At the heart of every Howard Hawks action movie is the concept of the professional doing his job, and doing it well, despite the imminent threat of death, an idealized code of conduct Hemingway called "grace under pressure." We're all going to die sooner or later, Hawks seems to be saying, can't we at least do it with a bit of dignity and honor and laughter and good company?
After nearly three decades of genre defining action pictures—from Dawn Patrol to Only Angels Have Wings to Red River to The Thing From Another World—Hawks topped himself with Rio Bravo, if not the best Western ever made then certainly the most entertaining.
It's also Hawks at his most compassionate, not an attribute I would always associate with his brusque heroes and no-nonsense women. But John Wayne watches over his ragged crew—a drunk, a cripple, and later a girl, a young gunslinger and even the manager of the local hotel—like a mother hen, with a love that is sometimes tough and sometimes tender, but always genuine.
There's a lesson here for purveyors of the modern summer blockbuster: don't confuse a slowing of the action with a flagging of the audience's interest. If you don't give us a reason to invest ourselves in the characters on the screen, the non-stop action, no matter how well choreographed, eventually becomes a tedious bore.
Hawks, for example, takes time after one character's particularly intense personal crisis for a trademark song (here, "My Rifle, My Pony and Me") which not only allows the audience to catch its breath, but also adds another dimension to the friendship between the four men involved that makes the final payoff (one of the greatest shootouts in movie history) so much more satisfying—because by then you really care.
I'll take Rio Bravo with its ups and downs of pacing and mood over all the empty, rote action movies ever made.
PICTURE (Drama) winner:Rio Bravo (prod. Howard Hawks) nominees:Anatomy of a Murder (prod. Otto Preminger); Ben-Hur (prod. Sam Zimbalist); Imitation of Life (prod. Ross Hunter); North By Northwest (prod. Alfred Hitchcock); Shadows (prod. Maurice McEndree); Room at the Top (James Woolf and John Woolf)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical) winner:Some Like It Hot (prod. Billy Wilder) nominees:I'm All Right Jack (prod. Roy Boultin); The Mouse That Roared (prod. Walter Shenson); Our Man In Havana (prod. Carol Reed); Pillow Talk (prod. Ross Hunter and Martin Melcher); Sleeping Beauty (prod. Walt Disney)
PICTURE (Foreign Language) winner:Les quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows) (prod. François Truffaut) nominees:Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) (prod. Satyajit Ray); Ballada o soldate (Ballad of a Soldier) (prod. M. Chernova); Hiroshima mon amour (prod. Anatole Dauman and Samy Halfon); Ningen no jôken (The Human Condition) (prod. Shigeru Wakatsuki); Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus) (prod. Sacha Gordine); Ukigusa (Floating Weeds) (prod. Masaichi Nagata)
ACTOR (Drama) winner: Cary Grant (North By Northwest) nominees: Peter Cushing (The Hound of the Baskervilles); Charlton Heston (Ben-Hur); Jean-Pierre Léaud (Les quatre cents coups a.k.a. The 400 Blows); Dean Martin (Rio Bravo); Paul Muni (The Last Angry Man); James Stewart (Anatomy of a Murder); John Wayne (Rio Bravo)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical) winner: Jack Lemmon (Some Like It Hot) nominees: Tony Curtis (Some Like It Hot); Alec Guinness (Our Man In Havana); Rock Hudson (Pillow Talk); Peter Sellers (The Mouse That Roared and I'm All Right Jack)
ACTRESS (Drama) winner: Simone Signoret (Room At The Top) nominees: Audrey Hepburn (The Nun's Story); Katharine Hepburn (Suddenly Last Summer); Eva Marie Saint (North By Northwest); Lana Turner (Imitation Of Life)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical) winner: Marilyn Monroe (Some Like It Hot) nominees: Dorothy Dandridge (Porgy And Bess); Doris Day (Pillow Talk)
DIRECTOR (Drama) winner: Howard Hawks (Rio Bravo) nominees: John Cassavetes (Shadows); Alfred Hitchcock (North By Northwest); Masaki Kobayashi (Ningen no jôken a.k.a. The Human Condition); Otto Preminger (Anatomy of a Murder); Douglas Sirk (Imitation of Life); François Truffaut (Les quatre cents coups a.k.a. The 400 Blows); William Wyler (Ben-Hur)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical) winner: Billy Wilder (Some Like It Hot) nominees: Marcel Camus (Orfeu Negro a.k.a. Black Orpheus); Michael Gordon (Pillow Talk); Yasujirô Ozu (Ohayô a.k.a. Good Morning); Carol Reed (Our Man In Havana)
SUPPORTING ACTOR winner: Walter Brennan (Rio Bravo) nominees: Joe E. Brown (Some Like It Hot); Ben Gazzarra (Anatomy of a Murder); Hugh Griffith (Ben-Hur); Martin Landau (North By Northwest); James Mason (North By Northwest); Arthur O'Connell (Anatomy of a Murder); Tony Randall (Pillow Talk); George C. Scott (Anatomy of a Murder); Orson Welles (Compulsion)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS winner: Juanita Moore (Imitation Of Life) nominees: Eve Arden (Anatomy of a Murder); Angie Dickinson (Rio Bravo); Susan Kohner (Imitation of Life); Jessie Royce Landis (North By Northwest); Lee Remick (Anatomy of a Murder); Shelley Winters (The Diary of Anne Frank)
SCREENPLAY winner: Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, from the story by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan (Some Like It Hot) nominees: Karl Tunberg, from the novel by Lew Wallace (Ben-Hur); Ernest Lehman (North By Northwest); Graham Greene, from his novel (Our Man In Havana); François Truffaut (scenario and adaptation), Marcel Moussy (dialogue and adaptation) (Les quatre cents coups a.k.a. The 400 Blows); Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett, from the short story by B.H. McCampbell (Rio Bravo)
SPECIAL AWARDS Saul Bass (Career Achievement Award); Jazz on a Summer's Day (Documentary); William A. Horning and Edward Carfagno; Hugh Hunt (Ben-Hur) (Art Direction-Set Decoration); Franklin E. Milton (Ben-Hur) (Sound); Ralph E. Winters and John D. Dunning (Ben-Hur) (Film Editing); Elizabeth Haffenden (Ben-Hur) (Costumes); A. Arnold Gillespie, Robert MacDonald and Milo Lory (Ben-Hur) (Special Effects)
One of my favorite fellow bloggers, Rachel at The Girl with the White Parasol, has come up with a New Years "meme"—12 questions, including a New Years resolution. Since I'm back in town after a long Christmas trip, perhaps this will help me edge back into the blogging habit.
1. What is your all-time favorite Grace Kelly costume? Whatever she was wearing as she makes her first appearance in Rear Window. Red lips, wetly parted, mostly. Humina. 2. What classic film would you nominate for a remake? To me there are two kinds of movies that should be remade: one with a good idea not fully realized (i.e., the first two versions of The Maltese Falcon before John Huston and Humphrey Bogart got hold of it and finally did it right), or a hardy perennial every generation should leave its stamp on—Sherlock Holmes, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare.
Perchance that will suggest something to you. 3. Name your favorite femme fatale. That's easy, Jane Greer, the only femme fatale in movie history I'd let shoot me. 4. Name the best movie with the word "heaven" in its title. Best? Can't say. Favorite? Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, which I wrote about here. 5. Describe the worst performance by a child actor that you’ve ever seen (since Laura gave me the idea). Whoever the kids were in the Cary Grant-Sophia Loren comedy Houseboat. Utterly charmless, throughly annoying. And I like kids. 6. Who gets your vote for most tragic movie monster? Frankenstein's monster, who I wrote about here. 7. What is the one Western that you would recommend to anybody? Rio Bravo, I think. If you don't like Westerns and you see this one and don't like it either, you can safely skip all the rest. Right, Stumpy? 8. Who is your ideal movie-viewing partner? Why, Katie-Bar-The-Door, of course. But let's face it—she's my favorite everything partner. 9. Has a film ever made you want to change your life? If so, what was the film? There are definitely films that have changed my life, which isn't quite the same as saying they made me want to change my life. Here is the story of one of them. 10. Think of one performer that you truly love. Now think of one scene/movie/performance of theirs that is too uncomfortable for you to watch. Every great star makes at least one true stinker—Cary Grant in The Pride and the Passion, for example—and lots of them hung on long after they should have hung it up (think of Joan Crawford in Trog).
But uncomfortable?
I'm sure I'm forgetting something obvious. Katie-Bar-The-Door will read this and immediately chime in with "What about ...?" When she does, I'll post an addendum. 11. On the flip side, think of one really good scene/performance/movie from a performer that you truly loathe. Well, I was never particularly a fan of Norma Shearer, but I wound up giving her a Katie-Bar-The-Door award for the comedy Private Lives. Because, frankly, she deserved it. 12. And finally, since it will be New Year's soon, do you have any movie or blogging-related resolutions for 2012? To keep my eyes on the prize, i.e., finishing the "Silent Oscars" series.
The Most Supportive Actor Walter Brennan holds the record for most wins as Best Supporting Actor (three) and is tied for the most nominations (four). For what 1941 drama about a World War I hero did he receive his final nomination?
Clean Sweeps Five times in Academy history has a Best Picture winner won in every category in which it was nominated. Only three times has this happened when more than five nominations were at stake. One such instance was a 1958 Vincente Minnelli musical. Name it.
As I was reviewing The Old Dark House, James Whale's story of things that go bump in the night, the name Lilian Bond kept buzzing around in my head—she played Charles Laughton's mistress, as you may recall—and I had this vague feeling I was supposed to know who she was. But as it turns out, no, I'd never heard of her, and moreover, further research reveals that there was no reason I should have heard of her.
Maybe I was thinking of Lillian Roth or Beulah Bondi or somebody like that. Ward Bond, maybe. I don't know. Just not Lilian Bond as it turns out. Because not to put too fine a point on it, Lilian Bond was nobody. Harsh, but essentially true, at least as far as movie history goes.
But let's talk about her anyway.
Born in London in 1908, Lilian Bond began working in the theater at the age of fourteen in the pantomime Dick Whittington and His Cat, a traditional story first performed on the English stage in 1605. Later she danced in the chorus of the Piccadilly Revels. In 1926 Bond won a beauty contest and moved to America where she performed in the Ziegfeld Follies.
She made her first movie, No More Children, in 1929, and in 1932 was named a "WAMPAS Baby Star" along with Ginger Rogers, Gloria Stuart and eleven other actresses. WAMPAS, in case you didn't know, was the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers and from 1922 to 1934, it selected a dozen or so young actresses as rising stars. Sometimes they got it right—Clara Bow (1924), Mary Astor (1926), Joan Crawford (1926), Jean Arthur (1929), Joan Blondell (1931)—but mostly they got it woefully wrong, and sometimes it looks like they just picked actresses based on who they thought would show up for the annual "WAMPAS Frolic," one of those gruesome little shindigs where fat guys in cheap suits make fools of themselves trying to impress beautiful girls half their age.
But I digress.
Appearing in forty-eight movies between 1929 and 1955, Bond played mostly supporting parts, with occasional starring roles in B-movies. Her best known roles are as Gladys Perkins (where she was credited as "Lillian" Bond) in the aforementioned The Old Dark House and as Lily Langtry in The Westerner, which starred Gary Cooper and scored an Oscar for Walter Brennan (who played Judge Roy Bean).
I've seen both movies, posted three pictures of her, and read everything about her I could find. Yet even now I doubt I could pick her out of a lineup, and that may be the problem with her career in a nutshell.
She married three times—twice until the death of her husbands did them part—and died herself of a heart attack in 1991.
And now before we leave the subject of Lilian Bond behind forever, here's a clip of her from The Old Dark House. She's playing across from the great Melvyn Douglas, who had only just broken into the movie business himself the year before. But more about him later.
Named for Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.
To see a list of nominees and winners by decade, as well as links to my essays about them, click the highlighted links:
Remember: There are no wrong answers, only movies you haven't seen yet.
The Silent Oscars
And don't forget to check out the Silent Oscars—my year-by-year choices for best picture, director and all four acting categories for the pre-Oscar years, 1902-1927.
Look at me—Joe College, with a touch of arthritis. Are my eyes really brown? Uh, no, they're green. Would we have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save a person from drowning? That's a key question. I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it. Say, haven't you anything better to do than to keep popping in here early every morning and asking a lot of fool questions?
At the heart of every Howard Hawks action movie is the concept of the professional doing his job, and doing it well, despite the imminent threat of death, an idealized code of conduct Hemingway called "grace under pressure." We're all going to die sooner or later, Hawks seems to be saying, can't we at least do it with a bit of dignity and honor and laughter and good company?
It's also Hawks at his most compassionate, not an attribute I would always associate with his brusque heroes and no-nonsense women. But John Wayne watches over his ragged crew—a drunk, a cripple, and later a girl, a young gunslinger and even the manager of the local hotel—like a mother hen, with a love that is sometimes tough and sometimes tender, but always genuine.
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