The Raven-haired sylph who “walks in beauty like the night… Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright; Meet in her aspect and her eyes…” — Lord Byron
Barbara Parkins as B.A. in a scene from the film ‘The Kremlin Letter’, 1970. (Photo by 20th Century-Fox/Getty)
It is so easy to look upon Barbara Parkins’ exquisite beauty and make that – the initial distinction you recall about her as an actress before recounting the roles she’s contributed to, the iconic roles that have left an impression on our cultural consciousness.
As Betty Anderson of Peyton Place and Anne Welles in Valley of the Dolls. But beyond the glamour and the pulp fiction and the melodrama and the camp, there is an actress who not only possessed an otherworldly beauty but a depth of character and quality. As Betty Anderson, she broke ground in a role that framed her as a young woman whose trajectory became more empowered within the small, moralistic New England town like Peyton Place that would first judge her. And through a lot of painful, solitary self-discovery, newly mined, and self-respect. Barbara Parkins was one of the actresses who led the way as a strong figure on television in that decade.
I have always been drawn to Barbara Parkins, her inherent sensuality, sophistication, and dreamy voice. There’s a deep well of desire and poetry simmering below that obvious beauty. She brings that sensuality to every versatile role as an actress. And that is why I’ve been in love with her since I first saw her.
It’s that marvelous time again, when one of the most enjoyable Blogathons has come around, it’s the 7th Annual What A Character Blogathon. And the reason I adore it so much –it’s purpose is essential in paying tribute to the memorable character actors who have often added the sparkle to the cinematic sky of movie stars– they touch our lives so profoundly because of their unique contribution as the characters they bring to life!
I want to thank Aurora of Once Upon a Screen, Paula Guthat of Paula’s Cinema Club, and Kellee Pratt of Outspoken & Freckled. for giving me the opportunity to once again show my sincerest love for the actors & actresses who are so discernible within the art of film, television and theatre. It is their unforgettable performances that make it a much richer, more compelling experience — as they are as much the stars who inhabit the dream of art because of their singular personalities.
I’ve been participating now for 7 years, and it’s always a great expedition to delve deeper into the careers of the people who I’ve found the most enigmatic, extraordinary, and uniquely engaging. This year I’ve been excited to pay special attention to two remarkable women, Eileen Heckart, and Louise Latham.
For years I have always thought of these two women together, as one of those odd associations–yet inexplicable– that makes you put certain faces or impressions together in your head. Another example of two actors that often seem to merge in that vast noggin of mine — I’m always thinking of E.G. Marshall and Eli Wallach together. Heck, maybe, next year I’ll do the same double feature for them. As I adore them both!
It struck me that I should pair Eileen and Louise as a kind of sisterhood, for both of their uniquely extraordinary styles stand out and somehow stand together for me. And an interesting confluence happened as I went on my more intensive journey of discovering of these two fine actresses. I found out that Eileen Heckart and Louise Latham appeared together in a rare episode of The Doctors and The Nurses an hour-long television medical drama that ran from 1962-1965. In a macabre tale reminiscent of a Robert Bloch story — the episode is called Night of the Witch, about a woman (Eileen Heckart) who is tortured by the loss of her 6-year-old daughter, and seeks her own brand of retribution from the medical staff she believes is responsible. The hospital receptionist who is cold and unfeeling is portrayed by none other than Louise Latham. The fascination I’ve had to see this performance led me to hunt down a rare copy and now I own it and have put together a sample of it here for you. It’s a rather long clip of the episode in honor of their appearing together. It showcases both their talents. I hope you enjoy the excerpt And I am praying that the television series itself will someday find a full release as it is worthy of being re-visited for its groundbreaking content, incredible cast, and performances.
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As in past What A Character Blogathons, Burgess Meredith, Ruth Gordon, Agnes Moorehead, Martin Balsam, and Jeanette Nolan–each of these actors– had a way of elevating every single project they were involved in, making it just that much more fascinating, delightful, heart-wrenching and unquestionably memorable because of their performance–no matter how small their presence, they changed the landscape and impacted the narrative.
It is my absolute honor this year to feature two of the most remarkable women whose legacy still lives on.
Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten)-to Teresa Wright (Charlie Newton)
“You think you know something, don’t you? You think you’re the clever little girl who knows something. There’s so much you don’t know… so much. What do you know really? You’re just an ordinary little girl living in an ordinary little town. You wake up every morning of your life and you know perfectly well that there’s nothing in the world to trouble you. You go though your ordinary little day and at night you sleep your untroubled, ordinary little sleep filled with peaceful, stupid dreams… and I brought you nightmares.”
Your EverLovin Joey saying there’s not a shadow of a doubt that I’ll be back with a more in-depth look at Hitchcock’s masterpiece of psychological terror!
“I don’t need a fantasy life as once I did. That is the life of the imagination that I had a great need for. Films were the perfect means for satisfying that need.” — Olivia de Havilland
The remarkable Olivia de Havilland turns 100 years old today. And it tickles me deeply and sincerely that we share the same birthday July 1st, so while I should be celebrating my own turn of the wheel, I felt it important to join in with so many others who recognize de Havilland’s enormous contribution to cinema and whose lasting grace and beauty still shines so effervescently.
And so… I’d like to pay a little tribute to a few of my favorite performances of this grand lady!
Olivia de Havilland won the Academy Award for Best Actress in To Each His Own (1946)and The Heiress (1949) and nominated for her incredible performance in The Snake Pit (1948), Hold Back the Dawn (1941), and Supporting Actress as the gentle, stoic but powerful strong Melanie in Gone With the Wind (1939).
The timeless beauty and grace of the great Olivia de Havilland at 99 years young!
You’ve got to love a woman who has the wisdom to be surrounded by Siamese cats! Yet another thing we share… I adore you Olivia-
Olivia de Havilland never shied away from taking on challenging roles, whether she played the archetypal ‘bad’ woman or the ‘good’ woman this astonishing actress could convey either nature with the ease of a jaguar who stirs with inner pride and purpose.
She still possesses that certain inner quality that is a quiet, dignified beauty whose layers unravel in each performance. Consider her heart wrenching portrayal of the emotionally disturbed Virginia Stuart Cunningham thrown into poignant turmoil when she finds herself within the walls of a mental institution but doesn’t remember her husband (Mark Stevens) or how or why she is there. It’s an astounding performance in director Anatole Litvak’s The Snake Pit (1948)
The New York Film Critics awarded Olivia de Havilland Best Actress for The Snake Pit (1948). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a leading role. Â
In an interview Olivia has said, “I met a young woman who was very much like Virginia… a schizophrenic with guilt problems. She had developed a warm rapport with her doctor, but what struck me most of all was the fact that she was rather likable and appealing.. it was that that gave me the key to the performance. “
Olivia de Havilland threw herself into the role of Virginia by getting up close and personal with mental health treatments of the time. She observed patients and the various modalities that were used in these institutions like, doctor/patient therapy sessions, electric shock therapy and hydrotherapy and attended social events like dances within the institution.
Here’s just a mention of some of my favorite performances by this great Dame of cinema, who as Robert Osborne so aptly spoke of her “… the ever present twinkle in her eyes or the wisdom you sense behind those orbs.”
Olivia de Havilland as Arabella Bishop in director Michael Curtiz’s Captain Blood (1935 ) co-starring familiar screen lover Errol FlynnThat multi layered manifestation of intelligence, courage and majesty… director Archie Mayo’s It’s Love I’m after (1937) co-stars another great STAR… friend, Bette Davis.
Olivia is romanced again by the dashing Errol in They Died with their Boots On (1941)Olivia de Havilland as the exquisite Maid Marian in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)Olivia plays Maid Marian in Michael Curtiz’s The Adventures of Robin Hood 1938 once again co-starring with Errol Flynn. Olivia wears a magnificent wardrobe designed by Milo Anderson
In director Robert Siodmak’s psychological thriller The Dark Mirror (1946)Olivia de Havilland plays duel roles as dichotomous identical twins, one purely good the other inherently evil.
With Montgomery Clift in director William Wyler’s The Heiress 1949 Oilvia de Havilland plays the timid & naive Catherine Sloper who falls under the spell of opportunist Morris Townsend (Clift).
In director Stanley Kramer’s melodrama Olivia de Havilland plays doctor Kristina Hedvigson who gets involved with the egotistical Lucas Marsh (Robert Mitchum) in Not as a Stranger (1955)
George Hamilton, Olivia, Rossano Brazzi and Yvette Mimieux on the set of Light in the Piazza (1962) filmed in Florence Italy. de Havilland plays Meg Johnson whose daughter having suffered a head injury has left her developmentally challenged. Both mother and daughter are seduced by the romantic atmosphere of Florence.
Now we come to a very powerful performance that of Mrs. Cornelia Hilyard one of Olivia’s most challenging roles as she is besieged upon by psychotic home invaders, James Caan, Jennifer Billingsley, Rafael Campos, Jeff Corey and Ann Southern who hold the uptight American matriarch in her gilded house elevator when the electricity goes out and the animals get in, in Walter Grauman’s brutal vision of the American Dream inverted. Lady in a Cage (1964)
Olivia de Havilland replaced Joan Crawford when tensions built on the set of the follow up to What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? 1962, the Grande Dame Guignol psychological thriller. Olivia de Havilland brought her own wardrobe and was not a stranger to pulling out the darker side of her acting self, portraying in my opinion perhaps one of the most vile and virulent antagonists the cunningly evil Cousin Miriam in director Robert Aldrich’s Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte 1964
Happy Birthday Grand Dame Olivia de Havilland… You are what puts the shine in the word ‘star’ forever vibrant and beloved by your fans and this girl who is honored to share your birthday! Hope it’s a grand day! Your EverLovin’ Joey
The clever & cheeky Barry of Cinematic Catharsis has summoned this great and powerful idea for a Summer Blogathon! Whether it’s the weather, or giant mutant bugs, blood hungry sharks, large animals run amok, or the elements gone awry–Nature’s Fury can be seen in so many fascinating and awe inspiring feature films and those lovable B movie trends that showcase the natural world in chaos. I immediately thought of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds as it is a film that has stayed burned in my mind since I first saw it as a child. Certain scenes will never lose their power to terrify.
And in celebration of this event, I’ve actually written a song and made a film/music mash up to tribute Tippi Hedren in The Birds, with a montage from the film featuring my song Calling Palundra…
“The Birds expresses nature and what it can do, and the dangers of nature. Because there’s no doubt that if the birds did decide, you know, with the millions that they are, to go for everybody’s eyes, then we’d have H.G.Wells Kingdom of the Blind on our hands.”-Alfred Hitchcock
“Why are they doing this? They said when you got here, the whole thing started. Who are you? What are You? Where did you come from? I think you’re the cause of all this… I think you’re evil EVIL!”–Actress Doreen Lang playing the hysterical mother in the diner!
This tribute video features my special song written just for this blogathon…. Here’s Melanie Daniels & the birds– with my piano vocal accompaniment, ‘Calling Palundra’
The children’s song “Risseldy Rosseldy” heard at the school when the crows began to unite as a gang is the Americanization of an old Scottish folk song called “Wee Cooper O’Fife”
Image courtesy of: Jürgen Müller’s colorful Movies of the ’60s
On its face, The Birds can be taken literally as a cautionary tale about the natural world fighting back against the insensitivity & downright barbaric treatment of nature’s children and the environment at the hands of humankind. Is it a tale of simple, unmitigated revenge against the town for the killing of a pigeon? Or is there something more nefarious & psycho-sexual at work? Once you peel back the top layer of the visual narrative, there are multiple metaphors at work.
From Dark Romance: SEXUALITY IN THE HORROR FILM by David J. Hogan- “Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) is probably the ultimate expression of this sort of nameless dread. It is a film that cheerfully defies description: it is horror, it is science fiction, it is black comedy, it is a scathing look at our mores and manners. It is a highly sexual film, but in a perversely negativistic way.”
Before the release of The Birds in 1963, Tippi Hedren made the cover of Look Magazine with the heading “Hitchcock’s new Grace Kelly.”
Tippi Hedren in Marnie (1964). What Grace Kelly had in pristine beauty and sophistication, Hedren possesses an undertow of sensuality that pulls you into that gorgeous mystique.
As with Hitchcock’s other, worldly beautiful blonde subject — the strong-willed socialite Lisa Carol Fremont (Grace Kelly) in Rear Window (1954)The Birds features the stunning Tippi Hedren as the coy, confident, and a bit manipulative Melanie Daniels a San Fransisco socialite who descends upon Bodega Bay with a similar uncompromising will. Stiff, stolid, and cocky Lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) meets Melanie in a pet shop where the two share shallow, faintly romantic barbs and repartee. Mitch is shopping for a pair of love birds for his sister Cathy’s eleventh birthday and Mitch pretends in a condescending manner to mistake her for the clerk. Melanie goes along with the mistaken identity as a way to flirt until his slightly mean-spirited joke backfires when she accidentally lets a canary loose while it lands in an ashtray Mitch throws his hat on it and places it back in its cage smugly saying “Back in your gilded cage Melanie Daniels.”revealing that he not only knew who she was from the very beginning and has quite a snotty preconceived notion about this socialite whom he appears to judge as running with a ‘wild’ crowd and is amoral. He manages to make a bit of a fool out of Melanie. The contrast between the flirty glib and calculating Melanie Daniels and the less interesting, judgemental, and arrogant Mitch Brenner kicks off a chemistry that really isn’t as vital to the story as what the two personalities represent.
As Melanie is about to enter Davidson’s Pet Shop, she hears and sees a tremendous gathering of Seagulls in the sky. It is a foreboding moment of things to come…
Folie à deux (/fäl? ä ?d?,f??l? ä ?d?/; French for “a madness shared by two”), or shared psychosis, is a psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief and hallucinations are transmitted from one individual to another.
or
Amour fou (ämoi)
1. uncontrollable or obsessive passion.
“The puzzle and threat of random violence is one of the defining tropes of true-crime”-Jean Murley
Scott Wilson as Dick Hickock and Robert Blake as Perry Smith.The real killers were Perry Smith and Richard ‘Dick’ Hickock.
In Cold Blood (1967) is director Richard Brooks’s (The First Time I Saw Paris 1954, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 1958, Elmer Gantry 1960) masterpiece of modern nightmarish nihilistic ‘horror of personality.’
Columbia Studios actually wanted Paul Newman and Steve McQueen to play the roles and wanted it shot in color. Newman went on to do Cool Hand Luke that year and McQueen starred in The Thomas Crown Affair and Bullitt in 1968. Thank god Brooks got his way and got to do his treatment in Black & White, on location and with lesser-known actors, who both went on to earn Oscar nominations for their chilling performances of the murderous pair.
Robert Blake, Scott Wilson, and director Richard Brooks on location for In Cold Blood (1967).Author Truman Capote and director/screenwriter Richard Brooks.
A post-war true crime thriller, what author Elliot Leyton terms Compulsive Killers: The Story of Modern Multiple Murder, the film is steeped in expressive realism about two thugs Robert Blake as Perry Smith a dark and damaged swarthy angel of death & Scott Wilson (In the Heat of the Night 1967, The Gypsy Moths 1969, The New Centurions 1972, The Great Gatsby 1974, The Right Stuff 1983) as Dick Hickock, who inspire in each other a sense of anti-establishment negativity.
These two drifters, having heard about a wealthy wheat farmer from a fellow inmate, think there is a safe in the house filled with $10,000. The two dark souls take siege upon the rural Holcomb Kansas Clutter family in the middle of the night, hogties them, and look for the money, only to find this clean cut humble family has nothing to steal but $43, a bible and pasteurized milk in the icebox. The two proceed to shotgun murder and cut the throats of the entire household so there are… “No witnesses.” –Dick Hickock. There are two surviving daughters, Beverly and Eveanna that were spared this horror.
Robert Blake as Perry Smith, John Forsythe plays Alvin Dewey head of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and Scott Wilson as Dick Hickock… being brought in…
John Forsythe plays Alvin Dewey head of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation who goes on the hunt collecting clues and tracking down the killers involved in this sensational crime.
Alvin Dewey (John Forsythe) Reporter Bill Jensen (Paul Stewart) who writes for the weekly magazine. Reporter Jensen tells Dewey that it’s a strange coincidence that Herb Clutter writes his first insurance check and that the policy paid $40,000 which pays a double indemnity of $80,000. Dewey-“You’re not here to write something new, what is your interest?” Jensen “Fairly basic” Dewey-“What’s basic about a stupid senseless crime… A violent unknown force destroys a decent ordinary family.” Jensen-“No clues, no logic. Makes us all feel frightened, vulnerable” Dewey- “Murders’ no mystery. Only the motive…{…} Someday, somebody will explain to me the motive of a newspaper. First, you scream, “Find the bastards.” Till we find them, you want to get us fired. When we find them, you accuse us of brutality. Before we go into court, you give them a trial by newspaper. When we finally get a conviction, you want to save them by proving they were crazy in the first place.”
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In this semi-documentary police procedural post-noir crime thriller Alvin Dewey studies the bloody bootprint left at the Clutter murder scene.
Dewey tracks down these two bad boys, who have fled to Mexico where Perry (Robert Blake) loses himself in fantasies and painful flashbacks of his childhood with a violent father, whoring mother, of buried treasure, and prospecting for gold. Dick (Scott Wilson) gets tired of languishing around listening to Perry’s dreams and convinces him to head back to the States, passing bad checks along the way and winding up in Las Vegas. The police finally catch up with the murderous anti-social duo, where the men are finally broken of their alibi, and they are sentenced to die by ‘the big swing’ hanging.
Alvin Dewey takes Perry back to the night of the terrible crime…
Mrs. Clutter calmly asks –“Please don’t hurt the children.”
Dick-“Make one move, holler once and we’ll cut their throats.”
Herbert Clutter: “Why do you boys want to do this? Dick: “Shut up!”Perry-“Floyd Wells lied to you. There isn’t any safe.”Perry morbidly superstitious and brooding, while Dick entertains a working girl in the bed across the room, has flashbacks to the night his father (Charles McGraw) finds his drunken whoring mother playing around. Perry’s father proceeds to beat her in front of him and his siblings. Painting a picture of Perry Smith’s traumatic beginnings.
In the clothing store, Dick who often refers to Perry as hon or some such affectionate diminutive–wipes the sweat off Perry’s brow and says “Easy baby… look casual.”the charming and fast-talking Dick passing around bad checks.Perry tells Dick- “You’re good you’re really good. Smooth. No sweat no strain You’re an artist boy.”buying supplies for the robbery/murder.Dick: “Did you see those guys? They coulda robbed us!” Perry: “What of?” Perry: “That was stupid – stealin’ a lousy pack of razor blades! To prove what?”Dick: “It’s the national pastime, baby, stealin’ and cheatin’. If they ever count every cheatin’ wife and tax chiseler, the whole country would be behind prison walls.”
Perry is superstitious he watches the nuns with a sense of foreboding… it’s a lurking bad omen for sure. stealing cars and changing plates.
Holcomb, Kan., Nov. 15 [1959] (UPI) “” A wealthy wheat farmer, his wife and their two young children were found shot to death today in their home. They had been killed by shotgun blasts at close range after being bound and gagged… There were no signs of a struggle, and nothing had been stolen. The telephone lines had been cut.
— The New York Times
the real Perry Smith led by police into the Garden City Kansas courthouse on Jan. 6, 1960 charged with first degree murder.
The film is based on Truman Capote’s nonfiction novel that started the True Crime trend. Capote was looking to write a non-fiction novel and had been inspired by the shotgun murders of the Clutter family when the sensational crime hit the news in 1959.
Defense lawyer Duane West in court with real killer Richard “Dick’ Hickock.Capote, Wilson, and Blake are on the set of In Cold Blood in Kansas…The Herbert Clutter family portrait.
The two were arrested on January 2, 1960, in Las Vegas and then executed by hanging on April 14, 1965. For the five years the two remained on death row they exchanged letters with Capote twice a week. Capote actually lived near the prison in Garden City and became very close in particular with Perry Smith and Richard ‘Dick’ Hickock. According to Ralph F. Voss in his book Truman Capote and the Legacy of ‘In Cold Blood,’ he writes that Smith had the idea that talking with Capote would spare him from the noose. But when he learns of the working title of the manuscript he winds up confronting Capote, who manages to manipulate him into confessing about the night of the Clutter murders.
Real-life killers Perry Smith and Richard ‘Dick’ Hickock… the mug shots…
Capote tells Smith that “The world will see him as a monster if he doesn’t open up and tell Capote what Capote wants to know.” Eventually, Perry Smith does open up and relates that brutal night in a vivid confession to Capote that winds up being “memorable lines that appear in the book”. As Voss tells us, “It is during this confession that this film, like the book and like both Richard Brook’s and Jonathan Kaplan’s film’s before it portray the brutal murders of the Clutters. Capote marks the fourth time Herb, Kenyon, Nancy, and Bonnie die in artistic representations of their tragedy–once in Capote’s pages, and three times on screen.”
The film doesn’t necessarily convey the emotional conflict that Capote felt for his subjects which is more obvious in his novel, he also created a connection with the killers that would be shared by the reader. According to writer Jean Murley from The Rise of True Crime: The 20th Century Murder and Popular Culture, “The simultaneous evocation of compassion for the murderer and horror at his deeds makes In Cold Blood a new form of murder narration… Capote’s narrative treatment of his subject would draw the reader into an uneasy and unprecedented relationship with killers, creating a sense of simultaneous identification and distance between reader and killer.” Murley asserts that there is a comfortable distance the reader experiences, “a vicarious thrill, a jolt of fear, and a comforting reassurance that the killer is contained.”
The specter of the rope behind Perry.
Just one more point about Capote’s novel that Jean Murley makes which I think is pretty revelatory about the killer (Perry) referred to as ‘sweet, suave and fascinatingly fatal’… ‘ who was at once a devious and dangerous loner and a sensitive wounded man within that is the notion that Murley distills the ‘ambiguity and intensity of the reader/killer relationship that allows the writer to interrogate notions of good and evil, self and other.” The film while starkly angled from the killer’s point of view for a good deal of the film, doesn’t quite evoke that same sympathetic enigma, though Robert Blake does an incredible job of portraying a wounded soul.
The real-life angry mug of Richard ‘Dick’ Hickock
However, Dick Hickock is described and masterfully pulled off by Scott Wilson as “vulgar, ugly, brutal and shallow; he looks like a murderer (the real Hickock looks like a vicious punk) and he wants to rape Nancy Clutter before killing her. Perry Smith is sensitive, handsome, artistic, a dreamer; sickened by Hickock’s lust(there is a scene in the film while the two are in Mexico where Hickock is drinking & carousing with a local working girl in the room with Perry) in the film Perry prevents the rape. And in keeping with the book, Perry almost loses his nerve to even go through with the robbery, getting sick in the gas station right up to the time they drive up to the Clutter’s property. There is some emphasis on Dick’s relationship with his cancer-ridden father (Jeff Corey) which showcases the only genuine connection he has to humanity.
While Dick visits with his sick dad, he takes the opportunity to steal a rifle from the barn.(Dicks dad watching the news about the murders ) Mr. Hickock “Terrible thing that happened”Dick replies like this… “I’ve never been so hungry in my life.”
Dewey comes to interview Dick’s father (Jeff Corey) who is dying of cancer and he tells them the last thing Dick ever said before he left was “Pa, I ain’t never gonna do anything to hurt ya. And he meant it too.”
Dewey (Forsythe) shows Perry’s dad (McGraw) a photo to confirm his son’s identity.Perry’s father worked in the rodeo back in the day.
Mr. Smith “Well then I guess I haven’t seen him for 5 or 6 years, that’s no surprise though he’s a lone wolf. You guys can rest easy on one thing for sure you won’t be having any more trouble with Perry. He’s learned his lesson for sure. He wrote me from prison I wrote him right back pronto. I taught the boy is you take your punishment with a smile. And I didn’t raise you to steal. So don’t expect me to cry. just because you got it tough behind the bars. Perry’s no fool. He knows when he’s beat you fella’s got him whipped forever. The law is the boss. He knows the difference between right and wrong. You can bet on that because I taught my kids the golden rule. Always tell the truth, always wash in the morning, always be sober and independent. And I showed him how. How to prospect how to trap fur how to carpenter how to bake bread how to be his own boss. Yes, he’s a chip off the old block”¦.”
In particular, Capote became very attached to Perry Smith, and struggled with demons about his execution, believing that both men’s natures were impacted by their early roots in poverty. Capote was tormented because he sold his soul to the devil, in order to write this ‘real’ book fueled by a tragic story that ultimately results not only in the murders of the Clutters but in the deaths of his subject of interest Perry Smith who went to the gallows. As Voss calls it, “the cost of literary non-fiction”. He also came to the conclusion that neither man was by himself a mass-murderer, but linked together they fed each-others egos and compensated for their inadequacies, as John McCarty says, “by constantly arousing and bolstering certain expectations of one another, they evolved into a potentially violent third party that was more than capable of murder.” Â
Eventually, Capote would publish his true crime tome in The New Yorker in four installments between September and October of 1965, published as a book in 1966, and becoming a huge success adapted to film in 1967.
As Jean Murley points out in Rise of True Crime, The 20th-Century Murder and American Popular Culture “Capote brought together and perfected the nascent conventions of what would become true crime, and his basic formula has been copied ever since.”
The film is elevated to a level of intense and searing reality due to brilliant cinematographer Conrad L. Hall’s (Edge of Fury 1958, The Outer Limits television series 1963-64, Harper 1966, Cool Hand Luke 1967, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid 1969, The Day of the Locust 1975, Marathon Man 1976, American Beauty 1999) incredible eye for scoping out a palpable environment filled with dread, tension, and instability in the normally ordinary settings. Either mastering the closed-in spaces between figures who shape the narrative, he also captures the alienation in the scenes when the duo is driving through the dirty dusty openness of the Great Plains. The additional moody atmosphere is lent a heightened sense of anxiety by Quincy Jones’ cool score. The film cast includes; John Forsythe as Alwin Dewey, Paul Stewart as Reporter Jenson, Gerald S. O’ Loughlin as Harold Nye, Jeff Corey as Mr. Hickock, Charles McGraw as Mr. Smith, Sammy Thurman as Mrs. Smith, Will Geeras The Prosecutor.
The incredible opening scene is when Perry is sitting in the dark of the bus, strumming his guitar, and the little girl watches for a brief moment…
In the beginning scene, Perry calls his friend Reverend James Post who tells Perry that he’s already broken parole because he quit his job, and did not dare enter Kansas. It is a warning that Perry still has time to redeem himself before there is no turning back.Perry gets off the bus and calls from the terminal waiting for his friend who is getting paroled that day and meeting Perry there. Reverend Jim Post tells Perry “Whatever you do don’t cross that river into Kansas.” This scene acts as a premonition while Perry shivers, tears up, and just assigns himself to his fate. He was supposed to meet Willy J there. “Can you tell me where he went?… please Jim.”his voice quavers sweaty crying as if he knows that his life is about to turn for the worse. “It’s very important, maybe the most important thing in my life,”Rev. Jim Post tells him “˜Go back why not see your father.” Perry hangs up. It is his first fateful decision in the film”¦
The film opens with a starkly gloomy night scene, Quincy Jone’s slick score leading us into the scene, as a Greyhound bus heads toward the camera. Inside, Robert Blake dark and brooding is sitting with his guitar. Conrad L Hall lights Perry’s intense face with the strike of a match he uses to light his cigarette. In a powerful moment, it accesses our full attention. Perry blows the little flame out and all at once the scene is wiped out in one puff! The film begins to peak our sense of danger in much the way Robert Siodmak’s masterpiece of film noir The Killers (1964)opening had led us into the plot.
As Jürgen Müller eloquently says it in his overview of 1960s cinema –“In Cold Blood opes with a flash and stealthily proceeds to trap its prey in a fog of eerie cinematic expression, born of its black and white photography and Quincy Jones’ dark jazz score.”
In November of 1959 Kansas, two ex-cons and social outliers, the quiet, yet brooding Perry Smith (Robert Blake) and hyper-kinetic egotist Dick Hickock (Scott Wilson) conspire to go out on an adventure to travel 400 miles in a beat-up old Chevy, in order to rob the Clutter family farmhouse. The film is a part genre of the dark road trip film as the two maneuvers, scheme, and machinate on their dark road trip toward their fate. True crime flashback, neo-noir, police procedural, the shades of gray between good vs evil, and a moral commentary on the death penalty, allowing the narrative to elicit sympathy and a vision from both murderers’ point of view, the ‘outlaws perspective’. It is still a very sobering view into the minds of the human offal of society.
Perry Smith’s most infamous statement about the crime, “I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.”Â
Perry talks about his cellmate Willy Jay referring to him (Perry) as being ‘unstable, explosive’ and him laughing about it being true. Dick comments that Willy Jay was a flaming faggot, Perry says he was the best friend he ever had…
Dick had been fed some gossip by an inmate friend, that Herbert Clutter (John McLiam) a wealthy farmer keeps a fortune, $10,000 stashed in his safe at the house. The two decide that it would be an easy job to grab the loot and head for Mexico, leaving their hard lives behind them. What becomes a spiraling coil of nerves, is fed from both Perry’s apprehension about the plot working and Dick’s cock sure attitude. In the twist of fate, it is Perry’s growing inner aggression that becomes the catalyst for the final annihilation of the family. Though Dick acts the part of punk, saying ‘No Witnesses he is not only priming Perry to be the one to have blood on his hands but by this time it is Perry who at first seems hesitant and adverse to violence, explodes in the cold nuclear fission of seemingly senseless bloodshed.
The way In Cold Blood is constructed, it begins to release the tightly wound coil as the two draw nearer to the Clutter home, we are introduced to this clean-cut American family in their daily life, in the light of the day, showing the family as an ordinary close and loving bunch right before they are about to be slaughtered. By the time the two men arrive, it is the dark and ominous shadow of night cloaking the ranch. Perry and Dick begin to wrangle the family bringing the men down to the basement tied up. But it is the day after the murders once the police arrive and are told later on in flashback that we get hints of the savagery, that we could only imagine was about to happen the night before.
The officer standing-“There’s two more in the basement.”
Officer Harold Nye (Gerald O McGlaughlin) asks Alvin Dewey (Forsythe) in the basement of the Clutter Home crime scene “The old Kansas myth. Every farmer with a good spread is supposed to have a hidden black box somewhere filled with money” He also asks if he thinks it’s the work of just one man. Dewey “It could be one man”¦ a mad man”¦”
The Kansas police begin their search in vain, as Perry and Dick make it to Mexico to hide out. Dick who is interested in partying with the senóritas Perry lives half in surreal flashbacks to his bleak beginnings as a child with several siblings and his mother a beautiful Native American woman who liked her alcohol and other young men and committed suicide. His brutal father drew a shotgun on him and chased him out of the house. Perry had a grim, sad, and claustrophobic life, and thus he fantasizes. Perry makes a reference to digging for gold just like Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madra 1947. The irony of him finding empty bottles in the desert that only yield a few cents, which he shares with a young homeless boy and his grandfather is a particularly humanizing scene in the midst of the fatalistic outcome that is inevitable. Perry never meant to amount to anything but a lost dreamer with no home.
Perry tells Dick -“I think”¦ you’re a bastard…”
Not only is Perry a dreamer, but Dick is an egomaniac and also has delusions of grandeur. Once the two figure out having to come back to Nevada in order to get some cash, they are quickly picked up by the authorities and charged with the murders. Soon after, they realized they will be facing the death penalty.
Perry revisits that night at the Clutters, flashing moments of the night on the screen. We see them fumbling for the non-existent safe. The mass murder only yielded them a mere $43. We see Perry and Dick rummaging through the house looking for anything valuable. Hall’s camera finally settles on the family coldly bound, gagged, and positioned in a certain way that sends chills up the spine. Ultimately it is here that it is revealed that it’s the reluctant and quietly brewing fury inside Perry that goes on a single rampage and executes each family member calmly and cold-bloodily.
“I guess the only thing I’m gonna miss in this world is that poor old man.” referring to his father.
Once again, Jürgen Müller-“The contradictions of the characters give the audience an inkling of what might have led to this senseless act of ultra violence.”
There is an element of homo-erotic attraction between Perry and Dick. It is unspoken yet it’s palpable to me, amidst the warm beer, faded treasure maps, dark brooding antagonism, prison scars, tattoos, sweating, greasy hair, aspirin popping, peacockery, wise-cracking resentment toward society, and the morally driven nuclear family of the mid to late 50s.
From Movie Psychos and Madmen-Film Psychopaths from Jekyll and Hyde to Hannibal Lecter by John McCarty- McCarty’s chapter on Killer Couples points out how Capote’s film was the most “famous example of this type of lethal psychological interrelationship.” And though Smith had boasted to Hickock that he wasn’t a stranger to killing before that fateful night where his pent-up aggression turned violent and he cold-bloodily killed four innocent people. Hickock was the one who “earmarked the Clutters for robbery, and it was he who engineered the heist by passing bad checks to buy the materials needed for the job. More important, it was Hickock, who was the dominant half of the pair.” Hickock appears as the alpha male who uses the term ‘faggot’ too easily and Smith is the submissive lover within the dynamic of their odd relationship. McCarty goes on to write, “Smith looked up to him and slaughtered the defenseless Clutters, toward whom Smith admitted later he never felt any anger, as a way of proving himself to his more glib, brash, and manipulative buddy.”
“You’re good. You’re really good! Smith tells Hickock who moves with ease as he proceeds to con a bunch of store owners passing bad checks. And on the flip side, Hickock is also impressed once Smith kills the helpless Clutters whose only provocation to violence is that they are ordinary. McCarty’s insight points out that like Leopold and Loeb, the same function worked for that killer pair, the less dominant wound up being the one who perpetrated the murder, while the more controlling “partner lent immoral support.”
Will Gear as the Prosecutor: “Mercy for them. The killers. How fortunate that their amicable attorneys were not present at the Clutter house on that fateful evening. How very fortunate for them that they were not present that evening to plead mercy for the doomed family, because otherwise, they would have found their corpses too. If you allow them life imprisonment, they will be eligible for parole in 7 years. That is the law. Gentlemen, 4 of your neighbors were slaughtered like hogs in a pen by them. They did not strike suddenly in the heat of passion but for money. They did not kill in vengeance, they planned it for money. And how cheaply those lives were bought. $40. $10 a life. They drove 400 miles to come here. They brought their weapons with them. [picks up a shotgun]… This shotgun. [picks up a knife] This dagger[picks up a rope] “This is the rope they hogtied their victims with. [picks up a vial of blood] “This is the blood they spilled. Herb Clutter’s. They who had no pity, now ask for yours. They who had no mercy, now ask for yours. They who shed no tears, now ask for yours. If you have tears to shed, weep not for them, weep for their victims.” [picks up a copy of the Holy Bible] “From the way the Holy Bible was quoted here today, You might think the word of God was written only to protect the killers, but they didn’t read you this: Exodus 20:13: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Or this: Genesis 9:12: ‘Who so sheddeth man’s blood, by man, shall his blood be shed.’
Here is a recently released article in the Smithsonian about Capote’s long-time friend and writer Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird).
From the Smithsonian.Com Reprinted here for the first time, the article was published five years before Truman Capote’s best-selling book. Dick: [to Perry, just after arrest] “Hey, Buddy, put in a call for that big, ol’ Yellow Bird!”Dick begins to flip on Perry.
The Big Yellow Bird he is referring to is a symbol, a warrior angel that comes to him in his dreams It is his savior, a protector he had during his dark days. He describes the bird as being “taller than Jesus, yellow like a sunflower.”Â
The irony of the film plays itself out in little subtle commentaries like the insurance salesman who wishes Herb Clutter the night before he is murdered “A very long and healthy life” or the moment in Las Vegas, Dick at the wheel of the car wanting to gamble because he’s feeling lucky, at that split second the police car pulls up next to them and the scene cuts away to the Perry and Dick being brought in to the station.
Dick: “I don’t know gold dust from diarrhea!”… Dick: [to Perry] “I’m SICK of it, maps, buried treasure, ALL OF IT! So ship it, burn it, and get RID of that ton and a half of garbage! There AIN’T no buried treasure, and even if there WAS, boy, hell, you can’t even swim!”Perry says to Dick-“You know, there’s got to be something wrong with us to do what we did.”Dick: “Next move… Mexico. Once we beat it out of the country.” Perry: “On what? $43 and a smile and bullshit.” [First use of the word ‘bullshit’ in a Hollywood film] Perry: “It’s true! Really true! We’re on our way and never coming back. Never! And no regrets.”Dick: “For you. You’re leaving nothing. What about my old man… and my mother? They’ll still be there when my checks start bouncing.” Perry: “It’s nice the way you think about your folks. Dick: “Yeah! I’m a real thoughtful bastard.”part of the opening sequence once Perry gets off the bus and heads to the men’s room to wash up.
While in the bathroom mirror, Perry fantasizes about being a huge celebrity playing the circuit in Las Vegas.
Dick: “You guessed it, chief. It’s the smile that does it. Like it says in the commercials, the family that sticks together lives forever.” Perry: [to himself, looking in a bathroom mirror] “Stick ’em up!” Perry: “Hey, buddy!” Perry: [realizing he’s being watched] “How long you been standin’ there?” Dick: “Long enough to catch your late late show.” Perry: [quoting his father] “Look at me, boy! Take a good look! Cause I’m the last living thing you’re ever gonna see!”Dick-“Hey Andy, does it tell anywhere in those big books what happens when you take the big drop?”Andy-“Well your neck breaks… and you crap your pants.”
Dick-“Hey Andy say hello to Mr. Jenson he’s writing the story of my life.” Andy asks “Why?” and Dick giggles and tells Jenson how Andy killed his entire family. “Andy’s a nut but I like him!” Jensen asks“What about Perry don’t you get along?” Dick says, “Heck there ain’t nobody get along with him. There’s 5 guys waiting in here for the big swing. Little Perry’s the only one yapping against Capital Punishment” Jensen surprised asks, “Don’t tell me you’re for it” Dick answers, “Hanging will only get ya revenge. What’s wrong with revenge? I’ve been revenging myself all my life…”Perry to the guard “I’ve got to go to the toilet.” Guard-“We can’t remove the harness there may not be time.” Perry-“Please” Guard-“Try to control yourself.”Perry-“But that’s it when you hit the end of the rope… your muscles lose control. I’m afraid I’ll mess myself.” Guard-“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. They all do it”… Perry-“I despise people who can’t control themselves.”And the most senseless gist of the whole story… Perry explains: “It doesn’t make sense. I mean what happened. It had nothing to do with the Clutters. They never hurt me. They just happened to be there. I thought Mr. Clutter was a very nice gentleman… I thought so right up to the time I cut his throat.”
Jensen: “I see, the hangman’s ready. What’s his name?”Perry: [his last words] ‘I’d like to apologize, but… who to?’
I’ll be covering two notorious true-life crimes involving folie à deux. First Truman Capote’s adapted story- Richard Brooks directs IN COLD BLOOD (1967) about the murder of the Clutters a Kansas family who were blitz attacked by psychopathic punks, two self-loathing homosexuals Perry & Dick portrayed phenomenally by Robert Blake and the remarkable character actor- Scott Wilson. Their embodiment of pure emotional sickness is burned into the screen like acid.
Then, a more off-the-beaten path yet ruthlessly cruel and just as true and ghastly a tale about a couple- Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco as Ray Fernandez and Martha Beck, who derive pleasure from luring wealthy, lonely older women to their deaths for money in director Leonard Kastle’s THE HONEYMOON KILLERS(1969)
In the spirit of this upcoming event, featuring all sorts of criminals & evil types, I thought I’d briefly pull out Evelyn as a kind of amuse-bouche to the huge Blogathon coming up in May! I felt like tossing out a crumb to entice those of you who will be titillated by the fantastic submissions by bloggers paying tribute to the villains, villainesses, and anti-heroes we love to hate/love… fear and cheer!
PLAY MISTY FOR ME (1971) is Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut, just coming off The Beguiled, directed by friend Don Siegel.
Play Misty For Me is scripted by Jo Heims (The Girl in Lover’s Lane 1960, The Devil’s Hand 1961, uncredited Dirty Harry 1971, You’ll Like My Mother 1972) Heims has a gift for extracting the perfect essence of mental instability on screen and constructing an atmosphere of unease in otherwise beautiful settings.
Ahhh… The Enduring Derangement of Evelyn Draper:
Set in the cool quaint and laid-back atmosphere of 70s coastal California living, Clint Eastwood who makes his directorial debut, plays the smooth-talking late-nite Carmel Disc jockey, David ‘Dave’ Garver who winds up becoming the object of desire for a psychopathic stalker, the love-sick Evelyn Draper, brought to ‘too real’ life by extraordinary actress Jessica Walter.
Each night, she calls the radio station to lure David, her sultry voice like dark amber honey dripping on the other end of the phone, mysterious with that hint of perilous in flavor and tone. Evelyn epitomizes the deranged & obsessive fan who becomes so fixated on David that she keeps calling, asking David to play the classic torch song “Misty” sung, composed, and performed by Erroll Garner.
This iconic performance must be the catalyst for Glenn Close’s role as the demented stalker Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction (1987). Play Misty For Me set the tone, and sent the moralizing message, that it’s dangerous and amoral to folly with a random, casual one-night stand, and that having only ‘respectable relationships’ and monogamous or marital sex will keep you safe from being butchered into a puddle of blood splatter evidence…
All snarkiness aside, Eastwood has offered a beautifully painted– groovy, easy world, filled with jazz and seascapes that underscore this moral tale about the backlash of the sexual revolution and its warnings to beware. And to be fair to this symbol of female rage, Evelyn is no more than a ‘sexual object’ to David, as much as Evelyn has fantasized about a great romance with this very charismatic guy, that ‘love’ does not exist. David has used her to fulfill his own desires and needs, yet he is not seen as predatory, and she is. The difference is, he uses his penis and she must wield the nearest symbol, something else that penetrates, a knife or a good old-fashioned pair of large, sharp scissors.
David picks Evelyn up in a bar and has a one-night roll in the sheets after she tells him that she’s his ‘Misty’ girl. David warns her that he’s involved with someone (artsy painter, Donna Mills), but she assures him that she just wants one night with him, no strings attached. Unfortunately, those strings are like steel cables, and they are tethered to David with a fierce, homicidal grip. When he gets home the next night, Evelyn returns to his place with steaks and all the fixings for a romantic dinner. David definitely now senses something a bit ‘off’ with Evelyn, but what the hell, he sleeps with her again. Her inner machinations and jealous rage rears its ugly head when David’s neighbor responds to her rude and rowdy behavior while firmly (getting lost already) escorting her to the car. She blasts the horn and opens up a mouth like a trucker after a six-pack of Schlitz, “Yeah, Get lost Asshole!” David squints, that classic Eastwood glance when he’s containing his ‘miffed’, and his look is forever delivered on screen.
The refined Evelyn Draper loses her serene “Yeah, Get lost Asshole!”
Of course, the one woman David is truly in love with Tobie (Donna Mills) shows up soon after and they begin where they left off. Tobie had left for a while because of his womanizing. Evelyn starts shadowing David, following him to a bar where she gets belligerent, demanding he spend more time with her, after which she steals his car keys. She shows up at his house, fully naked under a smashing coat… but crazy, and of course, David calls the police. No… David sleeps with her one more time. Naked trumps crazy with a smooth-talking womanizing squinting louse! He promises her that he’ll call her. Sure, Dave, sure…
But David does not call her. He also misses a special dinner she has planned. She calls into KRML to chastise him for missing their date. He drives to her place to break off the three one-night stands with her. Evelyn reveals her primal rage once more, but calls David later on, filled with regrets, but this time, he is done with her. No really… No more naked rules over crazy.
Evelyn stalks David while he is busy rekindling his romance with Tobie. Evelyn shows up at his place once again, this time going into his bathroom and slicing her wrists. This suicide attempt prompts David’s sense of guilt, so he spends the night and the following day sitting with her, breaking a date he has with Tobie. The shot of David, panicked and befuddled, in a state of shock, while his hand holds Evelyn, now resting in bed after her suicide attempt, looks like this…
Evelyn: Why didn’t you take my call?
David ‘Dave’ Garver: Where does it say that I gotta drop what I’m doing and answer the phone every time it rings?
Evelyn: Do you know your nostrils flare out into little wings when you’re mad? It’s kinda cute.
David ‘Dave’ Garver: I’m just trying to tell you something. I’m trying to tell you there’s a telephone. I pick it up and I dial it.
Evelyn: “I should’ve known you’d never do anything to spoil it.” ‘Dave’ Garver: “To spoil what? Evelyn: What we have between us.” David ‘Dave’ Garver: “We don’t have a goddam thing between us.”
The film is a groovy and intense nail-biter as Evelyn spirals dangerously out of rationality’s orbit, stalking, sneaking around, and ultimately going in and out of homicidal fits.
She sabotages a business lunch with a potential radio station executive Madge (Irene Hervey), insulting her with foul-mouthed accusations, trashes David’s house, takes a butcher knife and slashes to ribbons David’s maid Birdie (Clarice Taylor- Tell Me You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970), Such Good Friends (1971) and Five on the Black Hand Side (1973)).
The police come and take Evelyn away in the happy wagon, and David briefly gets a reprieve from the madness until he finds out that she has been released when he gets that familiar yet chilling request over the phone to “Play Misty” Evelyn assures him that she has gotten straightened out and is leaving for a new job in Hawaii. Leaving him with a creepy clue as she quotes a passage from Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Annabel Lee.’
Once again, Evelyn appears in David’s house, where she attacks him with a very large carving knife. Sgt. McCallum (John Larch) appears on the scene, tells David to change the locks, and wants to try and track Evelyn down, by luring her out with that memorable song Misty, by tracing the phone call.
Cleverly, Evelyn manipulates Tobie into becoming her new roommate, named, of course, Annabel, thus abducting David’s sane and wholesome as pasteurized milk girlfriend Tobie, and ultimately tries to annihilate David’s cool world and himself, her lover, who has spurned her affections. Evelyn, as the ‘monstrous feminine’ power, finally erupts into a climactic vengeful frenzy, as a vicious butcher who has a one-track libido for a guy whom it takes half the film to finally see how sick she really is. It only took three one-night stands to get through to this smirking Lothario. Don’t get me wrong, I would have swooned for Eastwood myself back in the day of bell-bottoms, guys with enormous sideburns, jazz festivals, and free love!
Sgt. McCallum (John Larch): “Why don’t you play some Montovani sometime?” David ‘Dave’ Garver: “Didn’t know you liked the show.” Sgt. McCallum: “I don’t. I like Montovani.”
The film also features one of the most memorable beautiful love songs sung by iconic songstress Roberta Flack (one of my all-time idols as a songwriter), who delivers a quiver inducing The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, which underscores a love-making scene in the woods between the naked Eastwood and Donna Mills. Groovy, just watch out for poison oak and briars.
It’s 1971 and this hippie love-making scene ala Adam & Eve in the greening woods… set to Roberta Flack’s profoundly earnest and beautiful “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” David is seeing more than just Tobie’s face in this sexy 70s love-power scene!
Mills, who plays David’s pretty girlfriend Tobie, gets in the way of Evelyn’s imagined love affair, and winds up–tied up at knife point while the immortal words are spoken out of that psychotically cold and emotionless voice saying… “God, you’re dumb.”
Evelyn Draper is perhaps one of the most mystifying and intoxicating evil culprits of skin-crawling obsessive love, setting the pace for future female monsters, personifying the ‘monstrous feminine’, a knife ( yoohoo–CASTRATING!!) wielding threat to both male and female alike.
The incredible transformation that Jessica Walters performs for us is nothing short of brilliant, as this sophisticated lady creates an otherwise appealing, attractive single seductress into a predatory huntress with no sense of right or wrong. Just an obsessive blood lust to dominate and possess David, the savvy, cool as the center seed of a cucumber DJ who spins records and turns on the ladies with his velveteen voice. Her menacing, neurotic, and unstable behavior builds perfectly, creating unease as we watch her devolve into a disturbing feminine force (she uses many feminine social mechanisms to try and entrap David). Evelyn Draper is one powerful, memorable villainess, thanks to Jessica Walters’ incredibly believable manifestation of female rage, rage against a system of morals that aren’t the same for men!
Steve McQueen turned down the lead role, claiming that the female lead was stronger than the male.-IMDb tidbit
The bewitchingly beautiful Audrey Dalton was born in Dublin, Ireland who maintains the most delicately embroidered lilt of Gaelic tones became an American actress of film in the heyday of Hollywood and the Golden Age of television. Knowing from early on that she wanted to be an actress while studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts was discovered by a Paramount Studio executive in London, thus beginning her notable career starring in classic drama, comedy, film noir, science fiction, campy cult classic horror and dramatic television hits!
Audrey Dalton as the lovely Louise Kendall in Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel (1952) directed by Henry Koster.
Recently Audrey Dalton celebrated her birthday on January 21st and I did a little tribute here at The Last Drive In. Visit the link above for more great info and special clips of Audrey Dalton’s work!
Since then I’ve had the incredible honor of chatting with this very special lady whom I consider not only one of THE most ethereal beauties of the silver screen, Audrey Dalton is a versatile actress, and an extremely gracious and kind person.
While I’ve read a few interviews one in particular in a division of USA TODAY: The Spectrum Audrey Dalton survived a sinking, a ‘Serpent’ and a stallionby Nick Thomas.Â
The article in USA Today asked about Titanic, Deborah Kerr, Rita Hayworth, designer Edith head, the pesky mollusk and her appearances in several notable film and television westerns.
Naturally they inquired about Audrey Dalton’s monumental contribution to one of the biggest beloved 1950s ‘B’ Sci-Fi treasures and she deserves to be honored for her legacy as the heroine in distress, pursued by a giant Mollusk, no not a Serpent nor giant caterpillar it be!
She is asked… eternally asked about this crusty bug eyed monster, and why not! it’s part of a fabulous celebration of what makes films like The Monster that Challenged the World (1957) memorable for so many of us!
The love for these sentimental sci-fi films are still so much alive! Early this year, Audrey Dalton joined Julie Adams to celebrate with fans both their iconic legacies for starring in two of the most popular monster films of all time… The Monster That Challenged the World (1957) and The Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954).
She’s been asked about her wonderful performance as Annette Sturges in Titanic (1953) with focus on her co-stars Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb, and of course about one hilarious anecdote around her role in several westerns, including TV shows like The Big Valley, Gunsmoke, Bonanza and Wagon Train, and her fabulous fear of horses! Even more than that giant drooling crustacean? "That monster was enormous!" –Audrey commented in her interview with USA Today.
I don’t have a video of Ms Dalton on a rambunctious horse, but here she is giving a fine performance in the television hit series that ironically reunites Stanwyck as the matriarch of the Barclay family and Audrey together again…tho Stanwyck is not in this scene, she works well with actor Richard Long in an episode called ‘Hazard’ in The Big Valley (1966). Audrey went on to do one more episode as Ann Snyder in season one called Earthquake.
I am most taken with Audrey Dalton’s wonderful nostalgic joy and her earnest appreciation for the collaborations off camera and on the set- having a true sense of warmth, togetherness and a passion for her craft and fellow cinema & television artists, crew and players. I’ve used the term “players” when I refer to actors, something that Audrey Dalton pointed out to me was not only a very endearing description, but in addition, something I hadn’t known and felt an adrenaline rush to learn that Boris Karloff was known to do as well. Perhaps he is my grandpa after all. I can dream can’t I?
Alan Ladd and Audrey Dalton on a horse in Delmer Daves’ western Drum Beat (1954)
Audrey told me that she had a fear of horses, having expanded on it when interviewed by USA Today“I hate horses!” she admitted. “I mean I’m really scared to death of them. In one show I had to ride down a very steep hill and felt sure I was going to fall. I got through it, but when the scene was over the director asked, “Could you do it again, this time with your eyes open?”
My little conversations with Audrey seem to drift more toward our mutual appreciation of her experience working with Boris Karloff in some of the most evocative episodes of that ground breaking television anthology show THRILLERÂ hosted by the great and dear Boris Karloff.
Audrey plays the beautiful woman/child Meg O’Danagh Wheeler a mail order bride from Ireland married to Warren Oates the son of a bully played masterfully by Denver Pyle, Meg is a jewel trapped in a tortured space of rural repression and hounded by a folk lorish Boogeyman called The Hollow Watcher released in 1962-Link to past post above.
I hesitated asking one question which this feature is usually founded on. Because of my great admiration for years that I’ve held for Ms.Dalton, I couldn’t put restrictions on this wonderful opportunity to listen to the wisdom and sacred reminiscence by such a special actress.
Normally I call this particular feature MonsterGirl Asks, where I put one specific question to someone special in the entertainment industry, arts or academic world instead a full blown interview asking predictable or possibly stale musings that are often over asked or just not inspiring for all concerned. I’ve had several wonderful chances at getting to ask a question here or there. But I have to say, THIS feature is centered around a very heart-warming exchange between myself and Audrey Dalton, yes the sublimely beautiful, versatile & talented actress of film & television.
So I took a chance and asked if she would agree to do my MonsterGirl Asks feature. What happened was she generously shared some very wonderful memories with me so instead of calling it MonsterGirl Asks, I defer to the much lauded star and changed the title special feature as I humbly open myself up as MonsterGirl Listens to a great star who has had the graciousness and kindness to allow me to share these reminiscings with you.
For years I have been such a fan of this otherworldly beauty, not just from watching Boris Karloff’s Thriller where Audrey graced three of the BEST episodes, nor is it her attractive self-reliance in defying Tim Holt’s priggishness as Lt. Cmdr. John ‘Twill’ Twillinger or showing shear guts in the midst of that giant Mollusk, that Monster That Challenged the World, nor is it just her ability to stare danger and death in the face, the very frightening face of Guy Rolfe otherwise known as Mr. Sardonicusin William Castle’s eerie cheeky masterpiece. Audrey Dalton has appeared in two of the most iconic treasures from exquisitely better times in the realm of Sci-Fi & Classical Horror film. She is still beloved by so many fans!
Tim Holt and Audrey Dalton in director Arnold Laven’s memorable & beloved sci-fi jaunt into the giant creature movie of the 1950s!Audrey Dalton and Ronald Lewis are unfortunate prisoners of the sadistic Mr. Sardonicus (1961) brought to you by the great showman of cult horror William Castle!
Though Audrey Dalton may have graced the world of cult horror & ‘B’ Sci-Fi phantasmagoria, she is quite the serious actress having been one of the main stars in Titanic (1953). Here she is shown with Robert Wagner.
Audrey Dalton co-stars with Robert Wagner in Titanic (1953)
Then Audrey brings a delightful bit of class to director Delbert Mann’s Separate Tables 1958, Audrey is provocative, self-reliant and wonderfully flirtatious as Jean who joyfully seduces Rod Taylor, keeping him charmingly distracted and constantly on his toes! Though this gif has him pecking her adorable nose!
Audrey with Don Taylor in her first film The Girls of Pleasure Island (1953) Alamy Stock Photo. Audrey Dalton co-stars with Rex Reason in Thundering Jets (1958)
Audrey played the lovely Louise Kendall quite enamored with Richard Burton in Daphne du Maurier’s romantic thriller My Cousin Rachel 1952 also c0-starring Olivia de Havilland as the cunning Rachel.
Audrey Dalton co-stars with Richard Burton in My Cousin Rachel (1952)-photo: Alamy Stock Photo.
Audrey’s been the elegant Donna Elena Di Gambetta co-starring in the romantic comedy with Bob Hope and Joan Fontaine in Cassanova’s Big Night (1954),
Audrey Dalton, Bob Hope and Joan Fontaine in Cassanova’s Big Night : Alamy Stock Photo.Here’s Audrey in Drum Beat (1954) as Nancy Meek who must be escorted by Indian fighter Johnny MacKay played by Alan Ladd
Audrey Dalton as the sensuous Nancy Meek in Delmer Dave’s Drum Beat (1954) co-starring with dreamy Alan Ladd. :Alamy Stock PhotoAudrey plays Louise Nelson in this superb British film noir The Deadliest Sin (1955).
I am so touched by Audrey Dalton’s kindness. She not only possesses a beauty that could be considered otherworldly, and up there in the ranks of so many of the great beauties of that Golden Age of Hollywood, it turns out she is one of THE most gracious and kind people in an industry filled with egos and eccentrics.
I shared a bit about why I call myself MonsterGirl, that I am a singer/songwriter and how much I’ve loved her work in film and television for as far back as I can remember. I mentioned that I had heard so many stories about how kind and gentle Boris Karloff was in real life. That I wished Boris Karloff had been my grandfather. My own was a real "˜meanie' and so around here we often joke and say Grandpa Boris.
I was so glad that I got the chance to tell her how much her contribution to THRILLER elevated the episodes to a whole new level, including Boris himself who brought to life a confluence of genius, the immense collaborative efforts of some of the most talented artists and people in the industry. Audrey Dalton worked with directors– Herschel Daugherty on Hay-Fork and Bill-Hook, with John Brahm on The Prediction starring along side Boris Karloff and director William F. Claxton and co-starring with another great actor Warren Oates in The Hollow WatcherÂ
The series has never been imitated nor surpassed in it’s originality and atmosphere. We conferred about our shared love of THRILLER and it's impact on television as a visionary program and a wonderful working space off camera.
Audrey Dalton has a fay-like smile, a pair of eyes that are deep & mesmerizing with a sparkle of kindness besides…
MonsterGirl Listens-
Audrey Dalton– “Here's some thoughts for you on my most beloved work as an actor.”
“I was on a lot of Westerns (despite my fear of horses) but my most favorite show was the Thriller series. I had an agreement with Boris to do one a season. Boris Karloff was a lovely, gentle man who was loved by the crew. Many of them had worked with him years before. That was nice to see. The Thriller set was a wonderful place to be. We all had so much fun working with one another. When we filmed Hay-Fork, we would all go out for late dinners after filming. Alan Napier was very tall and had a wonderful sense of humor about it. He would tease Boris that he should've played Frankenstein's Monster because of his height and strong features. But Boris was the best Monster of all. He was always a gentleman and genuinely enjoyed listening to everyone talk. He was a true actor and director. He watched people and life around him with huge eyes.”
On BORIS KARLOFF and his iconic anthology television series THRILLER:
It must have been wonderful working with Boris Karloff on this remarkable series that possessed an innovative and unique sense of atmosphere, blending mystery & suspense, the crime drama and some of the BEST tales of terror & the supernatural!
Joey– “I'm glad to see that you enjoyed working with him {Boris} on the show THRILLER"¦ It was not only ahead of it's time, and I’m not just trying to impress you, it IS actors like yourself and the quality and the true passion that you brought that helped make the show a very special body of work. It's so nice to hear that you enjoyed the experience behind the scenes as well"¦ It is one of my favorite classic anthology series. I can re-watch it over and over because it's so compelling and well done!”
Audrey- “I feel very fortunate to have been working when the film industry was still relatively small and run by creative producers, writers and directors who had the studio solidly behind them, and not by financial conglomerates for whom film making was just one more way to make money. Boris could just call up his favorite film colleagues to work on Thriller, and that made it a wonderful experience. Film making today is a more complicated business with so much more emphasis on the business side and on ratings. We told stories because we were passionate about them. I'm not sure that passion is the same any more.”
“I watched some Thrillers last month after my daughter first saw your website. They are creepy even for someone who acted in them. It was such a well-done, well-made show.”
“Thriller is such a gem that it would be wonderful if you wrote more about it. It does not get the attention it deserves. Boris really considered it his masterpiece of so much talent in each episode.”
Joey-“I laughed out loud, at your comment that Thriller was “even creepy for someone who acted in them.” I suppose it would be creepy, and I often wonder how the atmosphere of the set and the narrative might influence a performance just by the suggestion of the story and the set design! And the musical score is yet another defining element of the show. Jerry Goldsmith, Pete Rugolo and Mort Stevens’ music is so extraordinary! Moody and evocative. Jerry Goldsmith's score for The Hollow Watcher is just incredible, it added to the emotionally nuanced scenes you had as the stirring character of Meg secretly married to the conniving Sean McClory in The Hollow Watcher. I will be covering very soon, your two other fantastic appearances in Hay-Fork and Bill-Hook and The Prediction.”
Audrey- “Boris would love to know you think of him as Grandpa Boris. He had a huge heart and I do so love remembering how kind and gentle he was. I am so grateful to have been one of the lucky few who worked with him.”
On working with Barbara Stanwyck & starring in the classic hit TITANIC (1953)
Audrey- “My other most cherished project was Titanic. I worked with Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb. Clifton was a little bit like snobbish and mostly kept to himself, but he was very funny with a sharp wit. Barbara Stanwyck was a dream "“ the ultimate pro, always prepared to act and ready to help the rest of us.”
Joey-“I loved your performance in Separate Tables! It's obvious you were having fun and it was a lovely and playful characterization. As well as pretty modern which I loved! Did it send Rod Taylor running back to the Time Machine because you were such a strong and confident gal"¦”
Audrey -“Another favorite role of mine was "Separate Tables" with David Niven, Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth and Deborah Kerr. It was such a fun little film. We rehearsed for 3 weeks and shot it in sequence, which was very unusual. Niven was a wonderful, funny man, a great raconteur. It was great to just sit quietly in a chair and listen to his wicked sense of humor. Rita was incredibly nervous during filming and was literally shaking. We all had to be quiet to help her get over it. She was such a sweet person, but I think she was having health problems by then.”
Joey-“You were wonderful in Separate Tables! The old gossips like Glady's Cooper (who –from her performance in Now Voyager, I wouldn't want to be my Grandma or mother for that matter!) I adore her as an actress though"¦ and Cathleen Nesbit they were hilarious as they watched nosily at your goings on with Rod Taylor"¦ you both brought a very nice bit of comedic lightness to the underlying sad tone of Deborah Kerr and David Niven's characters.”
Audrey –“Now I might have to watch Separate Tables again.”
On ELSA LANCHESTER-Â
I did wonder if The Girls of Pleasure Island co-star Elsa Lanchester had left an impression on Audrey Dalton, a seemingly feisty character I wondered if she had experienced anything memorable acting in her first feature film along side of another of my favorite actresses.
Audrey- “I don’t remember a lot about Elsa Lanchester. When we filmed “The Girls of Pleasure Island” it was on the Paramount backlot and I remember she always had a camera with her. She was an avid photographer and she had a wonderful sense of humor.”
On WILLIAM CASTLE and Mr. Sardonicus!
Ronald Lewis, Audrey Dalton and Guy Rolfe in William Castle’s macabre Gothic masterpiece Mr. Sardonicus (1961)
I read William Castle's bio and it was quite a hell of a read! The stories about his childhood are wild. Like Audrey said, “he is a legend for good reason”, and Mr. Sardonicus (1961) is quite a macabre masterpiece in so many ways. Castle was considered a master of Bally-Hoo but he truly had an eye for creating weird spaces and stories. Although considered low budget, it doesn't matter to so many of us, because he left a legacy and Audrey Dalton is part of that"¦
Joey-“I imagine working with William Castle on Mr. Sardonicus, there must have been a great deal of creepy moments because of that horrific mask that Guy Rolfe wore! and Oskar Homolka and his awful leeches, horrid man"¦ (the character not the actor of course!) I hope it was as enjoyable working with William Castle as it was with Grandpa Boris. You were wonderful in the film!”
Audrey-“Bill Castle was another incredible director I was fortunate to get to work with. He’s a legend for good reason; I don’t think I have ever met someone so creative and driven about his work. You are right that the mask that Guy wore in Mr. Sardonicus was chilling. I have not seen that film in years but I can see that image as clearly as if it were yesterday.”
Audrey– “I noticed you wrote a bit about Beverly Garland. She was such a dear friend of mine. She was in Pretty Poison with Noel Black who just passed away last year.  Bev died years ago and even though she remained active in the Scarecrow and Mrs King for so long, she loved acting in “B” films the most.”
Joey-“I am a big fan of Beverly Garland! I think she was a versatile and extremely accessible actress! Just wonderful to watch. Even her outre cool 1950’s police show DECOY: Police Woman!"¦ Of course she'll always be beloved for her ‘B’ movies with Roger Corman.
It's so wonderful to hear that you both were good friends. I'm sorry she's gone. So many wonderful people we've lost. It’s so great to know that she enjoyed being known as a "B" movie actress in addition to her other incredible body of work. I loved her in director Noel Black’s Pretty Poison (1968). I forgot that she played the psychopathic Sue Ann Stepaneck’s (Tuesday Weld’s) mom!”
Beverly Garland not only exuded a gutsy streak in every role she took, she shared the notable distinction of starring in one of Boris Karloff’s THRILLER episodes called Knock-Three-One-Two co-starring with the wonderful character actor Joe Maross who has a gambling problem and will be beaten to a pulp if he doesn’t pay his bookie. So he enlists the help of a psychopathic lady killer to murder his wife Beverly for her tightly held purse and large savings account!
On ED NELSON– Like the wonderful Audrey Dalton, Ed Nelson exudes an inner light and sort of tangible kindness.
Joey– “One very endearing thing that happened in August 2014 after Ed Nelson passed away, when I wrote a little something about the ubiquitous actor, his son wrote to me in particular to thank me for saying such nice things about his dad. It's ironic Ed worked on several of Boris Karloff’s THRILLERs too! When he had passed on, I hoped he knew how many fans he had and could have had the opportunity to enjoy a nice tribute from me for all the work he had done.”
Ed Nelson and Linda Watkins in The Cheaters episode of Boris Karloff’s anthology television show Thriller!
I just watched the 70s television show Police Woman with Angie Dickinson as Pepper Anderson "”Audrey Dalton starred in the episode called “Shoefly.” It was so nice to see her playing the wife of actor Ed Nelson, since they both starred in several roles of Thriller! and the chemistry between them was very genuine. And I told her so, and did ask about him.
Ed Nelson plays Lieutenant John Hess married to the loving Rose in Police Woman episode ‘Shoefly” 1974
Audrey–“I did know Ed Nelson quite well, by the way. We lost touch over the years, but during the time we were first filming Killers in Paradise and then again while filming Police Woman. He was a kind man and very smart. And he was a very busy actor.”
COMING SOON: Boris Karloff’s anthology television show THRILLERÂ featuring Audrey Dalton in 2 memorable & evocative episodes– HAY -FORK and BILL-HOOKÂ and THE PREDICTION!
Audrey Dalton in Hay-Fork and Bill-Hook shown here with Doris Lloyd as Mother Evans. There’s witchcraft afoot in the Welsh moors.
Audrey- “Your website brings back wonderful memories and I have enjoyed reading it so very much. It is such a treasure.”
Joey- With all my sincerest gratitude and ever lasting admiration, it’s been one of the greatest thrills of my life, speaking to you, the amazing Audrey Dalton!