in numerous stage productions at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven where she starred in Long Day's Journey Into Night. She also played Amanda Wingfield as part of her collaboration with Tennessee Williams from his story The Glass Menagerie. Dunnock went on to teach at Yale Drama School. She passed away on July 5, 1991, at the age of 90.

FEATURED CLIPS:

Miss Ronberry The Corn is Green 1945

Miss Rizzo Kiss of Death 1947

Mrs. Linda Loman Death of a Salesman 1951

Celanese Theatre ‘On Borrowed Time’ 1952

Mrs. Wiggs The Trouble With Harry 1955

Aunt Rose Comfort Baby Doll 1956

Miss Elsie Thornton Peyton Place 1957

Mrs. Ellis The Story on Page On 1959 

Way Out 1961 ‘William and Mary’

Minnie Briggs Alfred Hitchcock Hour ‘Beyond the Sea of Death’ 1964

Miriam Olcott Thriller The Cheaters 1960

Mrs. Wandrous BUtterfield 8 1960

Mrs. Gates Something Wild 1961

Aunt Nonnie Sweet Bird of Youth 1962

Miss Tinsley What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice 1969

Photograph by Diane Arbus: 1961.

PATRICIA COLLINGE

Over the years, in my journey through classic film and television, I discovered character actress Patricia Collinge, an endearingly beautiful woman, with winsome, kind eyes that glimmer when she speaks. Through her broad sweet-tempered smile, emerges her voice, with a quality that strikes me as distinct, giving the impression of spaces between her words. Like the spaces of amber honeycomb, that are drizzled with her authentically regal and splendid kindness. You will recognize her most often playing sympathetic widows, whimsical mothers, aunts, or vulnerable older women. Collinge was primarily a celebrated stage actress from 1908-1952. I can only imagine what her stage presence would be like, knowing the depth of her acting integrity.

Born in London, Collinge emigrated to America in 1907 and began her acting career on Broadway in 1908 with her first New York stage appearance when she was 16 years old, as a flower girl in The Queen of the Moulin Rouge at the Circle Theatre on Broadway. Look at those beautifully expressive eyes.

She became an acclaimed actress of the theatre in many classic stage productions, penned by such playwrights as George Bernard Shaw, Henrik Ibsen, and J.M. Barrie. Some notable stage appearances — She was the first actress to play the lead role of Pollyanna, which was popularized by Hayley Mills in the 1960 ‘filmitization’ which was also rendered by Mary Pickford in 1920. Collinge received rave reviews for the four-act stage adaptation of Catherine Chisholm Cushing's novel which opened in 1916 at the Hudson Theater on Broadway and ran for 112 shows. She appeared in Hedda Gabler 1926, The Importance of Being Earnest 1926, Venus 1927, She Stoops to Conquer 1928, Becky Sharp 1929, The Lady with the Lamp 1931, The Little Foxes 1939, as Abby Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace 1941, The Heiress 1947 and her last appearance on stage was 1952 in I’ve Got Sixpence.

Patricia Collinge in the theatrical production of Tillie 1916.

From 1947-48 she starred as Lavinia Penniman in The Heiress at the Biltmore Theatre where she gave 410 performances.

Collinge originated the role of Birdie Hubbard in Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes on Broadway in 1939, probably her most notable performance as well as her film debut is that of the forlorn and fragile, beguiling and heartbreaking interpretation of Aunt Birdie Hubbard in the screen version of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes 1941, which was a recreation of her role in the original Broadway production in 1939, which she co-starred with Tallulah Bankhead. While Bankhead was considered to reprise her role as Regina Giddens in the film adaptation, Bette Davis was cast instead. Collinge’s psychologically tortured, neglected, and alcoholic Aunt Birdie is perhaps the most startling performance of the picture.

Collinge's touching performance won her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and in my opinion, should have delivered her the honor. She lost to Mary Astor for The Big Lie.

Another memorable role is Collinge's Emmie Newton in Alfred Hitchcock's psychological thriller, Shadow of a Doubt 1943 where she plays Teresa Wright's humble, proud, and chatty housewife who dotes over her baby brother Charlie, The Merry Widow Killer. Collinge also rewrote the scene with Macdonald Carey confessing his love for her in the garage. The cast was reportedly dissatisfied with the dialogue and she was asked to rewrite the script, which pleased Hitchcock.

Aside from being an actress, Collinge was a playwright, author, and columnist. In 1938, her comedy, “Dame Nature”, an adaptation of a French drama by André Birabeau was published. Several of Collinge’s short stories were published in the New Yorker and she was also a contributor to the New York Times Book Review. Collinge is also uncredited for writing some of the other dialogue for Shadow of a Doubt, and having been one of several writers on Hitchcock's Lifeboat 1944 in which she did not appear as an actress.

Collinge and Wright would appear together in two other features, The Little Foxes 1941 and as Mrs. Drury once again playing Wright’s mother in Casanova Brown 1944. The film is a seldom-credited romantic comedy about Gary Cooper and Wright who get divorced only to discover that she has given birth to their child. Collinge is a quirky eccentric who judges her daughter's marriage by interpreting the astrological signs to decide whether Cooper is the right man for her daughter.

She later appeared in Hitchcock's anthology mystery series, from 1955-1961. Starring in four episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and in 1962 two episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Collinge’s participation in Hitchcock’s outstanding mystery series is a startling example of her acting and should be considered some of her best work. See film clips below:

Aside from The Little Foxes and Shadow of a Doubt, major motion pictures and television credits include Tender Comrade 1943 co-starring Ginger Rogers, Ruth Hussey, and Kim Hunter as women who have moved in together while their husbands are fighting in WWII.

In Teresa 1951, after a six-year absence from film, Fred Zinnemann cast Collinge as Clara Cast, GI John Ericson's controlling, possessive mother who refuses to let go of her son when he brings home an Italian bride (Pier Angeli) after the war. Her performance is quite a shift from her familiarly likable characters. She appeared briefly as Sister William in The Nun’s Story 1959, Collinge also gave dramatic performances in such television series The Web 1953 “Midnight Guest” Celanese Theatre 1952 “Mornings at Seven”, Goodyear Playhouse “The Rumor” 1953, Omnibus “Lord Byron’s Love Letter”, and Studio Ones “Crime at Blossom’s”, The River Garden” and “The Hero”. She also appeared in Armstrong Circle Theater 1955-56 and East Side/West Side 1963 “Creeps Live Here”, and United Steel Hour 1962 “Scene of the Crime”.

Patricia Collinge passed away in New York City at the age of 81 on April 10, 1974.

Patricia Collinge co-stars with Ginger Rogers, Kim Hunter, and Ruth Hussey in Tender Comrade 1943.

9 FEATURED CLIPS:

*As Birdie Hubbard in The Little Foxes 1941

*The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in Bonfire as Naomi Freshwater with psychopathic Peter Falk

*Emmie in Shadow of a Doubt 1943

*East Side /West Side 1963 ‘Creeps Live Here’ as Miss Harriet Allen

*Alfred Hitchcock Presents 3 episodes

Across the Threshold S5 Ep 22 1960, The Rose Garden Season 2 1956, and The Cheney Vase 1955

*Casanova Brown as Mrs Drury 1944

*As Clara Cass in Teresa 1951

This is your EverLovin’ Joey showing a little appreciation to two actresses of a certain character!

Flicker Alley and Universal Pictures Present Paul Leni’s The Man Who Laughs (1928) The Tortured Smile “Hear how they laugh at me. Nothing but a clown!”

Words that come to mind when I think of The Man Who Laughs: beautiful, disturbing, hauntingly poetic, disquieting, dreamlike, tragic, memorable.

Flicker Alley & Universal Pictures have released all these visual thoughtscapes into one gorgeous pristine Blu-ray/DVD combo! It’s Paul Leni‘s visually arresting masterpiece restored to all its glorious original flavor and so much more! Thank you, Aurora, for giving me an opportunity to review it!

I have always been drawn to the tragic beauty of Victor Hugo’s classical romantic horror story The Man Who Laughs. Now a new generation of film lovers can experience the powerful visual poetry of director Paul Leni’s film starring one of the most enigmatic screen presences. Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine brings to life the kidnapped heir to an earldom who was hideously deformed into a perpetually smiling clown, baring a sad eternal grimace. It leaves us with the eternal question — what is the quality of beauty or ugliness? There is an aspect of Beauty and the Beast to the story. Mary Philbin portrays the innocent waif Dea with her long blonde mane of curls and to me, Conrad Veidt is the ONLY Gwynplaine who could have brought the pathos to that infamously hideous visage (though I do not see his eternal smile as hideous).

This remastering of The Man Who Laughs is part of Universal Pictures’ ongoing silent restoration initiative. The source of the restoration is a 35mm composite fine grain film reel from the Universal Pictures vault, created in 1954 from the original nitrate camera negatives. The restoration team stabilized and deflickered the film, repairing scratches, warps, and dirt. The final gorgeous 4k digital restoration was completed by NBCUniversal StudioPost and is accompanied by the extraordinarily evocative score, newly recorded by the Berklee College of Music Silent Film Orchestra. 

Conrad Veidt’s character, Gwynplaine, is The Man Who Laughs. Veidt’s face is well known to most cinephiles, particularly for inspiring Bob Kane’s legendary flamboyant Batman villain, the Joker. Orphaned as a child, Gwynplaine is kidnapped by gypsies, and King James II orders that his face be carved into a hideous grin as punishment for the sins of his father, the Scottish Nobleman Clancharlie. Alone after his disfigurement, he rescues a blind girl named Dea. They are taken in by Ursus and star in a traveling theatre troop. Dea and Gwynplaine fall in love. She can’t see her lover’s tormented smile. They enjoy years of prosperity until Gwynplaine is recognized by the surgeon who disfigured him and the malevolent court jester, Barkilphedro, who served under the patronage of King James II.

Much like Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932), I would imagine The Man Who Laughs (1928) would have been a very difficult picture to sit down and get comfortable with given the subject matter. As Kevin Brownlow writes the film is “far too unpleasant” for some.

circa 1928: Mary Philbin (1903 – 1993) with Conrad Veidt (1893 – 1943) in a scene from the film ‘The Man Who Laughs’, directed by Paul Leni for Universal. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

As I’ve always been into Gothic classical horror and fantasy stories, while the narrative is no less disturbing to me, I’m incredibly drawn to Gwynplaine as a romantically tragic hero. He is not a monster or a freak. He is a victim of monsters and cold-blooded opportunists who forced him into a mold in which he had to rely on fate to be kinder to him later on in life than it was when he was a little lad. As a French romanticism writer, Victor Hugo wrote poetry and was struck with an acute social consciousness in tune with social misery and injustice. Gwynplaine is one of his tragic figures.

Because of the success of his Cat and the Canary a year earlier, Leni was entrusted to direct The Man Who Laughs. There were the elements of horror that were expected from Paul Leni, the concept of disfigurements, of children sold into slavery, and the torture chambers with its Iron Maiden. This is considered Paul Leni’s best American film.

Leni was a German director and set designer most known in the U.S. for his Waxworks 1924, The Cat and the Canary 1927, The Chinese Parrot 1927, and The Last Warning 1928.

The Man Who Laughs influenced director James Whale who acknowledged Leni’s innovative technique as a major inspiration for his The Old Dark House 1932, Frankenstein 1931, and Bride of Frankenstein 1935. It has been said that Leni had an ‘Intoxicating flair for the grotesque’. This was a moment in filmmaking when movie studios had a flair for extravagant stylized horror!

Camerawork & Cinematographer by Gilbert Warrenton. (The Cat and the Canary 1927, A Man’s Past 1927, Lonesome 1928, The Mississippi Gambler 1929, High School Hellcats 1958, Panic in the Year Zero 1962)  "smothered in décor and chiaroscuro and turned into an impressive recreation of the splendor and horror of 17th century London"-Carlos Clarens

“The highly sophisticated qualities of mise-en-scene, decoration, lighting and playing of German Expressionist cinema are effectively combined with the marvelous expertise, pace and attack of the best American films of the period: and The Man Who Laughs proved to be one of the most vivid and dynamic films to survive from the silent cinema.” –From the booklet, Kevin Brownlow

Warrenton uses expressive camera angles, along with moody and beautifully executed low-key lighting, and atmospheric backlit frames. Each shot is framed like an exquisite 17th-century Hogarthian painting, utilizing Leni’s background in German Expressionism, culminating in scenes of pageantry, the elegance of its set pieces and stylized grandeur, and at times uneasy gruesomeness.

For example, the opening shot of Barkilphedro coming into King James II’s bedroom from behind the wall of imposing religious statues is quite remarkable in its ability to draw you into the story swiftly as a dark fairy-tale once Barkilphedro creeps along the wall like a goblin in a nightmarish fever dream.

And there’s a moment Clancharlie (Conrad Veidt playing a second role) is being sent to the Iron Lady floats into the frame and the darkness closes in around him. The shot is set up with black empty space to devour him, it’s brilliantly executed. The Duchess Josiana’s room is cluttered like a den of sensual pleasures, and even her little monkey adds a touch of the bizarre.

Another incredible cinematic moment is little Gwynplaine wandering the cold countryside of Cornwall among the swinging corpses hanging from the gibbets. The whole scene is hallucinatory in the fashion of expressionist art. The Southwark Fair and the show with the theatre troop with Ursus’ storytelling’ theatrics is shot with flair. Warrenton knew how to utilize space to tell a visual story.

Art Direction Charles D Hall worked with the Universal art directors from Hunchback for the standing sets.

“The whole design was very strongly under the influence of Paul Leni. Charles D. Hall who later became very big with Frankenstein, Dracula and All Quiet on the Western Front was one of the art directors. The research was done so well that it had an ancient European ‘imprint’ You felt that it was barely 1600. Every costume was specially designed and carefully executed.”

Hall went on to design the sets for Dracula and Frankenstein at Universal. Joseph Wright, and Thomas F. O’Neill. The set design is resplendent, especially in King James II’s bed chambers with the wall of Religious Saints and secret passageways.

The 56 sets took eight months to design and build. The teeming Southwark Fair scene"”the recreation of a famous London carnival of the 16th and 17th centuries, juxtaposes a mélange of freak shows, musicians, exotic animals, bear baiting, boxers and tumblers, included 1500 actors in period costume and 18 cameras.

The sets were by the brilliant Charles D. Hall, the designer of Frankenstein's laboratory, the spooky staircase in Dracula, the creaking mansion in The Old Dark House, the Bauhaus nightmares of The Black Cat, and for Chaplin, the madly teetering cabin in The Gold Rush and the out of control factory machinery in Modern Times. His sketch for the scene where Gwynplaine is abandoned on a frigid rock is reproduced in the film almost exactly. There are many memorable aspects to The Man Who Laughs, but the production design is indispensable to the atmosphere of horror. -William K. Everson

There are hints of German expressionism.  “One Needs to grasp the full implications of this style The low ceilings and vaults oblige the characters to stoop, and force them into those jerky movements and broken gestures which produce the extravagant curves and diagonals required by Expressionist precept. A few years later Leni was to use the same attitude in The Man Who Laughs, made in America when his King of England creeps down a corridor accompanied by his sadistic jester.” –From The Haunted Screen by Lotte Eisner 

Film Editor Edward L. Cahn (Yes!, my favorite schlocky B director famously known for films like Creature with The Atom Brain 1955, The She-Creature 1956, Zombies of Mora Tau 1957, Invasion of the Saucer Men 1957, It!, The Terror from Beyond Space 1958, Curse of the Faceless Man 1958, Invisible Invaders 1959, The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake 1959)

THE COLORFUL CASTING

Interestingly, Conrad Veidt was Carl Laemmle’s first choice to portray Dracula in the film adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, after Bela Lugosi emoted his bloody heart out on Broadway for 33 weeks.

Universal Studio made a big splash with The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) with Lon Chaney. According to Kevin Brownlow, director Rupert Julian said “Lon Chaney-or it can’t be done” before casting Phantom of the Opera. And there was the same sentiment about The Man Who Laughs as well. They had their minds set on casting Lon Chaney as Gwynplaine. The problem was that Universal had let Chaney out of his contract already, and while he was now under contract at MGM and could loan him out, he for some reason withdrew at the last minute.

Conrad Veidt in Lady Hamilton (1921).

And so Conrad Veidt wound up playing Gwynplaine, the role intended for Lon Chaney. Veidt had already established himself as one of the world’s top “tragedians” when Laemmle contacted him and got him interested in taking the role. “I rarely have had such a satisfying experience.” in a letter written to a German journalist during production.

Veidt had returned to Berlin after playing a role with John Barrymore in The Beloved Rogue (1927). He worked with Leni on Waxworks (1924). Veidt was most known for his role in Robert Weine’s as Cesare the chilling somnambulist in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and with this performance, he helped pioneer the horror film industry.

"No matter what roles I play, I can't get Caligari out of my system"-Conrad Veidt

(Eingeschränkte Rechte für bestimmte redaktionelle Kunden in Deutschland. Limited rights for specific editorial clients in Germany.) 1893 – 1943 Schauspieler, D in dem film ‘Der Student von Prag’ 1926 (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Noah Beery and Conrad Veidt in King of the Damned (1935)

He was active in German Expressionist theatre and starred in The Hands of Orlac (1924) Waxworks (1924), The Passing of the Third Floor Back (1935), Dark Journey (1937) Blackout (1940), A Woman’s Face (1941), as Major Strasser in Casablanca (1942). He was targeted for death by the Nazis for his anti-Nazi sentiment he fled to England and fought with the Brits. He also donated his earnings to help with the Allied cause. Veidt was one of the stars who appeared in Casablanca (1942). Veidt would ironically play Nazis in several film roles.

He had the perfect demeanor to play the murderous sleepwalker, Cesare, in the Expressionist masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and soon would be called the "Man with the Wicked Eyes."

Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr Caligari) 1920 – Germany Director: Robert Wiene stars Conrad Veidt, Lil Dagover.

When I think about how expressive Veidt is in The Man Who Laughs, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligary, or The Hands of Orlac, I turn to Eisner to describe it perfectly–

“A dynamic synthesis of their being, by concentrating their movements which are almost linear and which-despite a few curves that slip in-remain brusque, like the broken angles of the set; and their movements from point to point never go beyond the limits of a given geometrical plane.” — From Lotte Eisner The Haunted Screen

In this way, she is describing a type of ballet or modern dance that takes discipline and mindfulness. I thought by watching Veidt’s external reality in The Man Who Laughs that he truly expressed the journey of a tortured soul merely through his eyes, and his hands. This he learned from working in the German expressionist theatre and his time with Max Reinhardt’s theatre troupe.

Conrad Veidt Mary Philbin Erich von Stroheim and Paul at the premiere of The Man Who Laughs 1928

“It is precisely as if I am possessed by some other spirit when I enter on a new task of acting, as though something within me presses a switch and my own consciousness merges into some other, greater, more vital being.”-Conrad Veidt

“To play Gwynplaine was the dream of my boyhood. I have been fascinated by this character ever since I read Victor Hugo’s novel in high school. One has to feel pity for Gwynplaine, as he is mutilated, but the result of that mutilation -the laughing, grotesque face-looks funny. For a film actor, that presents an artistic challenge that could hardly be more complicated. So what did I have left as my main mean of communications? The eyes!” – Conrad Veidt

Film Review from 1928 — “…The picture is undeniably better than The Hunchback of Notre Dame…  Conrad Veidt’s impersonation of the laughing man is at least as good as anything Lon Chaney ever did with the aid of makeup. Baclanova’s portrayal of the loose duchess is without parallel and burns holes in the screen….” Motion Picture World 13 October 1928

Conrad Veidt not only plays Gwynplaine but also portrays his father the wild-eyed Scottish nobleman Lord Clancharlie who is sent to the Iron Lady by King James II and sentenced to death for political defection. His young son to suffer the sins of the father.

Universal Studios had their heyday with monsters at their studio with Frankenstein and Dracula beginning in the 1930s. But during the silent era, the big feature was The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923). Here The Man Who Laughs lent primarily to the talents of an actor who could express himself through the art of pantomime as only Lon Chaney could have. The character of Gwynplaine cannot speak ordinarily or alter his intensely forged smile framed and accentuated by the use of lipstick around a wide mountain of grinning teeth. This would pose a challenging limitation to any actor. Conrad Veidt had already proven he had the essential force within him to limit facial expressions to convey his mood.

Veidt’s incredible command of just his eyes as the source of his power — the place where his identity springs from are extraordinary. He utilizes scarves and handkerchiefs, sleeves, and Dea’s hair to block anyone’s sight of his mouth. It’s a very thoughtful and purposeful mechanism but is not done in a way that is artifice. He uses his eyes to create the semblance that he is a complete man. This conflict is saddening to us as we gaze upon him and understand his inner pain. The only way he can become whole especially when he is closest to Dea is when he covers his mouth. Veidt is masterful at telegraphing his conflict to us over his outer reality and his inner desires.

Originally Charles Dullin was to play The Laughing Man and Edith Jehanne was to play the beautiful blind girl Dea in the French version of the film, they were not known actors in the U.S.

The American version of the film also considered featuring Ernest Torrence as Gwynplaine and Mary Philbin who had wonderful success as Christine Daae in Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera in 1925, she was perfect to play the lovely Dea.

The original choice for the seductive Duchess Josiana was French actress Arlette Marchal who had been suggested by Gloria Swanson after they worked together on Madame Sans-Gene 1925– but Olga Baclanova was chosen for the sensual Duchess Josiana sister to the wicked Queen Anne. American audiences never seemed to warm up to the glamorous Baclanova. Historian Kevin Brownlow tells a very interesting story about interviewing her in New York in the 1960s as part of his essay in the wonderful booklet. About she got started here in the States, her work on Freaks, and a few other funny tidbits.

Olga Baclanova is well known as the treacherous Cleopatra in Freaks (1932). Here she is with Harry Earles as Hans. Ironically starting out in the film a beautiful flying peacock until she dared call Han’s beloved family “dirty, filthy freaks” and that she’d never be one of them. Well, that peacock became a non-coherent chicken lady and in fact did become one of them, poetic justice! While Baclanova adored The Man Who Laughs she despised her work on Tod Browning’s film referring to it as her béte noir.

One of the minor ‘ooh ahh’ shocks that draws to the film was the opportunity to catch a glimpse of Baclanova’s naked arse as she rises out of her bath. Her naked tuckus is shown through the keyhole in the European version of the film but her bare arse is obscured in the American version by the towel. Nudity was shown in pre-Code films up until the early 1930s.

The rest of the players

Cesare Gravina as Ursus the Philosopher…

Brandon Hurst (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 1920, The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1923, Love (1927), House of Frankenstein 1944)is absolutely wonderful as the sinister Barkilphedro the goblin Jester who is perhaps one of the most photogenic and the most complex if not the most diabolical and sinister of all the characters in this dark fairy tale. He is like the boogeyman.

Josephine Crowell as Queen Anne, Sam De Grasse as King James II, Stuart Holmes as the buffoon Lord Dirry-Moir, George Siegmann as Dr. Hardquanonne the head Comprachico surgeon, Nick De Ruiz as Wapentake, Edgar Norton as Lord High Chancellor, Torben Meyer as The Spy, Julius Molnar Jr. as Gwynplaine as a child, Charles Puffy as Innkeeper, Frank Puglia as Clown, Jack Goodrich as Clown, and the star of the film–Zimbo as Homo the Wolf.

MAKE-UP

The great Jack Pierce was responsible for Gwynplaine’s make-up. Pierce was chosen with the tremendous undertaking of replacing the remarkable artistry of Lon Chaney.  The idea was to create the look on Veidt’s face of a “death’s head rictus grin.” It predated the grueling makeup hours that Boris Karloff would have to undergo for Universals Frankenstein’s monster! But Jack Pierce was the man to create the sympathetic anti-heroes!

“We had to have a mouthpiece made” said Andrew Marton, assistant director, “that kept Veidt’s cheeks in this horrible position . He was so ill from this. Day after day his muscles and his skin was stretched-he became sore in his mouth, and he was suffering. He was a marvellous actor, but no actor, no matter how good he is, can surmount a grimace that is imposed on him from the word go.”

Gwynplaine’s grotesque grin was achieved with a prosthesis. Veidt wore a set of dentures with metal hooks that pulled back the corners of his mouth. One can imagine how much pain he was in! He couldn’t speak with the prosthesis in his mouth. There’s only one scene in which he did not wear the prosthesis and that’s when he is ravished by the Duchess Josiana.

“Wearing dentures to give him a blinding set of piano-key set of choppers (framed by a lipstick mouth)added to his prominent nose, heavy eyebrows and nest of hair, Veidt is an unforgettable sight. (Metal hooks on the dentures pulled the actors lips into a laughing rictus)” – From John Dileo 40 Remarkable Movies Awaiting Rediscovery

Veidt’s acting is mostly with his lyrical hand movements and his eyes, which transpires empathy and is one of the most heartbreaking visceral performances in cinematic history. Jack Pierce’s makeup helps to heighten the dramatized sense of fable with Gwynlaine’s deep-set piercing eyes, which are captivating and entrancing. Veidt had already been considered one of the great ‘tragedian’ actors Pierce using dark eye shadow helps to deepen the well of his sadness from where the tears spring. Through only the use of his eyes and his facial expressions we manage to understand the layers of emotions he is experiencing on his journey through his ordeal. Great gentility pitted against self-hatred then spirited courage, self-sacrifice, and soul searching. As John Dileo says,

“this is stylized acting simultaneously marked by bold operatic strokes and subtle graduations of feeling resulting in a Chaney worthy turn of significant pathos. It is especially chilling to see him to watch him cry ;the upper half of his face in torment and tears while the lower half frozen in maniacal glee.”

Oddly enough this was the third story in a cycle of Gothic historical, romantic tragedies eloquently macabre with themes of love and disfigurement adapted at major motion picture studios. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), and The Man Who Laughs (1928)

IMDb not-so-fun facts:

Gwynplaine’s fixed grin and disturbing clown-like appearance was a key inspiration for comic book talents writer Bill Finger and artists Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson in creating Batman’s greatest enemy, The Joker.

The process of carving a victim’s face to look like it is smiling broadly has come to be known as a Glasgow Smile or a Chelsea Smile after organized-crime rings in those two British cities used such mutilation as a terror tactic.

The Comprachicos, a Spanish term meaning child buyers, was coined by Victor Hugo for his novel this film is based upon. According to Hugo they could change one’s physical appearance through various methods such as physical restraints, muzzling their faces to deform them, slitting their eyes, dislocating their joints, and the malformation of their bones.

One wonders if director William Castle’s Mr. Sardonicus in 1961 was a much more exaggerated version, a more grotesque visage, and not the sympathetic character of Gwynplaine. This might have been something Castle thought about being a classic horror fan who loved his gimmicks.

Guy Rolfe stars as Mr.Sardonicus (1961) in William Castle’s film based on writer Ray Russell’s novel. The film co-stars Audrey Dalton and Ronald Lewis. 

In recent years, in the contemporary horror genre assailed by rampant body violation and disfigurement (torture porn), there’s a host of horror films that include faces slashed from ear to ear but don’t give reference nor credit to Hugo’s character. The slashed face is common in 21st-century films, yet Gwynplaine is the earliest archetypal Gothic figure as a tragic hero. The true-life Black Dahlia murder in the 1940s is the next time a face is literally slashed from ear to ear. And we see this sardonic grin outside of horror films, in V for Vendetta (2005).

Ironically, Frankenstein’s monster and Gwynplaine have been the two classical figures in Gothic horror literature, and film adaptations are not unlikely due to the contributions of Boris Karloff and Conrad Veidt’s striking and soulful performances of their characters. It consistently breaks my heart every time I re-watch their presence on screen. Gwynplaine’s face is unusually arresting and his expressive eyes are absolutely heart-wrenching. It’s evocative without a word spoken. Perhaps the only comparison to this is Lon Chaney Sr.’s Quasimodo. Each is similarly tied to the other as tragic, misunderstood, as either an error of nature or a trespass of man on nature. They are prisoners in their bodies, hated by outsiders, in love with women they wish they could have, and all gentle souls within, and we ache for them to be released. As Shelley’s Frankenstein’s monster, asks, “Why did you create me?” And just as Gwynplaine cannot change his immortal grimace we cannot look away from him but embrace him as a whole man.

The striking coincidence that the great Jack Pierce did the time-consuming painstaking makeup for Karloff’s Frankenstein’s monster, years after creating the eternal smile on Conrad Veidt’s face is not lost on me. I find it a quite natural succession of events.

THE COSTUMES

The magnificent costuming with historical accuracy for the time period designed by Vera West and David Cox adds to the atmosphere and pageantry of the extravagant beauty of the picture.

THE SCORE

The Berklee College of Music Silent Film Orchestra’s collaborative efforts brought Hugo’s story, Leni’s direction, and the actors’ performances to a whole other level of feeling. Lyrical, playful, dynamic, ominous, or poignantly beautiful. The music uses strings, woodwinds, piano, flutes, tympani, harps, and bowed upright bass to represent certain characters in the film, brilliantly accentuating the scenarios and each scene’s moods. Dea and Gwynplaine’s lover’s theme is particularly poignant.

As a musician, I recognized the musical themes of the motifs used. The theme for the lovers — Gwynplaine’s and Deas, symbolizes their immortal love. As Sonia Coronado explains in her informative essay (another extra included in the lovely booklet that comes with the Flicker Alley Blu-ray/DVD) the scoring was divided into seven reels, 15 minutes each as the film is almost 2 hours. They had a list of themes representing each main character. It’s extraordinary how an entire class of music students took their own sections of music and came together at the end to piece the fabric of the full story like a tapestry. That confluence works so beautifully. One complete score was written by seven composers.

THE STUDIO:

In the 1920s Universal Studios was trying to compete with the more successful studios of the time period. Paramount and MGM had higher budgets. Universal needed something impressive to rescue their studio. Something on a grand scale, like the success they had with The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) with Lon Chaney. Chaney started his career in 1912 at Universal as a stagehand and an occasional extra, ultimately becoming The Man of a Thousand Faces, doing over 150 roles with his extraordinary makeup treatments. The President of Universal, Carl Laemmle, along with Duc’d’Ayen representing La Sociéte Générale des Films decided to collaborate on a Franco-American co-production of The Man Who Laughs based on Victor Hugo’s harrowing and horrifying novel about a young boy whose claim to nobility is stolen and his face mutilated in an eternal grimace as revenge for the sins of the father. This production was done in the ‘Super Jewel’ unit of Universal, devoted to higher budget films they wanted to make spectacles.

The studio had a strong response to their 1926 release of the French-produced Les Miserable (1923), Victor Hugo’s best-loved work. To the executives at Universal, the character of Gwynplaine had much in common with that of the other Hugo character, Quasimodo, played by Chaney in Universal’s success of 1923.

Let me just quickly say that there are two absolutely powerful moments in The Man Who Laughs. My two favorite scenes are:

1st — When Gwynplaine goes to Duchess Josiana’s bedchambers to be seduced. Perhaps what made this scene so believable is something I read in Kevin Brownlow’s booklet where he talks about interviewing  Ogla Baclanova, and how she particularly liked Veidt “He was so adorable. We had a love scene on the bed-excuse me! I was crazy about him.” Apparently, she wasn’t acting…

2nd — One of the most poignant and well-orchestrated sequences is when the Theatre troupe of clowns try to pretend that there’s an audience waiting to see The Laughing Man, the show must go on, trying to prevent Dea from learning that Gwynplaine has been taken to the torture chamber until Barkilphedro shows up and announces that he’s dead. For the actors, it is what is not said, and how the scene manages to come together that is superbly coordinated.

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