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A few facts about silent film star Ramon Novarro:
● He was born José Ramón Gil Samaniego in Durango, Mexico, in 1899. At age fourteen, he moved with his family to Los Angeles to escape the Mexican Revolution.
● Novarro made his acting debut with an uncredited part as a starving peasant in Cecil B. DeMille's 1916 costume epic, Joan the Woman.
● After ten more small, usually uncredited bit roles between 1917 and 1921, Novarro scored his breakout role as Rupert of Hentzau in the 1922 version of The Prisoner of Zenda.
● Novarro's biggest role was the title character in Fred Niblo's silent classic, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Among his silent works, I can also highly recommend Scaramouche and Ernst Lubitsch's The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg.
● As was the case with many actors of the time, his career suffered with the advent of the talkies. He made his talkie debut in 1929, and of these early efforts, I'd point you to 1931's Mati Hari in which he co-starred with an especially luminous Greta Garbo. MGM dropped his contract in 1935.
● Novarro was a devout Roman Catholic; he was also gay, and was tormented by the conflict between his sexuality and his religious beliefs. Nevertheless, he refused to enter into a sham marriage to satisfy the gossip columnists or his boss, Louis B. Mayer.
● Of his later movies, I am a big fan of his work in the 1949 comic noir The Big Steal, starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer. There he is a Mexican police inspector who plays cat-and-mouse with a thief and his pursuers. He also appeared in an episode of The Wild Wild West, a childhood favorite of mine.
● Novarro was brutally murdered in his home in 1968 by two male prostitutes who mistakenly believed Novarro had a large cache of money hidden in his home. They eventually made off with $20, were captured, convicted and served less than ten years each for their crimes.
● And while we're here, how about a few more photos of Ramon Novarro:
with Ernst Lubitsch:
with Joan Crawford:
with Norma Shearer:
Usually billed as a film noir, The Big Steal—the story of a guy chasing a guy chasing a girl chasing a guy who stole some money, with Jane Greer as the girl and Robert Mitchum as the man in the middle—is actually a screwball road picture, romantic comedy and wry commentary on the Ugly American (this time in Mexico), all rolled into 71 taut minutes.
Known at the time as the first film Mitchum made after his infamous marijuana bust (filming was interrupted for two months while he served his prison sentence), The Big Steal is really Jane Greer's picture. She's funny, she's smart, she's tender, she's tough, and she and Mitchum are very, very good together. Out of the Past made Greer a film noir legend, deservedly so, but The Big Steal is actually a better showcase for her talent.
That she also flew down to Mexico on forty-eight hours notice out of loyalty to Mitchum when no other actress would work with him only deepens my affection for this underrated actress.
She and Mitchum crack wise with each other throughout the film and the chemistry between them is palpable. Greer's best scene, though, is across from the foreman of a road repair crew (Pascual García Peña) as she tries to talk him into letting them pass. She tells him that she and Mitchum are eloping, and that her father, chasing them with a shotgun (really William Bendix, the first "guy" in the equation), wants her to marry a short, ugly man. She prefers the big, pretty one—"¿Verdad que es grande y hermoso, no?"
And the foreman looks at Mitchum, shrugs and says with a laugh, "Grande, sí. ¿Pero hermoso?"—which is to say, "Big, yes, but pretty?"
The film was directed by Don Siegel, who had cut his teeth putting together the Paris montage sequence in Casablanca, and who would later direct such classics as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Dirty Harry. His biggest achievement here, aside from some great car chases, was working around Mitchum's absence. Because co-star William Bendix had a prior commitment, he and Mitchum appear in only one scene together, the film's first. Thereafter, Siegel had to make due with stunt doubles, rear screen projection and careful editing.
That Bendix and Mitchum stage a convincing fist fight later in the movie without being in the same room together is a minor miracle.
Also look for Ramon Novarro as the Mexican police inspector. Fans of silent film may remember him as the title character in the 1925 verison of Ben-Hur. Like so many, his star fell when the talkies came in.
Despite the commercial and critical success of The Big Steal, there was no follow-up film for Greer. Indeed, it's a measure of the studio's desperation that she'd been cast at all. RKO owner Howard Hughes had vowed to wreck Greer's career after she refused to sleep with him, and wreck it he did. It took Greer three years to get out of her contract with the studio, by which time the public had largely forgotten her.
Finally free of RKO, she made a handful of films in the early 1950s, including Man of a Thousand Faces and a remake of The Prisoner of Zenda. After she nearly died from an infection suffered while filming Run for the Sun in the jungles of Mexico, Greer went into semi-retirement, playing occasional supporting roles, most memorably in Against All Odds, a loose remake of Out of the Past.
[SPOILERS]
The ending of The Big Steal underscores for me the degree to which we watch movies rather than listen to them. If you watch the last scene, letting it flow over you, and with the expectations of the genre firmly established in your mind, you assume that Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer are going to pair off permanently at the end, get married, have ten kids. Nice.
On the other hand, if you listen to the words they are speaking, it's clear he's leaving town in the morning and she's staying put. And that makes sense. He's a lieutenant in the army, she has an important job in Mexico. If you read the scene on the printed page, you'd see it as a lament for the life they aren't going to have together.
But if you put the images together with the words they are speaking, it becomes clear that they are negotiating a one-night stand. Which is exactly as it should be—they are attractive, single people who have just finished a life-and-death adventure together, but who, let's face it, have little else in common. Why not?
That director Don Siegel contrived to say this in a way that passed muster with the censors during the era of the Production Code is a tribute to his ingenuity and his craft. He let your eyes tell you one thing, your ears another, and if you're really paying attention, you can decode his intentions. It's subtle, something the censors never were. It's one of those times when the lament "they don't make 'em like they used to" is fully justified.
PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Third Man (prod. Carol Reed)
nominees: All The King's Men (prod. Robert Rossen); Battleground (prod. Dore Schary); The Heiress (prod. William Wyler); A Letter to Three Wives (prod. Sol C. Siegel); The Set-Up (prod. Richard Goldstone); She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (prod. Merian C. Cooper and John Ford); They Live By Night (prod. John Houseman); Twelve O'Clock High (prod. Darryl F. Zanuck); White Heat (prod. Louis F. Edelman)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Kind Hearts and Coronets (prod. Michael Balcon)
nominees: Adam's Rib (prod. Lawrence Weingarten); I Was A Male War Bride (prod. Sol C. Siegel); On The Town (prod. Arthur Freed); Whisky Galore! (prod. Michael Balcon)
PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Banshun (Late Spring) (prod. Shôchiku Film)
nominees: Jour de fête (prod. Fred Orain and André Paulvé); Nora inu (Stray Dog) (prod. Sôjirô Motoki); Riso amaro (Bitter Rice) (prod. Dino De Laurentiis)
ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Kirk Douglas (Champion)
nominees: James Cagney (White Heat); Joseph Cotten (The Third Man); Broderick Crawford (All The King's Men); Toshiro Mifune (Nora inu a.k.a. Stray Dog); Gregory Peck (Twelve O'Clock High); Robert Ryan (The Set-Up); Chishu Ryu (Banshun a.k.a. Late Spring); John Wayne (She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and Sands Of Iwo Jima)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Gene Kelly (On The Town)
nominees: Cary Grant (I Was A Male War Bride); Danny Kaye (The Inspector General); Robert Mitchum (The Big Steal and Holiday Affair); Dennis Price (Kind Hearts and Coronets); Basil Radford (Whisky Galore!); Jacques Tati (Jour de fête); Spencer Tracy (Adam's Rib)
ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Olivia de Havilland (The Heiress)
nominees: Jeanne Crain (Pinky); Joan Crawford (Flamingo Road); Linda Darnell (A Letter To Three Wives); Setsuko Hara (Banshun a.k.a. Late Spring); Alida Valli (The Third Man)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jane Greer (The Big Steal)
nominees: Joan Greenwood (Kind Hearts and Coronets and Whisky Galore!); Katharine Hepburn (Adam's Rib); Ann Sheridan (I Was A Male War Bride)
DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Carol Reed (The Third Man)
nominees: John Ford (She Wore A Yellow Ribbon); Akira Kurosawa (Nora inu a.k.a. Stray Dog); Yasujiro Ozu (Banshun a.k.a. Late Spring); Raoul Walsh (White Heat); William Wyler (The Heiress)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Robert Hamer (Kind Hearts and Coronets)
nominees: George Cukor (Adam's Rib); Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly (On The Town); Howard Hawks (I Was A Male War Bride); Alexander Mackendrick (Whisky Galore!)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Alec Guinness (Kind Hearts and Coronets)
nominees: Paul Douglas (A Letter to Three Wives); Juano Hernandez (Intruder in the Dust); Trevor Howard (The Third Man); Victor McLaglen (She Wore A Yellow Ribbon); Ramon Novarro (The Big Steal); Ralph Richardson (The Heiress); David Wayne (Adam's Rib); Orson Welles (The Third Man); James Whitmore (Battleground)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Mercedes McCambridge (All The King's Men)
nominees: Judy Holliday (Adam's Rib); Ann Miller (On the Town); Elizabeth Patterson (Intruder in the Dust); Margaret Wycherly (White Heat)
SCREENPLAY
winner: Graham Greene (The Third Man)
nominees: Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin (Adam's Rib); Robert Rossen, from the novel by Robert Penn Warren (All The King's Men); Robert Pirosh (Battleground); Ruth Goetz and Augustus Goetz, from their play suggested by the novel Washington Square by Henry James (The Heiress); Robert Hamer and John Dighton, from the novel by Roy Horniman (Kind Hearts and Coronets)
SPECIAL AWARDS
Ray Harryhausen, Linwood G. Dunn, Willis H. O'Brien, Harold E. Stein, Herb Willis and Bert Willis (Mighty Joe Young) (Special Effects); Anton Karas (The Third Man) (Score); Robert Krasker (The Third Man) (Cinematography)
Of the first 1300 words of my essay on the best director of 1930-31, I've written about the Beatles, baseball, Robert Osborne, Glenn Beck, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Casablanca and the baking of cakes, but I haven't written about Charles Chaplin, René Clair or Fritz Lang—perhaps a significant oversight given that the essay is about one of them.
Obviously, this is taking longer than I had intended.
In the meantime, here is some eye candy for both sexes: Ramon Novarro and Greta Garbo in 1931's elegant, trash-tastic romance/spy-thriller, Mata Hari.
Before you go to bed tonight, be sure to set your recorders to tape Ernst Lubitsch's bittersweet comedy, The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg, which is showing at 2 a.m., Wednesday, June 24, 2009, on Turner Classic Movies.
For those of you with long memories, Jean Hersholt won the first Katie Award for best supporting actor playing Ramon Novarro's kindly tutor.
From the TCM website:
2:00am [Silent] Student Prince In Old Heidelberg, The (1927)
In this silent film, a young prince attending college falls for a barmaid below his station. Cast: Ramon Novarro, Norma Shearer, Jean Hersholt, Gustav von Seyffertitz Dir: Ernst Lubitsch BW-106 mins, TV-G
Before his name became synonymous with humanitarian causes, Jean Hersholt was also a fine character actor and never better than he was here in The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg, one of the last silent films directed by the great Ernst Lubitsch.
Old Heidelberg, as the movie was originally known, is the story of a young prince (Ramon Novarro, who played the title character in the silent classic Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ) who is torn from his family to prepare to take the reins of government from his uncle, the king.
It proves to be a lonely life and Hersholt, who plays the prince's tutor, Dr, Jüttner, is the only real friend and father the prince has ever known. While everyone in the palace is always telling the boy what he should do, the tutor is the only one who ever encourages him to do what he wants to do, and what little fun there is to be had for a prince growing up in a gated palace, the tutor provides.
Admittedly, Jüttner is not much at teaching the young man what it means to be a prince—in a funny scene during the prince's university exams, we learn that not only does the prince not know his country's history, neither does Jüttner—but he's done a first rate job at teaching him what it means to be a human being, and let's face it, future kings get their diplomas whether they know anything or not.
After graduation, instead of getting the expected medal and a forced retirement, Jüttner accompanies the prince who is sent to Heidelberg for graduate studies—studies which focus primarily on beer and a romance with Norma Shearer. The few months in Heidelberg are the best the prince has ever known.
Incidentally, this is one of Shearer's most appealing performances in a career that often leaves me cold. Here, she plays the niece of an innkeeper, the prettiest and most lively girl in Heidelberg, and the main attraction for the hoards of beer-swilling fraternity boys who crowd the inn's garden. Jüttner is delighted by her spunk, the prince by her beauty, as she shows them to their rooms in the tiny, third-rate inn and enthusiastically recommends the couch. "You can sit on it, you can lie down on it! You can't expect any more of a couch!"
She then proceeds, to the prince's embarrassment and the tutor's amusement, to demonstrate the virtues of the bed.
Love is in the air, but of course the tutor knows (and we suspect) that royal protocol will never allow the marriage of such a socially mismatched couple. And this ultimately is what The Student Prince is all about. The old tutor knows what the young prince doesn't, that you have to live as much as you can while you can because all things eventually end, and in one of the film's most poignant moments, Jüttner gently, but firmly steers the prince toward his inevitable duties as head of the government.
The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg represented something of a turning point for Hersholt. Before this role, he had primarily played villains, and quite successfully, in classic silent films such as Tess of the Storm Country and Erich von Stroheim's Greed. His performance here was so effective, he afterwards became known for playing kind if weary wise men. His most remembered role may be that of the cantankerous yet caring grandfather searching for Shirley Temple in the 1937 version of Heidi.
Hersholt was twice awarded honorary Oscars, once in 1940 for his work in establishing the Motion Picture Relief Fund which was designed to help out-of-work and ailing actors, and again in 1950 after his years of service as president of the Academy. Shortly before his death in 1956, the Academy created the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award which is bestowed periodically on those from the Hollywood community who have significantly furthered humanitarian causes.
Note: I very seriously considered giving the first supporting actor award to Gary Cooper for his performance in Wings. He's only on screen for three minutes, he doesn't talk (of course), exits stage left and gets killed immediately. Given the way I usually feel about Gary Cooper's acting, I would normally say the only way his performance in Wings could be any better is if he wasn't in the movie at all. But the fact is, he's terrific—cocky but human, naturalistic and above all riveting—and those three minutes made him a star.
It wouldn't have been the briefest performance ever nominated—that would be Hermione Baddeley who was on screen for all of two minutes thirty-two seconds in 1959's Room At The Top. And Beatrice Straight won for Network in a role that lasted only five minutes forty seconds, so short in fact that the first time I saw the movie I didn't realize she'd been on screen until she was already gone.
There have been two dozen actors who have received Oscar nominations for performances that clock in at fewer than ten minutes (three of them won). So I think I could have gotten away with selecting Gary Cooper. But in the end, it was Jean Hersholt's performance that moved me most.
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