Any Resemblance to Actual Persons : The Real People Behind 400+ Fictional Movie Characters [1 ed.] 9781476629308, 9781476666051

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Any Resemblance to Actual Persons

ALSO BY HAL ERICKSON AND FROM MCFARLAND From Radio to the Big Screen: Hollywood Films Featuring Broadcast Personalities and Programs (2014) Military Comedy Films: A Critical Survey and Filmography of Hollywood Releases Since 1918 (2012) Encyclopedia of Television Law Shows: Factual and Fictional Series About Judges, Lawyers and the Courtroom, 1948–2008 (2009) Television Cartoon Shows: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, 1949 through 2003, 2d ed. (2005; softcover 2016) The Baseball Filmography, 1915 through 2001, 2d ed. (2002; softcover 2010) “From Beautiful Downtown Burbank”: A Critical History of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, 1968–1973 (2000; softcover 2009) Sid and Marty Krofft: A Critical Study of Saturday Morning Children’s Television, 1969–1993 (1998; softcover 2007) Religious Radio and Television in the United States, 1921–1991: The Programs and Personalities (1992; softcover 2001) Syndicated Television: The First Forty Years, 1947–1987 (1989; softcover 2001)

Any Resemblance to Actual Persons The Real People Behind 400+ Fictional Movie Characters

HAL ERICKSON

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina

The illustrations in this book are from the author’s collection, unless otherwise indicated.

ISBN (print) 978-1-4766-6605-1 ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4766-2930-8 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

© 2017 Hal Erickson. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Front cover: Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather, 1972 (Paramount Pictures/Photofest) Printed in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com

To my loyal and venerable siblings (in order of age), Bill, David, Anne and Jim. To paraphrase Will Rogers, as long as our parents managed to keep us all out of jail, they fulfilled their obligation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Herewith an incomplete but representative selection of friends, fellow authors, media historians and movie buffs who have over the years provided me with information, edification and moral support: Jerry Beck, Matthew Coniam, Dale Craven, Travis D, Jim Feeley, Paul E. Gierucki, Martin Grams, Barry Grauman, Wayne and Rita Hawk, Michael Hayde, John Larrabee, Jane and Mark Martell, Lee Matthias, Dave Michelson, James L. Neibaur, Kliph Nesteroff, Ted Okuda, Barbara Parkman, Scott T. Rivers, Lou Sabini, David Seebach, Ivan G. Shreve, Bruce Simon, Randy Skretvedt, Roger Sorenson, Terry Soto, Laura Wagner, Brent Walker and Ed Watz. Special shout-outs to Cari and David Bobke for their diligence and forebearance in proofreading this manuscript. And a shower of bouquets to my wife, Joanne, my sons, Brian and Peter, my daughter-in-law, Janel, and my granddaughter, Lorelai, for reasons of love and affection.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments vi Introduction 1

The Real Persons 7 Bibliography 375 Index 381

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INTRODUCTION up names for their real-life objects of derision—as did serious authors of non-comic novels and plays who cherished their freedom and their heads. When motion pictures were made available to the general public at the end of the 19th century, the slander and libel laws pertaining to the new art form were somewhat sketchy. A plagiarized work of literature could result in prompt legal action and stiff fines, as the producers of a 1907 one-reel adaptation of BenHur discovered when they failed to secure the permission of the Lew Wallace estate. At the same time, there seems to have been no trouble encountered by early 20th century filmmakers who used lookalike actors to impersonate such contemporary personalities as persecuted French military officer Alfred Dreyfus, assassin Leon Czolgosz, murdered architect Stanford White, ax-wielding abolitionist Carrie Nation or President Theodore Roosevelt without first checking to see if these people (or their families) were cool with being thus impersonated. Once the movies “grew up,” it was a different story, so to avoid possible legal entanglements producers and scriptwriters were careful to bestow fictional names on dramatized versions of factual characters— even when, as in the case of the William Jennings Bryan clone in 1916’s The Fall of a Nation, the inspiration was obvious. Using actual names onscreen still occurred, though the practice varied depending on the individual film. Let’s cite a brace of Civil War

“So, what’s your new book about?” “I’m writing about the real people upon whom fictional film characters were based.” “Oh, so you’re writing about movies like The Jolson Story, Lawrence of Arabia, and Gandhi, right?” It really isn’t fair or polite to fault anyone who assumes that I have written a book about filmed biographies, because my actual subject of choice isn’t something one thinks about every day (though I’ve sure thought about it every day for months). I have always been fascinated by fictional films based on actual people and events, and have as often as possible made concerted efforts to unearth the facts behind the fiction. While many other media history books have chronicled films of this nature in considerable detail, this volume is to the best of my knowledge the first to focus primarily on the reallife personalities and events, rather than the films inspired by them. At the risk of getting too wonky about the subject, a little pre-movie history might be warranted. There’s nothing new about using actual people as role models for characters in literature or theatrical works. Greek playwright Aristophanes got into a lot of trouble lampooning Plato and Socrates by name way back in the 5th century BC, while Roman poet Juvenal was exiled to Egypt after poking fun at a popular actor of the 1st century AD. A few more centuries of that sort of thing and authors began finding it prudent to use made1

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comedies from the 1920s as examples. Buster orado “Bonanza King” H.A.W. Tabor, and The Keaton’s The General (1926) was inspired by Man Who Dared (1933), inspired by the life the celebrated Anderson raid of 1862, in and assassination of Chicago mayor Anton which two dozen Union volunteers led by Cermak, so closely adhered to the facts that it civilian spy James J. Andrews participated in seemed superfluous to use fictional names— the hijacking of a Confederate train for the though contemporary reviewers recognized purpose of disrupting Southern troop move- that such a subterfuge was necessary to sidements and ultimately destroying strategic rail- step legal action or invasion of privacy. The road bridges. The train’s civilian conductor, little game that fooled no one would have conWilliam Allen Fuller, became a Confederate tinued its merry way were it not for the 1933 hero for his relentless one-man pursuit of his MGM historical epic Rasputin and the Emstolen engine. Buster Keaton re-enacted the press, described in detail within the entry for true story in the first portion of his film The Prince Felix Youssoupov. Set before, during General, with himself cast as the William Allen and after the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Fuller equivalent Johnny Grey. But inasmuch film identifies Czar Nicholas, Czarina Alexanas the facts were used primarily as the foun- dra and “mad monk” Grigori Rasputin by their dation for a series of brilliant sight gags, and real names, while identifying the characters since the second portion of the film—Johnnie’s recovery of the engine and escape back to the Southern lines—was purely fictional, no real names were used: Even James J. Andrews was re christened Captain Anderson. Conversely, the real-life personalities Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee and Brigham Young appear under their actual names in Raymond Griffith’s 1926 comedy Hands Up, an entirely fictional yarn which just happens to take place during the Civil War. Since the focus is on Griffith and his humorous escapades and not the three genuine figures mentioned—each one of whom is treated with the utmost respect—the filmmakers felt no obligation to resort to pseudonyms. Certain legal precedents allowed films to offer romanticized versions of true persons and events so long as all the names (and sometimes the locations) were changed. Early talkies like Sil- Prince Felix and Princess Irina Youssoupov—without whom this ver Dollar (1932), based on Col- book might not have been possible.

Introduction

based on Russian aristocrats Prince Youssoupov and his wife, Princess Irina, as “Prince Chegodieff ” and “Princess Natasha.” Though MGM argued that the characters were actually composites inspired by several different people (a common legal dodge, then as now), the fact that the film’s Prince Chegodieff was the instigator of the 1916 murder of Rasputin effectively pinned him down as Prince Youssoupov. This didn’t bother the real Youssoupov too much since he was proud of his participation in Rasputin’s demise; but when the film also suggested that “Princess Natasha” had been sexually intimate with Rasputin, it was step too far. Youssoupov sued MGM, not only demanding that Rasputin and the Empress be withdrawn from distribution but also that the studio—and all the theaters that had shown the film—pay himself and his wife a hefty sum for damages. Ultimately MGM shelled out a reported $1.1 million to the aggrieved aristocrat, and when after many years in mothballs Rasputin and the Empress resurfaced on TV in the mid–1950s, the film had been radically re-edited to remove all offending scenes. It is often assumed that American motion pictures began using the famous disclaimer “Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental” (or words to that effect) immediately after the Rasputin debacle. In fact, the disclaimer did not go into common usage until 1936, and even then the wording was not always the same. Prior to that year it was not unusual for a film to state at the outset that the facts had been tinkered with for dramatic license. Witness the 1934 “biopic” The Mighty Barnum, which states outright that there’s more fiction than fact in store for the audience. But in the wake of Rasputin the legal terminology became less jocular and more solemn—and much more precise. The Gentleman from Louisiana, released by Republic Pictures on August 17, 1936, is inspired by the life of Tod Sloan (1874–1933), the “Yankee doodle dandy” American jockey who’d previously

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served as role model for the title character in George M. Cohan’s 1903 Broadway musical Little Johnny Jones. Hedging all bets, Republic’s legal department saw to it that the film included the following disclaimer: “This story opens in Louisiana over forty years ago. Although suggested by the career of the late Tod Sloan, all events and all characters, except Diamond Jim Brady, Steve Brodie and John L. Sullivan, are fictitious. Any similarity to any person or event is purely coincidental.” Additionally, Sloan himself is renamed Tod Mason. Other 1936 historical films streamlined this sort of disclaimer: Beloved Enemy, inspired in part by the exploits of Irish insurrectionist Michael Collins (1890–1922), opens with “This story is not taken from history. Rather, it is legend inspired by fact and all characters are fictional.” Sometimes the measures taken by major studios to avoid possible legal repercussions bordered on the absurd: Hollywood columnists derived a great deal of enjoyment from the “Any resemblance to actual persons” disclaimer at the beginning of the 1938 biopic Marie Antoinette. Another common assumption is that the disclaimer was mandatory on all post–Rasputin and the Empress productions. In truth, the decision whether to use a disclaimer was made by the individual studio’s legal department on a picture-by-picture basis. Occasionally some appalling lapses in judgment occurred, notably when in 1941 RKO-Radio released Citizen Kane, largely inspired by the life of powerful publisher William Randolph Hearst, with no disclaimer of any kind. Nor did the inclusion of such legalese automatically safeguard a studio from lawsuits: Despite the opening disclaimer of Sing Baby Sing (1936), transparently based on the December–May romance of actor John Barrymore and starlet Elaine Barrie, Barrymore nonetheless issued dire warnings that he’d dispatch a team of attorneys to Fox’s doorstep. Evidently all that stopped the actor from taking the studio to court was the ridicule heaped upon him by the

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Hollywood trade papers, who correctly pointed out that Barrymore had by 1936 become such a public spectacle that nothing could possibly further tarnish his reputation. Even so, studios that had not originally included a disclaimer in their credits increasingly found it wise to do so, sometimes inserting the words into those credits just before the film was released, as witness 1937’s They Won’t Forget and 1939’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. On the whole, filmmakers regarded the disclaimer as a nuisance, with some going so far as to mock the practice onscreen. Among the first to poke fun at the requisite legal gobbledygook was the comedy team of Laurel and Hardy, whose 1938 film Block-Heads features a separate introductory title personally signed by the two stars: “The events and characters depicted in this photoplay are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental, and not our fault!” The spate of post–1939 films lampooning Adolf Hitler inspired producers to make light of the disclaimer to an even greater extent. Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940), which in part hinges on mistaken-identify complications involving Hitlerlike despot Adenoid Hynkle and a humble Jewish barber (both played by Chaplin, of course) opens gratuitously with “Note: any resemblance between Hynkle the Dictator and the Jewish Barber is purely co-incidental.” In the same vein, the hilarious Hitler parodies of the Three Stooges, featuring lead Stooge Moe Howard as “Moe Hailstone of Moronika,” both get under way by assuring the audience that any resemblance to actual persons “is a miracle” (You Nazty Spy, 1940) and that those actual persons “are better off dead” (I’ll Never Heil Again, 1941). And animation director Tex Avery’s 1942 cartoon The Blitz Wolf, featuring a Hitler caricature in the traditional Big Bad Wolf role, characteristically takes the joke to its outermost limits: “Foreword: The Wolf in this photoplay is NOT fictitious. Any similarity between this Wolf and that (*!!♦≈%) jerk Hitler is purely intentional!”

One of the most delightful satires of the boilerplate disclaimer appears in Paramount’s 1941 movie version of Irving Berlin’s 1940 Broadway musical Louisiana Purchase. Both film and play open with an attorney warning the musical’s producers that they won’t get away with satirizing political corruption in New Orleans unless they state from the outset that the story is purely fictional and any relation to actual persons unintentional—and that both New Orleans and Louisiana are imaginary locales. This segues into a colorful production number with dozens of chorus girls cheerfully singing the standard disclaimer, with such rhyming lyrics as “fiction” and “restriction.” Show-business buffs can derive additional fun from the knowledge that Paramount had to go even farther than the original Broadway version to cover their backside. In the play, the lawyer who talk-sings his legal instructions to the producers is identified as Sam Liebowitz, also the name of one of Manhattan’s leading criminal-defense attorneys. In the film adaptation of Louisiana Purchase, the character’s name is changed to Sam Horowitz. Though such capriciousness is rare in dramatic films, it does occur from time to time. If your eyes are good enough to read the teenytiny disclaimer in Val Lewton’s 1943 thriller I Walked with a Zombie, you’ll notice that the last sentence of the disclaimer has been slightly revised: “Any similarity to any persons, living, dead, OR POSSESSED, is entirely coincidental.” Evidently the producers of An American Werewolf in London (1981) and Michael Jackson’s music video Thriller (1984) were Val Lewton fans, since both efforts close with the strikingly similar “any persons living, dead or undead.” A far more serious, intense and politically motivated rewriting of the basic disclaimer in Costa-Gavras’ fact-based melodrama Z (1969) is cited in the entry for Grigoris Lambrakis in this book. The reasons for avoiding actual names in films inspired by true events are manifold, going beyond the aforementioned libel, slan-

Introduction

der, character defamation and invasion of privacy. Even in cases wherein a person has signed a release allowing himself or herself to be dramatized onscreen, some have requested that their names not be used, usually for reasons entirely their own. Occasionally such people have been upset to the point of summoning attorneys even after signing off on the film version, requiring the producers to prove that any inferred negativity displayed by the real person’s fictional counterpart was not written with intentional malice. The preemptive measure of avoiding litigation by making the actual person a technical advisor on the film inspired by his/her life also has its shortcomings, especially when the person feels that the film in question was misrepresented to them in the negotiation process or re-edited after the fact to distort the truth. And because of a major change in California law in 1984, the “right of publicity” extends to the descendants of deceased persons—meaning that technically a person long dead can sue over being dramatized on film unless money crosses the palms of the Living. And now we’re getting into the tall weeds of legal interpretation, which is not the purpose of this book. Besides, an excellent and concise study of the many legalities pertaining to “fictional-factual” movies has been written and is highly recommended by this author: Truth and Lives on Film: The Legal Problems of Depicting Real Persons and Events in a Fictional Medium, by John Aquino (McFarland, 2005). Suffice to say that with lawsuits and specialinterest-group pressure increasing astronomically with each passing year, the “Any resemblance etc.” disclaimer has been augmented to include such qualifiers as “any resemblance to persons, places or institutions,” “No animals were harmed during the making of this picture,” and a rather cumbersomely worded assurance that the cigarettes smoked on-screen do not represent any sort of product placement.

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What’s in the Book My hopes of making this book all-inclusive were dashed early on, so I had to make a few concessions. The real-life people analyzed herein are listed alphabetically. You will find 220 primary entries covering nearly 400 individuals. These people, I believe, hold the most interest for the reader, and like most such decisions it is entirely subjective. Likewise a matter of personal choice are 80 shorter entries; these thumbnail sketches deal with those personalities whom I deemed worthy of mention, but not to the extent of the primary entries. In my obligatory setting of limitations, only one self-imposed rule is intractable. The films referenced in the text are all theatrical releases; there are no made-for-TV or direct-tovideo movies unless they also received a theatrical release. In this same spirit, I have eliminated all television series: Imagine how bloated this book might have been had I itemized all of the à clef characters on the longrunning weekly series Law and Order. Fictional characters introduced in novels or plays that have subsequently been depicted on screen are, however, included herein when appropriate. To keep the text to a manageable length, I had intended to eliminate all non–Englishlanguage films (a rich field for further research) and all films in which the author of the piece has included himself under a nom de plume or other pseudonym. I’d also planned to avoid “composite” characters with individual characteristics drawn from several different actual people, and additionally edit out fictional characters appearing in otherwise fact-based biopics (e.g., “Julie Gibson,” the lawyer-dictated Ruby Keeler substitute in 1946’s The Jolson Story). As you will see, I have occasionally had to ignore these restrictions, though not to any great extent. Finally, my original intention of listing every instance in which a famous person is impersonated or parodied, even fleetingly, had

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to go by the wayside. The takeoffs of Liberace in the Bowery Boys’ High Society (1955), John Ford in The Wings of Eagles (1957), Marlon Brando in Bells are Ringing (1960), Sir Lew Grade in The Muppet Movie (1979), Al Pacino in Lovesick (1983), Walt Disney in National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), Wally “Famous” Amos in The Stuff (1985), and Jacques Cousteau in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) are all amusing, but in my humble opinion not substantial enough to warrant extensive discussion.

A few paragraphs back, I mentioned that there is a vast array of reasons—legal and otherwise—that actual people appear under fabricated names in certain films. Let me assure the reader that if those reasons are compelling enough to be mentioned in detail in this book, the opportunity will not pass. I can be just as long-winded as the next fellow … whose name is entirely fictitious and not meant to represent any actual person living or dead.

THE REAL PERSONS How to Use This Book

Artists, 1946); Chunnel (Titanic Productions/DWI LLC Inc./Universal, 1984). Cross-referencing applies only to the names of actual people, not the character names or the films in which those characters appeared. These can be found in bold, most often appearing in this form: (see separate entry for Stanley H. Bimp) or (see separate entry). If a name is cited for cross-referencing within the text, it will be the first name listed in the heading of the appropriate entry: e.g., Vincent Alo is the first name listed in the entry covering most of the factual and fictional characters in The Godfather (1972). Generally if a name is in bold it’s meant to be crossreferenced. But not always: In the aforementioned Vincent Alo entry, the fictional characters cited within are listed in bold and italics. Conversely, in the entry covering The Great Escape (1963) headed with the name Per Bergsland, the names of the actual people fictionalized in the film are listed in bold.

The entries are listed alphabetically by the last names of the “real” people fictionalized on film, not by the character names. Each entry is headed by the name or names of the person(s) covered therein. For example, if the entry concerns someone named Stanley H. Bimp, the heading will consist of his name in bold small caps: STANLEY H. BIMP. Several entries cover more than one actual person; these names are listed alphabetically in the heading. Occasionally the billing order will seem a bit odd: Though “Bonnie and Clyde” is the accepted manner of identifying these two famous outlaws, in their entry heading CLYDE BARROW comes first alphabetically, followed by BONNIE PARKER. The main entry headings are followed by a list of the most significant films in which the real person is fictionalized. Some such lists have only one title, while others will have several. In the latter case the films are listed in order of release. Each title is followed by the name of the production company and release date, in bold italics, and within parentheses. To cite the fictional Stanley H. Bimp again, let’s say that only one film is listed. If so, it would be identified thusly: The Burning Passion (RKORadio, 1935). If our imaginary Mr. Bimp is fictionalized in more than one film, the listing would read as follows: The Burning Passion (RKO-Radio, 1935); Goose-Stepping Down Broadway ( Jonathan Shields Prod./United

ACOSTA , OSCAR “ZETA” The films: Where the Buffalo Roam (Universal, 1980); Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Fear and Loathing LLC/Rhino Films/Shark Productions/ Summit Entertainment/Universal, 1998)

This entry is about “Gonzo,” though not about famed gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. Even so, a few words about the gentleman might be appropriate. Going into journalism after a tumultuous youth, Thompson settled in Aspen, Colorado, in his mid–20s. His 1966 breakthrough book Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang gained

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him fame for his willingness to “live” his story by actually riding with the Angels for the better part of a year. It was the beginning of new style of journalism which Thompson called “gonzo,” wherein he not only became part of the story he was covering but also a central character. Adopting the literary alter ego “Raoul Duke,” Thompson starred himself in a roman à clef published in 1971 as a two-part Rolling Stone magazine article, then in novel form a year later as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. The novel combined two journeys Thompson had made to Vegas in the company of El Paso–born attorney, novelist and politician Oscar “Zeta” Acosta. A major mover and shaker of Chicano activism in East Los Angeles, Acosta had met Thompson in 1967, beginning a relationship for which the term “love-hate” is a bit too benign. Within the next four years Acosta became a celebrity in his own right, running for sheriff under the Raza Unida Party and defending six “brown beret” activists who had set a fire at the Biltmore Hotel during a visit by then-governor Reagan. He made his bow as a Thompson “character” in another Rolling Stone article, “Strange Rumblings in Aztlan,” a probe of journalist Ruben Salazar’s death at the hands of a Los Angeles County sheriff ’s deputy during the 1970 National Chicano Moratorium. Not only were Thompson and Acosta on the same page politically, but they also shared a fondness for working on multiple projects simultaneously, living life in the fastest lane possible, and consuming mass quantities of hallucinogens. While polishing up the Salazar piece in March 1971, Thompson suggested that he and Ocasta take a trip to Las Vegas, where they could discuss the racial tensions of East L.A. while Thompson covered the annual Mint 400 road race for Sports Illustrated. Their second Vegas excursion was in late April, with the two men attending the National District Attorneys Association’s Conference on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Thompson wanted to use the conference to expand his Mint 400 article into another of his essays on the state of the union; Acosta seems to have gone along for the food, drinks, and endless

flow of drugs, with LSD and amphetamines in the forefront. Masterfully blending fact, fiction and narcotic-induced fantasy, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas featured two protagonists: Thompson clone Raoul Duke and Duke’s attorney Dr. Gonzo. To avoid any libelous comparisons between Gonzo and Acosta, Thompson described the fictional doctor as a “Samoan or something” who weighed in at 300 pounds. At first insulted, Acosta granted legal clearance on the proviso that his own photograph appear on the book’s dustjacket. Perhaps the success of Fear and Loathing inspired Acosta to give up his career as a civil rights attorney and devote himself to writing books full-time, resulting in such titles as Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo and Revolt of the Cockroach People. In May 1974, Oscar “Zeta” Acosta embarked upon a trip to Mazatlan, Mexico. He never returned. Though no body was found, Acosta has been presumed dead ever since. Hunter S. Thompson’s public response to his friend’s apparent demise came in October 1977 as an irreverent obituary in Rolling Stone, “The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat.” This served as the source for the first motion picture inspired by Thompson’s writings, Where the Buffalo Roam, a lighthearted recounting of the author’s rise to fame. Played by Bill Murray, the Thompson character retains the writer’s real name without the “Raoul Duke” dodge. Told in flashback, the film begins with Thompson struggling to complete an article about his onetime attorney, an explosive radical who has vanished from sight. With corpulent, combustible Peter Boyle cast as the attorney, and with an introductory scene finding him making a shambles of a courtroom where he is defending a group of kids on a pot-possession charge, all the ducks are in a row for a bravura depiction of the politically charged, drug-fueled Oscar “Zeta” Acosta. Only he doesn’t go by that name, nor by Thompson’s preferred Acosta alias Dr. Gonzo. Inasmuch as the character is drawn not only as a rabblerouser but also a gun smuggler and insurrectionist, screenwriter John Kaye felt it wise to rechristen him “Carl Lazlo, Esq.” And since Where the Buffalo Roam is not meant to be taken seriously,

Adams-Young Thompson and Lazlo behave less like comrades in arms and more like a comedy team. In his review for the St. Petersburg Independent, Jim Moorehead suggested that Peter Boyle’s interpretation of Carl Lazlo, Esq., was a comedy team in itself, “a cross between Gene Shalit and Ben Turpin.” The “Dr. Gonzo” version of Oscar Acosta finally hit the screen in the 1998 film adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, starring Johnny Depp as the properly renamed Raoul Duke. An earlier animated cartoon version in the style of the novel’s illustrator Ralph Steadman had been planned by Ralph Bakshi, but he was unable to win over the holder of the story rights. That person’s objection to turning the novel into a cartoon became moot when the film was ultimately scripted and directed by onetime Monty Python animator Terry Gilliam, who had been turning out live-action cartoons for most of his career. In this same spirit, Johnny Depp delivers a performance that would have done Bugs Bunny proud. Though still identified as Samoan, the film’s Dr. Gonzo is played by Puerto Rican actor Benicio del Toro, who makes a meal of the scenes in which he snorts coke at the DA convention and chug-a-lugs mescaline and diethyl ether. Because Thompson’s depiction of Gonzo is somewhat sketchy, del Toro did a great deal of his own research on the real Acosta. Even so, the film gives lip service to protecting Acosta’s reputation, albeit with such fleeting hints to the character’s true identity as the Cesar Chavez poster on his bedroom wall. And in keeping with the 300-pound bulk Thompson imposed upon Gonzo, del Toro dutifully gained 45 pounds to play the role. A legitimate biopic of Oscar “Zeta” Acosta, perhaps from one of the Spanish-language cable TV outlets, would be most welcome. As for now, the comic excesses of Dr. Gonzo and Carl Lazlo, Esq., will have to fill the gap.

A DAMS -YOUNG, N ATASHA— AND JESSE JAMES H OLLYWOOD, JACK H OLLYWOOD, RYAN HOYT, BENJAMIN M ARKOWITZ , JEFF MARKOWITZ, NICHOLAS MARKOWITZ, SUSAN

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MARKOWITZ, GRAHAM PRESSLEY, JOHN ROBERTS, JESSE RUGGE, CHAS SAULSBURY, WILLIAM SKIDMORE The film: Alpha Dog (Sidney Kimmel Entertainment/Universal, 2007)

Strange as it seems, Jesse James Hollywood was the man’s real name. As a star high school athlete in the West Hills section of Los Angeles, Jesse developed a taste for muscle supplements that quickly became a dependency, and it wasn’t long before he was displaying a violent, potentially dangerous temper. Transferring from Camino Real to Calabasas High School in 1995, he was forced to give up athletics due to a back injury. But Jesse had already found another calling in life: selling marijuana to friends and fellow students. A born organizer, he gathered together several other West Hills teens into a drug operation. So successful were Jesse and his crew that by the time he was 19 years old in 1999, he was able to purchase his own house. Among those following Hollywood’s orders was his best friend Ben Markowitz, who in his own way was just as maladjusted as Jesse—perhaps more so. Each boy fed off the other’s rage until they became bitter rivals, haggling over who was the real “alpha dog” of the drug ring. The breaking point was a $1200 debt that Ben owed Jesse but refused to pay back, an act of defiance with tragic ramifications. On August 6, 2000, Hollywood and fellow pot-pushers Jesse Rugge and William Skidmore spotted Ben’s halfbrother Nick Markowitz wandering along the street. A plot was hatched on the spot to kidnap Nick and hold him for ransom, forcing Ben to square his debt. Chasing Nick down, the boys stuffed the 15-year-old into a van and sped away—while back at home, Nick’s mother Susan began to wonder if the boy had made good his threat to run away from home. Nick seemingly had no reason to believe that his captors meant him any harm. They spent the evening hauling their captive from one neighborhood party to another, getting high and hanging out with girls—one of whom, a 17-yearold who became friendly with Nick, could not help but wonder why if he was being held prisoner he didn’t ask for her help. Nor did he solicit

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aid from the 32 other revellers who knew about the “snatch” but chose not to interfere. Meanwhile, an increasingly nervous Jesse James Hollywood had contacted his family lawyer, asking vague questions about the penalty for kidnapping. Suddenly aware of the terrible consequences should Nick ever snitch to the police, Jesse got hold of Ryan Hoyt, a member of his crew who owed him $200, and told him he’d forget the debt if Hoyt killed Nick—thoughtfully providing Ryan with the weapon to finish the job. It turned out to be a grotesquely savage murder, and when it was all over Jesse and his buddies hid Nick’s body in a shallow grave, the gun tucked between his legs. The entreaties of Susan Markowitz to locate her missing son, combined with tips both open and anonymous regarding the whereabouts of kidnappers and victim, led the police to unearth the corpse and arrest most of the culprits. Jesse James Hollywood had skipped to parts unknown and was sentenced in absentia, the devastated Susan posting a $50,000 reward for his capture. Five years would pass before Hollywood, going by the alias Michael Costa Giroux, was arrested along with his pregnant girlfriend in Brazil. Jesse Rugge and William Skidmore, together with accomplice Graham Pressley (who dug Nick’s grave), all received prison terms and have since been released; triggerman Ryan Hoyt was given the death penalty; and in 2009, Jesse James Hollywood was sentenced to life without parole. Hollywood’s trial had been delayed for over two years because of the January 2007 release of director Nick Cassavetes’ Alpha Dog, an inyour-face film adaptation of the Markowitz murder. Alpha Dog was in post- production when news of Hollywood’s arrest was announced, necessitating a hastily reshot ending. In the completed film all names are changed, the events pushed back a year to 1999, and the West Hills locale shifted to Claremont and Palm Springs— “for purposes of dramatization,” read the disclaimer. But some facts were too dramatic, or poignant, to mess with: As in real life, the foredoomed kidnap victim cheerfully proclaims that his experience “is a story I can tell my grandkids.”

Most media attention was focused on the offbeat casting of Sharon Stone as Olivia Mazursky, the raw-nerved mother of the Nick Markowitz counterpart Zack Mazursky (played by Anton Yelchin); and, in his big-screen debut, singing idol Justin Timberlake as Frankie Ballenbacher, the “Jesse Rugge” of the piece, who for the purposes of the film (and Timberlake’s image) is virtually the only drug-ring member with a semblance of conscience. Also in the cast are Emile Hirsch as Johnny Truelove, the film’s baby-faced spin on Jesse James Hollywood; Bruce Willis as Johnny’s unsavory dad Sonny ( Jack Hollywood); Ben Foster as loose cannon Jake Mazursky (Ben Markowitz); David Thornton as Butch Mazursky (Ben’s father Jeff ); Shawn Hatosy as triggerhappy Elvis Schmidt (Ryan Hoyt); Fernando Vargas as “TKO” Martinez (William Skidmore); Chris Marquette as Keith Stratten (Graham Pressley); Dominique Swain as Susan Hartanian (Natasha Adams-Young, who after the murder angrily confronted Rugge with her suspicions); Harry Dean Stanton as Cosmo Gadabetti ( John Roberts, whose van was used in the kidnapping); Lukas Haas as Buzz Fecske (Chas Saulsbury, who’d tried to help Hollywood escape); and Amanda Seyfried as Julie (based on “Jeanine,” the girl who’d briefly made friends with Ken in mid-abduction). Ronald J. Zonen, the Santa Barbara Deputy DA in charge of the case, did not have a specific counterpart in Alpha Dog. This is just as well, considering the conflict-of-interest charge levelled against Zonen for giving the filmmakers access to documents about the crime while still prosecuting the defendants—nearly resulting in Zonen’s recusal from the case. “It’s not like they’re calling it ‘The Jesse James Hollywood Story,’” mused William Skidmore’s lawyer H. Russell Halperin to MTV’s Jennifer Vineyard. “People have short memories, and without publicity, people won’t make the connection. But I don’t know what Zonen was thinking, handing over the files. It was stupid.” Subsequent efforts by Jesse James Hollywood’s attorneys to prevent the release of Alpha Dog were unsuccessful. Equally (and providentially) unsuccessful were several suicide attempts

Ajar by Nick Markowitz’s mother Susan, who never got over the loss of her son and was understandably hesitant to see the film. But Susan did attend the L.A. premiere, and had nothing but praise for Sharon Stone’s gut- wrenching performance.

A JAR , J ONATHAN “JOHNNY DANGER OUS”—AND COURTNEY A MES, ANDREA ARLINGTON, R ACHEL JUNGEON LEE, ROY LOPEZ

JR ., ALEXIS NEIERS, G ABBY NEIERS, NICHOLAS PRUGO, TESS TAYLOR The film: The Bling Ring (American Zoetrope/ NALA Films/Pathé Distributors/StudioCanal/ TOBIS Film/Tohokushina Film Corporation/ A24, 2013)

Between October 2008 and August 2009, $3 million worth of clothing, jewelry, shoes, accessories, cosmetics and other high-end items were stolen from the suburban L.A. mansions of such celebrities as Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Orlando Bloom, Brian Austin Green and Megan Fox. The thieves were neither hardened criminals nor impoverished scroungers. They were teenagers, mostly born into wealth and privilege. They stole not for profit but for the thrill of being in close proximity with the Rich and Famous. They called themselves “The Burglar Bunch”; the L.A. media called them the Bling Ring. Ringleader Rachel Jungeon Lee harbored dreams of owning her own designer wardrobe and living the life of a media star. She and her best bud Diane Tamayo were problem kids attending an alternate school. Having already been pinched for shoplifting, they enjoyed a favored status with their fellow students, among them lonely gay teenager Nick Prugo. Also fascinated by Rachel and Diane was Alexis Neiers, the daughter of a Playboy model and a Hollywood cinematographer. Prescription-medicated with Adderall, Alexis saw nothing sinister about supplying her younger sister Gabby and her pal Tess Taylor with the highly stimulating drug. It was Tess who introduced Alexis to Nick Prugo, who in turn invited the girl into Rachel and Diane’s private circle. Together with Diane’s chum Courtney Ames, this merry band spent their days on the social network and their nights

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cruising the freeway and partying at Les Deux, where nightclub promoter Jonathan “Johnny Dangerous” Ajar, Courtney’s boyfriend, always sneaked the underaged kids a few drinks. Throughout their revelry, the teenagers prattled on about their favorite stars and dissed those luminaries who seemed to have risen to the top without any discernable talent. Like Alexis Neiers’ personal obsession, hotel heiress Paris Hilton. When Rachel Lee formulated her plan to rob celebrity houses, Hilton was chosen as the first victim because she had indicated when she’d be out of her home on her website—and was “dumb” enough to leave her front door unlocked. Sneaking into chez Hilton with the greatest of ease, the Burglar Bunch agreed not to steal so much that Paris would notice; they also took their sweet time wandering through the luxurious surroundings, trying on as many of Paris’ outfits and cosmetics as possible. This and later excursions into unprotected homes were all in fun at first, and might have remained so had not “Johnny Dangerous” Ajar wanted a piece of the action. Though never participating in the robberies, Ajar forced the kids to turn over a portion of their loot so that he and Les Deux bouncer Roy Lopez, Jr., could fence it for cash. It was inevitable that the Bunch’s recklessness would get them arrested; what’s astonishing is that it took so long. The kids had always wanted to star on TV, but hadn’t planned to make their video debut on actress Audrina Partridge’s surveillance camera. Though the heat was on, Rachel couldn’t resist one last heist in the home of Lindsay Lohan. Nick Prugo proudly boasted of this caper on Facebook, making the same tactical error as millions of others: Tell Facebook, and you tell the world. When the police hauled Nick in, he not only confessed to his known crimes but also gave details about crimes no one knew anything about. While all this was happening, Alexis Neiers was busy assembling a realityTV series for the E!Entertainment network in the manner of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. She and her family were in the midst of taping the pilot episode of Pretty Wild in their living room when the cops arrived and placed her

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under arrest—as the family dutifully photographed the event and the round-robin discussion they held afterward. Falling all over themselves confessing and blaming each other for leading them astray, the key players in this wacko drama pleaded no contest to the charges against them. Some ended up serving short prison sentences, others received probation and were forced to do community service. All but one had been released by the time that the first of two à clef films bearing the title The Bling Ring was telecast on the Lifetime network in 2011; and none was still serving time when the second The Bling Ring, a theatrical feature directed by Sofia Coppola, was released in 2013. Both films were largely based upon “The Suspects Wore Loubotins,” a February 2010 Vanity Fair article by Nancy Jo Sales that she would later expand into a book, also titled The Bling Ring. Alexis Neiers was ticked off by Sales’ account of the events, not so much because it opened old wounds but because the author had been one of the invited guests on Alexis’ postprison TV reality series (yes, she got what she wanted after all). The TV-movie version of The Bling Ring, told from the POV of the Nick Prugo character “Zach Garvey,” will not be analyzed. The Sofia Coppola version is vastly superior, thanks in great part to her staging many of the highlights—notably the first burglary, lensed in the actual home of Paris Hilton—in the style of a reality-TV program, replete with unsteady camerawork and inane comments by the youthful miscreants. Coppola’s grasp of vapid teenage jargon is remarkable, enhancing the brilliant performance by Emma Watson as the film’s Alexis Neiers counterpart Nicki Moore. No less adept at capturing the voices and likenesses of their real-life role models are Katie Chang as Rebecca (Rachel Lee), Israel Broussard as Marc (Nick Prugo), Claire Julien as Chloe (Courtney Ames), Gavin Rossdale as Ricky (“Johnny Dangerous”), Taissa Farmiga as Sam (Tess Taylor), Georgia Rock as Emily (Gabby Neiers), Carlos Miranda as Rob (Roy Lopez, Jr.) and Leslie Mann as Laurie (Alexis’ mother Andrea Arlington). But no one’s performance was quite as spot-on as authentic

LAPD officer Brett Goodkin as “himself,” who in addition to acting in the film served as technical advisor—and got into a heap of trouble for doing so because he was still working on the case. Sofia Coppola would have been hard pressed to dream up anything as surreal as what actually happened, thus there isn’t much in the film that digresses from the facts. Admittedly, Alexis didn’t really walk into the courtroom wearing Louboutins as Nicki Moore does, but otherwise even the film’s most bizarre vignettes were drawn from life, right down to Rebecca/Rachel enthusiastically squealing “What did Lindsay say?” while being interrogated about the Lohan robbery. And just as the Bling Ring–ers never truly exhibited a full grasp of the severity of their crimes and continued basking in the glow of sharing space with celebrities (just listen to some of their later interviews), The Bling Ring concludes with a TV host asking the recently released Nicki Moore what it was like to be incarcerated in the same jail as her former victim Lindsay Lohan, who was serving time on a DUI charge. Neither Nicki nor the host can stop gushing about the fabulous Ms. Lohan, and the scene concludes with Nicki turning to the camera that she loves so much and paraphrasing Alexis Neiers’ assertion that “I was meant to bring truth to the situation”—hastening to add “You can find out all about me, and my journey, at NickiMooreForever.com.”

ALLEN, EUGENE The film: Lee Daniels’ The Butler (AI-Film/Follow Through Productions/Salamander Films/ Laura Ziskin Productions/Lee Daniels Entertainment/Pam Williams Productions/Windy Hill Pictures, 2013)

Three days after the historic 2008 election of America’s first black president, Will Haygood of the Washington Post wrote the article “A Butler Well Served by This Election.” It was a concise history of the evolution of Washington race relations framed by the reminiscences of 89-yearold Eugene Allen, who between 1952 and 1988 rose from the rank of White House “pastry man” to the coveted position of head butler, or maître d’hotel, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Like most

Allen black men who grew up in the depths of the segregation era, Allen had endured the usual racial indignities but never let them get him down: “I was always hoping things would get better.” To Allen, the election of Barack Obama was the fulfillment of that hope. After working as a waiter at various country clubs and resorts in the D.C.–Virginia area during the 1940s and 1950s, Allen learned from a lady customer that a position might be open at the White House. Ultimately he would serve under eight presidents, from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan. Allen proudly proclaimed “I never missed a day at work,” even on the day of John F. Kennedy’s funeral service; though invited to attend, he felt that someone had to be on staff “to serve everyone after the funeral.” He also took pride in the fact that he’d shaken hands with every president for whom he’d worked. While the relationship between Allen and the chief executive varied depending on the man in the Oval Office, most of them treated him warmly. Dwight Eisenhower discussed their mutual fondness for TV’s The Nat King Cole Show; Lyndon Johnson made occasional profane racist remarks, but earned Allen’s admiration by signing the Civil Rights bill; and because he and Gerald Ford shared the same birthday, Betty Ford never let a birthday party for her husband pass without also honoring Allen in song. After his retirement in 1988, Allen was increasingly impressed that people like Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice were growing closer to the center of power. Upon the ascension of Barack Obama in 2008, the former head butler could not have been more thrilled and gratified. The only pall cast upon Obama’s election was that Helene Allen, Eugene’s wife of 65 years, died one day before she could cast her vote. The Washington Post article thrust celebrity upon the mild, self- effacing Eugene Allen. Though he refused all entreaties to write an autobiography, he appeared in the 2009 DVD documentary Workers at the White House, and not long before his death in 2010 he sold Columbia Pictures the rights to his life story. Over the next three years the Weinstein company acquired distribution rights to the property, with Lee

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Daniels as director and Daniel Strong as screenwriter. Despite a production history fraught with delays caused by funding shortages, the ravages of Tropical Storm Isaac, and a hassle over title rights inaugurated by Warner Bros., Lee Daniels’ The Butler (the director’s name was added to mollify Warners) premiered in 2013. As Daniels has explained, “While the movie The Butler is set against historical events, the title character and his family are fictionalized. We were able to borrow some extraordinary moments from Eugene’s real life to weave into the movie.” Writer Daniel Strong insisted that he’d captured the “essence” of Eugene Allen while molding a fictional protagonist. So it is that Forrest Whitaker stars not as Allen but as lifelong domestic worker Cecil Gaines, with Oprah Winfrey as his wife Gloria and both Isaac White and Elijah Kelly as their son Charlie (based on the real-life Charles Allen). The U.S. presidents characterized in the film are allowed to keep their own names, though the casting choices (Robin Williams as Eisenhower, John Cusack as Nixon, Alan Rickman as Reagan etc.) exhibit less “essence” than box-office insurance. The subtle shadings of Will Haygood’s Post article gave way to the wallpaper-paste brushstrokes of The Butler. While it’s true that Eugene Allen grew up on a white-owned plantation— in West Virginia, not the film’s Georgia—his mother was never raped nor his father shot down in cold blood by a brutish landowner (It was explained that these melodramatic excesses were needed to show why the fictional Cecil Gaines was frightened into a life of servitude, as if there was something inherently racist in being a butler). The tragic death of young Charlie Gaines in Vietnam must have come a quite a surprise to the real Charles Allen, who not only survived his Vietnam experience but eventually accepted an important post in the State Department. The fervent black militancy of Cecil’s older son Louis (Daniel Oyelowo), who joins every movement from the Freedom Riders to the Black Panthers and bitterly resents his father’s acquiescence to the white power structure, had no equivalent in the actual story, primarily because Eugene Allen didn’t have an older son.

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And to create an ongoing domestic crisis where none existed, Cecil’s wife Gloria takes out her frustration over her husband’s menial lot in life by cheating on him and drinking like a fish. Perhaps it is a blessing that neither Eugene Allen nor his wife Helene—as above reproach as Caesar’s wife—lived to see the film. Finally, The Butler goes one better than Allen’s biographer Will Haygood by imposing its own political agenda on the proceedings. The film’s beautifully realized climax, in which Nancy Reagan (played without a hint of irony by Jane Fonda) informs Cecil Gaines that he will not be functioning as butler at a reception for German chancellor Helmut Kohl, but instead Cecil and his wife will be among the special guests at the event, is a fairly accurate rendition of the honor bestowed upon Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Allen in 2008. It’s too bad that this uplifting sequence is preceded by the vignette in which Cecil expresses silent disdain as President Reagan refuses to impose sanctions on apartheid South Africa. An executive decision of profound complexity, largedly motivated by concern over the effect that sanctions might have on South Africa’s poorest citizens, is minimalized so that Reagan will come off as a closet bigot. Actually, the original Haygood article includes a more blatant example of casual racism on the part of one of Reagan’s predecessors, a man usually treated with Christlike reverence by Hollywood. But somehow Lee Daniels’ The Butler was unable to find room for that incident.

A LO, V INCENT—AND S ALVATORE “BILL” BONANNO, JOSEPH COLOMBO, FRANK COSTELLO, G ASPARE DIGREGORIO, VITO GEN OVESE , TOMMY LUCCHESE , A LBERTO LU CIANO [P OPE J OHN PAUL I], WILLIE MORETTI, FRANK SINATRA The films: The Godfather (Alfran Productions/ Paramount, 1972); The Godfather: Part II (Coppola Company/Paramount 1974); The Godfather: Part III (Zoetrope/Paramount, 1990)

Prior to the astronomical success of his 1970 novel The Godfather, Mario Puzo was a talented hack who wrote mostly for pulp magazines. This sort of bread-and-butter work required Puzo to paint his characters in broad strokes; and given

the tight deadlines in the periodical business, he seldom had time for in-depth research. Although many Godfather fans were convinced that Mario Puzo had special “inside” knowledge about the Mafia, he freely admitted that most of his material and characters were drawn from news articles, popular culture and gangland folklore. As for the distinctive “family” structure of the Mafia and the internal conflicts within the Corleone clan, Puzo was inspired by his own favorite novel, Dostoyevski’s The Brothers Karamazov. Both the bestselling The Godfather and its even more successful Oscar-winning 1972 film version (and its sequels) sparked an international guessing game as to whom the characters were based upon. This speculation has led to a several published tallies of the fictional characters and their (likely) factual counterparts. In Mario Puzo tradition, I must defer to these past listings without any intimate knowledge of the people involved. Let’s get started with the one Godfather character whose source everyone agrees upon. Johnny Fontaine: Even the most primitive tribe in the world’s most backward nation will recognize mob-connected singer Johnny Fontaine (played in the The Godfather by Al Martino) as a thinly disguised Frank Sinatra. Johnny is the first significant character we meet in novel, and his subplot is the first one given any attention in the film, establishing the à clef expectations for all the rest. Puzo rounds out his portrait of Fontaine with a few known facts about Sinatra—his real-life godfather was Frank Costello’s cousin and chief enforcer Willie Moretti—and a couple of urban legends. The first is the story of how Moretti held a gun to the head of bandleader Tommy Dorsey to force him to break his ironclad contract with Sinatra. While it was indeed difficult for Frank to get out of his contract with Tommy, the situation was resolved when Dorsey accepted a $75,000 payoff. The second legend, presented in lurid detail in both novel and film, involves Sinatra landing the coveted role of Maggio in Columbia’s 1953 screen version of James Jones’ From Here to Eternity. Neither Puzo nor writer-director Francis Ford Coppola allow the facts to get in the way of their fantasy

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gang torpedo Solozzo (Al Lettieri) to weaken the iron grip of the Corleone family, Willie Moretti was similarly subjected to what Vito Genovese (fictionalized in The Godfather as the never-seen Emilio Barzini) referred to as a “mercy killing” to diminish the strength of Moretti’s employer Frank Costello. Philip Tattaglia: Solozzo kills Willie Moretti on orders from his boss, Philip Tattaglia (played in the film by Victor Redina). In another Godfather scene, Don Vito Corleone balks at forming an alliance Frank Costello, the original “Godfather” (photograph by Al Aumuller/New York World Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph with the slimy Tattaglia because he deals in prostiCollection, Library of Congress). tutes—no better than a about a severed horse’s head at the foot of movie “pimp” so far as Corleone is concerned. This mogul Jack Woltz’s bed. But whereas Columbia might lead some to assume that Tattaglia is chieftan Harry Cohn (the model for Woltz) ini- based on New York vice lord Lucky Luciano (see tially vetoed Sinatra as Maggio, Cohn also in- separate entry for Thomas E. Dewey), but in sisted upon casting Columbia contractees Rita fact his role model was Tommy Lucchese, who Hayworth and Aldo Ray in the roles ultimately with his associate Vincent Papa oversaw the played by Deborah Kerr and Montgomery Mafia’s prostitution traffic and heroin distribuClift—both of whom landed those roles with tion (likewise detested by the selectively purizero mob intervention. When Sinatra desper- tanical Don Vito). A founding member of the ately lobbied to play Maggio, the film’s director American branch of Sicily’s La Cosa Nostra, Fred Zinnemann, the rest of the cast and prac- Lucchese was like the fictional Tattaglia a reigntically everyone in Hollywood rallied to Frankie’s ing member of the Five Families that ran organside. What eventually won Harry Cohn over was ized crime in Manhattan. To paraphrase Sidney Sinatra’s offer to play the part for $3000, far Greenstreet in Casablanca, as leader of one of below his usual asking price and a pittance for the biggest Mafia operations in postwar Amerany major star at the time. No horses were harmed ica, Lucchese was an influential and respected in the making of this picture. man, a close friend of several high-ranking New Luca Brasi: Before we get off the subject of York City politicians. In both novel and film, Sinatra, let’s discuss his genuine godfather Willie Philip Tattaglia is among those massacred durMoretti, whose Godfather equivalent is silent- ing Michael Corleone’s climactic purge of the but-deadly Luca Brasi, played on screen by 6'6" other New York dons as well as Las Vegas mobLenny Montana. A tactiturn Mike Mazurki type ster Moe Greene, a character based on Bugsy in the movie, Willie Moretti was not quite as Siegel (see separate entry for Virginia Hill). In dull-witted or thuggish in real life, displaying a the film, director Coppola cross-cuts between wry sense of humor when questioned by the Ke- the baptism of Michael’s baby daughter and the fauver Committee hearings on organized crime. ongoing bloodbath outside the church, with Whereas Luca Brasi is strangled and stabbed by Tattaglia machine-gunned in a hotel bedroom

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with one of his own whores. There was no such karma in real life: While Tommy Lucchese did die in bed, it was from a brain tumor at age 67. Salvatore Tessio: The lifelong friend and outwardly loyal capo of Don Vito Corleone, Salvatore Tessio is played by Abe Vigoda in the first Godfather film and, as a young man by John Aprea in The Godfather: Part II. After engineering the assassination of Corleone rival Bruno Tattaglia, Tessio takes Michael Corleone aside at the Don Vito’s funeral to discuss plans for a peace summit with rival Emilio Barzini. Michael senses that someone intends to assassinate him at the summit; what he doesn’t know is that Tessio, angry over past slights from Michael, is masterminding the hit and has been promised the leadership of the Corleone operation once Michael is dead. This scenario is based on the treachery of Gaspare DiGregorio, a trusted capo in the Bonanno crime family and heir apparent to Joe Bonanno. Upset when Joe appointed his own inexperienced son Bill as head of the gang, DiGregorio conspired with other mob leaders to oust his own boss, culminating in an attempted assassination of Bill Bonanno during a “truce” meeting. After Bill managed to escape this attempt and Joe Bonanno emerged from a lengthy seclusion, Joe’s rivals wrote off DiGregorio as a screwup and shut him out of all future endeavors. In the Puzo novel Salvatore Tessio’s execution is only hinted at; in the film we last see him being carted off to his doom. Gaspare DiGregorio himself died of natural causes in 1970, the same year The Godfather was published. Johnny Ola: Played by Dominic Chianese in The Godfather: Part II, Johnny Ola is the righthand man of Miami-based casino kingpin Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg). Roth is a minor character in the Puzo novel, while Ola is a creation of the filmmakers—though he does figure into Puzo’s own published sequel The Godfather Returns. In the film, Ola participates in Roth’s scheme to murder Michael Corleone at his Lake Tahoe estate. An unwitting remark by Michael’s brother Fredo about a previous meeting with Ola reveals that Fredo is a traitor in league with Roth. Before dispatching Fredo himself, Michael

orders the killings of Roth and Ola, though Roth temporarily manages to escape. Johnny Ola’s real-life role model was Vincent Alo, second-incommand to Roth’s living counterpart Meyer Lansky (see separate entry). While Lansky was eminently visible as the owner of several casinos in Florida, Cuba, Las Vegas and the East Coast, Alo kept himself so invisible that many people were unaware of his existence. After a brief prison term for obstruction of justice, Alo accepted a few random jobs as technical advisor for various crime films; he was 96 years old when he peacefully passed away in his Florida home. In addition to Godfather: Part II’s Johnny Ola, Vincent Alo was fictionalized as “Victor Tellegio” (played by Robert De Niro) in American Hustle, a black comedy inspired by the Abscam scandal (see separate entry for Anthony Amoroso, Jr.) Before focusing on the flesh-and-blood inspirations for Michael and Vito Corleone, let’s briefly touch upon two characters who appear only in Coppola’s much-maligned The Godfather: Part III. Mob chieftan Joseph Colombo, who unlike his shadow-dwelling predecessors adored being in full public view, is represented in the third of the Godfather trilogy by Joey Zasa, played by Joe Mantegna. Assuming control of the Corleone mob with Michael’s permission, Zasa’s flamboyant lifestyle assures him ample media coverage; taking advantage of this, he works hard at cleaning up the public image of New York’s Italian-American community. The real Joe Colombo emerged as leader of the powerful Profaci Family in the 1960s, and was so dedicated to removing the Mob onus from his fellow Italian-Americans that he managed to prevent the word “Mafia” from ever being mentioned in the first Godfather film. Just as Michael Corleone grows to resent Zasa, Colombo managed to make such formidable enemies as Carlo Gambino and “Crazy” Joe Gallo (see separate entry), mostly because his ceaseless selfpromotion shed unwelcome light on mob activities. In Godfather: Part III, Joey Zasa is shot down in full view of a street-festival crowd on orders from Michael Corleone’s sister Connie (Talia Shire); the gunman is disguised as a

Alvarez-Belón mounted policeman. In 1971, Joe Colombo was shot and permanently disabled during a rally staged by the Italian-American Civil Rights League, with a man disguised as a priest pulling the trigger. Another fact-based Godfather: Part III character is Cardinal Lamberto, played by Raf Vallone. The leading candidate to replace Pope Paul VI, Lamberto is warned of mob-related improprieties at the Vatican Bank by Michael Corleone. Upon his election as Pontiff, Lamberto takes the name John Paul I and launches an investigation of the bank, prompting the corrupt chief accountant and his accomplices to murder the new Pope. In this respect, Godfather III goes full “Oliver Stone” by rehashing one of the many conspiracy theories surrounding the sudden death of the real John Paul I, 33 days after his election in 1978. Which brings us to the Big Kahunas themselves, Corleone père and fils. Played in all three Godfather films by Al Pacino, Michael Corleone initially wants no part of the Mob. His father Don Vito feels the same way and pushes Michael towards a normal, honest life by sending him to law school. The circumstances in the novel and first film—among them his dad’s attempted assassination and ultimate death from heart failure—force Michael to change his mind, and by the end of The Godfather he has been anointed successor to his father’s throne. This could pass as the life story of Salvatore “Bill” Bonanno, whose father Joe never intended his son to follow in his footsteps and similarly financed Bill’s law-school education. But when Joe bowed to the inevitable and appointed Bill as the head of his organization, the die was cast. Unlike Michael, who is very much his own man, Bill was regarded by other mobsters as Charlie McCarthy to Joe Bonanno’s Edgar Bergen. Also, while Michael Corleone prefers to keep a low profile, Bill Bonanno eagerly offered his “expertise” to various low-budget movie producers as a gangland technical consultant. And so we’ve come to Don Vito Corleone, the role that made Marlon Brando the first actor to win an Oscar by stuffing cotton in his cheeks. While it’s true that Joseph Bonanno appointed

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his own son to lead his criminal empire, that Joseph Profaci ran an olive-oil business as a front, and that Carlo Gambino was the boss of bosses during the period that Mario Puzo was writing The Godfather, the character of Don Vito owes his existence primarily to Frank Costello, aka the “Prime Minister.” The raspy voice, the political connections, the subdivision of New York’s crime families into five districts, the singular code of honor, the abhorrence of unnecessary bloodshed, the peace-keeping consolidations and compromises, the quiet humility and acts of generosity, the remarkable resilience in the face of numerous assassination attempts— all these and more add up to Frank Costello. Lest any doubts still linger, we’ll repeat what has been reported in dozens of sources: While preparing for his role in The Godfather, Marlon Brando studied kinescopes of Costello’s infamous “hands only” appearances before the Kefauver Committee (For the record, when Robert De Niro played the younger Vito in Godfather: Part II, his research included the 1915 film The Italian, starring George Beban as a Corleone-esque immigrant). Like Don Vito Corleone, Frank Costello lived long and prospered, passing away from a heart attack in his Manhattan home. It would have been a nice touch if he’d had the presence of mind to stick fang-shaped orange peels in his mouth just before breathing his last, but you can’t have everything.

THE ALVAREZ -BELÓN FAMILY The film: The Impossible (Apaches Entertainment/Telecino Cinema/Summit 2012)

“Suddenly we heard a horrible sound, like the sound of thousands of big planes. Seconds later there was a black wall in front of us. I thought it was death. I couldn’t imagine it was water. It was a monster. The most horrible monster you can imagine.” This was the first of many indelible memories that Spanish vacationer Maria Belón would retain of December 26, 2004. A few minutes earlier, Maria and her doctor husband Enrique Alvarez had been two of the many tourists enjoying Christmas week on the Thai island of Phuket in the Andaman Sea. While her sons

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Lucas (age 10), Tomas (age 8) and Simon (age 5) were splashing away in the swimming pool of the Orchid Hotel in Khao Lak, Maria was sitting at poolside, peacefully reading a novel. The notion that the third-largest underwater earthquake in history would literally tear the AlvarezBelón family apart in a matter of seconds was the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. Yet suddenly there it was—a massive wall of water, the opening deluge of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami that would claim the lives of nearly 250,000 people in 14 countries. Thrown against the collapsing façade of the Orchid Hotel by the force of the wave, Maria remained submerged for three minutes. When she finally surfaced, all she could see in the surging waters around her were tons of debris and hundreds of floating corpses. There was no sign anywhere of her husband, Enrique, or her children. Meanwhile, Enrique had managed to get his head above water half a mile from the hotel. With the torrent still raging around him, he was suddenly struck by the realization that he was probably going to drown and that the rest of his family likely had no chance for survival. “Why are you crying when there is no one to comfort you?” he asked himself as he struggled to tread water. Then he heard a cry from his son Tomas, who had miraculously found himself atop a tree. 40 minutes later Enrique located his youngest son, Simon, whose recent swimming lessons had come in handy. Enrique and the two boys would soon be rescued and rushed to the hospital in Takua Pa, but Maria and Lucas were still among the missing. Her odyssey towards dry land was far more treacherous than her husband’s, and as she clung desperately to a palm tree she wondered if saving herself was really worth it. That was when she saw Lucas, still living, floating by; like his brothers and his mother, he’d been rescued by a convenient tree. “Okay,” Maria said to herself. “I have an incredible reason to be alive.” Feeling as if she had somehow absorbed the strength and resilience of all the other survivors, she whispered to Lucas “We need to be courageous. We need to take care of each other.” But Maria was so badly injured that it was Lucas who assumed the role of rescuer, not only of his

mother but of a Swedish youngster named Daniel. “It might as well have been the Apocalypse,” Lucas would recall, but he never gave up hope that he and his mom would make it through. Once Maria and her son were located and taken to Takua Pa, they were reunited with Enrique and the other boys. Grateful beyond words, Maria nonetheless could not shake the feeling that “I do not deserve to be alive.” Resigned to the inequities of fate, she added “I feel pain or compassion for so many others who didn’t come back up or lost the ones they loved.” It would be six months before the Alvarez-Belón family could purge themselves of their separate traumas: Little Simon in particular was plagued by nightmares about monsters. Still mourning over those who hadn’t been as fortunate, Maria was disinclined to share her story until she heard a radio broadcast of Luz Casal’s song “Un nuevo dia brillára,” which proclaimed that a new beginning in life was possible even after the most devastating tragedy. Calling the radio station to thank them for playing the tune, Maria was invited to guest on a program commemorating the third anniversary of the tsunami. Among those listening to the broadcast was film producer Belen Atienza, who became so engrossed in Maria’s story that she pulled her car to the side of the road: “I was obsessed with this mother that was in this situation where she couldn’t afford to die,” Atienza told the Los Angeles Times. “I was a recent mother at the time and I was thinking, ‘What would I do? If I die, he would be alone.’ That’s how Maria felt when she spots the head of Lucas out of the water. She has to live.” Though she regarded Atienza and her coproducers as “crazy movie people,” Maria agreed that a film based on the experiences of the Alvarez-Belóns would be both compelling and inspirational—though she had to act as liaison between the filmmakers and the more reluctant members of her family (including husband Enrique). On one issue Maria stood firm: Neither she, her husband nor her sons should be depicted heroically in Sergio G. Sánchez’s screenplay. As far as she was concerned, they had survived through the sheer providence of being in

Amoroso the “right” place when the big wave struck. And though it has been reported that it was director Juan Antonio Bayona’s idea to change the name of the family to “Bennett” and to avoid identifying their nationality, this was actually one of Maria’s stipulations: “We were the same,” she said of herself and the others who weathered the storm. “We had no race, no language, no nationality, no social standard. We were just the same.” Released in Spain in 2012 and in the United States in 2013, The Impossible stars Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts as Maria and Henry Bennett, with Tom Holland, Samuel Joslin and Oaklee Pendergrast respectively as their sons Lucas, Tomas and Simon. Director Bayona chose to film the story exactly where it happened on the island of Phuket, and though the AlvarezBelóns had avoided revisiting the site of their ordeal for six years, on this occasion they enthusiastically joined the cast and crew on location, coaching the actors as to where and how they were positioned when the tsunami hit. “We had to go back with different feelings than how we left,” Maria explained. “We left feeling pain, shock. We needed to go back to that land, that place and say sorry for the moment we spent together.” The Impossible was so well received by critics and moviegoers that it seems “impossible” in itself that any criticisms were leveled against the film—and yet there were. One was that the other victims of the tsunami are largely ignored; another was that the film tells us nothing about the family before and after their ordeal, stripping the story down to its essentials. Tackling the first complaint, we can only advise critics to stop a moment and think: Is it not more dramatically uplifting to reenact the incredible story of one family’s survival than to dwell morbidly upon the hundreds of thousands who didn’t survive? As to the second issue, we can fill in a few blanks by noting that once the Alvarez-Belón clan had found closure they began taking beach vacations again, making a point of spending every Christmas at a faraway seashore (“it is our birthday— our Thanksgiving”). Which is not say that Maria Belón would ever forget the disaster that had nearly wiped away her loved ones and forced

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her to undergo 16 surgeries after her rescue: As she told People magazine in 2013, “My scars will be with me forever. My whole story is on my body. And it is wonderful because it means I am alive.”

A MOROSO, ANTHONY JR .—AND ANGELO ERRICHETTI, E VELYN K NIGHT, C YNTHIA WEINBERG, MELVIN WEINBERG The film: American Hustle (Atlas Entertainment/Annapurna Pictures/Columbia, 2013)

If you’re going to turn the Abscam scandal into a comedy film, it would be wise to change all the character names for legal reasons. It’s bad enough for a person to be characterized as a criminal on the big screen; but to be held up for public ridicule is too much to bear. Director David O. Russell’s black farce American Hustle (originally titled American Bullshit—probably for about five minutes) opens with the cheeky disclaimer “Some of this actually happened.” The absurdities of the real Abscam story are only slightly exaggerated for comic effect, while the biggest laughs are generated by the clothing and hairstyles of the 1970s and the over-the-top performances of the principal players. The screenplay by Russell and Eric Warren Singer not only changed all the names but also provided at least one happy ending where none occurred. Professional con artist Melvin Weinberg was 52 years old when in 1977 he was indicted for mail and wire fraud along with his girlfriendaccomplice, Evelyn Knight. According to his autobiography The Sting Man (cowritten by Bob Greene), Weinberg agreed to a deal whereby he’d get probation in exchange for his cooperation with the FBI solely to protect Evelyn, who is identified only as “Lady Diane.” Weinberg had exhibited considerably less compassion when he purchased a condo for Evelyn a few miles from his own home, convincing his wife Cynthia that he’d bought it for a union official. When Cynthia learned the truth and confronted him, Weinberg blustered “So I got caught. I always told you I’m the world’s biggest liar.” FBI agent John Good wanted to use Weinberg as a come-on to ensnare even bigger white-collar criminals. After wrapping up four cases on

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behalf of Good and his fellow agent Anthony Amoroso, Jr., Weinberg agreed to one more sting for the purpose of exposing political corruption involving payoffs for trafficking stolen goods and investing in shady business enterprises. This required setting up meetings between susceptible politicians and an FBI agent posing as an Arab Sheik—hence the code name Abscam, a contraction for “Arab Scam.” Among those caught on camera in this operation were Camden, New Jersey, mayor Angelo Errichetti and U.S. Senator Harrison Williams. The agents in charge laid out a great deal of money to pull off this hustle— Weinberg’s compensation alone was $150,000— leading to complaints that too much expenditure was devoted to nabbing too few culprits, and also that Good and Amoroso had become too chummy with Weinberg. These complaints were set aside when Abscam resulted in the convictions of Mayor Errichetti, Senator Williams, six members of the House of Representatives, a good chunk of the Philadelphia City Council, and one Immigration and Naturalization Inspector. Weinberg claimed that even more politicians would have been prosecuted had not the Justice Department warned him that certain people were “off limits.” Though he gained 50 pounds for the role of Melvin Weinberg counterpart Irving Rosenfeld, and even adopted Melvin’s distinctive combover, American Hustle star Christian Bale couldn’t hide the fact that he was 13 years younger than Weinberg, so he didn’t try—and neither did the rest of the cast, none of them as old as the actual people involved. Other alterations included the nationality of Weinberg’s mistress Evelyn, who was born in Great Britain. Played by Amy Adams, “Sydney Prosser” is an American who only pretends to be British to pull off her scams (Sydney is depicted as a major player in Abscam, which Evelyn was not). In another departure from fact, it is Sydney and not Rosenfeld who is first arrested by FBI agent and Abscam mastermind Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper), a composite of Jack Good and Anthony Amoroso favoring the latter. Danger seems to be an aphrodisiac for the headstrong DiMaso, who courts death at the hands of mob-connected casino operator Victor

Tellegio (an uncredited Robert DeNiro) so that he can entrap both Tellegio and New Jersey mayor Carmine Polito (the Angelo Errichetti character played by Jerry Renner) during a bugged meeting with phony Sheik Abdullah, aka FBI agent Paco Hernandez (Michael Peña, playing an amalgam of two real-life Feds). Inasmuch as Tellegio is described as the lieutenant of crime boss Meyer Lansky (see separate entry), we must assume that he is supposed to be Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo, previously fictionalized as Johnny Ola in The Godfather: Part II. Not involved in the actual Abscam hustle, Alo is included here as lagniappe. Irving Rosenfeld’s comic nervousness over dealing with big-time gangsters was evidently written into the script to make him more sympathetic than the real Melvin Weinberg, as was Rosenfeld’s string-pulling to get a lighter sentence for Mayor Polito, the latter depicted as a basically decent fellow who gets involved in a dishonest deal only to help his constituents. In truth, Weinberg did nothing on behalf of Mayor Errichetti, whom he described as a “crook at heart.” And lest we think too kindly of Weinberg after seeing American Hustle, consider his comment to ABC News regarding actress Jennifer Lawrence’s portrayal of the Cynthia Weinberg character Rosalyn Rosenfeld: “In the movie, the wife was hotter than the girlfriend. I mean, it shoulda been the other way around…. The mistress should always be hotter than your wife.” Weinberg’s words seem even more callous when one realizes that Cynthia was no longer around to respond. In American Hustle, Rosalyn Rosenfeld reacts to husband Irving’s brazen infidelity and willingness to use her as a shill for his con jobs by inaugurating an affair with a gangster ( Jack Houston), to whom she suggests that Irving might be in cahoots with the IRS. This plot development was loosely inspired by journalist Jack Anderson’s investigation of Cynthia Weinberg’s vengeful claim that Melvin lied in his Abscam-trial testimony on orders from the FBI. The epilogue of American Hustle shows Rosalyn Rosenfeld blissfully settled down with her gangster lover, sharing custody of her son with

Angleton ex-husband Irving. The painful truth is that Cynthia Weinberg hanged herself in her condominium in 1982, after which her attorney charged that the suicide was bogus and that she had actually been silenced by the Feds. Melvin Weinberg, whom the film portrays as the proverbial grifter with the heart of gold, responded to this tragedy by marrying Evelyn Knight one month after Cynthia’s death.

ANGLETON, JAMES—AND ALLEN DULLES, SAM GIANCANA , ANTOLIY GOLITSYN, RICHHELMS, YURI NOSENKO, SAM PAPICH, R AY ROCCA

ARD

The film: The Good Shepherd (Morgan Creek/ Tribeca/American Zoetrope/Universal, 2006)

A rare directorial effort by actor Robert De Niro, the 2006 spy drama The Good Shepherd is the story of Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), a brilliant but emotionally withdrawn young man who during World War II is recruited from college to do counterintelligence work for the Office of Strategic Services. After the war he joins the successor to the OSS, the Central Intelligence Agency. The ever-expanding influence of the CIA throughout the Cold War is shown through the eyes of Wilson, who while embarking upon a series of delicate and dangerous missions grows increasingly distant from his wife Margaret (Angelina Jolie) and son Edward Jr. (played as an adult by Eddie Redmayne). Eric Roth’s screenplay spans 22 years, concluding with Wilson’s involvement in the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. The film’s enormous cast of prominent actors in small but significant roles, together with its dramatic throughline of the personal sacrifices Wilson must make on behalf of the “organization,” indicate that Robert De Niro kept his eyes open during production of The Godfather: Part II (Roth’s script had initially been offered to Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola). On January 8, 2007, The Good Shepherd was discussed at great length during a special meeting at CIA headquarters. Agency reviewers David Robarge, Gary McCollim, Nicholas Dujmovic and Thomas G. Coffey admitted that it was unusual for the CIA to pay so much atten-

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tion to a single Hollywood film, but felt it was important to analyze the fictional characters and events in what was described by the filmmakers as “the untold story,” as well as the exploitation of actual CIA history to promote fiction as fact. It was the consensus at the meeting that Edward Wilson was primarily based on James Jesus Angleton (1917–1987), chief of CIA counterintelligence from 1954 to 1975 and best known for inaugurating an intense search for possible KGB “moles” in the agency, which some critics condemned as just another witch hunt of the era. This ties in with the flashback structure of The Good Shepherd, wherein Edward Wilson reviews his own experiences all the way back to the pre– World War II era in hopes of exposing the double agent whom he believes tipped off Castro to the landing place at the Bay of Pigs. The film suggests that Wilson was the prime architect of the failed invasion, though in fact that dubious honor goes not to James Angleton but to Richard M. Bissell (1909–1994). Like the fictional Wilson, Angleton was a Yale graduate, though unlike Wilson he was never a member of the secret undergrad society Skull and Bones. However, the aforementioned Richard Bissell was part of Skull and Bones, leading the CIA reviewers to conclude that Edward Wilson was probably a composite. Supporting this theory is the fact that Wilson’s wife, Margaret, is nicknamed “Clover,” the same name as the wife of Angleton’s superior Allen Dulles (1893– 1969). Confusing the issue was William Hurt’s character in the film, CIA Director Philip Allen, who was also perceived as an Allen Dulles clone. (Incidentally, the film’s deputy CIA director Richard Hayes [Lee Pace], who succeeds Philip Allen, was inspired by Dulles’ real-life successor Richard Helms). As for Wilson’s deputy, CIA analyst Ray Brocco ( John Turturro), his apparent role model was an Angleton subordinate, operations officer Ray Rocca. Another Good Shepherd character, FBI agent Sam Murach (Alec Baldwin), acts as go-between for J. Edgar Hoover and the CIA; this, according to the CIA reviewers, pinpointed Murach as being based on actual federal agent Sam Papich. Finally, director De Niro himself appears as OSS head man

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General William “Bill” Sullivan; the reviewers’ comparison of Sullivan with his presumed reallife counterpart is discussed in the separate entry for William “Wild Bill” Donovan. The reviewers also identified the “originals” for several other characters, including actor Joe Pesci’s Joseph Palmi, a stand-in for mobster Sam Giancana (whom Edward Wilson briefly considers as a potential assassin of Fidel Castro, feeding into long-standing speculation about the Mob’s links with the CIA) and Billy Crudup’s turncoat British intelligence officer Arch Cummings (see separate entry for Kim Philby). The character of Yuri Modin ( John Sessions) bears little resemblance to his real-life model Antoliy Goltisyn beyond being one of two Soviet defectors interviewed by the CIA as a source of information on KGB activities. Goltisyn’s fellow defector Yuri Nosenko was fictionalized as Valentin Mironov (Mark Ivanir), who in the film is subjected to drugs and beatings during his interrogation, which the reviewers insisted was totally false. One of the few characters in The Good Shepherd who is thoroughly decent and with no hidden agenda is a Russian with the code name “Ulysses” (Oleg Stefan), for whom the CIA could find no real-life counterpart. The CIA discussion of The Good Shepherd wrapped up with reviewer Thomas G. Coffey’s complaint that the film was predicated on “the double game within the double game,” a standard spy-movie contrivance that Coffey felt bore scant relation to the truth. The reviewer wondered why the filmmakers were compelled to fabricate things when “Real history should be interesting enough.” Hear that, Robert De Niro? Watch it next time!

ANNAN, BEULAH—AND BELVA GAERTNER The films: Chicago (DeMille Pictures Corporation/Pathé, 1927); Roxie Hart (20th Century– Fox, 1942); Chicago (Producers Circle/Storyline Entertainment/Kalis Productions GmbH/Miramax, 2002)

The 1920s was a decade in which sensational and overpublicized murder trials were the rule rather than the exception. In contrast with the grimness of Sacco- Vanzetti, Hall- Mills, Leo pold-Loeb and Snyder-Gray, the separate-but-

equal trials of Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner stood out as comedy relief—though the murder victims were just as dead as in those other more “serious” cases. The earliest newspaper items about 23-yearold Beulah Annan were brief and to the point. The United Press report of April 4, 1924, described Beulah as “pretty, with bobbed titian hair.” Though married to machine-shop owner Albert Annan, Beulah was unabashed about her extramarital affairs. Her latest lover, 29-year-old Harry Kalsteadt, was killed in Beulah’s East 47th St. apartment in Chicago. According to the UP, Kalsteadt had threatened to walk out on Beulah just before she shot him to death. When the police arrived three hours later they found Beulah drunkenly singing her favorite tune “Hula Lu, the Girl Who Could Never Be True.” A clumsy effort by husband Albert to take responsibility for the murder was scuttled by Beulah herself, who attributed her foul deed to “just gin, I guess”; later she insisted that her mind was in a “whirl” of a “daze” when it all happened. At the time of her arrest there were 14 other accused murderesses occupying a row of cells at the Cook County jail. Deemed the prettiest of the lot by the local press, Beulah naturally got the most publicity. Described by the newspapers as “Chicago’s most gorgeous slayer” and “the Modern Salome,” Beulah received the best legal counsel her husband’s money could buy: William S. Stewart, who did his darnedest to coach his client as they prepared her testimony. Though Beulah was a poor pupil and kept changing her story on the witness stand, the 12 male members of the jury—all of whom had sworn prior to the trial that they wouldn’t let the defendant’s beauty sway them—swallowed her claim that she was fighting for her virtue when she killed Kalsteadt. She was declared not guilty, posed provocatively for photographers, and within a year had divorced her true-blue husband, flippantly explaining that she’d married him on a dare and that “He was just a home body. I liked the lights.” Handling her divorce was none other than William S. Stewart. Beulah’s story led to a flurry of newspaper articles about “killer dames” who had beaten the

Annan rap; those who suffered the consequences were, in the words of NEA reporter Allen Sumnerr, “a much more exclusive set.” As serious criminologists argued in favor of all-women juries, Sunday-supplement editors merrily itemized the many femme fatales who had gotten off scot-free, notably another Chicago lassie, Belva Gaertner—or Belle Brown, as she was billed on the cabaret stage. After ditching her parasitical first husband, Belva gave up show business to wed William Gaertner, a manufacturer of scientific instruments. But she couldn’t give up the wild lifestyle to which she was accustomed; over the years her husband repeatedly sued for divorce on the grounds of adultery, and just as repeatedly kissed and made up. Later on the press would label Belva “The Cave Girl” because of her alleged rough-sex relationship with her subservient husband. That “later on” occurred after March 4, 1924, the day that 32-year-old Belva was arrested for murdering her newest paramour, 29-year-old automobile salesman Walter Law. Though she considered Law a “nice young man” and “wonderful dancer,” that didn’t prevent her from shooting him in the head during a drunken quarrel—her own special way of persuading Law not to return to his wife and baby. Taking her place in the same prison cellblock that would soon house Beulah Annan, Belva and five other inmates were analyzed by phrenologist Dr. James M. Fitzgerald, who considered Mrs. Gaertner “the most highly developed mentality of the lot. Unless she were drunk, she never would have shot. But she loves romance and action.” Her defense financed by her generous exhusband, Belva was permitted to select her own jury in cooperation with her attorneys. She also took instructions from jailhouse lawyer W.W. O’Brien on how to “act sexy” around the jurors. In July 1924 the nation’s newspapers reported that along with Beulah Annan, Belva Gartner had been acquitted of murder, with Belva getting the good news first by dint of seniority. She immediately announced that she would re-wed her husband and embark on a trip to Europe; Walter Law’s widow was left behind in Chicago without a penny to her name.

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Both Beulah and Belva had been interviewed prior to their trials by newspaperwoman Maurine Watkins. Her reporting evinced more sympathy for Mrs. Annan than Mrs. Gaertner, though it is likely that the jurors would have set both ladies free without any input from the media. When in 1926 Beulah again made headlines with her divorce from wealthy ex-boxer Edward Harlib, Maurine Watkins was inspired to write a play based on Beulah’s arrest and trial, with Belva as a secondary character. Opening December 30, 1926, the three-act comedy Chicago starred Francine Larrimore as the Beulah Annan character Roxie Hart, with Juliette Crosby as the Belva Gaertner equivalent Velma. Watkins leaves no doubt that both ladies are guilty, and that they’re counting on their feminine wiles to win a get-out-of-jail card. Though there is some professional jealousy amongst the other murderesses in Cook County jail, Velma helpfully provides Roxie with tips as to how to win over the jury, as does the cell block’s all-wise matron. Edward Ellis was in the original cast as Roxie’s flamboyant attorney Billy Flynn, whose theatrical hijinks hoodwink the jury into ignoring the facts of the case; providing no little assistance to Roxy are the saccharine news articles by sob-sister Mary Sunshine (Eda Heineman). Odd man out is Roxy’s long-suffering husband Amos (Charles Halton), who sacrifices all and loses all. Maurine Watkins’ play gives a proper skewering to Chicago jurisprudence, but she reserves her sharpest harpoons for the gentlemen of the press who manage to transform a stone-cold killer into a folk heroine. In 1927 Chicago was made into a silent film by producer Cecil B. DeMille, but we’ll get to that later. The second cinema version of Chicago, retitled Roxie Hart, was directed by William Wellman and scripted by Nunnally Johnson and Ben Hecht. Released at the height of the Production Code’s power in 1942, the film’s source material has been scrubbed clean as a whistle, the script’s flashback framework allowing us to view the naughty 1920s with nostalgia rather than condemnation. Ginger Rogers stars as coquettish showgirl Roxie, who in keeping with the censorship strictures of the era is not a murderess, but

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merely covering up for her weasely husband, vehicle for herself. Not until 1975 was Fosse able Amos (George Chandler), on the theory that no to free up his schedule and commission comChicago jury would ever send a beautiful woman poser John Kander and lyricist-liberettist Fred to the gallows (this was also the rationale of the Ebb to come up with what would eventually original play). Roxie is encouraged to milk the emerge as—drum roll please—Chicago. With publicity she’ll get for killing theatrical agent Verdon set for the role of Roxie Hart, a second Fred Casely for all it’s worth by Casely’s partner lead was created for the actress’ Sweet Charity Benham (Nigel Bruce) and reporter Jake Carter costar Chita Rivera as Velma Kelly, at long last (Lynne Overman), whose colleague Homer given equal billing. Also greatly expanded was Howard (George Montgomery) falls hard for the role of prison matron “Mama” Morton, Roxie while interviewing her (since the older played on Broadway by Mary McCarty. Billy Howard is narrating the story, guess how this Flynn, previously characterized as a middle-aged will end up). Adolphe Menjou out-hams all his man, shed several years and gained several showprevious performances as Billy Flynn, whose stopping numbers with the casting of the peerself-defense strategy combines Shakespearian less Jerry Orbach. Just as the musical highlights histrionics with plenty of leg display from Roxie in Cabaret were presented in the style of a 1930s on the witness stand. In this version Velma Kelly Berlin nightclub revue, Chicago was staged in the (Helene Reynolds) is a minor character who punches out Roxie for stealing her headline thunder. Also envious of Roxie’s popularity is gang moll TwoGun Gertie (Iris Adrian), who likewise dukes it out with our heroine. Thank goodness levelheaded prison matron Mrs. Morton (Sara Allgood) is on hand to settle the argument between Roxie and Gertie by knocking their heads together. Roxie Hart overflows with so many hilarious lines and wonderful character bits that we’re willing to forgive its superficiality and frenetic pace. In 1956, Broadway producers Robert Fryer and Lawrence Carr tried to acquire the rights to the stage play Chicago as a musical comedy, but by that time Maurine Watkins had Come to Jesus and refused their entreaties, calling the play “frivolous.” After Watkins’ death in 1969, her mother sold the rights to actress Gwen Verdon, who suggested that her director-choreographer Ad for the 1927 movie version of Chicago (based on the murder trial husband Bob Fosse adapt it as a of Beulah Annan), as it appeared in Film Daily.

Apana manner of a 1920s vaudeville show, with the “straight” storyline interrupted sporadically by splashy song-and-dance routines commenting on, rather than growing organically from, the action. Running 898 performances on Broadway, Chicago was slated for a film adaptation starring Goldie Hawn and Liza Minnelli, but this project was shelved. The smash 1996 revival of the stage musical ultimately led to the 2002 Oscarwinning filmization of Chicago, directed by Rob Marshall and scripted by Bill Condon, with Renée Zellweger as Roxie, Catherine Zeta-Jones as Velma, Richard Gere as Billy Flynn, Queen Latifah as Mama Morton, John C. Reilly as Roxie’s “Mr. Cellophane” husband Amos and Christine Baranski as Mary Sunshine. With the Production Code long since consigned to the relic heap, the film was allowed to retain the ending of both the original play, with guilty-as-sin Roxie getting away with murder, and the Broadway musical, wherein the exonerated (but also guilty) Velma teams up with Roxie for a razzledazzle vaudeville act. The 1926 play and the two above-mentioned film versions of Chicago all mirrored the outcome of the original trial, with Roxie Hart’s acquittal—and all were played for laughs. Which brings us back to the first film version of Chicago, scripted by Lenore J. Coffee, subtitled by John W. Krafft and directed by Frank Urson. With Mack Sennett alumnus Phyllis Haver cast as Roxie Hart, the audience naturally expects a riotous comedy. And with the laxity of movie censorship in 1927, we seem to be assured that the ending of the play will be unaltered. WRONG! We know from the outset that Roxie has plugged her lover (Eugene Pallette) despite the gallant efforts by her milquetoast husband Amos (Victor Varconi) to shoulder the blame. With the combined input of hoity- toity killerette Velma ( Julia Faye), down-to-earth matron Mrs. Morton (May Robson) and the inimitable Billy Flynn (Robert Edeson), Roxie is able to persuade the jury that she’s both an innocent victim of circumstance and a real red-hot mamma. But the silent film version has a comeuppance coda not to be found in the play. After being set free

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by the jury, Roxie returns home to find that her husband Amos has been accused of stealing the money that he’d used to pay for her defense. Saved from arrest by the quick thinking of housemaid Katie (Virginia Bradford), Amos is forced to confront his wife’s true nature when Roxie tries to abscond with the hot money. The worm turns as Amos angrily burns the cash and throws Roxie out into the street. With every indication of a “happily ever after” between Amos and Katie, we last see Roxie wandering the rainsoaked pavement, glumly looking on as a newspaper bearing a headline about her acquittal is washed into a gutter. The end of the 1927 movie version of Chicago eerily anticipated the fate in store for Beulah Annan. While Belva Gaertner lived to a ripe and rich old age, Beulah died of tuberculosis on March 10, 1928, in total poverty and utter obscurity.

APANA , CHANG The Films: The House Without a Key (Pathé, 1925); The Chinese Parrot (Universal, 1927); Behind That Curtain (Fox, 1929); The “Charlie Chan” series (Fox, 1931–1935; 20th Century–Fox, 1935– 1942; Monogram, 1944–1949); Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen ( Jerry Sherlock Productions/American Cinema, 1981)

There is little argument that a principal inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s immortal sleuth Sherlock Holmes—the hero of far too many films to be listed here—was the author’s former instructor at Edinburgh Medical School, Dr. Joseph Bell (1837–1911). “Use your eyes, use your eyes” was Bell’s admonition to his students, urging them to take notice of the smallest details while making a diagnosis. When Doyle turned to writing Holmes stories in 1887, one person immediately came to mind: “I thought of my old teacher Joe Bell, of his eagle face, of his curious ways, and his eerie trick of spotting details.” Dr. Bell himself was delighted by the comparison, though whenever the press identified him as “the real Sherlock Holmes” he would gently chide them for making “a great deal out of very little” and bestow all credit for the character upon Doyle. Which is right and proper, since although Bell was from time to time called in to assist the London police with certain baffling cases (notably

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Apana

the Jack the Ripper murders), he was never a consulting detective like Holmes, nor did he indulge in any police work until after Holmes was introduced in A Study in Scarlet. To be sure, there is a lot of Joseph Bell in Sherlock Holmes, but the character owes just as much to the pioneering detective stories of Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins, as well as real-life role model Eugène François Vidocq, founding director of France’s Sûreté Nationale and the acknowledged “father” of modern criminology. A more solid and singular case can be made for the man who prompted Earl Derr Biggers to create the celebrated Oriental detective Charlie Chan. In a 1931 Fox Studios press release, novelist-playwright Biggers recalled that in 1919 he was suffering from high blood pressure and decided to follow his doctor’s advice by vacationing in Hawaii. While relaxing on the beach at Waikiki, he was suddenly struck with an idea for a Honolulu-based murder mystery in which the killer avoided detection by swimming ashore from a harbored ship to commit his foul deed. Once back on the mainland Biggers busied himself with other writings, not returning to his murder story until four years later. The author noted that while researching Hawaii at the New York Public Library, “I came across a small, unimportant item to the effect that Chang Apana and Lee Fook, Chinese detectives on the Honolulu force, had arrested one of their countrymen for being too friendly with opium. If I had known before that there were Chinese on the police force over there I had forgotten about it.” Biggers determined that “for local color, a Chinese detective would be a good idea in [the new novel] The House Without a Key. Sinister and wicked Chinese were old stuff in mystery stories, but an amiable Chinese acting on the side of law and order had never been used up to that time.” Biggers christened his detective Charlie Chan, who though originally a minor character in House without a Key “modestly pushed his way forward” into becoming the star of the proceedings. Response to the 1925 novel was so favorable that Biggers bowed to public demand and wrote another Charlie Chan yarn, The Chinese Parrot, which came out in 1926.

Having admired Chan’s role model from afar for so many years, Biggers finally came face to face with Chang Apana circa 1932. By that time, the author had virtually memorized the detective’s life story. Born in 1871 to Chinese parents on the island of Oahu, Apana moved to China with his family at age 3, returning to Hawaii when he was 10. Sparsely educated, he could neither read nor write English or Chinese, but was able to read native Hawaiian and spoke several languages. He worked as a cowboy on various island ranches, developing considerable prowess with a bullwhip. Joining the Honolulu police in 1898, three years before the city was incorporated, he patrolled the area’s toughest neighborhoods, busting up Chinese opium gangs and gambling establishments. Unlike certain of his colleagues Apana refused to be bribed: “No money has ever stuck to my hands.” The numerous scars on his body and face testified to his willingness to get down and dirty to nab lawbreakers, somehow never losing his ubiquitous cigar and Panama hat. Only 5 feet tall, he was wiry and fearless, using his trusty bullwhip whenever outmuscled by an opponent. Stories of his exploits were legend throughout Hawaii: According to mystery writer Dick O’Donnell in a 1989 interview, “Apana once collared a big, burly Samoan leper hiding under a porch while the police were scared to mess with the guy.” And though he never spoke in the witty aphorisms that became a trademark of Charlie Chan, Apana put his multilingual skills to excellent use by establishing a wide network of police informants. The inaugural Chan novel The House Without a Key was filmed as a ten-chapter Pathé serial in 1925. Establishing Hollywood’s tradition of never casting a Chinese actor as Charlie Chan, the role was played by George Kuwa, a Japanese. Universal’s feature-length version of The Chinese Parrot followed in 1927, again with a Japanese actor, Sojin, appearing as Chan. 1929 brought forth the first all-talkie Charlie Chan picture, and the earliest one known to survive, Fox’s Behind That Curtain. With stars Warner Baxter and Lois Moran carrying the plotline, Charlie Chan is reduced to an expository bit role played by

Araujo British-born E.L. Park, who doesn’t even get a screen credit. We will probably never know how close the Chans in the first two films came to replicating Chang Apana; E.L. Park doesn’t behave like either Apana or Charlie, and at any rate is a San Francisco rather than a Honolulu detective. The title character in Fox’s Charlie Chan Carries On (1931) didn’t show up until the film was nearly over, but with charismatic Swedish actor Warner Oland as Charlie there was no doubt as to who was top man in this picture. Charlie Chan Carries On no longer exists outside of an intriguing Spanish-language version starring Manuel Arbó, Eran Trece (1931); fortunately, Oland’s second Chan outing Black Camel (1931) has been safely preserved. The only Charlie Chan picture filmed on location in Hawaii, Black Camel afforded Chang Apana the opportunity to visit the Fox film crew, who treated him royally and permitted him to watch a few scenes in progress. He roared with laughter at every aphorism spoken by Oland’s Charlie Chan, and was undoubtedly pleased that Charlie, like himself, did meticulous research on each of his cases— and also, like himself, had somehow found time to father a very large family. Apana made no comment on the physical discrepancies between himself and the taller, stockier Oland, cheerfully posing side by side with the actor for publicity pictures. The Charlie Chan novels and films made Chang Apana an even bigger local hero than before. Earl Derr Biggers would never forget his first meeting with Apana while the detective was on duty at a Honolulu baseball game; as he patrolled the stands, Chang was surrounded by worshipful Asian youngsters screaming “Charlie Chan! Charlie Chan!”—and loving every minute of it. You read that right: Asian youngsters. Though the present Politically Correct status quo has condemned the Chan films as racist and stereotypical, it must be noted that Charlie in his heyday was as just as popular with Chinese as Caucasian filmgoers. As the Pittsburgh Press observed in its December 11, 1933, obituary for Chang Apana, “‘Charlie Chan’ was more than merely entertaining. He was a genuine ambas-

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sador of good will between the Orient and the Western Hemisphere. He was the first Chinaman [sic] in a mystery story who had ever been the hero…. ‘Charlie Chan’ performed a real service for the cause of good relations between China and America.”

ARAUJO, CHERYL A. The film: The Accused (Paramount, 1988)

A product of New Bedford, Massachusetts’ Portuguese-American North End, Cheryl A. Araujo had dropped out of high school and gone to work when her first child was born out of wedlock. On the evening of March 6, 1983, 22year-old Cheryl showed up at Big Dan’s tavern to pick up some cigarettes. She bought a drink and began displaying pictures of her children to another woman in the bar … and after that the story gets hazy, with some patrons later claiming that Cheryl sauntered over to a group of male pool players and exposed her breasts. There was, however, no question that Cheryl was suddenly grabbed from behind, stripped from the waist down and raped on the pool table by two of the men, with the other two trying to perform oral sex. No one came to her defense; according to Cheryl, the bar patrons cheered “Do it! Do it!” throughout her ordeal—“Just like a baseball game.” Two hours later she ran half-naked from the bar and went straight to the police. The ensuing glare of publicity did nothing to improve the public image of New Bedford, already straining under a depressed economy and a history of violent crimes. Also, the men Cheryl accused were all Portuguese immigrants, aggravating the North End’s ongoing racial tensions. Given the victim’s past sexual history, which somehow managed to leak to the press even though her identity was kept secret, there was a disturbing tendency to blame her for encouraging the assault. Even a Massachusetts state representative who should have known better chimed in with “I’ll say this: She’s no Virgin Mary”—though he qualified this with “nobody can condone what happened at Big Dan’s.” Ten months of legal delays followed before a jury was selected on January 30, 1984, to determine the fate of the rapists. During the trial there

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Arbuckle

were two juries, one listening to charges against the four men charged with rape, the other listening to the case against two others charged as accessories after the fact. Judge William Young had decided upon this division to limit the negative effect of the media coverage, though by this time there wasn’t much he could do. That the potential jury pool had already been tainted was demonstrated when the court had to interview 1000 possible jurors before settling on the requisite 32. While there was plenty of open hostility towards Cheryl in the Portuguese community—many of whose residents felt that the DA was using the rape as an excuse to vilify an entire ethnic group—some 2500 people publicly rallied to her defense, including such notable feminists as Gloria Steinem; as an offshoot of this support, the Coalition Against Sexual Violence was formed. Still, it wasn’t clear sailing for Cheryl. Though she delivered an impressive, emotion-free testimony, someone secretly recorded her words and played them on two TV cable channels, leading to her name being made public. She also didn’t help her own case when she admitted to defrauding the State Welfare Department regarding support checks for her children. It was undoubtedly taxing for the jury to separate Cheryl’s personal shortcomings from the severity of the crime against her, but ultimately the four main defendants were found guilty, receiving sentences ranging from 6 to 12 years. A $10 million lawsuit was then levelled against the owners of the now-defunct Big Dan’s bar, though obviously there was no way to collect. Shunned by her neighbors and former friends after the trial, Cheryl moved to Florida with her boyfriend and their daughters. There she kept such a low profile that when she was killed in a Miami car accident on December 15, 1986, her new neighbors could only remark “That was her?” The producers of the 1988 film The Accused insisted that it wasn’t based specifically on the Cheryl Araujo rape case, but one was certainly welcome to draw that conclusion. Jodie Foster won an Oscar for her portrayal of Sarah Tobias, a young woman of dubious morals who accuses several male bar patrons of raping her atop a pin-

ball machine. Since the defendants have no priors, assistant prosecutor Kathryn Murphy (Kelly McGillis) allows them to plea-bargain—and without ever consulting Sarah. Kathryn explains that she hadn’t wanted to put Sarah through the ordeal of having her sexual history picked apart in the courtroom, but the victim is determined to see that justice is done and demands that the case be reopened. Since the rape charges have already been dropped, Kathryn must go after the rapists and the patrons who goaded them on for “criminal solicitation.” Underlining the real-life challenge of separating Cheryl Araujo’s pecadilloes from the fact that no one under any circumstances deserves to be raped, screenwriter Tom Topor and director Jonathan Kaplan refuse to take the easy-out of purifying Sarah Tobias or sanctioning her sexual misbehavior. At the same time, the filmmakers remove the racial issues surrounding the actual case, though Sarah must still endure the jeers and insults from her own community. There’s a bit of cinematic shorthand in the outcome of the case as a new witness comes forth with irrefutable testimony that figuratively hangs the defendants. Presented in flashback, the brutal rape scene is withheld until the end of the film, placing the audience in the same “He Said—She Said” quandary that might have faced an actual jury up to this point. It is one of the few aspects of The Accused that can be accused of subtlety or restraint.

ARBUCKLE, ROSCOE Rotund American silent-film comedian and director, known to his fans (but not his friends) as “Fatty.” His starring career was ruined by a trumped up sex-and-murder scandal in 1921, despite his full exoneration by the jury. The particulars of the scandal are grotesquely fictionalized in the 1975 film adaptation of Joseph Mon cure March’s narrative poem The Wild Party, with James Coco as “Jolly Grimm.”

ARCHER-SHEE, GEORGE (AND FAMILY)— AND SIR EDWARD CARSON

The films: The Winslow Boy (DeGrunwald Productions/British Lion, 1948); The Winslow Boy (Winslow Partners Ltd./Sony Pictures Classics, 1999)

Archer-Shee A five- shilling misunderstanding brought about 13-year-old George Archer-Shee’s expulsion from Osbourne Naval College on the Isle of Wight in November 1908. George’s fellow cadet Terence Back had put a 5/note from his family in his locker on the same day that George decided to buy a model steam engine for 16/, drawing the money from the school bank and placing it in his own locker. After mailing his order, George was informed that Terence had been robbed. The next day George found himself suspected of breaking into Terence’s locker and stealing the 5/, with the local postmistress reporting that the cadet who had cashed the stolen note was the same one who bought the 15/6d postal order for the model engine; there was also a forged signature on the back of the pilfered note. His protests of innocence ignored, George was withdrawn from school and sent back to his family in Kensington. The situation was brought to the attention of King’s Counsel Sir Edward Carson by George’s half-brother, military officer and politician Martin Archer-Shee. On behalf of his retired-banker father, Martin entreated Sir Edward to represent his brother in court. Impressed by young George’s calm demeanor, Carson concluded that he was “honest and true” and agreed to take the case. It took some doing to get it before a court; the Admiralty was protected by the King, meaning that by extension the King himself would have to be sued. Aware that adhering to the absolute letter of the law would be a dead end, Sir Edward approached Buckingham Palace with a “Petition of Right,” arguing that the boy’s rights were as important as cold, clinical justice. The King weighed the argument and declared “Let right be done.” The case proceeded in July 1910 before a special jury, with Carson seeking damages for George’s father—who’d gone into considerable debt in his son’s defense—as repayment for being forced to withdraw the boy from Osbourne. George himself, happily installed in a private school, was never required to testify in court; Carson concentrated instead upon tactfully proving that the postmistress had been mistaken when she implicated George, and establishing that a handwriting expert had been

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wrong in labelling the boy as a forger. After four days’ testimony, Sir Rufus Isaacs, representative of the Crown, declared “without any reserve” that George was innocent. The case was sensationalized and hotly debated by the British press, public and Parliament, with just as many people siding with George as those who felt that the trial was either much ado about nothing or a slap in the face of the Admiralty. Some likened the cause célèbre to France’s Alfred Dreyfus affair of a few years back, comparing Dreyfus’ persecution on the basis of his Jewish faith with the possibility that George had been expelled because of anti–Catholic prejudice in the Royal Navy (the fact that Sir Edward Carson was not only Protestant but also a political opponent of Martin Archer-Shee made his defense of the boy all the more impressive). The case was still fresh in the mind of playwright Terrence Rattigan when in 1945 he was asked by film producer Anatole de Grunwald to write a screenplay about British justice. When Rattigan proposed an à clef version of the Archer-

George Archer-Shee (right), with his father, Martin.

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Archer-Shee

Shee episode, de Grunwald rejected it as too dull a topic. Refusing to drop the idea, Rattigan adapted his story into a four-act stage play, The Winslow Boy. This time it was Rattigan’s friend and frequent collaborator, director Anthony Asquith, who questioned the wisdom of the undertaking, suggesting that a period play about a controversial trial would require dozens of actors and plenty of expensive sets. The playwright responded with a plot that took place entirely within the walls of a British family home, the trial and its outcome occurring offstage and referenced through dialogue. Moving the action of the original events up from 1908–1910 to just before World War I, a time when challenging the infallibility of the Admiralty was an even riskier proposition, The Winslow Boy begins as 12-year-old Ronnie Winslow shows up at the doorstep of his parents’ home, having been cashiered from Osbourne on a charge of theft. Ronnie’s middle-class father Arthur believes the boy’s protestations of innocence and consults family solicitor Desmond Curry regarding the possibility of clearing Ronnie’s name—and by extension his own—in court. The family engages the costly services of famed barrister Sir Robert Morton, who after a brutal cross-examination of the tearful Ronnie coolly announces that the boy is innocent and deserves justice. Though we never see the trial, the descriptions of its progress adhere closely to the actual events. Rattigan exercises dramatic license with the other members of the Winslow family, to the extent that the play is not really about the “Winslow Boy” but about the impact the case has on his loved ones. Conflict is established between the “cold” and “fishlike” Sir Edward and Ronnie’s suffragette sister Catherine, who clashes with the barrister’s conviction that women should not be given the vote. The reallife model for Catherine was neither a suffragette nor a political activist of any kind, and it took all of Terrence Rattigan’s powers of persuasion to convince her to allow his elaborations to go forward. Similarly, the play’s counterpart for George Archer-Shee’s half-brother, in life a military professional and Member of Parliament, becomes Ronnie’s slightly older brother Dickie,

an upper-class twit who’d rather dance the “bunny hug” than buckle down to his studies at Oxford (Martin was long dead by 1945). In addition to dissecting the political climate of the early 20th century, The Winslow Boy contrasts Ronnie’s victory in court with the sacrifices his family is forced to endure: Father Arthur is left destitute by the cost of the defense, daughter Catherine’s engagement to wealthy Army officer John Watherstone is broken off, and eldest son Dickie can no longer afford to attend college. Finally, Ronnie’s mother Grace, who strives to put on a happy face while her family is in turmoil, questions whether her husband wants to clear Ronnie’s name out of a sense of justice or out of stubborn pride, a personal issue which emerged solely from Terrence Rattigan’s fertile imagination. A marked contrast with the light comedies that had previously been Rattigan’s forte, The Winslow Boy opened in 1946, scoring a hit in London and later on Broadway. The two men most skeptical of the property’s success, producer de Grunwald and director Asquith, demonstrated that eating one’s words can be nourishing when in 1948 they collaborated on a film version of The Winslow Boy, scripted by Rattigan and starring Robert Donat as Sir Robert Morton, Cedric Hardwicke and Marie Löhr as Arthur and Grace Winslow, Margaret Leighton as Catherine, Jack Watling as Dickie and Neil North as Ronnie. Retaining the play’s best dialogue and the “money scene” in which the family awaits the trial’s verdict in their own living room, the film opens up the action every once in a while: A rapid montage of the events leading up to Ronnie’s expulsion, splashy examples of how the “Winslow craze” is affecting the nation (a ballad sung by Cyril Ritchard, jokes told by comedian Stanley Holloway etc.), and a few select highlights from the court proceedings. The ending of the play is slightly tweaked to hint at a future romance between attractingopposites Sir Robert and Catherine, capped by his classic fadeout line “How little you know about men.” Just as Terrence Rattigan surprised his contemporaries by switching from comedy to historical drama in 1946, American playwright-

Armour director David Mamet astonished his followers when in 1999 he came forth with a G-rated remake of The Winslow Boy, his screenplay remaining faithful to the source material. Exercising the artistic discipline that had earned him wide acclaim in his previous plays and films (their liberal use of profanity notwithstanding), Mamet stuck even closer to Rattigan’s original than the 1948 version, keeping the entire trial out of camera range and replacing many of the earlier film’s long-winded verbal augmentations with such short and snappy visuals as the fleeting display of “Winslow Craze” toys and souvenirs. Though still essentially the cold fish described by the Winslow family, Jeremy Northam exhibits a shade more warmth and good humor than Robert Donat in the role of Sir Robert Carson. Mamet’s British-American wife Rebecca Pidgeon successfully negotiates a proper middleclass accent as Catherine Winslow, Rebecca’s real-life brother Matthew is cast as Catherine’s brother Dicky, Nigel Hawthorne and Gemma Jones are seen as their parents, and Guy Edwards gives a nicely ambiguous performance as Ronnie. The supporting role of the First Lord of the Admiralty is superbly played by the 1948 film version’s Ronnie Winslow, Neil North—who was cast in the remake before David Mamet realized who he was. Like the earlier Winslow Boy, the 1999 version ends on an optimistic note; would that Real Life was so accommodating. Following George Archer-Shee’s exoneration, the Admiralty fought bitterly against paying any damages to the boy’s now-impoverished father, who would ultimately receive a token £7000 before his death a few months after the trial. As for George, he never was reinstated at Osbourne nor was he able to pursue a Naval career; instead, he received a commission in the British Army just in time for World War I. In 1914, 19-year-old George Archer- Shee was killed in the First Battle of Ypres, displaying what the press described as “conspicuous bravery.” His remains were never found.

ARMOUR , PHILIP DANFOURTH—AND GUSTAV S WIFT

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The film: The World Changes (First National, 1933)

This cumbersome entry should demonstrate why I’ve tried to avoid writing about fictional movie characters based on more than one actual person. Orin Nordholm, Jr., the tragic industrialist played by Paul Muni in director Mervyn LeRoy’s The World Changes (1933), was according to some sources inspired by 19th century meat-packing magnate Philip Danfourth Armour. Watching the film, one recognizes that the screenplay by Robert Lord and Edward Chodhorov (based on Sheridan Gibney’s novel America Kneels) also owes a debt to the life story of Armour’s equally famous rival Gustav Swift. Both men hailed from New England, and both were born and died within a few years of each other (Armour lived from 1832 to 1901, Swift from 1839 to 1903). Though their families were comfortably off, both men struck out on their own at an early age. In his 20s Armour was in charge of a sluice construction firm controlling water supplies for miners; Swift went to work at his older brother’s butcher shop at age 14, and within a few years was overseeing cattle drives. Armour inaugurated a grain business in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1859, then moved into meat packing to take advantage of fluctuating prices during and after the Civil War. Opening his own butcher shop and slaughterhouse in 1862, Swift moved his business from Boston to Buffalo, then headed westward where the cattle market was booming. Also in 1862, Swift married Annie Marie Higgins, while that same year Armour likewise took a bride, Malvina Belle Ogden. By 1867 Armour had settled in Chicago, where he established the hog-packing firm Armour & Company; 18 years later, Swift also migrated to Chicago, where Armour and others in the meat business were now flourishing. For a long time both men faced the problem of transporting butchered meat by train without having it spoil en route. Swift was first to meet and defeat this challenge in 1878, when he contracted Andrew Chase to design a insulated and ventilated refrigerator car. Armour followed Swift’s example by setting up the Armour Refrigerator Line in 1883, a fair trade since Swift had previously

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Armour

novel The Jungle. After their deaths their legacies lived on through their charitable contributions, with Armour being honored in his lifetime when a town in South Dakota was named for him. The World Changes pays its most obvious homage to both Armour and Swift in a scene set in the 1880s. Facing one of his many financial crises, Orin Nordholm, Jr., suddenly hits upon a brilliant idea that will allow him to transport slaughtered meat both safely and efficiently: “Iceboxes on wheels! Iceboxes on wheels! Iceboxes on wheels!” (It is at this juncture that star Paul Muni, who up until now has been playing Nordholm with commendable restraint, lapses into his usual overrated overacting). The film also emphasizes the importance of the meat-packing industry to the growth and expansion of Chicago in a scene taking place during the 1893 World’s Fair, in which a tour guide points out Nordholm’s palatial mansion and credits the man for making Chicago the “hog butcher of the universe!”—anticipating Carl Sandburg by 21 years. And in an indirect nod to Philip Armour, Nordholm’s South Dakota home town is named for his father before the first reel is over. Otherwise, the ArmourSwift influence recedes into the shadows of artifice in The World Changes, which is essentially a pageant of the years 1856 through 1929 in the tradition of the earlier Oscar-winning films Cimarron and Cavalcade. Rejecting the philosophy of his pioneer-farmer mother (Aline MacMahon), who believes that hard-earned property and family pride are the most important Paul Muni as the Philip Armour-Gustav Swift character in The World things in life, Orin Nordholm, Changes (1933), from Silver Screen magazine. Jr., leaves his hometown fiancee adopted Armour’s super-efficient assembly line process for canning meat. Of the two, Swift had a better relationship with his employees, engendering loyalty with profit-sharing and promotions; Armour was more cavalier in his treatment of subordinates, putting down all efforts by his workers to unionize with his own private militia. Both Swift and Armour came under scrutiny by the government after their enemies accused them of chemically treating their meat and using unsanitary packing practices, accusations that would culminate in Upton Sinclair’s muckraking

Arnstein ( Jean Muir) to enter the burgeoning cattle industry on the advice of casual acquaintance Buffalo Bill Cody (General Custer and Wild Bill Hickok also make cameo appearances. It’s that kind of movie). So dedicated is Nordstrom to his business and so driven to enrich himself that he is incapable of forming any worthwhile personal relationships: His city-bred wife Virginia (Mary Astor) is an insufferable snob, his sons (Donald Cook, Gordon Westcott) are spoiled and useless, and his grandchildren aren’t much better except for his namesake Orin III (William Janney). Nordholm’s chickens come home to roost with the stock market crash of 1929, his progeny crumbling to pieces as their selfishness destroys them in various cathartic ways. The only one spared this purge is Orin III, who returns to his grandfather’s prairie birthplace accompanied by the lookalike granddaughter of Orin Jr.’s abandoned fiancee ( Jean Muir plays both roles). Thematically representing the Hope for the Future, the two youngsters are given blessing by Orin Jr.’s wise old mother, who by now must conservatively be in her 110th year.

ARNSTEIN, NICKY—AND FANNY BRICE The film: Rose of Washington Square (20th Century–Fox, 1939)

You may think you know the full story of legendary entertainer Fanny Brice and her gambler husband, Nicky Arnstein, from the 1968 Barbra Streisand musical Funny Girl, but there’s more to it than that. Since this entry isn’t about Funny Girl, it is necessary only to recall that in both the film and original Broadway musical, Arnstein (played onscreen by Omaf Sharif ) is depicted as a charming rascal who, resentful at being merely “Mr. Fanny Brice” and embarrassed that his wife is supporting him, becomes involved in a crooked bond scheme. Rather than humiliate Fanny, Nicky gallantly surrenders to the authorities and serves two years in prison, after which he returns to his wife, who though she still loves him tearfully concludes that she and Nicky are a bad fit. Ray Stark, Fanny Brice’s son-in-law and the producer of the film version of Funny Girl, glossed over certain particulars in the lives of both Fanny and Nicky, as had the original play’s

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librettist Isobel Lennart. The whitewashing of Arnstein was obligatory for two reasons: Nicky was still alive when the play premiered on Broadway in 1964, and there was a strong likelihood that he might sue the producers if the more unsavory aspects of his life were dramatized. After all, he’d done it before. Born Fania Borach in New York City, Fanny Brice aspired to be a dramatic actress but found her niche as a comedienne. Already a highly regarded artist when she made her Ziegfeld Follies debut in 1910, Fanny had so little time for a private life that her first marriage to barber Frank White (unmentioned in Funny Girl) ended after only three years. While this union was breaking up in 1912, Fanny met Jule Arndt Stein, 12 years her senior. A professional gambler, loan shark and con artist who went by several aliases, Stein was then travelling under the name Nicky Arnstein, and had just barely avoided a stiff jail term for a securities scam. Falling in love with Nicky, Fanny was eager and willing to become his bride, but he’d neglected to tell her that he was already married. This didn’t prevent Fanny from waiting for her beloved to finish serving a short sentence for illegal wiretapping in 1915, after which she lived with him until his divorce in 1919. They were married that same year, her first child born two months after the ceremony. Fanny’s friends and family warned her that Nicky was a scoundrel who was perfectly content to sponge off her while she raked in all the money, but despite the evidence of her own eyes she remained faithful to her husband. Rather than reluctantly participating in a crooked scheme to raise money and prove he could stand on his own feet as depicted in Funny Girl, Nicky dived into a conspiracy to smuggle $5 million in stolen securities into Washington, D.C., with both eyes open. When the cops came calling, Nicky ran like the thief he was, leaving Fanny and their kids to bear the brunt of the negative publicity. Arrested in 1923, Nicky’s subsequent stay in Leavenworth was cushioned by Fanny’s expensive efforts to assure that he was made as comfortable as possible. After he was sprung Nicky went back to leeching off his wife, adding insult to injury by openly cheating on her.

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Arnstein

Enough was enough, and in 1927 Fanny divorced Nicky. He then wed a Long Island socialite and began leading an exemplary life, enriching himself in a variety of legitimate business enterprises. As accurately depicted in the 1975 Funny Girl movie sequel Funny Lady, Arnstein attempted a reconciliation with Fanny after the breakup of her third marriage to showman Billy Rose, but she would have none of him. Fanny Brice died at age 60 in 1951; Nicky Arnstein outlived her by 14 years. Now pay close attention to the next three paragraphs. With the 20th Century–Fox musical Alexander’s Ragtime Band ringing in as the most profitable film of 1938, the studio determined to continue making showbiz musicals constructed around the popular songs of a specific era. Alexander’s Ragtime Band was the history of American music from 1914 through 1938 as reflected in the songs of Irving Berlin. Fox’s next film in this vein, 1939’s Rose of Washington Square, recreated its early 20th century milieu via the songs made famous on Broadway during that period by entertainers like Al Jolson and Fanny Brice. Jolson himself appears in the film as singing waiter Ted Cotter, who forms a vaudeville act with amateur songbird Rose Sargent (Alice Faye). Disenchanted by her lack of progress, Rose quits the act, while Tom goes on to great success as a solo performer. In the meantime, Rose falls in love with Barton Dewitt Clinton (Tyrone Power), a handsome but spineless gambler-embezzler. At Cotter’s invitation, Rose emerges from retirement to sing at a party celebrating Tom’s latest stage hit. When the producers in attendance show interest in Rose, Bart Clinton chisels a piece of the action by claiming to be her agent. Within what seems like minutes Rose is the brightest light on the Great White Way, while Bart shamelessly cashes in on her success. Though she knows he’s a rat, Rose marries him anyway, and before long Bart surpasses his earlier misdeeds by participating in a stolen bond scheme. Still carrying a torch for Rose, Cotter selflessly gives Bart $50,000 to post bail, whereupon Bart cravenly dashes off to parts unknown. Exhibiting either great fidelity or great imbecility, Rose still can’t get over her love for

Bart, pouring out her soul on the stage of the Zieg feld Follies with the plaintive ballad “My Man.” Who should be sitting in the audience but the errant Bart, who instantly reforms and gives himself up to the authorities—as Rose of Arc promises to wait for him while he’s in the slammer. Back up a minute. Rose’s song is “My Man.” Earlier in the film she sings the title number “Rose of Washington Square.” Both songs were trademark tunes of Fanny Brice, who received a third of the royalties any time they were performed. And though Alice Faye and Tyrone Power were the WASP Queen and King of Hollywood, only someone who’d had his head in the sand throughout the 1920s could fail to recognize Rose Sargent and Bart Clinton as dera cinated versions of Fanny Brice and Nicky Arnstein—especially since despite his goyishe character name Al Jolson is basically playing “himself ” and performing the numbers that made him famous. It’s a musical biography whether the names are genuine or not, a point driven home by Jolson in a February 7, 1939, AP interview: “It’s the story of Fanny Brice and Nicky Arnstein, with variations.” Five days later the Milwaukee Journal listed the “surprises” in store for audiences when they saw Rose of Washington Square: “One of them is that the studio has built its drama around the life stories of Fanny Brice and Nicky Arnstein and, we are informed, without undue prettying of the most unpleasant phases of Arnstein’s off-color career.” When the trade paper Harrison’s Reports reviewed the film, the article singled out the reptilian character of Bart Clinton, warning that Bart’s behavior made the film “unsuitable for children.” Tyrone Power’s fans were so offended by his parasitical portrayal that the actor would not again attempt to play such an out-and-out louse until 1947’s Nightmare Alley. Though Fanny Brice was paid for the use of her signature songs in the film, no one at Fox ever got around to obtaining permission to dramatize her life. Labelling the picture a gross invasion of privacy, Brice sued the studio, the stars and director Gregory Ratoff for $750,000. On May 14, 1939, Walter Winchell reported that

Aron Nicky Arnstein had no plans to file a similar lawsuit: “He has enough money and wants to forget the past.” To use a Winchell catchphrase, was Walter’s face red when a few days later Arnstein likewise brought legal action against Rose of Washington Square, complaining that Ty Power had played him as “a thief, weakling and unscrupulous person,” causing his friends to “scorn and abandon” him. Did you absorb all that? Now get this: When the case went to court in July 1939, 20th Century– Fox’s lawyers insisted that “by no stretch of the imagination” was the film inspired by Fanny Brice and Nicky Arnstein, further arguing that no intelligent person could ever mistake Alice Faye for Fanny Brice. In the words of Pittsburgh Press film reviewer Harold W. Cohen, “never has the cinema’s usual preface—‘any resemblance to persons living or dead, etc. etc.’— sounded so inane.” In December 1940 the lawsuits were quietly settled, with Fanny and Nicky receiving $30,000 each. Settled, but not forgotten, if this 1941 tidbit from writer Frederick Van Ryn in Liberty magazine is any indication. Van Ryn recalls a Hollywood anecdote in which Tyrone Power expressed doubt to director Gregory Ratoff that he could bring justice to his role in Rose of Washington Square. In rebuttal, Ratoff rattled off all the other historical figures that Power had successfully impersonated onscreen: “You’re crazy, my boy! You, the man who built the British mercantile marine for Lloyds of London … you, the man who dug the Suez canal single-handed … you, the man who made love to Marie Antoinette … and you don’t think you’re good enough to play Nicky Arnstein?”

ARON, ERNEST/ELIZABETH EDEN—AND R ICHARD BAKER , S HIRLEY BALL , R OBERT BARRETT, CARMEN BIFULCO, LOUIS C. COTELL, JOHN WOJTOWICZ The film: Dog Day Afternoon (Artists Entertainment Complex/Warner Bros., 1975)

Films advertised as “Incredible but True!” still can’t entirely avoid the “Aw, come on!” factor: “You mean to say that this really happened? Honestly, was that what happened next? And

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that’s how the story actually ended? Aw, come on!” Which is probably how someone in the year AD 2017 with no foreknowledge of the 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon would react upon seeing it for the first time. But rest assured, incredibly it’s true. The people who saw it back in 1975 will testify to this. The story behind the film was too well covered by the media in general and by Life magazine writers Thomas F. More and P.F. Kluge in particular for anyone to doubt its veracity. It all began at the Sheepshead New York branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank on the corner of Avenue P and East 3rd St. in Gravesend, Brooklyn. The date was August 22, 1972; the time was 3:05 p.m. Two well-dressed young men, 29-year-old John Wojtowicz and 18-yearold Salvatore Naturile, entered the bank at closing time, pulled out weapons and announced a holdup. Their 21-year-old accomplice Bobby Westernberg was already in the bank, but the moment the holdup began he fled from the building. The thieves’ original plan was to steal all available assets, leave the bank at 3:25 p.m., head over to the Kings County Hospital psychiatric ward and “spring” young Ernest Aron. All the men involved were gay; Aron was John Wojtowicz’s lover, and the money was to be used to pay for Aron’s sex-change operation. As the bandits collected the $29,000 the bank had on hand, John allowed the nine employees held at gunpoint to call their relatives and assure them they were OK. Bank manager Robert Barrett took this opportunity to call an assistant at another bank, tipping off the assistant that something was amiss. Pretty soon the building was surrounded by local and federal law enforcement agents brandishing weapons and wearing armor. Sensing that things were beginning to get out of hand, Wojtowicz warned the police by phone that he meant business: “I’ll shoot everyone in the bank. The Supreme Court will let me get away with this. There’s no death penalty. It’s ridiculous. I can shoot everyone here, then throw my gun down and walk out and they can’t put me in the electric chair. You have to have a death penalty, otherwise this can happen every day.” This bizarre rant set the tone for the next

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Aron

15 hours, which played out more like a Woody Allen comedy than a genuine life-or-death situation. John Wojtowicz told the authorities that he wouldn’t release a single hostage until his wife came to the bank to talk to him. He wasn’t referring to Mrs. Carmen Wojtowicz, from whom he had recently separated: By “wife” he meant Ernest Aron, whom he had “married” in a symbolic ceremony. But Ernest didn’t want to see John, fearing that their love had grown cold; when he did agree to show up, he was dressed in women’s clothing. Meanwhile, bank teller Shirley Ball had secured unlimited bathroom privileges for the hostages, and was pressuring John to get his robbery over with and leave them be. Ms. Ball was so outspoken that John gave her the same nickname as his estranged wife: “The Mouth.” Throughout the afternoon and into the evening John kept changing his mind over whether he’d release anyone, at one point offering to exchange each hostage for a prominent member of the New York media. Eventually he let two people go, while the remaining hostages were torn between abject terror over their situation and helpless laughter over John and Sal’s increasingly goofy behavior: “If they had been my houseguests on a Saturday night, it would have been hilarious,” Shirley Ball later recalled. It was anything but hilarious to the bandits, especially when the mayor of New York phoned to tell them that if they didn’t surrender immediately the authorities would burst into the building guns blazing, no matter how many hostages were hurt or killed—exactly the tactic used during the infamous 1971 inmate revolt at Attica State Prison (Yes, that was the inspiration for Dog Day Afternoon’s famous line “Atti-CA! Atti-CA! AttiCA!”) At 11 p.m. John ordered pizza and soda for everyone still in the bank, sending Shirley out to pay the delivery man; in so doing she almost had a chance to escape, but didn’t feel it was fair to the other hostages. Likewise, manager Robert Barrett turned down an opportunity for release to take insulin for his diabetes, choosing to remain with his employees. At long last Wojtowicz made one final demand: Safe passage for himself, Sal, Ernest and the hostages to a private

jet at Kennedy airport. Early on the morning of August 23 the bandits freed another hostage, piled the six remaining prisoners into an airport limo, and headed to JFK. Just minutes before their jet was to take off, an FBI agent named Murphy took advantage of a brief distraction to shoot and kill Sal Naturile, whereupon John Wojtowicz was placed in custody and the crisis was over. In addition to playing up the near-farcical absurdities of the whole affair, the mainstream media made much of the fact that the bandits were homosexuals acting on behalf of a transvestite. This became a rallying point for several gay activist groups, some of whom blamed the prejudices of “straight” society for Wojtowicz’s desperate act. Others—and remember that this was 1972—treated the gay angle with mild derision, including the Thomas F. More–P.F. Kluge Life magazine article of September 22, 1972, titled “The Boys in the Bank.” This article was the main source for Frank Pierson’s screenplay for Dog Day Afternoon, especially the part in which More and Kluge described John Wojtowicz as a Dustin Hoffman or Al Pacino type: Indeed, it was Al Pacino who starred in the film as the Wojtowicz character Sonny Wortzik. At Pacino’s suggestion, director Sidney Lumet ignored the fact that the unfortunate Sal Naturile was only 18 by casting Al’s best friend and Godfather costar John Cazale, then 39 years old, as Sonny’s cohort Sal, the only character in the film other than Agent Murphy (played by Lance Henriksen) to keep his real name. Others in the cast include Sully Boyer as bank manager Mulvaney, Chris Sarandon as Sonny’s lover Leon, Penelope Allen (another of Pacino’s close friends) as Shirley Ball’s feisty counterpart Sylvia, Charles Durning as NYPD sergeant Moretti (originally Chief Louis C. Cotell), James Broderick as FBI agent Sheldon (real name: Richard Baker), and Susan Peretz as Sonny’s soon-to-be-ex-wife Angie. The film has a marvelously spontaneous quality, mainly because Sidney Lumet allowed the actors to ad-lib so long as they didn’t stray too far from Pierson’s script (which would win an Academy Award). The issue of homosexuality is neither overstressed nor editorialized, but

Aubrey instead treated in a matter-of-fact fashion not often found in Hollywood films of the period. And rather than provide a phony backstory or specious “motivations” for the behavior of the characters, Lumet and Pierson start the picture cold with the holdup and allow the audience to catch up with salient plot points on a need-toknow basis. The main criticism levelled against Dog Day Afternoon, notably in Andrew Sarris’ Village Voice review, was that audience sympathy is almost entirely with Sonny and Sal, making them heroes in a story where they should be the villains. The hostages are drab and sometimes obnoxious, the authorities are virtually bereft of humanity, and the bank manager—courageous and resourceful during the actual crisis—is made to appear clumsy and almost inept. As Sarris put it, “The crooks are cuddly, the honest citizens are boobs and bullies.” Yet this was precisely what made the film so attractive in 1975 to a moviegoing audience that had recently emerged from the devastating disillusionments of Vietnam and Watergate. To them, the terms “good guy” and “bad guy” were no longer relevant: If they wanted to cheer the heavy and hiss the hero, who could blame them in a world where these labels had lost all meaning? Sentenced to 20 years in prison in 1973, John Wojtowicz was paroled to a halfway house five years later. He was paid $7500 for the film rights to his story, with an additional 1 percent of the film’s profits once they matched or passed the $25 million earned by Al Pacino’s previous starrer Serpico. Unfortunately John was unable to collect any more than a fraction of the money because of a New York law decreeing that profits accrued by convicted felons for stories based on their crimes must be distributed to crime victims as compensation for their suffering (the passage of the “Son of Sam Law” in 1979 further barred criminals from cashing in on their misdeeds). A popular interview subject for several years after Dog Day Afternoon’s release, John Wojtowicz claimed that the film was only about 30 percent accurate, carping over conversations that never took place and the portrayal of his first wife Carmen as an obese harpy. He also griped that whereas he and the late Sal Naturile

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were immaculately dressed when they entered the bank, Al Pacino and John Cazale look as if they’d slept in their clothes. Otherwise, he liked the film and hesitated to correct or clear up the few instances when fact crossed over into fantasy, prompting ex-hostage Robert Barrett to remark “He tells a beautiful story. Maybe he should have written the screenplay.” And what of Ernest Aron, the unwilling cause of it all? Using $2500 of the money given to John Wojtowicz by the film’s producers, Ernest finally underwent his sex-change operation and emerged as “Liz Eden.” Informing The Village Voice that she never loved John and had told him so “a thousand times,” in 1975 Liz announced her engagement to another, much younger man. This marriage was sanctioned by the courts, but didn’t last very long. Nor, sadly, did Liz Eden, who died of AIDS at age 41 in 1987.

A STAIRE, ADELE American musical comedy star of the 1920s and 1930s, sister and professional dancing partner of Fred Astaire. Upon her 1932 marriage to British nobleman Lord Charles Cavendish she retired from the stage. The 1951 film musical Royal Wedding stars Fred Astaire and Jane Powell as Tom and Ellen Bowen, a brother-sister Broadway dance team whose partnership breaks up when she weds Lord John Brindale (Peter Lawford).

AUBREY, JAMES The film: The Love Machine (Sujac Productions/Frankovich Productions/Columbia, 1971)

It has been claimed that onetime CBS television president James T. Aubrey Jr., was given his soubriquet “The Smiling Cobra” by producer John Houseman after the latter’s unpleasant experience with the CBS anthology series The Great Adventure. Other sources insist that the nickname was bestowed upon Aubrey because of the sadistic glee he derived from firing such longtime CBS favorites as Jack Benny and Garry Moore. No matter how the name originated, it was unfair. To the cobra. Born with the proverbial mouthful of silver spoon in 1918, James Aubrey excelled at academics and athletics at Princeton, then spent World

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Aubrey

War II in the Air Force, described by CBS historian Robert Metz as “the glamour branch of the service.” The golden boy glittered all the more when in 1944 he married movie star Phyllis Thaxter, an 18-year union that resulted in two children, one of whom became a fine actress in her own right under the name Skye Aubrey. After the war he joined the CBS sales department, working his way up to manager of Hollywood network programming. His promotion of the successful TV western series Have Gun— Will Travel in 1957 earned the admiration of the network’s executive branch, but Aubrey felt restless and defected to third-rated network ABC, where he received a vice-presidency and a larger salary. Boosting ABC’s ratings and profits with a steady diet of domestic sitcoms, westerns and crime shows, Aubrey was lured back to CBS in 1959, where he was appointed president by the end of the year. Up til then, top-rated CBS enjoyed the reputation of “The Tiffany Network,” specializing in quality TV programs that pleased both critics and viewers. Aubrey on the other hand established a policy of “broads, bosoms and fun,” dumbing down the network’s primetime lineup with infantile comedies like Mister Ed and Petticoat Junction. This isn’t to say that nothing of value emerged during the six-year Aubrey regime—as The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Defenders will attest—but for the most part his programming exemplified FCC chairman Newton Minow’s description of network TV as “a vast wasteland.” During this period Aubrey became famous for his ability to make snap decisions no matter whose feathers he ruffled, earning the scorn of many top CBS stars who had come to expect better treatment under the benevolent reign of network owner William S. Paley. Eventually even Paley became fed up with Aubrey’s arrogance, though as long as advertising revenue rolled in and ratings continued to climb Paley was willing to give The Smiling Cobra a free hand (if indeed snakes have hands). More troublesome than his cavalier treatment of talent was Jim Aubrey’s private life, with stories of wild booze-sex-and-drug orgies abounding. Wrote media historian Peter Bart, “The face

Aubrey presented to the world was that of the controlled tactician, the master of cool. The after-hours Aubrey was a whole different animal—hard-drinking and feral.” Though it was never difficult for Aubrey to attract beautiful and pliable young women, some of his ex-amours came forth with stories of his fondness for rough sex and other kinkiness, brandishing bruises and broken limbs to back up their words. Especially irksome to the CBS brass was Aubrey’s close friendship with mob-connected entertainer Keefe Brasselle, who despite his many career flops (notably the starring role in The Eddie Cantor Story) always mysteriously commanded enormous salaries in Las Vegas nightclubs. The story goes that Brasselle prevented Aubrey from being “hit” by the Mob after the executive roughed up the girlfriend of a prominent gangster, whereupon Aubrey promised Brasselle that anything he wanted, he’d get. In the fall of 1964, three weekly TV series produced by Brasselle were accepted for CBS’s nighttime lineup without even the formality of a pilot episode. All three shows bombed spectacularly, but not before they practically bled the network dry with cost overruns. This, combined with an overall drop of ratings and revenue during the 1964–65 season, proved to be the death knell for Aubrey, whom CBS mogul Bill Paley wasted no time firing. Four years after his dismissal Aubrey was invited by Kirk Kerkorian, owner of Hollywood’s MGM studios, to take charge of the floundering operation. Kerkorian cared nothing about Aubrey’s private peccadilloes, but admired the man’s cutthroat executive abilities. Slashing the studio work force by half, cancelling potentially expensive productions before they could get under way, imposing a budget cap for all future productions, auctioning off MGM’s Golden-Age props and costumes and selling the studio’s fabled backlot to real estate developers, Aubrey managed to get the dying concern back on its feet, though by 1973 he was out of a job again after a few unsuccessful films. He then went into independent production, still proving to be a reliable barometer of public taste with such gems as the TV movie The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. James Aubrey died in 1994.

Baer In 1969, the same year that Aubrey descended upon MGM like the One Horseman of the Apocalypse, novelist Jacqueline Susann published another of her popular roman à clefs. This one was titled The Love Machine, named for the prodigious sexual prowess of its protaganist, TV network executive Robin Stone. As was her custom, Susann based most of the main characters on celebrities of her acquaintance, though she was careful to protect herself by folding in composite character traits. Robin Stone starts out as a newscaster before seducing Judith Austin, the socialite wife of “IBC Network” chieftan Greg Austin, into getting him an executive position at the network. Thus with a touch of “Edward R. Murrow,” Susann could claim if necessary that Stone was not entirely inspired by James Aubrey. Even so, Robin climbs to power over the bones of people whom he’d befriended only to use and throw away, while his spare-time sexual appetite is boundless and insatiable. He also musses up a few of his conquests, inflicting so much pain on one particular prostitute that his gay friend Jerry Nelson has to do an extensive coverup of the damage, receiving a contract to produce a high-profile TV series as a reward. But Robin Stone is not entirely beyond redemption: It turns out that his abusive treatment of women stems from his shame over being the bastard son of a hooker, and in the end of the novel a threehour hypnotic treatment “cures” him to the extent that he asks for and receives the love of a Good Woman. When Jim Aubrey got wind of what Jackie Susann was up to with The Love Machine, the Cobra smiled as broadly as ever, urging Susann to “make me a bastard!” and throwing a publication party for Jackie where he was the center of attention. Coproduced by Susann and directed by Jack Haley, Jr., the 1971 film version of The Love Machine was to have starred Brian Kelly as Robin Stone; when Kelly was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident the role was offered to several prominent leading men before John Phillip Law was finally chosen. Susann was unhappy with the changes wrought by screenwriter Samuel Taylor and his uncredited collaborators, notably the removal of the happy ending for Robin Stone in

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favor of an earlier climax in the novel wherein he sacrifices his career to spare a former girlfriend from scandal. On the other hand, the film undoubtedly proved satisfying to at least two of its contributors: Executive producer Mike Frankovich, whom Aubrey had replaced at MGM, and actor Jackie Cooper, who back in 1964 had starred in the pilot for a TV series that died aborning thanks to Aubrey’s intrusive “improvements.” As bad as any other Jacqueline Susann– based movie, The Love Machine succeeded in at least one respect: During a preview showing of the film, actress Skye Aubrey pointed to the bigscreen image of John Phillip Law and announced, “That’s my father.”

AVEDON, RICHARD American fashion photographer who served as the inspiration for Fred Astaire’s screen character Dick Avery in the 1957 movie musical Funny Face (Avedon supplied some of the photographs seen in the film).

BAER , ROBERT The film: Syriana (Participant Media/4M/Section Eight/FilmWorks/MID Foundation/Warner Bros., 2005)

Produced by and co-starring George Clooney, Syriana warrants a book of its own. Like writerdirector Stephen Gaghan’s previous Traffic (2000), the film is a dizzying labyrinth of plots, sub-plots, and sub-sub-plots, intersecting and interconnecting throughout its crowded 128 minutes. Put as simply as a possible, Syriana is the story of how “petroleum politics” profoundly affects the destiny of the Middle East. Set in motion by the desire of the fictional energy titan Commex to maintain control of an unnamed kingdom run by the “al-Subaai” family, the film features Clooney as CIA agent Bob Barnes (a role that earned him a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award), who while on assignment to kill a pair of arms traffickers embarrasses the agency by reporting on the fact that one of his predator missiles has somehow been diverted to a mysterious Egyptian (Amr Waked). Meanwhile, the CIA has engaged the law firm run by Dean Whiting (Christopher Plummer)—a man with more fingers in more pies

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Baglio

than is apparent in the early scenes—to make it appear as if the Department of Justice is conducting a thorough investigation of a shady corporate merger engineered by Commex to squeeze out its Chinese competition in the Middle East. The CIA also arranges to assassinate the politically progressive son (Alexander Siddig) of a “friendly” oil-rich emir lest the younger man democratize his country and diminish its dependence on American money. Without giving too much away—or burning out my word processor—let it be said that both Bob Barnes and Dean Whiting’s emissary Bennett Holliday ( Jeffrey Wright) are thrown under the bus by their respective bosses in order to maintain the status quo; energy analyst Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon), much against his will, is engaged by the emir’s son as an economic advisor, a move that culminates in death for one of the men and an epiphany for the other; and Pakistani migrant worker Wasim (Mazhar Munir), who loses his oil-refinery job as a result of all the other subplots, is radicalized and transforms into a suicide warrior—using “stolen” CIA weaponry. The film’s title Syriana, calculated to sound like a compound word, is a reference to the manner in which outside political and economic forces have since World War I created “false” nations from independent Middle Eastern colonies and kingdoms to suit their purposes. The viewer is free to assume that Syriana is the name of the oil-producing country where the story takes place, though this is never made clear (nor is “Syriana” ever spoken in the film). Screenwriter Gaghan’s principal source for his fictional mosaic was former CIA case officer Robert Baer’s 2003 memoir See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War Against Terrorism. In a December 6, 2005, interview with NPR’s Robert Siegel, Baer acknowledged the influence of his book on the film, though he added “you have to remember that Syriana—that Stephen Gaghan has taken like real characters and fictionalized their stories, carried them out through the end, ’cause this—at the end of the day it’s a thriller, a political thriller.” Still, there is a great deal of Bob Baer, or at least his own experiences, in George Clooney’s character Bob Barnes. Ad-

dressing the plot strand in which the kidnapping and murder of the emir’s “dangerous” son, and a subsequent pro–West coup, is planned by the CIA and its oil-industry accomplices, Baer recalled “In 1997 when I left the agency, I resigned; showed up in Beirut, and there was a contract out on a Gulf prince. It was open, and people knew about it. He was hiding in Syria at the time. He opposed his government. He was a cousin of the emir of his government. He was a bit of a, you know, red-diaper prince. He tried a coup in 1995 and was trying again in 1997, and there was money being offered to whack this guy. So it is plausible. This is the way the Middle East works.” Also in Syriana, Bob Barnes is disavowed by his superiors so it will appear that the assassination is the handiwork of a rogue agent, at the same time punishing Barnes for his outspokenness about questionable activities in the Middle East. Though the details and results were different in real life, Bob Baer told Robert Siegel “I was disowned by the CIA. In 1995 I was brought up on charges of attempting to kill Saddam Hussein. I was told not to have a lawyer, and I was— at the end of it, the FBI told me this was a capital crime and they could have brought charges against me had they wanted to. They chose not to. So Gaghan has taken this story and, of course, rejiggered it, and you do get cut loose.” As for the CIA’s use of predator missiles in the film despite the agency’s official aversion to such tactics (at least in 2005), Baer gave his former bosses the benefit of the doubt: “9/11 changed everything.” Producer-star George Clooney would revisit the theme of American-driven mischief in the Middle East in another fact-based film, 2009’s The Men Who Stare at Goats—this time for laughs rather than thrills (See separate entry for Jim Channon).

BAGLIO, MATT—AND FATHER CARMINE DE FILIPPIS, FATHER G ARY THOMAS The film: The Rite (Contrafilm/Mid Atlantic Films/Hungarian National Film Office/Rome Film/Lazio Film Commission/Italian Tax Credit/ Mouse Film/New Line Cinema, 2011)

The ancient Catholic rite of exorcism pro-

Baglio vided fodder for one of the scariest (and greenpea-soupiest) films of the 1970s. But whereas The Exorcist had no aspirations beyond serving as entertainment, 2011’s The Rite was created in hopes of being both entertaining and instructional. And scary, too, just to make sure it wouldn’t attract an audience comprised exclusively of divinity students. Author Matthew Baglio was neither an avowed believer nor a confirmed skeptic when he first received word about a 40-hour seminar, “Exorcism and the Prayer of Liberation,” offered by the Vatican-affiliated Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorium in Rome. “Being naturally curious, I wanted to understand what was going on,” Baglio told the National Catholic Register’s Daily News. “I wanted to shine a light on this phenomenon so that believers and skeptics could look at this topic and say, ‘I’ve never seen it talked about like this before.’” The author arranged to attend the seminar in 2005, where he and Father Gary Thomas from the Diocese of San Jose, California, were the only Americans. Bonding with Father Gary, Baglio learned that the priest had been recommended for exorcism training by his own bishop. And while Baglio himself doubted the necessity of exorcism, he was no bigger a doubter than Father Gary, who said that no one is more skeptical than the exorcist: He can’t simply want to find a demon or demons, but has to truly believe that an exorcism is required. According to seminar statistics, only about 10 percent of people who believe they need an exorcism actually do. Of that 10 percent, most had either been involved in occult activities or had suffered from sexual abuse. The exorcist must confirm that belief in the existence of demons is genuine on everyone’s part, and not just a byproduct of mental illness or delusion. The results of Baglio’s hands-on research were published in his 2009 book The Rite, in which Father Gary Thomas emerges as protagonist. Mikael Håfström, director of the 2011 film adaptation, invited Father Gary to spend a week on the set as technical advisor. At that time the priest owned up to performing five genuine exorcisms out of the hundreds of supposedly pos-

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sessed people he’d met, and objected not at all that the batting average of his movie counterpart Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donoghue) was rather better. Of the finished film, Father Gary Thomas told USA Today that he found it “much more true to life and genuine” than The Exorcist. That said, Father Gary understood that screenwriter Michael Petroni would have to do some sensationalizing to keep the audience awake. While it’s true that Father Gary had once studied mortuary science and worked in a funeral home as Michael Kovak does, his decision to become a priest at age 30 was sincerely motivated—unlike Kovak’s master plan to attend seminary school just to get a free college degree, then renounce his vows afterward. Kovak doesn’t have the epiphany that we all know he’s going to have until he’s pressed into service to give absolution to a dying accident victim. Witnessing this, Father Matthew (Tobia Jones) tells the still-doubting (and not yet ordained) Kovak that he has the potential to be an exorcist, so off our hero goes to Rome to study for this singular skill under the tutelage of the very pragmatic Father Lucas Travant (Anthony Hopkins), the film’s equivalent of Father Gary’s real-life instructor Father Carmine de Filippis. Upon arrival, Kovak links up with journalist Angeline (Alice Braga), who like her male role model Matt Baglio is attending the seminar out of curiosity (Why the gender change? Well, why not?) Some of the events that follow in the film were experienced by Father Gary, but most of the ones that really grab our attention did not. The priest never witnessed a possessed woman spitting up nails, though he’d been told this had occurred elsewhere. Nor did he ever see anyone die from the after-effects of an exorcism, as happens here to a luckless woman who has been impregnated by her own father. In the film, the shock of this tragedy causes Father Travant to become possessed by demons himself, and it is up to Kozak to apply what he has learned to save his mentor’s life—and to prevent those selfsame demons from infesting his own body. Again, this did not occur within Father Gary Thomas’ range of experience, but who’s to say it never happened?

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(Oops. I’m beginning to sound like Criswell in Plan 9 from Outer Space). Matt Baglio has summed up The Rite as “slightly different from the book, but there’s nothing in the movie that isn’t theologically posited in the book, so they’re not pulling things out of left field. The filmmakers have tried to be very faithful to the theology of the Church on the dynamics of demonic possession. The message is very similar to my book, which is this idea that evil likes to stay hidden, but it’s through belief, through faith, that you’re able to overcome it.” As with the original book, the film version of The Rite does not attempt to proselytize on behalf of exorcism: Either you believe in it or you don’t.

BAKER , C. GRAHAM—AND GENE TOWNE American writing team, highly active in Hollywood talkies both together (You Only Live Once, Eternally Yours) and individually throughout the 1930s. Like Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (who famously inspired the 1936 Broadway comedy and 1938 Warner Bros. film Boy Meets Girl), the team was as famous for their off-screen shenanigans as their on-screen achievements. Baker and Towne’s predilection for pulling stunts and playing games during production is lampooned in the 1939 Kay Kyser vehicle That’s Right—You’re Wrong, with Hobart Cavanaugh and Edward Everett Horton respectively cast as capricious screenwriters Dwight Cook and Tom Village.

BAKEWELL, JOAN [BARONESS] British journalist, TV hostess and politician. From 1962 to 1969 she had an affair with British playwright Harold Pinter while he was married to actress Vivien Merchant and she was still Mrs. Michael Bakewell. Somewhat unchivalrously, Pinter used his relationship with Baroness Bakewell as inspiration for his 1978 play Betrayal, a reverse-chronology dissection of an extramarital romance. The 1983 film version of Betrayal stars Patricia Hodge as Emma, the Bakewell counterpart, with Jeremy Irons as Pinter’s alter ego Jerry and Ben Kingsley as Emma’s husband Robert.

BARKER , ARIZONA DONIE “MA” The films: Queen of the Mob (Paramount, 1940); White Heat (Warner Bros., 1949)

It has often been said that the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list actually represents the ten criminals whom the FBI has the best chance of capturing. While that isn’t quite the case, the bureau’s founder J. Edgar Hoover did have a tendency to exaggerate how dangerous certain “Public Enemies” actually were in order to inflate his own efficiency. Case in point: “Ma” Barker, matriarch of one of the more notorious criminal families of the 1920s and 1930s. Better known to her intimates as “Kate” Barker, she was born in Missouri in 1873 as Arizona Donie Clark, and was 19 years old when she married itinerant laborer George Barker. Neither one could have qualified as a Rhodes Scholar, passing along their lack of education to their four sons: Herman (born 1893), Lloyd (born 1897), Arthur, aka “Doc” (born 1899) and Fred (born 1901). The boys’ criminal career began around 1910, and by the 1920s all four were well versed in larceny both petty and grand. Their activities were impeded in 1927 when Herman killed himself after a robbery in Wichita went wrong, and were put on hold the following year when the remaining three brothers landed in prison. At that time the elder Barkers were living together in Tulsa, but George soon deserted Ma, either because he was fed up with his sons’ perfidy or because his wife was cheating on him. Either way, Ma had taken up with Arthur Dunlop by the time her sons Fred and Doc were released from prison in 1931. Making up for lost time, the boys formed a new gang with fellow ex-con Alvin Karpis. Forced to move from state to state after Fred and Karpis killed a sheriff, the boys occasionally took Ma and Dunlop along with them, but most often stashed them in remote apartments to keep them out of the Syndicated newspaper line of fire—and also photo of “Ma” Barker.

Barker to prevent the jealous Ma from driving a wedge between her sons and their girlfriends. While temporarily encamped in St. Paul, Minnesota, the Barkers enjoyed the patronage of a corrupt police chief who allegedly encouraged them to switch from robbery to kidnapping. Around this time Fred took it upon himself to kill Arthur Dunlop because the old duffer tended to talk too much when he got drunk. After collecting the ransom for their second kidnap victim the family had to go on the lam again because they’d left fingerprints at the drop site. On January 8, 1935, Doc Barker was arrested in Chicago while carrying a map that led the authorities to the Barker hiding place in Lake Wier, Florida. Surrounding the house eight days later, the FBI began shooting it out with Ma and her son Fred. When the smoke cleared the Feds broke into the house and found mother and son lying dead. According to legend, Ma still held a hot machine gun in her cold hands. Describing Ma Barker as deadlier than John Dillinger (see separate entry), J. Edgar Hoover perpetuated the myth that she had been the mastermind in the Barker family, orchestrating all the robberies and kidnappings. But outside of J. Edgar’s printed testimony in his 1938 book Persons in Hiding there is no evidence that Ma was ever directly involved in her sons’ criminal activities beyond providing them with care and shelter between jobs. Former gang member Alvin Karpis described Ma as a harmless and not terribly bright old woman who generally tried to obey the law in all other aspects of her life. Still, the image of Ma Barker as the cunning, cold-blooded leader of her family “mob” has persisted in virtually all movie adaptations of her life and times, with one 1960 film, Ma Barker’s Killer Brood, claiming that among her gang members were Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd. The fictionalized Ma Barker surrogates in various films have likewise been painted as willing instigators of and participants in their families’ violent escapades, as witness Ma Jarrett (Margaret Wycherly) in the James Cagney crime meller White Heat (1949). The most overt à clef dramatization of the Barker story is director James Hogan’s Queen of the Mob (1940), the

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third of a Paramount Pictures series based on J. Edgar Hoover’s Persons in Hiding. Screenwriters Horace McCoy (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?) and William R. Lipman gave the film’s characters fictional names at the request of Hoover, most likely because Ma’s ex-husband George and stillimprisoned son Lloyd were still alive (Doc Barker had died in a botched prison break in 1939). In her first screen appearance since her histrionic movie debut as the vengeful Madame LaFarge in Tale of Two Cities (1935), celebrated stage actress Blanche Yurka gives a virtuoso performance as “Ma Webster.” In later years, Yurka explained that she accepted this 61-minute B picture because “I thought it would do for me what Little Caesar had done for [Edward G.] Robinson.” It didn’t, but not for lack of trying. Most of the film adheres to the Gospel According to Hoover, with Ma Webster shepherding her sons Tom (Paul Kelly), Charlie (Richard Denning) and Eddie ( James Seay) through a series of robberies, abductions and murders. A fourth Webster son, Bert (William Henry), has renounced his mother’s evil ways and settled down to respectability with his wife Ethel (played by Jimmy Cagney’s sister Jeanne, one the film’s two tangible connections with White Heat). The ill-fated Arthur Dunlop character is gang member George Frost, played by Paramount’s all-purpose character actor J. Carrol Naish. Dogging the Websters’ trail are two dauntless FBI agents played by Ralph Bellamy and Jack Carson. In a deft dramatic touch, the major events of Ma Webster’s career (among them a brief respite in which she poses as a society matron) are linked to various Christmas Eve celebrations, including the climactic gun battle with the FBI. Returning to reality for a moment, we note that Ma Barker’s surviving son Lloyd cleaned up his act after finishing his prison term, serving honorably in World War II and opening up his own Denver grocery store. In 1949 he unexpectedly followed in the path of his late mother and siblings by suffering a violent death at the hands of his mentally unbalanced wife. Since that time, the Barkers’ final Florida hideout has become a popular tourist attraction. From 1985 until the

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early 21st century, the anniversary of Ma’s demise was celebrated in a lavish Lake Wier festival culminating with a re-enactment of the last big shootout—usually with a local mother and son in the roles of Ma and Fred Barker.

BARKLEY, ALBEN—AND LESTER C. HUNT, JOHN FITZGERALD K ENNEDY, JOSEPH M C C ARTHY, KENNETH MCKELLAR , FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, ROBERT TAFT The film: Advise and Consent (Otto Preminger Films/Alpha Alpina/Columbia, 1962)

Anticipating the works of Harold Robbins and the 1970 blockbuster The Godfather, Allen Drury’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Advise and Consent sparked a widespread guessing game when it was published in 1959. A longtime Washington reporter, Drury had covered the DC beat for United Press during the World War II years, and was with the Washington bureau of the New York Times when his novel appeared. His avowed mission was “to be of some slight assistance in making my fellow countrymen better acquainted with their Congress and particularly their Senate.” The quintessential Washington insider, Drury poured a lot of his accumulated knowledge and experience into Advise and Consent—and though he would later insist that the main characters were merely “akin” to actual persons and “not the people and events of reality,” those In The Know were able to discern who in the novel was really who. Film buffs are more familiar with director Otto Preminger’s 1962 screen version of Advise and Consent, adapted by Wendell Mayes with a soft-pedalled liberal bent reflecting the Kennedy years, as opposed to the Eisenhower-era conservatism prevalent in the novel. Both book and film—as well as the 1960 Broadway stage adaptation by Loring Mandel—share the same basic plotline, in which the president of the United States nominates prominent liberal Robert Leffingwell as the next Secretary of State. The president hopes that Leffingwell’s policies will help mend fences between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, but a number of senators are convinced that the nominee has Communist sympathies. They are further concerned that Vice President

Harley Hudson, first in line to succeed the ailing president, is not strong enough to sustain the present foreign policy, and since Leffingwell would be the next choice after Hudson, his nomination would be disastrous. Thus the Senate invokes Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, which states that the president “shall nominate and appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consults, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States” only “by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate.” In the years following the film version, the character of Robert Leffingwell has often been assumed to be an à clef Adlai Stevenson, especially since the role is played in the film by Henry Fonda, who also essayed Stevenson-like characters in Fail-Safe and The Best Man (both 1964). Similarly, Seabright Cooley, the lugubrious Southern senator opposing Leffingwell’s nomination, is played by Charles Laughton in a manner reminding some observers of Republican Senator Everett Dirksen; while Sen. Fred Van Ackerman, the scheming gadfly who resorts to blackmail to get Leffingwell approved, is portrayed by George

Alben Barkley, role model for Orrin Munson in Advise and Consent.

Barkley Grizzard as a lean-and-hungry type that could be patterned after Richard Nixon. Though these comparisons are understandable, the statements of political insiders of the 1950s combined with the evidence of Allen Drury’s own 1963 memoir A Senate Journal have pointed to several more likely character inspirations. Robert Leffingwell has less in common with Adlai Stevenson than with Alger Hiss, a government official who’d been instrumental in establishing the United Nations before he was accused of being a Soviet spy and tried for perjury and espionage in 1948. The testimony of journalist Whittaker Chambers, an ex–Communist who became one of the party’s most vocal opponents during the Cold War, helped secure Hiss’ conviction. This episode is recreated in all versions of Advise and Consent: Defending himself against charges of Communist ties before a special Senate committee, Leffingwell must fend off the accusations of former associate Herbert Gelman (played in the film by Burgess Meredith), who claims to have proof that Leffingwell is a “fellow traveller.” As for Fred Van Ackerman, his bully boy tactics and coven of political henchmen pin him down as a Joseph McCarthy surrogate, though Van Ackerman’s sincerity makes him a lot more dangerous than the cynically opportunistic McCarthy. Also, whereas Dick Nixon wasn’t given the cold shoulder by his fellow politicians for his career-making attacks on liberal senator Helen Gahagan Douglas (whom he dubbed “The Pink Lady”), Van Ackerman suffers a McCarthy-like censure—in essence if not in fact—when his ruthlessness drives one of his colleagues to kill himself. Finally, Seabright Cooley may talk and act like Ev Dirksen, but he has his roots in Tennessee Democrat Kenneth McKellar, who served in the Senate from 1917 through 1953. In the spirit of Seab Cooley’s obstructionism, McKellar made quite a few enemies in the 1940s by threatening to withhold funding to purchase uranium from his home state, arguing that the manufacture of the atom bomb was less important than making sure his constituents were given fair market profit for land taken by the Tennessee Valley Authority. Additionally, McKellar had been cool

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towards fellow Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt ever since the appointment of the liberal David E. Lillienthal as the head of the TVA. McKellar’s accusation that Lillienthal was soft on Communism parallels Seab Cooley’s distrustful attitude towards Bob Leffingwell. The role models for some of the other Advise and Consent characters are less debatable. Senate Majority Leader Orrin Munson (Walter Pidgeon in the film), who uses charm and conviviality to unite the warring factions within his party, is derived from Kentucky-born Alben Barkley, whose keynote speech at the 1948 Democratic convention may well have turned the tide for presidential nominee Harry S Truman. Barkley was rewarded with the position of Vice President, and in this capacity did a lot of the hands-on politicking necessary to keep the country running smoothly while Truman was preoccupied with foreign relations. Also like Barkley, Munson resents being kept in the dark by the President regarding certain aspects of of the Leffingwell nomination, angrily resigning his post at one point. Finally, both Barkley and Munson were widowers courting much-younger women, but while Barkley would marry his sweetheart Jane Hadley in 1949, Munson remains unwed to influential Washington hostess Dolly Harrison (Gene Tierney in the film), a sexier version of real-life “hostess with the mostess” Perle Mesta (see separate entry). Lew Ayres plays the film’s Vice President Harley Hudson, an acquiescent and seemingly feckless “good party man” who turns out to have leadership qualities after all upon his ascension to the presidency: If that sounds like Harry S Truman, so be it. The film’s unnamed and mortally ill president, played by Franchot Tone, has many of the qualities and some of the shortcomings of Franklin D. Roosevelt, though after seeing the Broadway version of Advise and Consent in 1960 Eleanor Roosevelt remarked that the character reminded her more of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Another major character (even more major in the film) is Utah senator Brigham Anderson, played as an ethical, upright family man by Don Murray. One of the strongest opponents of Leffingwell’s nomination, Anderson is targeted for

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blackmail by Van Ackerman’s minions, who threaten to expose a brief homosexual liaison in the senator’s past. Given only a chapter or two in the novel, this episode is blown way out of proportion in the film version, suggesting that director Otto Preminger’s motivation for making the picture was to knock down a few pillars of movie censorship, as he’d done previously in The Moon Is Blue, The Man with the Golden Arm and Anatomy of a Murder. Thus the film not only details the many frustrating hoops that homosexuals had to jump through to avoid arrest back in 1962 (personified by the gross, grimy male pimp played by Larry Tucker), but also offers the first post–Production Code depiction of a “typical” gay bar. Anderson ends up killing himself in his Senate office, an incident based on the real-life tragedy of Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt, who committed suicide after Sen. Styles Bridges warned him that if he ran for re-election in 1954, the story of the arrest of Hunt’s son for gay solicitation would end up “in every mailbox in Wyoming.” In the novel, the president actually gives Fred Van Ackerman photographic evidence of Brig Anderson’s indiscretion, certain that Van Ackerman would never stoop so low as to use it. This is one of several details omitted from the film version of Advise and Consent, possibly because of the screenplay’s subtle shift from the Right to the Left. In a similar vein, Senator Orrin Knox, based on Republican Sen. Robert A. Taft, is a major character in the novel, emerging as its hero in the final chapters (he would be given even more prominence in Allen Drury’s many sequels to Advise and Consent); Knox is also one of the leading roles in the 1960 stage production, originally played by Ed Begley, Sr. But in the Preminger film Orrin Knox is reduced to a supporting player, given a measure of gravitas by the casting of noted character actor Edward Andrews but still just a glorified cameo. If anyone can be said to be the hero in the film’s climax, it is Senator Lafe Smith, who is so disgusted by the actions of Van Ackerman that he breaks from his party during the final vote on the Leffingwell appointment. D.C. insiders were quick to recognize the novel’s version of Lafe

Smith as a caricature of then Senator John F. Kennedy, especially given Smith’s serial womanizing—though unlike Kennedy, Lafe is a bachelor. While the character’s peccadilloes are respectfully downplayed in the film version of Advise and Consent, Lafe Smith’s resemblance to the man sitting in the Oval Office in 1962 is still fairly overt, if only because the role was played by Peter Lawford—who (all together now) was JFK’s brother-in-law at the time.

BARROW, CLYDE—AND BONNIE PARKER The films: Absolute Quiet (MGM, 1936); You Only Live Once (Walter Wanger/United Artists, 1937); Persons in Hiding (Paramount, 1939); They Live by Night (RKO-Radio, 1948); Gun Crazy (King Bros./United Artists, 1950); Thieves Like Us (George Litto Productions/Jerry Bick/United Artists, 1974)

Had they not both been killed in a Louisiana police ambush on May 23, 1934, Depression-era outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow might have lived long enough to see their criminal career immortalized in the highly influential 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde. Undoubtedly they would have been amused and flattered by the film’s critical adulation and box office success: If there was anything they loved, it was a good laugh and a lot of publicity. Before its canonization as the film which single-handedly introduced the French nouvelle vague movement to the American cinema, Bonnie and Clyde was subjected to a handful of negative reviews complaining about its historical inaccuracies. Others griped that the casting of Warren Beatty as Clyde and Faye Dunaway as Bonnie unduly glamorized a notoriously unglamorous criminal pair, and that the adulation of the film by hip young movie fans obscured the fact that Parker and Barrow were essentially losers: For all the killings committed in the course of their crimes and the widespread newspaper coverage of their exploits, their gang netted very little money and were forced to perpetually stay on the run in a progression of cheap bungalows and fleabag hotels. And while film’s the climactic shootout death of Bonnie and Clyde may have drawn sympathetic catcalls from the 1967 anti-establishment crowd, there were comparatively few tears shed when 24-year-old

Barrow Parker and 25-year-old Barrow were mowed down back in 1934. If we can believe contemporary newspaper accounts, the nonsense of Bonnie and Clyde being modern-day Robin Hoods was rejected even during a period in which similar desperadoes like John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd were lionized as folk heroes. Nevertheless, the mystique of Bonnie and Clyde—two young and vibrant Depression victims lashing out at the depersonalized coldness of Authority—was sustained for many years by Hollywood (1957’s The Bonnie Parker Story is here cited only in passing due to its plethora of falsifications and anachronisms, as well as the refusal of Clyde Barrow’s family to allow his name to be used—not to mention the fact that as a biopic it doesn’t qualify for entry in this book). Fictionalized versions of the couple began showing up on screen within two years of their deaths, starting with the 1936 MGM programmer Absolute Quiet. Directed by George B. Seitz from a script by Harry Clork and George F. Wortz, the film stars Lionel Atwill as tyrannical tycoon Gerald A. Axton, who for health reasons has squirreled himself away at a remote Western ranch. The unexpected intrusion of a pair of fugitive killers, shabby ex-vaudevillians Jack and Judy (Wallace Ford, Bernardene Hayes), precipitates the forced landing of an airplane near Axton’s hideaway. As luck would have it, practically all the passengers have ample reason to hate Axton and wish him dead, making them potentially more dangerous (and a lot less sympathetic) than the gun-wielding Jack and Judy. Among those held hostage by the outlaw pair is Axton’s political enemy Gov. Sam Pruden (Raymond Walburn), an out-and-out crook whom Axton tries to strongarm into pardoning Jack and Judy in order to destroy Pruden’s career. The film’s Bonnie & Clyde surrogates die in each other’s arms during a climactic burst of gunfire, which somehow results in Pruden’s instant reformation. While Judy and Jack are supporting characters in Absolute Quiet, Joan Graham (Sylvia Sidney) and Eddie Taylor (Henry Fonda) are the whole show in You Only Live Once (1937), producer Walter Wanger and director Fritz Lang’s

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spin on the Bonnie & Clyde legend. Screenwriters Gene Towne and Graham Baker stack the deck in favor of ex-convict Eddie by establishing him as a three-time loser who desperately wants to go straight. With the help of public defender Stephen Whitney (Barton MacLane), Eddie gets a good truck-driving job, rejecting all temptations to return to crime. But when his romance with Whitney’s secretary Joan causes him to be late for work, Eddie is summarily fired by his gross, insensitive boss. Thus according to the film’s logic, Eddie has no choice but to participate in an armored car robbery in which six people are killed, landing him on Death Row. The hitherto blameless Joan helps Eddie stage a prison break, during which he kills kindly Father Dolan (William Gargan). The now-married couple takes it on the lam, pulling robberies along the way to sustain themselves with food and medical supplies. During their final flight from the authorities, Eddie and Joan are in a car crash which kills her instantly. As he carries her body toward the state border, Eddie is shot down by the cops, and we hear the voice of Father Dolan, whose spirit is remarkably forgiving under the circumstances, assuring the dying fugitive “You’re free, Eddie; the gates are open.” Director Lang has said “I think there is one thread running through all my pictures: the fight against Destiny, or Fate, or whatever you want to call it…. In You Only Live Once, it is the fight of a three-time loser against something which is stronger than he is.” While this philosophy applies to the film’s Eddie Taylor, no one has ever argued that Clyde Barrow was fighting against anything stronger than the urge to find honest work. Producer John Houseman hoped to juxtapose the innocence of youth with the jadedness of the career criminal in 1949’s They Live by Night, the first film adaptation of Edward Anderson’s novel Thieves Like Us. Having spent the early Depression years as a hobo, Anderson understood the frustration and hopelessness that might lead an otherwise decent human being into a life of crime. Published in 1937, three years after Bonnie & Clyde met their maker, Thieves Like Us is clearly inspired by their story, though Anderson’s

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youthful protagonists Bowie (the boy) and Keechie (the girl) are not the leaders of their bank-robbery gang. They more closely resemble the friends and relatives who tagged along with Parker and Barrow; Keechie is the cousin of gang member Chickamaw, with whom Bowie and fellow convict T-Dub escape from jail at the beginning of the story. Locked up for murder at age 16, Bowie has been an outlaw virtually all his life, so it’s only natural that he remains with Chickamaw and T-Dub once he’s on the outside. Similarly, Keechie has grown up exclusively among thieves and scoundrels, an environment that has warped her outlook on life. In fact the entire novel is told from a criminal’s viewpoint, with nary a single honest or non-corrupted character. For all the sordidness and bloodshed surrounding them, the romance between Bowie and Keechie remains sweet and touching. Explaining his reason for adapting Thieves Like Us to the screen, John Houseman said “It was a blend of chase and love story—the brief, tender idyll of two lonely, emotionally stunted kids set in a world of which hunger, fear, treachery and violence were essential components.” At the same time, Houseman acknowledged the challenge of sustaining audience sympathy for a pair of social outcasts who see nothing wrong with stealing as a way of life. They Live by Night (the studio-imposed title of the film version) manages to pull this off thanks to the incisive and innovative direction of Nicholas Ray, the adroit concessions to the Production Code by screenwriter Charles Schnee (Bowie’s desire in the film to “go straight” and live a decent life is all but nonexistent in the novel), and the sensitive, unaffected performances by Farley Granger as Bowie and Cathy O’Donnell as Keechie. Lest at any time the audience should remark “Yeh, they’re nice kids and all, but they’re still basically criminals,” the subtle blend of worldliness and naïvete conveyed by Granger and O’Donnell is contrasted with the unrepentant evil of Howard da Silva as Chickamaw and Jay C. Flippen as TDub; since we certainly aren’t going to like them, we have no alternative but to side with the young lovers. They Live by Night was remade in 1974 under the property’s original title Thieves Like

Us by director Robert Altman and screenwriters Calder Winningham and Joan Tewksbury, starring David Carradine as Bowie, Shelley Duvall as Keechie, John Shuck as Chickamaw and Bert Remsen as T-Dub. John Houseman has opined that the 1949 version’s most compelling quality, its “alternation of harshness and tenderness,” is “largely missing” from the Altman version; but the director’s legions of admirers (and this writer) regard the 1974 Thieves Like Us as darned good character study in its own right. Two years after the release of You Only Live Once and the publication of Thieves Like Us, the Paramount B-picture Persons in Hiding, loosely based on J. Edgar Hoover’s book of the same name, was the first film version of the Bonnie & Clyde story to make the Bonnie character the more dominant of the two. Possibly because of published photos showing Bonnie leaning menacingly against the bumper of her car with a cigar in her mouth and a rifle in her hands, Hoover had apparently gotten it into his skull that Ms. Parker was the real “brains” of the Barrow gang. This premise is articulated by screenwriters William R. Lipman and Horace McCoy and director Louis King in Persons in Hiding, wherein Patricia Morison as the Bonnie equivalent Dorothy “Dot” Bronson is billed ahead of J. Carrol Naish as the Clyde stand-in Freddie “Gunner” Martin. Born into grinding poverty, beauty parlor employee Dot is ruthless in her pursuit of wealth, marrying two-bit crook Freddie and molding him into a master criminal. The more ill-gotten gains Freddie accrues from the couple’s lawbreaking activities, the more Dot spends on furs and cosmetics. The story crosses over into the true-life saga of “Machine Gun” Kelly and his ambitious wife when Dot and Freddie add kidnapping to their list of felonies, arousing the interest of the FBI as represented by fearless agents Pete Griswold (Lynne Overman) and Dan Waldron (William Henry). When Dot double-crosses Freddie in order to get her mother out of jail, Freddie spitefully reveals Dot’s hiding place for their stolen swag. In Greek Tragedy fashion, Dot is ultimately trapped by her own weakness, an all-consuming desire for her favorite perfume (“Tantalizing”). This is the

Barrymore only adaptation of the Bonnie & Clyde saga in which both criminals survive past the “End” title. The female is likewise the deadlier of the species in what is arguably the best of the faux Bonnie and Clyde film yarns, Director Joseph H. Lewis and screenwriters Mackinlay Kantor and Dalton Trumbo’s brilliant Gun Crazy (1950); indeed, the picture was alternately released as Deadlier Than the Male. What binds the Barrow and Parker characters inextricably together, at least in the beginning, is not a love of crime but an obsession with guns. Juvenile delinquent Bart Tare ( John Dall) steals a gun as a child, thereby planting the seed of his obsession; but though he loves to hold and shoot firearms, he stops short of killing. While attending a carnival, Bart becomes fascinated with gorgeous professional sharpshooter Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins), whom he engages in a quasi-erotic shooting match. Unlike Bart, Annie has blood on her hands, having previously killed a man in St. Louis. Running out of money shortly after their marriage, Bart offers to sell his beloved guns; Annie says she has a better idea, and before long they’ve committed the first of several armed robberies. A nervous Bart begs Annie to give up crime after one last heist at the Armour Meat Company (product placement!), but Annie gums things up by cold-bloodedly killing two employees. And so it goes, with Bart pining to go straight while Annie seems anxious to add even more notches to her guns. Highlighted by Joseph H. Lewis’ virtuoso single-take staging of a bank robbery lensed from the back seat of the getaway car, Gun Crazy would have been a fitting climax to Hollywood’s intermittent love affair with the legend of Bonnie and Clyde had not director Arthur Penn’s aforementioned 1967 biopic stolen all the thunder—and the gunfire.

BARRYMORE, DIANA—AND PAUL GREEN, ALFRED AND ALMA HITCHCOCK , FRITZ LANG, VAL LEWTON, DAVID O. SELZNICK The film: The Bad and the Beautiful (MGM, 1952)

Directed by Vincente Minnelli from a screenplay by Charles Schnee, The Bad and the Beautiful gives us a good idea what Citizen Kane

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might have looked like had it been filmed at MGM—and without Orson Welles. In addition to the film’s prismatic treatment of its protagonist, who is described in flashback by four of his closest associates, Bad and the Beautiful also shared the same producer as Citizen Kane, John Houseman. And in the tradition of Kane’s implicit portrayal of William Randolph Hearst, several of the characters in Bad and the Beautiful were inspired by actual people whom Houseman hoped would be “vaguely recognizable figures” to the Hollywood congnoscenti—but not recognizable enough to provoke lawsuits. The project began as “Tribute to a Bad Man,” a story by George Bradshaw. Set in the Broadway theater world, Bradshaw’s tale revolved around an amoral stage producer reminiscent of Jed Harris (see separate entry). By that time there had been too many fictionalizations of Harris, notably Twentieth Century and The Saxon Charm, and John Houseman was tired of them. But the premise and the flashback structure appealed to Houseman, who commissioned Charles Schnee to rewrite the property as a behind-the-scenes peek at the Hollywood movie industry: “What was cliched and threadbare in the Bradshaw story about Broadway would be exciting and full of new possibilities if it were transferred to California.” A film about a talented but unscrupulous movie mogul would hardly have gotten by during the height of the Studio System, with those same moguls still running the ship, but current MGM head Dore Schary liked the idea and gave it the green light. To avoid being mistaken for a western, Tribute to a Bad Man underwent a title change to The Bad and the Beautiful. It has been reported that Clark Gable was originally slated to play the hero-heel Jonathan Shields, but Houseman has written that he personally rejected both Gable and Robert Taylor in favor of Kirk Douglas, whom he felt could best convey the sharkish charm of the main character. Both Houseman and director Vincente Minnelli have acknowledged that Jonathan Shields was based in great part on independent producer David O. Selznick, notably his driving ambition and towering ego, his habit of building actresses into major stars and then abandoning them to

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other producers, and what Houseman described as Selznick’s “blend of sentimentality and ruthlessness” that had made possible such cinema classics as Gone with the Wind, Rebecca and Since You Went Away. The early scene in Bad and the Beautiful where Shields has to pay mourners for the sparsely attended funeral of his father, a washed-up movie producer, had its roots in the precipitous fall from grace of Selznick’s father Lewis J. Selznick, and also in the sad final days of screenwriter Budd Schulberg’s once-powerful producer dad J.P. Schulberg. And Shield’s later make-or-break historical epic The Far Away Mountain invokes strong memories of Gone with the Wind despite its Czarist-Russia setting. Vincente Minnelli solidified the Selznick connection in these scenes by designing the filmwithin-a-film to resemble Anna Karenina, which Selznick had produced at MGM. Allegedly Selznick arranged for a pre-release screening of Bad and the Beautiful to determine if he had grounds for a lawsuit, only to conclude that the film wasn’t at all libelous. Perhaps this is because Houseman, Minnelli and Schnee also folded in elements of another producer, RKO horror specialist Val Lewton. The cash-strapped Shields’ decision to avoid buying new costumes for his threadbare production Son of the Cat Man by never showing the title character onscreen, thereby allowing audiences to use their imaginations, is a direct lift from Lewton’s 1942 RKO B-picture Cat People, hailed as a masterpiece because the presence of the feline villainess was merely suggested by shadows, camera angles, “shock” cuts and eerie music until the very end. The four characters who recall how Jonathan Shields has both benefited and betrayed them are director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan), actress Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner), writer James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell), and Shields’ loyal studio manager Harry Pebbel (Walter Pidgeon), who has gathered the others together in hopes of selling them on a new movie project that will restore the now-destitute Shields to his former glory. Amiel and Pebbel are such clever composites that it is nearly impossible to figure out who they’re really supposed to be, but the inspirations for Bartlow and especially Georgia are

fairly transparent. Established as a Southern college professor who on the basis of his steamy bestseller The Proud Land reluctantly allows himself to be lured to Hollywood by Shields, Bartlow is most reminiscent of North Carolina– born novelist-playwright Paul Green, who had greatness thrust upon him when his maiden theatrical effort In Abraham’s Bosom won the 1927 Pulitzer Prize. Green’s only hands-on brush with Hollywood was as screenwriter of the 1932 film Cabin in the Cotton; he didn’t care for the experience and returned to writing plays. Bartlow’s character also draws from William Faulkner, who spent considerably more time in the Hollywood script mills but still preferred his home town in Mississippi; and Foster FitzSimmons, a theater professor at University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, who used the money earned from the film adaptation of his own bestseller Bright Leaf to purchase a summer house before happily returning to academia. The intrigue of Shields forcing Bartlow to concentrate on his script for the film version of The Proud Land by getting the writer’s clinging wife (Gloria Grahame) out of the way via an orchestrated romantic tryst with a sexy Mexican movie star (Gilbert Roland, parodying his own macho screen image), is virtually the only remnant left of the original Bradshaw story involving a Jed Harris–like protagonist. As mentioned in the separate entry on Harris, playwright Charlie MacArthur and novelist Frederic Wakeman both nearly had their marriages ruined by the obtrusive and obstreperous producer. Lana Turner’s Oscar-nominated portrayal of Georgia Lorrison, whom Shields plucks from alcoholic obscurity and transforms into Hollywood’s biggest female star, was largely inspired by Diana Barrymore, daughter of “The Great Profile” John Barrymore. In the film, Georgia is the embittered daughter of a celebrated Shakespearian actor notorious for his sexual shenanigans and drunken escapades. Her own efforts to become an actress dwindling down to a desultory series of screen tests, Georgia has degenerated into a promiscuous lush by the time she is rescued by Shields. The Barrymore link is strengthened by having Georgia’s shabby apart-

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ment cluttered with profile photos of her late fa- cock’s favorite actor Leo G. Carroll as Whitther, with the girl spending night after drunken field—and by showing the character constantly night listening to old records of his soliloquies followed around the set by a dowdy female asfrom Macbeth; these were recorded by MGM sistant, played by Kathleen Freeman as a blunt contract actor Louis Calhern, whom director cartoon of Hitch’s indispensible wife Alma. Minnelli encouraged to closely imitate John Barrymore (as if Calhern needed any encourage- BARRYMORE, ETHEL—AND JOHN BARRYment). In real life, the progression from obscu- MORE rity to stardom was played out in reverse by The films: The Royal Family of Broadway (ParaDiana Barrymore. Though she possessed only a mount, 1930); Sing, Baby, Sing (20th Century– modest talent she was headlined in four Univer- Fox, 1936) The nearest America ever came to a true actsal film features produced between 1941 and 1943; when her movie career failed to catch fire ing dynasty was the fabulous Barrymore family she ended up in unbilled bits, the last in the film of stage and screen. With roots in the British noir classic D.O.A. Several unhappy marriages and a prolonged love affair with alcohol did little to improve Diana’s professional prospects, and in 1960 she died of a drug overdose at age 38. John Houseman and Vincente Minnelli have both admitted that they had Diana Barrymore in mind with Georgia Lorrison, though Houseman added that the character also contained vestiges of Ava Gardner and Joan Fontaine. Outside of the star line-up in Bad and the Beautiful, three other reality-based characters are worthy of mention. Von Ellstein, the autocratic German director hired to direct Shields’ The Proud Land, is played by Ivan Triesault as a carbon copy of filmmaker Fritz Lang, right down to the bluetinted monocle. More amusingly, the director of Shields’ earlier production The Far Away Mountain, caustic and condescending Brit isher Henry Whitfield, is a thinly disguised Alfred Hitchcock, whom Shields’ role model Selznick had first brought to Hollywood in 1940. The folks beFrom Motion Picture News: Ad for The Royal Family of Broadway hind The Bad and the Beautiful (1930), dominated by a mustachioed Fredric March as John Barrymischievously expand upon this more counterpart Tony Cavendish. The ladies are (clockwise from little inside joke by casting Hitch- left) Mary Brian, Henrietta Crosman and Ina Claire.

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theater of the 18th century, the Barrymores rose to prominence on Broadway in the early 1900s, when the three best-known members of the clan—Lionel, Ethel and John Barrymore— ascended to superstardom under the watchful eye of mega-producer Charles Frohman. Though both Lionel and John would eventually abandon the stage for Hollywood, Ethel continued trodding the boards well into the 1940s, long past her 65th birthday. As celebrated as they were for their acting accomplishments, the Barrymore siblings were also famous for their eccentricities: Ethel’s wicked wit, belying her aristocratic hauteur; Lionel’s heavy drinking, which somehow enhanced his crusty charm; and John’s scampish misadventures with beautiful women and bad business investments. Novelist Edna Ferber had adored Ethel ever since the actress starred in Our Mrs. McChesney, a 1915 play based on Ferber’s stories about a travelling saleswoman. Playwright George S. Kaufman had no great love for actors, but found their temperamental extravagances amusing enough to satirize in such plays as Merton of the Movies and Once in a Lifetime. Several years after their first theatrical collaboration, Ferber and Kaufman reteamed for another play, this one concerning a family of flamboyant actors. Though they would swear up and down that The Royal Family was not a specific spoof of the Barrymores, the collaborators decided from the outset that the most colorful member of their fictional “Cavendish” family would be affectionately patterned after the equally colorful John Barrymore. Tony Cavendish makes his first entrance sneaking into the family home under heavy disguise to escape his creditors and the latest of his amours. Before long he launches into a generously gesticulated account of his plans to produce an avant-garde version of The Passion Play, with himself in the leading role. According to the playwrights, Tony Cavendish was actually a toned-down version of Jack Barrymore: “He was, of course, too improbable to copy from life,” noted Edna Ferber. Tony’s actress sister Julia was inspired by Ethel, an inspiration manifested more in the character’s regal bearing than her determination to wed a wealthy industrialist

(Ethel had in fact married prominent businessman Russell Colt) and give up the theater for a domestic life (which didn’t happen; the marriage to Colt dissolved after 14 years, and Ethel had never entertained the thought of forsaking her career). A third major character, family matriarch Fanny Cavendish, is a Great Lady of the Stage from the previous century who is so anxious to return to the footlights that she seriously jeopardizes her health by accepting an offer from theatrical manager Oscar Wolfe to star in a touring show. Fanny was based on John and Ethel’s celebrated actress grandmother Mrs. John Drew, who had died in 1897; Oscar Wolfe was a thinly disguised Charles Frohman, who had gone down with the Lusitania in 1915. Still sticking to their story that The Royal Family wasn’t founded on the Barrymores, Kaufman and Ferber hoped that Ethel would agree to star in the play as Fanny, but she got wind of their plans and turned them down cold—then contacted her attorney with the intention of suing the playwrights. Nothing came of her legal action because the libel laws only applied if the plaintiff had been satirized with malicious intent, definitely not the case here. Also, Ethel was unable to persuade her brothers to join in the lawsuit: John just plain didn’t care, while Lionel was put out because he hadn’t been caricatured in the play along with his siblings. Ethel would later offer a variety of explanations as to why The Royal Family offended her, from her complaint that unlike the Cavendishes the Barrymores never behaved so theatrically in their private lives, to her dismay that the play’s characters seemed to be eating all the time. Those close to Ethel believed that the real point of contention was a pair of secondary characters in The Royal Family, Fanny’s improvident actor brother Herbert Dean and his dizzy young wife, whom Ethel regarded as an unfair representation of the Barrymores’ uncle Sidney Drew (dead since 1919) and his brace of acting-partner brides. The Royal Family opened on Broadway December 28, 1927, with Otto Kruger as Tony and Haidee Wright as Fanny. Ina Claire had been the producers’ choice for Julia Cavendish, but when the actress balked at being “a walking Barrymore

Barrymore advertisement” the role went to Ann Andrews. The play ran a successful 345 performances and has been frequently revived since, once with coauthor Edna Ferber as Fanny. Modern audiences are more familiar with the 1930 film version codirected by George Cukor and Cyril Gardner, retitled The Royal Family of Broadway because Paramount Pictures didn’t want moviegoers to assume that the picture was about the crowned heads of Europe. Ina Claire reversed her earlier decision and appeared as the film’s Julia Cavendish, with Fredric March stealing the show with his Barrymore-to-the-max portrayal of Tony. Henrietta Crosman was cast as Fanny Cavendish, while the controversial character of Herbert Dean was eliminated by screenwriters Herman Mankiewicz and Gertrude Purcell. Unwilling to incur the wrath of Ethel Barrymore, no filmmaker ever again offered a character based upon the imperious actress. But it was open season on John Barrymore when in the mid–1930s the ageing matinee idol found himself in yet another highly publicized romantic entanglement with Elaine Jacobs, who called herself Elaine Barrie because it sounded so much like the name of her favorite actor. Paying multiple visits to the then-hospitalized Barrymore, 18-year-old Elaine began a love affair with the 52-year-old actor that made headlines throughout the country, with reporters dubbing the pair “Caliban and Ariel” after the beast-and-beauty characters in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. After their 1936 marriage the couple’s relationship proved to be a rocky one thanks to John’s excessive drinking and Elaine’s apparent belief that any publicity was good publicity. They divorced in 1940, two years before Barrymore’s death. At its height, the Caliban-Ariel saga was enjoyable exploited in the 1936 20th Century–Fox musical Sing , Baby, Sing. Alice Faye stars as nightclub singer Joan Warren, who while performing a tune is heard by drunken actor Bruce Farraday (Adolphe Menjou) just before he passes out at the club where she works. Never one to pass up a good publicity stunt, Joan’s agent (Gregory Ratoff ) suggests that she sneak into the hospital where Farraday is sleeping it off and play “Juliet” to Bruce’s “Romeo,” reen-

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acting the balcony scene on a fire escape while a newspaper photographer snaps their picture. Embarrassed by the incident and determined to get Farraday to retract a statement he has made against her, Joan pursues the mortified actor all over the country—while the press has a field day with the ongoing spectacle of the cross-country “Romeo and Juliet romance.” John Barrymore’s indifference towards Royal Family of Broadway was not repeated in regards to Sing , Baby, Sing. According to the August 1936 issue of Movie Classic, “Jawn” Barrymore had “snorted a challenge at 20th Century–Fox. In letters from his lawyer, the studio and Alice Faye and Adolphe Menjou have been warned that if they go through with a certain scene in Sing, Baby, Sing, Barrymore will sue for libel or slander or something. Jawn, the lawyer says, believes the scene is a burlesque on his interlude with Elaine.” Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck, with “figurative tongue in cheek,” insisted that the studio didn’t have Barrymore or Barrie in mind, telling columnist Louella Parsons “I don’t see how Mr. Barrymore can claim damages. The scenario bears no resemblance to Mr. Barrymore’s recent experiences.” The Barrymore family had about as much faith in Zanuck’s protestations as in George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s disavowal of their inspiration for The Royal Family, but eventually John Barrymore swallowed his indignation and abandoned his lawsuit (if indeed he was serious about it in the first place). Also, as reported in Modern Screen magazine, the real Barrymore-Barrie escapade had gotten so out of control by 1936 that Barrymore should have been issuing such statements as “it isn’t true that it’s a take-off of Sing Baby Sing.” One fringe benefit of the film was that it opened up several new professional doors for actor Adolphe Menjou. In his autobiography, Menjou admitted that his portrayal of Bruce Farraday was a travesty of John Barrymore, further noting “After the picture was released I was called a number of times for ‘Barrymore’ parts— which shows the inconsistency of Hollywood. Jack was still alive at the time, and they could just as easily have had the original instead of an impersonation.” In 1940, Menjou was again cast

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as a synthetic Barrymore in the 20th Century– Fox comedy The Great Profile, a lampoon of John’s recent return to the stage in the secondrate play My Dear Children, which became a sellout when the actor decided to abandon the script and ad-lib outrageously throughout the production, insulting the audience and groping the actresses. As Menjou recalled it, Barrymore again threatened to sue, insisting “Nobody is going to make a picture based on my life, unless I play the leading role.” As a result, the studio hired Barrymore and quietly paid off Menjou: “I collected my salary and played golf all during the shooting of the picture. That was the easiest money I ever earned in Hollywood.”

BAZNA , ELYESA The film: Five Fingers (20th Century–Fox, 1952)

If you wanted to pursue a career as a freelance spy during World War II, Turkey was loaded with job opportunities. Since the country’s diplomatic relations with both Great Britain and Nazi Germany were still open during the first three years of the war, there were probably more spies per capita in Istanbul and Ankara than anywhere else in the world. In terms of remuneration and results, few espionage agents enjoyed more success than Kosovo-born Albanian Elyesa Bazna. After a checkered past as a street hoodlum, locksmith and fireman, the middleaged Bazna hit his stride when he became the valet of Ankara-based British ambassador Sir Hughe Knatchbul l-Hugessen. Keeping his employer totally in the dark, Bazna spent his off-hours (and occasionally his onhours) photocopying top- secret Allied documents and Rare newspaper photo of selling the dupliElyesa Bazna, a.k.a. “Ci- cates to German atcero.” taches Ludwig Moy-

zisch and Franz Von Papen. He was motivated neither by love for the Nazis nor hatred for the English: Having lived in poverty and obscurity most of his life, Bazna craved only money and a feeling of power. He was known to the German higher-ups by the code name Cicero: Like the Roman orator of the same name, his stolen information was eloquent and easily understandable. Others referred to him as “Five Fingers,” a common term for espionage agents whose greed outweighed their patriotism. A lot of the information Bazna passed along to the Nazis was well worth his lofty asking price. One of his forays into Allied secret files prevented the British from using Turkish airfields, while another enabled Germany to win the first battle after Turkey’s entry into the war; he also was adept at predicting upcoming air raids. But because he indiscriminately photocopied so many documents (approximately 400,000 in all), some of his information was of little value. Nor did the Germans always act properly upon his missives: When he unearthed information regarding the Allies’ D-Day plans, Hitler refused to accept it because he was convinced the invasion would come from the Balkans. As the war ground on Bazna was stymied by the installation of a new alarm system in the British embassy, and by the counterespionage of German-born Nele Kapp, who hated the Nazis and accordingly spied for the British and the OSS—though like practically everyone else, she had no idea who “Cicero” really was. For a considerable length of time, however, Bazna pulled off his capers with a minimum of muss and fuss, even outwitting the British when they tried to determine his identity by planting fake Cabinet Office papers in the embassy safe. Once Turkey broke off diplomatic relations with Germany in 1944, Bazna was out of a job. He bundled up between £240,000 and £300,000 he’d saved from his activities and skeedaddled. His dreams of a postwar life of ease were dashed when he discovered that most of the money was counterfeit; with typical chutzpah, he tried to sue the West German government for his back pay. On the plus side, once his cover was blown by Fritz Kolbe, a German diplomat secretly

Beck spying for the U.S., Bazna escaped prosecution in exchange for not divulging the extent of his knowledge of the British Enigma code-breaking machine. “Cicero”’s identity was still largely unknown to the world when his former contact Ludwig Moyzisch published his memoir Who Was Cicero? in 1950. Two years later the book was adaptated for the screen by Michael Wilson and filmed under Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s direction as Five Fingers. James Mason played the wily valet-cum-spy, who for lack of a better name was called Ulysses Diello. Similarly, Cicero’s British employer was renamed Sir Frederic Taylor (played by Walter Hampden), while female counterspy Nele Kapp was written out entirely and replaced with a fictional love interest for Diello, impoverished Polish Countess Anna Staviska (Danielle Darrieux). In a stroke of double irony that the real story couldn’t possibly match, Anna is the only person in the film whom Diello cares for and trusts—and it is she who not only exposes his activities to Sir Frederic, but also steals a large chunk of his payoff money, as unaware as he is that it’s all counterfeit. Asked his impression of Five Fingers, Elyesa Bazna replied diplomatically “I thought it was exciting but untrue.” Five Fingers was first broadcast on American network television in 1962, the same year that Bazna published his own memoir I Was Cicero, written with the assistance of British Intelligence to make certain the author wouldn’t divulge classified information. Fifteen years later, former Intelligence officer Constantine Fitzgibbon, who helped prepare I Was Cicero, made the startling claim that Bazna’s account was a complete “putup job,” and that “Cicero” had actually been a double agent working for Britain during the war to undermine the German intelligence service Abwehr. What makes Fitzgibbon’s account shaky is his assertion that Elyesa Bazna died in total poverty in 1964. In truth, Bazna had managed to make a meager but steady living in Istanbul after the war in such professions as voice teacher and used-car dealer, and at the time of his actual death in 1970 he was living off the proceeds of his book and his salary as a night watchman.

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BECK , M ARTHA JULE —AND R AYMOND MARTINEZ FERNANDEZ The film: Lonely Hearts Bandits (Republic, 1950)

They were the oddest of odd couples. Raymond Martinez Fernandez was born in Hawaii in 1914; Martha Jule Seabrook came along six years later in Florida. Raymond was no Adonis: Even in youth he bore the homeliness of a middle-aged man and had lost his hair early on, but what he lacked in looks he made up for in suavity and sex appeal. Martha was even less a vision of beauty. At 5'6 she weighed 202 pounds, and her appearance was rather unchivalrously summed up by the mystery-writing team known as Ellery Queen: “If her face would not have stopped the clock, neither would it have inspired poetry or sweet dreams.” Yet from the moment they met in 1947, Raymond and Martha were crazy about each other. Or maybe just crazy. A trained nurse, Martha worked at a school for crippled children in Pensacola on either side of her brief marriage to Albert Beck. Unfulfilled by her profession, she sent a letter to a lonely hearts club and soon began corresponding with Raymond, who after forsaking such strenuous professions as seaman and freight-handler had settled into the more cerebral pursuit of swindling women with phony marriages. Instead of making Martha another of his pigeons, he invited her to join him as both lover and business partner, whereupon she abandoned her job, her second husband and her two children. Together Raymond and Martha formulated a scam whereby they would pose as brother and sister to seek out lonely, wealthy and gullible women for the purpose of a sham marriage and a big financial shakedown. Raymond would romance the ladies and convince them to sign over their property and savings; then Martha would murder the unfortunate patsy. If Raymond had any qualms about killing, he was frightened out of them by Martha, who by all accounts totally dominated him even though she insisted that they never consummate their relationship. Their first known victim was 66-year-old widow Janet Fay of Valley Stream, New York. When Martha found Raymond and Janet in bed together, she

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crushed the woman’s skull with a ball-peen hammer, then Raymond used the handle of the hammer to tighten a scarf around Janet’s neck. Replacing the bloody carpet on the floor, Raymond and Martha stuffed Janet’s body in a trunk, which they deposited at a rented house in Queens. The couple relocated to Grand Rapids, Michigan, for a rendezvous with Delphine Downing, a young widow with a 2-year-old daughter named Rainelle. Upon meeting Raymond on February 26, 1949, Delphine was outraged to discover that he was bald, forcing Martha to ply the widow with “nerve pills”—actually strong barbiturates designed to send her off to dreamland permanently. When Mrs. Downing obstinately refused to die, at Martha’s urging Raymond shot the woman in the head and tied the body in a bag for later disposal. Martha and Raymond took little Rainelle out of Delphine’s house, went to a movie and then brought the kid back. Frustrated by her inability to calm Rainelle down, Martha solved the problem by drowning the child. This time the bodies were buried under concrete in Delphine’s basement. Acting on tips from Mrs. Downing’s neighbors, the police arrested Raymond and Martha, still living in the dead woman’s home, on March 1, 1949. Under interrogation Fernandez confessed to Delphine’s murder and also to the killing of Janet Fay, which he assumed the cops already knew about (They didn’t). With no death penalty in Michigan, the couple was extradited to New York, where they were tried for murdering Fay. That was enough to secure a sentence of death for both perpetrators on August 1949, so technically no one was ever punished for the Grand Rapids murders. The executions took place in Sing Sing Prison on March 19, 1951, but not before Fernandez declared he wanted to “burst for joy” when Martha reaffirmed her undying love for him. It remained undying until the switch was pulled on her a few minutes after Raymond got the juice. During the 17 months between sentence and execution the newspapers spewed out headline stories about the “Honeymoon Killers” and “The Lonely Hearts Bandits.” The latter appel-

lation served as the title for a modest 1950 Republic Pictures programmer loosely based on the true story. Either out of propriety or fear of censorship, screenwriter George Lewis and director George Blair ignored the kinkier aspects of the Beck-Fernandez crime spree, refashioning the facts into a standard B-picture plotline about a sleek, fortyish roué named Tony Morill ( John Eldredge) who persuades a lovely but-lethal dame of svelte proportions named Louise Curtis (Dorothy Patrick) to embark upon a confidence scheme preying on susceptible widows. Though Tony is the dominant member of this deadly duo, the first killing in Lonely Hearts Bandits is committed by Louise when she shoots a lovelorn farmer (Howard Negley) whom she’d tried to trap into marriage. Though there hardly seems enough time in the film’s 60-minute span to develop any secondary characters, much screen space is devoted to the couple’s next “mark,” lonely widow Nancy Crane (Ann Doran), whose grown son Bobby (Eric Sinclair) is stuck on ingenue Laurel (Barbara Fuller). When Nancy figures out that Louise’s “brother” is actually planning to fleece and abandon her, Louise tosses Nancy off a moving train. Like Delphine Downing, Nancy isn’t killed outright, but fortunately the villains don’t get a second chance as she lies comatose in a hospital. Stalwart police lieutenant Carroll (Robert Rockwell), who has been on the trail of the “Lonely Hearts Bandits” for months, finally catches up with the pair, killing Tony and wounding Louise (the picture’s almost over, so we can’t squeeze in a trial). All ends happily with a brace of clinches, as Bobby and Laurel tie the knot in church while a fully recovered Nancy beams from the sidelines in the arms of Aaron Hart (Richard Travis), the guy she should have married when he asked her in the second reel. Two subsequent filmizations of the BeckFernandez saga, the fictional Mexican-FrenchSpanish Deep Crimson (1996) and the factual U.S.–German Lonely Hearts (2007), were infinitely more explicit and violent than the antiseptic Lonely Hearts Bandits, though neither effort saw fit to exploit the grotesque mismatch of a slim villain and an obese villainess; Lonely

Beiderbecke Hearts in fact cast Salma Hayek as Martha Beck. Only the ultra-gory cult classic The Honeymoon Killers (1970) was willing to risk audience revulsion by costarring slender, devilishly handsome Tony lo Bianco with massive, gargoylevisaged Shirley Stoler. And before I’m pilloried for being sexist, it must be noted that throughout her career Ms. Stoler willingly specialized in portraying behemoth-like villainesses, most famously the Nazi prison commander in Lina Wertmuller’s Seven Beauties (1975). Written and directed by Leonard Kastle (who took on the second job when both Martin Scorsese and Donald Volkman dropped out of the project), Honeymoon Killers is a reasonably faithful rendition of the actual story, with a particularly memorable prolonged sequence featuring Mary Jane Higby as Janet Fay, who proves nearly impossible to kill. The film has the distinction of being simultaneously praised and panned by Pauline Kael: “The Honeymoon Killers is terrible in such a primitive way that it has a strange sort of austerity and integrity…. I would not have sat through it for my own pleasure. Yet it can’t quite be overlooked either; it’s simple-minded in such a nagging, insistent way that this anachronism— a primitive version of the old Republic Pictures— is a true curiosity.” (Emphasis mine—unless of course Ms. Kael was actually referring to Lonely Hearts Bandits.)

dealer. Displaying a musical gift at an early age, Bix was given piano lessons but was more interested in brass instruments, teaching himself how to play the cornet. At age 14 he set out to play with the various jazz bands in the Iowa-IllinoisMissouri area; though jazz musicians at the time preferred the trumpet to the cornet, Bix quickly made a name for himself with his astonishing versatility on his instrument of choice. After sitting in with a number of black combos he organized the Wolverines, one of the first major all-white jazz aggregations. He worked with bandleaders Charley Straight, Frank Trumbaur and Jean Goldkette before reaching the pinnacle as a member of the prestigious Paul Whiteman orchestra. Even in his early 20s Bix was widely admired by musicians far older and more famous than himself; he also enjoyed a vast fan following thanks to his many recordings, with Whiteman frequently permitting Beiderbecke to improvise to his heart’s content when his fans interrupted concerts with shouts of “Give us Bix!” In his off-

BEECHAM, SIR THOMAS British symphonic conductor, best known for his lengthy associations with the London Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic. Independently wealthy, Sir Thomas was the grandson of the founder of the Beecham’s Pills laxative factory. In his 1947 romantic comedy Unfaithfully Yours, director-writer Preston Sturges capriciously named the film’s orchestra-conductor protagonist (played by Rex Harrison) Sir Alfred de Carter—as in Carter’s Little Liver Pills.

BEIDERBECKE, BIX The film: Young Man with a Horn (Warner Bros., 1950)

Leon Bismarck “Bix” Beiderbecke was born in 1903 in the Mississippi river town of Davenport, Iowa, the son of a prosperous lumber

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Bix Beiderbecke.

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hours Bix spent a lot of time with beautiful girls and, unfortunately, even more time guzzling bootleg liquor. His talent began to fade at age 26, with missed performances and sloppy renditions. Whiteman sent him back to Davenport to rest and dry out, but it didn’t work. By the time the 1930s rolled around Bix was jobless and destitute, living off the charity of such friends as Hoagy Carmichael, Louis Armstrong and Babe Ruth. Contacting pneumonia in 1931, Bix rose from his sickbed to accept an invitation for one last performance at Princeton University. He died a week later at the age of 28. In 1938, Dorothy Baker, the Montana-born, California-educated wife of a Harvard instructor, was awarded a Houghton Mifflin scholarship to write her first novel. Having been fascinated with jazz and swing music for 15 of her 30 years, Baker drew from her extensive studies on the subject and came out with Young Man with a Horn, not- too-loosely based on the life and death of Bix Beiderbecke. Unlike the genuine article, Baker’s protagonist Rick Martin is born into poverty in Los Angeles, where he forges an early friendship with black jazz drummer Smoke Jordan. His inborn talent with the trumpet enables Rick to rise to prominence in the musical world, linking up with Phil Morrison’s ritzy New York Orchestra. During this period Rick falls for black female vocalist Jo Jordan, but it is white, wealthy and neurotic Columbia University psychology major Amy North who lands him as a husband. Though managing to diminish his heavy drinking Amy is unable to give Rick the love he needs, nor will Rick ever be truly happy until he reaches “the one note” he has always strived for but never achieved. Even his closest friends are convinced that Rick’s personal mission is futile, with one commenting “I don’t know what the hell that boy thinks a trumpet will do. That note he was going for. There isn’t any such thing—not on a horn.” When Rick ruins an important recording session for Jo Jordan by trying and failing to achieve “that note,” it’s the beginning of the end. “Rick Martin stuck to jazz and the nervous, crazy life that goes with it,” notes the author at the outset of the novel. “He made an amazing thing of his own playing;

he couldn’t keep pace with himself.” Outliving Bix Beiderbecke by only two years, Rick Martin dies of pneumonia, hard living and frustration at age 30. What made Young Man with a Horn unique at the time was not Dorothy Baker’s laconic Hemingwayesque prose, but the fact that she treated the world of jazz with reverence, awe, and not a drop of condescension—something evidently beyond the capacities of “serious” music critics of the late 1930s. There were plans afoot in 1940 to mount a stage adaptation of Young Man with a Horn starring Burgess Meredith, Margaret Sullavan, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, but this project came to nothing. The following year, independent movie producer Benjamin Glazer announced his intention to film the novel, only to run smack-dab into the Hollywood Production Code which automatically vetoed the interracial romance between Rick Martin and Jo Jordan, not to mention the implied lesbianism of Amy North. Still, Warner Bros. picked up the property in 1946 as a possible vehicle for James Stewart (!), but it wasn’t until screenwriters Edmund H. North and Carl Foreman were able to satisfactorily “lick” the novel that Young Man with a Horn went before the cameras under the direction of Michael Curtiz. Kirk Douglas stars as Rick Martin, with composer Hoagy Carmichael (in real life a close friend of Beiderbecke’s, whose freeform style directly influenced Hoagy’s first big hit, “Stardust”) in the deracinated role of Rick’s best friend and severest critic Smoke. Lauren Bacall costars as the troubled Amy North, described in the film as “cold” and “sick,” familiar Hollywood code words for “gay.” Reportedly, Bacall was so naïve at the time of filming that she had no idea what her character was really supposed to be, and it shows in her by-the-numbers performance. With the Production Code still dead set against a romance between races, Jo Jordan is transformed into the white-as-snow Doris Day, a casting choice adamantly opposed by Kirk Douglas (Doris would later complain that Kirk’s aloofness made this one of her most unpleasant film experiences). Douglas was also ticked off by the script’s imposition of a happy ending,

Benítez with Rick Martin saved from himself by faithful Jo Jordan so that he can go on to be a truly great musician (what the hell has he been up to now?). Even so, Kirk Douglas gives a consummate performance, miming convincingly to the prerecorded trumpet licks of Harry James. Young Man with a Horn remains a solid and persuasive piece of Hollywood artifice, though a more authentically gritty remake of Dorothy Baker’s landmark novel is long overdue.

BENÍTEZ, FR . SERGIO GUTIÉRREZ The film: Nacho Libre (Nickelodeon Movies/ HH Films/Paramount, 2006)

There is something almost sacred about the world of Mexican professional wrestling, popularly known as Lucha Libre. Even more so than their American counterparts, Mexico’s leading wrestlers maintain their distinctive ring “characters”—be they técnicos (good guys) or rudos (bad guys)—at all times, wearing elaborate costumes and colorful masks which they never remove in public; one of the greatest of all luchadores was Santos (The Saint), who is said to have been buried in his mask. Most of Lucha Libre’s biggest stars come from old and extended wrestling families, each possessing its own special repertoire of trademarked holds, moves and gestures. Far more limber than most North American wrestlers, the luchadores also specialize in “aerial” maneuvers, leaping and flying across the ring and sometimes into the audience—always remaining in character, always moving in a unique and instantly recognizable manner. In some ways Lucha Libre is as ritualized as the Catholic Church, an analogy especially appropriate in regard to the celebrated masked técnico known as Fray Tormenta (“Friar Storm”). He was born in the state of Hildalgo as Sergio Gutiérrez Benítez in 1945. A drug addict in his early teens, Benítez was 20 or so when he staggered into a church and begged help from the priest. “This isn’t a rehab center!” barked the padre, who kicked the boy out into the street. Rather than drive him deeper into his addiction, this incident proved an inspiration to Benítez: If a nasty priest was capable of making unfortunates feel like dirt, a nice, or “cool,” priest would

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have the exact opposite effect. Determined to be that cool priest, Benítez entered the Parista order at 22, studied religion for seven years in Spain and Italy, and returned to Mexico as a secular priest in 1970. Working with druggies and prostitutes, Benítez was unable to win their respect or trust until he proved that he could be as a rough and tough a scrapper as they were. Continuing to minister to the underprivileged, he championed the cause of orphaned children as he prepared for his ordainment. In later years Father Sergio would tell a variety of stories of how he came to be a wrestler for the purpose of raising money for his orphans, but the one he told most often was his exposure to the 1963 Mexican film El Señor Tormenta, which revolved around a young priest who similarly financed his orphanage by secretly working nights as a masked luchador. Taking his professional name and distinctive mask design from El Señor Tormenta, Benítez reinvented himself as Fray Tormenta— and even before launching his ring career in the 1980s, he established his own orphanage named in honor of his adopted persona, La Casa Hogar de los Cachorros de Fray Tormenta, as part of the Diocese of Texcoco in the town of Teotihuacan. His first fight earned him 200 pesos and also a mentor in the person of his opponent, “The Leader.” Though he quickly rose to fame as a luchador Benítez kept his true identity secret for fear that once he was identified as a priest, no one would take him seriously. He was finally outed when a fellow wrestler attended one of Father Sergio’s sermons and instantly recognized his voice and physique. When his bishop objected to his double life, Fray Tormenta offered to give up wrestling if the Diocese would contribute as much money to his orphans as he was earning in the ring. Ultimately given the blessing of the Church, Fray Tormenta continued to wrestle to great acclaim not only in Mexico but throughout the world, accumulating a fanatical following in Japan because of his resemblance to the manga hero Tiger Mask. He even conducted some of his masses while decked out in his robe and his famous yellowand-red mask. By the time he retired from the

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ring in 2011, Fray Tormenta had sold the rights to his life story to a French film company, resulting in the 1991 biopic The Man in the Golden Mask, starring Jean Reno. Explaining as always “I became a professional wrestler for a cause. If it weren’t for my children, there would have been no reason to fight,” he used the money from the film to build a new orphanage in his home state Hildalgo, just as he would construct another orphanage in Texcoco with the proceeds from the 2006 American film Nacho Libre. Faithful to the spirit if not the letter of the Fray Tormenta saga, Nacho Libre was directed by Jacob (Napoleon Dynamite) Hess and stars corpulent comic actor Jack Black as Ignacio, a young Scandinavian-Mexican (!) friar working as a cook in the monastery where he was raised from childhood. As disgusted as his orphan charges by the cheap, crummy food he is forced to serve, Ignacio scrimps and saves to buy them better nourishment, only to be robbed of these victuals by street thief Steven (Héctor Jiménez). Rather than seek revenge, Ignacio talks Steven into teaming up with him as a wrestling tag team for the purpose of raising funds to improve the living conditions of the monastery orphans. Donning a white mask with red rings around the eyes and mouth, our hero reinvents himself as Nacho Libre, with Steven assuming the persona of Esqueleto (The Skeleton). Though soundly defeated in most of their bouts, under the rules of Lucha Libre the team is still able to claim a good portion of the prize money. Unfortunately, even the viewing of wrestling matches is forbidden by the monastery and frowned upon by sweet Sister Encarnación (Ana de la Reguera), whom Ignacio admires from afar. He manages to keep his second career a secret until his friar robes catch fire during a church service, revealing his costume and too-tight tights underneath. Ignacio agrees to give up wrestling if he is given one last chance to prove himself as both a luchador and a cash provider, offering to wrestle eight opponents simultaneously for the chance of taking on the notorious rudo Ramses in a championship bout. (Ramses is played by real-life wrestler Cesar Gonzales, aka “Silver King,” who true to form never removes his mask in the film).

Through the sort of dumb luck indigenous to PG-rated family comedies, Ignacio gets his chance to take on Ramses. Alas, his opponent is to too strong and unscrupulous for the fightin’ friar to get the upper hand—until Ignacio is spurred to victory by the arrival in the arena of Sister Encarnación and the orphans, all of them wearing his signature mask. Though Nacho Libre received some of the worst reviews ever bestowed upon a Jack Black comedy, it pushed all the right buttons with the star’s fans and the kiddie trade and ended up a box-office winner.

BENNETT, M ICHAEL— AND BOB FOSSE, JOAN MCCRACKEN, H AROLD PRINCE, PHEN SCHWARTZ, G WEN VERDON

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Broadway luminaries who appear under different names in director Bob Fosse’s semiautobiographical musical tragedy All That Jazz (1979). Fosse himself “appears” in the guise of driving, driven choreographer-director Joe Gideon, played by Roy Scheider. Musicalcomedy star Gwen Verdon, Fosse’s ex-wife and favorite collaborator even after their divorce, becomes Audrey Parris, enacted by Leland Palmer. Fosse’s previous wife and spiritual mentor Joan McCracken, the tragically short-lived dancing star of Oklahoma!, Bloomer Girl and Me and Juliet, is represented by Jessica Lange’s pixieish “Angel of Death,” aka Angelique, who spends most of the film preparing Joe Gideon for his own untimely demise. Songwriter Paul Dann (Anthony Holland) is an unflattering caricature of real-life songsmith Stephen Schwartz, with whom Bob Fosse worked on Pippin. And eccentric Broadway producer-directors Harold Prince and Michael Bennett—both of whom had mutually recriminating relationships with Fosse— are respectively reinvented in All That Jazz as Jonesy Hecht (William LeMassena) and Lucas Sergeant ( John Lithgow).

BERG, ALAN The film: Talk Radio (Cineplex-Odeon Films/ Ten-Four Productions/Universal, 1988)

In the early 1980s two polls were conducted amongst the citizens of Denver, Colorado. One asked them to identify the most loved Denver media personality; the other asked them to

Berg identify the most hated. Alan Berg, host of a nightly talk show on Colorado’s most powerful radio station KOA, won both polls. A transplanted Chicagoan, Berg was a recovering alcoholic in charge of a Denver clothing store when he began phoning in his scattershot opinions and insults on Laurence Gross’ KGMC radio talkfest. Impressed by Berg’s marineraiders eloquence, the host invited Alan to take over the show once Gross moved to San Diego. After bouncing around several other Denver stations, Berg finally landed at top-rated KOA on February 23, 1981, the station’s 50,000 watts beaming his program to 30 states. Though he could be soft-spoken and gently humorous in private, Berg assumed the on-air persona of an obnoxious loudmouth. Essentially of the liberal persuasion, he refused to suffer fools on either side of the political spectrum, mocking fellow liberals for their pretentions and conservatives for their close-mindedness. He went out of his way to upset those who called into his program, reducing them to gibbering incoherence before abruptly hanging up on them; eventually he reached the point where he’d cut off a caller who offended him before the other person even started speaking. His take-no-prisoners style endeared him to listeners who felt disenfranchised by the media and the national power structure, while outraging those who couldn’t stand the fact that he spoke his mind without apology or qualification. He was also disliked in certain circles because he was Jewish—especially by such viciously anti–Semitic and anti-black groups as the tiny but lethal aggregation called The Order. An example had to be made of Alan Berg so that The Order could frighten other minorities on their hate list into silence. On June 18, 1984, Berg was returning from a reconciliation dinner with his former wife Judith to his Congress Park condominium when he was confronted in the driveway by Bruce Pierce, who emptied twelve bullets into the startled talk host. After Berg’s murder, Pierce and three accomplices were arrested and received stiff prison sentences, while the leader of The Order, Bob Mathews, was himself killed in a shootout with the FBI. The re-

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maining four members of The Order scattered to parts unknown. Performance artist Eric Bogosian, creator of such provocative one-man shows as Drinking in America and Funhouse, was drawn to the Alan Berg story by the subject’s willingness to put his life on the line for his convictions—and also by Berg’s self-destructive streak, which Bogosian recognized in himself. The actor-writer’s first full-length play Talk Radio (developed in collaboration with Tad Savinar) opened off–Broadway on May 28, 1987, with Bogosian starring as the Alan Berg character Barry Champlain. Though the protagonist was based in Cleveland rather than Denver, the inspiration was instantly recognizable even to those who’d never heard Berg in action. The plot takes place on the eve of a national syndication hookup for Champlain’s controversial talk show, as his producer warns him to avoid saying anything that will offend potential sponsors. This of course encourages Champlain to be even more outrageous than usual, mercilessly baiting his callers (who range from pathetic to psychotic) and laughing off the sporadic and increasingly ominous death threats. “This decadent country needs a loud voice,” Barry declares in a loud voice, “and that’s me!” Mel Gussow of the New York Times had this to say: “Imagine Lenny Bruce at the height of his notoriety becoming a popular talk show host—and you may begin to have an idea of the whiplash intensity and black, hard-edged cynicism of Eric Bogosian’s Talk Radio.” Even before the play won a Pulitzer Prize it had caught the eye of director Oliver Stone, who was fascinated by the devil’s brew of selfrighteousness and self-loathing that was Bogosian’s Barry Champlain. In collaboration with the playwright, Stone embarked upon an expanded film version of Talk Radio, fleshing out the text with details of Alan Berg’s own life, including his pre-radio career as a suit salesman, his battles with alcohol and paranoia, and his fragile relationship with his ex-wife (played by Ellen Greene), the only person he genuinely trusts. The locale of the play was shifted to Dallas Texas, where Stone had secured locationshooting permits. The climactic murder of Barry

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Champlain took a page from the assassination of John Lennon, with the gunman claiming to be an autograph seeker before ending Barry’s life. To research his film role, Eric Bogosian spent a great deal of time observing the modus operandi of Tom Leykis, host of a popular chatfest on Los Angeles’ KFI. Released in late 1988, Talk Radio was greeted with the same effusion of praise and condemnation that accompanies virtually all of Oliver Stone’s films. Some observers worried that the explosion of violence in the climax would encourage similar real-life carnage—“It scares the hell out of me,” admitted L.A. deejay Jay Thomas—while others could find no redeeming qualities in the character of Barry Champlain despite the multi-nuanced performance of Eric Bogosian (who repeated his stage role after Stone rejected Universal’s demand that he cast the more “bankable” Dustin Hoffman). The biggest outcry against Talk Radio came from the late Alan Berg’s brethren in the talk show industry. Larry King, the only radio host mentioned by name in the film, confessed that this flattering gesture “makes it embarrassing not to like the movie. Alan Berg was very liberal. Morton Downey [ Jr.] is very conservative. This guy [Champlain] really had no opinion. I would not listen to that show. It’s a kind of one-note show. The caller calls in. He’s going to get angry. You didn’t learn anything at all. I was bored.” KFI’s Tom Leykis was “angry about it because there was no need to kill the main character in the movie. Using the shooting of Alan Berg was, I think, a smarmy attempt to capitalize on all the publicity that that murder got.” Citing the earlier film Betrayal, which also featured the murder of a liberal talk host by a right- wing extremist, Leykis added “It’s real convenient for Hollywood to use radio talk-show hosts as fodder.” He allowed, however, that the film’s depiction of the darkened, boxlike broadcast studio which serves as Champlain’s lonely outpost was “the most realistic portrayal of radio” he’d ever seen. KOA vice president Lee Larson, who’d been the station’s general manager at the time of Alan Berg’s murder, felt that Talk Radio was nowhere near as effective as a factual book on Berg’s life

and career, Stephen Singular’s Talked to Death (which the film’s producer Edward Pressman had optioned along with the play). “I raced to read the book, and I found it very good and enjoyable,” Larson told the Los Angeles Times. “It captured the complexity of Alan, and it also helped you see where he was serious and where he was being a good entertainer. But since the movie was not a true reflection on his life, it’s not the first thing I want to see.” When asked for his own assessment of Talk Radio, Eric Bogosian went into full movie-star mode and made it all about himself. As Bogosian related to Peter Blauner of New York magazine, “Watching it recently, I thought, I must be a terrible person—because how could I play a terrible person so convincingly if I weren’t terrible myself ?”

BERGNER , ELISABETH—AND RUTH MAXINE HIRSCH [MARTINA L AWRENCE]

The film: All About Eve (20th Century–Fox, 1950)

The 90-minute NBC radio variety series The Big Show debuted November 5, 1950, starring actress Tallulah Bankhead as mistress of ceremonies. Three weeks before the show’s premiere, the 20th Century–Fox film All About Eve had its first New York showing. The film starred Bette Davis as Margot Channing, a temperamental Broadway actress whose career is undermined by a deceptively wide-eyed and innocent admirer named Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter). Taking Eve under her wing, Margot doesn’t realize until it is too late that she is in danger of being replaced as the Queen of Broadway by her scheming little protegée, nor do any of Margot’s associates catch on to Eve’s chicanery except for waspish theater critic Addison de Witt (George Sanders). Written and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz, All About Eve was based on a 1946 short story by Mary Orr, published in Cosmopolitan magazine as “The Wisdom of Eve” (Orr was paid $800 for her story, but received no screen credit in the film). I imagine that a few readers are now asking themselves why I began this paragraph talking about The Big Show, then went on at great length discussing All About Eve.

Bergner The reason: In 1950 it was a common assumption that Margot Channing (or “Margola Cranston” in the original story) was based on Tallulah Bankhead, who reportedly had had a similar runin with Lizabeth Scott, her ambitious understudy in the Broadway play The Skin of Our Teeth. And no one got more mileage out of this assumption than Tallulah herself. After All About Eve swept the Academy Awards with six statuettes, there was hardly an episode of The Big Show in which the film was not mentioned at least once. With the considerable input of head writer Goodman Ace, who knew how to “milk” celebrities for full comic value, Tallulah constantly referred to the film as “All About Me,” minimizing Bette Davis with such lines as “We gave a brilliant performance in that picture.” When on one program Groucho Marx asked if she’d seen Bette in All About Eve, Tallulah shot back “Every morning when I brush my teeth.” And when on another occasion George Jessel queried if Tallulah had made any films at 20th Century–Fox since Lifeboat, her answer was “I made one that won the Academy Award a few Eves ago.” Goodman Ace parlayed

Elisabeth Bergner.

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this vein of humor into a fabricated feud between Bankhead and Bette Davis, which became so familiar that the studio audience began laughing whenever Tallulah even threatened to mention Bette by name. While there was no love lost between the two actresses—Davis, after all, had had the audacity to star in the film versions of Bankhead’s Broadway successes The Old Maid and The Little Foxes—the feud was as artificial as the one between Jack Benny and Fred Allen. This of course didn’t stop Tallulah from delivering such zingers as “There’s nothing I say behind Bette’s back that I wouldn’t say to her face. Both of them.” This running gag reached its climax in 1952, when Bankhead starred in Theater Guild on the Air’s hour-long radio adaptation of All About Eve, with “Wisdom of Eve” author Mary Orr costarring as Karen Richards, the role played onscreen by Celeste Holm. After the broadcast Tallulah rushed up to Orr, and in a grateful tone repeated her presumption that she’d been the role model for Margot Channing. When Mary replied that Margot had actually been inspired by Ukraineborn actress Elisabeth Bergner, Tallulah was so outraged that she never spoke to the writer again. Here’s the lowdown. A few months after the close of the Broadway melodrama The Two Mrs. Carrolls in 1944, the play’s star Elisabeth Bergner was preparing dinner at home for her director Reginald Denham and his wife Mary Orr. In the course of the evening, Bergner cited “that awful creature” whom she’d encountered during the run of the play. She recalled that on the night of every performance, self-avowed Bergner devotee Ruth Maxine Hirsch could be found standing in the alley outside the theater, waiting for a glimpse of her idol. Touched by Ruth’s devotion, Bergner hired the girl as her assistant and as secretary to her husband, producer-director Paul Czinner. Learning that Ruth aspired to be an actress herself, Bergner and Czinner arranged for the youngster to secure a small part in an upcoming Broadway show. The relationship was a pleasant one until the day Bergner went backstage and found Ruth reading the star’s lines from Two Mrs. Carrolls to a new cast member.

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Though the girl insisted that she was merely helping out Czinner, who had allegedly given her permission to run lines with the newcomer, Bergner was incensed. To her way of thinking, she was being used by Ruth to advance the girl’s own career—or worse still, Ruth was planning to snatch Czinner away from her (In “The Wisdom of Eve,” the title character runs off with the actress’ husband, a character written out of the movie). As Ruth recalled Bergner’s reaction, “She was so cold! Never before had I felt such a chill. I realized at once that, knowing the actress Bergner quite well, Elisabeth the human being was a stranger to me.” The girl was immediately barred from the theater, though for a while she continued working in Czinner’s office. Did Bergner overreact? Perhaps—though Ruth had previously gotten into a similar jam while working for opera diva Renata Tenaldi. Whatever the case, Ruth Hirsch would enjoy a brief acting career under the name Martina Lawrence, which happened to be Elisabeth Bergner’s character name in her 1939 British film A Stolen Life (remade in 1946 by none other than Bette Davis). In another version of this story, the object of Bergner’s wrath was her Two Mrs. Carrolls understudy Irene Worth, but the basic point remains the same: Tallulah Bankhead was not the source for Margot Channing—at least not the primary source. Elisabeth Bergner herself didn’t seem too upset when she finally caught up with All About Eve, though she lamented that everyone got rich off the story except the three people actually involved. Ruth Hirsch was less philosophical and more vitriolic when in 1946 she stormed into Mary Orr’s house and threatened to sue over “The Wisdom of Eve.” She later backed off upon realizing that to reveal herself as the original for the duplicitous Eve would do her more harm than good. As for All About Eve’s “auteur” Joe Mankiewicz, he wouldn’t come face to face with Ruth Hirsch until 1987, at which time the former actress implored him to let her set the story straight. In Ruth’s version she was not a hopelessly devoted fan of Elisabeth Bergner, and had only shown up at the stage door every night because Paul Czinner had hired her to hail taxicabs

for the actress. Try squeezing an Oscar-winning movie out of that scenario.

BERGSLAND, PER—AND ROGER BUSHELL, A LEX C ASSIE, JIMMY K IDDELL , HERBERT M ASSEY, JENS MÜLLER , BRAM VAN D ER STOK , TIM WALENN The film: The Great Escape (Mirisch/United Artists, 1963)

As the night of March 24, 1944 faded into the early morning of March 25, 78 Allied prisoners of war made a daring escape from Stalag Luft III, located in what is now Poland but was then the German province of Lower Silesia. The escape had been nearly a year in planning, with three separate tunnels—“Tom” “Dick” and “Harry”— dug right under the Germans’ noses, the excess dirt carried in the trouser legs of the prisoners and quietly deposited where it would attract the least notice. The strategy behind this was that the Germans would eventually locate two of the tunnels while overlooking the third. In the meantime another escape had been organized and carried out in which all but two prisoners were captured, but the March 1944 operation was the Big One, carried out in big style with counterfeit money, forged passports and fabricated German clothing and personal items. Two hundred of the camp’s 600 prisoners were to have been crammed into the “Tom” tunnel on the night of March 24, but last-minute complications forced 122 to stay behind. Most of the escapees were captured, with Hitler ordering the execution of 50 of them to discourage future breakouts. Twenty-three were reimprisoned at Luft III, while two more were sent to the prison fortress of Colditz. Three of the prisoners managed to make a clean getaway to neutral Sweden and Spain. All this was faithfully chronicled in Australian author Paul Brickhill’s 1949 book The Great Escape. A former POW who’d been sequestered in Luft III from 1943 until 1945, Brickhill was among those left behind during the escape, but had helped with the preparations. Though he was able to use most of the actual names of the prisoners involved, for the sake of space and legal considerations a few characters were

Bergsland composites. In 1951 The Great Escape was adapted as a live one-hour drama for the American TV anthology Philco Television Playhouse, starring E.G. Marshall and Everett Sloane. Twelve years later, the more familiar adaptation of The Great Escape made it to the big screen courtesy of producers Walter and Harold Mirisch, director John Sturges and screenwriters James Clavell (survivor of a Japanese POW camp) and W.R. Burnett. The all-star production renamed all of the principal participants, and at the insistence of star Steve McQueen included a spectacular motorcycle chase that is recorded in neither the original Brickhill book nor the annals of wartime history. Still, the film spun a lucid and realistic account of the mass escape, refusing to sugar-coat the outcome by allowing any more than the original three prisoners to make it to freedom. In some instances the film was even harsher with the captured escapees than in reality, with the 50 executed prisoners killed in one fell swoop rather than over a period of days. What follows is a roll call of the real-life participants of the Great Escape and (as near as can be determined) their motion- picture equivalents: RAF squadron leader Roger Joyce Bushell was the mastermind of the operation. Shot down by the Luftwaffe together with French pilot and future escape partner Bernard Scheihauer on March 29, 1942, Bushell had previously busted out of a German compound in 1940, and as a result was shipped to Luft III, where many other escapees were also interred. A former barrister, Bushell used his courtroom eloquence to rally the camp’s escape committee with a spectacular all-or-nothing plan for freedom: “Everyone here in this room is living on borrowed time. By rights we should all be dead! The only reason that God allowed us this extra ration of life is so we can make life hell for the Hun…. In North Compound we are concentrating our efforts on completing and escaping through one master tunnel. No private-enterprise tunnels allowed. Three bloody deep, bloody long tunnels will be dug—Tom, Dick and Harry. One will succeed!” Making good his own getaway in the company

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of Scheihauer, Bushell had almost succeeded in crossing the border to Alsace when the two men were captured. Three days later both were executed in violation of the Geneva Convention. In The Great Escape, Roger Bushell is represented by Richard Attenborough in the role of Squadron Leader Robert Bartlett, who like Bushell is identified by his comrades as “Big X.” Also like Bushell, Bartlett has a pronounced facial scar— as did actor Attenborough, though otherwise he did not resemble his counterpart. Air Commodore Herbert Martin Massey was a senior officer in the RAF when shot down off the Dutch coast in the second of Britain’s “Thousand Plane” raids, and subsequently became Luft III’s Senior British Officer. It is likely that his incarceration was the most sedentary incident in his military career to date: in World War I he served as a Captain during the Arab Revolt, and in 1917 was wounded in aerial combat by fabled German ace Werner Voss; two years later he suffered another wound in Palestine. By the time he arrived at Luft III he had lost half a leg and was using a walking stick. After the war Ramsey was largely responsible for rallying world attention to the 50 murdered escapees (18 of the Nazis involved in this slaughter were eventually hanged). James Donald plays the Massey character in The Great Escape, Group Captain Ramsey, replete with walking stick and unflappable British reserve. The real Herbert Massey died in 1976 at the age of 78. Gilbert “Tim” Wallen was the main inspiration for the film’s Flight Lt. Colin Blythe, the expert forger played by Donald Pleasence. Unlike Blythe, Wallen was not shot while escaping, but was among the 50 later executed by the Nazis. Blythe also displays characteristics of another of Luft III’s master forgers, Flight Lt. Alex Cassie. Attending a POW reunion eight years before his death in 2012, Cassie recalled that he neither escaped the camp nor went blind, as Blythe does in the film. “I don’t look back with pride at our escape, but with great sadness,” he said at the time. “Being here today brings a lump to my throat because so many of my good friends were shot by the Gestapo.” While it was Alex Cassie who decided not to

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attempt escape because of his claustrophobia, that affliction is given to the character played in the film by Charles Bronson, Flight Lt. Danny Velinski, aka “The Tunnel King”—who manages to overcome his phobia and make it to freedom. Velinski’s role model was Sgt. Per Bergsland (1918–1992), a Norwegian-born POW who’d been a ferry commander in the RAF’s 322 Squadron. Captured during the 1942 Dieppe Raid, he identified himself as Peter Rockland to his fellow POWs. After making his escape from Luft III, Bergsland linked up with another 322 Squadron alumnus: Jens Müller, born in Shanghai to Norwegian parents in 1917. Impounded after being shot down over the Belgian coast in 1942, it was Müller who constructed the air pump to ventilate the escape tunnel. During their getaway, Bersgland and Müller arrived at one of the pre-arranged stopping points, a French brothel where German soldiers were forbidden—an episode curiously deleted from the film. Eventually the two men were slipped past Nazi harbor authorities on the Baltic coast by a pair of Swedish sailors, who transported them to their neutral homeland. After the war, Bergsland became CEO for both Fred Olsen Air Transport and Norway’s Widerø Airlines. Müller likewise remained in aviation with the Scandinavian Airlines system, and also wrote a wartime memoir, Tre Kom Tilbake (Three Came Back). The brother of award-winning film director Nils R. Müller, Jens Müller died in 1999. He was characterized in The Great Escape by John Leyton as Flight Lt. Willie Dickes. Just after we see Danny Velinski and Willie Dickes stealing a rowboat en route to freedom in the film, James Coburn as Flight Officer Louis Sedwick (called “The Manufacturer” for his ability to fabricate German goods) is shown beginning his hike across the Pyrenees to neutral Spain. This was the same route navigated by the third of the real-life successful escapees: Bram Van der Stok (1915–1993), the most decorated aviator in Dutch history. Known as “Bob” to his fellow POWS, he’d managed to get to England after the Nazi invasion of Holland, where he joined the RAF’s 41st Squadron. After parachuting from his crippled plane, he was captured off

the French coast. Before the Great Escape he had made two previous breakout attempts. The third and most famous was successful; after a tension-packed journey through occupied Europe, he managed to cross into Spain with the help of the French Resistance. After the war he moved to the United States for a medical career in OB/GYN and general practice, while serving with distinction in the U.S. Coast Guard. He too wrote a memoir, War Pilot of Orange. One of the most memorable characters in The Great Escape is killed long before the escape takes place: Scottish POW Archibald Ives, alias “The Mole,” played by Angus Lennie. Early on, Ives helps to cook up an escape route through a short tunnel near the camp’s edge. Unfortunately, he never gets to carry out his scheme: During a Fourth of July celebration, Ives goes stir-crazy and attempts to climb the barbed wire surrounding the camp, only to be shot dead by the German guards. The “real” Ives was POW Jimmy Kiddel, who like his movie double spent a lot of time in the “cooler” (solitary confinement) for various infractions, and who indeed met his doom by trying to scale the fence in full view of the watchtower—though unlike Ives he immediately fell to the ground and did not dramatically linger on the barbed wire. The film’s principal American characters were in actuality not Americans at all, since the Yank POWs (except for British Army volunteer John Dodge) had been relocated to a separate compound before the escape got under way. But with Hollywood financing at stake, the two lead roles had to accommodate U.S. actors James Garner as Flight Lt. Robert “The Scrounger” Hendley and Steve McQueen as Capt. Virgil “Cooler King” Hilts, who ends the film bouncing a baseball against the wall of the cooler where he spends a goodly portion of his screen time. It is unclear whether Garner’s character was in reality an individual or a composite; the source for Steve McQueen’s character has been variously identified as Jerry Sage, who was seldom seen around Luft III without a baseball in hand, or one of the film’s two ex–POW technical advisors, Barry Mahon and Wally Flood. Other survivors of the original escape alternately enjoyed

Berle the film or complained about its omissions, including any mention of the Silesian civilians around the camp who aided in the getaway. According to the producers of The Great Escape, the names of those civilians were kept secret so as to protect POWs and their co-conspirators in case of future wars. I can live with that.

BERLE, MILTON The films: Top Banana (Roadshow Productions/United Artists, 1954); Lenny (Marvin Worth Productions/United Artists 1974)

Comedian Milton Berle was more than worthy of the title “Mister Television” in the swaddling days of the industry. An entertainer since childhood (he was born in 1908), Berle was one of the biggest draws in vaudeville, nightclubs and Broadway musicals, overwhelming audiences with his computer-like memory for jokes and his outrageously hokey visual gags. But despite his success in live venues, Berle never clicked in movies, where his style was too bombastic, or on radio, where he was too derivative (it was not for nothing that he was dubbed “The Thief of Bad Gags”). When network television came along, however, Milton conquered the medium by hauling out 40 years’ worth of surefire material, offering a full-fledged weekly revue to millions of viewers who had never before seen such a spectacle. Premiering in 1948, Berle’s Texaco Star Theater topped the ratings for several seasons, though admittedly competition was sparse at the time. Acknowledging his value to the network, in 1951 NBC signed him to a “lifetime” contract for 30 years, which he managed to outlive by two decades. No one was more cognizant of Berle’s superstardom than Berle himself, and he wore the mantle like a Spartan general, driving himself and his coworkers mercilessly with his perfectionism. His rehearsals were conducted in the manner of a full-metaljacket Army drill, with Berle ceaselessly interrupting the proceedings by blowing the whistle he wore constantly around his neck and haranguing the troops to “get it right.” Though never denying that he was tyrannical on the job, Milton insisted that the whistle was necessary so that he wouldn’t lose his voice. And though his

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staff never dared to joke about it in his presence, there was a weekly pool in which they would wager how many times he’d blow that whistle in a single day. Milton himself won the pool on several occasions, indicating that for all his imperiousness he was able to laugh at himself. Berle’s offstage generosity to young performers and his tireless fundraising efforts on behalf of several charities enabled him to retain a large circle of showbiz friends, among them comedian Phil Silvers. A few years younger than “Uncle Miltie,” the bald, bespectacled Silvers had worked his way up from the Stygian caves of burlesque to the Olympia of Broadway and Hollywood, reaching a peak with his performance in the 1948 stage musical High Button Shoes, in which he developed the glib con-artist characterization that he’d later refine as “Sergeant Bilko” on the classic 1950s TV sitcom The Phil Silvers Show. Before that series got under way, Silvers starred in one more Broadway hit, 1951’s Top Banana, scripted and scored by Hy Kraft and Johnny Mercer. Phil was cast as popular TV comedian Jerry Biffle, a likeable despot who insists upon controlling every aspect of his weekly variety show. This includes ordering the program’s resident tenor Cliff Lane (Danny Scholl) to sing to beautiful model Sally Peters ( Judy Lynn) and win her heart—not for Cliff, but for Jerry, who is smitten by the girl. When Cliff announces plans to get married, Jerry decides to hype his ratings by staging an elopement and wedding on his show, little realizing that the bride-to-be is his own beloved Sally. Shattered by this and the possibility of losing his longtime sponsor, Jerry bounces back to his old “Top Banana” status with a popular new half-hour format for his series, while Sally’s roommate Betty (Rose Marie), who has loved Jerry from afar, snares him for her own. Though Phil Silvers retained his own personality by incorporating several of his old burlesque sketches (and such longtime comedy cronies as Jack Albertson, Joey Faye and Herbie Faye) into the play, no one was misled into thinking that Top Banana was inspired by Phil’s own career. As Silvers wrote in his autobiography, “In 1950 the tyrant of the tube was Milton

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Berle… . I knew every flip gesture of Berle’s, every ruthless smile. Milton was, shall I say, an impatient man. He had to have his laughs, and he didn’t care where or how he found them.” Once Silvers decided to base Top Banana’s Jerry Biffle on his old pal Berle, he felt Miltie out during a friendly game of golf. Describing his upcoming Broadway musical, he characterized Biffle as “a guy who’s been ‘on’ all his life. His only goal is the laugh…. He never listens to anyone’s conversation—he’s just thinking of what he’ll say next. The poor old guy’s never had a chance to develop in any other areas. He’s been on the stage since he was five years old. His dedication—the laugh must come.” Digesting these words, Berle barely paused before replying with a straight face, “I’ll be a sonovabitch. I know guys just like that”—and on the spot he offered to invest heavily in Top Banana. For a long time Silvers was convinced that Berle was unaware he was the role model for Jerry Biffle, but in his own autobiography Milton stated that he knew what Phil was up to from the start and invested in the play as a gesture of friendship. The comedian described Biffle as “a vicious and funny swipe on me, and I loved it so much I offered to sue Hy Kraft for the publicity value.” Berle also supplied some of his own gags to the script on the sly, and later played Biffle himself in regional revivals of the show. Two years after completing its 350-performance Broadway run, Top Banana was adapted for the screen by writer Gene Towne. Produced by Albert Zugsmith and directed by Alfred E. Green, the 1954 film version was lensed in Eastmancolor and 3-D, with the decision made to cut down on production time and show off the “realism” of the stereoscopic process by staging the production exactly as it had appeared on Broadway—curtains, scenery changes and all— giving latter-day viewers the rare opportunity of seeing what a hit musical of the 1950s must have looked like. Phil Silvers and the rest of the Broadway cast were retained, as was most of the original music and libretto. Unfortunately, Top Banana is seen today at a disadvantage since circulating public- domain prints have been cut from 100 to 85 minutes, excising some of the

songs; also, the 3D version is now lost, literally leaving us “flat.” By the time Top Banana was distributed by United Artists, Milton Berle’s TV career was on the wane. As the 1960s began, he was working out his lifetime contract doing monthly specials and hosting an NBC bowling show. But though “Mister Television” would become more of an emeritus title as the years rolled on, Berle retained his popularity on stage, in clubs and as a movie and TV character actor until his death in 2002. In the meantime, moviegoers were offered one more faux Berle in the form of TV headliner Sherman Hart, a character introduced in Julian Barry’s 1971 Broadway play Lenny. A mixedmedia spin on the life and work of controversial standup comic Lenny Bruce, the play includes an early scene in which young upstart Lenny is given the opportunity to redeem himself after offending an audience with his scatological humor by “old pro” Sherman Hart, who is first seen rattling off wheezy mother-in-law jokes to a chortling middle-aged crowd. When Lenny was filmed by director Bob Fosse in 1974 with Dustin Hoffman as star, the Hart character was given a key scene in which he advises Bruce to stick to a clean, “safe” act—all the while stroking the knee of Lenny’s sexy wife Honey (Valerie Perrine). Hart then sets up Lenny’s comeback by introducing the boy with a little vintage schtick of his own. The insouciant Bruce expresses his gratitude to the magnanimous Sherman Hart by telling the nightclub audience “I’d like to piss on you.” It might not have happened just that way, but certainly Milton Berle was among the many comedy veterans who tried to steer Bruce away from doing “his own thing”—and since Lenny was worshipped as a martyred icon by the new comedy generation of the 1970s, the older “establishment” comedians were held in just as much contempt at the time as Sherman Hart seems to be in Lenny. In spite of this, Berle himself was approached to portray Hart in the screen version: “They talked to me about playing the part, but my representatives thought the role was too small.” Described in Lenny as “Mr. Entertainment,” Sherman Hart was ultimately played by

Biggs comedian Gary Morton, proving for all time that he was not merely “Mr. Lucille Ball” with a devastatingly on-target Milton Berle imitation.

BERRY, J OHN—AND R ING L ARDNER JR ., JOSEPH LOSEY American directors John Berry and Joseph Losey and screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr., were all blacklisted from Hollywood in the wake of the HUAC investigations of so-called Communist infiltration in the movie industry. All three men were forced to find work in England and Europe throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. Their stories provided substance for the later films Fellow Traveller (1989) and Guilty by Suspicion (1991), both set during the Blacklist era. In Fellow Traveller, Ron Silver plays blacklisted screenwriter Asa Kaufman, exiled to Britain and writing scripts for the TV series The Adventures of Robin Hood under a pseudonym—just as Ring Lardner, Jr., did from 1955 through 1958. Guilty by Suspicion features a brace of movie directors who sustain their careers abroad after being banned from Hollywood: David Merrill (Robert De Niro), based on John Berry; and Joe Lesser (Martin Scorsese), inspired by Joseph Losey.

BIGGS, G REGORY—AND CHANTI JAWAN MILLARD The film: Stuck (Prodigy Pictures/Amicus Entertainment/Tumidor/THINKFilm, 2007)

At age 25, Chanti Millard of Fort Worth, Texas, was old enough to know that gasoline, alcohol and Ecstacy don’t mix, but it’s likely she just didn’t care as she climbed into her car on the night of October 26, 2001. Speeding towards home, Chanti struck a 37-year-old homeless man named Gregory Biggs. The impact caused Biggs to crash through the glass of the car’s windshield; he was still alive, but his upper torso now hung down into the vehicle and his lower body was sprawled on the hood. Arriving home, Chanti parked her car in the garage, leaving Biggs embedded in her windshield, rapidly losing blood and moaning in pain. Chanti returned periodically to check on her victim, assuring him that as a former nurse’s aide she felt it would be dangerous to move him. What she didn’t tell him

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is that she had made no attempt to summon medical aid, and that she was waiting for him to die. At some point in the early morning, Chanti made her last check-in and found that Biggs had finally cooperated with her. She waited until late evening to summon two male friends, Chet Jackson and Herbert Cleveland, to help her remove the body and dump it in a local park, also setting fire to the damaged portion of the car to hide the evidence. Attending a party four months later, Chanti laughingly bragged about the incident to her friend Maranda Daniel. Failing to see the humor in the situation, Maranda phoned the police. During Chanti’s trial in 2003, a coroner testified that Gregory Biggs’ life might have been saved had he received immediate medical attention. Chanti Millard was sentenced to prison for 60 years, 50 for murder and 10 for tampering with evidence. The latter lighter sentence was also applied to Chanti’s two accessories after the fact. It was inevitable that this crackbrained crime of craven carelessness would undergo multiple adaptations on various TV programs, notably that à clef bastion Law & Order and even such comedy series as My Name Is Earl. The equally inevitable big-screen adaptation was an ultracheap, semiserious slasher flick directed by Stuart Gordon (Honey, I Shrunk the Kids) and written by Gordon and John Strysik (TV’s Tales from the Darkside). The title of this 2007 release, Stuck, is a tip-off that it isn’t to be taken with an entirely straight face. The opening scenes concentrate on Thomas Bardo (Stephen Rea), a born loser who has already suffered the worst day of his life when he is stuck down by the car driven by inebriated nursing assistant Brandi Boski (Mena Suvari). Faced with the inconvenience of a gravely injured man wedged in her windshield, and worried that the accident might have an adverse affect on her upcoming promotion, Brandi calls upon her boyfriend Rashid (Russell Hornsby) to help her finish off Bardo and burn both body and car (Chanti Millard’s real boyfriend knew nothing of the incident and was cleared by the police). But Bardo manages to wriggle free from the windshield, and despite a multitude of broken bones and damaged organs contrives to turn the tables on his would-be

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murderers—in the case of Brandi, trapping her in the same blazing inferno she’d planned for him. (Another variation on this theme was Accident on Hill Road, a Bollywood production of 2009). Most critics accepted Stuck for the chintzy but perversely charming concoction that it is, while others attacked the film on the basis of its seeming racism. Although the real Chanti Millard was black, actress Mena Suvari was as white as white could be, despite the cornrows in her blonde hair. In a 2008 article by ABC News’ Lucinda Fisher, New York casting director David Vaccari noted bluntly “That movie Mena is in might not have gotten made if she wasn’t in it. It’s all about getting the movie done. It’s a business, Everyone is looking to make their money back. The artistic vision is in there, but I don’t think it’s already the primary factor. Sometimes ethnicity and the reality of the story are sacrificed.” The suggestion made by some observers that the real murderer’s race was altered so as not to offend black filmgoers didn’t hold water with AfricanAmerican actress Victoria Rowell: “Just because this true-life story is so abysmal does not mean we don’t want to play the part.”

BIKOWSKY, ALFREDA FRANCES [“JEN ”] The film: Zero Dark Thirty (Annapurna Pictures/First Light Productions/Columbia, 2012)

Written by Mark Boal and directed by Kathryn Bigelow, the popular action thriller Zero Dark Thirty was originally conceived as a reenactment of the 2001 Battle of Tora Bora on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the subsequent long and futile search for al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack. These plans were slightly altered after May 2, 2011, the day that Navy SEALs invaded the secret al-Qaeda stronghold at Abbottabad, killing Bin Laden in the process. Now the first portions of Zero Dark Thirty would focus on the decade-long quest by the Central Intelligence Agency to gather the information needed to locate and neutralize Bin Laden, with the climactic assault meticulously and breathtakingly recreated in the final half-hour of the film. Zero Dark Thirty’s protagonist, a spunky and tena-

cious female CIA intelligence analyst, was initially identified as “Jen” by Navy SEAL Matt Bissonette, who recounted his participation in Abbottabad in his pseudonymously published autobiography No Easy Day. Bissonette reported that “Jen” was in her 30s, had joined the CIA after college but before 9/11, and had devoted 5 years to capturing the elusive Bin Laden. A subsequent article in the London Daily Mail affirmed “Jen”’s importance to the mission as one of the first intelligence agents to theorize that by tracking al-Qaeda’s courier network the CIA would be led directly to Bin Laden’s hidden compound. Acknowledging that “Jen” was “not exactly Miss Congeniality,” Bissonnette added “I can’t give her enough credit. I mean, she, in my opinion, she kind of teed up the whole thing.” Unabashedly patriotic and pro–CIA, Zero Dark Thirty is also something of a feminist manifesto, with the renamed “Maya” (played by British actress Jessica Chastain) stubbornly standing alone against a sea of doubting and hostile CIA and government superiors. During his pre-film discussions with “Jen,” Mark Boal decided to go beyond the CIA’s description of her as a “targeter” recruiting other spies and stopping drone attacks, transforming the film’s Maya into the prime mover of the Abbottabad operation. Just as abrasive and combative as “Jen,” Maya openly clashes with her superiors and frequently goes over their heads to get results. The fact that after his 2008 election President Obama gave the CIA direct orders to renew their efforts to find Bin Laden is mentioned in the film, but it still appears at times as if Jen is carrying the entire load, and the responsibilities, all by her lonesome. In time-honored war movie tradition, Maya also has a personal stake in eradicating Bin Laden. One of her best friends is CIA intelligence officer Jessica ( Jennifer Ehle), who while serving as base chief at Camp Chapman in Khost Afghanistan is killed in the 2009 attack on the base, the result of phony intel from an “informant” who is actually a suicide bomber. In a way, Maya feels personally responsible for Jessica’s death; by trusting the bomber she and

Bingham her fellow agents had been led down the garden path to false leads that nullified all her intelligence-gathering up to that time. Whether or not revenge was a motivational factor for “Jen,” the film accurately dramatizes her enthusiastic participation in enhanced interrogation (a.k.a. “torture”) to pry information from captured terrorists, and the moment when she bursts into tears while identifying Bin Laden’s corpse. It didn’t take much imagination to identify the unfortunate Jessica as real-life Camp Chapman chief Jennifer Lynne Matthews, who lost her life in the actual 2009 attack. Nor is it hard to determine that Islamabad station chief Joseph Bradley (Kyle Chandler) is based on Jonathan Banks, or that the film’s unnamed National Security Adviser (Steven Dillane) and CIA Director ( James Gandolfini) are supposed to be John Brennan and Leon Panetta, respectively. But no amount of enhanced interrogation could have persuaded the CIA, Matt Bissonette or the filmmakers to reveal the true identity of “Jen” when Zero Dark Thirty was released in 2012. The Manchester Guardian was able to report that the unnamed analyst received a cash bonus and Distinguished Service Medal for her services, but was passed over for promotion allegedly because she posted an e-mail taking full credit for the operation. The Guardian also noted that the emphasis on Maya in Zero Dark Thirty had stirred up jealousy among “Jen”’s colleagues and prompted the CIA to issue a terse statement that “hundreds of analysts, operators and many others played key roles in the hunt.” Not until December 2014 did New Yorker writer Jane Mayer identify “Jen” as Alfreda Frances Bikowsky. Since Mayer’s article was titled “The Unidentified Queen of Torture,” readers could not have mistaken it for a flattering puff piece. In addition to criticizing Bikowsky for her endorsement of waterboarding, Mayer laid many of the intelligence failures prior to 9/11 right in Bikowsky’s lap. Chances are, however, that Alfreda Frances was too wrapped up in her impending marriage to her former CIA boss Michael Scheuer (the likely role model for Zero Dark Thirty’s “Dan,” played by Jason Clark), to let the New Yorker ruin her day.

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BINGHAM, HIRAM, III The films: Secret of the Incas (Paramount, 1954); Raiders of the Lost Ark (Lucasfilm/Paramount, 1981); Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Lucasfilm/Paramount, 1984); Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Lucasfilm/Paramount, 1989); Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Lucasfilm/Paramount, 2008)

The buzz surrounding producer George Lucas and director Steven Spielberg’s landmark adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark and its three sequels has brought new attention to reallife Yale professor, explorer, and politician Hiram Bingham III (1875–1956). Despite Lucasfilm’s insistence that fictional hero Indiana Jones, played in all four films by Harrison Ford, was “created from whole cloth” (to quote Bingham biographer Christopher Heaney), history buffs have been equally insistent in tracing a lineage between Bingham and the beloved “Indy.” But there is a detour in that lineage which leads directly to the much earlier film The Secret of the Incas, wherein the Bingham connection is far more obvious. In 1911, 36-year-old Hiram Bingham headed an archaeological expedition to Peru under the auspices of Yale University and National Geographic. His mission was to locate the ruins of Vitcos and Vilcabambas, the last two capitals of the Incan Empire that had flourished from 1100 to AD 1562. Four centuries before Bingham, Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro had been thwarted in his efforts to find the legendary “lost cities of gold” by the indigenous residents’ complex system of burial and camouflage. Not an archaeologist himself, Bingham called upon his training as an historian to soak up as much oral testimony from the local Peruvians as possible, coordinating this fresh information with existing Spanish chronicles. Bolstered by the considerable expertise of expedition member Albert Giesecke, the American-born rector of Peru’s National University of Cuzco, Bingham was able to determine that the lost cities were located somewhere above the Urubamba Valley. The expedition party was on the verge of declaring their mission a failure when on July 24, 1911, Bingham beheld a magnificent sight. Just beyond the ancient Incan fortress of Sacsahuaman

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Hiram Bingham, III.

stood the mountaintop sanctuary of Machu Picchu (“old summit”), wherein rested the skeletal remains of hundreds of middle-aged men and young female virgins—indicating that it had once been a religious shrine, possibly even a temple of human sacrifice. Though contrary to legend there was no Incan gold to be found at Machu Picchu, the site proved to be a treasure trove of priceless artifacts. Bingham would lead further Peruvian expeditions on behalf of Yale and the Geographic in 1912, 1914 and 1915, the last journey given generous press coverage describing Machu Picchu as “The American Tibet.” Bingham’s 1948 memoir Lost City of the Incas expressed his belief that the original 1911 expedition had been even more successful than originally assumed, advancing the theory that Machu Picchu and the elusive Incan capital Vilcabambas were one and the same. By that time, Bingham had abandoned academia and archaeology to serve in various Connecticut govern-

mental offices ranging from Lieutenant Governor to State Senator. Partially filmed on location at Machu Picchu with the participation of 500 Peruvian extras, director Jerry Hopper’s Secret of the Incas was scripted by Sydney Boehm and Ranald MacDougall not from Hiram Bingham’s account of the 1911 expedition but from a recent series of National Geographic articles recounting Bingham’s exploits. The film’s technical advisor was the aforementioned Albert Giesecke, upon whom many modern historians have bestowed as much credit for the discovery of Machu Picchu as the more celebrated Bingham. Updated to the 1950s, Secret of the Incas is set in motion by an intensive multi-party search for the sacred—and inestimably valuable—Incan artifact “The Golden Sunburst.” It has sometimes been claimed that the film’s Hiram Bingham character is American soldier-of-fortune Harry Steele, played by Charlton Heston; but in fact Steele joins the Machu

Blyth Picchu expedition to steal the Golden Sunburst for himself, and isn’t above lying and cheating to fulfill his objective. The character played by costar Robert Young, pedantic archaeologist Dr. Stanley Moorehead, more closely resembles the real Bingham in appearance and demeanor; unlike Harry Steele, Moorehead’s interest in the Sunburst is purely humanitarian. The last-reel intrusion of former partner-in-crime Ed Morgan (Thomas Mitchell) motivates Harry to cast greed aside and return the Sunburst to its rightful owners, though he still manages to pilfer a few lesser golden relics along the way. And while Dr. Stanley Moorehead succeeds in his goal of excavating Machu Picchu for the benefit of the impoverished local natives, he loses the film’s heroine Elena Antonescu (Nicole Maurey) to the less ethical but more attractive Harry Steele. In Secret of the Incas Charlton Heston wears a curiously familiar outfit consisting of a battered fedora, brown leather jacket, tan pants and shoulder bag. Interviewed in 2005 by Mike French and Gilles Verschuere, Raiders of the Lost Ark costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis admitted that she and her crew had watched the Heston film several times before deciding to use the actor’s clothing and accessories as the template for the wardrobe that Indiana Jones would soon make famous throughout the world. “I always thought it strange that the filmmakers did not credit [Secret of the Incas] as the inspiration,” noted Landis, adding that the 1954 film is “almost a shot for shot Raiders of the Lost Ark.” This hyperbolic (and inaccurate) assertion aside, the protagonist’s costume, together with his day job as a college professor, are the most tangible links between Indiana Jones and Hiram Bingham III, who to the best of my knowledge never wielded a whip, battled a Nazi, or palled around with Karen Allen.

BLAIR , TONY—AND ROBERT MCNAMARA Based on a novel by Robert Harris, Roman Polanski’s 2010 mystery-thriller The Ghost Writer stars Ewan McGregor as the never-named title character. Hired to redact the autobiography of controversial British prime minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), the protagonist

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soon realizes that his own life is in danger. Adam Lang is a thinly disguised Tony Blair, Labour Party PM of Great Britain from 1994 to 2007 who with American president George W. Bush touched off the highly criticized 2003 war on Iraq. Halfway through The Ghost Writer, the hero learns some frightening details about the death of Adam Lang’s previous ghostwriter—and some inconvenient truths about international politics—from a melancholy old man played by Eli Wallach. This character is drawn from former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who just before his death expressed deep regret for his role in America’s involvement in Vietnam.

BLYTH, AUBREY—AND ETHEL BLYTH, JOHN HENRY PATTERSON The films: The Macomber Affair (Benedict Bogeaus Productions/United Artists, 1947); Bwana Devil (Gulu Productions/Oboler/United Artists, 1952); Killers of Kilimanjaro (Warwick/Columbia, 1959)

Most Ernest Hemingway aficionados are aware that his 1936 short story “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” is based on an incident in the life of British soldier-adventurer-author Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson (1867–1947). One should not assume, however, that Patterson would be forgotten had it not been for Hemingway. The Colonel had been “big news” in his mother country since 1898, and would remain so throughout World War I, wherein he earned the controversial designation of “godfather” of the present-day Israel Defense Forces. Hemingway had known Col. Patterson in the latter’s capacity as hunting guide, which had also earned him the friendship of Teddy Roosevelt. In 1908 Patterson agreed to shepherd Aubrey James Blyth, son of a baron who had known the colonel for years, on a safari to the Kikuyu Mountains of Kenya. Going along for the ride was Blyth’s attractive wife Ethel, an accomplished hunter in her own right. The defection of six porters en route to the Kikuyus was an early indication that this safari would not proceed smoothly; nor did Blyth’s neurotic behavior rest well with the remaining porters. After Blyth shot an onyx, his wife one-upped him by bagging two gazelles, which only exacerbated her husband’s

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fragile emotional state. Patterson urged Blyth to go back to Nairobi after the man developed an abscess on his foot, but Blyth refused, continuing his journey in a hammock borne by the increasingly resentful natives. Again Patterson attempted to stop the safari to protect Blyth from a rhinoceros, and again Blyth and his wife ignored their guide, managing to stalk the rhino and shoot its calf—which prompted the porters to cheer Mrs. Blyth and laud her as a better hunter than her husband. Eventually Blyth became dangerously feverish, forcing Ethel and Patterson to care for him in shifts. Ethel began sleeping in Patterson’s tent while the Colonel looked after her husband, leading some of the porters to suspect that Mrs. Blyth was having an affair with the guide. What happened next, recalled Patterson, was “a terrible shock. And one which I shall never forget.” As Patterson and Ethel conferred in his tent to discuss Blyth’s medical condition, a shot was heard: Blyth had killed himself with a bullet to the head. After arranging for Blyth’s burial, Patterson opted to continue the mission that had originally motivated his participation in the safari: surveying the boundaries of the Marsabit Reserve on behalf of the British government. To prevent Ethel from being stranded in the wilderness should anything happen to him, Patterson divided his own tent into two sections, one accommodating Mrs. Blythe. Now it was Patterson’s turn to fall ill, with Ethel acting as his nurse. Throughout the treacherous journey back to Nairobi, Patterson had nothing but praise for Mrs. Blyth’s courage and fortitude—and according to him, that was as far as his admiration ever went. Back in Nairobi, Patterson filed an accidentaldeath report on Aubrey Blythe and assumed that the matter was settled. But once Ethel returned to London rumors flared that she had cheated on her late husband with Patterson, and may even have been complicit in Aubrey’s death. Patterson’s wife Frances nobly stood by her husband throughout the scandal, which came to a head in 1909 with an official inquiry by the District Commissioner of British East Africa. Though no proof of impropriety was found, it was the considered opinion of the District Com-

missioner that “Mr. Blyth shot himself on account of the too intimate relations between his wife and Colonel Patterson.” A long-standing gentleman’s agreement that no white man would ever be put on trial in Africa helped clear Patterson of all charges of wrongdoing, but gossip persisted for the rest of his life, some of it fomented by no less than Winston Churchill, whom Patterson nearly sued for slander. After his official exoneration Patterson never saw Ethel Blyth again; at the time of her death in New Zealand in 1931, she was living with a married man who in a bizarre coincidence also ended up committing suicide. In “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” Hemingway’s John Patterson replicate is professional hunter Robert Wilson, who guides Francis and Margot Macomber on an African safari. Mrs. Macomber is contemptuous of her husband, mocking and browbeating him for his presumed cowardice after he runs away from a wounded lion. As Macomber struggles to prove his mettle to his wife and regain his own self-respect, Hemingway implies that Margot is having sex with Wilson on the sly. Later on Macomber valiantly stands his ground against a charging buffalo, bringing the beast down at the last possible moment. Watching this spectacle from the safety of the safari car, Margot raises her rifle and takes a shot herself—which strikes Macomber in the head and kills him. Whether or not Margot intended to shoot her husband is left for the reader to decide, though she seems genuinely distraught by the tragedy. The title of the story refers to the brief happiness enjoyed by the long-suffering Macomber in the few seconds between the recovery of his manhood and his sudden death—a “life” in itself. Produced by Benedict Bogeaus, directed by Zoltan Korda and adapted by Seymour Bennet, Frank Arnold and Casey Robinson, the 1947 film version of the Hemingway story was retitled The Macomber Affair, with the emphasis shifted from the tortured Francis Macomber (played by Robert Preston along more malevolent lines than his literary counterpart) to the man’s amoral wife Margot ( Joan Bennett) and her ambiguous relationship with great white hunter

Boshears Robert Wilson (Gregory Peck, who together with Gary Cooper—an earlier choice for the role of Wilson—represented Hollywood’s quintessential Hemingway Hero). Though Margot is in no way likeable, she comes off more sympathetically than her dissolute husband; as for Wilson, he ends up the hero of the piece by default. To mollify the Hollywood censors, the film is presented in flashback, bracketed by a prologue in which Robert Wilson expresses remorse and an epilogue in which he is punished for actual and imaginary sins by losing his guide’s license, while Margot herself faces possible indictment for her husband’s suspicious death. A less ignominious earlier event in John Patterson’s career was the source for three subsequent films, one of them—1996’s The Ghost in the Darkness—identifying Patterson by name (Val Kilmer played the role). Inspired by his own 1907 memoir The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, both Bwana Devil and Killers of Kilimanjaro were fictionalized accounts of Patterson’s experiences while assisting in the construction or a railway bridge over Kenya’s Tsavo river between 1898 and 1899. Faced with the atypical presence of man-eating lions plaguing the native workers, Patterson was forced to combat the superstitious belief that the beasts had been possessed by evil spirits. Nearly 140 men were attacked and fatally mauled by two rogue lions before Patterson called upon his tiger- hunting experiences in India to personally track down and kill both animals over a period of three weeks. This feat made Patterson an international hero, an honor tarnished only by the later Aubrey Blyth incident. In Bwana Devil—more celebrated as the first narrative feature film lensed in 3-D that for its historical accuracy—Robert Stack is cast as intrepid lion hunter Jack Hayward, who according to writer-director Arch Oboler takes on both killer lions simultaneously rather than individually on behalf of the “Uganda Railway.” Killers of Kilimanjaro reimagines John Patterson as fearless lion-slayer Robert Adamson (the film’s British title was Adamson of Africa), with screenwriters Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum combining Patterson’s written account with material

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from JA Hunter and Daniel P. Mannix’s book African Bush Adventure. Like Oboler’s Bwana Devil, Killers of Kilimanjaro was shot on location in Africa by director Richard Thorpe; and though the film was a British production, the casting followed the pattern of its predecessors by casting an American actor as the Patterson character, in this case Robert Taylor. John Henry Patterson’s later adventures as commander of the Jewish Legion in World War I, and his subsequent championing of Zionism in defiance of fierce opposition and hostility in the United Kingdom, have not yet been dramatized on film—though there are vestiges of Col. Patterson in Ralph Richardson’s portrayal of the fictional (and half–Jewish) General Bruce Sutherland in Otto Preminger’s Israeli epic Exodus (1960).

BOGDANOVICH, PETER—AND JOCK M A HONEY, H AL NEEDHAM

Burt Reynolds’ 1978 film vehicle Hooper is a lighthearted tribute to Hollywood stuntmen in general and Hal Needham and Jock Mahoney in particular. Reynolds’ character Sonny Hooper is known as “The World’s Greatest Stuntman,” an appellation previously bestowed upon Burt’s longtime friend and associate Needham, who later in his career became a director—his credits including this very film. Hooper’s idol is retired stuntman Jocko (Brian Keith), the father of his girlfriend Gwen. Jocko is patently inspired by actor-stunt specialist Jock Mahoney, in real life the stepfather of Burt Reynolds’ then-girlfriend Sally Field—who, need we add, plays Gwen here. Rumor has it that the character played by Robert Klein, overbearingly egotistical movie director Roger Deal, is based on filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, who’d had a falling out with Reynolds after collaborating with the actor on the films At Long Last Love (1975) and Nickelodeon (1976).

BOSHEARS, BILL— AND BARBARA A NN BUTLER The film: Man on a Swing ( Jaffilms/Paramount, 1974)

William Arthur Clark was a reporter with the Dayton, Ohio, Daily News when in June 1968 he

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was assigned to cover a murder investigation in the nearby suburb of Kettering. The victim was 23-year-old Barbara Ann Butler, an 8th-grade science teacher and former high school homecoming queen. Her body had been found under a blanket on the floor of her Volkswagen; she had been strangled at least two days earlier. What should have been a routine investigation was complicated by the utter lack of clues and a time-consuming jurisdictional dispute between two neighboring police departments. When it became obvious that there were no leads, the Dayton police chief let it be known that he was willing to listen to input from anyone who might know anything about the crime—including a self-proclaimed clairvoyant and psychic healer who had gotten in touch with William Clark. At first skeptical, the reporter was intrigued by the psychic’s knowledge of investigation details that the police had not yet made public—and by his uncanny insight into Clark’s own private life. Instructed by his editor to devote all his time to the Butler case, Clark developed an obsessive interest in the alleged clairvoyant’s pronouncements. Could the man be genuine, a talented fraud, or perhaps the murderer himself ? As part of his research, Clark called upon famed parapsychologist Joseph B. Rhine to administer a test to the presumed psychic. After the man failed the test and the police dismissed his information as useless, Clark soured on his source—which may have been the reason that the reporter suddenly began to receive threatening anonymous phone calls. As it turned out, the only “break” in the case occurred when a 12year-old girl was murdered and her killer quickly arrested. The culprit had previously been a suspect in the Butler killing, but had been released after passing a polygraph. He also happened to have a tenuous connection with the “helpful” psychic upon whom both Clark and the police had pinned their hopes for a quick solution. Though the loose ends of the Butler murder case were never satisfactorily tied up, fresh information about the “clairvoyant”’s fact-gathering techniques convinced William Clark that he and everyone else had been led up the proverbial garden path.

In 1971, Clark published a procedural-style book about the case, The Girl on the Volkswagen Floor. All the actual names of the persons involved were used, save for the self-styled psychic, who because he claimed not to want any publicity was identified as “Norman Dodd.” The 1974 film inspired by The Girl on the Volkswagen Floor, director Frank Perry’s Man on the Swing, went even further than the book in protecting identities: The clairvoyant is renamed Frank Wills, while the schoolteacher victim becomes Maggie Dawson (a judicious move, since “Maggie”—played in flashback by Diane Hull—is fairly promiscuous). The closest the film comes to a William Clark equivalent is a nameless reporter played by Lane Smith; otherwise Clark is eliminated from the narrative, his role in the case totally usurped by Lee Tucker, police chief of the fictional town of Laurel, Indiana. The nucleus of Man on a Swing is the intense interplay between Chief Tucker, played with taciturn professionalism by Cliff Robertson, and Norman Wills, who as enacted by Joel Grey comes off like a perverted leprechaun. Wills’ ambiguous “I know something you don’t know” smirk during his placid scenes, coupled with his terrifying tantrums and trances when he’s in “clairvoyant” mode, lead Tucker to conclude that he’s dealing either with a nutcase, a genius, or a diabolical killer. The script follows the chronology of the Barbara Ann Butler investigation with only a handful of digressions, such as having the police themselves administer the psychic test which Wills fails, rather than the film’s Joseph B. Rhine counterpart Nicholas Vorner (George Voskovec). Some critics complained about the inconclusive denouement, though it isn’t too far removed from what actually happened—right down the second murder that ever so briefly seems to provide a solution to the first. Thanks to Joel Grey’s kinky performance and the enigmatic screenplay by David Zelag Goodman (Logan’s Run, Straw Dogs), Man on a Swing is bathed in an aura of unsettling eeriness not unlike the works of David Lynch, whose own Twin Peaks bears a marked resemblance to the 1974 film.

Bout Unlike its source book, Man on a Swing does not tell us how the Barbara Ann Butler investigation profoundly affected the personality and philosophy of author William Clark, who later forsook journalism to become a detective himself. Nor does the film come any closer than the book to revealing the true identity of “Norman Dodd.” Several years would pass before Dodd was finally unmasked as Bill Boshears, whose original request for anonymity was predicated on his distaste for the publicity-seeking stunts staged by his mother Beulah. Famed in professional-wrestling circles as “Bouncin’ Beulah” Boshears, she was known far and wide for sitting on the sidelines and screaming invectives at her least favorite wrestlers—and on more than one occasion climbing into the ring and going headto-head with her latest object of derision. Bouncin’ Beulah kept her act going for nearly 60 years, living long enough to get into the face of none other than Hulk Hogan. Once everyone knew that Norman Dodd and Bill Boshears were one and the same, he had no reservations about promoting himself in public. Allowing his earlier career as a psychic healer to fade into obscurity, Bill Boshears became a celebrity in the Greater Cincinnati area as the host of SciZone, a freewheeling radio and TV “paranormal news” program in the tin-foil-hat tradition of Art Bell.

BOUT, VIKTOR The film: Lord of War (Entertainment Manufacturing Co./VIP Medienfonds 3/Ascendant Pictures/Saturn Films/Rising Star/Copag V/Endgame Entertainment/Lions Gate, 2005)

Russian-born arms dealer Viktor Bout has been described by his wife Alla as “a caring, funloving family man” and “committed Christian whose planes carried aid and shipments as often as they carried weapons.” Others have been less affectionate in their assessment of Bout, with British MP Lord Peter Hain branding him “The Lord of War” and the worldwide media referring to him as “The Merchant of Death.” Bout himself rejected all these appellations, preferring to call himself a “Sanctions Buster.” Born in 1967, Bout’s early history is clouded by contradictory stories (he may or may not

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have been associated with Russian military intelligence); it is known for certain that he was working as a military translator when the Soviet Union broke up in the early 1990s. Acquiring abandoned planes and jets from various Soviet airports, he created his own charter service for the purpose of trafficking arms and blood diamonds, setting up shop in Bulgaria in 1995. Technically a smuggler, Bout was able to skirt the law with the help of his more influential clients. His defenders point out that his activities aided the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan, with his knowledge of logistics coming in especially handy. But he also regularly violated UN embargos in Afghanistan, Africa and the United Arab Emirates, and was suspected of doing business with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Two of Bout’s steadiest customers were Liberian dictator Charles Taylor and Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi. Apparently Viktor Bout never had any qualms over who was willing to pay for his services, but the same cannot be said for his fictional counterpart Yuri Orlov in the 2005 film Lord of War. As played by Nicolas Cage, Orlov starts questioning the morality of his actions once Interpol begins to pursue him—which is as good a time as any. According to the screenplay by director Andrew Niccol, Orlov is living in the U.S. with his parents when in 1982 he witnesses the attempted murder of a Russian mobster in a Brighton Beach restaurant. The fact that the mobster is himself armed and able to turn the tables on the assassins leaves a lasting impression on Orlov: “There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That’s one firearm for every 12 people on earth. The only question is: How do we arm the other 11?” Orlov’s answer is to shoulder the burden of serving the unarmed—for a price. In truth, Viktor Bout needed no motivation to launch his activities beyond a desire to line his own pockets. Still, after seeing Lord of War Bout criticized Orlov’s above-mentioned rationale for running guns as “cynical,” adding “Too bad for [Nicolas] Cage, though. He deserved a better screenplay.” Bout had nothing at all to say about the producers’ utilization of some of his

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own impounded aircraft—and a few of his former crew members—in the film’s flying scenes. While filmmaker Andrew Niccol chastises both “good guys” and “bad guys” on the world scene for dealing with mercenaries, no one is quite as reprehensible—or as bat-guano crazy— as the film’s Charles Taylor counterpart Andre Baptiste, Sr. (Eamonn Walker). Other characters include Orlov’s wife Ava (Bridget Moynihan), his brother and business partner Vitaly ( Jared Leto), and incorruptible Interpol agent Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke). Though Niccol insisted that Yuri Orlov was a composite of six different people, no one who’d read a newspaper in the early 21st century could possibly miss the film’s references to Viktor Bout. This is especially true at the end of Lord of War wherein Orlov is finally captured by Valentine, only to predict that he will soon be freed by unnamed but powerful forces. This reflected the embarrassing fact that at the time of the film’s release, Viktor Bout was still at large, still active, still enjoying the protection of his best customers. It wasn’t until 2008 that Bout was arrested in Thailand and extradited to the U.S. to stand trial for terrorism, charged with planning to smuggle arms to Cambodian rebels; he was convicted in 2011 and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

BOW, CLARA American silent film star known as “The It Girl.” Her talkie career was mired in scandal when her personal secretary Daisy De Voe, getting even for being fired by Clara’s new husband Rex Bell on a questionable theft charge, revealed intimate details of the actress’ private sex life in court. This incident was fictionalized and played for laughs in Bombshell (1933), starring Jean Harlow as Bow-like movie star Lola Burns.

BOWERS, JOHN—AND LA MOTTE

M ARGUERITE DE

American silent film stars, husband and wife from 1924. As Marguerite’s star rose and his fell, Bowers became depressed and self-destructive. Shortly after losing out on a comeback role in 1936, Bowers rowed a boat out into the Pacific Ocean and drowned himself. His riches-to-rags life story and dramatic demise were universally

recognized as source material for the 1937 film drama A Star Is Born, featuring Frederic March as washed-up film favorite Norman Maine and Janet Gaynor as his up-and-coming actress wife Vicki Lester. These characters were respectively played by James Mason and Judy Garland in the 1954 musical remake of A Star Is Born. Neither film borrowed anything else from the true story of Bowers and De La Motte.

BOWIE, DAVID Iconic British pop-music superstar. Bowie was the main inspiration for bisexual glam-rock performer Brian Slade, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the 1998 British film Velvet Goldmine.

BREMER , ARTHUR The film: Taxi Driver (Bill/Phillips/Italo/ Judeo/Columbia, 1976)

As a Wisconsinite, I would prefer that my home state be more famous for dairy products and the Green Bay Packers than as a breeding ground for such serial killers as Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer. I suppose I can take some solace in the fact that Milwaukee native Arthur Bremer was unsuccessful in his bid to enter the ranks of psychotic murderers, though he came perilously close. Born in 1950, Bremer was a lonely, embittered youngster whose blue-collar family was forced to move frequently, usually whenever they had trashed their latest apartment. Though a fairly good student and briefly a member of the football team at South Division High School he was incapable of making friends, keeping his classmates at a distance with weird outbursts of laughter, sudden seizures of panic and refusal to make eye contact. Somehow he was able to establish a relationship with a 15-year-old girl, but their breakup sent him off the deep end and he became obsessed with the desire to kill someone—anyone. In the April 1972 Bremer showed up in Silver Spring, Maryland, where he volunteered to campaign on behalf ex–Alabama governor and presidential candidate George Wallace. He certainly seemed to be sincere if slightly detached, and in addition was well groomed and impeccably dressed. “To be a real rebel today you have to

Bremer keep a job, wear a suit and stay apolitical,” Bremer wrote in his diary. “Now THAT’S REBELLION!” He hoped to sell his diary to Time magazine for $100,000 after he’d accomplished something big. Previously he’d targeted Democratic presidential hopeful George McGovern and Republican incumbent Richard Nixon as his focus of attention, but by early May Bremer had crammed his tiny apartment with George Wallace literature and posters—as well as Black Panther pamphlets, a Confederate flag, pornography and childish scribblings. No one fully understood his fascination with Gov. Wallace until May 15, 1972. It was at a Wallace rally in Laurel, Maryland; though approximately 1000 people were present, Bremer immediately stood out in the crowd with his huge campaign button and brightly colored shirt.. Shoving his way to the front of the crowd, Bremer stood face to face with Wallace, pulled out a .38 revolver and shot the candidate four times in the chest and abdomen. Though Wallace survived, one of the bullets had struck his spinal cord, crippling him for the remainder of his life. Bremer had not only failed in his mission to kill the governor, but in the excitement he’d forgotten to shout “A penny for your thoughts,” which he’d chosen as his own personal “Sic semper tyrannis.” Much to his apparent delight, Bremer was swiftly tried, convicted and sentenced to 63 years. Though released on probation in 2007, Bremer will be required to live under electronic supervision until he reaches the age of 75. George Wallace died of a bacterial infection in 1998. Discussing his screenplay for director Martin Scorsese’s iconic 1976 thriller Taxi Driver, Paul Schrader has emphasized “It is not the Arthur Bremer story, but there are points in common, including the diaristic narration.” When work began on the screenplay in early 1973, Bremer’s diary had not yet been published; still, noted Schrader, “I was surprised at the number of places where it lined up with what I imagined.” Cast as deranged loner Travis Bickle, Robert De Niro may be more attractive than the gormless Arthur Bremer, but he is no less terrifying—and may be even more so. Unfolding the plotline of

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Taxi Driver on a need-to-know basis, neither Scorsese nor Schrader provide Bickle with a clear-cut explanation or motivation for his actions. He is simply “there” throughout most of the film, a New York newcomer who takes a night-shift job as a cab driver in the city’s most hellish neighborhoods, spending his days bulking up, honing his expertise with firearms, and staring into the mirror while carrying on threatening conversations with imaginary foes (“You talkin’ to me?”) As the film’s voiceover “diary” narration indicates, Bickle is on a mission that to him is of the utmost importance, one which will somehow elevate him from obscurity to fame. In a December 3, 2015, Washington Post magazine piece, David Montgomery observed “Arthur Bremer shot Gov. George Wallace to be famous. A search for who he is today.” Following the Bremer scenario, Bickle comes in contact with the presidential campaign of Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris) and attaches himself to pretty campaign worker Betsy (Cybill Shepherd)—who though initially attracted to Bickle is instantly turned off by his Bremer-like fascination with pornography. The only person Travis is able to connect with is 12-year-old prostitute Iris ( Jodie Foster), whom he hopes to rescue from her sordid lifestyle. Bickle’s inevitable attempt on the life of Charles Palantine during a campaign rally— where, in emulation of Bremer, Travis makes himself conspicuous with a mohawk haircut— is thwarted before a shot can be fired. But Bickle still manages to find an outlet for his pent-up rage by killing Iris’ pimp (Harvey Keitel) along with two other lowlifes. In an ironic twist that Martin Scorsese would later reconfigure for laughs in The King of Comedy, Bickle’s crazed outburst transforms him into a folk hero, at last bestowing upon him the fame he has always craved. As a footnote without further comment, after John Hinckley endeavored to impress Taxi Driver costar Jodie Foster with a failed attempt on the life of President Ronald Reagan in 1981, among Hinckley’s possessions was found a copy of Arthur Bremer’s An Assassin’s Diary.

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BROWN, GRACE—AND CHESTER GILLETTE The films: An American Tragedy (Paramount, 1931); A Place in the Sun (Paramount, 1951)

The 1900s were only six years old when America was treated to its first “crime of the century,” courtesy of Chester Gillette. Born in Montana in 1883, Gillette spent his early years traversing the West Coast with the Salvation Army, which his parents had joined after embracing God. Pampered by his indulgent mother, Chester became impatient with religious life and eagerly accepted the financial aid of his wealthy uncle Noah. Exhibiting little ambition, Chester drifted through a series of dead-end jobs before he went to work at his uncle’s skirt factory in Cortland, New York. There he met factory worker Grace Brown, who took to Chester and confided her innermost thoughts to him. Chester began dating Grace but refused to take her to picnics and parties, instead patronizing places where he wouldn’t run into to his highsociety friends. When Grace revealed she was pregnant he persuaded her to go back to her home town in Ohio, promising to marry her if she ever returned to Cortland. Her subsequent letters indicated that she knew Chester was partying around with other women in her absence, yet she pathetically prepared for the wedding that would never be. Worried that she’d expose his indiscretion unless they were reunited, Chester agreed to a rendezvous with Grace at the Tabor House in DeRuyter, New York, where he’d registered under an assumed name. On the morning of July 11, 1906, Chester invited the girl to go rowing with him in nearby Big Moose Lake; hours later he returned alone. According to the prosecution in his subsequent murder trial, Chester threw 20-year-old Grace into the lake and drowned her, striking her over the head with a tennis racket to make sure she wouldn’t resurface. Chester admitted that he’d planned to kill her but had undergone a change of heart, and that she’d beat him to the punch by jumping in the lake and overturning the boat. He also confessed that though he was a good swimmer he made no attempt to rescue her. The prosecution tore all of Chester’s alibis and protestations of inno-

cence to shreds, and on December 6, 1906, he was sentenced to the electric chair. Despite the strenuous efforts by Chester’s mother to secure a reprieve, the sentence was carried out on March 30, 1908. Like all other aspects of the trial, Chester Gillette’s death was given full and florid coverage by the press: As one feverish reporter exclaimed in print, “Not since the execution of Czolgosz, McKinley’s assassin, has Auburn [N.Y.] known such a night.” The sensational aspects of the story eventually died down, and by 1920 the Chester Gillette–Grace Brown case had been forgotten—except by muckraking author Theodore Dreiser, who since 1914 had been working on a massive novel which served as a reservoir for his outrage over a callous and superficial social structure that drove innocent young Americans to soul-killing extremes in pursuit of the Bitch Goddess Success. Incorporating the 1906 murder of Grace Brown and its aftermath into his narrative, Dreiser spent five more years assembling a massive 800-page tome bulging with sledgehammer symbolism, ominous foreshadowing, excruciating detail and bizarre colloquial speech patterns, which came out in 1925 under the title An American Tragedy. The narrative follows the actual story to the letter, though all names and most of the places are changed. Protagonist Clyde Griffiths is the restless son of Salvation Army missionaries, yearning for the finer things in life but lacking the stamina to turn ambition into action. The novel is a “tragedy” in the strictest sense, with Griffith’s character flaws and his inability to learn from the mistakes of others leading inexorably to his doom. Working as a hotel bellhop in Kansas City, Clyde falls in with a fast crowd and becomes enamored of a mercenary female on whom he squanders his meager earnings. Barely escaping arrest for a fatal traffic accident in which he was marginally involved, he flees to Chicago where a chance meeting with a wealthy uncle secures him a job at a shirt-collar factory in fictional Lycurgus, New York. Ignoring the factory’s rules against fraternization, Clyde takes up with coworker Roberta Alden, whom he persuades to have sex with him. Meanwhile, wealthy

Brown young socialite Sondra Finchley takes a fancy to Clyde and introduces him to her “smart” social circle. Thus when Roberta reveals that she is pregnant and fully prepared to name the father, Clyde takes drastic action so as not to ruin his romance with Sondra. Having read a newspaper report about an accidental drowning, Clyde schedules Roberta for a similar fate. Though the girl’s own drowning is entirely accidental, circumstantial evidence and his own weakness of character result in a sentence of death. Ever the social activist, Theodore Dreiser gilds the lily by having the corrupt local authorities manufacture evidence to secure a conviction, but when all is said and done Clyde signs his own death warrant with his inability to resist temptation and to profit from the bad examples of others. A theatrical version of An American Tragedy, adapted by Patrick Kearney and starring Morgan Farley and Miriam Hopkins, briefly ran on Broadway in 1926. Four years later legendary Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein came to Hollywood in hopes of filming his own screenplay inspired by the novel. The film was ultimately directed by Josef Von Sternberg from an adaptation by Samuel Hoffenstein for a 1931 Paramount release. The 96-minute running time was scarcely adequate to accommodate Dreiser’s gargantuan novel, but a surprising number of highlights from the original survived the final cut, including the sequence in which Clyde Griffiths (unevenly played by pasty-faced Phillips Holmes) narrowly avoids prosecution for his involvement in a hit-and-run accident, thereby laying the foundation for his climactic “postman always rings twice” punishment for a murder which he didn’t commit but had wanted to. Sylvia Sidney, then in the martyr-victim phase of her film career, makes a suitably foredoomed Roberta Alden, while Frances Dee is both sweet and sexy as Clyde’s dream girl Sondra Finchley. The 1931 version of An American Tragedy was not well received either by the public or by Theodore Dreiser, who attempted to sue Paramount for distorting the novel into “a justification of society and an indictment of Clyde Griffiths”; he also complained that the studio had reduced his masterpiece to an “ordinary murder story.” An-

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other legal action against Paramount was brought by murder victim Grace Brown’s mother, who was offended by what she perceived as the negative characterization of her daughter (evidently she hadn’t read the book, which is just as hard on Roberta Alden). Both litigants were dead by the time Paramount released producer-director George Stevens’ 1951 remake of An American Tragedy, retitled A Place in the Sun. An updated romanticization of the source material (courtesy of screenwriters Michael Wilson and Harry Brown), the film stars Montgomery Clift as renamed hero George Eastman, Elizabeth Taylor as Sondra Finchley counterpart Angela Vickers and Shelley Winters as Roberta Alden equivalent Alice Tripp. Jettisoning all of Theodore Dreiser’s scathing social commentary and the novel’s air of tragic predestination, the film begins with George Eastman’s chance encounter with his industrialist uncle Charles (Herbert Heyes), who invites the boy to take a job in his factory. In contrast with the aimless Clyde Griffiths, George is depicted as industrious and eager to please, but lonely and desperate enough to be drawn into a sexual relationship with drab coworker Alice Tripp. His excellent job performance gains George entry to a fancy party at his uncle’s house, where he meets and falls in love with glamorous debutante Angela Vickers. Complicating matters is Alice’s pregnancy and her sullen insistence that George marry her or she’ll tell all to Angela. George concocts a scheme to drown Alice, but at the last moment he recants—too late, since Alice has upset the canoe and drowned without George’s assistance. Much more time is spent between Grace’s death and George’s arrest, permitting director Stevens not only to build up suspense but also to put Montgomery Clift through all manner of anxiety, remorse and terror. In the final death-house scenes, George admits that he could have saved Alice but was too obsessed with Angela, who shows up just before the execution to assure George that she forgives him and will always love him. A master manipulator, George Stevens makes certain (which Josef Von Sternberg did not in the comparatively sterile An American

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Tragedy) that audience sympathy is firmly with the tragic protagonist throughout, especially in his scenes with the unfortunate Alice. As noted by film historian William K. Everson, “the dull, whimpering girl who serves a momentary need for Clift’s loneliness—as she does for hers—is, as played by Shelley Winters, so abrasive and dispiriting that there is almost no need for a moral choice, and anything that is planned for her seems justifiable!” Though Theodore Dreiser and Grace Brown’s mother were no longer around to threaten lawsuits, A Place in the Sun nonetheless became the focus of a 1966 legal action inaugurated by George Stevens, who requested a judicial injunction to prevent the NBC network from telecasting the film lest they inflict “artistic damage” by making cuts and interrupting the flow of action with commercials. Stevens lost the battle but won the war; NBC ran the picture intact, with a minimum of commercial breaks.

BROWN, HELEN GURLEY American editor of Cosmopolitan magazine and author of Sex and the Single Girl. The film version of the latter title stars Natalie Wood as “Helen Brown,” but there the resemblance ends. In the 1975 movie adaptation of Jacqueline Susann’s novel Once Is Not Enough, Brenda Vaccaro received an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of the story’s à clef Helen Gurley Brown, renamed Linda Riggs.

ployed as a seamstress when at age 19 she married 37-year-old mining superintendent Johnny Brown. Marching to her own drummer all her life, Margaret—or “Maggie,” as she preferred— lived separately from her husband, educated herself from the ground up, and fought for the rights of the local miners. The Silver Crash of 1893 wiped out practically everyone in town except Maggie and Johnny Brown, who had providentially invested in gold. With wealth in abundance they moved to Denver in 1894, setting themselves up in an magnificent mansion. Unlike the events depicted in Molly Brown, Maggie was not snubbed by Denver society; rather, she snubbed them because she considered them dull. The outspoken Mrs. Brown never fit comfortably into any preordained niche: As her great-granddaughter Helen Benzinger McKinney commented in 2002, “You had the funny, in-your-face woman on one end and then the wife of J.J. Brown who spoke five languages, played the piano and ran for senate before women had the right to vote.” After her legal separation from Brown in 1909 she dedicated herself to “good works,” founding a major Denver animal shelter and supporting an equitable juvenile justice system.

BROWN, MARGARET “MOLLY ” TOBIN The film: Titanic (20th Century–Fox, 1953)

The 1960 Broadway musical and 1964 MGM film The Unsinkable Molly Brown never purport to be the authentic story of the title character, a wise decision in that during her lifetime she hated the name “Molly” because it had once been a condescending label slapped on immigrant Irish girls. Margaret Tobin (1867–1932) was of Irish descent but not an immigrant, unless one regards her relocation from Hannibal, Missouri, to the mining town of Leadville, Colorado, as a form of immigration. While the early portions of Unsinkable Molly Brown find her working as a bar girl in Leadville (the better to squeeze a song out of the situation), she was actually em-

Margaret “Molly” Brown.

Bruno One of the few aspects of The Unsinkable Molly Brown that cannot be refuted is her status as the only miner’s wife in the first class section on the maiden voyage of the Titanic in April 1912. On the night that the great ship went down in the North Atlantic she exhorted the other passengers in her lifeboat to keep their spirits up despite the gloom-and-doom pronouncements of the quartermaster in charge (she became so fed up with his pessimism that she half-seriously threatened to throw him overboard). While Maggie didn’t assume command of the lifeboat by waving a gun and forcing everyone to row for their lives—a legend established in Gene Fowler’s specious 1932 volume Timberline, expanded upon by magazine writer Carolyn Bancroft, and of course repeated in Molly Brown—she would later complain that the men in the boat were virtually useless. In anticipation of Rose in the 1997 film Titanic, Maggie would also gripe that most of the lifeboats were half-empty and the determination of who would live or die was made along class-conscious lines. She was not permitted to testify at the Congressional hearings about the Titanic disaster because of her gender, so she wrote her own account, which received wide circulation. Also given plenty of media coverage was her reported comment as to how she managed to survive: “Typical Brown luck, we’re unsinkable.” In truth, she never said anything of the kind, but the “unsinkable” tag would stick to the end of days. Timberline was purchased by MGM to secure the picture rights to Maggie Brown’s story. As a result, for many years her name could not be used in any other studio’s film; too, a lot of Hollywoodites were worried about possible libel suits from Maggie’s family, who for decades had worn themselves to a frazzle trying to debunk the more outlandish myths about her. When 20th Century– Fox produced its historical drama-cum-soap opera Titanic in 1953, Thelma Ritter was cast as the fictional Maude Young, an earthy widow whose late husband had made his fortune as a Montana lead miner. Charles Brackett, Richard L. Breen and Walter Reischer’s screenplay finds Maude casting a jaundiced eye on the social pretensions of her fellow passen-

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gers, verbally shaming snobbish Richard Sturgis (Clifton Webb) for giving the cold shoulder to his lonely son Norman (Harper Carter). During the climactic scenes, Maude emulates Mrs. Brown by striving to keep her fellow lifeboat passengers from losing hope—and also exposes a cowardly male passenger (Allyn Joslyn) who has wangled a seat on the boat by disguising himself as a woman. Thereafter, Margaret Brown would always be identified by name in filmed re-enactments of the 1912 maritime tragedy. Cloris Leachman played Mrs. Brown in a 1957 episode of the TV anthology Telephone Time, while later cinematic interpreters have included Tucker McGuire in the 1958 British film A Night to Remember, Debbie Reynolds in 1964’s The Unsinkable Molly Brown and Kathy Bates in James Cameron’s Oscar-winning 1997 spin on the watery tale. Given the limited scope of these films, the post– Titanic life of Mrs. Brown—her raising of $10,000 to aid the victims of the disaster, the French Legion D’Honneur she received for exemplary citizenship, her brief fling as an actress, her reduced financial status in her final years due to an inheritance battle with her children—has yet to be dramatized onscreen.

BRUNO, A NTHONY—AND BARRY GIA COBBE, ANTHONY AND FRANCES TOTO

The film: I Love You to Death (Chestnut Hill Productions/TriStar, 1990)

“In my opinion it was lack of communication—a big lack of communication. Lots of people have that problem. I had to pay a big price … me and my family.” Those words were spoken in 1988 by Anthony “Tony” Toto, owner of an Allentown, Pennsylvania, pizzeria. Tony was referring to the problems that had led to the nearbreakup of his marriage to his wife, Frances, five years earlier. He was also citing the reason that Frances had just served four years at the State Correctional Institution on a variety of charges, including attempted murder. Tony Toto’s attempted murder. Tony loved his wife in his fashion but was occasionally neglectful, especially while fooling around with other women. The time came when

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Frances decided enough was enough, but she didn’t go the accepted route of counseling and legal separation: “I didn’t, and I should have” she would later admit. Instead Frances chose the more direct method of removing Tony from the face of the earth. It wasn’t easy. Preliminary murder attempts with a trip-wire, a booby-trapped gas tank and a baseball bat didn’t quite work, but since Tony never seemed to catch on to what Frances had in mind, she was free to try, try again. Taking her daughter’s boyfriend Anthony Bruno into her confidence, Frances concocted a plan: On January 26, 1983, Bruno would invite Tony into his home for the purpose of shooting the errant husband in the head. Bruno dutifully aimed, fired, and wounded Tony, but not in the head as instructed. He adamantly refused to shoot again, so two days later Frances managed to persuade her cousins Ronald and Donald Barlip to fire a second shot—once more clipping Tony, yet still missing his head by at least an inch. Nothing if not persistent, Frances tried to finish the job by feeding her husband a bowl of soup laced with barbituates. The soup didn’t kill Tony either; worse luck, the barbiturates saved his life by slowing down the bleeding. In the spirit of “better late than never,” the police arrived at Bruno’s home on January 30, having been alerted of strange noises from within. After two weeks in the hospital, Tony gallantly posted the $50,000 bail for Frances and defended her court, saying that the whole misunderstanding was all his fault and things would be better in the future—in this case, four years in the future. The moment Frances was released she flew back to her husband and children, who welcomed her with open arms, resuming their lives as if nothing had happened. “These four years that she’s been away we communicated on the phone and with letters, and we found we still love another,” declared Tony to the Associated Press. Thanks to the maelstrom of publicity surrounding this touching reunion business at the family pizzeria was at record levels, and the Toto home was showered with cards and gifts from well-wishers. One bouquet of roses was sent by John “Cos” Kostmayer, who was writing a screenplay based on Frances’ indefatigable ef-

forts to rush her husband to the Next World— which only made sense, inasmuch as Mr. and Mrs. Toto had become media darlings, celebrating their 22nd wedding anniversary on The Oprah Winfrey Show. The film that would be released in 1989 as I Love You to Death was directed by Lawrence Kasdan, with technical advice provided by Barry Giacobbe, the detective who had investigated the case. Never was there any intention to tell the story in a stark dramatic fashion; it played like a slapstick comedy in real life, and that was the approach taken in the film. The decision whether or not to use the real names of the participants was unresolved all the way up to production time; once the cameras began turning, Tracey Ullmann and Kevin Kline had been cast as “Rosalie and Joey Boca,” with Joaquin Phoenix as Rosalie’s pimply triggerman “Devo” and William Hurt as “Detective Harlan James.” “We are saying this story is based on a true event,” declared producer Ron Moler. “We are not saying that this is the actual event.” Casual moviegoers might have swallowed that if they hadn’t been familiar with the real story. One watches I Love You to Death in a series of short gasps—first gasping with laughter at the frivolity onscreen, then gasping with astonishment over the realization that the actors and production crew haven’t made the whole thing up. Few people enjoyed the film more than Frances and Anthony Toto, though Frances quibbled that her husband’s string of casual girlfriends were never as pretty in real life as onscreen. And, of course, they laughed right along with their friends and family when the picture opened at their neighborhood cinema, where it was variously promoted as “The Toto Movie” and “The Nut Movie.” As Frances explained while catching her breath, “The way we can laugh about it now is that we don’t get crazy.” But not everyone was amused. Paroled from prison after serving 51/2 years for his participation in Frances Toto’s homicide campaign, Anthony Bruno grumbled to the press that “Frances is going on talk shows now. She sits there and laughs. This has ruined my life.” No sense of humor at all.

Bryan

BRYAN, WILLIAM JENNINGS

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wins the case, the world at large recognizes it as a moral victory for the pro–Evolution forces. Brady becomes so apoplectic at the prospect of coming off as a pathetic clown that he drops dead a few minutes after the verdict is rendered. The popular image of Illinois-born politician Using only Inherit the Wind as a frame of refWilliam Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) is that of erence, it is nearly impossible to believe that a bald, bloviating buffoon standing stubbornly William Jennings Bryan was once a political as a roadblock against progressivism, an image giant, standing four-square in favor of the compromulgated in Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. mon man against the forces of Big Business and Lee’s 1955 play Inherit the Wind and Stanley Big Politics, a powerful and influential secretary Kramer’s 1960 film version of the property. Ficof state during the Woodrow Wilson administionalized as Matthew Harrison Brady, Bryan is tration, and a three-time candidate for the presseen at the tail end of his four-decade career, idency of the United States. And though Inherit when he became chief prosecuting attorney in the Wind has a decidedly liberal slant, Bryan was the infamous Scopes “Monkey Trial” of 1925, in not the retrogressive knee-jerk conservative he which Tennessee schoolteacher John Scopes appears to be on stage and screen, but instead a (see separate entry) was charged with teaching lifelong Democrat who espoused liberty and the theory of Evolution in violation of a state law equality for all men. Elected congressman in his which only allowed the Biblical version of Creadopted state of Nebraska in 1890, Bryan exation to be taught in school. According to the ploded on the national scene six years later at play and film, Bryan/Brady is held up to public the Democratic National Convention with his ridicule when his intransigent pro- religion celebrated “Cross of Gold” speech, in which he stance is systematically torn apart by defense advocated the “free silver” movement by classicounsel Clarence Darrow (see separate entry), fying the gold standard as a tool of the wealthy called Henry Drummond here. Though Brady and a burden on the backs of working-class Americans. It was this speech that secured Bryan the Democratic nomination of 1896, and though he lost to Republican candidate William McKinley he would go on to two more Presidential bids in 1900 and 1908, keeping his name before the public in the years between with newspaper columns and lecture tours. In 1912 President Woodrow Wilson, who shared Bryan’s antiwar and anti-interAn unidentified actor (center), made up to resemble the famously bald William vention stance, apJennings Bryan, plays professional pacifist Plato Barker in the long-lost pro- pointed him Secretary war film The Fall of a Nation. From the July 1916 edition of Motion Picture News. of State, and in this The films: The Fall of a Nation (National Drama Corporation/V-L-S-E, 1916); Inherit the Wind (Stanley Kramer Productions/ United Artists, 1960)

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capacity he successfully supported conciliation between opposing political parties and warring nations. After the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 Bryan knew that Wilson would be forced into taking a more militant attitude towards the war in Europe, whereupon he resigned rather than support America’s involvement in the hostilities. At first many other Americans shared Bryan’s pacificism, but within the next two years public sentiment turned in favor of war. As a result Bryan and other “peacemongers” like industrialist Henry Ford were seen as foolish obstructionists, refusing to recognize the danger of enemy invasion and the necessity of “beating the Hun.” A few films of the 1915–16 era featured characters based on these real-life pacifists; the most blatant of these was 1916’s The Fall of a Nation, written and produced by Thomas Dixon of The Birth of a Nation fame and boasting a specially written musical score by Victor Herbert (to be played by theater orchestras, since this was after all a silent film). The plot found America in a weakened and vulnerable state thanks to anti-war activism, allowing an unnamed European nation to invade and conquer the U.S. The day was saved by a white-robed army of militant women, a distaff version of the “heroic” Ku Klux Klan depicted by Dixon and D.W. Griffith in Birth of a Nation. Comic relief was provided by two featherbrained pacifist leaders, the Rev. Cuthbert Pike and the Honorable Plato S. Barker. While Pike was patterned after Henry Ford, this was not quite so obvious in the film as the model for Plato Barker, who was portrayed by a portly actor made up as the spitting image of William Jennings Bryan (Unfortunately the actor’s name was not listed in contemporary trade publications, and the film no longer exists for us to identify him). In their big scene, Pike and Barker arrived at the camp of the enemy general armed with bouquets of flowers, only to suffer the humiliation of being forced to peel potatoes for the invaders’ soup. Answering an angry letter to the New York Sun protesting this lampoon, Thomas Dixon replied “Is Charles Wakefield Cadman, the writer of the Sun letter, aware that Mr. Bryan is being caricatured in al-

most every summer show or revue in the country? I saw him cartooned in the Ziegfeld ‘Follies’ at the New Amsterdam Theatre the other night and in a Columbia Theatre revue in Chicago last week. Every newspaper cartoonist is privileged to make fun of public characters. Yet when a film author does the same thing hands are held up in horror and ‘breaches of decency and national respect’ are talked of. I’ll wager that Mr. Cadman, had he looked back over his files of the Sun and the Evening Sun, would have discovered pictorial and literary ridicule of Bryan far exceeding anything I have attempted.” (Dixon could have also mentioned L. Frank Baum’s alleged caricature of Bryan as the Cowardly Lion in his 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz—but only if he’d been one of the present-day revisionists who insist upon reading political messages in the Oz books that Baum probably never intended). After the war Bryan was written off as a relic of the past because of his support of Prohibition and the teaching of religion in classrooms, though this perception unfairly discounted his tireless efforts on behalf of Women’s Suffrage. His reputation was further tarnished just before the Monkey Trial when, for a substantial fee, he delivered speeches in Florida promoting the state’s big land boom of the mid–1920s on behalf of the same prosperous businessmen whom he once vilified. Journalist H.L. Mencken, whose Baltimore Sun poured a lot of money into Clarence Darrow’s defense team, wrote column after column relegating Bryan to the compost heap of history, ladling scorn upon the man’s perceived ignorance in the face of scientific fact. This is reflected in Inherit the Wind via the Mencken-like character E.K. Hornbeck, played on Broadway by Tony Randall and on film by Gene Kelly. One of the highlights of the actual 1925 trial was transformed into the highlight of the play and film, with Henry Drummond (played on screen by Spencer Tracy) putting Matthew Brady (portrayed by Fredric March, who prepped for his role by listening to Bryan’s recorded speeches) on the witness stand as a “Biblical expert.” For the next several minutes Drummond mercilessly grills Brady about the inconsistencies in the Old Testament version of

Budberg Creation for the purpose of making his opponent appear ludicrously narrow- minded (“I do not think about—what I do not think about”). What is not generally known is that back in 1925 Bryan actually won this round of the trial, refusing to be shaken by Darrow’s tactics and winning the respect of the spectators and the press. Inherit the Wind ends just after Brady’s operatic collapse and death in the courtroom. E.K. Hornbeck declares sardonically that “Matthew Harrison Brady died of a busted belly,” whereupon Henry Drummond gallantly defends the life and reputation of his fallen opponent. In truth, the “busted belly” crack was made by Clarence Darrow himself on the occasion of William Jennings Bryan’s death—which occurred not in Dayton Tennessee, where the trial actually took place, but during a lecture tour in Chattanooga, five days after Bryan walked out of the Dayton courtroom under his own power.

BUDBERG, MOURA The film: British Agent (First National, 1934)

The daughter of a Russian senate official and chief prosecutor for the Czar, Moura Ignatievna Zakrevskaya was born in the Ukraine in 1892. Noble by birth, she became the wife of Count Djon Von Beckendorff in 1910, only to be widowed eight years later when her husband died under mysterious circumstances. In the years prior to and during the Revolution she worked as a translator in the propaganda office of the British agency in Moscow, where she met and fell in love with British diplomat R.H. Bruce Lockhart, who would become his nation’s unofficial representative to the new Bolshevik re gime. Accused of conspiring with British secret agent Sidney Reilly (of Reilly, Ace of Spies fame) to assassinate Vladimir Lenin—something he would furiously deny for the rest of his life— Lockhart was arrested while sharing a bed with Moura. Protesting her innocence, Lockhart managed to secure Moura’s freedom, though another of her clandestine affairs with the head of Lenin’s secret police may have contributed to her exoneration. Upon her second marriage to

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German baron Nikolai von Budberg-Bönningshausen she became a baroness, retaining both the title and her husband’s last name after their divorce. Throughout the 1920s she was the private secretary and common-law wife of author Maxim Gorki, and may also have been romantically involved with H.G. Wells. She went on to work as a story editor for British filmmakers Alexander Korda and Carol Reed, along the way publishing several translations of classic Russian plays; director Sidney Lumet would use her translation of The Sea Gull for his 1968 film adaptation. Though she knew many men in her 82 years on earth, R.H. Bruce Lockhart remained the great love of her life, and when he died in the 1960s she mourned his passing at a Russian church in Kensington. Because of her numerous high-profile romances on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Moura Budberg was often presumed to have been a spy, specifically a double agent for both the Soviet Union and Great Britain. Though no proof exists of this, R.H. Bruce Lockhart’s 1932 autobiography Memoirs of a British Agent fed into the legend of Moura’s espionage activities simply by denying that there were any. Referring to Moura only by her first name, Lockhart candidly admitted the affair and sang praises to her intelligence and courage while repeating his assertion that neither he nor she were involved in any assassination conspiracy. Nonetheless, the infamy of “The Lockhart Plot” had made the author persona non grata in Russia, casting suspicion-byassociation on his Soviet sweetheart. Though Moura Budberg was a minor player in Memoirs of a British Agent, which covered the author’s entire career, Hollywood chose to dramatize the romance and throw out practically everything else, including most (but not all) of Lockhart’s blistering criticism of the diplomatic blunders which led to the strained relations between Great Britain and the U.S.S.R. Scripted by Laird Doyle and directed by Michael Curtiz, 1934’s British Agent stars Leslie Howard as British official Stephen Locke, who finds himself stranded in Russia after the Revolution. There he falls in love with Eleana Moura (Kay Francis), a dedicated revolutionary working for

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Commissioner of War Trotsky ( J. Carrol Naish)—and as far as we can tell, she’s never been married. If not technically a spy, Eleana sure behaves like one, using secret information to bollix up Locke’s plans to prevent Russia and Germany from negotiating a separate peace at the end of World War I. Later Stephen joins a counter-revolutionary movement and is among those hunted by the secret police after a failed attempt to kill Lenin. Departing from the actual sequence of events, Eleana is not arrested along with Stephen, but instead betrays his hiding place in order to save his life. At fadeout time she happily joins Stephen as he returns to England—a denouement made possible because the filmmakers chose to omit the inconvenient fact that R.H. Bruce Lockhart was married to someone else while he was dallying with Countess Moura Von Beckendorff von BudbergBönningshausen.

BULGER , JAMES “WHITEY ”— AND JOHN CONNOLLY The film: The Departed (Plan B Entertainment/ IEG/Vertigo Entertainment/Media Asia Films/ Warner Bros., 2006)

James Joseph “Whitey” Bulger’s reign as the czar of the Boston Irish Mob came to a definitive end when on August 12, 2013, he was found guilty on 31 counts, including racketeering and murder, and sentenced to two consecutive life terms plus five years—a rather bleak prospect for an 84-year-old man. His subsequent confession of his multitude of heinous crimes forced many people in South Boston to reassess their impression of Whitey Bulger as a modern-day Robin Hood for his charitable contributions and his efforts to find jobs for his neighbors. FBI agent John Connolly had know Bulger since 1948, when 19-year-old Whitey, part-time janitor and full-time extortionist, bought some ice cream for the 8-year-old Connolly. Making his FBI reputation when he nabbed Mafia boss “Cadillac Frank” Salamme in 1972, Connolly was assigned to another case, this one targeting the entire Cosa Nostra operation. Convinced that Whitey Bulger would be an excellent information source, Connolly banked on his friend-

ship with Whitey to draw him into the operation. For the next several years Connolly, Bulger and mob triggerman Steve “The Rifleman” Flemmi worked as a team on behalf of the FBI. Unfortunately Connolly’s intimate association with criminals would have a corruptive effect on him. In exchange for Connolly protecting Bulger from arrest and prosecution, Whitey set the agent up in various lucrative money-laundering and extortion operations. When gangster wannabe John Callahan, president of the Bulgercontrolled World Jai-Alai, ran afoul of the Mob and was forced to go on the run, Connolly allegedly ferreted out enough FBI information for Bulger and Flemmi to track down Callahan and murder him. After his honorable retirement from the Bureau in 1990, Connolly continued benefiting from Bulger’s largesse, landing a lucrative corporate security job which allowed him to feed Whitey with inside information enabling the gangster to elude capture. But the subsequent arrest of Steve Flemmi resulted in the exposure of Connolly’s own misdeeds: Convicted for racketeering in 2000, eight years later Connolly was additionally charged with 2nd degree murder for his complicity in the 1982 execution of John Callahan. A Congressional investigation regretfully concluded that the FBI’s cozy relationship with Bulger had been “one of the greatest failures in the history of federal law enforcement,” leading directly to Attorney General Janet Reno’s implementation of sweeping reforms concerning the Bureau’s use of criminal informants. John Connolly has since characterized the witnesses against him as “liars” and “bastards,” describing himself as a “prisoner of war.” Whitey Bulger would remain on the Bureau’s Ten Most Wanted list until his capture in Santa Monica, California, in 2011. William Monahan’s screenplay for Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning 2006 crime drama The Departed was officially based on the 2002 Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs. Despite this, the Boston setting of Scorcese’s film and Jack Nicholson’s characterization of gang chieftan “Frank Costello” (no relationship to the real-life Mafioso of that name), not to mention such

Burke scenes as Costello purchasing ice cream for the South Boston youngster who will grow up to be police investigator “Colin Sullivan” (Matt Damon) and the grisly reenactment of the 1974 “Lady of the Dunes” murder in which Whitey Bulger had been implicated, effectively nail down the film as a dramatization of the Bulger– John Connolly saga. According to a 2007 interview with Scorsese, it was Jack Nicholson’s idea to give the film an aura of realism by drawing upon actual events. Because the free hand given Bulger as a federal informant was still an embarrassment to the FBI, Connolly surrogate Colin Sullivan is depicted as a Mob “mole” within the less expansive jurisdiction of the Massachusetts State Police. And since Connolly’s name has been changed, the film is permitted its ironic coda of Sullivan getting away with murder (at least until the symbolic final fadeout). Additional layers of intrigue are applied by placing the fate of undercover police officer Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Sullivan’s hands, and entangling both men romantically with police psychiatrist Madolyn Madden (Vera Farmiga). In the Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, Infernal Affairs co-director Andrew Lau expressed a preference for his own film, “but the Hollywood version is pretty good too.” Lau went on to praise Martin Scorsese for making The Departed “more attuned to American culture.” No one has ever asked Whitey Bulger or John Connolly for their opinions.

BURKE, JIMMY “THE GENT”—AND “T WOGUN ” TOMMY DESIMONE; PAUL VARIO American gangsters who were among the few real- life criminals not identified by their real names in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990). Their cinematic counterparts are Jimmy “The Gent” Conway (played by Robert De Niro), Tommy (“What do you mean I’m funny?”) DeVito ( Joe Pesci), and Paulie Cicero (Paul Sorvino).

BUCHALTER , LOUIS “LEPKE” New York labor racketeer, head of the Mafia assassination squad Murder Inc. After personally surrendering to journalist Walter Winchell,

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“Lepke” gained fame as the only significant crime boss to receive the death penalty. A childhood friend of entertainer Eddie Cantor, Buchal ter is fictionalized as Rocky Kramer (played by Gerald Mohr) in the 1954 musical biopic The Eddie Cantor Story—which ironically starred Mob-connected singer Keefe Brasselle.

BURKE, MICHAEL The film: Cloak and Dagger (United States Pictures/Warner Bros., 1946)

Released in 1946, the fact-based spy melodrama Cloak and Dagger was not one of the favorite films of its director, Fritz Lang. His main complaint was that producer Milton Sperling removed the original ending of the film, in which American physicist Alvah Jesper (Gary Cooper) delivered a stern warning to the audience after heroically helping to prevent the Nazis from developing nuclear weapons: “This is the Year One of the atomic age, and God help us Americans if we think we can keep the secret of the atomic bomb for ourselves.” The finale was one of the few overtly political statements made by scenarists (and future blacklistees) Albert Maltz and Ring Lardner, Jr., whose task it was to forge the published version of Cloak and Dagger, Corey Ford and Alastair MacLean’s anecdotal history of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), into a linear screenplay. Perhaps because of the excised curtain speech’s cautionary tone, Lang has said that the character of Alvah Jesper was based on nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who after witnessing the first atomic explosion made the similarly ominous pronouncement “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” In fact, the character’s principal role model was Connecticut-born, Ireland-raised Michael Burke (1917–1987). After excelling in athletics at the University of Pennsylvania, Burke went professional in 1941 with Philadelphia Eagles football team. Upon America’s entry in World War II, Burke put his gridiron career on hold to join the OSS, an organization so top-secret that its very existence would not be acknowledged until after the war. The forerunner of the CIA, the OSS was organized by World War I hero “Wild Bill” Donovan (see separate entry) for

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the purpose of conducting covert espionage missions behind enemy lines, with guerrilla warfare and sabotage all part of the game. Many of Donovan’s operatives were civilians, recruited not only for their specific skills but also because as “ordinary” people they could blend into foreign populations without arousing suspicion. Officially a member of Naval Intelligence, Burke’s OSS missions included being parachuted into Axis Italy, where he was instrumental in the surrender of the Italian fleet. He then made his way into occupied France, joining the Resistance in preparation for the D-Day Invasion. By war’s end Burke had been awarded two Silver Stars, a Purple Heart, the Navy Cross and the Médaille de la Résistance. Once his exploits were declassified, he headed to Hollywood to serve as technical advisor for Cloak and Dagger, which would have been the first American film to mention the Office of Strategic Services by name had it not been beaten to the box office by Paramount’s O.S.S. nine days earlier. According to Louella Parsons’ column of November 16, 1945, Milton Sperling had invited Burke to “write yourself a part” in the film—and indeed, Burke appears uncredited as a nameless OSS agent in the completed picture. Michael Burke would become better known to the public at large as president of both the Madison Square Garden organization and the New York Knicks basketball team, and as chairman of the board of the New York Yankees. In 1969, his name was put into consideration for the job of Baseball Commissioner, though he declined saying he felt the position was unnecessary. Eight years later Burke’s name again popped up in the papers when he attended a reunion of former OSS agents just before the annual William J. Donovan Award dinner. Referring to himself and his comrades as “all us old goats,” Burke welcomed the opportunity to “show that not all of us ended up badly, and it’ll give us an opportunity to lie about some of the things we did.” And though Michael Burke was unstinting in his praise for the old OSS, most of his comments about its successor organization the CIA were either disdainful or unprintable.

BURKE, WILLIAM—AND WILLIAM H ARE, DR . ROBERT KNOX Irishmen Burke and Hare were 19th century grave robbers, who when they couldn’t find a suitable corpse to sell to medical students (the acquisition of cadavers for dissection was illegal at the time) resorted to murder. The team was responsible for the “West Port Murders” which held Glasgow Scotland in thrall during 1828. Burke and Hare sold their victims’ bodies to Scottish physiologist Dr. Robert Knox for use during his anatomical lectures to his students. Unaware that his cadavers were mostly murder victims, Knox made 16 transactions with Burke and Hare before the team was captured and arrested. While both grave robbers were hanged, Knox was not prosecuted, though he encountered great difficulty securing work as either a teacher or doctor and spent the remainder of his life writing and lecturing. The 1985 film The Doctor and the Devils, adapted from an unproduced but widely published screenplay by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, is based on the West Port Murders, though the names of the principals have been changed to Dr. Thomas Rock (played by Timothy Dalton), Fallon (the “Burke” character played by Jonathan Pryce) and Broom (the “Hare” equivalent played by Stephen Rea).

BURNS, ROBERT E. The film: I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (Warner Bros., 1932)

One of the first of Warner Bros.’ hard-hiding exposes of the seamier side of Depression-era America, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang has often been credited with single-handedly forcing the Georgia penal system to abolish chain gangs, floggings, sweat boxes and other medieval forms of punishment. It was neither that easy nor that rapid. Many of the atrocities depicted in the film were still in force when in 1937 Georgia Governor Ed Rivers ordered that chain gangs be eliminated; and it wasn’t until six years later that Rivers’ successor Ellis Arnall banned leg irons, chains, manacles and striped uniforms. Still, there were few real efforts to rehabilitate prisoners, and isolated brutalities continued to take place under the radar. In 1951, 40 hard-labor

Burns prisoners at Buford Prison severed their own heel tendons rather than return to work in Buford’s rock quarry; and in 1956, 41 convicts smashed their legs with sledgehammers for similar reasons. All that the legislators did at the time was recommend that guards stop using corporal punishment and profanities. It wasn’t until 1963 that sweeping and permanent reforms were made under the watchful eye of the Georgia Board of Corrections. By that time, Robert El-

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liott Burns, the man whose inflammatory 1932 memoir I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang had first alerted the general public to the institutional cruelties in the state’s correctional facilities, had been dead for eight years. Born in Palisades, New Jersey, in 1892, Robert E. Burns served as a medical corpsman in World War I. Returning home wounded and shellshocked in 1919, he had difficulty holding a job and by 1920 was “on the bum.” Burns’ family had no idea where he was until February 1922, when they received word that he had been arrested in Georgia for participating in a grocery-store robbery that had netted $5.29. In May he began serving a 6-to10 year jail sentence on the Campbell County chain gang. Two months later he escaped with the help of a fellow convict who used his hammer to weaken Burns’ leg manacles. Relocating to Chicago, Burns married and found work as a writer; by 1929 he was pulling down $20,000 annually as editor of a prominent Chicago magazine. Unfortunately his ex-wife, angry over his remarriage to a much younger woman, informed on him to the authorities, and despite pleas for clemency from friends and coworkers Burns was returned to Georgia to serve out his sentence on the Troupe County chain gang. When his efforts to win an appeal failed he escaped again, this time heading to his home town where his minister brother Vincent Burns was in charge of Palisades Community Church. Determined to Ad for I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), spotlighting Paul Muni remain permanently free, as the character based on real-life fugitive Robert E. Burns. From the Burns also wanted to expose December 1932 issue of Photoplay. the horrors of the Georgia

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chain-gang system. Dictating his story while Vincent wrote everything down, Burns submitted I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang to True Detective magazine, where for the first time in the publication’s history a serialized story ran for six issues. Burns’ chronicle hadn’t yet been bound together in book form when it was optioned by Warner Bros. as a vehicle for contractee Paul Muni. After Roy Del Ruth turned down the project as being too morbid, young Mervyn LeRoy was assigned to direct the retitled I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, the first of LeRoy’s three collaborations with Muni. Though uncredited, Sheridan Gibney was responsible for the lion’s share of the screenplay, in which the protagonist’s name was changed to James Allen—the alias used by Robert E. Burns when he smuggled himself into Hollywood to collaborate on the project. The film follows the actual events with commendable fidelity, though some details were changed. To begin with, whereas James Allen is an innocent bystander in the robbery for which he is arrested, Burns was an active participant in the real-life crime. Later on we see Allen’s first wife (played by Glenda Farrell) trap him into marriage by threatening to expose his past once he has escaped from the chain gang and established his own construction firm; we can’t vouch for this plot point beyond the inescapable fact that it was the first Mrs. Burns who ratted the fugitive out to the authorities after their divorce. Once back in custody, Allen is persuaded by his preacher brother (Hale Hamilton) to give himself up on the assurance that he will be pardoned by the unnamed state from which he’d escaped—only to discover that the state has reneged on its promise. In fact, Burns did not consult his brother until after his second escape, while Georgia never made any promises beyond assuring Burns that he’d be recaptured someday. Also in the film, James Allen makes his second breakout by using a truckful of dynamite to blow up a bridge and cut off the guards’ pursuit—infinitely more dramatic than simply walking away while the guards were occupied elsewhere, which is what really happened. The nowlegendary final scene, with the fugitive Allen bid-

ding a furtive farewell to his sweetheart (Helen Vinson) and literally vanishing into the black void of night (an effect which director LeRoy claimed was a happy accident, caused by a blown fuse) was not only speculative regarding Burns’ future but also inaccurate regarding his “present”; at the time I Am a Fugitive was filmed, Burns was managing a successful art shop in East Orange New Jersey. Labelling the film a pack of lies, Troupe County prison warden John Howell Hardy, Jr., told the United Press “Burns touched up the story and made himself appear a hero.” Since Hardy also insisted that he’d never seen a sweatbox or a whipping post in any Georgia prison, one is hesitant to take him at his word, though it is true that Burns was no choirboy. Shortly after his first escape he’d spent some time behind bars in New York on a forgery charge; and six years after the publication of his book, Burns’ otherwise supportive brother Vincent sued him for nonpayment of $4950 in royalties. And for all his business acumen during his periods of freedom—the editing job, the art store, a lucrative private practice as a tax advisor—Burns was capable of some major boners in his post-prison life. Just after the release of I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang in November 1932, he was arrested for a third time by the Georgia authorities when he indiscreetly revealed his East Orange address in a newspaper interview. Still, to most of the country it seemed ridiculously unfair that a man should be forced back into a lengthy hard-labor prison term for a $5.29 robbery committed while he was “not in a normal mental state” (his own words). When in 1933 Georgia demanded that Burns be extradited to finish his sentence, New Jersey governor A. Harry Moore refused to do so. Nor would Moore’s successors surrender Burns when Georgia again tried to get him back in 1937 and 1943. In the end it was Robert Burns himself who elected to return to Georgia and take his chances, telling his wife Clara “in all people’s lives there comes a time when one must show courage.” With former state governor Ellis Arnall acting as his counsel, Burns presented himself to the Georgia Board of Corrections, who on

Burros November 1, 1945, finally commuted his sentence and restored his civil rights. Those who hadn’t forgotten him by that time joined Burns in his exultation, with only a few holdouts like curmudgeonly Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler, who throughout the years had retained “stout sales resistance” to I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang’s depiction of Robert E. Burns as a martyred folk hero.

BURROS, DANIEL The film: The Believer (Fuller Films/Seven Arts/Fireworks, 2001)

Daniel Burros had plenty to boast about when he sat down for an interview with New York Times reporter John McCandlish Phillips on the morning of October 29, 1965. A longtime member of the American Nazi party, Burros was at the tender age of 28 appointed Grand Dragon of the New York branch of the Ku Klux Klan. Except for his short height, he was the very model of a modern Aryan Superman, blond hair, blue eyes and all. With the erudition that came naturally to a young man with a 154 IQ, Burros confidently predicted that soon the United States would purge itself of Jews and other “undesirables” and enjoy a rebirth as the “civilized and highly cultured” nation that Germany had been in the 1930s. His confidence would start to crumble when reporter Phillips revealed that he had done some homework on Burros, reminding the preening Grand Dragon that his parents “were married by the Reverend Bernard Kallberg in a Jewish ceremony in the Bronx.” There was more. The grandson of Russian Jews, Daniel Burros had attended Hebrew school and been bar mitzvahed in 1950. In high school he excelled in all subjects except Hebrew; whenever he failed to come up to his own standards, especially in sports, he would go off on one of the paranoid rants that made him the laughing stock of his peers. He developed an obsession with all things military, joining the National Guard even before graduation. Slowly but surely his fascination with American uniforms and weaponry switched over to a mania for German World War II paraphernalia. While serving without distinction in the U.S. Army he at-

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tempted to commit suicide, leaving behind a note comparing himself to Adolf Hitler, who was likewise “misunderstood” by the military. After his discharge he raised a few eyebrows among friends and especially family members with his harangues about the superiority of Hitler’s Nazis and the inferiority of Jews. From a humble oneman American Nazi Party office in Queens he matriculated to the party’s headquarters in Arlington Virginia, printing propaganda leaflets and openly calling for “pogroms” in America to wipe out all minorities who met with his disapproval. Evidently none of his new associates had any idea of his Jewish upbringing, but by 1965 he had been fully investigated by the U.S. Government, who felt that the only way the increasingly violent Burros could be stopped was to expose him as a Jew. During his interview with Burros, John McClandish Phillips allowed the interviewee to ramble on about his convictions before dropping the J-Bomb, whereupon Burros threatened to kill Phillips. When the article about his hidden past was published in the Sunday Times on October 31, 1965, Daniel Burros altered his plans and killed himself. Fascinating on both a tragic and enigmatic level, the Burros story was crystalized in A.M. Rosenthal and Arthur Gelb’s 1967 book One More Victim: The Life and Death of an American Nazi. The facts had already been fictionalized on a 1977 episode of the TV series Lou Grant when in 2001 writer-director Henry Bean’s feature film The Believer made its British and European bow, one year before its debut in the United States. In the film Daniel Burros is reimagined as Danny Balint, played in a disconcertingly charismatic fashion by Ryan Gosling. The director seemed to be banking on a 21stcentury audience’s unfamiliarity with the original story, opening with a scene in which Danny beats up an Orthodox Jewish boy for no discernable reason, then flashing back to a younger, yarmulke-wearing Danny having an intense debate with his rabbi about the terrifying power of God and the historic passivity of the Jews. This paradoxical sequence is a perfect hook for reeling us into an elliptical narrative detailing Balint’s immersion into America’s skinhead

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culture and its unexpected consequences. In flyon-the-wall fashion the film shows us Danny’s indoctrination by a covert neo- fascist movement, with group leader Curtis (Billy Zane) expressing discomfort over Danny’s outdated and potentially lethal anti–Semitic zealotry while Curtis’ lover Lina (Theresa Russell) goads the boy into becoming as passionate a rabble-rouser as is necessary to draw more converts to the cause. The crucial difference between the film and real life—and the one hardest to digest for some moviegoers—is that Danny continues to be a practicing Jew by day while devoting himself to Curtis’s movement by night. The reporter who threatens to bring about Balint’s downfall is here named Guy Daniels (A.D. Miles), though Danny has already been put on the defensive by the intellectual mind games of Lina’s daughter Carla (Summer Phoenix). The climax of the film is less a self-destruction than a self-discovery, as mystical and inscrutable as an Old Testament legend. The effectiveness of The Believer is marred by what Los Angeles Times reviewer Kevin Thomas described as a script which “tends to be all effect and no cause.” Just as the reasons for Daniel Burros’ journey to the Dark Side were never fully explained during his lifetime, the film offers no explanation as to why Danny Balint devolves from sensitive Yeshiva student to soulless hatespewer. This was a conscious choice by filmmaker Henry Bean, who felt that the crux of the story was Danny’s struggle with the mysteries and contradictions of his religion rather than the utter rejection of his heritage. “This isn’t a movie about a Jewish Nazi,” Bean insisted. “It’s a movie about being Jewish.”

BUSH, GEORGE W.—AND KELLY CLARKSON, SIMON COWELL

Writer-director Paul Weisz’s American Dreamz (2006) is a pig-bladder parody of American politics and pop entertainment, skewering both the administration of President George W. Bush and the long-running Fox TV Network talent show American Idol. The plot finds the Chief of Staff (Willem Dafoe) of scatterbrained U.S. President Joseph Staton (Dennis Quaid) attempting to

buoy up the chief executive’s popularity and credibility by scheduling Staton as a guest judge on TV’s American Dreamz. Since the fictional program is so obviously American Idol that it’s surprising Paul Weisz went to the bother of changing the name, it stands to reason that the show’s obnoxious host Martin Tweed (Hugh Grant) is supposed to be American Idol’s prickly British-born producer-star Simon Cowell, and that twinkly eyed contestant Sally Kendoo (Mandy Moore) is a stand-in for the best-known 2002 Idol winner, singer Kelly Clarkson.

CAESAR , SID Dynamic American comedian who after extensive stage work became a TV sensation as star of NBC’s Your Show of Shows (1950–1954). Caesar’s fearlessness as a performer and his notoriously gargantuan ego is celebrated in the character of TV variety star King Kaiser, played by Joseph Bologna in the nostalgic 1982 comedy film My Favorite Year, produced by longtime Caesar staff writer Mel Brooks.

CAHILL, MARTIN The film: Ordinary Decent Criminals (Bórd Scannán na hÉirann/Filmstiftung NordrheimWestfalen/Icon Entertainment Intl./Little Bird/ Tatfilm/Greenlight Fund/Trigger Street Productions/Miramax, 2000)

When he chose to direct a 1998 film adaptation of Irish journalist Paul Williams’ book The General, John Boorman was handed the opportunity to tell the truth about infamous Dublinborn criminal boss Martin Cahill. Instead, Boorman emulated John Ford and printed the legend. According to the film version of The General, Cahill (played by Brendon Gleeson) was a combination Jesse James, Robin Hood and Artful Dodger, committing his many crimes to fight injustice and promote a socialist utopia in his troubled nation. His exploits are admired by the general population and despised by the clueless Irish police, as represented by Inspector Ned Kenny ( Jon Voight). But noble Martin o’erreaches himself when he steals a valuable painting and sells it to representatives of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVA), a loyalist paramilitary group and sworn enemy of the Irish Republican

Cahill Army. Acting on orders from the IRA, the police launch an expansive anti-drug campaign which is actually a smokescreen for the concerted effort to hunt down and murder Cahill. When he is finally killed, the good people of South Dublin weep for their fallen champion. The General chooses to ignore the fact that in addition to such crimes as burglary, armed robbery, drug dealing and art theft, Martin Cahill was also well versed in extortion, kidnapping and rape. A few truths are in order. Born in the slums of Dublin in 1949, Martin Cahill was quick to see that the honest labors of his tosspot father were insufficient to support himself and his large family. So Martin formed a burglary gang with his brothers John, Eddie, and Anthony and Paddy, going into business before he’d even begun to shave. Neither his first arrest at age 12 nor his later month-long term in a reformatory dissuaded Martin from becoming a full-fledged professional criminal by 1967. Linking up with the Dunn brothers, a team of armed robbers, Martin expanded his operation and became wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. Yet he continued dwelling in the slums of his birth, feeling safest in his own native environment. To make sure everybody in the neighborhood knew who he was and what he’d done, he tooled around in expensive cars and motorcycles and decked himself out in the poshest of clothes. Not so much a folk hero as an overgrown schoolyard bully, Cahill ruled his empire through fear and fear alone; even his closest associates were afraid of ticking him off. The “Garda,” as Cahill called the police, were anxious to get Martin and his gang behind bars, but he always managed to elude them. His daring £6000 robbery of computer-game manufacturer Quintin Flynn Inc. in 1981 left authorities choking in his dust as he made his getaway on a motorcycle; this time, however, forensics expert Dr. James Donovan was able to collect enough evidence at the crime scene to arrest Cahill. The “Irish godfather” responded by attempting to kill Donovan with a bomb, but though he failed in this mission he still succeeded in beating the rap. When Cahill moved into drug trafficking, the police formed the special Tango Squad (after

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Cahill’s radio-patrol code name “Tango One”) to specifically nail the criminal. With his gang members systematically picked off by the Tango Squad, Cahill focused on stealing valuable works of art, a less risky proposition than narcotics— or so he thought until he sold a “hot” painting to the UVA, incurring the wrath of the rival IRA faction. While driving to a video store in the Ranelagh district of Dublin on August 18, 1994, Martin Cahill was shot multiple times with a .357 magnum. The IRA took full responsibility for the assassination, and few tears were shed. Whereas the purportedly factual The General was filmed with a straight face, the 2000 à clef treatment of the life and times of Martin Cahill, Ordinary Decent Criminals, was played for laughs. Using a lilting brogue that he probably learned from his onetime costar Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey stars as the film’s “Cahill lite” Michael Lynch, who rules over a vast criminal empire while functioning as a father figure for his two wives and his extended family. Suggesting that he would be more comfortable with the Abbey Players than with the South Dublin Underworld, Michael makes a theatrical production of every one of his heists, deliberately taunting his prime nemesis Inspector Noel Quigley (Stephen Dillane). Only when Michael orchestrates a massive art theft and is unable to fence a priceless Carravagio is Quigley able to get the goods on our hero and force him to go on the lam—though the Carravagio doesn’t weather the journey well. Written by Gerard Stenbridge and directed by Thaddeus O’Sullivan, Ordinary Decent Criminals justifies its title by dwelling extensively on the “ordinary, decent” private lives of Michael Lynch and his confreres. While plying his children with such sage advice as “don’t call the Garda pigs … and don’t trust them,” he is careful to throw in a few gentle homilies like “Waste not, want not.” Regarding laws and lawmakers as oppressors of the poor, he works hard to convey the sheer joy of making the police look like idiots to his disciples. He also manages to find a justification for each of his crimes, some of them defying belief and all of them hilarious. The police become so unhinged by Lynch’s merry antics

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that they begin breaking laws in order to catch him—which serves to make the supremely selfsatisfied Michael all the more appealing to the audience. Yes, Ordinary Decent Criminals asks us to take to our hearts an arrogant, overbearing career criminal—but really, who couldn’t love a character who while holding several hostages at gunpoint manages to toss off a Hibernian imitation of Al Pacino in Scarface?

C ANDAELE , H ELEN C ALLAGHAN —AND JIMMIE FOXX , DOROTHY KAMENSHEK The film: A League of Their Own (Parkway Productions/Columbia, 1992)

Director Penny Marshall’s 1991 blockbuster A League of Their Own was inspired by the true story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), created in 1942 under the aegis of Chicago Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley as means of keeping baseball alive during World War II, while many of the male ballplayers were in uniform. There was serious talk at the time that pro baseball would be suspended for the duration, and Wrigley wasn’t about to let that happen. To guide the female athletes through the rigors of training, several of the Big Leagues’ best and most famous managers were hired to work with the AAGPBL. To draw the male fans into the stadiums, the ladies wore specially designed uniforms displaying their attractive lower extremities: As league veteran Lavone “Pepper” Paire Davis observed four decades later, “In the beginning, a lot of people came to laugh and the guys to look at the legs.” Though the AAGPBL enjoyed a measure of success throughout the early 1940s, once the boys came marching home in 1945 interest in women’s baseball began to flag; also, the women involved started to defect in favor of better-paying and more permanent jobs. In 1954 the financially depleted and sparsely populated AAGPBL was disbanded. Most of the principal female characters in A League of Their Own are composites of genuine ballplayers, both for dramatic and legal purposes (many ex-players were still alive at the time of its release). The leading character played by Geena Davis, given the fictional cognomen Dot-

tie Keller Hinson, is generally accepted as a synthesis of AAGPBL stars Dorothy “Dottie” Kamenshek (1925–2010), who during her nine years with the Rockford Peaches toted up a lifetime batting average of .292, and Helen Callaghan Candaele (1923–1992), described by sports historians as “the Ted Williams of Women’s Baseball.” Like Kamenshek, Dottie Hinson plays for the Rockford Peaches; and like Candaele, whose sister Margaret was also an accomplished ballplayer, one of Dottie’s teammates is her own sister Kit Keller (Lori Petty). The film’s principal male star Tom Hanks appears as the reluctant coach of the Peaches, exmajor leaguer Jimmy Dugan. Again described as a composite by director Marshall and screenwriter Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel (who worked from an original story by Kim Wilson and Kelly Candaele, producers of an 1988 TV documentary on the AAGPBL), the character of Jimmy Dugan was most strongly influenced by James Emory “Jimmie” Foxx (1907–1967), catcher/first baseman for the Philadelphia Athletics and the Boston Red Sox from 1925 to 1941. After a brief stint with the Chicago Cubs in 1942 Foxx retired, though he briefly returned to bolster the depleted wartime Cubs and Phillies in 1944. While A League of Their Own is set during the early years of World War II, Foxx did not become an AAGPBL manager until 1952, when for a single season he took charge of the Fort Wayne Daisies. In the film, Jimmy Dugan is an embittered, profane and obnoxiously chauvinistic alcoholic who sums up his disdain for female ballplayers with the now-famous lament “There’s no crying in baseball!” Nonetheless, under his tutelage the Rockford Peaches win the league Pennant, with Dugan and his players forming a mutual bond of respect and affection. It is true that Jimmie Foxx spent much of his time with the Daisies stewed to the gills, often falling asleep during games and obliging the ladies to run the show themselves. Otherwise, Foxx has been described by his contemporaries as a man who “hated no one and no one hated him.” He displayed no bitterness or frustration towards his female charges but instead exhibited the patience of Job, with

Capone habitual spontaneous acts of generosity and kindness. After seeing A League of Their Own, Pepper Paire Davis allowed that there was some truth in the characterization of Jimmy Dugan, but made a point of summing up the real Jimmie Foxx with a simple and heartfelt “he was a gentleman!” For more on A League of Their Own, the reader is cordially invited to reference the author’s The Baseball Filmography: 1915 Through 2001 (McFarland, 2002).

CAPONE, AL The films: Little Caesar (First National, 1931); The Secret Six (MGM, 1931); The Guilty Generation (Columbia, 1931); Scarface (Caddo/United Artists, 1932).

Chicago gangland chieftan Alphonse “Al” Capone (1899–1947) is mentioned by name in the 1929 Warner Bros. musical extravaganza The Show of Shows, as John Barrymore compares Capone’s deadly efficiency in dealing with enemies to the homicidal expertise of Shakespeare’s Richard III. Three years later the MGM Technicolor musical short Devil’s Cabaret references Capone’s familiar nickname, bestowed upon him because of the prominent knife wounds on his face: Speaking to one of his emissaries, Satan (Charles Middleton) recoils in horror at the thought of “Scarface” entering the gates of Hell. Outside of these and other fleeting examples, it was verboten in the 1930s and 1940s for Hollywood films to invoke the name of Al Capone or to make a biographical film about his criminal exploits, not only out of fear of being accused of glorifying gangsters but to avoid potential pressure from Capone himself. Even after the ban was lifted in the 1950s, Allied Artists’ gangster biopic Al Capone (1959), starring Rod Steiger in the title role, was blocked from theatrical exhibition in Chicago because of threatened legal action from Big Al’s family. Of course, if a savvy screenwriter or clever director could dramatize Capone without using his name, they encountered only minimal resistance. On either side of Capone’s arrest for tax evasion in 1932, actors Stanley Fields and Matthew Betz carved out extensive careers for themselves playing Capone-like characters with

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such names as “Spumoni,” “Vettori,” “Valisimo,” “Brick” and “Blackie.” And in Gregory LaCava’s Gabriel Over the White House (1933), underworld czar Nick Diamond (C. Henry Gordon) paraphrases one of Capone’s most oft-quoted witticisms: “When I sell liquor, it’s called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive, it’s called hospitality.” A more rounded-out Capone clone can be seen in MGM’s The Secret Six, with Wallace Beery as Louie “Slaughterhouse” Scorpio. Just as Capone rose from humble Chicago bouncerbartender to “topedo” for Chicago gang boss Johnny Torrio, then took over The Organization himself after wiping out his competition, so too does working stiff Scorpio assume command of the bootlegging operation formerly controlled by his bosses Johnny Franks (Ralph Bellamy) and “Newt” Newton (Lewis Stone). In further emulation of Capone, who despite his traffic in illegal liquor was reportedly a teetotaller, Scorpio’s beverage of preference is milk. Finally, following the murder of a reporter (see separate entry for Alfred “Jake” Lingle), a group of prominent citizens form a concern called “The Secret Six” to bring Scorpio down—precisely the mission of Chicago’s real-life “Secret Six” visà-vis Capone. First National’s Little Caesar, released the same year as The Secret Six, top-bills Edward G. Robinson as Caesar Enrico Bandello, who follows the Capone chronology by starting out as a two-bit hoodlum who works his way into the gang operated by Sam Vettori (based on Ca pone’s superior Johnny Torrio). Ultimately “Little Caesar” takes charge of the underworld empire headed by Diamond Pete Montana (Ralph Ince), a character inspired by Chicago’s Big Jim Colosimo (see separate entry), who according to Mob folklore was rubbed out by Al Capone personally. Like Capone, Rico Bandello lives high on the hog with fancy clothes and expensive cars; and like both Capone and The Secret Six’s Scorpio, Rico politely refuses to drink the liquor he palms off on his customers. Some sources indicate that the protagonist of Little Caesar was inspired by Brooklyn gangster Buggy Goldstein, but the character’s Italian name and

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Edward G. Robinson’s overall deportment suggest otherwise. Films like Secret Six and Little Caesar represented a form of wish fulfillment in that their Capone characters die at the end: “Slaughterhouse” Scorpio is executed, while Rico Bandello is brought down in a hail of police bullets. Likewise meeting a sticky end is Leo Carrillo as Capone replicate Mike Palmero in the littleknown Columbia crime melodrama The Guilty Generation, directed by Rowland V. Lee from a screenplay by Jack Cunningham. Forced to flee

his home turf of Chicago, Palmero moves his family and his mob to Florida—which by a jawdropping coincidence was also the winter residence of Our Boy Alphonse. Like his real-life inspiration, Palmero works overtime to ingratiate himself with the local social set, getting his picture taken at all the right parties with all the right people. Thereafter the film becomes a gangland Romeo and Juliet as Palmero’s sheltered daughter Maria (Constance Cummings) falls in love with Marco Ricca (Robert Young), the son of Pa lermo’s sworn enemy Tony Ricca (Boris Karloff ). Though he’s been a fairly sympathetic character up until now, Palermo shows his true colors as he plans to kill Marco despite the boy’s marriage to Maria. This time around, the villain’s punishment is meted out by his own silver-haired mother (Emma Dunn). From Romeo and Juliet we move to the Borgia-like intrigues of the most entertainingly blatant of the fictionalized Al Capone yarns of the early 1930s, Producer Howard Hughes’ Scarface. Fulsomely scripted by Ben Hecht (among others) and stylishly directed by Howard Hawks, the film begins with the murder of a “Big Jim Colosimo” character named Big Louie (Harry J. Vejar), carried out by Capone stand-in Tony Carmonte (Paul Muni) on behalf of Johnny Torrio–like Johnny Lovo (Osgood Perkins), enabling Lovo to take over Chicago’s South Side. Before long North Side chieftan Gaffney (Boris Karloff) is also put “on the spot”; and when things get too hot for Lovo, Tony Carmonte assumes command of the entire city—not to mention Lovo’s silken mistress Poppy (Karen British film magazine illustration for the Al Capone–inspired melo- Morley). Going one better than drama The Secret Six (1931). any of the other films in this

Carnera entry, Scarface offers a noirish re-enactment of 1929’s St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, in which Capone eliminated most of the gang headed by rival mobster George “Bugs” Moran (Though Al was in Florida at the time to establish an alibi, Scarface’s Tony Carmonte doesn’t make a similar Southward journey until later in the film). But the raw red meat of Scarface is not the film’s constant allusions to Al Capone, but rather the implied incestuous relationship between Tony Carmonte and his sloe-eyed sister Cesca (Ann Dvorak). In a 1938 article for the British publication World Film and Television Progress, H.E. Blyth offers an itemized list of similarities between Scarface and the actual events in Al Capone’s career, though Blyth allows that not even this film “tells the whole truth, or plumbs to its foulest depths the diseased mind of gangland’s most infamous killer.” Perhaps Scarface had done exactly that before the film was subjected to a plethora of excisions, alterations and wholesale retakes demanded by the Hollywood censors and certain ethnocentric pressure groups. As a result of these emendations, Scarface was not released until 1932, two years after principal shooting wrapped. It has been claimed that among the film’s severest critics was Al Capone himself. Though he usually laughed off such efforts as Secret Six, Little Caesar and The Guilty Generation, apparently Al deemed Scarface worthy of serious consideration—not least because among the supporting players was George Raft, a boyhood friend of Capone’s fellow gangsters Owney Madden and Bugsy Siegel. If we are to believe screenwriter Ben Hecht (and there’s no reason why we should), late one night he was approached by a pair of sinister strangers who had somehow obtained an advance copy of the Scarface script. “Is this stuff about Al Capone?,” one of the strangers growled. Ben denied it, admitting that while he knew several gangsters personally Al was a complete stranger to him. “If this stuff isn’t about Al Capone, why are you calling it Scarface?” the other stranger inquired. In response, Ben Hecht exhibited the verbal dexterity that would earn him millions throughout his Hollywood career:

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“Al is one of the most famous and fascinating men of our time. If you call the movie Scarface, everybody will want to see it, figuring it’s about Al. That’s part of the racket we call showmanship.”

CARNERA , PRIMO The film: The Harder They Fall (Columbia, 1956)

Popularly known as “The Ambling Alp,” Italian-born prizefighter Primo Carnera (1906– 1967) was the Flavor of the Month—actually several months—after winning the World Heavyweight Championship in 1933. Standing 6'6" and weighing 275 pounds, his freakish appearance and above-average “reach” made him a lumbering giant amongst the more traditional-sized boxers of his day. From his professional debut in 1928 onward, there seemed to be no stopping Carnera as he scored knockout after knockout in both Europe and (after 1930) the United States. He reached nirvana when he faced reigning heavyweight champion Jack Sharkey at Madison Square Garden on June 29, 1933, winning the bout in the sixth round. The decision turned out to be the most controversial since the Dempsey-Tunney “long count” of 1927, with sports writers and fans alike suspecting that Carnera’s KO uppercut had not actually connected with Sharkey. This placed Carnera under intense scrutiny for the next year, until he lost the championship crown to Max Baer (with whom Carnera had costarred in the 1933 MGM feature The Prizefighter and the Lady) after a grueling 11 rounds on June 14, 1934. Even before his fleeting champion status there was plenty of scuttlebutt that Carnera’s career was tightly controlled by mobster Owney Madden, with various opponents coming forth to claim that they had either been paid off or threatened with death to sustain the illusion of Primo’s indestructability. The journalists who had praised and supported Carnera in his heyday were also held responsible for compounding a lie, as noted by the Sarasota Herald Tribune’s Stan Windhorn in 1956: “Those who took Old Primo and built him from an inept and harmless import into an unbeatable person were the

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sports writers… . [A]ll the time they were singing hosannas of the Ambling Alp and all the time they spent in writing reams of copy to build up gate receipts to enrich the hoodlums, they must have been doing this in the full knowledge that they were perpetrating a fraud.” Carnera never admitted to any wrongdoing, permitting his adherents to conclude that if his fights were indeed fixed he knew nothing about it. Whatever the case, while a lot of people got rich off of Carnera, he himself saw very little of the money. After his retirement from the ring he made his living portraying the heroic muscleman Sligon in a string of Italian action films; and following an unsuccessful boxing comeback in 1945 he supported himself as a professional wrestler, appearing in this capacity with such fellow grapplers as Tor Johnson, Wee Willie Davis and Man Mountain Dean in the 1949 fantasy film Mighty Joe Young. Primo Carnera was more widely recognized as a wrestler than an ex-champion boxer when in 1956 the Mark Robson–directed film The Harder They Fall was released by Columbia. Scripted by Philip Yordan and Budd Schulberg from Schulberg’s novel, the film was a brutal indictment of the savagery and corruption of professional boxing, with Humphrey Bogart in his final role as cynical sportswriter Eddie Willis. Broke and jobless, Eddie is hired by mobconnected boxing promoter Nick Benko (Rod Steiger) to publicize Benko’s latest protégé, naïve young Argentine pugilist Toro Moreno (Mike Lane). Ballyhooed as “The Wild Bull of the Pampas,” Moreno is sent on a whirlwind boxing tour in which he knocks out all comers, never suspecting that his opponents are ringers hired by Benko to take dives so that the unwitting public will pour more money into the promoter’s coffers. When he discovers that Moreno is going to be sent packing to his homeland with only a pittance from his earnings, Eddie Willis finally develops a conscience. All concerned with The Harder They Fall insisted that Toro Moreno was a composite character, but no one could miss the overt Primo Carnera connection in the scenes with Carnera’s one-time opponent Max Baer, Sr., as Buddy Brannen, who takes umbrage

when Moreno is tagged a killer after the accidental death of one of the boy’s challengers and insists upon facing the Wild Bull of the Pampas in an honest fight. This episode mirrors Baer’s genuine professional jealousy back in February 1933, when after boxer Ernie Schaaf died following a 15-round battle with Carnera, Max came forth with the boast that he himself had administered the fatal damage on Schaaf in a previous bout. On April 30, 1956, the Associated Press announced that Primo Carnera’s lawyer had filed a libel suit against Columbia Pictures for the portrayal of Toro Moreno in The Harder They Fall. A Santa Monica, California, courtroom swiftly threw out the case, stating that as a celebrity Carnera had long since waived his right to privacy. As for the lawyer’s argument that Primo had suffered damage to his reputation, sports columnist Stan Windhorm commented indelicately “We feel it is unfortunate that Mr. Carnera has no reputation to be damaged and therefore, no basis for a libel suit.” Be that as it may, Primo Carnera managed to win at least one round of this battle. Out of respect for his still-enormous popularity in his native country, Italy’s RAI television network placed a ban on any and all telecasts of The Harder They Fall.

CARPENTER , KIM AND KRICKITT The film: The Vow (Spyglass Entertainment/ Screen Gems/Sony, 2012)

Amnesia has always been a useful movie plot device, though a realistic depiction of this mental aberration is seldom possible when the scriptwriter must distort the clinical facts of memory loss to suit the purposes of the story. Director Michael Suscy’s The Vow (2012) has a distinct advantage over such earlier amnesiamotivated films as As You Desire Me, I Love You Again and Random Harvest in that it is based on a true story—though in standard Hollywood fashion, truth was trumped by fiction more often than not. Kim and Krickitt Carpenter had been married for two months when on November 24, 1993 they were involved in a horrible traffic collision. Though both sustained serious injuries they

Carpenter managed to survive the accident, with one lingering after-effect: Krickitt awoke from a coma with no memory of her husband, her marriage, or anything else that had happened in the previous 18 months. Because of their devout Christianity, it was out of the question to break up the marriage even under these circumstances; at the same time, their deeply held religious beliefs made it problematic to live as man and wife if Krickitt was no longer in love with her husband. It fell to Kim to not only see Krickitt through the tortuous process of restoring her motor skills, but also win his wife’s heart all over again—and though she never fully regained her memory, that’s just what he did. The burden of remaining committed to their original wedding vows was in great part alleviated by the Carpenters’ dedication to their faith. “I made that promise before the Lord,” Kim recalled in an interview with Oprah Winfrey. “You make that promise, you keep the promise. If you’re going to say something, act on your word. Be a man or woman of your word.” The foremost factor in the indestructability of their marriage was the couple’s firm belief that what had happened to them was all God’s plan to strength their devotion to one another. In February 1996 the Carpenters granted an interview to a local New Mexico TV show which was reprinted by the Albuquerque Journal as a Sunday front-page feature. Two weeks later the head of a Hollywood research-and-development firm called the couple to verify their tale: “I want to release this story…. If I do, your life will never be the same. This could be one of the greatest love stories that was ever heard.” After hundreds of national magazine and TV interviews—as well as a few conducted by foreign journalists— Kim and Krickitt signed a book and movie deal. The book came out in 2000 under the title The Vow. The film of the same name was released twelve years and seven script revisions later. Written by Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein and Jason Katims, the film stars Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams as Chicago newlyweds Leo and Paige Collins. The story begins with a truck plowing into the couple’s car as they share a kiss, and after flashbacks to their courtship and

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marriage the action picks up in the hospital. Coming out of her coma, Paige mistakes Leo for her doctor, the first indication that her memory of the past two years is tabula rasa. As Leo sticks to his vow that his marriage will stand and he will regain his wife’s love, the film bulks up the actual story with extra layers of complications. Much as she would like to be in love with Leo, Paige finds it impossible unless she can answer lingering questions about the events that occurred before she met him. Why had she cut off all contact with her parents ( Jessica Lange, Sam Neill), never introducing them to Leo or informing them about the wedding? Why had she given up law school to take up sculpting? And why had she broken up with her first fiance (Scott Speedman), who in “Ralph Bellamy” fashion insists upon lurking about hoping that she’ll go back to him? Few moviegoers were ever in doubt that The Vow would have a happy ending, but the road to happiness is paved with several surprises that would be unfair to reveal here. Admitting that the film could have turned out irreparably cheesy if mishandled, director Michael Suscy did his best to sidestep the “Cheese Level” by discarding plans for a lush, old-fashioned spellit-out musical score, instead offering a selection of demographic-neutral contemporary themes that complemented the characters’ emotions without tipping them off in advance. While Kim and Krickitt Carpenter were thrilled that the story of their romance was worthy of a big-budget film, they were disappointed that the greatest contribution to their reinvigorated romance, their unswerving faith in God, was barely touched upon in The Vow. Kim also “went crazy over a couple of issues” such as how his wife’s parents were represented, and the fabricated crisis of Leo and Paige considering divorce. Worse, as originally edited the film was going to receive an R rating, meaning that few of the couple’s churchgoing friends and relatives would ever consider seeing it. “I knew contractually we didn’t have anything to stand on,” Kim said to FamilyLife’s Mary May Larmoyeux. “They compromised on several things and were actually concerned about how we felt.” The rating was toned down to PG-13, and the Divine

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Predetermination message in the original book was articulated without direct references to the Almighty. Instead we are offered Leo Collins’ “Moment of Impact” philosophy, wherein one sudden event can change your life positively in ways you never expect. Any fears Krickitt Carpenter had that the movie would not cast their religiosity in the proper light were dissipated when her brother said: “The world’s going to love this movie and it will turn people towards your book where the Lord can speak to them in a different way.” Regardless of whether seeing The Vow encouraged people to read the book, the film was a staggering success, ending up the seventh highest-grossing romantic drama in movie history. As an illustration of the difference between the common folk who pay to see films and the Hollywood “in” crowd, L.A.–based cultural journalist Drew Tewksbury has compared the dilemma facing the couple in The Vow to that of a man who falls in love with a girl believing that she’s a Democrat, then finding out after the marriage that she’s a Republican.

CASSADY, NEAL Beat Generation poet/author Jack Kerouac’s picaresque counterculture novel On the Road is a fascinating read (to say the least), but so fundamentally unfilmable that it’s hardly surprising that no movie version was made until 2012, 43 years after the novel’s publication. The main character of both book and film is Dean Moriarty, a young car thief who in 1947 embarks upon a cross-country journey with his teenage girlfriend Marylou and aspiring writer Sal Paradise. Played onscreen by Garret Hedlum, Dean Moriarty is based on Neal Cassady, a towering presence in the 1950s Beat movement who first encouraged Kerouac to write his “spontaneous prose” novel by sending Jack a brilliantly disorganized 1000-word letter. If actor Hedlum comes off as Brandoesque in On the Road, it may be because Marlon Brando was considered for the role of Neal Cassady in the aborted 1957 effort to translate On the Road to the big screen.

CASTLE, WILLIAM American producer-director who in the late

1950s and early 1960s made his mark in the lowbudget-thriller genre with such films as The Tingler, House on Haunted Hill, 13 Ghosts and StraitJacket. Castle’s enduring legacy was his utilization of clever gimmicks to attract patrons into the theaters, beginning with 1958’s Macabre, in which he gave each customer a $1000 life insurance policy in case they should die of fright while watching the film, carrying the gag to its logical conclusion by posting nurses in the theater lobbies. Later gimmicks included “Emergo,” “Percepto” and “Illusion-O,” com bining onscreen special effects and offscreen props. Matinee (1993), director Joe Dante’s affectionate cinematic bouquet to cheap horror movies and their teenage fans, is built around the premiere showing of Mant, a gimmick-laden thriller about a half-man/half-ant produced by Lawrence Woolsey ( John Goodman), a William Castle replicate right down to the audience-partici pation gimmicks and the ever-present cigar.

CERMAK , ANTON The film: The Man Who Dared (Fox, 1933)

It’s a shame that even in Chicago the name “Cermak” is recognizable to most citizens only as the alternate designation of the city’s 22nd Street. Anton Cermak certainly deserves better, if only because he laid down his the life in the service of President Franklin D. Roosevelt— nine years before World War II. Born in what is now the Czech Republic in 1873, Cermak emigrated to America with his family the following year and grew up in the outskirts of Chicago. Having spent several years supporting himself by selling firewood out of a wagon to his fellow immigrants, he made enough friends to last a lifetime, most of them offering their unwavering support when he entered politics as member of the Illinois legislature in 1902. After serving as alderman, bailiff and Cook County Board president, he was elected the 36th mayor of Chicago in 1931, defeating corrupt incumbent “Big Bill” Thompson, who sealed his own doom when he publicly dissed his opponent as a “bohunk.” Cermak transformed the historically Republican city into a Democratic stronghold by uniting the

Cermak various and sundry factions of the party, doling out both rewards and punishments depending on the person and the circumstances. Thanks to his melting-pot constituency, Chicago’s traditionally Irish-American political majority now accommodated the many Jews, Slavs and African-Americans who had begun settling the area in the early 20th century. He also clamped down on organized crime in the Windy City, doing much to restore its battered reputation in the eyes of the nation and the world. And while he was just as active in patronage and armtwisting as any of his predecessors, even his opponents had to admit that he had done Chicago more good than harm. On February 19, 1933, Cermak was performing “box office duty” attending a speech delivered by President-elect Franklin Roosevelt in Miami Park Florida. Sitting atop the back seat

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of a convertible, FDR beckoned Cermak to his side. As the two men exchanged pleasantries and shook hands, several shots rang out, felling Cermak and four other people. The gunman was Giuseppe Zangara, an Italian immigrant with a deep and abiding hatred for all politicians; according to legend, he had been aiming at Roosevelt but hit Cermak instead. It was later reported that as Cermak was being rushed to the hospital in the President’s car, he turned to Roosevelt and murmured “I am glad it was me instead of you.” He died 19 days later of his wounds and a pre-existing inflammatory bowel disease. It was not the famously fast Warner Bros. who would be first out of the paddock with a fictionalized movie version of Cermak’s life and death, but instead the traditionally slow-and-steady Fox Studios. Directed by Hamilton MacFadden from a screenplay by Dudley Nichols and Lamar Trotti, The Man Who Dared (working title: The American) was released June 30, 1933, less than four months after Anton Cermak breathed his last. Preston Foster starred as Cermak surrogate Jan Novak, an alias apparently chosen only out of respect for Cermak’s family, since otherwise the film did next to nothing to camouflage the known facts. Jan Novak follows the Cermak scenario to the letter by emigrating to the U.S. from Eastern Europe and working his way up from poverty to the mayoral office in Chicago, fighting corruption and voter fraud every inch of the way before he is cut down by an assassin’s bullet. Film Daily disregarded any attempt at artifice in its review of The Man Who Dared, referring to Preston Foster’s character as “Cermak” throughout the Chicago mayor Anton Cermak (center) and family during a 1931 visit piece. In addition to stirring up to Miami (photograph by G.W. Romer, courtesy State Archives of pre-release interest by running Florida). a series of dramatized radio

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commercials right up to the day of the film’s theatrical debut, the Fox publicity wizards arranged a special preview at Miami’s Mayfair theater for those people who were present at Cermak’s assassination—among them Mrs. Joe Cross, whose husband was also wounded by Giuseppe Zangara. Revisionist historians have since claimed that Anton Cermak and not Roosevelt had been Zangara’s target all along, and that his “last words” were the invention of two Chicago journalists. A theory has also been floated that Cermak was just as dishonest as any other politico, and his killing was payback for his own illegal attempt to bump off mobster Frank Nitti. But try telling that to anyone in 1933.

CHANNON, JIM—AND GUY SAVELLI, MAJ. GEN. ALBERT STUBBLEBINE, GLENN WHEATON

The film: The Men Who Stare at Goats (BBC/ Smokehose/Westgate/Winchester Capital Partners/Overture, 2009)

Steal from many, it’s called research. Steal from yourself, and the publisher sends it back. I was tempted in this book to lift an entire chapter from my previous effort Military Comedy Films (McFarland, 2012) titled “Stranger than Fiction,” which detailed several military comedies that were based on outlandish-but-true stories. Rather than rehash my essays on You’re in the Navy Now (1951), Operation Petticoat (1959) and The Wackiest Ship in the Army (1960), I finally concluded that in order to keep the length of the present book down to something slightly shorter than The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire I would focus solely on the one film that seems the most detached from reality—and yet incredibly has its foundation in fact. And I promise not to merely cut and paste what I’ve already written. Crusading Welsh journalist Jon Ronson may be best known for his three-part 2004 British TV documentary Crazy Rulers of the World, the first episode of which was titled “Men Who Stare at Goats.” The narrative begins with a 1983 incident in which American Army general Albert Stubblebine suddenly stood up from his desk and attempted to walk through the wall of

his office. Ronson interviews several of Stubblebine’s colleagues, who reveal that the man’s lifelong fascination with the powers of psychic concentration had convinced him that in addition to being able to pass through a solid wall, a man could conceivably stare at goats and cause their hearts to stop beating. Among the interviewees is ex–Green Beret Glenn Wheaton, who had explored Stubblebine’s theories as head man of the Military’s “Project Jedi,” named for the telepathic powers prevalent in the Star Wars films. Wheaton reports that one man had actually managed to kill a goat simply by staring at it, though he hadn’t witnessed the phenomenon first-hand. Jon Ronson then spotlights the star of the episode: Unreconstructed hippie Jim Channon, creator of the “psychic-soldier” program at Fort Bragg. In a manner bordering on the puckish, Channon tells Ronson that he’d personally seen the mass slaughter of American soldiers in Vietnam who had suddenly and inexplicably been unable to use their weapons against a female sniper. The reason, Channon believed, was that the unfortunate soldiers had lacked the mental “cunning” that only came through the harnessing of their mental powers, beginning with mesmerizing their enemies via “sparkly eyes.” (I swear I’m not making this up). In 1979 Channon published his theories in The First Earth Manual, which became the bible for the psychic-soldier unit known as the First Earth Battalion. Finally the episode concentrates on Guy Savelli, formerly a sergeant in the battalion, who had gained fame for his self-proclaimed killing of a hamster via psychic concentration. He attempts to recreate the feat before Ronson’s camera, but this time the hamster doesn’t cooperate. The material seen in Crazy Rulers of the World was in 2005 published in book form by Ronson as The Men Who Stare at Goats. Though the author relates the information provided him with a straight face, producer-actor George Clooney saw only the comic potential in the book. In its own way, Clooney’s 2009 film version of Men Who Stare at Goats is every bit as anti-war and anti-military as the Ronson original; however, in using the film as an attack on President

Chapin George W. Bush’s Iraq Policy, Clooney sugarcoats the message with satire, slapstick and farce. Whereas the book version of Men Who Stare at Goats begins with “This is a true story,” the Grant Heslov–directed film is prefaced with “More of this is true than you would believe.” Told by screenwriter Peter Straughan from the viewpoint of feckless American reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), the film follows Bob’s investigation of a curious incident involving Brigadier General Avery Hopgood (Stephen Lang), who has shocked his colleagues by endeavoring to walk through a wall—with no more success than Maj. Gen. Albert Stubblebine. After interviewing Gus Lacey (Stephen Root), who in a more feverish manner than the comparatively sedate Guy Savelli rails about psychic spies and goats killed with powerful “brain waves,” Wilton is taken on a wild ride through war-torn Iraq by the film’s enigmatic Glenn Wheaton counterpart Lynn Cassady (George Clooney). Along the way Cassady reveals his own bizarre military past, notably his paranormal methods of training the “Jedi knights” of the “New Earth Battalion” (need we reiterate that the actor playing Wilton, Ewan McGregor, was seen as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the three Star Wars prequels? The audience sure didn’t miss the joke). Among Cassady’s peculiar talents are the ability to render himself invisible and to conjure up cloudbursts … or at least that’s his story. The film suggests that the Second Gulf War was waged solely for the benefit of American defense- contracting firms like Halliburton (never mentioned by name, of course). This subversive logic brings us to the climax, in which Cassady and Wilton are held prisoner in the secret desert headquarters of private contractor Psi-Security, run by rogue “New Earther” Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey). Cassady has been drawn to this location by an ESP transmission from onetime New Earth Battalion commander Bill Django ( Jeff Bridges), a withered husk of a man whose resemblance to the more ebullient Jim Channon is manifested in his long stringy hair and anachronistic hippie garb. This last portion of Men Who Stare at Goats pokes savage fun at the final two episodes of Ronson’s Crazy

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Rulers of the World miniseries in which the more sinister aspects of the First Earth program were explored, including the unit’s dangerous and deadly experimentation with LSD. Enabling Bill Django to escape the evil Larry Hooper and his men, Cassady and Wilton also allow Django to neutralize his captors by adding LSD to the compound’s drinking water. The shock of psychotropic defeat results in Hooper’s attempted suicide—which he promptly abandons thanks to a bad case of the munchies. I had promised at the beginning of this entry not use any extensive passages from my previously published analysis of Men Who Stare at Goats. Still, I can’t resist repeating the film’s closing disclaimer, here quoted in toto: “Although this film is inspired by John Ronson’s book The Men Who Stare at Goats, it is a fiction, and while the characters Lynn Cassady and Bill Django are based on actual persons, Sergeant Glenn Wheaton and Colonel Jim Channon, all other characters are invented or are composites and are not portrayals of actual persons. The filmmakers ask that no one attempt walking through walls, cloudbursting while driving, or staring for hours at goats with the intent of harming them … invisibility is fine.”

CHAPIN, CHARLES The film: Scandal Sheet (Paramount, 1931)

At the risk of exhuming a hackneyed cliché, Charles Chapin was born with printer’s ink in his veins. A lifelong journalist, he joined the New York World in 1900 at the age of 42, and before long became the highest paid city editor in that newspaper’s history. He may never have actually said “If it bleeds it leads,” but came awfully close when while perusing a photo of an assassination attempt he exulted “Look at all that blood! And exclusive too!” According to fellow newspaperman Pat Lynch, Chapin’s eyes “would blaze when he would hear of a bad accident or fire”—and woe betide any World reporter who didn’t return to the newsroom with a sensational story. Chapin’s mercurial temper was legendary: After firing one reporter, he demanded to know why the man was leaving work early, then excoriated the poor guy for using his dismissal as an

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“excuse.” Among the famous men of letters who worked and suffered under Chapin were humorist Irvin S. Cobb and editor Max Schuster of Simon and Schuster. The end came for Charles Chapin with the spectacular splash of a tabloid headline. After losing all his money gambling and speculating in the stock market, on September 16, 1918, Chapin and his wife, Nellie, entered into a suicide pact. Dashing off what he assumed would be his last exclusive, Chapin wrote “When you get this letter I will be dead. My wife has been such a good pal I cannot leave her alone in the world.” He put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on his apartment door, locked it, and proceeded to shoot his wife dead. But at the last moment he had what he later described as a “change of heart” and did not go through with his own killing. Dutifully surrendering to the authorities, Chapin was tried and sentenced to life in prison. At Sing Sing he became a model prisoner, applying what he’d learned “outside” by editing the Sing Sing Bulletin and penning his memoirs in his spare time. He died in 1930, not long after his meticulously cultivated rose garden was slated for destruction in a prison expansion program. Upon the release of the 1931 Paramount feature Scandal Sheet, Motion Picture Herald instantly recognized the film as a thinly veiled rehash of the Charles Chapin story. George Bancroft stars as Mark Flint, hard-driving city editor of the fictional New York Bulletin. Never letting anything get in the way of a good story— even if it means ruining the reputation of an old friend—Flint intends to print the whole sordid saga of financier Noel Adams’ (Clive Brook) eminent collapse if Adams does not square his debts with his stockholders. Arriving at Adams’ apartment Flint finds the man’s luggage packed and assumes that Adams is planning to skip town without making restitution, little imagining that the financier is intending to elope with Flint’s estranged wife Ellen (Kay Francis). Flint prints the story of Adams’ apparent skullduggery; Ellen, who was on the verge of reconciling with her husband, now feels justified in leaving him for her lover. Discovering the truth, Flint kills

Adams, then files the story of the murder and its motive as a means of boosting the Bulletin’s circulation. Scandal Sheet ends with Mark Flint emulating Charles Chapin by giving himself up to the police and spending the rest of his days editing the prison newspaper, a professional to the last.

CHASANOW, ABRAHAM The film: Three Brave Men (20th Century–Fox, 1957)

As of 1953, Abraham Chasanow (1910–1989) had spent 23 years employed as a civilian mapmaker by the U.S. Navy. He also worked parttime as a lawyer, most conspicuously for a corporation who’d wanted to purchase his home town of Greenbelt, Maryland, from the government. Though generally well liked by the community, he had undoubtedly ruffled a few feathers with the above-mentioned action, especially among those who felt that there was something un–American about living in an “owned” town. Whether or not it was these people who described Chasanow as “a leader and very active in a radical group” and “very willing to defend Communism” is something that Chasanow would never find out. All he knew was that on July 29, 1953, he was suspended from his job without pay, and not permitted to face his accusers because their identities were being protected. Though officially cleared by a security board, the charges carried so much weight that he could no longer be employed in any capacity by the Navy. Chasanow was now one of some 8000 persons who by the mid–1950s had been dismissed from government jobs as possible security risks. Most of these unfortunates had been advised by their attorneys not to reveal the reason for their firing in subsequent court actions, just the fact of the firing itself. But once Scripps-Howard’s Washington correspondent Anthony Lewis began researching his Pulitzer Prize–winning coverage of the Chasanow story, there was no way that the truth would not come to light. While most of the citizens of Greenbelt rallied to Chasanow’s defense, attorney Joe Fanelli took more tangible action, accepting Chasa -

Chasanow now’s case pro bono “as a public service.” During his client’s second hearing before an appeals board (he hadn’t been allowed to testify in his own behalf at the first hearing), Fanelli argued that the charges of Communist sympathies had been accepted by the Navy without further investigation. Allowing that as a lawyer Chasanow had occasionally been obliged to meet with people whose loyalties were “alleged to be subversive,” Fanelli added that “such contacts were isolated, short and casual and were brought about by Mr. Chasanow’s normal civic activities and for no other purpose.” He concluded with a masterpiece of tact, saying that the Navy had been “a little naïve” in not investigating the informants themselves. Milton Friedman, writing in the Canadian Jewish Chronicle, further suggested that anti–Semitism was also involved in the persecution of Chasanow. Ultimately the government did the Right Thing: In September 1954, Assistant Secretary of the Navy James W. Smith, whose Office of Military Personnel Security had ordered Chasanow’s firing in the first place, held a press conference to apologize to the victim for the “grave injustice” levied upon him, announcing that in addition to an official pardon and complete exoneration Chasanow would receiving 13 months’ back pay. Describing his ordeal as “indescribable torture,” Chasanow likened the outcome to “waking from a bad dream.” But remember the climate of the McCarthy era: There were still those flagwavers who even after Chasanow was cleared wrote angry letters to their newspapers, insisting that all Communist suspicions were justified and that it was grossly unfair to call the Chasanow case a “witch hunt.” Too, the firings of government personnel were still going on for the flimsiest of reasons, with one unnamed Federal spokesman arguing “We’re not interested in the truth of the charges but only in the fact that charges have been made.” And we need not itemize the many Hollywood actors, directors and writers who were being denied work by the supposedly nonexistent Blacklist. With this is mind, screenwriter-director Phillip Dunne exhibited conspicuous courage when in late 1956 he announced

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his impending production of 20th Century– Fox’s Three Brave Men, an all-names-changed dramatization of the Chasanow affair. Hollywood columnist Bob Thomas cited this film as the industry’s “search for controversy to lure customers into the theater,” but Dunne claimed loftier motives. “I think this picture will have a good effect,” he told Thomas. “The best way to demonstrate our way of life is to point out a sore spot and then show how democracy heals it over…. The fact that we can correct our faults is one of the strengths of democracy.” (Dunne’s additional reference to “the grip of McCarthyism,” though recorded by Thomas, was edited out of the column by several newspapers). Ernest Borgnine stars in Three Brave Men as civilian Navy employee Bernie Goldsmith, who suddenly finds himself out of work thanks to unfounded accusations of Communist sympathies. Ray Milland plays Goldsmith’s dedicated attorney Joe DiMarco, Dean Jagger is seen as fictional Secretary of the Navy John W. Rogers, and representing the review board are Frank Lovejoy and Nina Foch, respectively cast as Capt. Amos Winfield and Lt. Mary Jane McCoy. Phillip Dunne’s screenplay alters a few facts, but not always for dramatic impact: “Some things in the real story are so dramatic that we can’t use them. For instance, there’s the matter of the man’s community rallying immediately to his support. That would be too obvious, so we are showing that the Navy instituted a review first, which is actually true.” Dunne also removed Chasanow’s part-time avocation as a lawyer, “the reason being that people would think that he should be able to get himself out of trouble.” From the vantage point of six decades, Three Brave Men seems much too polite for its own good. There are no real villains, only misguided people who often as not recant their words the minute they submit to cross-examination or are exposed to the facts of the matter. The U.S. Navy is not shown as an impersonal juggernaut riding roughshod over the Constitutional rights of its employees, but rather a body of decent men and women trying to do the most efficient job possible in the face of the perceived Communist threat against Democracy. But though Three

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Brave Men pulls a lot of its punches, credit is due Phillip Dunne for making a film that even in diluted form presents a valid indictment of “Guilt by Suspicion.” That said, it’s mildly ironic that most the film’s musical score is lifted from Fox’s 1945 biopic of President Woodrow Wilson, whose own civil rights record was, for lack of a nicer word, spotty.

CHESSMAN, CARYL The film: Cell 2455, Death Row (Columbia, 1955)

While the designation “jailhouse lawyer” was not invented for Caryl Chessman, he was the most famous person of the 1950s (and one of the most famous afterward) to earn this title. Born in Michigan in 1921 and raised in California, Chessman was a fairly normal youngster until a near-fatal case of encephalitis profoundly affected his personality. A sullen loner in high school, he began hanging around with other “outcasts” and was soon stealing cars for kicks. From his first arrest at 16 onward, Caryl seemed incapable of staying out of trouble with the law. By January 1948 he had developed an M.O. of stopping cars by flashing a red light and then robbing the occupants, earning the mediaimposed nickname “The Red Light Bandit.” During his third such holdup, Chessman forced a female victim to have oral sex with him—and from then on his assaults on women became more frequent and brutal. Captured by the police on January 27, 1948, Chessman and his accomplice David Knowles confessed after a 72hour interrogation; Caryl later claimed he was beaten by the cops, the better to paint himself as an innocent victim of mistaken identity. He maintained his innocence throughout his trial, but all evidence and eyewitness testimony was against him. The robbery charge would have been enough to put him away for several years; the charges of sexual assault and abduction, however, invoked the “Little Lindbergh” law of 1933 which demanded either a life sentence or execution for kidnapping— and never mind Chessman’s argument that he had never moved his victims any further than a few yards from the scene of the crime. Proving the old adage about

having a fool for a client, Chessman virtually signed his own death warrant by representing himself in court. Sent to Death Row at San Quentin, Chessman was determined not to end up what the New York Daily News described as the “first modern American executed for a non-lethal kidnapping.” Taking his case public with the help of sympathetic lawyers and Caryl Chessman. journalists, Chessman became a cause célèbre, with such prominent figures as Eleanor Roosevelt, Billy Graham, Norman Mailer and Ray Bradbury supporting his battle to avoid the gas chamber. During his incarceration he wrote four well-received books, the first of which was his 1954 autobiography Cell 2455 Death Row. In 1955 the book was purchased by Columbia Pictures, who wasted no time putting out a film version scripted by Jack DeWitt and directed by Fred F. Sears. Though contractually obligated to give Chessman an on-screen story credit, Columbia also had to bow to the Production Code’s insistence that no living criminal could be mentioned by name. Thus, as played by William Campbell (and by the actor’s brother Robert as a boy), Chessman is rechristened Whit Whittier. While there is no effort to gloss over his criminal history as leader of a robbery gang—the film was advertised as a cautionary tale for the benefit of any kid entertaining thoughts of becoming a juvenile delinquent—Whit’s guilt or innocence regarding his death sentence was left to conjecture because the real story hadn’t yet played itself out. And of course the film carried the usual “any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely accidental and uninten-

Chrzanowski tional” disclaimer, which must have been good for a laugh back in 1955. The United States Senate found nothing funny or instructional in the film version of Cell 2455 Death Row, especially since they were in the midst of an investigation of juvenile delinquency in the U.S. and didn’t want any real-life “JDs” glamorized in the movies. Called on the carpet by a Senate Subcommittee, Production Code czar Geoffrey Shurlock was asked to explain why, if it was a violation of the Code to use the actual names of living felons, Caryl Chessman was listed in the film’s opening credits. Putting on his magic CYA helmet, Shurlock replied “When the regulation about criminals, notorious criminals, was written into the code, I don’t think that anybody thought that one of these criminals would be literary enough to write a book. [Chessman] did write a book and the studio bought the book. Now, I have not gone into this phase of the matter, but I think that the reason his name appeared on the main title probably comes from the fact that the Authors League insists that when a property is purchased for the screen the author of the book will be given proper credit on the main title. The studio endeavored, and I think successfully, to sidestep this legal inconvenience. In the whole body of the story the name was never used.” At the time Cell 2455 Death Row was released, Caryl Chessman had already gotten three stays of execution. Another stay would follow before his luck ran out at 10 a.m. on May 2, 1960. The taxi that Chessman had hired to take him to court to plead for a fifth stay remained idle as the cyanide pellets were dropped and the 39year-old prisoner was finally executed. Now prepare yourself for a big surprise: No sooner had this happened than Columbia reissued Cell 2455 Death Row, which played to great business everywhere.

CHRZANOWSKI, DR . GERARD “DR . KIK” The film: The Snake Pit (20th Century– Fox, 1948)

Psychoanalysis was still a relatively experimental science when Poland-born, Switzerlandtrained Dr. Gerard Chrzanowski arrived in the

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United States in 1940. His interest in psychotherapy began at age 19, when he befriended a dancer who was frequently hospitalized for schizophrenia. Disdaining what was then the standard procedure of using restraints and severe hot and cold treatments to deal with patients suffering from depressive manifestation, Dr. Chrzanowski and his associate Dr. Milton Zaphiropoulos advocated more sympathetic analytical methods, probing the patients’ memories in hopes of pinpointing the roots of their problems, sometimes through the use of narcosynthesis. Occasionally he recommended shock treatment, but only when all other means had failed. This put him at odds with some of his fellow staffers at Rockland Psychiatric Center in Orangeburg New York, but Chrzanowski—more popularly known as “Dr. Kik” by the many who couldn’t pronounce his name—was much admired by his patients, and often loved by them. One of the beneficiaries of Dr. Kik’s humane treatment was novelist Mary Jane Ward, who in 1941 was committed to Rockland when she suffered a breakdown and was diagnosed with schizophrenia (this may have been incorrect, but was a convenient classification at a time when mental aberrations were still misunderstood). 81/2 months of treatment followed, some of it extremely brutal by today’s standards but much of it beneficial thanks to Dr. Kik and Dr. Zaphiropoulos. A few years after her release she wrote the fifth of her eight novels, The Snake Pit, the story of the treatment and cure of an emotionally disturbed woman named Virginia Cunningham. Written in the first person, the novel’s introductory chapters find Virginia confused over who and where she is; finally realizing that she has been institutionalized, she undergoes a series of harrowing experiences before being set on the road to recovery by compassionate psychoanalyst Dr. Mark Kensdelaerik—or as she refers to him, Dr. Kik. At first denying that The Snake Pit was autobiographical, Ms. Ward eventually admitted that outside of a few melodramatic flourishes it was indeed her own story, especially after the novel was swept up in a nationwide crusade to reform the mental-

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institution system in the U.S. Ward also acknowledged her gratitude to Dr. Kik, who modestly insisted that his own memories of her case were “hazy.” Having read The Snake Pit in galley form, director Anatole Litvak and screenwriters Frank Partos and Millen Brand molded the material into a workable screenplay and paid Ward $75,000 for the screen rights. In the three years between concept and completed picture, Litvak and his writers visited various mental hospitals and consulted actual psychiatrists, among them Dr. Kik, who politely declined their offer to serve as the film’s technical advisor. Starring Olivia de Havilland as Virginia Hammond, the 1948 cinemadaptation of The Snake Pit was described by Life magazine as “Hollywood’s first honest movie about insanity and the ways of treating it,” destigmatizing mental illness in the same way that 1945’s The Lost Weekend had been the first mature and realistic film study of alcoholism. Since the novel did not specifically identify schizophrenia as the heroine’s illness, the film defines the sources of Virginia’s woes as an Oedipus complex and profound guilt feelings. The Snake Pit indulges in some unsubtle dramatic shorthand with easily identifiable “clues” to the profundity of the heroine’s psychosis. Virginia refuses to go on dates in college; she’d rather be a professional woman than a housewife and mother; and, in the surest giveway that we’re dealing with a neurotic basket case, she smokes too much. Her loving but helpless husband Robert (Mark Stevens), tipped off to his wife’s mental imbalance by her hysterical reaction whenever the date May 7 is mentioned (watch the movie and you’ll know why—I’m not going to do all the work for you), is certain that she’s ready for a straitjacket when she shouts “You can’t make me love you!” and recoils from his touch. That she is institutionalized and treated without her consent is one of several reasons that, for all its power and poignancy, The Snake Pit seems outdated today. To avoid a blanket condemnation of all mental-institution personnel, only two of the film’s asylum employees are openly hostile to-

wards Virginia: Ill-mannered Nurse Davis (Helen Craig), who resents any challenge to her authority, and obnoxious Dr. Curtis (Howard Freeman), whose bullying tone and jabbing forefinger cause Virginia to have a relapse. The staffer with the most consideration and sympathy for Virginia’s plight is fatherly Dr. “Kik” Kensdelaerik (Leo Genn), who speaks in comforting, nonjudgmental tones while digging into her subconscious to find the source of her neuroses. Scorned by his traditionalist colleagues for his gentle ministrations, Kensdelaerik is not so completely enlightened in his approach that he doesn’t occasionally rely upon such approved methods as shock treatment and hydrotherapy, which the film shows in tortuous detail. After several months, Dr. Kik concludes that Virginia will not be cured until she can convince herself that she is sane—and this happens only when she is tossed into the dreaded Ward 33, where the hospital’s most severely disturbed patients are confined. She likens this terrifying experience to the medieval snake pit into which lunatics were thrown in hopes that they would be frightened out of their dementia. Though The Snake Pit was praised for its progressive attitude regarding the treatment of mental illness, there are times that Dr. Kik’s asylum lives up to the description of media historian Peter Biskind as “The Frances Farmer Memorial Sanitarium.” Dismissing the attention garnered by his connection with The Snake Pit as “just a footnote” in his life, “Dr. Kik” Chrzanowski went on to become one of the founders of the International Federation of Psychoanalysis. From 1967 through 1982 he ran the Bleuler Clinic in Queens for people under the age of 18 with emotional and mental issues. Outliving his “biographer” Mary Jane Ward by 15 years, he died in 2000 at the age of 87.

CLINTON, BILL—AND HILLARY CLINTON U.S. president and first lady from 1993 to 2001. Written anonymously by Newsweek journalist Joe Klein, 1996’s Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics is a roman à clef based on the Clintons’ 1992 presidential campaign. The 1998 film

Collins version, titled simply Primary Colors, stars John Travolta as Jack Stanton, the somewhat randy Arkansas governor who is ultimately elected president. Emma Thompson costars as Stanton’s ruthlessly ambitious wife, Susan. Say no more, say no more, wink-wink-nudge-nudge.

COBAIN, KURT American singer-guitarist-songwriter whose grunge-rock band Nirvana was a major trendsetting force in the Seattle music scene of the late 1980s–early 1990s. 11 years after his 1994 suicide Cobain was fictionalized as Blake, the brilliant but self-destructive grunge rocker played by Michael Pitt in filmmaker Gus Van Sant’s Last Days (2005). Seven years earlier, fragments of Kurt Cobain’s life story were blended with elements of British rocker Iggy Pop for the character Curt Wild, played by Ewan McGregor in director Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine.

COLLINS, FLOYD The film: The Big Carnival [Ace in the Hole] (Paramount, 1951)

Had he been given a choice, Floyd Collins would not have wanted immortality thrust upon him by dying in agony 55 feet below the earth’s surface. Not that Collins was shy about publicity: An expert “spelunker,” or cave explorer, since childhood, Collins was acknowledged as the best caver in all southern Kentucky. In 1917, the 30-year-old Collins and his father discovered and purchased the Great Crystal Cavern, which they hoped would become as big a tourist attraction as the nearby Mammoth Cave system. But whereas Mammoth was easily accessible via the Dixie highway, Great Crystal was too far off the beaten path to draw spectators. Thus on January 30, 1925, Collins was engaged in the latest of several explorations for a cave closer to Mammoth. While he dug through the tiny and treacherous Sand Cave a huge rock (later described as weighing seven tons, but actually closer to 27 pounds) became dislodged from the ceiling and landed on his foot, trapping him in a narrow passageway 150 feet from the cave’s opening. Alerted to Collins’ plight by his faint cries for help, a neighbor summoned Floyd’s friends and

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family to the site, where their early rescue attempts were thwarted by the prisoner’s inaccessibility. When it became obvious that he would not be brought to safety within the 24 hours estimated by the local Bowling Green newspaper, 20-year-old William “Skeets” Miller, cub reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal, was dispatched to cover the story. Three days into Collins’ ordeal, the 5'5", 117-pound Miller was lowered into the cave, bearing food and drink for the trapped explorer. “I saw the purple of his lips, the pallor on his face, and realized that something must be done before long if this man is to live,” wrote Collins in his first article, and within the next 48 hours the reporter had transformed a local human interest story into the second biggest media sensation of the 1920s (the Lindbergh flight of 1927 was the first). Although Miller would have no further communication with Collins after the fifth day of the event, the story was kept alive by virtually every other newspaper in the world, often with wild speculation replacing cold, hard facts: Some reporters claimed that the story was a hoax, and that Collins was either sitting comfortably at home or less comfortably in a jail cell; and at least one rival Louisville newspaper offered an “exclusive” interview with a rescued Collins that started with “Never again!” Meanwhile, an estimated 30,000 spectators gathered around the cave’s entrance, proving a bonanza for hamburger vendors, souvenir hawkers, tent-carnival entrepreneurs and local entertainers who made up ballads about the entombed Collins on the spot. After civilian rescue attempts proved unsuccessful, professional engineers and the military took over, attempting to open up a new avenue of escape by digging a vertical shaft; unfortunately, this effort may well have caused the second tunnel collapse that sealed Collins’ doom (Ironically, a safer access had been available all along, but wouldn’t be discovered until 1977). Fifteen days after Collins had been pinioned by a boulder, he was found dead. Since it would have been dangerous to try to remove his body, Sand Cave became his burial ground; until 1948, tourists were able to see Collins’ body reposing in a specially built glass coffin.

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Though several songs, stage plays and musical presentations have been written about Floyd Collins, the most famous retelling of the tragedy is director Billy Wilder’s updated fictionalization of the event, the 1951 film Ace in the Hole. Wilder cited two inspirations beyond Collins for the film: The media circus surrounding the similar Kathy Fiscus incident of 1949 (see separate entry), and his personal experience when, after witnessing a man struck down by a car on Wilshire Boulevard, a nearby newspaper photographer refused to help the victim, shouting “Not me, boy! I’ve got to get that picture in!” This same cutthroat cynicism permeates the screenplay for Ace in the Hole by Wilder, Lesser Samuels and Walter Newman. Lensed on location in New Mexico, the film stars Kirk Douglas as ambitious reporter Chuck Tatum, who after managing to get himself kicked off every major newspaper in the East ends up writing banal human-interest stories on a tiny Albuquerque daily. Upon learning that a local man named Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict) has become trapped in a cave collapse while searching for Indian artifacts, Tatum decides to exploit the story to jump-start his career. Climbing into the cave himself to interview the helpless Minosa, Tatum claims the story as an exclusive and rides roughshod over all the other journalists (including several old enemies) who have gathered to cover the event. He also begins an affair with Minosa’s sluttish wife Lorraine ( Jan Sterling), who hopes to use the money earned from the newspaper coverage to escape her dreary existence (in contrast, the real Floyd Collins was a confirmed bachelor). As he watches the Minosa story grow into a “big carnival” with thousands of gawkers, media representatives, itinerant troubadours, food vendors, and travelling gamblers milling around the cave entrance, Tatum schemes to prolong the story so he can file even more exclusive articles and become a celebrity in his own right. He conspires with a corrupt sheriff (Ray Teal) to persuade the contractors supervising the rescue efforts to drill from above the cave rather than attempt to reach Minosa via one of the existing passageways. After five days it becomes painfully

clear that the drilling is retarding rather than accelerating the rescue. Tatum belatedly tries to talk the contractor into using the original, quicker method; but by now the tunnels are too weak to sustain such an operation. Leo dies gasping for air and water in the darkness. forcing Tatum to face his own culpability in the victim’s death. Ace in the Hole was generally panned by newspaper critics, who resented their journalistic brethren being caricatured as greed-driven ghouls. The public was equally offended by the film’s merciless misanthropy, prompting Paramount Pictures to retitle it The Big Carnival in an effort to at least attract customers into the theater. The film lost so much money that it cut into the potential profits of Billy Wilder’s next film, the immensely successful Stalag 17. Paramount endured additional financial headaches when actor Victor Desny, who had purchased the film rights to Floyd Collins’ story from his family, filed a $500,000 lawsuit for infringement of copyright. Represented by famed attorney Jerry Geisler, Desny was able to prove that he had offered his own screenplay based on the actual events to Wilder in 1949, but had been rejected—whereupon Ace in the Hole went forward without providing him any compensation. In 1956 the California Supreme Court ruled in Desny’s favor, awarding him $14,350. At the end of Ace in the Hole, a mortally wounded Chuck Tatum stumbles into his Albuquerque newspaper office, croaks out a curtain speech saturated with sarcasm and self-loathing, and drops dead at the feet of his editor. The fates were kinder to intrepid Louisville Courier-Journal correspondent William “Skeets” Miller, who in 1926 became the youngest-ever recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for journalism. A few years later he gave up reporting to become head of special programming for NBC radio, coordinating scores of remote news broadcasts and frequently putting his own life in danger to provide on-the-spot coverage. He remained with NBC through the first two decades of network television, and in 1954 made a return visit to Sand Cave as part of a 32-person scientific expedition. Miller died in 1994, undoubtedly with a clear

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conscience for turning down all offers to exploit the Floyd Collins incident for personal financial gain.

COLOSIMO, “BIG” JIM The films: Little Caesar (First National, 1931); Scarface (Caddo–United Artists, 1932); Love Me Forever (Columbia, 1935)

In the nearly 100 years since his death, Giacomo “Big Jim” Colosimo has been reduced to a footnote in the saga of superstar gangster Al Capone. This is grossly unfair to Big Jim, without whom there wouldn’t have even been a Chicago Mob for Capone to take over. Born in Italy in 1877, Colosimo immigrated to Chicago at age 18, quickly making a name for himself in the city’s thriving criminal community. Forming his own gang in 1902, he possessed a natural gift for organization and leadership, enabling his operation to combine most of the smaller Chicago gangs into a single entity known variously as the Mob, the Outfit and the Organization; after overwhelming the Italianbased Black Hand, his gang was rechristened the Chicago Mafia. Described as “King of the Pimps,” Colosimo ruled the city’s prostitution industry with an iron hand, establishing a popular bordello called the Four Deuces. He also managed the equally popular Colosimo’s Café, which though advertised as “America’s Finest Italian Restaurant” was essentially a conference center and clearing house for his various rackets, which also included every gambling establishment in town. Like any respectable Chicago hoodlum, he enjoyed the patronage and protection of corrupt police officials and politicians. If anyone gave him trouble that he himself couldn’t fix, he could always rely on his nephew and chief enforcer Johnny Torrio to take care of business— usually with a revolver or machine gun. When Prohibition went into effect in 1920, Torrio urged Colosimo to get involved with the rumrunning racket, but Big Jim would have none of it. The ensuing conflict between the two men was resolved on May 11, 1920, when on his nephew’s orders Big Jim Colosimo was gunned down in a phone booth inside his own café. While some sources identify Torrio’s old pal

“Big” Jim Colosimo.

Frank Yale as the assassin, it is generally accepted that the man who pulled the trigger was Mob newcomer Al Capone (see separate entry), for whom Big Jim’s killing was the first big step towards establishing his own criminal empire. The murder of Big Jim Colosimo inspired the opening scene in Howard Hawks’ 1932 gangster epic Scarface, with gangster chieftan Big Louie Costillo (Harry J. Vehar) getting “his” at the hands of the film’s Al Capone character Tony Mordente (Paul Muni) on orders from the film’s Johnny Torrio character Johnny Lovo (Osgood Perkins). Another Capone-inspired picture, Little Caesar (released before Scarface but filmed afterward), cast Ralph Ince as the bombastic “Diamond Pete” Montana, a reference to Colosimo’s nickname “Diamond Jim” in honor of the jewelry he wore on his collar, cuffs and fingers. Though Montana is nominally in charge of all mob activity in Little Caesar, he actually takes his orders from the reclusive “Big Boy” (Sidney Blackmer), allegedly based on Chicago mayor Big Bill Thompson. Impressed by up-andcoming triggerman Rico Bandello (Edward G. Robinson), the Big Boy makes an offer Bandello can’t refuse: “Suppose I told you that—you were Pete Montana.” With this single sentence, Rico

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usurps Montana’s territory without spilling a drop of Big Pete’s blood. Colosimo had been in his grave for 15 years when another aspect of his career was brought to the screen. Having become enamored of aspiring opera diva Dale Fuller, Big Jim abruptly dumped his first wife and arranged to marry Fuller in early 1920. Were it not for his sudden death from lead poisoning, Colosimo would most likely have done everything in his power to advance Fuller’s career. This story was still well enough known in 1935 for film critics and trade-paper scriveners to cite the Fuller-Colosimo romance as the inspiration for the rickety relationship between café singer Margaret Howard (Grace Moore) and gambler- restau ranteur Steve Correlli (Leo Carrillo) in the Columbia musical Love Me Forever. Though not explicitly a criminal, Correlli evinces a latent homicidal streak when, after he goes to all the trouble of financing Margaret’s musical training and her Metropolitan Opera debut, she returns to her former sweetheart Philip Cameron (Robert Allen). The ending of Love Me Forever will undoubtedly take the viewer by surprise, and not just because the redoubtable Steve Corelli manages to survive to the final fadeout.

CONSTANZO, A DOLFO MARK J. KILROY

DE

JESÚS —AND

The film: Borderland (Tonic Films/Emmett/ Furla Films/Freedom Films/Tau Productions/ Worldwide Media Group/After Dark, 2007)

One of the most prolific of all Mexican serial killers, Adolfo de Jesús Costanzo was known in his mercifully short lifetime as “The Godfather of Matamoros.” Born in Miami, Florida, in 1962, Costanzo was the illegitimate son of a Cubanémigré mother who practiced the West African religion Palo Mayombe, a form of witchcraft requiring animal sacrifice and “spiritual” items like human bones. Accompanying his mother on a trip to Haiti, young Constanzo took instruction in the rites of Voodoo just as reverently as he had previously practiced Catholicism. Mother and son returned to Miami in 1972, where she married a drug dealer and distributed “cursed” artifacts to anyone who dared offend her husband. Within this environment Constanzo be-

came convinced that he had psychic powers, and at age 21 relocated to Mexico where he set himself up as a tarot-card reader, witch doctor and drug peddler. Adopting the name “El Padrino,” he gathered a band of disciples who assisted him in casting spells and making live sacrifices on behalf of various criminals and drug-cartel members. Not content with killing small animals, Constanzo demanded human remains for his ceremonies, at first merely digging up graves but quickly graduating to murder, subjecting his victims to sadistic ritual killings before skinning, mutilating and dismembering the bodies. In expanding his operation he moved himself, his followers (aka “The Narco-Satanists”) and his girlfriend “La Madrina” to his desert headquarters of Rancho Santa Elena near Matamoros Mexico. His murder victims were exclusively male, generally rival drug dealers and their families but sometimes members of his own cult whom he considered traitors. Eventually he convinced himself that all his murders and sacrifices had magically immunized him from discovery or capture. Perhaps he should have quit while he was ahead and left American college student Mark Kilroy alone and unmolested. After Kilroy’s disappearance the Mexican police launched an investigation that led them straight to Constanzo. Staging a raid on Rancho Santa Elena, the authorities unearthed Kilroy’s remains along with those of 15 other young men. Managing to escape, Constanzo was eventually cornered by the cops in Mexico City, whereupon he ordered one of his followers to kill both him and his longtime disciple Martin Quintana. It was May 6, 1989: The Godfather of Matamoros and his Narco-Satanist cult both died on the same day. Inasmuch as the actual story played itself out like “torture porn,” it was only logical that it would inspire a horror movie in the same vein. Written and directed by Zev Berman, Borderland is set in Mexico and references Palo Mayombe while taking Constanzo’s atrocities to an even loftier strata, with women, children and policemen sliced and diced (both onscreen and off ) in the course of the cult’s murder-sacrifice spree. “Phil” is the name of the Mark Kilroy surrogate played by Rider Strong, whose disappearance is

Courvoisie investigated by his party-animal college buddies Ed (Brian Presley) and Henry ( Jake Mulworthy). They team up with Ulises (Damian Alcazar), an unhinged cop who’d been forced to watch his partner die a horrible death at the hands of the cultists, but was himself allowed to live so he could warn other law officials to leave the killers alone (Hey, that always works, doesn’t it?) It soon develops that Phil has been kidnapped and prepped for sacrifice because the death of a “gringo” will allow the cultists to summon the legendary African witch doctor Nganga, who in turn will enable them to become invisible and smuggle hallucinogens into the United States without being caught. The biggest Hollywood name in the cast of Borderland is Sean Astin, but he doesn’t play the counterpart of Adolfo de Jesús Costanzo, here named Santillan. That privilege goes to Chilean-Canadian entertainer Beto Cuevas, lead singer for the Chilean band La Ley and something of a renaissance man in the South American art world. Borderland director Zev Berman has described Cuevas as a “pleasure” to work with, adding that he “rehearsed the role quite thoroughly.” Not too thoroughly, we hope.

CORNWELL, CHARLOTTE The anti–Zionist actress identified as Charlie in John le Carre’s 1993 spy novel The Little Drummer Girl, and played by Diane Keaton in George Roy Hill’s 1998 film version, may seem at first glance to be a takeoff of British film star Vanessa Redgrave, an outspoken critic of Israel and staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause. In fact, le Carre based Charlie’s fiery personality (if not her politics) on his own half-sister, British actress Charlotte Cornwell—or more specifically on Charlotte’s leather-lunged performance as Rosalind, who during a performance of Shakespeare’s As You Like It was forced to shout iambic pentameter while the roof of the theater was pelted by a heavy rainstorm.

COURVOISIE, LT. THOMAS “BOO” The Film: The Lords of Discipline (Paramount, 1983)

Novelist Pat Conroy never really wanted to

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follow in the footsteps of his disciplinarian Marine-colonel father; this much is obvious from Conroy’s autobiographical novel The Great Santini. A sensitive, restless youngster, he resisted following orders and protocol throughout his life; this much is obvious from another of Conroy’s autobiographical novels, Conrack. Yet when in 1963 he was accepted at The Citadel, the Military Academy of South Carolina, he jumped at the chance, not because he entertained illusions of becoming a career officer but because he wanted to play on the Academy’s basketball team. At the bottom of the Citadel’s totem pole as a measly “knob,” Conroy’s freshman year was hell on earth, with seemingly endless hazings and punishments—notably “The Walk,” wherein a rule-breaker was required to march up and down the campus for hours on end with an exaggerated stiff-backed posture, wearing full kit and carrying a heavy rifle. From 1961 through 1968 the man in charge of doling out such punishments was Lt. Col. Thomas Nugent Courvoisie, assistant officer of military discipline. Born in Georgia in 1916, Courvoisie entered the Citadel in 1934 but didn’t graduate for over a decade because of World War II service. Returning to the Academy in 1959 as assistant professor of military science, within two years he was firmly established as a formidable and fearsome presence, standing watch over the front entrance and seemingly everywhere else on campus to harangue his charges and issue demerits for the slightest infractions. The “knobs” seldom heard Courvoisie approaching them, but the stench of his ever-present cigar was a surefire tipoff that trouble was in store. He was described as resembling “a trapped caribou,” which in shortened form became his enduring nickname “The Boo.” By his own admission Pat Conroy was one of the Citadel’s laziest, sloppiest and most insubordinate students, and on four different occasions Col. Courvoisie requested his expulsion; each time, however, “The Boo” would forgive Conroy, bursting out with laughter at the hapless cadet’s lame excuses. Though he would resent the brutal hazings and other indignities of the Citadel until his death in 2016, Conroy also

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retained a soft spot in his heart for Courvoisie, who despite his gruffness had a strong sense of humor, honor and justice. For all his blustery insults he genuinely cared about his charges, writing checks for cadets who couldn’t afford tuition, bailing others out of jail, and dispensing advice about everything from legal issues to romance (It has been said that the thrice-married Courvoisie was a better parent to the cadets than to his own children). When in 1970 Conroy gathered together several anecdotes about his time in the Citadel, it was under the title The Boo. The volume was described by the author as a “boyish defense” of Courvoisie, who’d been summarily fired from his post in 1968 on a specious charge of being “bad for discipline.” Instead of restoring Courvoisie’s position and reputation, The Boo had the opposite effect, making the title character a pariah at the Citadel thanks to Conroy’s exposé of the cruelties of Academy life. By the time Conroy published yet another autobiographical novel, The Lords of Discipline, in 1980, Courvoisie had been shunted to the position of Officer in Charge of Supplies. Despite his loss of stature, The Boo remained a legendary figure at the Citadel, and even those who did not fear him had the utmost respect for him. When Courvoisie died in 2006, it was Pat Conroy who delivered the eulogy. The Lords of Discipline was the novel that made Conroy persona non grata at the Citadel— and every other American military academy— for the next 20 years. The first-person narrator is Conroy surrogate Will McLean, enrolled at the fictional Carolina Military Academy. The misfit protagonist and his friends manage to survive the degradations of their “knob” year thanks largely to the strict-but-fair Col. “Bear” Berrineau (based on Guess Who). At the beginning of his sophomore year McLean is asked by “The Bear” to keep a protective eye on the Academy’s first black cadet, Tom Pearce. This proves problematic when Pearce is targeted for persecution and possible expulsion by The Ten, a secret campus society that has taken upon itself the ignoble cause of purging the Academy of all undesirables, specifically those who are pro–Civil Rights and anti–Vietnam. In his efforts to stop The Ten

in their tracks, McLean unearths a horrible secret about the influential people behind the covert society. Small wonder that no military academy in the United States would allow director Franc Roddam to lens his 1983 film version of The Lords of Discipline on their premises, forcing the production crew to do its location shooting at Wellington College, a coeducational boarding school in Berkshire England. David Keith stars as Willie McLean, with Dracula-visaged Robert Prosky as cigar-chomping “Bear” Berrineau and Mark Breland as Tom Pearce. Though screenwriters Lloyd Fonvielle and Thomas Pope spare the viewer none of the institutional brutality and corruption prevalent in the novel, they do a slick streamlining job on other elements of the narrative, most conspicuously the removal of a subplot involving a young woman impregnated by one of the cadets. Also altered is The Bear’s motivation for choosing McLean to watch over the beleaguered Charles Pearce. In the novel, it is because Berrineau regards McLean as the most “liberal” cadet on campus. In the film, it’s payback for a favor granted McLean by The Bear during the boy’s freshman year. Either way, The Lords of Discipline’s characterization of Berrineau remains faithful to Pat Conroy’s indelible portrait of the estimable T.N. “The Boo” Courvoisie.

COX , DAVID The film: A Few Good Men (Castle Rock/Columbia, 1992)

To do full justice to the tragic story of David Cox, the U.S. Marine whose 1986 court-martial inspired the 1989 play and 1992 film A Few Good Men, it would be necessary to finance and produce A Few Good Men 2. Having joined the USMC straight out of high school, Cox was serving at Guantanamo Bay when he and nine other Marines pulled a “Code Red” on PFC William Alvarado. Regarded as a malingerer by the other men of Rifle Security Company, Windward Side, 2nd Platoon, Alvarado had further alienated his comrades in arms by writing a letter to his congressman, complaining about an incident wherein shots

Cox were fired across the border towards Communist Cuba. “Code Red” is a highfalutin term for a hazing: In this case, Cox and his companions dragged Alvarado from his bunk, blindfolded and gagged him, and began shaving his head. While wielding the shears, Cox noticed that Alvarado seemed to be asphyxiating and called off the hazing. Rushed to the hospital, Alvarado quickly recovered, while his attackers were arrested and charged with attempted murder. The members of the Judge Advocate General ( JAG) defense team included officers Don Marcari, David Iglesias, Chris Johnson and Deborah Sorkin. Seven of the defendants accepted plea bargains and received “other than honorable” discharges. The three holdouts included David Cox, who claimed that by carrying out the Code Red he was following the tacit orders of his commanding officer Col. Sam Adams. JAG officer Marcari tried to talk Cox out of subjecting himself to a court-martial, advising him that it would better to cop a plea than risk a dishonorable discharge and 20 years in Leavenworth. But Cox was adamant: “I have nothing else. All I want to be is a Marine.” Grimly aware that an “only following orders” plea had seldom worked in the past, Marcari nonetheless acceded to Cox’s request for a court hearing. Though never put on the witness stand, Col. Sam Adams testified out of court that he was unaware that any Code Reds were going on at Gitmo; he was soon quietly shipped out to another base. In July 1986, Cox and his two fellow defendants were convicted of simple assault, a misdemeanor that carried a maximum 30 days in jail. His sentence reduced to time served, Cox continued his tour of duty without difficulty until his honorable discharge in 1989, at which time he held the rank of Corporal. Just before the court-martial got under way, JAG officer Deborah Sorkin called her playwright brother Aaron Sorkin and told him about the impending trial. Sensing that a dramatization of the incident from a female Navy lawyer’s viewpoint might make an interesting theatrical piece, Aaron set to work on A Few Good Men, which ultimately premiered on Broadway in November 1989. The single-set play focuses on the

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court-martial of PFC Loudon Downey and Lance Cpl. Harold Dawson, two Marines charged with accidentally causing the death of hazing victim PFC Santiago. The defense team includes Navy JAG Joanne Galloway, who wants to see justice done and disapproves of the willingness of her colleague, Lt. jg. Daniel A. Kaffee, to enter into a plea bargain. Kaffee drops this strategy when Dawson and Downey claim that the hazing was done with full approval from their commander, Lt. Col. Nathan R. Jessup. According to Aaron Sorkin, “The character of Dan Kaffee in A Few Good Men is entirely fictional and was not inspired by any particular individual.” But those close to the actual events recognized the character’s enormous debt to Don Marcari, as well as the lesser influence of David Iglesias and Chris Johnson. Joanne Galloway’s inspiration is more easily discernable as Deborah Sorkin, while Harold Dawson comes across as a slightly less mature David Cox. Producer David Brown purchased the film rights to A Few Good Men even before the play opened on Broadway, and in 1992 the inevitable movie version was assembled under the direction of Rob Reiner, with Aaron Sorkin expanding his play to provide a juicy part for Jack Nicholson as flint-hearted Lt. Col. Nathan Jessup. Tom Cruise and Demi Moore are respectively starred as Daniel Kaffee and JoAnne Galloway, whose hinted romantic relationship in the play was largely written out of the film—much to the dismay of distributing studio Columbia Pictures. Wolfgang Bodison plays Harold Dawson, whose defense for contributing to Santiago’s death is that he cannot be adjudged guilty for obeying orders. Some of the minor inaccuracies in the play were magnified in the film, notably the implication that Kaffee himself will face court-martial if he “smears” Nathan Jessup on the witness stand (In truth, JAG officers enjoy the same immunity from prosecution as civilian attorneys; in fact, Kaffee would have gotten in trouble with his superiors if he hadn’t provided his clients with the best possible defense, even if it required the maligning of a superior officer). Additional criticism was aimed at the film’s oversimplification of the legal process, as well as Col.

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Jessup’s self-righteous confession at the end (“You can’t handle the truth!”), which was handled with more subtlety on stage. But overall A Few Good Men is solid entertainment, a guaranteed audience pleaser. Except for one member of the audience: ExMarine David Cox, who saw the film for the first time at a Boston theater with his girlfriend Elaine Tinsley. Having never been contacted by any member of the Few Good Men production team, Cox was visibly shaken by the similarities between the film’s plotline and his own experiences, though he later told the Natick [MA] Bulletin “If I hadn’t known the truth, it probably would’ve been the best movie I’ve ever seen in my life.” What really stuck in his craw was the film’s “rotten ending”: Although Harold Dawson and co-defendant Loudon Downey ( James Marshall) are cleared of murder, both men are dishonorably discharged. Accusing the film’s production firm Castle Rock Entertainment of “stealing” his story, Cox and several of the other defendants filed a lawsuit for “invasion of privacy, civil conspiracy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.” Cox’s attorney was his former court-martial counsel Don Marcari, now in private practice. The lawsuit was still in litigation when on January 5, 1994, David Cox disappeared from the Boston apartment he shared with Elaine Tinsley. Checking David’s phone messages, Elaine figured that he had been accepted for a full-time job at UPS and had left home en route to his new workplace. But as the days and weeks passed it became painfully obvious that Don wasn’t coming home, nor did anyone at UPS have any idea where he’d gone. On April 2, the Spring thaw revealed that David Cox’s body lay on a river bank five miles from his apartment; he had been shot four times, execution style. The Boston police theorized that Cox had been acquainted with his killer and had gone along willingly to the murder scene. Though a few family members believed that he’d been the victim of a UPS employee involved in illegal activities, his mother was haunted by the memory of a radio interview David had given regarding his lawsuit against Castle Rock, in which he suggested that he had in

his possession secret information about U.S. activities in Cuba. This was enough for Don Marciani to set forth the theory that Cox’s murder “had something to do with the military,” possibly because of the alleged Cuba connection, or possibly because of official embarrassment over the issues raised by A Few Good Men. As of this writing, the murder of David Cox remains unsolved—and like we said at the beginning of this entry, there’s a terrific movie lurking in there somewhere.

CRANE, CHERYL—AND L ANA TURNER The film: Where Love Has Gone ( Joseph E. Levine Productions/Embassy/Paramount, 1964)

It may have been Good Friday everywhere else, but April 25, 1958, was anything but good in the Beverly Hills home of screen star Lana Turner (1912–1995). By rights, Lana should have been basking in the glow of her recent Oscar nomination for Peyton Place (1957), the first film she’d starred in after her dismissal from longtime home studio MGM. She had also just completed the British-produced Another Time, Another Place, during which she’d had a brief fling with her young costar Sean Connery. But Lana was going through hell in her private life; already a target for nasty jokes about her four failed marriages and numerous affairs, she was in the midst of a nasty breakup with her current boyfriend, 32-year-old Johnny Stompanato. A onetime bodyguard for mobster Mickey Cohen, Stompanato was well known to the cops as a gigolo who frequently entered into torrid affairs with prominent women for extortion purposes. His marital record was nearly as flawed as Lana’s, with film actresses Helen Gilbert and Helene Stanley among his ex-wives. It was rumored that Johnny was merely using Lana just as he’d used the other women in his life, banking on her celebrity to pick up cash and launch a movie career of his own. The relationship became physically abusive after Lana indicated that she wanted out. Stompanato had recently pulled a gun on Sean Connery, who handily wrested it away from the 6-foot, 180-pound thug; now Johnny was threatening Lana with beatings or worse if she dumped him.

Crater On the evening of April 15, Cheryl Crane, Lana’s 14-year-old daughter by her second husband Stephen Crane, heard Johnny screaming in her mother’s bedroom: “Wherever you go, I’ll find you. If someone makes a living with their hands, break their hands. If someone makes a living with her face, destroy her face. I’ll cut you good, baby. You’ll never work again. And don’t think I won’t also get your mother and your kid. I have people to do the job for me—and I’ll watch.” Cheryl had no reason to doubt him: Having been sexually assaulted by Lana’s third husband, Lex Barker, she knew that her mom’s taste in men was often bad news for both of them. As she later recalled the events, Cheryl grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen in hopes of scaring Johnny off. But as he charged out of the bedroom, she stabbed him in the abdomen—at which point, she claimed, everything went black. When the police arrived Cheryl told them that she’d killed Johnny because she saw him threaten her mother, whereupon she was shipped off to Juvenile Hall as a formality. The coroner ruled Stompanato’s death a justifiable homicide, though some tonguewaggers implied that Lana had actually stabbed Johnny and Cheryl was covering up for her. Neither mother nor daughter would make a public statement regarding the incident for decades; Lana resumed her movie career (and married thrice more) as if nothing had happened, while Cheryl endured several turbulent years which included a serious drug problem and a couple of suicide attempts. She turned her life around after forming a loving, lasting relationship with model Joyce “Josh” Leroy, building up a comfortable bank account in the real estate game and the restaurant business. Lana Turner finally addressed the Johnny Stompanato incident (two chapters’ worth) in her 1982 autobiography. Cheryl Crane told her side of the story six years later in her own memoirs, which refreshingly avoided the “Mommie Dearest” syndrome by painting an affectionate portrait of her mother. But neither lady had much to say upon the 1962 publication of Harold Robbins’ novel Where Love Has Gone, except for Lana’s curt response to an inquisitive

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reporter: “I suppose I’ll be getting bugged up by that question.” As he’d done with his 1961 bestseller The Carpetbagger, a thinly veiled chronicle of Howard Hughes, Robbins insisted with a straight face that he didn’t have any specific person in mind when he created the character of world-famous sculptress Valerie Hayden Miller, whose loutish lover Rick Lazich is shot to death by Valerie’s neurotic 15-year-old daughter Danielle. Whatever embarrassment Lana and Cheryl may have suffered when Where Love Has Gone appeared in book form, it must have multiplied tenfold when fabled schlockmeister Joseph E. Levine produced a film version in 1964, scripted by John Michael Hayes and directed by Edward Dmytrk. Susan Hayward stars as Valerie Miller, whom we know is a sculptress because she wears a stained smock and her loft is cluttered with statues and pottery. Joey Heatherton beat out candidates Laurel Goodwin and Lana Wood for the role of Danielle, while Bette Davis (ironically Lana Turner’s favorite actress) does a Medusalike turn as Valerie’s wealthy and overbearing mother, who according to Where Love Has Gone is the root cause of all the sturm und drang. The film is largely told in flashback by Danielle’s architect father Luke Miller (Mike Connors), a man so saintly that he practically qualifies for canonization by the Vatican. The plotline dances around the old whispered rumor that the mother rather than the daughter was the killer, gilding the lily by having Valerie and Danielle both lust after the sleazy Rick Lazish (who shows up only as a corpse). Once the question of who really pulled the trigger is straightened out in court, Valerie sobs out a mea culpa holding herself responsible no matter what the judge decides, leading to an ending that is happy for only two of the characters. The whole mishmosh is summed up by costar Bette Davis in one of the greatest bits of dialogue in her illustrious career: “Somewhere along the line, the world has lost all its standards and all its taste.”

CRATER , JUDGE J OSEPH FORCE—AND JUDGE WEBSTER THAYER The films: Mystery of the Wax Museum (Warner

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Bros., 1933); Winterset (RKO-Radio, 1936); The Judge Steps Out (RKO-Radio, 1949)

He was known as “The Most Missingest Man in New York.” People were still making jokes about him 30 years after anyone had ever seen him. To “Pull a Crater” became popular slang for anyone who’d vanished without a trace under his own power. Until the advent of Jimmy Hoffa and D.B. Cooper, New York Supreme Court judge Joseph Force Crater was the world’s foremost Little Man Who Wasn’t There. Except he wasn’t all that little. Born in Easton, Pennsylvania, in 1889, Crater was tall, handsome, impeccably dressed at all times, and a chick magnet even after putting on weight. A graduate of Columbia Law School, he began his legal practice in 1913. With strong ties to Manhattan’s Tammany Hall he became president of New York’s Democratic Party Club, a position that proved beneficial to his business and political aspirations. Though he drew a comfortable salary as a lawyer, his greater wealth was harvested from shrewd business transactions, some of them actually honest. Liberal in everything including romance, he wed Stella Wheeler a year after representing her in a 1916 divorce case, professing his undying love for her while dallying with a choice assortment of Broadway showgirls. In April 1930 Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Judge Crater to the state supreme court, bypassing the hand-picked Tammany candidate. Just before the appointment Crater drew $20,000 from the bank, leading many to conclude that he was paying off Tammany for his judgeship. While vacationing in Maine with his wife in July 1930, the judge received a phone call summoning him back to New York. No sooner had he returned to his downtown office than he embarked on a trip to Atlantic City in the company of chorus girl Sally Ritz. On the morning of August 6, 1930, Crater spent several hours going through his courthouse files, then cashed two checks totaling $5150, after which he and an assistant carried two locked briefcases to his apartment. That evening he arrived at Bil Haas’ Chophouse for a quick dinner before attending the Broadway play Dancing Partners. His dining

companions were his lawyer and the toothsome Sally Ritz. At 9 p.m. he bade goodbye to his friends and hailed a taxi. He was never seen again. Ten days passed before the still-vacationing Mrs. Crater began calling around to friends asking where her husband was. On September 3, the police were finally informed officially that the Judge was missing. Newspaper headlines blazed with speculation, suggesting variously that Crater had been murdered, that he had fled the city with municipal funds, that he had run off with Sally Ritz (who likewise was nowhere to be found), that he had suffered a blow to the head and lost his memory, that he was escaping an impending arrest…. And so it went until October, when a Grand Jury concluded “The evidence is insufficient to warrant any expression of opinion as to whether Crater is alive or dead, or as to whether he has absented himself voluntarily, or is the suffered from disease in the nature of amnesia, or the victim of crime.” Over the next decade, “Crater sightings” occurred at least twice per week, contests were held for the best theory as to where the Judge had gone, and Mrs. Crater unsuccessfully petitioned three different insurance companies to pay off her husband’s double-indemnity policies. On June 6, 1939, Joseph Force Crater was declared legally dead. Beyond a casual wisecrack in 1932’s Bureau of Missing Persons, the first Hollywood film to reference the Crater mystery was the 1933 Technicolor melodrama Mystery of the Wax Museum, in which a mad sculptor kills various people and dips them in wax to create statues for his museum. One of his victims, “immortalized” as the wax figure of Voltaire, turns out to be one Judge Ramsey, who had inexplicably dropped out of sight several months earlier. As Time observed in its February 27, 1933, review of Mystery of the Wax Museum, “The picture hints rather broadly that the corpse of Justice Joseph Force Crater (who disappeared in Manhattan in 1930) is now a rouged mummy in an exhibition.” A more fully developed Crater knockoff can be found in Maxwell Anderson’s 1935 Broadway drama Winterset, adapted for the screen in 1936

Crosby by Anthony Veiller and directed by Alfred Santell. An unsteady mixture of prose and blank verse, Anderson’s play was based on the controversial 1927 execution of anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartello Vanzetti on a robbery- murder charge. Celebrities and intellectuals throughout the world protested the execution, arguing that the defendants’ trial was unjust and prejudicial, with Sacco and Vanzetti condemned because of their ethnicity and radical politics rather than the crime at hand. Presiding Judge Webster Thayer was known to make biased comments about the defendants outside the courtroom, and his general demeanor was that of someone who’d made up his mind even before hearing the evidence. The equivalent character in Winterset is Judge Gaunt, played in the film by Edward Ellis, who like Webster Thayer never recants his verdict against “Bartolomeo Romagna.” But with a difference: After reading about a university investigation charging that his verdict was unfair not only because of his own prejudice but because Romagna was entirely innocent, Judge Gaunt goes mad and disappears from his home, wandering the streets babbling about justice and empathy, so tortured by guilt and doubt that he is unable to remember his own name. Movie audiences who recognized the Sacco-Vanzetti connection in Winterset also perceived that there was more Crater than Webster in the deranged Judge Gaunt. On a less gloomy note, Alexander Knox stars as the title character in The Judge Steps Out, filmed in 1947 and released by RKO two years later. Knox portrays Boston judge Thomas Bailey, who is suffering from a midlife crisis brought about by pressures from both his job and his shrewish wife (Frieda Inescourt). When a doctor advises Bailey to take a break from everyone and everything in his life, the Judge elects to quietly exit his home and hit the road as a hobo. Landing a job as a short-order cook in a California town where nobody knows him, he forms a platonic friendship with Peggy (Ann Sothern), a single woman anxious to adopt a child. Through the example of Peggy, Bailey realizes that he’d made the wrong decision in an earlier custody case where he’d ruled against the

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mother. He also finds the peace of mind and heart that had been denied him back in Boston. Though unacknowledged by film critics back in 1949, Judge Bailey is a sweet and unsullied variation on Judge Crater, and as such fully deserves the happy ending provided him by director Boris Ingster (who cowrote the script with star Knox). As of this writing, the disappearance of Judge Crater remains a mystery, despite such recent developments as the discovery of a letter written by a female contemporary of the judge, with instructions that it not be opened until after her death. According to the letter, two of the woman’s male companions murdered Crater and buried him under the boardwalk at Coney Island. But before you break out the excavation equipment, be advised that the alleged burial site was totally obliterated in the mid–1950s by the construction of the New York Aquarium.

CROSBY, BING—AND DIXIE LEE CROSBY The film: Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (Wanger/Universal-International, 1947)

Born in Tennessee in 1911, Wilma Winifred Wyatt changed her name to Dixie Carroll when she became a musical performer on the stage and vaudeville circuit. Hired for talking pictures by Fox Films executive Winfield Sheehan in 1929, she was obliged to change her name to Dixie Lee, so as not to be confused with Fox contractee Sue Carol or Paramount’s resident musical star Nancy Carroll. Making her featurefilm debut in Fox Movietone Follies of 1929, Dixie never quite became a major name but still developed a strong fan following in such films as Harmony at Home, Let’s Go Places and Cheer Up and Smile (all 1930); her effervescent “Crazy Feet” number in the all-star Fox revue Happy Days is arguably the highlight of that very uneven film. Shy and retiring by nature, Dixie found herself attracted to the outgoing selfconfidence of singer Bing Crosby, who at the time of her Fox contract was still a member of the Rhythm Boys in Paul Whiteman’s orchestra. Their subsequent romance was frowned upon by both of their families: Bing was an irresponsible playboy, an unreliable performer, and worst of all, a heavy drinker. Despite these

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strikes against him, 27-year-old Bing wed 18year-old Dixie on September 29, 1930. Within a year she was working at Paramount Pictures while he was making his network-radio debut; by 1932 his own star was on the ascent. Though the couple was devoted to each other Dixie told Bing that they were through unless he stopped drinking. With her help, he gave up liquor and (for a while anyway) cleaned up his act. But before the swearing-off period, Dixie had begun drinking herself to keep apace with her husband, gradually developing into an alcoholic. The common assumption is that Dixie gave up show business when she and Bing began raising a family in 1933, but in fact she continued playing romantic leads in films like Manhattan Love Song and Love in Bloom for the next two years. However, her heart was no longer in her work, and despite an uptick in popularity after she and Bing dueted on recordings of “A Fine Romance” and “The Way You Look Tonight” in 1936, Dixie chose to give up show business and devote herself to her children. Eventually she stopped going out socially altogether, remaining at home

Dixie Lee Crosby.

with her four sons Gary, Dennis, Lindsay and Philip and allowing her husband to be the Number One Star of the Crosby clan. Suffering from clinical depression, Dixie’s drinking increased as the years went on, and while Bing publicly professed his love for her he offered very little moral support, spending most of his time with his movie and radio work and indulging in casual extramarital affairs. An additional strain was placed on their marriage with arguments over how to raise their sons: Though Bing was notoriously strict with the boys, Dixie complained that he was too indulgent with them. For appearances’ sake Bing and Dixie stayed married, but it was an unhappy and fractious household, with Dixie’s alcoholism threatening to get out of control. According to his biographer Matthew Bernstein, film producer Walter Wanger “vehemently” denied that his 1947 production Smash Up: The Story of a Woman was inspired by Dixie Lee Crosby. However, the inspiration was an open secret in Hollywood, though trade magazines and gossip columnists discreetly avoided mentioning the fact. Susan Hayward stars in Smash Up as Angelica Evans, a popular nightclub singer who depends on liquor to overcome her insecurities. Angela marries Ken Conway (Lee Bowman), an obscure singer-composer who performs on radio as “The Lonesome Cowboy.” When their daughter is born Ken is so thrilled that he sings a new composition in the baby’s honor over the air, which boosts his popularity and makes him a star. In the meantime Angelica’s career fades precipitously and she crawls back into a bottle. Ken is too preoccupied with fame and fortune to notice his wife’s deterioration, and when her boozing reaches the danger level he responds by divorcing her. Accidentally starting an apartment fire that scars her face and nearly kills her child, Angelica is finally given the help she needs by an understanding psychiatrist, who also reprimands Ken for his insensitivity. The couple is reunited, but it’s up to the audience to determine if they’ll truly live happily ever after; the film’s premise is that alcoholism is not a weakness of character but a disease that needs constant monitoring (It’s worth noting

Crowley that the film was cowritten by Dorothy Parker, herself an alcoholic who’d recently divorced her husband). Maintaining Hollywood’s “don’t ask—don’t tell” stance vis-à-vis Smash Up’s roots in reality, the reviews for the Stuart Heisler–directed production never mentioned Mr. and Mrs. Crosby, focusing instead on the film’s exalted status as “a female version of The Lost Weekend” and citing its honesty and frankness within the confines of the Production Code. But Bing Crosby and Dixie Lee recognized the similarities and were outraged, almost to the point of filing suit against Walter Wanger. It is said that the trauma caused by the film resulted in a split between the couple, with serious talk of divorce; this, however, probably had more to do with Bing’s brief infatuation with actress Joan Caulfield, his costar in The Emperor Waltz. By 1950 the Crosbys had reconciled, but total happiness and contentment would remain elusive. Two years later Dixie Lee was dead of ovarian cancer at the age of 40.

CROWLEY, ALEISTER The films: The Magician (MGM, 1927); The Black Cat (Universal, 1934); Night of the Demon [Curse of the Demon] (Sabre Film Productions/ Columbia, 1957)

Warwickshire-born, Cambridge- educated Edward Alexander “Aleister” Crowley (1875– 1947) was a man of many talents: Author, artist, magician, chess master, mountain climber and self-styled occult prophet. A devout follower of Thelema, a multi-theistic religion which preached the philosophy “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law: Love is the law, love under will,” Crowley was regarded by his own followers as a saint of the Dark Arts, and by traditional churchmen as a sinner doomed to the Fiery Furnace. Luxuriating in his reputation as “the wickedest man in the world,” Crowley also espoused the use of recreational drugs and the pleasures of bisexuality, and in later years was hailed as the father of the “counterculture” movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Nor did he hide is monumental ego under a bushel basket: “1000 years from now,” he wrote, “the world will be sitting in the sunset of Crowlianity.” Not surprisingly, he was held responsible for innumer-

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British occultist Aleister Crowley, 1913.

able sadistic and homicidal practices of which he was wholly innocent: As Vanity Fair noted in 1915, “a legend has been built up around his name. He is a myth. No other man has so many strange tales told of him.” One of the strangest of these tales was Somerset Maugham’s à clef 1908 novel The Magician, the title character of which is professional prestidigitator and dedicated occultist Oliver Haddo. To avenge himself against prominent British surgeon Arthur Burdon, Haddo places Burdon’s fiancee Margaret Dauncey under his diabolical spell and makes her his bride. Arthur comes back into Margaret’s life when she expresses fear that Haddo intends to sacrifice her in an occult ritual for the purpose of “creating” new lives, à la Frankenstein. Too late to rescue Margaret, Arthur saves the world from Haddo’s evil influence by burning the magician’s home and destroying all evidence of his unholy practices. Aleister Crowley subsequently wrote a scathing criticism of The Magician, accusing Maugham of stealing his material: The critique was published under the nom de plume of…. Oliver Haddo. In 1927, visionary filmmaker Rex Ingram

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assembled a cinematic adaptation of The Magician with German star Paul Wegener as Oliver Haddo, Ingram’s wife Alice Terry as Margaret Dauncey and Iván Petrovich as Arthur Burdon. In this version Margaret is mesmerized into wedding Haddo so that he may use her virgin blood in his efforts to create human life (he is shown consulting an ancient parchment articulating this process, specifying in no uncertain terms that the blood must be “pure”). Haddo’s psychological seduction of Margaret is depicted as a surrealistic hallucination, suggesting that the poor woman’s blood isn’t entirely untainted by the time she is strapped to the operating table in her husband’s fortresslike laboratory. In a rewrite of Maugham’s original denouement, Margaret is rescued in the nick of time by Arthur Burdon, while Haddo is consumed by fire and his comical (!) assistant is left dangling from a tree branch. The Magician has been hailed as a stylistic precursor to Universal’s Frankenstein films. In 1934, the selfsame Universal brought forth an equally stylish (but far more economical) spin on the Aleister Crowley legend, The Black Cat, which despite its opening credits has absolutely nothing to do with the Edgar Allan Poe story of the same name. Dressed entirely in black and wearing Mephistopholean makeup, Boris Karloff is cast as devil-worshipping Hjalmar Poelzig, who has constructed an lavish art-deco home upon the ruins of a World War I fortress once commanded by his former friend Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Bela Lugosi). A bus accident strands Werdegast and American newlyweds Peter and Joan Allison (David Manners, Jacqueline Wells) at Poelzig’s residence, where the two ex-friends square off over the mysterious fate of Werdegast’s beloved wife. It is soon revealed that Poelzig has preserved the dead bodies of several women in glass cases, and is now the paramour of Werdegast’s bewitched daughter Karen (Lucille Lund). Fully aware that Poelzig intends to sacrifice Joan during a satanic ritual, Werdegast is prevented from intervening by his morbid fear of the black cats prowling all over the mansion. Naturally Joan’s husband Peter doesn’t swallow any of this “supernatural baloney,” but by film’s

end he is galvanized into rescuing Joan from the altar of doom. In a macabre finale that Aleister Crowley might have enjoyed, Werdegast avenges the murders of his wife and daughter by chaining Poelzig to an embalming rack and skinning him alive. Lauded as one of the finest efforts of cult director Edgar Ulmer, The Black Cat was Universal’s biggest moneymaker of 1934, and emphatically the best of the studio’s Karloff-Lugosi vehicles. A more recent variation on the Aleister Crowley theme, director Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon (released in the U.S. as Curse of the Demon) was adapted by longtime Hitchcock collaborator Charles Bennett and producer Hal E. Chester from M.R. James’ classic 1911 horror tale “Casting the Runes.” This time the Crowley character is Dr. Julian Karswell, played by Niall MacGinnis as a deceptively convivial Pickwick type. Karswell’s fascination with Satanism has attracted the attention of Professor Harrington (Maurice Denham), who is investigating reports that a devil-worshipping cult has been responsible for several deaths in the British countryside. Karswell disposes of Harrington by using an ancient parchment (not dissimilar to the one displayed in The Magician) to summon an enormous demonic creature. Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews), an American associate of Dr. Harrington, immerses himself in the study of witchcraft and occultism in hopes of finding a link between his late colleague and Dr. Karswell. Though initially skeptical of Karswell’s powers, Holden cannot easily dismiss the ever-mounting evidence, especially after the accursed parchment results in the “suicide” of suspected murderer Rand Hobart (Brian Wilde). Too clever by half, Dr. Karswell is unaware that Holden has managed to smuggle the parchment into Karswell’s coat, leading to the villain’s spectacular demise at the hands of his own demon. It was the original intention of director Tourneur and screenwriter Bennett never to actually show the monstrous demon, leaving its presence to the audience’s imagination; Tourneur even had a clause in his contract to this effect. But after both men had gone on to other projects, producer-cowriter Hal E. Chester

Cullotta insisted upon inserting closeups and medium shots of a studio-manufactured demon, whereupon Tourneur summarily disowned the film. Bennett was even more outraged, telling a later interviewer “If [Chester] walked up my driveway right now, I’d shoot him dead.” Perhaps if Jacques Tourneur and Charles Bennett had been personally acquainted with Aleister Crowley, they might have been able to conjure up a more suitably Hellish retribution upon the artless Mr. Chester.

CULLOTTA , FRANK— AND FRANK

AND

GER AL DINE ROSENTHAL , A NTHONY MICHAEL SPILOTRO

AND

The film: Casino (Syalis DA/Légendre Enterprises/De Fina-Cappa/Universal, 1995)

Filmmaker Martin Scorsese has gone on record insisting that his 1995 crime epic Casino is a movie without a plot, a bold statement to make about a dazzlingly extravagant 186-minute essay on the Mob’s dominance of Las Vegas during the 1970s and 1980s, just before the town became a mecca for legitimate entrepreneurs. For a plotless film, Casino is certainly topheavy with colorful characters, most of them based on real- life personalities described in Scorsese’s source material: Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas, written by his Goodfellas collaborator Nicolas Pileggi. To list everyone who goes by a cinematic alias in Scorsese’s film would require a second volume, so we’ll focus here on the principal players. Top-billed Robert De Niro is cast as Sam “Ace” Rothstein, based on celebrated sports handicapper Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal (1928– 2008). His mob connections enabled Rosenthal to run four Las Vegas casinos simultaneously: the Stardust, the Hacienda, the Fremont and the Marina. In Casino, Ace Rothstein is only in charge of the fictional “Tangiers,” but that’s more than enough to keep him busy. The legendary Riviera stands in for the Tangiers throughout the film, with the audience treated to a guided tour of the casino in the very first scene, a virtuoso sequence lensed in a single take. Bucking Vegas’ other casino owners, who prefer table games as a source of income, Rothstein

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(like Rosenthal) is a racing aficionado who establishes Sin City’s first race and track parlor, doubling the Tangiers’ profits. Along the way he falls in love with sexy hustler Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone), a character inspired by Rosenthal’s tragic spouse Geraldine McKee, and who like Geraldine has trouble divesting herself of her former boyfriend (Lenny Marmor in real life, Lester Diamond in the film), played by James Woods. After a nasty breakup with Ace, Ginger runs off with her ex-beau, taking along her daughter by Rothstein; and like Geraldine McKee Rosenthal, Ginger ultimately dies of a drug overdose. Ace’s other fact-based personal woes include an attempt on his life with a boobytrapped car and the loss of his gambling license after a squabble with the chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission, played by Dick Smothers and here named Harrison Roberts, though he’s obviously supposed to be the estimable Sen. Harry Reid. In a critique of Casino on his own web page, Lefty Rosenthal allowed that much of what happens in the film is true, at the same time ticking off Scorsese’s dramatic embellishments: For example, while Rosenthal did indeed star in his own Las Vegas TV show, unlike Ace Rothstein he never performed a juggling act on the air. The film’s Mob bosses are so impressed by Rothstein’s management of the Tangiers that they ship out a couple of enforcers to protect his interests: Ace’s childhood buddy Nicky Santoro ( Joe Pesci) and Nicky’s brother Dominick (Philip Suriano), characters patterned after Anthony “Tony the Ant” Spilotro and his brother Michael. The former top dog in the Chicago Outfit’s “Hole in the Wall Gang,” Tony Spilotro was well versed in the ways and means of handling business, with such services as crushing the hands of cheating gamblers a specialty of the house. In Casino, short-tempered Nicky Santoro manages to get himself banned from every casino in town, whereupon he and Dominick engage in crimes of their own that prove detrimental to the Mob. Suspecting that the Santoros were behind a plot to blow him up in his car, Ace Rothstein vows to take revenge, but is beaten to the punch when the brothers are beaten and buried alive in a cornfield by their own cohorts.

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Much of this follows the real-life chronology, with one slight geographical difference: On June 14, 1986, the Spilotro brothers were chauffeured to a Mob house in Bensenville, Illinois, on the pretext of receiving a promotion, only to be savagely murdered the moment they stepped into the basement. One of the secondary characters in Casino, Nicky Santoro’s close associate Frankie Marino (played by Frank Vincent), was based on a key player in Nicolas Pileggi’s original book: Chicago-born Frank Cullotta, who in his heyday called himself “The Las Vegas Boss.” Taking orders from lifelong pal Tony Spilotro, Cullotta was in charge of the Las Vegas underworld, and by extension Lefty Rosenthal’s network of casinos. Falling out with Tony in 1982 and facing arrest on a variety of charges, Cullotta turned government witness, effectively putting the Mob out of business in Vegas and clearing the path for a series of corporate takeovers. Sentenced to prison in 1983, he managed to survive a contract on his life, and after eight years was released to the Witness Protection Program. After functioning as a paid consultant on Casino and writing his autobiography in 2007, Cullotta returned to Las Vegas as the manager and head guide of a tour-bus service, shepherding out-of-town customers and Mafia buffs to the sites of various legendary Mob “hits” and other thrilling landmarks. He also provided transportation for Vegas’ “Mob-Con,” an annual gathering of exwiseguys and crime aficionados. A confessed murderer and acknowledged former capo, Cullotta had quite a time convincing the authorities that his new business venture was on the level: “It is a challenge to do things on the legal side…. It’s difficult to be legit, and I am legit. But I’m always having to fight the system for some reason. It seems like nobody wants me to be legit.” As of this writing, Frank Cullotta is one of the few surviving figures fictionalized in Casino. Even the mighty Riviera was demolished to make way for the expansion of the Las Vegas Convention Center on June 14, 2016.

CUMMINGS, H OMER—AND H AROLD IS RAEL, NELLIE TRAFTON

The film: Boomerang (20th Century–Fox, 1947)

Why would anyone want to murder a priest in broad daylight? And in Bridgeport, Connecticut, of all places? Those might have been the last conscious thoughts of Father Hubert Dahme as he was fatally shot outside a Main Street movie house on February 4, 1924. So shocked were the witnesses that it took 10 minutes for anyone to summon medical aid for the dying priest; nor in the confusion was anyone able to positively identify the killer. While making a sweep of the city, the police recalled that shortly after the murder they had jailed 24-year-old vagrant Harold Israel on a weapon-possession charge. With the citizenry and the local government hounding the authorities for a swift prosecution, Israel was placed in a line-up and identified by four witnesses, including waitress Nellie Trafton. Add to this Israel’s many lies and evasions during his interrogation, plus his statement that he’d been seized by an “irresistable impulse,” and it looked to state’s attorney Homer Cummings that he had an airtight case. But just as Israel’s interrogation ramblings were full of holes, so too was the case against him. Holding off prosecution until he’d fully studied the evidence, Cummings consulted a ballistics expert who contradicted the police findings, and a team of doctors who ascertained that Israel was of “sub-normal” intelligence whose confession came after 28 hours’ sleep deprivation. Cummings also discounted the testimony of Nellie Trafton, who though she may have been acquainted with Israel as she claimed, could not possibly have seen him the night of the killing because of a steam-clouded glass partition. On May 24, 1924, Homer Cummings surprised everyone by dropping all charges against Israel: “It goes without saying that it is just as important for a state’s attorney to protect the innocent as it is to convict the guilty. In view of what I have said about every element of the case, I do not think that any doubt of Israel’s innocence can remain in the mind of a candid person.” The murder of Father Dahme was never solved. There were those in Bridgeport who still

Cunningham believed Harold Israel was guilty when in 1945 an article about the incident appeared in the Rotarian magazine, written by mystery novelist Fulton Oursler and titled “The Perfect Case.” The article was purchased by 20th Century–Fox as the basis for their 1947 film Boomerang, written for the screen by Richard Muphy and lensed in the same docudrama style as the studio’s 1945 hit The House on 92nd Street. Bridgeport was not about to permit Fox to open old wounds by filming on the actual locations, so Boomerang was shot in nearby Stanford Connecticut, where former prosecutor Homer Cummings had long served as mayor. In lieu of Fox’ house realitymovie specialist Henry Hathaway, the film was directed by Elia Kazan, who had brought the Oursler article to the attention of studio head Darryl F. Zanuck. Dissatisfied with his previous studio-dominated films, Kazan was excited by the prospect of a all- location shoot: “I really [was] able to do the picture the way I think pictures should be made. It was our neo-realism.” Harold Israel accepted $18,000 for the rights to his story on condition that his name not be used. Arthur Kennedy was cast as Israel surrogate John Waldron, a disillusioned World War II veteran rather than an aimless drifter. Top-billed Dana Andrews was cast as Homer Cummings counterpart Henry J. Harvey, with Jane Wyatt as his wife Madge. The emphasis was shifted from the plight of the accused murderer to the complex melodrama involving those prosecuting the case and those demanding a quick conviction, truth or no truth. The arresting officers (Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden) mercilessly grill the sleepless John Waldron and coerce a confession because they are being pressured by corrupt city official Paul Harris (Ed Begley, Sr.), who hopes to parlay Waldron’s conviction into a smashing victory in the upcoming election—the better for Harris to cinch a shady real estate transaction. In contrast with Harris, Henry J. Harvey is willing to sacrifice a bid for the governor’s office, and also expose his wife’s unwitting complicity in Harris’ crooked land deal, to see that justice is done. As in real life, the murder of “Father George M. Lambert” is never solved, though after Waldron’s

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release the film heaps suspicion on weasely Jim Crossman (Philip Coolidge), who had a motivation to kill the priest but is himself killed in a traffic accident before the matter can be explored further. One of the top-grossing films of 1947, Boomerang met with only marginal resistance from the city fathers of Bridgeport, though it was plagued by a couple of lawsuits. Fulton Oursler was served papers by another author who cried “plagiarism,” a case that was settled for an undisclosed sum. And waitress Nellie Trafton, star witness against Harold Israel, was dismayed by the film’s portrayal of “Irene Nelson” (Cara Williams) as being driven by revenge against her ex-boyfriend John Waldron. Suing 20th Century–Fox for libel, Ms. Trafton was mollified to the tune of $1200.

CUNNINGHAM, R ANDALL “DUKE” The film: Top Gun (Paramount, 1986)

It is often the case that a person whose life and career has served as the basis for a fictional motion picture will vehemently deny any connection with or resemblance to his fictional counterpart—or failing that, the person will halfheartedly acknowledge the resemblance but point out the many discrepancies and inaccuracies. Not so Randall “Duke” Cunningham, one of most highly decorated U.S. Navy pilots of the Vietnam War. Upon the 1986 release of Tom Cruise’s breakthrough picture Top Gun, Cunningham was pleased as punch when rumors circulated that he had been the inspiration for Cruise’s character Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, the hotshot fighter pilot who plays by his own rules both as a student at the elite Top Gun Naval Flying School and in combat over the Persian Gulf. It was no surprise that Cunningham was so eager and willing to take credit for “Maverick,” since he was the guy who started the rumors in the first place. Born in Louisiana in 1941, Duke Cunningham was an award-winning high school swimming coach before joining the Navy in 1967. After his first tour of duty in Vietnam, Duke took additional training at the Top Gun School and returned to active duty in 1971. On January 19,

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1972, he and his radar intercept officer Willie Driscoll spotted two MiG fighters north of the Demilitarized Zone. Though the enemy was in range of the Sparrow missiles carried in his F4 Phantom 2, Duke didn’t trust the Sparrows and brazenly ignored Driscoll’s call to fire, flying perilously close to the MiGs in order to shoot off his short-range AIM-9 Sidewinders. The results could have been disastrous, but Duke’s luck held out and both MiGs were brought down. In later combat, he was the only American aviator to knock off three MiGs in the same day, elevating himself and Driscoll to the status of the only Navy aces in the Vietnam conflict. Returning to the States, Cunningham became an instructor for the Top Gun School at San Diego’s Miramar Naval Air Station. Though no one could diminish the honor of his many decorations—two silver stars, 15 air medals, purple heart—Cunningham made many enemies at Miramar with his bullheaded refusal to follow protocol and his explosive temper. “He was too confrontational with his superiors and got low scores on his fitness reports,” explained his wife, Nancy, when asked why her husband was constantly passed over for promotion. Demanding to receive the Medal of Honor, Duke petulantly threatened to boycott an awards ceremony when he found out he was only getting the Navy Cross. And at one point he was nearly court-martialed for breaking into his CO’s office to compare other officers’ personnel records with his own. What really rubbed his colleagues the wrong way was Cunningham’s shameless self-aggrandizement: Whereas most fighter pilots are modest about their achievements, Duke liked nothing better than to brag about his “kills” at great and tedious length, often throwing in details that were flatout falsifications. When producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Tony Scott brought the cast and crew of Top Gun to Miramar for location shooting, Cunningham reportedly became insufferable. Despite the protests of writers Jack Epps, Jr., and Jim Cash that their screenplay was inspired by a magazine article by Ehud Yonay, and though virtually every other officer at Miramar agreed that Cunningham was full of hot air, Duke insisted that

the film was based on his “real life experiences” and that “Maverick” Mitchell was a younger version of himself. He further claimed that two of the film’s aerial highlights, the “hit the brakes and he’ll fly by” maneuver and Maverick’s taunting upside-down flight over a MiG fighter, were lifted verbatim from his Vietnam experiences. He even declared that he’d wooed and won his wife, Nancy, by singing “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling,” just as Tom Cruise does to leading lady Kelly McGillis. “That is a myth,” riposted Jack Epps, Jr. “We didn’t spend two minutes thinking about Randy Cunningham…. I never really paid attention to him or his story.” Be that as it may, star Cruise befriended Cunningham on the set of Top Gun, posed for publicity pictures with the ex-ace, and never publicly punched any holes in Duke’s delusion that he was the principal source for Tom’s signature film role. Tom Cruise may have been the only friend Duke Cunningham had left when, while serving as Republican congressman of California’s 51st District in 2005, Cunningham pled guilty to accepting bribes and resigned from office. “In sheer dollar amounts, it’s unprecedented,” Deputy House Historian Fred W. Beuttler told the San Diego Tribune regarding the enormity of Cunningham’s crime. Sentenced to eight years and four months in prison, Cunningham still had two years to serve when in 2011 Tom Cruise purchased the movie rights to the disgraced congressman’s life story. The actor cinched the bargain by throwing in a Rolls-Royce, an antique toilet and a laser weapon to replace items that Duke had owned before they were impounded by the Feds. Cruise told the Huffington Post that the film would be a “docu-drama” with himself as Cunningham and Katie Holmes as a fictional Mata Hari–like defense lobbyist who leads Duke astray. Though Cruise’s project has yet to get off the ground (sorry about that one), we humbly suggest that Tom use the title of Marcus Stern’s 2007 book about the fall from grace of Randall “Duke” Cunningham: The Wrong Stuff.

CUSTER , GEORGE ARMSTRONG Valiant but egotistical and famously foolhardy

Dainard U.S. Cavalry Commander. On June 25, 1876, he led his 7th Cavalry into a disastrous battle with the combined Native American forces of Montana and Dakota Territory at the Little Big Horn. What came to be known as Custer’s Last Stand is fictionalized as the climax of John Ford’s 1947 western Fort Apache, with Henry Fonda as vainglorious Custer counterpart Lt. Col. Owen Thursday.

DAINARD, WILLIAM—AND HARMON METZ WALEY, GEORGE WEYERHAUESER The films: Men Without Names (Paramount, 1935); Show Them No Mercy (20th Century–Fox, 1935)

It was not so much the people involved in the kidnapping of 9-year-old George Weyerhaueser in May 1935 as it was the aftermath of the crime that inspired two Hollywood films, both produced and released within a few months of the incident. The son of prosperous Tacoma, Washington, lumberman J.P. Weyerhaueser, George was grabbed on May 24 while walking to the seminary attended by his sister. $200,000 was demanded from the boy’s parents, the highest ransom to date. There was speculation that the dreaded Alvin Karpis gang was responsible (see separate entry for Arizona Donie “Ma” Barker), but in the fact the snatch was pulled off by a pair of amateurs, Harmon Metz Waley and William Dainard. The masked culprits kept George chained in a trunk hidden in a small dugout, assuring the boy that he was “too valuable to be hurt.” Throughout his seven-day ordeal George was allowed to read newspaper reports of what was described as “the greatest manhunt of the Pacific Northwest.” Once the ransom was paid by the boy’s uncle F. Rodman Titcomb, George was released four miles from Issaquah Washington. Unharmed and evidently untraumatized, he wandered toward the home of John Bonifas, who drove him back to his parents. After the kidnappers split the ransom they went their separate ways, with Waley accompanied by his wife Margaret, who’d been left in the dark about the abduction until after it occurred; it was, however, Margaret who unwittingly set off the chain of events by reading her husband

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the obituary of George’s grandfather a week before the crime. Waley was captured on June 8 after the FBI traced the serial numbers on the ransom bills—the first time this technique was used to track down a criminal gang. Though George confirmed Waley’s statement that his wife wasn’t one of the kidnappers, both received long prison sentences as a byproduct of the “Lindbergh Law” which imposed heavy punishments for transporting a kidnap victim across state lines (George had briefly been shunted to Oregon). Meanwhile, Waley’s accomplice William Dainard, whom George considered the most dangerous of the bunch, remained at large. After nearly a year as “Public Enemy Number One,” Dainard was trapped by those pesky consecutively numbered bills in San Francisco on May 7, 1936; also arrested was Edward Fliss, who admitted to “laundering” the ill-gotten money by replacing it with unmarked bills. In its review of Paramount’s Men Without Names, Daily Variety revealed that the film has been rushed into production to capitalize on the “ransom money roundup” of the Weyerhaueser case. Released June 29, 1935, the Ralph Murphy– directed Men Without Names didn’t involve a kidnapping but instead a mail-truck robbery, with Justice Department agent Richard Hood (Fred MacMurray) going undercover to track down the serialized bills and put the cuffs on the perpetrators. Outside of the villains, the only people held against their will in the film are heroine Helen Sherwood (Madge Evans) and her kid brother David (David Holt), whom the thieves take hostage while making their final, futile escape. Among the screenwriters of Men Without Names was Kubec Glasmon, who also collaborated on the second Weyerhaeuser-inspired film of 1935 (released on December 6), Show Them No Mercy. The film’s original title Snatched was vetoed by the Motion Picture Production Code out of fear that it would somehow glamorize the kidnappers played by Cesar Romero, Bruce Cabot, Ed Brophy and Warren Hymer. Also, no details of the kidnapping that motivates the film were dramatized by director George Marshall nor even discussed by the characters, again

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adhering to Code policy; thus, we never see a George Weyerhaueser character, only the criminals after their youthful victim “Tom Hansen” is released. Quicker on the uptake than Harmon Metz Waley, gang leader Tobey (Romero) forces innocent bystander Joe Martin (Edward Norris) to pass some of the “hot” money so that Martin will be blamed if the Feds get wise. To ensure Joe’s cooperation and silence, his wife Loretta (Rochelle Hudson) and the couple’s baby are held prisoner in the crooks’ hideout. While the FBI does manage to track some of the bills to their source, the heavies are foiled more by their own infighting and the resourcefulness of the Martins’ pet dog than by the diligence of the authorities. Reviewers gave less space to the Weyerhaueser connection in Show Them No Mercy than to the film’s climactic highlight, in which to protect her child from harm heroine Loretta Martin empties a machine gun into the belly of vicious hoodlum Pitch (Bruce Cabot). If you’re concerned over the ultimate fate of the real kidnap victim George Weyerhaeuser, I’m happy to report that he sustained few if any emotional scars from his harrowing experience and grew up to become CEO of the vast Weyerhaeuser timber empire, a position he held from 1986 until his retirement in 1991.

legal career in his native Ohio, he quickly relocated to Chicago where the money was better. While it is often recorded that he gave up a lucrative position as general attorney for the Chicago and Northwestern Railway to defend the striking Pullman workers in 1894, it is seldom mentioned that he’d left his previous position several years earlier and gave up only 50 percent of his hefty salary on behalf of his new clients. His later defense of Eugene V. Debs, Big Bill Haywood and other union leaders was likewise well compensated; nor did he go broke defending prominent anarchists of the early 1900s. After representing labor officials John and James McNamara in their 1910 murder trial, Darrow himself was brought up on charges for attempting to bribe the jury. Defended by Earl Rogers (see separate entry), Darrow was acquitted, though latter-day historians believe he was actually guilty. Once the McNamara case finished him as a labor lawyer, he went into the even more lucrative field of criminal defense. Admittedly he engineered the freedom (or at least reduced the sentences) of many indigent and deserving defendants; but he also saved corrupt and incompetent Chicago officials from being

DARROW, CLARENCE The films: Compulsion (20th Century– Fox, 1959); Inherit the Wind (Stanley Kramer Prod./ United Artists, 1960)

Even a good dose of reality will do little to tarnish the image of legendary American defense attorney Clarence Darrow (1857–1938). Beloved as the champion of the Underdog, revered as “The Attorney of the Damned” for his eloquent pleas against capital punishment, and a leading light of the American Civil Liberties Union, in his own lifetime the rumpled, rambling Darrow carved out an formidable legend for himself as a selfless crusader for justice who renounced the enormous fees normally paid attorneys of his skill and renown. Darrow is also considered a hero because of his outspoken agnosticism in defiance of a Judeo- Christian hierarchy. Granted, there is truth in this mythology, but let’s dig a bit deeper. Though Darrow began his

Clarence Darrow.

Darrow prosecuted for such man-made tragedies as the Iroquois Theater fire of 1903 and the sinking of the pleasure boat Eastland in 1915. It is not my intention to write off Darrow as a charlatan or a humbug, merely to point out that he was not exclusively the altruistic humanitarian that his admirers have painted him. It’s worth noting that two film fictionalizations of Clarence Darrow centered around courtroom cases that had nothing to do with the poor or downtrodden. The first was his 1924 defense of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb (see separate entry), two wealthy Chicago teenagers who committed the “thrill killing” of 14-year-old Bobby Franks. The parents of the defendants spared no expense in hiring Darrow to keep their boys from receiving the death penalty. Knowing full well that public opinion would heavily influence the verdict if he pled “Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity” and threw the boys to the mercy of a jury, Darrow astonished everyone by entering a guilty plea. Now the stage was set for Darrow to deliver a powerful argument against capital punishment, which is probably why he accepted the case in the first place. In a courtroom summation that lasted 12 hours over two days, he admitted that Leopold and Loeb were unbalanced and undeniably guilty, but also pointed out that no murder defendant under the age of 21 had ever been put to death in Chicago. He further placed much of the blame for the murder on the defendants’ rich and privileged upbringing, which had denied them the opportunity to mature into normal, well-adjusted individuals: In modern terms, Darrow hoped to save the boys from hanging with the “affluenza” defense. “What has this boy to do with it?” he asked the court in reference to Richard Loeb. “He was not his own mother; he was not his own grandparents. All of this was handed to him. He did not surround himself with governesses and wealth. He did not make himself. And yet he is to be compelled to pay. Do you mean to tell me that Dickie Loeb had any more to do with his making than any other product of heredity that is born upon the earth?” Darrow further argued that the killers’ obsession with existentialist philosopher Frederich Niet-

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zche had distorted their sense of right and wrong—thus shifting blame to a man who’d been dead since 1900. Returning to his oftrepeated argument that capital punishment made law officials murderers themselves, he aimed his final remarks at the heart of presiding judge John R. Caverly: “Your Honor, if these boys hang, you must do it. There can be no division of responsibility here. You can never explain that the rest overpowered you. It must be by your deliberate, cool, pre-meditated act, without a chance to shifty responsibility.” Judge Caverly deferred to Darrow, sentencing the boys to life in prison plus 99 years. Darrow’s summation was subsequently published to great acclaim, with many passages lifted verbatim for Meyer Levin’s 1956 novel and 1957 Broadway play Compulsion, a recap of LeopoldLoeb with all names changed to avoid threatened legal action from the still-living Nathan Leopold. Filmed in 1959 as the first solo production of Richard Zanuck, scripted by Richard Murphy and directed by Richard Fleischer, the screen version of Compulsion stars Orson Welles as the Darrow character Jonathan Wilk. Making his first appearance 65 minutes into the 99minute film, Welles delivers a stunning performance, avoiding his usual bombast in favor of what seems to be genuine compassion. Darrow’s 12hour summation is boiled down to 11 minutes’ screen time, with Welles holding court (literally and figuratively) so magnificently that many people who’ve seen the film actually believe the monologue was shot in one take (it wasn’t). In his autobiography, director Fleischer credits the effectiveness of the climax as much to film editor William Reynolds as to Welles: With the actor unwilling to “loop” the last 20 seconds of his summation in post-production, Reynolds was forced to piece together the missing words from Orson’s previous scenes in Compulsion, and even from a few of his earlier films. The second cinematic Clarence Darrow clone appears in Stanley Kramer’s 1960 adaptation of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s 1955 Broadway hit Inherit the Wind, inspired by the Scopes “Monkey Trial” of 1925. As noted in the separate entries for William Jennings Bryan

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and John Scopes, Darrow was paid by the ACLU, the Baltimore Sun and several other progressive concerns to defend Tennessee schoolteacher Scopes on a charge of teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in defiance of the state’s Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of anything but the biblical version of Creation. As played on screen by Spencer Tracy, “Henry Drummond” is the crusty but lovable defense attorney for teacher “Bertram Kates” (Dick York). The prosecution is represented by oldtime populist politician and confirmed fundamentalist Matthew Harrison Brady (Fredric March), the film’s version of Darrow’s actual opponent William Jennings Bryan. Inherit the Wind is highlighted by the courtroom clashes between the Bible-thumping Brady and the agnostic Drummond, who has all the best lines. Relentlessly breaking down Brady’s arguments throughout the trial, Drummond finally delivers the coup de grace when he puts Brady on the stand as a “biblical expert,” reducing the poor man to babbling idiocy as he tries to defend the Word of God. Though he loses the case Drummond scores a moral victory, while the devastated Brady suffers a stroke and dies just after the verdict is reached. When a cynical reporter nastily remarks that the corpulent Brady “died of a busted belly,” Drummond angrily rises to the defense of his fallen opponent, who according to the film (if not the play) was once one of Drummond’s dearest friends. Let’s tackle the last point first. Though Clarence Darrow had often been on the same political page as William Jennings Bryan, the two men were never good buddies; in fact, Darrow regarded Bryan as something of a mental midget. As to the rest of Inherit the Wind, while revisionist historians prefer to believe that Bryan’s reputation was “ruined” in the courtroom by the merciless Darrow, court records indicate that the two men came out fairly even in their arguments, with Bryan actually emerging the victor when Darrow attempted to embarrass him by placing him on the stand—which occurred the last afternoon of the trial, the only time that Darrow and Bryan argued face to face. And while it seems that Henry Drummond is .

conducting his defense in a manner approved by those financing him, in truth the ACLU wanted Darrow to mount an argument against the Butler Act, which much to their dismay he never did. One gets the impression that Darrow cared less about Butler or Scopes than he did about having a public forum for his agnosticism—decidedly at odds with Drummond’s final scene in the play, where he holds both the Bible and a copy of Darwin in his hands as if balancing their arguments. Finally, as noted in the entry for William Jennings Bryan, the callous postmortem remark that his opponent died of “a busted belly” was made by Darrow himself. Clarence Darrow continued practicing law into the 1930s, most famously defending a black family who had been moved to violence after being harassed by a white crowd (Where is the movie about that?). After his death in 1938, Motion Picture Herald revealed a heretofore unexplored Hollywood connection in Darrow’s past: In 1931 Universal Pictures hired him as a technical adviser on The Mystery of Life, a proposed film about the theory of Evolution that, unhappily, never came to fruition.

DAVIS, GOV. JIMMIE—AND GOV. MIRIAM “MA” FERGUSON The film: Ada (MGM, 1961)

When Wirt Williams’ Pulitzer-nominated novel Ada Dallas was published in 1959, he was Assistant Professor of English at Los Angeles City College. Prior to that, he had worked as a newspaperman in Louisiana, a fertile ground for political novels based on actual people and events (see separate entry for Huey Long). In Ada Dallas, heroine Ada Malone is a soiled dove from the slums of New Orleans, working as a call girl to pay her college tuition. Television writer Steve Jackson falls in love with Ada and sets her up with her own TV show, but she jilts him in favor of self-styled “singing sheriff ” Tommy Dallas, a dense country troubadour who is running for governor with Machiavellian political boss Sylvestre Marin pulling the strings. Marin encourages Tommy to marry Ada, knowing that her popularity will attract voters. After the election New Orleans’ social elite shuns the new

Davis First Lady, who swears vengeance on them all. When Tommy is seriously wounded by a wouldbe assassin, Ada takes over as governor, pushing through legislation that will benefit her constituents but not the corrupt political establishment represented by Marin. Once her position of power is a fait accompli Ada does an aboutface, conspiring with unscrupulous State Police chief Robert Yancey to set up a Nazi-like dictatorship, complete with a Hitlerjugend-style boys’ club. She goes so far as to stage a fully armed invasion of New Orleans, forcing the socialites who’d snubbed her to pay her homage. Eventually murder becomes part of her modus operandi, and it’s up to such disillusioned exassociates as Steve Jackson to bring about her downfall. This bears but faint resemblance to the 1961 film version Ada, written by Arthur Sheekman and William Driskill and directed by Daniel Mann. On this occasion Ada (Susan Hayward) is still a hooker when she elopes with good-oleboy guitar player Bo Gillis (Dean Martin), the hand-picked gubernatorial candidate of evil politico Marin (Wilfred Hyde- White, who seems to be auditioning for the role of Mr. Burns on The Simpsons). Realizing that he’s a mere puppet for the powers-that-be, newly elected governor Gillis begins to work for the people’s best interests, annoying Marin no end. The wily power broker begs Ada to keep her husband in line; she agrees—but only if she herself is appointed Lieutenant Governor. After the assassination attempt on Bo, Ada steps into the governor’s office and continues promoting the procitizen, anti-“machine” agenda of her ailing husband. In retaliation, Marin and crooked police chief Yancey (Ralph Meeker) conspire to publicly expose Ada’s previous life as a working girl. Upon his recovery Bo makes a dramatic appearance before the legislature to stand by his wife and renounce Marin and his fellow grafters. Yes, Ada is taken from the novel by Wirt Williams. Taken as far as possible. Williams’ primary inspiration for the character of Tommy Dallas (still obvious in the film despite the name change and all that other stuff) was Jimmie Davis, a Louisiana sharecropper’s

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son who worked his way through college as a blues singer. After achieving showbiz popularity, David entered politics in 1938 as Shreveport’s public safety commissioner. Six years later he ran for governor, coasting on his down-home appeal and his musical talents, using his selfcomposed hit tune “You Are My Sunshine” (once described as “the most valuable music copyright in history”) as his campaign song. Elected in 1944, he set a record for absenteeism during his four-year term, habitually leaving Baton Rouge for Hollywood to pursue a film career that had begun in 1942: “I turned down a chance for millions to take a job that paid $1000 a month.” After leaving office in 1948 he kept active as a recording artist and radio-TV performer until he ran for a second term in 1959 on a “Peace and Harmony” platform. Again emerging victorious, he rode his horse up the capitol steps on the morning of his 1960 inauguration. Though he fought long and hard against federal desegregation, once this policy became inevitable he labored just as mightily on behalf of improving the integrated Louisiana school system, setting up teacher pensions and other benefits. At the end of his term in 1964 it was back to the concert and TV trail, except for a tentative stab at a third term in 1971. Far better known in his later years as singer-songwriter than a politician, Jimmie Davis died at the age of 101 in 2000. We haven’t mentioned either of “The Singing Governor”’s two wives, Alvena Adams (who died in 1969) and legendary gospel singer Anna Gordon Davis. Suffice to say that neither lady was a prostitute before wedding Davis, and neither transformed overnight into Eva Peron. The notion of a geetar-plunkin’ politico wed to a doxie-turned-dictator was strictly an invention of Wirt Williams—but the notion of a governor’s wife who became a governor herself did have a precedent in the person of Miriam Amanda “Ma” Ferguson (1875–1961). And no, she didn’t spend her prenuptial years beckoning “johns” into her boudoir either. Born and college-educated in Texas, she was the perfectly respectable helpmate of James “Pa” Ferguson, who was elected state governor in

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1915. Two years later Ferguson was impeached and convicted of misappropriating public funds; booted out of office, he was barred from ever reentering politics. But Pa Ferguson wasn’t about to be counted out: Despite his previous resistance to Women’s Suffrage, in 1924 he took advantage of the 19th Amendment and arranged for his wife Ma to run for governor, confident that he would remain the power behind the throne. Campaigning on the slogan “Two Governors For the Price of One,” Ma surprised everybody by winning the election. During her first term she implemented many of her husband’s policies with a few improvements of her own, crusading against the Ku Klux Klan, condemning the country’s Prohibition laws, and granting mass pardons to relieve overcrowded Texas prisons; and though a Democrat all her life, she gained a reputation as a fiscal conservative. Like her husband, Ma Ferguson ran afoul of lawmakers for granting highway contracts exclusively to companies who advertised in her newspaper The Ferguson Forum, but unlike Pa she managed to avoid prosecution. And in case one might assume that her election and first term were merely byproducts of her husband’s clout, be it noted that she was reelected on the strength of her own record for another threeyear term in 1932. All this without sending tanks and troops into Austin. In the course of my research I have found no evidence that Governor Ma Ferguson ever reached out to her neighbor from the east, Governor Jimmie Davis, to compare notes, or even if they ever met each other. So I’ll continue assuming that Wirt Williams combined and embellished their stories in Ada Dallas in the spirit of “Two Governors for the Price of One.”

DAVIS, L ANNY—AND R ICHARD T. DAVIS, REMY DAVIS The film: In the Valley of Elah (NALA Films/ Summit Entertainment/Samuels Media/Blackfriars Bridge Films/WIP, 2007)

Richard Davis was an “army brat” in the best sense of the phrase. His MP father Lanny was a 20-year-man, his mother Remy an Army medic. Growing up on military bases in California,

Kansas and Missouri, Richard was 19 when he himself joined the service in 1998. After serving in Bosnia he reenlisted in 2001 and participated in the Iraq invasion as part of Baker Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Infantry. His superiors praised him for his fearlessness and inventiveness with tools in the thick of battle … but there was something going on beneath the surface that wasn’t so positive. A long stretch of erratic behavior came to a climax when he told a medic that two soldiers had cut open his hand and beaten him. In fact, the wounds were self-inflicted, part of a bloodbrother ritual with his friends. On May 20, 2003, one month after fighting in the brutal Baghdad “Midtown Massacre,” Richard called his parents. According to Lanny Davis, the boy sounded more frightened of his friends than any combat enemy: “He said he didn’t have a safe place to lay his head. He’s tired of looking out for himself.” The last words Richard ever spoke to his father were “Dad, can’t you get me out of here?” Returning from Iraq, Richard was at Fort Benning, Georgia, awaiting redeployment when on July 15, 2003, he was reported AWOL. A friend told the authorities than Richard had been planning to make a surprise visit to his family, but first went out on the town with four buddies, where he reportedly became drunk and disorderly. No one else saw him after that. Nearly two months passed before Lanny Davis arrived at Fort Benning, looking for answers. Nobody in charge seemed terribly concerned about Richard’s disappearance, and were sticking to the AWOL story despite the perplexing fact that he’d left all his clothes and belongings behind. “I think everyone’s lying,” Lanny exclaimed in a later interview. “And I’ll tell ’em that straight to their face.” In September an official investigation finally got under way, largely due to Lanny’s persistence. It wasn’t until November 7, 2003, that the Columbus, Georgia, coroner announced that Richard’s remains had been found scattered all over the woods near Fort Benning—and that he had been stabbed at least 33 times. Richard’s four “blood brother” Army companions on the evening of July 13—Alberto Martinez, Mario Navarette, Douglas Woodcoff and Jacob Burgoyne—were charged with murder.

Davis Gradually the story came together. Burgoyne had been suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and was supposed to be under observation, but wasn’t; and despite his friendship with Davis there’d been friction between them. The initial theory that Burgoyne had been the killer was countered by his own testimony, in which he stated that while the belligerent Davis had fought with all four soldiers, it was Martinez who pulled the knife and stabbed the boy, after which the others tried to destroy all evidence—including the corpse. The prosecutors believed Burgoyne, but with no physical evidence they’d also have to get Navarette and Woodcoff to testify against Martinez. After the trial began on January 23, 2006, Woodcoff balked at testifying and Navarette impugned himself by swearing that he’d seen nothing. Cinching the case for the prosecution was star witness Burgoyne: “I know who the killer is, I know who is involved, I know my part in it, I’m just as guilty. I’m guilty just like everyone up here is guilty. Everyone here is guilty.” The final verdict imposed life sentences on Martinez and Navarette, with Woodcoff getting five years’ probation for concealing a crime. After Burgoyne was sentenced to 20 years for voluntary manslaughter, he was confronted in court by a stone-cold Lanny Davis: “I wanna look at his face. You murdered my son. I don’t forgive you. You’re nothing but a cold blooded, dirty murderer. The Lord Himself doesn’t forgive people like you. Whatever demon you worship won’t forgive you. There’s not a name in this world that’s bad enough for you. If I had my way, you wouldn’t be sitting here right now. You’re lucky I can’t get my hands on you.” Though Cilla McCain, author of Murder in Baker Company, has suggested that Richard Davis’ animosity towards Martinez and Navarette stemmed from the time he witnessed them raping an Iraqi girl, no definite motive for Richard’s killing has ever been established. Mark Boal, author of a 2004 Playboy article about Davis’ death and the alleged Army coverup of the circumstances, collaborated with director Paul Haggis on In the Valley of Elah, a 2007 film dramatizing the tragedy and its after-

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math. “It’s a fictional piece,” Boal explained to Seattle Today reporter Russell Korando, “and so at various junctures Paul and I thought we should change Lanny’s story to make it feel more universal…. I hope the film will stand on its own and come across as a human drama that’s poignant on some level for audiences, regardless of which side of the political spectrum they fall on.” Lanny and Remy Davis are renamed Hank and Joan Deerfield, played respectively by Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon (another instance of a Caucasian actor portraying a reallife Asian). Fort Benning, Georgia, becomes Fort Rudd, New Mexico, and the missing soldier’s outfit is changed to the 107th Infantry. In the Valley of Elah is long, drawn out and relentlessly melancholy. A former member of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, Hank Deerfield is disinclined to accept the official story that his son Mike ( Jonathan Tucker) has gone AWOL. Forcing the phlegmatic Fort Rudd MPs to conduct a search, Mike eventually receives the grim news that his son’s dismembered body has been found—period, end of report. Sensing that no one wants to give him any answers as to the circumstances of his son’s murder, Mike enlists the aid of civilian police detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron) to launch his own probe of the tragedy. The military brass doubles down on its non-cooperation, attempting to block further investigation by writing off the boy’s death as drug-related and unconnected with anyone at Fort Rudd. Finally a soldier evidently suffering from PTSD confesses that he and three equally disturbed Iraqi veterans were responsible for Mike’s murder. By film’s end, the once intensely patriotic Hank Deerfield has become utterly disillusioned by a military system that to his way of thinking turns decent young men into mindless killers, shipping them off to pointless wars and failing to properly treat their battle-related mental issues. In many ways, Deerfield’s disillusionment matches that of the real Lanny Davis, who told interviewers that his own experience in Vietnam had initially prompted him to discourage Richard from going into the military (in contrast with the film’s Hank Deerfield), and that he regarded

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former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld as a “dickhead.” This didn’t mean that Davis thoroughly approved of the changes wrought in In the Valley of Elah: He didn’t like the script’s suggestion that his son’s murderers would have been nice, upright guys had they not been warped by their combat experience, nor the scenes in which Mike Deerfield carries a hash pipe into battle and tortures an Iraqi prisoner. He also expressed discomfort over the climactic moment wherein Hank Deerfield beats up suspect Robert Ortiez (Victor Wolf ), no matter how aesthetically satisfying the scene may have been. Overall, however, Lanny Davis found it “a great honor” to be fictionalized on film, and was undoubtedly gratified by The New Yorker’s description of In the Valley of Elah as “an American film that convinces you that its protagonist is a genuinely great man.” DE VOSJOLI, PHILLIPPE THYRAUD

Veteran espionage agent and longtime chief of French Intelligence in the United States. His role in the exposure of Soviet missiles in Cuba in the early 1960s formed the basis of Leon Uris’ 1967 novel Topaz. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1969 film version top-bills Frederick Stafford as the De Vosjoli character, renamed André Devereaux.

DEWEY, THOMAS E.—AND CHARLES “LUCKY ” LUCIANO The films: Marked Woman (Warner Bros. 1937); Missing Witnesses (Warner Bros. 1937); I Am the Law (Columbia, 1938); Smashing the Rackets (RKO-Radio, 1938); Crime Takes a Holiday (Larry Darmour Prod./Columbia, 1938)

Thomas E. Dewey may have looked like “the man on the wedding cake,” as memorably described by Alice Roosevelt Longworth, but he was definitely no empty tuxedo. Born in Michigan in 1902, Dewey made New York his home in 1928, some five years after abandoning his youthful musical ambitions to become a lawyer. His experience as a federal prosecutor and a private attorney was put to excellent use when he was appointed Manhattan’s special prosecutor in 1935, immediately setting his sights on purging his jurisdiction of organized crime and political corruption. His war on the Mob netted him one of the organization’s biggest fish, Dutch

Schultz, who after managing to dodge a prison term put out a contract on Dewey. New York crime boss Charles “Lucky” Luciano (1897– 1962) vetoed this notion as being too risky—a decision that turned out to be the beginning of the end for Luciano. After Schultz was murdered by rival gangsters, Dewey focused all his attention on Lucky’s widespread prostitution ring. The tireless prosecutor gathered enough eyewitness evidence to convict Luciano on 62 different counts, resulting in a 30-year prison term. The dapper, mustachioed Dewey was deemed photogenic enough to be offered the leading role in Warner Bros.’ Marked Women, a fictionalized account of the Luciano prosecution scripted by Robert Rossen and Abem Finkel. Had he accepted, Dewey would have been paid $150,000 for his performance—and just in case he turned Warners down, the studio was prepared to offer the same amount to J. Edgar Hoover for his acting debut. But Dewey had just been elected District Attorney of New York and Hoover wasn’t about to leave Washington, so the film role of crusading D.A. David Graham went to inexpensive contract player Humphrey Bogart. Studio press agents not only heralded Marked Woman as the return of leading lady Bette Davis after her much-publicized walkout from Warners, but also as a shocking exposé of “the biggest white slavery ring ever to operate in America.” This being well into the Production Code era, the film’s obvious prostitutes are euphemistically referred to as “dance hall hostesses,” and that’s what we see on screen: No brothels, no sidewalk pickups, but plenty of jaded Janes dancing and drinking with wealthy suckers in fancy clip joints. “Ink never dries under the feet of the Freres Warner, printer’s ink, that is” quipped Pittsburgh Press-Gazette film reviewer Harold W. Cohen. “The headlines have hardly been knocked out of the front-page form before they have their writing lads busy whipping up a scenario on the subject. This time it was Marked Woman, a thinly disguised inspection—despite the rather naïve foreword—of the recent case of Lucky Luciano, Manhattan’s late and unlamented Viking of Vice.” Just as Thomas E. Dewey is rechristened

Dewey

Thomas E. Dewey.

David Graham, so too is Luciano given the new moniker of Johnny Vanning, played by “Lucky” lookalike Eduardo Ciannelli in the first of many such film assignments. Other changes were made in the real-life narrative to sidestep any possible legal action, as noted by columnist Sidney Skolsky when he itemized recent movie “boners” in his column of May 4, 1937: “In Bette Davis’ latest picture, Marked Woman, the setting is supposed to be New York, declares [reader] Gerald Malmed, and this is verified by the opening scenes showing Broadway. However, in both courtroom scenes, there are ladies on the jury. This is not permitted in New York…. But I believe this was done purposely by Warners so that if any person claimed that he was depicted by a character in the picture, the producers could show it was not about the famous Luciano case, for the flicker never deliberately states that the setting is New York.” Ersatz Thomas Deweys appear in several other films produced between 1937 and 1939. Also from Warner Bros., Missing Witnesses features John Litel as Dewey surrogate Inspector Lane in a scenario that “parallels in some instances the actual story of the racket investiga-

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tions of Mr. Dewey” (Motion Picture Herald). The same studio’s Racket Busters reunited Marked Woman’s screenwriter Robert Rossen and star Humphrey Bogart, this time on the wrong side of the law as racketeer “Czar” Martin; Walter Abel plays the requisite racket-busting lawyer Hugh Allison. Independent Exhibitors’ Bulletin urged theater owners to play up a “Dewey tie-in” in their advertising displays. Over at Columbia, Edward G. Robinson played incorruptible D.A. John Lindsay (presumably no relation to the NYC mayor of the same name) in I Am the Law, adapted from Fred Allhoff ’s Liberty magazine serial by frequent Frank Capra collaborator Jo Swerling. Again quoting Independent Exhibitor’s Bulletin: “Columbia’s press sheet won’t tell you so, but [ John Lindsay] is modeled after New York’s famed Thomas E. Dewey… . If ever a ‘natural’ was dropped into exhibitors’ laps, this is it!” Columbia also released independent producer Larry Darmour’s Crime Takes a Holiday, in which Dewey stand-in Walter Forbes ( Jack Holt) uses a potentially deadly subterfuge to bring “untouchable” criminal mastermind J.J. Grant (Douglass Dumbrille) out in the open. Finally, RKO’s Smashing the Rackets finds D.A. Edward Greer (George Irving) teaming up with FBI agent Jim Conway (Chester Morris) to—yes— smash the rackets headed by crooked attorney Steve Lawrence (Bruce Cabot). Once the “Dewey” cycle was played out in Hollywood, the real Thomas Dewey’s exploits continued providing fodder for the radio series Mr. District Attorney, which began in 1939 as a serialized account of big-city crimebusting, branching out into self-contained stories of espionage and black marketeering in World War II. Mr. District Attorney would spawn a handful of theatrical features and two separate TV series before running its course in 1954, by which time New York State Governor Thomas E. Dewey had achieved negative fame as a twice-defeated Republican presidential candidate—most ignominiously when despite a premature Chicago Tribune headline he lost to Harry Truman in 1948. Dewey died in 1971, 17 years after completing his third and final gubernatorial term.

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As for Charles “Lucky” Luciano, despite his incarceration he continued overseeing his criminal activities by proxy, even after he was deported to his native Sicily in 1946. Subsequent film portrayals of Luciano under his real name have been offered by such actors as Gian Maria Volonte, Joe Dallesandro, Stanley Tucci, Robert Davi, Andy Garcia and Anthony LaPaglia. And while the fictional gangsters played by Richard Conte in Deported (1950) and Yul Brynner in Surprise Package (1960) are said to have been inspired by Lucky Luciano during his years of exile in Sicily, for all their tough- guy bluster these characters are essentially harmless, benign and (in the case of Brynner) laughable.

DIAGHILEV, SERGE Russian patron of the arts, founder of the Ballet Russe. His most famous protégés included dancers Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky, the latter eventually (and very publicly) rebelling against the fearsome and demanding Diaghilev, who felt that he had the divine right to control every aspect of his dancers’ lives both on and off the stage. The Diaghilev-Nijinsky relationship is mirrored in Warner Bros. The Mad Genius (1931) with the characters of crippled impresario Ivan Tsarakov ( John Barrymore) and his foster son Fedor Ivanoff (Donald Cook), and with less melodrama and more sexual tension by autocratic ballet master Boris Lemontov (Anton Walbrook) and première danseuse Vicky Page (Moira Shearer) in Powell and Pressburger’s Technicolor masterpiece The Red Shoes (1948).

DILLINGER , JOHN The films: Public Hero #1 (MGM, 1935); The Petrified Forest (Warner Bros., 1936); High Sierra (Warner Bros., 1941); The Get-Away (MGM, 1941); I Died a Thousand Times (Warner Bros., 1955)

It was on March 20, 1934, that Will Hays, head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America and supreme arbiter of the Hollywood Production Code, imposed a ban on all films about the life and career of Indiana-born “Public Enemy Number One” John Dillinger. Hays explained “This position is based on the belief that production, distribution or exhibition

of such a picture would be detrimental to the best public interest.” One might assume that Hays implemented his ban after the 31-year-old Dillinger was shot down by the FBI while leaving Chicago’s Biograph Theater after watching the MGM film Manhattan Melodrama. But in fact the outlaw’s death took place on July 22, 1934; at the time of the MPPDA ban he was still a fugitive, having recently escaped from a jail in Crown Point, Indiana, by carving a phony pistol out of a potato (an embarrassing incident later played for laughs in Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run). Hays was probably reacting to a tradepaper announcement that Paramount Pictures was planning to film a biographical drama about Dillinger titled Goes Marching On, written by Bartlett Cormack. Paramount quickly backtracked on this announcement, stating that Cormack had planted the item himself without the studio’s knowledge; but even without this incentive, Will Hays was anxious to curtail newsreel coverage of Dillinger’s string of bank robberies and hairbreadth escapes, which Hays and other reformminded citizens felt had only served to glamorize the outlaw and encourage youngsters to emulate him. Perhaps hoping to avoid incurring Hays’ wrath, the producers of the Universal Newsreel offered a $5000 reward for the capture of Dillinger—though thanks to the ban, the newsreel was not allowed to advertise the reward onscreen (After it was revealed that Dillinger had been ratted out by the notorious “lady in red” Anna Sage, Universal refused to pay her the reward because she hadn’t adhered to the rules of the contest.) The embargo on films specifically about John Dillinger remained in effect for a decade, though the late criminal’s name could be mentioned onscreen in passing, or (as in the 1937 Hal Roach feature Pick a Star) as the punchline to a joke. In 1939 Warner Bros. announced plans for a bigbudget crime meller titled John Dillinger, Outlaw, produced by Hal Wallis, directed by Michael Curtiz, and starring either George Raft or Humphrey Bogart in the title role, with James Cagney as Melvin Purvis, the publicity-mongering FBI agent who brought Dillinger down. Evidently because of regional exhibitor resistance to so

Dillinger volatile a project, Warners quietly cancelled the film and diverted the proposed stars to other projects. It was not until 1945 that a movie titled Dillinger finally hit the theaters, produced by the King Bros. for Monogram Pictures and starring newcomer Lawrence Tierney as the titular desperado. The film hokes up young Dillinger’s introduction to crime by having him steal $7.00 in order to pay a speakeasy bill and impress his girl friend (his actual first conviction was for auto theft), and tends to distort other incidents in his life, but otherwise does a capable job of conveying the real Dillinger’s charisma without minimizing the seriousness of his robberies and murders. One of the most famous incidents in Dillinger’s criminal career, the April 20, 1934, shootout between his gang and the FBI at the Little Bohemia Lodge in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin, is given short shrift in Dillinger; conversely, his equally famous demise outside the Biograph Theater is faithfully (and tastefully) recreated—though to keep the budget under control, the film playing at the Biograph isn’t Manhattan Melodrama but instead an earlier Monogram programmer starring Victor Jory. The success of Dillinger encouraged other producers to dramatize the subject on screen even unto the 21st century, with the outlaw played by the likes of Nick Adams, Warren Oates, Robert Conrad, Mark Harmon, Martin Sheen and Johnny Depp. Before the ban was lifted, a number of films incorporated the known events of Dillinger’s life into fictional narratives with renamed villains. This had become so common by 1935 that MGM’s Public Hero #1 was referred to as “another Dillinger melodrama” by the trades. As indicated by the title, however, the emphasis was on Purvis-like hero Jeff Crane, played by Chester Morris. An undercover FBI agent, Crane ingratiates himself with the film’s Dillinger character Sonny Black ( Joseph Calleia), aiding in Sonny’s spectacular escape from prison so he can track down the rest of the criminal’s gang. The wounded Sonny heads to his hideout in central Wisconsin, later participating in a fierce gun battle with the Feds at a roadhouse called Little Paree. Though he undergoes plastic surgery, Sonny is spotted

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by Jeff while exiting a vaudeville theater and is promptly gunned down. You’d think that this would be the end of Public Hero #1, but screenwriter Wells Root and director J. Walter Rubin must still resolve the troubled romance between Jeff Crane and Sonny Black’s sister Terry O’Reilly ( Jean Arthur), who during most of the picture is totally oblivious to her brother’s crimes. Exhibitors could still recognize the Dillinger connection even in diluted form when Public Hero #1 was remade in 1941 as The Get-Away, starring Robert Sterling as Jeff, Donna Reed as Terry and Dan Dailey as Sonny. The Little Bohemia raid, recreated in both films, was also emulated by a number of other crime pictures of the 1930s, among them G-Men (1935), Public Enemy’s Wife (1936) and Let ’Em Have It (1936). The two best-known faux Dillinger films both came from Warner Bros. and both starred Humphrey Bogart. Adapted from Robert E. Sherwood’s Broadway play by Charles Kenyon and Delmar Daves and directed by Archie Mayo, 1936’s The Petrified Forest gave Bogart his first big movie break as he recreated his stage role of fugitive bank robber and “well-known killer” Duke Mantee. Bogart clearly patterns his performance after Dillinger—or at least the Dillinger the public knew through his newsreel appearances—complete with five o’clock shadow, haunted eyes and world-weary body language. Holding a group of people hostage in an isolated Arizona gas station, Mantee lets it be known that he’s perfectly capable of killing everyone in an instant, but also that he’d prefer to avoid violence while he and his gang await a rendezvous with Duke’s girlfriend. The most blasé of the hostages is failed poet and defeated intellectual Alan Squier (Leslie Howard, who refused to recreate his Broadway role unless Bogart was also cast in the film), who sees in Mantee a kindred spirit. Toasting Duke as “the last great apostle of rugged individualism,” Alan knows instinctively that he and the gangster are burned-out anachronisms, doomed by a merciless and depersonalized society. Maneuvering the reluctant Mantee into killing him, Alan succeeds in ennobling them both: By pulling the trigger, Duke has assured that Alan’s life-insurance policy will

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go directly to dreamy-eyed waitress Gabrielle (Bette Davis) so she can pursue the art career she has always wanted. The Petrified Forest was remade as the 1943 war melodrama Escape in the Desert, with all the texture and depth of Duke Mantee eliminated by rewriting the character as a cold-blooded Nazi officer (Helmut Dantine). Warners’ 1941 drama High Sierra, adapted by W.R. Burnett from his own novel and directed by Raoul Walsh, could be regarded as speculative fiction: What if Dillinger had been arrested rather than killed by 1934, served his prison sentence, and was released older but no wiser 6 years later, hoping to pull off one last big heist so he can spend the rest of his life in freedom and peace—despite his knowledge that all the other Depression-era outlaws are “either dead or in stir”? With greyed temples and a tinge of defeatism in his gait, Humphrey Bogart is this time cast as notorious thief Roy Earle, who reacts in disgust whenever newspapers refer to him as “Mad Dog” Earle. Hired by his ailing former boss (Donald MacBride) to pull a robbery at a posh California resort, Earle despairs at the clumsy, inexperienced punks who comprise his new gang. He also has no time for his lovelorn would-be moll Marie (Ida Lupino), choosing instead to invest his affection in sweet young cripple Velma ( Joan Leslie), who turns out to be a real rhymes-with-witch once he uses his share of the stolen money to pay for her leg operation. This is a romanticized version of John Dillinger as opposed to the unregenerate and irredeemable Sonny Black in Public Hero #1 and the embittered, fatalistic Duke Mantee in Petrified Forest. Yet because he is on the wrong side of the law Roy Earle must die at the end of the film, not outside an urban movie theater but in the wide-open spaces of the Sierra mountains. In a way it’s a happy ending, as the tearful Marie declares to the police that at long last Roy Earle has “bust out” of his self-imposed prison and is forever “free … free!” High Sierra was remade twice, first by Raoul Walsh in Western drag as Colorado Territory (1947) starring Joel McCrea and Virginia Mayo, and then virtually scene-for-scene by director Stuart Heisler as I Died a Thousand Times

(1955), with Jack Palance as Roy Earle and Shelley Winters as Marie. Though he makes a valiant effort to achieve the pathos and audience empathy of Humphrey Bogart’s earlier performance, Palance is so tightly wound that he could probably have turned Little Boy Blue into a psycho.

DOHENY, EDWARD L. California oil magnate who in the late 19th century transformed Los Angeles into one of the world’s foremost petroleum centers. His bribery of U.S. Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall triggered the Teapot Dome Scandal of 1921–22 which nearly toppled the administration of President Warren G. Harding. Upton Sinclair used Doheny as the basis for the character of J. Arnold Ross in his muckraking 1927 novel Oil!, which in turn was a primary inspiration for the 2007 historical film There Will Be Blood, wherein Ross is renamed Daniel Plainview and portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis.

DONNER , RICHARD—AND DEBBIE REYNOLDS

Breathes there a man with brain so dead that he doesn’t recognize actress Carrie Fisher’s 1987 novel Postcards from the Edge as an à clef recounting of her own life and career? Though Meryl Streep neither looks nor sounds like the novel’s Carrie Fisher counterpart Suzanne Vale in Mike Nichols’ 1990 film version of Postcards from the Edge (coscripted by Fisher herself ), the plotline involving a young actress struggling to make a comeback after drug rehab has the proverbial “familiar ring.” Fisher’s movie-star mom Debbie Reynolds, with whom she has had a bumpy relationship (we’re being kind here), is reinvented as Doris Mann, played by Shirley MacLaine—whose real-life daughter indirectly plays the younger Suzanne in a vintage Life magazine cover. Other friends and acquaintances of the actual Ms. Fisher are sprinkled throughout the film, most prominently Gene Hackman as filmmaker Lowell Kolchek, based on director Richard Donner (Superman, Lethal Weapon)— who according to Holly wood folklore was among the names floated to direct Carrie’s third Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi.

Donovan

DONOVAN, WILLIAM “WILD BILL”

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on to organize the 69th New York volunteers, an Irish-American battalion of the 165th regiment, The films: 13 Rue Madeleine (20th Century– 42nd division of the U.S. Army. Shipped to Fox, 1946); The Good Shepherd (Morgan Creek/ Tribeca/American Zoetrope/Universal, 2006) France as part of World War I’s Allied ExpediWhen William Joseph “Wild Bill” Donovan tionary Force, the “Fighting 69th” gained died at age 76 on February 8, 1959, a message renown for its fearless ferocity in battle, notably was transmitted to all foreign offices of the CIA: during Donovan’s charge into Northern France “The man most responsible than any other for by way of the Ourcq River in April 1918. Urging the existence of the Central Intelligence Agency his battalion forward with shouts of “They can’t has passed away.” A statue of the man described hit me and they won’t hit you!,” Donovan sucby President Eisenhower as “the last hero” still cessfully completed his mission, albeit losing stands on the grounds of CIA headquarters in 600 of his 1000 men—including his aide-deLangley Virginia. Though Wild Bill Donovan camp Joyce Kilmer, the poet of “Trees” fame. By was never an active member of the CIA, it can- the end of his military career Wild Bill had not be denied that he prepared the groundwork earned all four of his country’s highest awards: for the agency and kept his hand in matters with The Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service such carefully groomed protégés as CIA director Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal and the Allen Dulles. National Security Medal. The 1940 Warner Born to Irish-immigrant parents in Buffalo, Bros. film The Fighting 69th, though primarily a New York, Donovan earned his nickname “Wild vehicle for James Cagney, afforded ample screen Bill” while a member of the Columbia Univer- time to George Brent as “Wild Bill” Donovan, sity football team. After working as a lawyer, as well as two other real-life personalities: the Donovan formed a National Guard cavalry 69th’s chaplain Father Francis Duffy (Pat troop which was mobilized in 1916 during the O’Brien) and the ill-fated Joyce Kilmer ( Jeffrey United States’ campaign against Pancho Villa Lynn). along the U.S.–Mexico border. Promoted to the After the Armistice, Donovan returned to the rank of Major and later Colonel, Donovan went Law in both private and government practice while carrying on a lifestyle as ostentatious as his military service, entertaining hundreds of wealthy and influential figures in his baronial estate and spacious offices. Making several trips to Europe during the 1930s and commiserating with such leaders as Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco, Donovan became convinced that a second world war was inevitable and conveyed this opinion to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Beginning in 1939 Donovan was given several important “preparedness” assignments by FDR, acting as emissary to war- torn Great Britain in 1940 and 1941. After “Wild Bill” Donovan in a milder mood. meeting with Prime Minister

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Winston Churchill, Donovan set about organizing America’s first formal spy agency along the lines of Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6. Under his auspices the Office of Strategic Services was born in 1942, not long after America’s entry into World War II. The OSS was dedicated to dispatching highly trained civilian and military volunteers into enemy territory for the purposes of espionage and subversion. Recommissioned as a Brigadier General, Donovan yearned to take an active part in the OSS’ European ground movements, but was considered nonexpendable and banned from entering combat zones—though that didn’t stop him from showing up at Normandy Beach a little over 24 hours after D-Day. There were those in Washington who regarded the OSS as too high-handed, reckless and disorganized for the good of the country, among them Roosevelt’s successor Harry S Truman, who disbanded the organization in 1945 despite Donovan’s efforts to keep it afloat during peacetime. Once the OSS was declared defunct and declassified, it was permissible for Hollywood to make dramatic films about the agency’s topsecret World War II missions. One such production was designed by 20th Century–Fox as a followup to its highly successful 1945 “docudrama” The House on 92nd Street (see separate entry for Fritz Duquesne), redeploying the earlier film’s producer Louis de Rochement, director Henry Hathaway, screenwriter John Monks, Jr., and cinematographer Norbert Brodine. Drawing its title from the actual address of Gestapo headquarters in Le Havre France, Fox’s 13 Rue Madeleine stars James Cagney as American spymaster Robert Emmett “Bob” Sharkey, a character who in the original screenplay by Monks and Sy Bartlett was patently based on Wild Bill Donovan. Less flamboyant and more businesslike than his role model, Cagney nonetheless captures the essence of Wild Bill with his brusque, matter-of-fact line delivery, notably in Bob Sharkey’s first scene with his newly recruited agents: “The average American is a good sport, plays by the rules. But this war is no game. And no secret agent is a hero or a good sport—that is, no living agent. You’re

going to be taught to kill, to cheat, to rob and lie…. Fair play—that’s out. Years of decency and honest living—forget all about them or turn in your suits. Because the enemy can forget.” 13 Rue Madeleine is set in 1944, with Sharkey and his boss Charles Gibson (Walter Abel) mounting a foray into occupied France and Holland to locate an important Nazi V-2 missile base. Aware that one of their agent trainees, Bill O’Connell (Richard Conte), is actually a Nazi mole named Wilhelm Kuncel, Sharkey and Gibson make the strategic decision not to arrest Kuncel but to feed him false information and send him on a dummy mission to throw the Germans off track. Another trainee, Jeff Lassiter (Frank Lattimore), is assigned to follow Kuncel into Holland before proceeding with the real mission—and to kill the double agent if necessary. But Kuncel is on to the scheme and calmly disposes of Lassiter by cutting the man’s parachute cord. To prevent Kuncel from blowing the whistle on other American agents and exposing the entire operation to the Nazis, Bob Sharkey must return to the field himself and finish Lassiter’s mission. Captured by the enemy and taken to Gestapo headquarters, Sharkey is able to withstand torture at Kuncel’s hands just long enough to allow Gibson to seek out and destroy the house at 13 Rue Madeleine—knowing full well that Sharkey himself will perish in the process. One might think that Wild Bill Donovan would be flattered by the script’s contrivance of allowing his movie counterpart to personally face danger behind enemy lines. But Donovan strongly objected to 13 Rue Madeleine in general and the plot device of a Nazi double agent within the OSS in particular. He denied permission to identify the spy organization by name, forcing the scriptwriters to refer to Sharkey’s command as “0–77.” Donovan also insisted that Cagney’s character be rewritten to expunge virtually all similarities between the fictional Bob Sharkey and the factual Wild Bill. As a result, Sharkey’s character bears a closer resemblance to the film’s technical advisor, former OSS operative Peter Ortiz. Bill Donovan’s disappointment over President Truman’s dismantling of the OSS was alle-

Doogan viated when in 1947 the organization was effectively reborn as the CIA. Though as mentioned Donovan was never officially a member of the new agency, he served in an unofficial advisory capacity well into the Cold War era. Just prior to the CIA’s formation Donovan renewed his legal activities one last time as an assistant prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, taking great personal satisfaction in prosecuting former Nazi officers who had tortured and murdered OSS agents. At the time of his retirement from public service in 1954, Donovan was serving as Ambassador to Thailand. Twenty-seven years after his death, Wild Bill Donovan again appeared onscreen in fictional form in The Good Shepherd, a pageantlike saga of the CIA from its inception in 1947 to the early 1960s as seen through the eyes of agent Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), a character based on the agency’s onetime counterintelligence chief James Angleton (see separate entry). Like a number of other CIA operatives, Wilson is shown cutting his teeth with the OSS, here headed by General William “Bill” Sullivan, played by the film’s director Robert De Niro. In an official CIA critique of The Good Shepherd, agency reviewers David Robarge, Gary McCollim. Nicholas Dujmovic and Thomas G. Coffey analyzed the similarities and differences between the film’s fictional characters and their real-life equivalents. Of Robert De Niro’s spin on Bill Donovan, the reviewers commented “De Niro alternatively is preachy, moralistic, and cynical. Donovan was none of these.”

DOOGAN, PAT—AND CHERRY AND GLENN FLOTHE The film: The Frozen Ground (Grindstone Entertainment/Emmett/Furla Films/Cheetah Vision/Count Five/Envision Entertainment/Valentina Films/K5 Intl./Knightsbridge Entertainment/Paradox Entertainment/Picture Perfect Corp./Lionsgate, 2013)

With the obvious exception of Cindy Paulson herself, no one was more delighted than Anchorage detective Glenn Flothe that Paulson, a 17year-old prostitute, had managed to escape certain death at the hands of Alaskan serial killer Robert Hansen on June 13, 1983. Far more for-

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tunate than Hansen’s previous female victims, Cindy would later recall what was running through her mind that day: “[T]his motherfucker wasn’t getting away with it…. I knew I was in trouble…. But if there was any chance of me getting away, he wasn’t getting away with it.” She even had the presence of mind to leave her blue sneakers hidden in the back seat of Hansen’s car as evidence. Barefoot and still wearing Hansen’s handcuffs, Cindy waited in a room at the Big Timber Motel near Anchorage until the police arrived. Under questioning, Hansen claimed that the girl was just angry because he hadn’t paid her for oral sex. But Glenn Flothe, part of a team of Alaska State Troopers who’d been dogging the trail of the elusive Hansen for over a year (though they hadn’t yet identified him), had faith in Paulson’s testimony, as well as FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood’s theory that the killer, who apparently enjoyed tracking down his fleeing victims before shooting them, was an experienced hunter with an inferiority complex. The profile was a perfect fit for Robert Hansen, already well known to authorities for the lesser crimes he’d committed before relocating from Iowa to Alaska, not to mention his oftarticulated hatred for the women who’d rejected him. Armed with a search warrant, Flothe’s team burrowed through Hansen’s home, cars and private airplane, not only finding items that had belonged to the missing and known-dead women but also an aviation map with tiny “Xes” marking all the murder sites. It would take a few more months of assembling all the pieces of the puzzle before Robert Hansen, known as the “Butcher-Baker Killer” because of his job in a small-town bakery, was sentenced to life plus 461 years for kidnapping and murder. He died in a prison hospital at age 75 in 2014. In the months preceding the release of writerdirector Scott Walker’s Frozen Ground, studio press notices indicated that the film would be a faithful rendition of the pursuit and capture of Robert Hansen, with actual names and locations used (The 2007 release Naked Fear had been built around a serial killer who tracked down a terrified unclothed girl in the wide open spaces of New Mexico, but was not officially inspired

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by the Butcher-Baker case). As promised, the completed film was set in Alaska, with John Cusack as Robert Hansen and Vanessa Hudgins as Cindy Paulson—and except for the requisite detail alterations and fictionalized characters for dramatic effect (including Paulson’s pimp, played by the film’s co-producer 50 Cent), the storyline sticks to the facts. And yet, the character played by Nicolas Cage who is obviously meant to be Glenn Flothe has been renamed Jack Holcombe, with Flothe’s wife Cherry (played by Radha Mitchell) and District Attorney Pat Doogan (Kurt Fuller) similarly rechristened Allie Holcombe and Pat Clives respectively (Hansen’s own wife Darla, played by Katherine La Nasa, undergoes a halfchange to Fran Hansen). Questions as to why the real Glenn Flothe chose to withhold his name from the film have never been satisfactorily answered, though it is speculated that as a modest man and dedicated team player, Flothe had no desire to grab all the glory of Hansen’s arrest for himself. Another clue to Glenn Flothe’s reluctance to capitalize on the publicity surrounding Frozen Ground might be found in his statement to the Anchorage Dispatch on the occasion of Robert Hansen’s death: “On this day we should only remember his many victims and all their families, and my heart goes out to all of them.”

DOSTOYEVSKY, F YODOR Russian novelist, author of such imperishable 19th century classics as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. It may be hard to believe that the character of contemporary American novelist Alex Sheldon (Luke Wilson) in the 2003 romantic comedy Alex & Emma is based on Dostoyevsky. But in fact the central dilemma confronting Sheldon in the film, wherein he must complete a novel in 30 days to pay off an enormous debt lest he be snuffed by the Cuban Mafia, is inspired by the crisis that faced Dostoyevsky when he finished his novel The Gambler within a 30-day period to square a gambling debt. And like Dostoyevsky before him, Alex Sheldon ends up falling in love with his pretty stenographer Emma Dinsmore (Kate Hudson).

DOTY, THOMAS G. On May 22, 1962, Continental Airlines Flight 11 exploded over Centerville, Iowa, killing all 45 people on board. At 8:35 p.m. that evening Thomas G. Doty had boarded the plane at Chicago’s O’Hare Field. Facing a court hearing for an earlier armed robbery, Doty carried a homemade bomb on board Flight 11, planning to kill himself in a manner that would allow his wife and daughter to collect his $150,000 life insurance policy. A subsequent investigation revealed that he’d placed the bomb in the usedtowel bin in the right rear bathroom shortly after he was airborne. Doty’s suicide-by-dynamite would be recreated (with far less disastrous results) in Arthur Hailey’s 1968 novel Airport, filmed in 1970 with Van Heflin as Doty equivalent D.O. Guerrero.

DOUGLAS, JOHN E. The films: Manhunter (Red Dragon Productions S.A./DEG, 1986); The Silence of the Lambs (Strong Heart/Demme Productions/Orion, 1991); Red Dragon (Mikona Productions GmbH & Co. KG/Pan Productions/Scott Free Productions/MGM/Dino De Laurentiis Co./Universal, 2002)

Born in Brooklyn in 1945, John E. Douglas joined the FBI in 1970 following college and Air Force service. Beginning as a SWAT sniper, Douglas moved into hostage negotiation, a skill he later taught along with criminal psychology to trainees at the Quantico FBI Academy. His expertise in behavioral sciences and his pioneering use of criminal profiling earned him a national reputation during the Atlanta Child Murders of 1979–1981. Bucking conventional wisdom, Douglas determined that the serial murderer was not the traditional white, middleaged “friendly stranger” but instead a young black man. This then-controversial theory led to the arrest of Wayne Williams, whom Douglas trapped into revealing himself by forcing the suspect to lose his temper. Douglas’ other interrogation techniques have included entering prisons late at night, calling upon incarcerated murder suspects unannounced, and once the suspect is off guard asking questions to which Douglas already knew the answers to let the suspect know

Dowd he “had his number”—a procedure preferably conducted in a dimly lit environment. As creator of the FBI’s Criminal Profiling Program, Douglas endeavored to get into the minds of murderers by carrying on preparatory monologues in which he first played the victim and then the perpetrator. By “feeling” the psyche of the killer, Douglas would theoretically become the killer himself in the course of the investigation. During his years with the FBI, Douglas developed several viable theories: Most serial killers are made, not born, usually as a result of childhood traumas; their murderous fantasies can never be satisfied nor the criminals rehabilitated, but they can be understood; the worst killers are not those who are overtly sadistic, but those like Ted Bundy who can blend in with normal people; and, as in the case of Wayne Williams, the best (though definitely not the quickest) method of getting the truth is to trigger the fantasy that motivates the killer. Author Thomas Harris expressed his fascination with the working methods of John E. Douglas by way of his fictional FBI profiler Jack Crawford, introduced in Harris’ 1981 suspense novel Red Dragon. In 1986 the novel was transferred to the big screen as Manhunter, adapted and directed by Michael Mann. Dennis Farina was the first of three actors to portray Jack Crawford, who on this occasion supervises fellow profiler Will Graham (William Petersen) in his search for a serial killer known as “The Tooth Fairy.” In the process, Graham and Crawford must rely upon the expertise of a brilliant, long- imprisoned multiple murderer named Hannibal Lecter, known for reasons that soon become obvious as “Hannibal the Cannibal.” In Manhunter, Lecter is played by Brian Cox; but after the release of the second Thomas Harris movie adaptation, the Oscar- winning The Silence of the Lambs, the role of Hannibal the Cannibal would forever be associated with actor Anthony Hopkins. Though the primary Federal investigator in Silence of the Lambs is Clarice Starling ( Jodie Foster), she still takes her orders regarding the trackdown of elusive murderer “Buffalo Bill” from her boss Jack Crawford, here played by Scott Glenn. John Douglas served as one of the

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film’s technical advisors, supplying Glenn with an audio tape of Douglas’ interrogation of reallife serial killers Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris. “Now you are part of my world” intoned Douglas, at least according to Glenn’s commentary on the DVD release of Silence of the Lambs. So unnerved was Scott Glenn by this experience that he passed on replaying Jack Crawford in Red Dragon, the 2002 remake of Manhunter; though Anthony Hopkins returns as Hannibal Lecter, Crawford is portrayed by Harvey Keitel. Outside the realm of this book is the 2013 TV series Hannibal, in which Jack Crawford underwent a change of ethnicity in the person of Laurence Fishburne. Eleven years earlier, a film titled Hannibal was released theatrically, again starring Anthony Hopkins as the title character, with Julianne Moore replacing Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling. This Ridley Scott–directed sequel to Silence of the Lambs takes place ten years later, so we must assume that Jack Crawford has retired from the FBI since the character is nowhere to be found. In 1996, John E. Douglas penned his autobiography (in collaboration with Mark Olshaker), Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit. As of this writing, an internet-series adaptation of Mindhunter, coproduced by David Hunter and actress Charlize Theron and written by Joe Penhall and Scott Buck, is slated for a 2017 Netflix debut. The closest this project would seem to come to a John Douglas character is actor Cotter Smith as “Shepard,” unit chief of the FBI National Training Academy.

DOWD, JEFF The film: The Big Lebowski (Working Title Films/Polygram Filmed Entertainment/Gramercy Pictures, 1998)

Leonard Maltin has described the Coen Brothers’ neo-noir comedy The Big Lebowski as a “shaggy dog story”; I can’t vouch for the “dog” part, but it certainly is shaggy. What passes for a plot involves a hirsute, overraged slacker known as “The Dude” ( Jeff Bridges), who happens to share the same name as crippled, crotchety, über-conservative zillionaire Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston), better known as “The

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Big Lebowski.” All the Dude cares about in life are bowling, White Russians and marijuana, at least until a pair of hired thugs beat him up, demanding the money his “wife” owes them. For bad measure, one of the hoods pees on the Dude’s beloved wall-to-wall carpet. Urged on by his motley crew of bowling buddies, the Dude seeks out the other Lebowski to demand that his carpet be replaced. Turns out that it’s the “Big Lebowski” whose trophy wife Bunny (Tara Reid) is heavily in debt to the boss of those incontinent hired torpedoes. Before we get to the meat of the story, in which Bunny is kidnapped and the “Big Lebowski” finagles the Dude into delivering the ransom money—as if it’s going to be that easy—the audience is treated to the initial meeting between the two radically different Lebowskis. “Wait, let me explain something to you,” clarifies the Dude. “I am not Mr. Lebowski. You’re Mr. Lebowski. I’m the Dude. So, that’s what you call me. You know, that, or ‘His Dudeness,’ or ‘Duder,’ or ‘El Dudarino,’ if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.” The Big Lebowski is a true story in the same manner as the Coens’ Fargo (1996), which is to say not true at all. Admittedly, the filmmakers borrowed a few elements from real life. The Coens’ friend Peter Exline, a faculty member of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, once actually owned a wall-to-wall rug which, like the Dude’s, “tied the room together.” And as in the film, Exline once reclaimed a car that had been stolen from him, only to find an 8th-grader’s homework in the back seat. Otherwise, Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski was wholly inspired by Jeffrey Dowd, a movie producer and lifelong political activist whom the Coens had befriended while he was mapping out the marketing strategy for their 1984 film Blood Simple. It was in the 6th grade that Dowd was nicknamed “Dude” via the usual process of classmates poking fun at his last name. Like the Dude, Dowd had in 1970 been a member of the anti-war group The Seattle Seven; he also boasted a headful of long, unkempt hair and dressed in colorful if not always laundered attire. As for the Dude’s general demeanor, in 2013 Dowd told the Huffington Post “The body language is one hundred percent me

in the movie,” amending this figure to 80 percent two years later in an interview with The Cannabist. For the benefit of his fans—who numbered in the millions once the low-grossing Big Lebowski graduated to cult-classic status in the early 21st century—Dowd sustained the illusion that he was exactly the same as his screen counterpart, describing his recreational pursuits as “The usual: bowl, drive around, the occasional acid flashback.” Those who knew Dowd well were quick to point out that while he looked the part of a slacker, he was anything but: Fast-talking, nimble-witted, immensely creative and extremely industrious, as anyone who’d been a founding member of the celebrated Sundance Film Festival would have to be. Though he threw a big bowling party for the cast and crew of Blood Simple, he himself was not an enthusiast of the sport. And while his consumption of marijuana was monumental, he parted company from the film’s “Dude” in his drinking preference. “Do I drink White Russians all the time?” he rhetorically asked Huffington Post. “No…. The reason it was White Russians is you could have a lot more fun with a White Russian than you can with, say, vodka soda.” Withal, Jeff Dowd had no trouble identifying with his fictional persona as “an intellectual drifter” who doesn’t care what people think of him and is steadfastly loyal to his grungy friends and his political convictions: “He’s a character who tells the truth.” Jeff Bridges, whose resemblance to the actual Dude is as remarkable as the fact that the two men were born three weeks apart in 1949, pinpointed the Dude’s appeal in The Big Lebowski in an interview on NPR’s All Things Considered: “I think there’s a little dude in all of us. That’s probably why I like him, because I see a lot of myself in the guy.” Big Lebowski co-creator Joel Coen added that the beauty of the Dude is that the character can be dropped into “the most impossible of situations” as “the person who seems least equipped to deal with it.” The operative word is “seems.” If it weren’t for the Dude, none of the loose plot ends of The Big Lebowski would ever be tied up, none of the

Druggan Innocent saved nor the Guilty punished. In his final conversation with the ubiquitous “Stranger” (Sam Elliott) who narrates The Big Lebowski, the Dude brilliantly sums it all up: “Yeah, well. The Dude Abides.” The only difference between Jeff Lebowski and Jeff Dowd is that the latter would have been intelligent enough to credit his paraphrased philosophy to Ecclesiastes 1:4—or failing that, to author George R. Stewart of The Earth Abides fame.

DRUGGAN, TERRY—AND FRANKIE L AKE, SAMUEL “NAILS” MORTON, HYMIE WEISS The film: The Public Enemy (Warner Bros., 1931)

The many backstage yarns arising from James Cagney’s breakthrough picture The Public Enemy are well enough known that we don’t have to recount them in detail. It is part of every film buff ’s primary education that Edward Woods was originally cast as charismatic Prohibition gangster Tommy Powers, with Cagney in support as his less interesting buddy Matt Doyle, but director William Wellman realized early on who was the stronger of the two actors and switched their roles. Also common movie-history knowledge is the fact that the legendary scene in which Tommy smashes a grapefruit in the face of his castoff mistress (Mae Clarke) was patterned after a real-life incident in which mobster Hymie Weiss used a messy omelet to shut his girlfriend up. Finally, we should all know by now that the vignette wherein Tommy and Matt purchase the horse that killed their pal Nails Nathan (Leslie Fenton) in a riding accident, then fill the nag full of bullet holes, was inspired by the similar revenge carried out by the associates of gangster Samuel “Nails” Morton after his fatal fall from a horse in 1929. A bit more on this last morsel of authenticity: Morton’s buddies didn’t buy the ill-fated horse, but merely rented the animal; and instead of plugging it in its stable as in the film, the boys took the horse “for a ride” to Southwest Chicago before finishing their work. Up until then, horseback riding had been a vogue amongst Chi cagoland hoodlums, and few were more “vogueish” than Nails Morton, who was also a rabid

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aviation enthusiast. On July 4, 1922, Morton created a sensation when he arrived at the Benny Leonard–Rocky Kansas boxing match at Michigan City, Indiana, by swooping down outside the stadium in his own private plane. Though this episode didn’t make it into The Public Enemy, screenwriters John Bright and Kubec Glasmon otherwise display no concern over libel laws, inasmuch as both Morton and Hymie Weiss were safely dead by the time the film premiered in 1931. But there were a couple of gangland figures fictionalized in the film who were still very much alive—and for all we know, very much flattered by the performances of Jimmy Cagney and Eddie Woods as their respective movie counterparts Tommy Powers and Matt Doyle. Inseparable friends since childhood, Chicago bootleggers Terry Druggan and Frankie Lake were members of the Irish-American Valley Gang, led by Paddy “The Bear” Ryan (who appears under his real name in The Public Enemy, played by Robert Emmet O’Connor). After Ryan was bumped off in the early 1920s, the youthful Terry and Frankie took charge of the operation, now known as the Druggan-Lake Gang. In 1924 the boys were sentenced to jail but allowed to regularly leave their cells and “attend to business” by corrupt local politicians. A year later they joined the Al Capone organization, giving Al 40 percent of their liquor profits in exchange for protection. Like the two protagonists in Public Enemy, Terry and Frankie were rich beyond their wildest dreams, flaunting their wealth with a string of chauffeured Rolls-Royces, catered gourmet meals and nightly excursions into the smartest supper clubs, always snappily dressed and with a classy dame on each arm. Just to make sure no one would mistake their veneer of sophistication for softness, the boys knew exactly when to flex their muscles. Cagney could not have come up with a better display of machismo than the time Terry Druggan was ordered off a racetrack for fixing a race, whereupon he flashed his gun and threatened to kill the officials on the spot if they didn’t change their minds. (PS: They did). In Public Enemy, both Tommy Powers and

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Matt Doyle come to violent ends, with Matt machine-gunned in the street and Tommy’s battered corpse delivered “gift-wrapped” to his mother’s doorstep. Not so Terry Druggan and Frankie Lake, who managed to save their millions after the end of Prohibition and lived in security for many years thereafter. Breaking up their association in the late 1930s, both men went into legitimate businesses. While Lake passed away in financial and personal comfort in 1947, Druggan died broke and ravaged by disease in 1954. DU MAURIER , GERALD

Distinguished actor and manager of the British stage, who popularized theatrical realism and championed the works of playwright James Barrie. In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1930 thriller Murder, Herbert Marshall stars as Sir John Menier, a Du Maurieresque actor-manager who serves on a murder-trial jury and later tries to clear the defendant, actress Diana Baring (Nora Barring), by calling upon his wealth of theatrical skills.

DUQUESNE, FRITZ—AND WILLIAM G. SE BOLD

The film: The House on 92nd Street (20th Century–Fox, 1945)

An employee of Consolidated Aircraft in San Diego, California, William G. Sebold paid a visit to his birth country of Germany in 1939. There he was contacted by members of the Nazi party, who told him that despite being a naturalized American he was still German at heart, and thus should dedicate himself to the Third Reich. The Nazis asked him to return to the U.S. and continue working as an airplane mechanic on their behalf. Many German-Americans had fallen for this “loyalty to the Fatherland” palaver, but Sebold was not one of them. Bidding the Nazis a cordial auf Wiedersehn, he made a beeline to the American Consul in Cologne and told the authorities what had just transpired. He was advised to accept the Nazis’ offer and find out exactly what they were up to. Convinced that Sebold was on their side, the Germans sent him to espionage school in Hamburg, where he was trained to produce microfilm, decipher codes and operate a short-wave radio transmitter, all

for the purpose of relaying classified American information to a spy ring headquartered at 92nd Street in New York City. The ring was headed by Fritz Duquesne, a prominent international journalist and soldier of fortune who was rumored to have been involved in a 1916 plot to kill Britain’s Lord Kitchener (His Lordship died in a sea battle, but conspiracy theories persisted for decades). Sebold’s spy-school principal instructed him to take a job at the Norden plant in Long Island, where the new secret American bombsight was being manufactured. Using the alias William G. Sawyer, Sebold agreed to transmit information on Norden’s production statistics and export activities to four German contacts, concealing his miniaturized instructions from Berlin in his watchcase. He then opened a Manhattan office which he named Diesel Research as a contact point, beeping out his first message to Fritz Duquesne’s operatives in May 1940. Unbeknownst to the Nazis, the FBI was listening in on every one of Sebold’s transmissions, and also using hidden cameras to photograph the spies. Imagine the oh-so-careful Duquesne’s surprise when on June 28, 1941, the Feds rounded up all of his agents, a grab which ultimately led to 33 arrests. The Nazis were at a loss to trace the leak in their operation until Sebold appeared as a prosecution witness in the trial of the enemy agents. America’s entry into World War II assured that this astounding tale of counterespionage would not be made public until after the war— and indeed, the original title of the 20th Century–Fox film based on the Sebold-Duquesne affair was Now It Can Be Told. The first of the studio’s semi-documentary yarns of the 1940s, the film was directed by Henry Hathaway (who became a specialist in this genre) and released in 1945 as The House on 92nd Street. As indicated by its lengthy opening title, most of the film was lensed in Washington, D.C., and New York, using as many genuine locations as feasible (the “house” seen in the picture was actually at 93rd Street), and with full cooperation from the FBI, with many Federal agents appearing in bit roles—along with several Manhattan-based

Dwan stage actors (E.G. Marshall, Paul Ford, Vincent Gardenia) in their screen debuts. Producer Louis de Rochemont, then in charge of Fox’s March of Time documentary series, incorporated actual FBI surveillance footage of the German Embassy, as well as newsreel glimpses of the real spies as they were hauled into court. To inflate the dramatic value of the screenplay, the FBI is alerted to the presence of the spy ring by a suspicious hit-and-run accident, a scene based on fact but not otherwise connected with this story; and near the end of the film, Bill Dietrich (William Eythe), the German-American screen counterpart of William Sebold, is exposed as a double agent and subjected to torture. In a bid to inject some glamour into the proceedings, Col. Hammersohn, the Fritz Duquesne character played by Leo G. Carroll, takes his orders from a mysterious spy chief known as “Mr. Christopher,” actually an attractive woman named Elsa Gebhardt (Signe Hasso) who scurries around in drag to avoid detection. And in a remarkable display of both timeliness and showmanship, the secret documents coveted by the Nazis are revealed by screenwriters Barré Lyndon, Charles G. Booth and John Monks, Jr., to be plans for the fictional “Project 97,” which we are informed by sonorous narrator Reed Hadley was “crucial to the development of the atomic bomb.” Considering that House on 92nd Street was released one month after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this revelation startled everyone, including most of the cast and crew. It has since been reported that producer Louis de Rochemont, writer Monks and narrator Hadley were the only Fox personnel to know of the A-bomb testing at Los Alamos by virtue of de Rochemont’s government contacts. While this may indeed be the case, in fact the climactic narration was not inserted into The House on 92nd Street until the eve of the film’s premiere.

DURST, ROBERT Heir to an American real estate empire, Robert Durst spent three decades under suspicion for the mysterious disappearance of his first wife Kathie in 1982, the murder of lady friend Susan Berman in 2000 and the killing and dis-

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memberment of his neighbor Morris Black in 2001. By the time the fictional film All Good Things was released in 2010, Durst had managed to beat all three raps. Inspired by Durst’s own memoirs, All Good Things stars Ryan Gosling as David Marks, son of a New York City real estate mogul (Frank Langella). Marks’ wife Katie (Kirsten Dunst) vanishes without a trace after a violent argument with her husband—a scenario with disturbing similarities to the murder of David’s best friend Deborah (Lily Rabe) 20 years later. With typical bravado, Robert Durst professed admiration for Ryan Gosling’s performance and allowed himself to be extensively interviewed by All Good Things director Andrew Jarecki for a proposed multipart HBO documentary titled The Jinx: The Life and Death of Robert Durst. The documentary’s “star” was not quite as friendly or cooperative after his arrest in 2015, the direct result of his on-the-air confession to the murders in the final episode of The Jinx. (The case is still playing itself out, even as I write).

DWAN, ALLAN—AND ANITA LOOS, R AOUL WALSH Several anecdotes related in late-life interviews by pioneering film directors Allan Dwan and Raoul Walsh are incorporated in Peter Bogdanovich’s Nickelodeon (1976), an engaging valentine to the early days of moviemaking, circa 1910–1915. Though it isn’t easy to spot the film’s Raoul Walsh references, the scene in which young attorney Leo Harrigan (Ryan O’Neal) is pressed into service as a movie director when the actual director vanishes from sight during a location shoot is directly inspired by Allan Dwan’s similar emergency entrée into filmmaking in 1911 or thereabouts. Also in Nickelodeon is Tatum O’Neal as Alice Forsythe, a precocious 12-year-old who turns out to be a talented and prolific screenwriter. Alice is based on Anita Loos, who for years claimed that she was only 12 when she sold her first film story, The New York Hat, to director D.W. Griffith—though in fact Miss Loos was an elderly matron of 22 at the time.

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E AGELS, JEANNE Brilliant, erratic American stage and screen actress, best known for her Broadway performance as Sadie Thompson in Somerset Mau gham’s Rain, whose career was tragically short by alcoholism and drug addiction. Bette Davis’ Oscar-winning performance as self-destructive actress Joyce Heath in Dangerous (1935) is blatantly patterned after Jeanne Eagels—whose name is referenced in the course of the film.

E ARHART, A MELIA The films: Mr. Moto Takes a Chance (20th Century–Fox, 1938); Flight for Freedom (RKORadio, 1943)

Hosannaed as the first aviatrix to fly solo across the Atlantic, the Kansas- born Amelia Earhart was nicknamed “Queen of the Air” and “The Lady Lindy” by the celebrity-conscious media of the 1920s and 1930s. As if she needed any more promotion, her name was attached to an autobiography, a widespread lecture tour and scores of commercial endorsements by her husband, publisher George Putnam. Five years after her fabled 1932 transatlantic solo flight, she and copilot Fred Noonan embarked upon what was planned as a flight around the world. Her progress was carefully monitored via ground spotters and radio transmissions, but on July 1, 1937, her plane disappeared from view. At 8:43 a.m. on July 2, a listening post at Howland Island, just north of the Equator in the Pacific Ocean, received one last transmission from Earhart: “We are running on line north and south.” And with that, Amelia Earhart vanished. Search efforts continued until July 19 at a cost of $4 million, but to no avail. It is not known whether her plane crashed, sank into the ocean, or was shot down by an unidentified hostile nation. Whatever her actual fate, Amelia Earhart was declared legally dead on July 5, 1939, three weeks shy of what would have been her 42nd birthday. In her lifetime, Earhart had appeared in caricature form in various animated cartoons (notably Ub Iwerks’ The Air Race), while the 1933 Katharine Hepburn vehicle Christopher Strong was influenced not only by Amelia’s airborne exploits but also those of British aviatrix Amy Johnson. Eleven months after Amelia’s disap-

pearance, Rochelle Hudson was seen as an Earhart-like character in the mystery melodrama Mr. Moto Takes a Chance, fourth in a series of B pictures starring Peter Lorre as soft-spoken Japanese detective Mr. Moto. In the midst of a supposed round-the-world flight, Victoria Mason (Hudson) bails out of her crippled plane and parachutes into the ruins of Angkor Wat. It turns out that her actual destination is the kingdom of Tong Moi in French Indochina, where she plans to photograph the activities of warmongering potentate Rajah Ali ( J. Edward Bromberg) on behalf of the British secret service. Victoria is saved from both death and the Fate Worse Than by the resourceful Mr. Moto, who has already arrived in Tong Moi with similar plans to expose Rajah Ali’s skullduggery. Victoria Mason’s top-secret spy mission feeds into one of the theories surrounding Amelia Earhart’s true purpose for her own globegirdling flight, that of snapping pictures of Japanese-held islands to determine whether America had anything to fear from the increasingly hostile Japanese empire. According to this theory, Amelia was shot down, perhaps captured, and possibly tortured to death once her mission was revealed. This supposition gained a measure of credibility after America went to war with Japan in 1941, as reflected two years later in the RKO feature Flight for Freedom. The studio publicists coyly revealed that the film was “based on an historic event of a few years back” and the leading character was “an ace aviatrix whose adventures end in a round-the-world flight during which she disappears in the Pacific.” Scripted by Jane Murfin, Oliver H.P. Garrett and S.K. Lauren from a story by Horace McCoy and directed by Lothar Mendes, Flight for Freedom stars Rosalind Russell as Tonie Carter, who after spending most of the film battling sexism in the aviation game embarks on her ill-fated aerial circumnavigation. Though the real-life inspiration for Tonie Carter is as clear as crystal, it is difficult to determine if rival pilot Randy Britton (Fred MacMurray) is supposed to be Fred Noonan, or if Tonie’s flight instructor Paul Turner (Herbert Marshall) is a stand-in for George Putnam. In any event, both Britton and Turner fall in love

Earp with Tonie, and it is Britton who accompanies her on that final flight. The film would have us believe that Tonie has been asked by the U.S. government to surreptitiously spy on the Japanese while flying over the country’s islands, and that in the end she nobly takes a suicide dive into the ocean to enable our Navy to take pictures of Japanese-held territories on the pretext of searching for her. Buck Herzog of the Milwaukee Sentinel spoke for many in his July 17, 1943, review of Flight for Freedom when he said that the picture “stretches one’s credulity to the breaking point.” However, in 1944 Amelia Earhart’s mother stepped forth to insist that, yes, her daughter was spying on behalf of her country when she met her doom— contradicting the public statements of Earhart’s sister Muriel, who could not be shaken from her conviction that Amelia simply perished in a tragic accident. Of course, there’s always the chance that both ladies were wrong, and that somewhere in the Pacific a 119-year-old woman in tattered flight clothes is still anxiously awaiting rescue.

E ARP, W YATT The films: Law and Order (Universal, 1932); Frontier Marshal (Fox, 1934); Law and Order (Universal-International, 1953); Powder River (20th Century–Fox, 1953)

When American network television got around to a weekly series based on celebrated lawman Wyatt Earp (1848–1929), the chosen title The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp could just have easily been A Little Life and Lot of Legend, inasmuch as the series’ story supervisor was Stuart M. Lake, whose success as a writer was founded on his lifelong perpetuation of the Wyatt Earp Myth. The popular image of Earp as a staunch, steely eyed defender of law and order is rather at odds with the real Wyatt, a onetime outlaw, horse thief and brothel owner. After a frenzied youth he moved to Dodge City, Kansas, with his saloonkeeper brother James in 1876, establishing his reputation as a lawman. Three years later he and brothers James and Virgil arrived in Tombstone Arizona, hoping to cash in on the town’s silver boom. Fourth brother Morgan teamed up with Wyatt and Virgil to keep the

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peace in Tombstone, all the while merrily extorting money from the town’s saloonkeepers, prostitutes and gamblers. Joining this bonanza was Wyatt’s friend John “Doc” Holliday, a former dentist who’d come west to cure his consumption and quickly degenerated into a gambler, gunslinger and boozehound. A longstanding feud between the Earps and the crooked Clanton family culminated in the legendary gunfight at the OK Corral on October 26, 1881. Suspected of instigating the battle, Virgil Earp lost his job as town marshal, while Wyatt was absolved of guilt in a court trial. After Morgan Earp’s murder in 1882, Wyatt and several companions embarked on a bloody vendetta in which at least two men were killed in cold blood. His reputation further stained by his questionable refereeing of the 1896 Fitzsimmons-Sharkey boxing match in San Francisco, Earp was compelled to keep a low profile in his future endeavors. By 1915 the aging ex-marshal had resurfaced in Hollywood, where he befriended such filmmakers as movie cowboy William S. Hart, who hired Wyatt as technical advisor for his 1925 film Wild Bill Hickok. Just before his death, Earp granted eight interviews to potential biographer Stuart Lake. Wyatt’s

The real Wyatt Earp.

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common-law wife Josephine consulted with Lake to keep her own name out of the biography, and also to obliterate the memory of Earp’s first common-law wife, prostitute Mattie Blaylock. By the time Lake’s Wyatt Earp—Frontier Marshal was published in 1931, at least three other books referencing Earp were already in circulation. One of these, written by W.R. Burnett of Little Caesar fame, was 1930’s Saint Johnson. With Josephine Earp issuing dire warnings that she’d sue anyone who tried to depict her “husband” in print or on screen (evidently she was out of the room when Bert Lindley played Wyatt in Bill Hart’s Wild Bill Hickok), Burnett changed all names and locales in Saint Johnson, though the book’s preface stated that the characters of Frame Johnson and Brant White were “based in part” on Earp and Doc Holliday, and that the story itself was “based on events leading up to and arising out of the Earp-Clanton feud.” The author’s hero, Marshal Frame Johnson of the town of Alkali, is known as “Saint Johnson” because of his strict adherence to the letter of the law and his vice-free lifestyle. Johnson keeps a lid on Alkali with the help of gunslinger Brant White and brother Luther Johnson (based on Virgil Earp), as well as a brace of deputies (dividing Morgan Earp into two separate characters). But Johnson can’t control his wild and uninhibited younger brother Jimmy (apparently inspired by James Earp, the oldest of the brothers) who gets involved with bad men and loose women and ultimately robs a stage, forcing Frame to break the law for the first time in his life to protect his wayward sibling. A climactic bloodbath in which Frame throws away the lawbook and becomes no better than a crazed vigilante was based on Wyatt’s 1882 vendetta, and later replicated onscreen in a non-western setting when W.R. Burnett contributed to the screenplay of the 1932 gangster melodrama Beast of the City, starring Walter Huston. Huston also headlined director Edward L. Cahn’s 1932 film version of Saint Johnson, retitled Law and Order, with Harry Carey, Sr., as Brant White (renamed Fred Brandt), Russell Hopton as Luther Johnson, and no one as the

written-out Jimmy. Raymond Hatton costars as “Deadwood,” one of the novel’s two characters based on Morgan Earp. Tom Reed and John Huston’s script originally featured a leading lady (W.R. Burnett had done nicely without one), but actress Lois Wilson was completely cut from the film’s release print. Beyond Frame Johnson’s violent all-out assault on the Clanton-like Durling family and the rest of the town’s criminal element in the final scene, Law and Order is best remembered for the poignant vignette in which Johnson comforts a simple-minded farm boy (Andy Devine) about to be executed for murder by telling him he should be proud to be the first man ever hanged legally in Arizona. This scene is rewritten as a standard lynching in the 1953 remake of Law and Order, directed by Nathan Juran and starring Ronald Reagan as Frame Johnson, marshal of “Cottonwood.” A more conventional—and less interesting—western than the 1932 original, this version offers two heroines (Dorothy Malone, Ruth Hampton), one of them the daughter of villain Kurt Durling (Preston Foster). There is no Doc Holliday counterpart on this occasion, though Frame Johnson’s headstrong younger brother Jimmy (Russell Johnson) is back, as is Frame’s other brother Luther (Alex Nicol). And while the 1932 Law and Order was aggressively pre-code, the 1953 remake must bow to the censors and remove Frame Johnson’s last-act killing spree. (Universal also made an interim 1940 version of Law and Order, reshaped as a vehicle for the studio’s Bwestern headliner Johnny Mack Brown.) Stuart Lake’s Wyatt Earp—Frontier Marshal was purchased by Fox Studios and filmed no fewer than four times. Now a permanent fixture in Hollywood, Josephine Earp gave her consent to the Lewis Seiler–directed 1934 film version starring George O’Brien on condition that Wyatt’s name not be used. Fox dodged a potential $50,000 lawsuit by titling the picture Frontier Marshal and changing the name of the eponymous hero to Michael Wyatt, further covering themselves by renaming Doc Holliday (played by Alan Edwards) Doc Warren and the surrogate Clanton character (Ward Bond) Ben Murchison. Establishing a precedent followed by the

Earp three later filmizations, there is a “good” and “bad” heroine, respectively Mary Reid (Irene Bentley) and Queenie LaVerne (Ruth Gillette); also repeated in subsequent films is the initial animosity between the Earp and Holliday characters, their combining of forces to defeat a mutual enemy, and the killing of the faux Holliday at the end (the real “Doc” died of tuberculosis in 1887). The OK Corral shootout figures into Stuart Lake and William M. Conselman’s screenplay, albeit relocated to a saloon. Among the myths lifted from Lake’s book is Wyatt’s weapon of preference, the Buntline Special, which may not have been invented at the time of his stopover in Tombstone but was definitely in existence during the film’s 1890s timeframe. When 20th Century– Fox announced a remake of Frontier Marshal in 1939, Josephine Earp once again threatened to sue. But the new studio regime was made of sterner stuff, conceding only to keep Wyatt’s name out of the title. Star Randolph Scott is firmly identified as Wyatt Earp, while costar Cesar Romero’s character almost goes the distance as Doc Halliday. Though she lost this round, Josephine still tried to collect a settlement on the grounds that the 1939 film provided Earp with a fictional girlfriend (played by Nancy Kelly). As recalled by director Allan Dwan, Josephine “tried to sue us for suggesting that Earp was ever in love with another woman. They didn’t even let her in the courtroom, but she tried to sue us for $50,000. We squared it by telling the wife that our leading lady was portraying her.” Otherwise, Sam Hellman and Stuart Anthony’s screenplay for the remake retains the two-heroine format (the other one was Binnie Barnes as Halliday’s gal), the fictionalized Clanton ( John Carradine as Ben Carter), the Buntline Special, and the final spectacular shootout staged a considerable distance from any corral, OK or otherwise. A few tidbits from Stuart Lake’s book untouched in 1934 are included herein: Wyatt putting a stop to a drunken shooting spree by Indian Charlie (Charles Stevens), a name taken from an actual Earp opponent; the villain’s hired gun Curly Bill ( Joe Sawyer), again a real person from Wyatt’s past; and a comic interlude in which Wyatt rescues a

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travelling entertainer who has been kidnapped by the local toughies and forced to give them a private show. Eddie Foy, Jr., plays his own father Eddie Sr., in this role, while variations of the character in later film adaptations include a drunken Shakespearean actor (Alan Mowbray) and a tacky juggler (Val Setz). Ward Bond, one of the bad guys in 1934’s Frontier Marshal, here plays the sheriff whom Wyatt replaces. After Josephine Earp’s death in 1944, Fox had no difficulty using real names in John Ford’s magnificent My Darling Clementine (1946), including Doc Holliday (Victor Mature), Indian Charlie (Charles Stevens again) and Earp’s brothers James, Morgan and Virgil, the latter played by Ward Bond in his third go-round within the Earp ouevre. Making their first screen appearances under their actual names are the despicable Clantons, headed by Walter Brennan as Newt Clanton. Elsewhere, scripters Samuel G. Engel and Winston Miller are content to resurrect all the old Earp mythology, cleaning up old Wyatt (Henry Fonda) to an even greater degree than before. John Ford added to the “realistic unreality” of the picture by planting Tombstone, Arizona, on the outskirts of Monument Valley Utah. And in keeping with the mold cast in the first Frontier Marshal we are offered for our consideration two contrasting leading ladies, the titular Clementine (Cathy Downs) and the tempestuous Chihuahua (Linda Darnell). But Fox wasn’t finished with the source material yet. Directed by Louis King from a screenplay by Daniel Mainwaring, 1953’s Powder River was the studio’s first Technicolor adaptation of the Earp-Clanton story, though you wouldn’t know it without watching the film since all the names have been changed again. Rory Calhoun plays Chino Bullock, who becomes marshal of Powder River after his mining partner is killed. Cameron Mitchell is Holliday clone Mitch Hardin, not only boozy and selfloathing but also plagued with killer migraines (the “consumption” bit was apparently worn out). This time the Clantons are disguised as Loney and Harvey Logan (Carl Betz, John Dehner), the dual heroines are played by Corinne Calvet and Penny Edwards, and the OK

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Corral fracas has moved into the middle of the street. Keep an eye out for any future remakes: Maybe the next one will turn up as a Star Wars sequel.

EGAN, EDDIE “POPEYE”—AND SALVATORE “SONNY ” GROSSO The films: The French Connection (D’Antoni Productions/Schine-Moore Productions/20th Century–Fox, 1971); Badge 373 (Paramount, 1973); The Seven- Ups (D’Antoni Productions/ 20th Century–Fox, 1973); The French Connection II (20th Century–Fox, 1975)

Few people have enjoyed such bountiful benefits from being fictionalized in the movies as NYPD detectives Eddie Egan and Salvatore “Sonny” Grosso. When in 1971 an Academy Award–winning film based on their exploits featured both detectives in small character roles (though not as themselves), it proved to be the launching pad for their own lucrative show business careers. Born in New York in 1930, Eddie Egan aspired to a career in Major League baseball, but when he left the New York Yankees’ Triple-A farm team to join the Marines he was replaced in center field by a talented youngster named Mickey Mantle. After his discharge Egan joined the NYPD, working his way up the ladder from beat cop to detective. By the early 1960s he was attached to narcotics detail with his partner Sonny Grosso, who despite his Italian surname was born in Düsseldorf Germany in 1932. Raised in New York, Grosso likewise became a cop and ended up as the Department’s youngest-ever Detective 1st Grade. Both Egan and Russo enjoyed adopting disguises for undercover assignments, with Eddie frequently garbed as a street corner Santa and Russo at one point showing up in drag. Their method of interrogation could be described as “Good Cop–Weird Cop,” with Grosso warming up by asking straightforward questions, then Egan taking over with bizarre non sequiturs like “You ever pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?” to throw the suspect off-guard and prompt a confession. The Egan-Grosso team entered the annals of Law Enforcement History when in January 1962 they seized a record 112 pounds of illegal heroin worth $32

million, setting in motion the breakup of what came to be known as “The French Connection,” in which drugs and drug money had been smuggled between Marseilles and New York right under the authorities’ noses. This sensational bust was recounted in Robin Moore’s 1969 bestseller The French Connection. When in November 1970 director William Friedkin arrived in New York to shoot the film version of French Connection, Egan and Grosso served as technical advisors and also arranged for police cooperation and protection in the Big Apple’s tougher neighborhoods. Screenwriter Ernest Tidyman drew heavily from the real Eddie Egan for the film’s hard-edged detective protaganist Jimmy Doyle, who like Eddie is nicknamed “Popeye” because he always appears to have his eyes wide open. Egan’s eccentric interrogation technique is also utilized by the fictional Doyle, with both “Popeyes” conducting police business while wearing a distinctive porkpie hat. Cast as Doyle, Gene Hackman at first had trouble getting a handle on Egan’s blunt, profane personality until he figured out that real Popeye’s bombast and bravado was mostly for show to terrify suspects and perps. “Hackman became Egan and got that way from hanging out

Eddie “Popeye” Egan as he appears in The French Connection (1971).

Egan with us for a month,” Sonny Grosso recalled, adding “Eddie was the best damn cop I ever worked with.” Grosso’s French Connection equivalent is the less demonstrative Buddy Russo, played by Roy Scheider, who like Gene Hackman would be nominated for an Oscar (though only Hackman won the prize). While he doesn’t share Grosso’s nickname Sonny, Buddy Russo is like his real-life counterpart referred to as “Cloudy” because of his gloomy disposition (in Grosso’s case, he was also stuck with “Cloudy” because it was the opposite of “Sonny.” Insert laugh). Assessing the two main characters both off screen and on, director Friedkin told journalist Ashley Jude Collins “Eddie deserves a lot of credit for the film’s success, he was a real tough guy. I played Sonny’s character as more of a calming influence. Thing is about Sonny, if he’s your friend, he’d stop a bullet for you. Eddie had that Irish bluster, but Sonny had that Italian iron fist. You did not mess with Sonny Grosso.” The French Connection takes the expected Hollywood liberties with the facts, but not to the extent of distortion. To add an extra dimension to Popeye Doyle, he is depicted as a racial bigot and heavy drinker, which Eddie Egan was not. As for the film’s iconic and unforgettable car chase, filmed without a completed script, a rehearsal or a city permit by director Friedkin and cinematographer Owen Roizman with stunt coordinator Bill Hickman doubling for Gene Hackman and Jerry Greenberg brilliantly editing the completed sequence (winning another of the film’s five Oscars for his efforts), the pursuit is shown to be spread over the length and breadth of Brooklyn. In truth, the real-life car chase back in 1961 ended after two blocks. As mentioned, both Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso play small roles in the film, Egan as Popeye’s superior Lt. Simonson (for which he received the SAG daily minimum of $240) and Grosso as FBI agent Klein. Neither detective was cast in John Frankenheimer’s 1975 sequel The French Connection II, wherein Gene Hackman returns as Popeye Doyle in a wholly fictional story. Eddie Egan is seen in director Howard W. Koch’s Badge 373, based on Egan’s own police career as scripted by himself and Pete Hamill;

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once more he is cast as his own boss, playing Lt. Scanlon to Robert Duvall’s Detective Eddie Ryan. Again played by Roy Scheider, Sonny Grosso’s French Connection alter ego Buddy Russo reappears in The Seven- Ups, scripted by Albert Ruben and Alexander Jacobs from a story by Grosso and directed by French Connection producer Philip D’Antoni. The Seven-Ups has been referred to as an unofficial sequel to the 1971 Oscar-winner but bears only a tenuous connection to the earlier effort, though like its predecessor the film is highlighted by a spectacular car chase. Sonny Grosso himself appears uncredited as a mob courier. After French Connection Eddie Egan’s newfound celebrity status somehow made him a liability to the NYPD; he was fired from the force just hours before becoming eligible for early retirement benefits. By 1973 Egan was in dire straits and turned to acting full-time to keep food on the table. In addition to parts of varying sizes in films and television, he was cast in the recurring role of Sgt. Bernie Vincent during the 1975–76 season of Lloyd Bridges’ TV cop series Joe Forrester. In 1979 he donned his familiar porkpie hat to appear as “a Famous Ex-Cop” in a funny and widely circulated beer commercial for Miller Lite. Moving to a Florida retirement community in 1984, he made his last screen appearance five years later in Cold Steel. Eddie Egan died in 1995. In contrast with his former partner, it wasn’t a financial pinch that motivated Sonny Grosso to continue his show business career, but instead a sincere and abiding love for the entertainment industry. He played detective roles in such 1970s films as The Godfather and Report to the Commissioner, served as technical advisor for 13 episodes of Telly Savalas’ TV series Kojak, created and cowrote the Canadian adventure weekly Night Heat (which ran on CBS’ late-night TV lineup in the 1980s), and somewhat improbably functioned as producer for the Saturdaymorning kid’s show Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Sonny Grosso remained active in Hollywood until his retirement in 2009.

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ELKINS, JAMES BUTLER The film: Portland Exposé (Lindsley Parsons Picture Corp./Allied Artists, 1957)

The post–World War I economic growth of Portland, Oregon, proved to be a bonanza for organized crime. A major shipping town, Portland was a magnet for sailors and merchants looking for a good time and willing to pay for it. The city was well into its second decade as the vice capital of the Pacific Northwest when in 1937 James Butler “Big Jim” Elkins, a 36-yearold career criminal, moved to Portland to hook up with his brother Fred. Once he hit town Jim Elkins opened a brothel and teamed with safecracker Harry Huerth for a series of robberies. At the same time, Huerth was employed by Raymond Emlou, head of the city’s slot machine racket. After the Elkins brothers were absorbed into this operation, Jim forced Emlou out and became the vice czar of Portland, mollifying the police with bribes and payoffs. The city’s “wide open” reputation defied all reform efforts from respectable citizens and politicians, due largely to the string-pulling by Jim Elkins and his flunkeys. Joining the fun in 1952 or thereabouts was Dave Beck, president of the mob-controlled Teamsters Union. Though he resented outsiders muscling into his territory, Elkins was compelled to keep Beck happy by putting gaming machines in the union’s Portland Labor Temple, forking over a piece of the action to Washington State racketeer Thomas Maloney, a close associate of Teamsters vice-president Frank Brewster. The only racket Elkins wanted no part of was prostitution, which was overseen against his wishes by former Seattle madam Ann Thompson. With so many out-of-town cooks stirring the broth, Big Jim Elkins grew increasingly paranoid throughout the early 1950s. To protect himself from double-crosses, Elkins hid recording devices in his watch and coat whenever conferring with the Teamsters, and also bugged Thomas Maloney’s apartment. His fears confirmed when he overheard a plot to frame him for a crime because of his opposition to Ann Thompson’s activities, Elkins contacted Wallace Turner, a newspaper reporter with The Oregonian, and offered to turn over evidence to squash the higher-

ups in the city’s vice rackets. Together with fellow reporter William Lambert, Turner gained access to Elkins’ incriminating tapes, and after contacting the state’s governor began a series of newspaper exposés of organized crime in Portland on April 19, 1956. The D.C.–based McClellan Committee, whose chief counsel Robert F. Kennedy was on a crusade to weed out mob infiltration of organized labor, got involved in the investigation. Jim Elkins sang like a bird before the Committee, and as a result several of the key players were indicted. Though a distressing number of scoundrels remained in public office despite the exposé, Turner and Lambert won a Pulitzer Prize for covering the story. In the tradition of their previous “drawn from today’s headlines” smash hit The Phenix City Story, Allied Artists Pictures quickly assembled the fact-based feature Portland Exposé, which like its predecessor was filmed “where it happened.” To avoid the embarrassing necessity of featuring a Jim Elkins–like stoolie as the hero of the piece, Portland Exposé instead came up with decent, upright tavern owner George Madison, played by Edward Binns. After a laughable prologue describing Portland as a squeaky-clean community until the film’s villains showed up from out of town, we see Madison being harassed by a trio of thugs who want him to install crooked pinball machines, threatening to force him out of business if he doesn’t play ball. He asks for help from the town’s ex-crime boss (seen only from the back), but the former top man can’t control the newcomers. It doesn’t dawn on Madison to seek aid from someone without a criminal record until a bug-eyed hoodlum (Frank Gorshin) attempts to rape George’s underaged daughter (Carolyn Craig). In concert with two fictional reporters and the honest local union leaders (you remember them), Madison uses hidden tape recorders to get the goods on the bad guys. Before the city is purged of its criminal element by the combined efforts of the newspaper exposé and the police departments of several other states, Madison’s covert investigation is blown when an “escort girl” in the employ of one Mrs. Stoneway (a slightly laundered version of Ann Thompson, played by Lea

Engelhard Penman) finds a wire in his shirt pocket. The hoods drag Madison to a warehouse, tie him up, and force him to watch as they prepare to blind his daughter with a bowlful of acid. This last Perils of Pauline gracenote was mostly a brainstorm of screenwriter Jack DeWitt, though it does contain a kernel of truth. Famed striptease artist Tempest Storm had purchased the Capitol Theater in Portland and converted it to a burlesque house, but quickly exited the city because of an ongoing feud with another stripper—the ex-wife of Tempest’s current husband— who tried to settle accounts in a vicious catfight, during which she falsely accused Ms. Storm of throwing acid at her. Unhappily, we don’t get to relish a similar scene in Portland Exposé, and in fact we might not have seen any of the film had we been living in the Pacific Northwest back in 1957. Thanks to pressure from certain interested parties, producer Lindsley Parsons was forced to cancel the film’s scheduled premiere in Portland, and also withdraw it from a number of theaters in neighboring cities and states. Parsons then asked the McClellan Committee to investigate this situation, which eventually and almost magically reversed itself. Posterity does not record whether “Big Jim” Elkins ever got to see Portland Exposé, though we can account for his later movements—including the last one. Spending the remainder of his life in and out of trouble and incarceration, the 67-year-old Elkins was free on a $20,000 bond when he was killed in a 1968 auto accident. Since that time a few anal-retentive conspiracy theorists have suggested that Elkins was actually murdered because he knew too much about the JFK assassination (Golly, didn’t everybody?).

E MMANUEL, ART It’s no secret to fans of the satirical HBO television series Entourage that Ari Gold, the obnoxious but endearing talent agent played by Jeremy Piven, is patterned after Hollywood superagent and co–CEO of the William Morris Agency Ari Emmanuel. His inclusion in this book about fictional movie characters is due to his presence (still in the person of Jeremy Piven) in the 2015 theatrical-film adaptation of Entourage.

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ENGELHARD, CHARLES W., JR . The film: Goldfinger (Saltzman-Broccoli/United Artists, 1964)

You can count on the fingers of one hand how many real-life personalities would be flattered and amused that a fictional villain was based on them. I don’t know who the other four fingers are, but the fifth one is Goldfinger—er, Charles W. Engelhard. Born to a Prussian family in 1917, Engelhard was given the nickname “The Platinum King” (which he detested) by his father, who had amassed great wealth in precious metals. His $20 million inheritance enabled the Oxford- and Princeton-educated Engelhard to make wise acquisitions throughout the world, the wisest being the Development and Investment Company of South Africa. As subsequent director of the South African Chamber of Mines, he set the wages and working conditions for the mine workers, building up enormous personal profits at the height of the Apartheid era. While this did nothing to make him popular with civil rights activists, it must be noted that he contributed mightily to the welfare of his adopted country, remaining in South Africa after many other businessmen fled in the wake of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre and arranging a $30 million loan to keep the country on its feet. Perhaps he was trying to buy his way into Heaven when he established himself as a worldwide philanthropist, but the fact remains that a lot of charitable organizations were grateful for his contributions and nobody gave anything back—not even the regents of Harvard University when they accepted his “dirty money” for a new campus library. “We all must begin to realize the dignity of man as a basic concept” was his credo, and he stuck to it as best he knew how. Described by Forbes magazine as “a great hulking man … [who] comports himself with all the concentrated power and assurance of a Roman emperor,” Engelhard conducted his private life in the Grand Manner, surrounding himself with property, mansions, race horses, and especially anything made of gold, for which he had developed a deep abiding affection in the days when he had transported the valuable metal in secret

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containers to avoid export restrictions. No doubt about it, he loved gold. He loved gold. He loved GOOOOOLLLDDD! (Thank you, Shirley Bassey.) In 1949 Engelhard met and befriended future James Bond creator Ian Fleming, who was impressed by the man’s genius as an industrialist, his wide-ranging lifestyle and his obsession with golden artifacts. In 1959 Fleming used Engelhard as the model for the titular heavy in his spy novel Goldfinger—specifically, the bulky, brutish Auric Goldfinger, zillionaire business mogul and parttime card cheat, whose master scheme is to hijack all the gold reserves in Fort Knox so that he can control the international market in that commodity and thereby rule the world. It is up to superspy James “007” Bond to stop Goldfinger in his tracks, and to neutralize such henchpersons as lesbian aviatrix Pussy Galore and the mute, karatechopping giant Oddjob. Filmed in 1964 under the direction of Guy Hamilton, the movie version of Goldfinger (scripted by Richard Maibaum and Paul Dehn) proved to be the most successful of the Sean Connery–starring James Bond films to date, with German actor Gert Fröbe attaining cinematic immortality in the title role (“No, no, Mister Bond. I expect you to die”). Backing up Fröbe’s formidable villainy are Harold Sakata as the deadly hat-flinging Oddjob and Honor Blackman as a less butch and more malleable Miss Galore. Charles Engelhard was delighted by both the novel and film versions of Goldfinger, so much so that he nicknamed the stewardess on his private jet “Pussy Galore.” And while his enemies now derisively referred to him as “the real Goldfinger” in their ceaseless cannonades against his South African dealings, Engelhard’s subsequent Brotherhood Award from the National Conference of Christian and Jews took some of the sting out of the nastiness. He died in 1971, not from being sucked out of the window of a jet plane, and with no record of ever having suffocated Shirley Eaton by covering her body with gold paint.

EVERSOLE, SGT. FRANK “BUCK”—CAPT. HENRY T. WASHKOW

Based on the newspaper columns by American World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle, The Story of G.I. Joe (1945) made a star of Robert Mitchum in the role of Capt. Bill Walker, the pragmatic Infantry officer who takes charge of his entire platoon out of sheer necessity. Though Pyle (played by Burgess Meredith) is identified onscreen by his real name, Capt. Walker is based on Capt. Henry T. Washkow of Company B, 36th Division, 143rd Infantry. Walker’s death near the end of the film is a near-exact replica of Pyle’s famous 1944 column “The Death of Captain Washkow,” recounting the events at Monte Sammucro, Italy, on December 14, 1943. Another prominent cast member of The Story of G.I. Joe is former boxer Freddie Steele as roughhewn Sgt. Warnicki, ever willing to take great risks on behalf of his men. His real-life counterpart was ex-cowboy Sgt. Frank “Buck” Eversole, a 133rd Infantry platoon leader described by Ernie Pyle as “one of the great men of the war.”

FAISON, AZIE—AND ALPO MARTINEZ, RICH PORTER The film: Paid in Full (Dimension Films/Loud Films/Rat Entertainment/Roc-a-fella Films/Dimension, 2002)

Just as the Prohibition laws of the 1920s made millionaires out of bootleggers, the “war on drugs” of the 1980s filled the bank accounts of drug dealers. To cite just one example, Azie Faison never made more money illegally than at the height of the government’s crackdown on narcotics. Together with cohorts Alpo Martinez and Rich Porter, Faison held sway over an enormous Harlem cocaine empire, raking in between $90,000 and $100,000 per week by the time he was 21. The party might have continued indefinitely had the events of August 21, 1987, not occurred. That was the night that a robbery and shoot-out took place at Faison’s stash house in the Morrisania section of the South Bronx. Three people were killed, including his aunt, while Azie himself was wounded nine times. “After I was shot, the doctor said ‘This man’s dead,’ but God saved me,” Faison told New York magazine in 2002. “He said, ‘Bring the drug game to an end.’” Recalling that the 1983 movie Scarface had inspired him to become a dealer,

Fallon the recovered Faison figured that an anti-drug message delivered in an entertaining fashion would have the opposite effect on impressionable youngsters. Organizing the rap group MobStyle in 1989, he used words and music as part of a mission to steer his fans away from drugs. His game plan also included an autobiography and a documentary film, both titled Game Over, and a mainstream dramatic feature, Paid in Full, produced by rap promoter Damon “Dame” Dash. The film stars Wood Harris as the Faison character, renamed Ace, with Mekhi Phifer as Mitch and Cam’ron as Rico, respectively based on Rich Porter and Alpo Martinez. As the Matthew Cirulnick–Thulani Davis screenplay would have it, Ace (who like Azie works in a dry cleaner’s shop) doesn’t really want to be a drug dealer until he is introduced to the life by Dominican dealer Lulu (Esai Morales). Ace takes the place of imprisoned dealer Calvin (Kevin Carroll) as part of the operation headed by his best friend Mitch and Mitch’s enforcer Rico. Before long the charismatic Ace has achieved legendary status on The Street, running his own operation with Mitch as partner and Rico as “muscle.” Though encouraged to emulate Mitch’s flamboyant lifestyle, Ace prefers to keep a low profile, letting Mitch give the “show” while Rico provides the brawn. Then Calvin is released from jail and tries to regain his former position in the operation by masterminding a lethal robbery- shootout in Ace’s apartment. All for calling it quits, Ace dives in one last time to raise the ransom money for Mitch’s kidnapped brother Sonny (based on Rich’s real brother Donell and played by Remo Green). In the meantime, trigger-happy Rico has killed Calvin in a bid to take over the gang himself; he then kills Mitch and steals the ransom-raising drugs. Ace settles accounts by cutting a deal with two undercover FBI agents, then retires to a new life. The above synopsis does not represent Trapped, the “powerful screenplay” for what eventually emerged as Paid in Full that Azie Faison originally submitted to the producer. “I felt like someone took my life, commercialized it, and stripped it of all the truth and power it formerly contained.” Among the finished film’s

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omissions were what Faison called the “social forces” that turn young people to drugs, and the corrupt law officials cited in his autobiography whom he believed supported the drug culture. He’d also wanted the film to show how he’d turned his life around in a positive way after forsaking his life of crime: Instead, according to Faison’s 2007 interview for the Whudat website, “Paid in Full encourages people to idolize the game and its star players.” Faison articulated his biggest argument against the film in his earlier New York magazine interview, insisting that the intended message was compromised by producer Dash’s own agenda: “[N]ow it seems more like a marketing plan to promote his rappers.” While not denying that the artists signed by his own Roc-a-Fella Records were amply represented on the soundtrack of Paid in Full—and also in the cast, with Busy Bee and Doug E. Fresh playing themselves—Dash addressed Faizon’s complaints by noting that if he’d made the film as originally written it would have run nearly 31/2 hours (Faison had after all hoped that the picture would be regarded as “the black Titanic”). The last withering blast against Paid in Full was delivered by the real-life villain of the piece, Alpo Martinez. From his vantage point at the Federal supermax prison ADX Florence, Martinez insisted that he hadn’t murdered Rich Porter himself, but had ordered his minions to do the job. Get it right, guys.

FALLON, WILLIAM J. The films: The Mouthpiece (Warner Bros., 1932); The Man Who Talked Too Much (Warner Bros., 1940); Illegal (Warner Bros., 1955)

It’s a toss-up as to who was the more colorful American defense attorney of the first half of the 20th century, Earl Rogers (see separate entry) or William J. Fallon. Both men were undeniably brilliant, both indulged in outrageous courtroom theatrics that more often than not resulted in acquittals for their guilty-as-hell clients, both spent their huge fees as quickly as they earned them … and sadly, both died early and in relative obscurity of alcoholism, though Fallon at 42 burned out more quickly than the 52-year-old Rogers.

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Born in New York City in 1886, Fallon was the son of a prosperous Long Island contractor. Graduating from Fordham University as class valedictorian, he went to work for the district attorney of Westchester County and was also elected to the state legislature, though he quit the latter post early on because “it bores me. And anything that bores me I’m not going to do.” By 1915 he had also soured on the prosecution end of the legal profession, having been ordered by New York’s Governor to railroad reform-minded Sing Sing warden Thomas Mott Osborne into prison on such vague charges as “gross immorality.” Later on, however, Fallon would claim that he crossed over into Defense after sending an innocent man to the electric chair. Setting up his own practice in partnership with college pal Ernest McGee in 1918, Fallon made his mark early on when he successfully defended taxi driver Ernest Fritz on a charge of murdering his girlfriend during sex. Memorizing several medical textbooks virtually overnight, Fallon was able to establish “reasonable doubt” by suggesting that Fritz’s victim might have hemorrhaged and coughed to death. His subsequent skill in getting criminal defendants off with hung juries attracted Fallon to gambler-racketeer Arnold Rothstein (see separate entry) whom the lawyer managed to keep out of prison throughout the 1920s—often by advising his client to plead the Fifth, an uncommon strategy at the time. Another of Fallon’s high-profile contacts was crooked speculator Nicky Arnstein (see separate entry), but when Arnstein objected to his lawyer’s heavy drinking (or in another version of story, was angered that a hung jury was not the same as a full acquittal), Fallon withdrew from his defense team and Arnstein was summarily convicted and jailed. Unlike Earl Rogers, who detested most of his clients, Fallon loved to pal around with his disreputable courtroom associates at all the top Manhattan nightclubs and cafes, indiscriminately spending money and boozing the night away with glamorous showgirls. But his vaunted reputation as “The Great Mouthpiece” suffered an eclipse when in 1924 he was charged with destroying evidence and bribing a witness while

acting as defense attorney for the brokerage firm E.M. Fuller and Company. With characteristic chutzpah, Fallon told the press that he was being persecuted by publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst (see separate entry) for gaining possession of the birth certificates of “a certain prominent actress” proving that Hearst had fathered several illegitimate children. Thanks to his own legal pyrotechnics Fallon emerged from the courtroom a free man, but already he was on the downslide thanks to his heavy consumption of bootleg liquor. He died alone and in dramatically reduced circumstances in 1927. Author-raconteur Gene Fowler frequently let his hero worship of William Fallon cloud his judgment (and distort the facts) in his 1931 biography of the lawyer, The Great Mouthpiece. But the book proved to be a best-seller and set in motion a spate of Hollywood movies inspired by the legendary legal eagle: State’s Attorney with John Barrymore, Lawyer Man with William Powell, The Defense Rests with Jack Holt and a host of others. The film that was most flagrantly inspired by Fallon was Warner Bros.’ The Mouthpiece, directed by James Flood and Elliott Nugent from a script by Joseph Jackson and Earl Baldwin, which in turn was based on the 1929 play of the same name by Frank J. Collins. Though the play never reached Broadway, it attracted attention during the tryout process with its spectacular showcase scene in which the Fallon character, criminal lawyer Vincent Day, swallows a bottle of poison to establish reasonable doubt in his defense of an accused murderer— then patiently waits until after the “not guilty” verdict to have his stomach pumped. This scene was so famous (and so often parodied, notably in the 1934 Harry Langdon two-reeler Counsel on de Fence) that many “experts” have claimed that it actually occurred during Fallon’s legal career, though in fact it was invented for the play. Closer to truth (at least Fallon’s version of the truth) is the decision by the fictional Vincent Day to become a defense attorney after wrongfully sending a young man to the death house; like the poison bit, this scene is played for all it’s worth in the film version of The Mouthpiece. Overall, the differences between the play and

Fay film are inconsequential, the most significant change being the gender of Day’s secretary Hickey from male to female (played onscreen by Aline MacMahon). Warren William, the screen’s foremost sophisticated shyster, pulls all the stops out as Vincent Day in the movie adaptation of The Mouthpiece, especially towards the end of the film when he is seized by sudden attack of integrity, risking his life to mete out justice to the vicious gangsters whom he had previously championed in court—all for the sake of his ex-sweetheart Celia Farrady (Sidney Fox). In April 1932 the late William Fallon’s 18year-daughter Rita tried to legally block The Mouthpiece from public exhibition, charging that the film defamed her father’s character. She succeeded to the extent of having a judge order the seizure of the film from a Syracuse, New York, theater and charging the manager with criminal libel. It was suggested at the time that Rita Fallon would continue pressing her case in movie houses all over the country, but evidently she dropped the crusade, as witness Warner Bros.’ subsequent remakes of The Mouthpiece: 1940’s The Man Who Talked Too Much, starring George Brent, and 1955’s Illegal, top-billing Edward G. Robinson—both actors a far cry from the youthful, roguishly attractive William J. Fallon.

FAY, L ARRY—AND JOHNNY IRISH, AL JOL SON, RUBY KEELER

The films: Broadway Thru a Keyhole (20th Century/United Artists, 1933); The Roaring Twenties (Warner Bros., 1939)

One of Los Angeles’ two main venues for professional boxing in the 1920s and 1930s (the other was the Olympic Auditorium), Hollywood Legion Stadium was the “in” spot for movie stars of the era. Every Friday night when the card matches were held, Tinseltown’s glitterati showed up fashionably dressed with their spouses and sweethearts, not so much to watch the bouts as to be seen by the press and the fans. In attendance for the championship fight card of July 21, 1933, were Broadway columnist Walter Winchell (see separate entry), in Hollywood working on a screenplay for producer Darryl F. Zanuck; and entertainer Al Jolson and his wife,

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movie-musical favorite Ruby Keeler. As Winchell took his seat he was spotted by Jolson, also seated. Then it happened, as covered by the Associated Press: “With one movement [ Jolson] got up and swung on Winchell’s chin. Winchell sat down without further ado, but he didn’t take the count. He was game but his judgment was bad. As he came up he met Jolson’s other fist. Down Winchell went a second time.” Up til then, Winchell had no idea that Jolie was ambidextrous—and in fact he later claimed it wasn’t Al who slugged him at all, but some other guy. Before long that story changed too: “He hit me in the back of the neck. And there were two of them—two guys hit me.” As the AP reported, “impromptu referees disagreed,” notably LAPD detective “Lefty” James, who “put it in the record that Jolson stood squarely before his man and swung from the heels—fairly, squarely and very, very fast.” The crowd cheered Jolson as Winchell made his exit, reflecting Hollywood’s negative attitude towards the keyhole-peeping gossipmonger who enjoyed skewering big stars in his daily newspaper “colyumn.” What had caused Jolson’s gorge to rise was a news item by another columnist, Louella Parsons, who announced that Winchell had just finished scripting the all-star film Broadway Thru a Keyhole for Darryl Zanuck’s 20th Century Pictures, adding that the film was based on the reported romantic triangle involving Jolson, Ruby Keeler and a prominent New York racketeer. Many people assumed that third party was Larry Fay, who’d risen to fame as a rum-runner in the early Prohibition years before branching out with a taxicab monopoly, then as the price-fixing poobah of the New York Milk Chain Association. Fay also ran the El Fey Club, a swank speakeasy at 105 West 45th Street, as a showcase for his old friend, singer Texas “Hello, Suckers!” Guinan. The floor show at the El Fey was produced by Nils T. Granlund, who in 1924 hired Nova Scotia–born Ruby Keeler to tapdance in the chorus line. Only 14, Ruby claimed to be 16 to get the job, and before long she was the darling of the show, not so much for her lumpish dancing style as for her sweet, innocent personality. Keeler would later insist “none of us knew

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for sure who were gangsters,” but she must have gotten some inkling that Larry Fay wasn’t in the storm-door business. While it has been claimed that a romance blossomed between Ruby and the married Fay, there is less evidence of that than of her later relationship with another racketeer, Johnny Irish (born Costello). Most of Keeler’s biographers are of the opinion that this romance was “tacit,” with Irish plying the girl with flowers, clothes and jewelry while behaving like a gentleman at all times. Johnny was very protective of Ruby, using brute strength to discourage mashers and insisting that her agent

Billy Grady inform him of all her show business deals. In 1928 Ruby was invited to visit the West Coast branch of the William Morris Agency. As she arrived at Union Station in Los Angeles she was spotted by Al Jolson, then the hottest star in Hollywood by virtue of the historic early talkie The Jazz Singer. As he later told it, Jolson fell hard for Ruby and began pestering her for a date. A bit put off by Al’s persistence—and the fact that he was same age as her own father— Ruby asked Johnny Irish to wire her enough money to return to New York post-haste. But Jolson wouldn’t be discouraged, and before long Ruby was in love with him. The twicemarried singer made it plain that he wanted Ruby for Bride Number 3—and when Johnny Irish heard the news he banged his fists together and started to cry. Jolson was a bit nervous when the soft-spoken but menacing racketeer summoned him for a meeting, which Johnny himself later recalled to AP correspondent Pearl Gross: “Al came to me and we talked it over. I shook hands with him and told him he was getting the sweetest girl in the world. What else could I do? I was second fiddle, that’s all.” Other sources claim that Irish warned Jolson to treat Ruby right, or else. The marriage took place on September 21, 1928, and lasted 11 years. What eventually happened to Johnny Irish has been lost to the ages, but it is a matter of record that Larry Fay was killed on January 1, 1933. In Broadway Thru a Keyhole, Winchell used 75 percent Fay and 25 perSheet music for Broadway Thru a Keyhole, Walter Winchell’s 1933 spin cent Irish to come up with ficon the alleged romantic triangle involving Ruby Keeler, Al Jolson and tional milk-industry racketeer Frank Rocci, played by Paul Johnny Irish—or was it Larry Fay?

Fay Kelly (whose own backstory was almost as fascinating as Fay’s: Kelly had done time for manslaughter after shooting the abusive husband of his girlfriend). Following the Larry Fay scenario, Rocci has a vested interested in a Manhattan cabaret where Texas Guinan (playing herself ) performs nightly. Recognizing chorus dancer Joan Whalen (Constance Cummings) as the same little kid he grew up with in the “old neighborhood,” Rocci uses his influence to land her a starring role in the cabaret’s musical revue. Segueing from Larry Fay to Johnny Irish, Rocci falls in love with Joan, their romance duly chronicled by Walter Winchell (who does not appear, but can be heard over the radio in a few scenes). When a gangland war erupts, Rocci sends Joan to Florida to keep her out of danger. There she meets crooner-bandleader Clark Brian (Russ Columbo), whom she finds appealing because, unlike her gangster beau, Brian is an avowed coward. Rocci’s spies see Joan and Brian together, whereupon an angry Rocci threatens dire consequences if the singer tries to woo his girlfriend. But Brian overcomes his cowardice and confronts Rocci, who is so impressed by the boy’s gumption that he gives the romance his blessing. So as not to further complicate the situation, Rocci is conveniently shot down while rescuing Joan from kidnappers. As he hovers near death in a hospital bed, he is gratified to hear Winchell pay tribute to him over the radio—a far less ignominious demise than the one endured by Larry Fay, who was knocked off by a disgruntled employee because of a salary cut. Considering the sympathetic treatment of the Al Jolson surrogate in Broadway Thru a Keyhole, one wonders what got Jolie’s dander up to the point of slugging Winchell. Al’s explanation was that he did it for the sake of his wife Ruby, who had “cried for days” upon hearing that her past was going to be dredged up for the entertainment of millions. Since director Lowell Sherman hadn’t completed the film and screenwriters Gene Towne and Graham Baker were still revising the script, Jolson threatened to sue Zanuck if the picture ever got released—or failing that, he’d sic censorship czar Will Hays on the pro-

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ducer and have Broadway Thru a Keyhole banned. Nothing like this ever happened, nor did Winchell’s $50,000 (or was it $500,000?) lawsuit against Jolson get anywhere. In fact, Winchell’s pummeling was a godsend for the movie, which did better than expected at the boxoffice. “Swell publicity for the picture I wrote, eh?” Winchell crowed to Zanuck as the returns came in. Another Broadway columnist of note, Mark Hellinger, used the Keeler-Jolson-Fay (or Keeler-Jolson-Irish) imbroglio as the source for his original story The World Moves On, which he sold to Warner Bros. in 1939. Since Fox Films had already made a picture of that name in 1934, the Hellinger-produced effort was released as The Roaring Twenties. The decade referenced in the title had receded far enough into history for the film to be packaged as a nostalgia piece, buoyed by such popular tunes of the 1920s as “Melancholy Baby” and “I’m Just Wild About Harry.” Raoul Walsh directed with his usual panache, while screenwriters Jerry Wald, Richard Macaulay and Robert Rossen fashioned Hellinger’s cavalcade of the 20s into a vehicle for James Cagney. The actor is cast as Eddie Bartlett, who reverses the Larry Fay chronology by working in the taxi business before unemployment forces him into rum-running. As in Broadway Thru a Keyhole, Eddie goes totally “Johnny Irish” and falls for aspiring singer Jean Sherman (Priscilla Lane), whom he promotes into stardom at the speakeasy run by blowsy Panama Smith (played by Gladys George; Panama’s role model Texas Guinan had died in 1933). There is no Al Jolson counterpart on this occasion; the third side of the triangle is tediously honest lawyer Lloyd Hart ( Jeffrey Lynn), who marries Jean and graduates to district attorney at the same time that Eddie’s illegal-hootch enterprise collapses under the weight of Repeal. As before, Eddie takes a bullet for the sake of his former love when gangster George Hally (Humphrey Bogart) puts out a contract on Lloyd Hart. (Did we mention that Paul Kelly, star of Broadway Thru a Keyhole, appears in The Roaring Twenties as a vicious racketeer who dies in a restaurant shootout that anticipates The Godfather by 33

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years?) Borrowing from still another Prohibition gangster named Hymie Weiss, Eddie Bartlett expires dramatically on the steps of a church. When a passing cop asks who Eddie was, trueblue Panama Smith delivers the film’s classic closing line: “He used to be a big shot.”

FIELD, MARSHALL Chicago-based business entrepreneur, founder of the Marshall Field department-store chain, benefactor of the Field Museum of Natural History and spiritual grandfather of the Field Communications media operation. Lester Cohen’s 1926 bestseller Sweepings uses Field as the model for one of the novel’s two protagonists, both of them self-made men who pass along their business empires to their children—with entirely different results. The 1933 film version of Sweepings focused solely on the Marshall Field counterpart, department-store tycoon Daniel Pardway (Lionel Barrymore), who comes to grief thanks to his spoiled and wastry offspring. Edward Ellis was cast as Pardway in Three Sons, the 1939 remake of Sweepings.

FISCUS, KATHY The films: Three Secrets (United States Pictures/Warner Bros. 1950); The Well (Cardinal Pictures/Harry Popkin Productions/United Artists, 1951); Radio Days (Orion, 1987)

Three-year-old Kathryn Ann Fiscus was playing in a San Marino, California, oil field with her sister and cousin on the afternoon of April 8, 1949, when she fell down the shaft of an abandoned water well. The herculean efforts to rescue Kathy with bulldozers, drills and derricks attracted an enormous crowd at the scene and was covered by Los Angeles television station KTLA, the first major telecast of a live news event. Reporter Stan Chambers’ TV coverage continued throughout the night, despite the worries of KTLA engineers that keeping the station on the air past its normal schedule would burn out the transmitter. Finally a doctor was lowered into the shaft to check on the girl. He grimly informed the spectators and the radioTV public that Kathy was dead, most likely asphyxiated a few minutes after her fall. Despite its tragic outcome, the Kathy Fiscus

story was eagerly sought after by Hollywood filmmakers. In the three pictures directly influenced by Kathy’s plight, the focus was not so much on the child as on the reactions of the adult characters to the child’s plight. Directed by Robert Wise, 1950’s Three Secrets initially concerns a 5-year-old boy, the lone survivor of a plane crash, trapped on a California mountainside while rescuers try to reach him. When a reporter (Edmon Ryan) discovers that the boy was adopted, and that the crash occurred on his birthday, the emphasis shifts to three women (Eleanor Parker, Patricia Neal, Ruth Roman), each of whom had once given up a baby boy for adoption, and now fears that the endangered child is her long-lost son. Let the flashbacks begin! Produced independently by the same team responsible for the noir classic, D.O.A., 1951’s The Well is set in an unnamed Southern town, where 5-year-old black child Carolyn Crawford (Gwendolen Laster) falls into a well while picking flowers on her way to school. Investigating Carolyn’s disappearance, Sheriff Ben Kellog (Richard Rober) follows up an eyewitness report that the girl had been seen talking to white stranger Claude Packard (Harry Morgan). The simmering racial tensions in town boil over with rumors and innuendo, threatening to explode into an all-out riot between the white and black communities. When it is discovered that Carolyn is still alive and trapped underground, the townsfolk put prejudice aside and pull together to effect the girl’s rescue. If the film hadn’t been trying to deliver several messages at once this would have been a satisfactory finale, but director-writer Russell Rouse and coscripter Ray Golden pile issue upon issue when the only person with the professional excavating experience needed to save Carolyn turns out to be the falsely accused and now embittered Claude Packard. Kathy Fiscus’ plight was reformatted a third time as one of the episodes in Woody Allen’s nostalgic seriocomedy Radio Days (1987). Since Allen’s film takes place in the early 1940s, the attempts to rescue “little Polly Phelps” from a well are covered exclusively by radio, with veteran

Flournoy voiceover artist Jackson Beck giving a blow-byblow account, struggling manfully to remain optimistic. Unlike the two previous dramatizations of the event, this one retains the unhappy climax of the actual story. The director concentrates on the people at home listening to the tragedy unfold over the radio—specifically young Woody Allen surrogate Joe (Seth Green) and his normally abrasive father (Michael Tucker), who protectively embrace one another as they solemnly digest the announcement that little Polly Phelps has not survived.

FLOURNOY, T.J.—AND EDNA MILTON [AKA EDNA M ILTON CHADWELL , E DNA M ILTON DAVIDSON], MARVIN ZINDLER The film: Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (RKO Pictures/Miller-Milkis-Boyett Productions/Universal, 1982)

One of the world’s oldest business centers for the World’s Oldest Profession, the Chicken Ranch was up and running in La Grange, Texas, as early as 1834. Many a love-starved Texan would make the long and dusty trek down the two dirt roads leading to the single-story structure for a few hours of sweet talk and sweeter sex from the working girls who’d made the Ranch their home. The building earned its name during the Great Depression, when in lieu of cash the customers would pay for services rendered with produce and livestock. Edna Milton, reigning madame during the Ranch’s final decades, preferred to call the place Edna’s Boarding House—and accordingly established some fairly stringent boarding house rules. “To all living on the premises: If anyone here is an illiterate or of sub- normal intelligence they had better have someone read and explain this to them. Read this book once a month if you want to live here. These rules will be followed by all boarders and no exceptions. Absolutely no narcotics are permitted on these premises and if any are found the law will be called immediately. Drinking is not permitted during visiting hours and anyone doing so will be ordered to leave. In short, dope heads, pill heads and drunks are not permitted to live here regardless of who they are.” But Edna was no tyrant, and there was some

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leeway: “If a boarder has a pimp, that comes under the heading of her business. Boarders are permitted to see their pimp or lover one night a week (never more than that). A boarder’s lover may pick her up on week nights at 3:15 a.m. and she is to return no later than 2 p.m.” That said, “This is not and never will be a house of white slavery. As long as I continue to operate this boarding house, no pimp will ever own it. If they ever get that idea, they do sin as much as they could possibly sin.” Above all, the Chicken Shack Girls were to comport themselves as “ladies” at all times. After all, much of their clientele was made up of the most influential gentlemen in Greater Houston. Some people just aren’t happy unless other people are unhappy, as witness newscaster Marvin Zindler, resident crusader for Houston TV station KTRK. Explaining his tireless campaign to close down the Chicken Ranch in the early 1970s, Zindler declared years later “I have absolutely no second thoughts because I feel like any time you have an open house of prostitution there is a possibility of graft and corruption.” He added, “People say nobody gets hurt in a business like that. Well, it’s your and my daughters who get hurt by being drawn into that kind of business.” The citizens of LaGrange were sharply divided on the issue: Granted, Edna Milton was running an illegal operation (and making around $1.3 million in the process), but no one could deny that Edna and her girls were the community’s best and busiest customers and consumers, keeping a lot of small businesses running at a profit. The “ranch hands” were also intensely patriotic, baking cookies for men in uniform, wrapping bandages for the Red Cross, and during wartime helping out at the local USO. Fortunately for Edna, she had a strong ally in local sheriff T.J. Flournoy, who was positively masterful in coming up with excuses to avoid shuttering the Ranch. Only the intercession of Texas governor Dolph Briscoe expedited the closing of the 139-year-old institution on August 2, 1973. Fulfilling their worst fears, the business community of LaGrange suffered a sudden and dramatic dip in the local economy. The widespread fame of the Chicken Ranch was strong enough for a

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group of Dallas business executives to open a restaurant bearing the same name, but this venture failed around the same time that the original Ranch was demolished. Texas scribe Larry L. King kept the legend of the Ranch alive in a highly regarded 1974 Playboy magazine article. Among those who read and enjoyed the piece was Houston-born actor Peter Masterson, then appearing on Broadway in That Championship Season. As Masterson explained to the New York Daily News, “I thought it would make a good straight play with a strong statement for women. I’ve always respected people who survived no matter who they are.” Around the same time, Robin Moore, who’d written a book about the Chicken Ranch, teamed with producer Fred Halliday with the intention of making a similarly straightforward theatrical feature on the subject. But it was Masterson, in collaboration with fellow Texans Larry L. King and songwriter Carol Hall, who got their project off the ground first in the form of the musical comedy The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. The musical was originally seen as a workshop production with Masterson’s wife, Carlyn Glynn, as the rechristened Chicken Ranch madame Mona Strangley; Glynn would be carried over into the Broadway version that opened June 19, 1978. Also in both productions was Henderson Forsythe as the T.J. Flournoy counterpart Sheriff Ed Earl, whose sorrow over being forced to close down the Ranch was compounded by the fact that he had been one of Mona’s favorite onenight-stands. The killjoy TV newscaster in the actual story became comic villain Melvin P. Thorpe (“The Watchdog of Texas”), originally played by Clint Allmon; while the nameless Governor who gives the ax to the Chicken was one of three roles enacted by Jay Garner. Universal Pictures producer Stevie Philips caught Best Little Whorehouse in workshop form, and on behalf of his studio financed the subsequent off–Broadway and Broadway versions in exchange for the film rights. Peter Masterson shared directorial duties with choreographer Tommy Tune (also a Texan), whose staging of such show-stopping numbers as “Hard Candy Christmas” and “The Aggie

Song” set the template for all future productions. Though not involved with the creative aspects of the show beyond serving as inspiration, Edna Milton agreed to appear in the Broadway version in the small role of “Miss Wulla Jean.” Despite opposition from bluenoses when Universal endeavored to advertise the show, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas was a smash from the outset, eventually toting up 1639 performances. With commendable confidence, Robin Moore and Fred Halliday intended to go ahead with their non-musical version of the story despite the success of the Broadway version: “We’re mining a new motherlode of gold—we hope,” insisted Moore, who was conferring with Edna Milton to come up with ideas that the musical hadn’t explored. But when the saga of the Chicken Ranch finally made it to the big screen in 1982, it was in the form of director-cowriter Colin Higgins’ star-studded film version of Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Plans to use LaGrange, Texas, as the film’s fictional burg of “Gilbert” were scuttled when it was decided that modern-day LaGrange was too large a town to pass as its older self; thus, filming commenced in the considerably smaller Texas community of Hallettsville, with an old farmhouse near Pflugerville (100 miles from LaGrange) standing in for the Chicken Ranch. Additional shooting took place inside the Capitol Building in Austin, where for the first time in history moviemakers were allowed to stage a fictional sequence: The nowclassic “sidestepping” dance performed by Charles Durning as the film’s still-nameless Governor. Others in the cast are Dolly Parton (who wrote a few new tunes for the occasion and revived her 1973 hit “I Will Always Love You”) as Mona Stangley, Burt Reynolds as Sheriff Ed Earl and Dom DeLuise as Melvin P. Thorpe, with character cameos by Jim Nabors, Lois Nettleton, Robert Mandan, Barry Corbin and veteran newscaster Howard K. Smith as “himself.” More a vehicle for the stars than the ensemble stage version, Best Little Whorehouse otherwise differs significantly from its Broadway source only in the length and breadth of the romantic relationship between Mona and Sheriff Ed and the omission of three songs. Though purists (if that is the appropriate

Ford word under the circumstances) prefer the original stage musical, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas was popular enough to knock E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial off its pedestal as the nation’s number-one box office attraction in July 1982.

FLYNN, ERROL Australian-born actor, Hollywood’s foremost swashbuckler of the 1930s and 1940s. Flynn’s well-known fondness for liquor is part and parcel of Peter O’Toole’s portrayal of movie star Allan Swann in My Favorite Year, very loosely based on producer Mel Brooks’ experiences as a staff writer on the early 1950s TV series Your Show of Shows when Flynn guested on a live 1950 episode. Among the many Flynn biographies was one written by Charles Higham which alleged that the actor’s close friendship with certain Britishers who harbored Fascist sympathies motivated him to spy for the Nazis during World War II. Though these claims were largely discredited by 1991, that didn’t stop the producers of the action-fantasy film The Rocketeer from using a Flynn- like 1930s film favorite named Neville Sinclair (Timothy Dalton) as the Naziagent villain of the piece.

FONDA , JANE Oscar-winning American actress, the daughter of film star Henry Fonda. During the Vietnam War she stirred up controversy with her antiwar activism and tacit support of the Vietcong, exemplified by a 1972 propaganda photo wherein she was shown sitting on an NVA anti-aircraft gun. “Hanoi Jane” was thoroughly trashed in Lionel Chetwind’s jingoistic POW film The Hanoi Hilton (1987) as reactionary Hollywood starlet “Paula,” fleetingly played by Gloria Carlin.

FONTANNE, LYNN—AND ALFRED LUNT Celebrated Broadway acting team, married from 1922 until Lunt’s death. Renowned not only for their immense talent and onscreen rapport but also for their formidable offstage temperaments. Basil Underwood (Leslie Howard) and Joyce Arden (Bette Davis) play a loving but fiercely competitive acting duo in It’s Love I’m After (1937), though unlike the Lunts the characters aren’t married to each other. Drawing

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from anecdotal and eyewitness accounts of Lynn and Alfred’s backstage quarrels during their joint appearance in the Theatre Guild’s 1935 moderndress version of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, Sam and Bella Spewack fashioned the book for the 1947 Cole Porter musical Kiss Me Kate, in which a divorced acting couple is reunited for a song-and-dance adaptation of Shrew. The 1953 film version of Kiss Me Kate stars Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson as Lunt-and-Fontanne clones Fred Graham and Lilli Vanessi.

FORD, FORD MADDOX British writer Jean Rhys drew upon her relationship with author-poet Ford Maddox Ford, her longtime mentor and lover, for the semiautobiographical 1928 novel Quartet. MerchantIvory’s 1981 film version of the Rhys novel stars Alan Bates as the Ford stand-in, English art dealer H.J. Heidler, while Jean Rhys herself is represented by Mado Zelli (Isabelle Adjani).

FORD, HENRY American automobile tycoon and industrialist, creator of the first mass-produced, popularpriced car, known as the Model T. Ford’s pacifism during World War I made him a ripe target for those who urgently pressed for U.S. involvement in the European conflict. Caricatured as Rev. Cuthbert Pike, he was seen together with William Jennings Bryan knockoff Plato Barker vainly attempting to appease an invading foreign army with bouquets of flowers in the now-lost 1916 melodrama The Fall of a Nation. In the 1920s Ford deservedly achieved negative fame for his anti–Semitic sentiments and promulgation of the notorious forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion; this aspect of his personality was ridiculed in such comedy films as The Shamrock and the Rose (1927) and Just Imagine (1931), though no Fordlike characters appeared onscreen. A more benign image was projected by Walter Huston as retired automobile manufacturer Sam Dodsworth in the 1934 stage version and 1936 film adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel Dodsworth. It was back to the Dark Side in 1978, when Henry Ford’s well-known contemptuous treatment of his son Edsel became a major

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plot device in the movie version of Harold Robbins’ novel The Betsy. Sir Laurence Olivier portrays Loren Hardeman II, aka “Number One,” aging auto-company president and thorn in the side of his visionary grandson Loren Hardeman III (Robert Duvall).

FORSON, TERRY—AND JESS KNOWLTON The film: Unstoppable (Prospect Park/Scott Free Productions/Firm Film/Millbrook Farm Productions/20th Century–Fox, 2010)

The name of the CSX Transportation employee whose carelessness caused what is now known as “The Crazy Eights Incident” has never been publicly revealed, and is he glad! On May 15, 2001, CSX train 8888 was accidentally allowed to leave Toledo, Ohio, under its own power, travelling unmanned at a speed of 45 miles per hour. Unfortunately, 8888 was carrying a huge shipment of phenol and other hazardous and highly combustible materials. Fortunately, CSX transmitter Jon Hosfield had seen the train leave with no one on board, and accompanied by fellow employee Mike Smith hopped into a car and sped down Interstate 75 at 100 miles per hour to locate the train before any damage occurred. Catching up with 8888 in the town of Cygnet, Hosfield attempted to derail it but was unsuccessful. Having been alerted to the situation, a team of CSX supervisors contacted veteran engineer Jess Knowlton and his young conductor Terry Forson, telling them to ditch their own train cars and divert their engine to a sidetrack. The supervisors came up with the idea of having Knowlton and Folson allow 8888 to pass them by, then throw their own engine in reverse in order to overtake the runaway train from behind. By the time this was accomplished outside the town of Kenton, 8888 had already travelled 66 miles with no signs of slowing down. It was up to Jon Hosfield to jump onto the runaway from his own engine and race to the cab to shut down the throttle, thereby averting disaster. The story was generously covered by the Ohio media and became the subject of a 2002 Reader’s Digest article. By that time Jess Knowlton and Terry Forson, who barely knew each other prior to the incident, had become close

friends, able to laugh about their first meeting wherein Knowlton sized up young Forson and grumbled “I don’t like working at a day care center”—to which Forson replied “Well, I don’t like working at an old folks home.” It was the sort of dialogue that one might find in an actionadventure film, and indeed screenwriter Tony Bombeck quotes the exchange verbatim in his script for the 2010 film Unstoppable, a fanciful re-enactment of the “Crazy Eights” yarn. Although Jess Knowlton was Caucasian, his onscreen counterpart Frank Barnes is played by the highly bankable African American star Denzel Washington; Forson’s ethnicity is unaltered, with Chris Pine cast as youthful engineer Will Colson. The third hero of the piece, Jon Hosfield, is somewhat lost in the shuffle, his actions spread out among several characters. Hosfield’s heroic action of leaping aboard 8888 to pull the throttle is transferred to Denzel Washington, who after all is top-billed. Knowlton and Forson coached the two stars of Unstoppable in the nomenclature of the railroad business and the proper comportment for an engineer and a conductor; they also supplied scripter Bombeck and director Tony Scott with appropriate dialogue. After seeing the film at its L.A. premiere, Knowlton remarked “It was surreal. Every time something was said in the movie that we had said to Tony Scott, I would lean forward in my seat, look at Terry and laugh.” The two men also undoubtedly derived a few hearty chuckles from the film’s embellishments, exaggerations and inaccuracies. To build up empathy between the two leading characters above and beyond the crisis confronting them in the film, both men are given compelling backstories: Engineer Frank Barnes has just been forced into early retirement and is presently missing his daughter’s birthday, while conductor Will Colson is being sued for divorce by his wife and may lose custody of his child. The old guy–young guy dynamic is ginned up by having Barnes express resentment over Colson apparently getting his job through family connections, but as expected the novice more than proves his mettle before the final fadeout. Most everybody else in the film is strictly

Frank from the disaster-movie-cliché handbook. The railroad hostler who accidently allows AFWR 777 to leave a Pennsylvania depot without anyone at the controls is portrayed by Ethan Suplee as a lazy slob with a bad attitude. A bombastic railroad vice president (Oscar Galvin) refuses to endorse Barnes’ brilliant idea to run his engine in reverse to catch up with the renegade train (yes, it is Barnes’ idea this time around), opting instead to derail the runaway even if it means blowing up a small town (his rationale is that this would be preferable to blowing up a big city). A feisty female yardmaster (third-billed Rosario Dawson) bucks orders and advises Barnes to follow his own judgment, at the risk of losing her job. And an elderly engineer (David Warshofsky) who happens to be one of Barnes’ oldest friends is killed in an attempt to slow down the train—in full view of the Fox News cameras (Did you miss that tragedy when the story was unfolding in real life? So did everyone else, because it never happened). Just in case the viewer has no interest in these old chestnuts, we’re provided with a gratuitous glimpse of female epidermis when it is revealed that Barnes’ two estranged daughters are both Hooters waitresses. This being a Tony Scott movie, explosions and helicopters are inserted at every opportunity, the latter figuring into a spectacular sequence in which an Afghan-war veteran (Ryan Aherne) is lowered from one of the copters in an effort to board the runaway, only to break several bones in the process. Similarly, Tony Scott can’t simply offer us one climax as in real life. Oh no, perish the thought. Once Jake Barnes has made it to the cab of AFWR 777, he still must navigate a perilous high-trestle curve—and horror of horrors, his own engine’s brakes have failed! Be sure to see the final chapter of Burn ’Em Up Barnes at this theater next week! If the actual people involved in the actual incident that inspired Unstoppable were upset by all this hyperbole, they made no complaints when they saw the finished film. Jess Knowlton for one expressed nothing but gratitude for Tony Scott’s sentimental gesture of dedicating Unstoppable to Knowlton’s wife Hollie, who died just before the film’s release: “Watching the movie

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was surreal, but when I saw my wife’s name, that put it into focus.”

FRANK , LEO—AND MARY PHAGAN The film: They Won’t Forget (Warner Bros., 1937)

One of most controversial criminal proceedings in the history of the state of Georgia is also among the most shameful examples of hatred and intolerance in the history of American jurisprudence. Among the harshest criticisms levelled against the Leo Frank murder trial was made in 1915, the same year that Frank was dragged from his prison cell and lynched: “[F]or brevity, the heart of the Frank case may be summed up in three words—politics, prejudice and perjury.” The National Pencil Factory in downtown Atlanta was the scene of a shocking murder on April 26, 1913. The victim was 13-year-old factory employee Mary Phagan, who was robbed, beaten and presumably raped before she was killed. The most likely of the seven suspects were night watchman Newt Lee, who had written two barely literate notes indicating that he lusted after Mary; and African American janitor Jim Conley, who helped Lee hide the girl’s body to avoid being arrested himself. As the circumstantial evidence piled up, Conley became the prime suspect—many criminologists have since determined that he probably was guilty—but ambitious prosecuting attorney Hugh Dorsey reasoned that there was no political advantage to sentencing a black man to the electric chair in Georgia. So Dorsey focused his attention on Mary’s boss, 29-year-old factory manager Leo Frank. Though born in Texas, Frank had spent most of his life in New York, and as such was eyed with suspicion as an “outsider” by his coworkers. The fact that Frank was Jewish was another strike against him in the Bible Belt of 1913. If Dorsey could convict a “New York Jew” for the murder of an innocent Southern girl, his reputation would be made and the governor’s office would be the next likely step in his political career—though of course he insisted to the press that he was motivated purely by the cause of “justice.”

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Bolstered by rabidly anti–Frank and anti–Yankee editorials in the Atlanta Constitution, Dorsey stirred up enough public outrage to effectively condemn the suspect before he even entered the courtroom. As if this wasn’t enough, Darley’s assistants terrorized Jim Conley into giving perjured testimony, while Dorsey himself hammered away at the defense team with a barrage of what historian Leonard Dinnerstein has characterized as “innuendo, misrepresentation, and distortion.” Those not directly connected with the case did their part by fomenting so much anti–Semitic vitriol that nearly half of the 3000 Jews in Atlanta moved out of the city. At the end of an unusually lengthy trial Frank was found guilty and sentenced to death, with mobs both inside and outside the Fulton County Superior Courthouse cheering the decision. After Frank exhausted his appeals, Georgia governor John M. Slayton—who had conducted his own private investigation—came to the defendant’s rescue by commuting his sentence to life imprisonment one day before the execution. With this one courageous action, Slayton destroyed his own political career; sadly, it was all for naught. On the night of August 16, 1915, a group of 25 men representing a Klan-like organization called the Knights of Mary Phagan broke into the Milledgeville State Prison, kidnapped Leo Frank, drove him to Cobb County and hanged him not far from Mary’s birthplace. This reprehensible saga of Justice Denied yielded one praiseworthy byproduct: the formation of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith in October 1913. The first film to touch upon the tragedy of Leo Frank was director Hal Reid’s Thou Shalt Not Kill (1915), in which a Kentucky boy was executed for murder on circumstantial evidence just before the real culprit confessed; that same year, Reid also produced a documentary on the actual case. With Thou Shalt Not Kill unavailable for viewing, we are compelled to accept producer-director Mervyn LeRoy’s 1937 social drama They Won’t Forget as the definitive fictionalization of the Leo Frank story (a two-part 1985 TV movie, The Murder of Mary Phagan, uses actual names and events). The film was adapted by Robert Rossen and Aben Kandel from Death

The ill-fated Leo Frank.

in the Deep South, a 1936 novel by former Atlanta Journal reporter Ward Greene. The action is moved from the pre–World War I era to the late 1930s, with care taken not to identify the Southern state where it unfolds. Edward Norris plays the Leo Frank equivalent, business-school teacher Robert Hale; Claude Rains is cast as relentless prosecutor and gubernatorial hopeful “Little” Andy Griffin; Clinton Rosemond is seen as Tump Redwine, the timorous (and, in this version, clearly innocent) black janitor who is coerced into lying on the witness stand to save himself from suspicion; and in her first major screen role, Lana Turner portrays the 16-yearold Mary Phagan counterpart Mary Clay, whose flirtatious nature and ripe figure suggest without further comment that her murder might have been sexually motivated. Though a powerful and generally uncompromising indictment of prejudice and mob rule, the film admittedly pulled a few punches in order to pass muster with the Production Code—and to avoid being boycotted by every

Fugate theater owner in the South. Edward Norris plays Robert Hale with restrained ambivalence, allowing the audience to draw its own conclusions regarding his guilt or innocence. The circumstantial evidence against Hale is damning; his behavior after the murder is suspicious and incriminating; and once behind bars he seems resigned to his fate, as if a heavy burden has been lifted from him. It would have been all too easy for the screenwriters to establish Hale’s innocence to hammer home the fact that he is being railroaded to the death house; by refusing to confirm whether Hale is a murderer or merely a victim of circumstance, They Won’t Forget accomplishes the formidable task of avoiding complaints of defamation from real-life Southern lawmakers while simultaneously emphasizing that even an accused killer-rapist has the unalienable right to a fair trial. As for Claude Rains’ characterization of Andy Griffin, there is no denying that he is anxious to use the murder of Mary Clay to advance himself politically. Still, throughout the early reels Griffin is sincere and equitable in his pursuit of truth and justice, refusing to indict the black janitor just because it may be convenient, or Mary’s boyfriend (Elisha Cook, Jr.) just because the kid has a short fuse. Only after a hotshot reporter (Allyn Joslyn) passes along local gossip regarding the relationship between Robert Hale and Mary Clay does Griffin even consider the possibility that Hale is the killer. And only after Griffin becomes acutely aware of public resentment against Hale does he double down on prosecuting the man as a means of enhancing his own reputation—though by this time he seems to have thoroughly convinced himself of Hale’s guilt. While the issue of anti–Semitism is ignored in They Won’t Forget, the issue of blind, stupid prejudice still figures prominently in the story. Before the murder is committed there are indications aplenty that many people in the fictional Southern town have an inherent intolerance of Yankees, just as Robert Hale is haughtily contemptuous of the local citizens’ Dixie pride. Once the murder case becomes a national news story, Northern newspaper editors order their

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reporters to pound the “prejudice angle,” while Southern newshounds declare exultantly that the Civil War has started all over again. By depicting cynical opportunists on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line who are willing to exploit a young girl’s murder for their own selfish purposes, neither side is let off the hook for the tragic consequences. In her emotional curtain speech, Robert Hale’s widow (Gloria Dickson) holds the opportunistic Andy Griffin liable for dredging up all the old animosities between the “Yanks” and “Rebs,” while at the same time piling plenty of blame upon her husband’s smug, condescending New York defense attorney (Otto Kruger) and his arrogant allies in the Northern press for allowing the hatred to boil over. In the final analysis, there are no individual villains in They Won’t Forget. Even the lynch mob in the climatic scene—led not by a KKK–style group but by the dead girl’s grieving brothers— cannot be held entirely responsible for the fate of Robert Hale. Like Hale himself, they are victims of an intrinsic brand of prejudice that was in place long before any of them were born. This isn’t exactly the message one takes away from the true story of Leo Frank and Mary Phagan, but it works just fine within the context of They Won’t Forget.

FUGATE, CARIL ANN—AND CHARLES STARKWEATHER

The Sadist (Fairway International, 1962); Badlands (Pressman-Williams/Jill Jakes Productions/Badlands Company/Warner Bros., 1974)

Based on a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino and written and directed by Oliver Stone, the jet-black comedy Natural Born Killers (1994) is the quintessential blend of Stone’s cinematic virtuosi and moral irresponsibility. Focusing on a fun-loving married couple (Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis) who happen to be mass murderers, Stone deploys a mind-blowing mixture of styles and genres to stake out his claim that the killers are no worse than the public that voyeuristically follows their every move, the media (represented by deranged TV host Robert Downey, Jr.) that transforms them into folk

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heroes, or the authorities (specifically a homicidal cop played by Tom Sizemore and an easily bribed warden played by Tommy Lee Jones) who in their own way are just as venal and sociopathic as the nominal villains. Praised to the heavens as Stone’s masterpiece in some quarters, Natural Born Killers has just as many highly vocal detractors, among them several who have complained that the film is a complete distortion of the real-life story that reportedly inspired it: The 1958 Nebraska killing spree of 19-year-old Charles Starkweather. In one respect, we can’t argue with the critics: Starkweather and his 14year-old girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate were never treated with idolatry by the press or the public. In fact, there was a collective sigh of relief throughout the nation when in 1959 Charles was executed and Caril sentenced to life imprisonment. There seems to have been no motivation for the murders beyond the fact that Starkweather had a bad attitude and an itchy trigger finger. Kicked out of his house by his parents and locked out of his cheap apartment for nonpayment of rent, Charles never displayed anything resembling ambition, nor was he particularly industrious as a garbage collector for the Lincoln, Nebraska, warehouse where his coworkers de-

scribed him as “dumb” and “worthless.” This didn’t stop him from strutting around in cowboy boots like he owned the place, nor from adopting an insolent James Dean pose while lounging in a corner smoking cigarettes and reading comic books. The only person who seemed to find any value in Charles was his steady date Caril, whom he’d known since she was 13. Caril’s mother Velda and stepfather Marion Bartlett hated Charles at first sight and ordered him to stay away from their daughter and the family farm. Surprisingly, the Bartletts weren’t Starkweather’s first murder victims: That distinction went to gas station attendant Robert Colvert, whom Charles shot during a robbery on November 30, 1957. It wasn’t until January 21, 1958, that Charles settled accounts with Caril’s family, killing Bartlett, Velda and Caril’s 3-year-old sister, Betty Jean. Caril herself would later insist she was unaware that Charles had murdered her loved ones during the six days that the couple remained in the farmhouse, but she must have tumbled to the fact by the time they fled the place in her stepfather’s car. The couple headed to the home of Charles’ frequent hunting companion August Meyer, who was also shot to death along with his dog. Again on the run, the couple was slowed down when their car got

Police mug shot of Charles Starkweather.

Fugate stuck in the mud. Seventeen-year-old Robert Jensen and his 16-year-old girlfriend Carol King offered to give the fugitives a lift and were murdered for their troubles, but not before Charles tried and failed to rape Carol. The next stop was the fashionable home of C. Lauer Ward, president of Capital Steel Works. Charles forced Lauer’s wife Clara and housekeeper Lillian Fencil into the master bedroom, tied them up and killed them both. He then patiently waited for Mr. Ward to return home from the office, shooting the man before he even had a chance to remove his coat. By now the authorities had concluded that the preponderance of corpses in the Lincoln area was the handiwork of one person. Figuring that the Packard he’d stolen from Ward was too “hot,” Starkweather ditched the car in favor of the Buick owned by salesman Merle Collison, whom Charles awoke from a nap before killing him. With police sirens wailing in the distance, Caril ran off in terror, screaming that Charles was going to kill her as well. After a highspeed car chase, Starkweather was forced to stop when police bullets shattered the Buick’s windshield. In his subsequent murder trial both Charles and his parents tried to claim that Caril had goaded the boy into becoming a murderer, with Charles testifying that the girl had personally pulled the trigger on two of the victims. Caril meanwhile insisted that Charles had kidnapped her and that she’d been too frightened to attempt escape during his campaign of terror. When the verdicts were reached, 15-year-old Caril became the youngest person in the United States ever convicted of first-degree murder, while Charles ended up as the last person electrocuted in Nebraska until 1996. The first theatrical feature inspired by the Starkweather murders was 1962’s The Sadist (also known as Profile in Terror), an astonishingly well made effort from veteran schlock merchant Arch Hall, Sr. Directed with flesh-creeping intensity by James Landis and photographed by recent Hungarian émigré Vilmos Zsigmond, the film stars the producer’s son Arch Hall, Jr., as the title character, aka Charlie Tibbs. Though Starkweather would protest throughout his trial that he killed only in self-defense (!), Hall’s slavering

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performance as Tibbs is probably closer to the mark; he not only derives an abundance of pleasure from killing in cold blood, but also revels in tormenting his victims before pulling the trigger. Accompanied by his moronic teenage girlfriend, Judy Bradshaw (Marilyn Manning), Tibbs spends most of the film making life sheer bloody hell for three schoolteachers (Helen Hovey, Richard Alden, Don Russell) who are ambushed by the lethal couple while en route to an L.A. Dodgers game. It’s the sort of movie that you can’t stop watching even when you want to turn away in revulsion, as Tibbs plays vicious cat-and-mouse games with his helpless victims and anticipates their every futile attempt to escape. Arch Hall, Jr.’s eerie facial resemblance to Starkweather enhances the film’s fear factor, making the viewer wish that Hall had done more pictures like this and fewer turkeys like Wild Guitar and Eegah! The major difference between this taut little nailbiter and the actual story is that in The Sadist both the killer and his girlfriend meet violent ends with nary a cop in sight. Though The Sadist has achieved cult status since 1962, at the time of its release it was ignored in the trade papers and shunted off to rural drive-ins. Conversely, Terrence Malick’s maiden directorial effort Badlands (1973), also inspired by the Starkweather-Fugate story, was recognized as a classic from the get-go, and has since been enshrined in the National Film Registry. A protégé of director Arthur Penn, Malick emulates Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde by engendering a measure of sympathy for his Starkweather character Kit Carruthers, well played by Martin Sheen in his pre–“eminent character actor” period. Kit’s 15-year-old girlfriend and travelling companion Holly Sargis (Sissy Spacek in her breakout performance) is not an unwilling hostage as Fugate claimed to be; though she never commits any murders herself, it doesn’t seem to faze her at all when Kit dispatches his various victims. While the Nebraska locale of the original story is changed to South Dakota and Saskatchewan, Badlands is true to its source so far as taking place in the late 1950s. Throughout the film, Kit Carruthers is

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provided with “motivation” to kill, though this in no way expunges him of sin. When he murders Holly’s cruel father (Warren Oates), it is only after the spiteful old man shoots Holly’s dog as punishment for her relationship with Kit. The next three victims are bounty hunters who have inconsiderately invaded Kit and Holly’s idyllic outdoor home- away-from-home. Also doomed to die is Kit’s friend Cato (Ramon Bieri), who turns Quisling and notifies the cops that the couple is hiding out in his home. Conversely, when Kit invades the mansion of a wealthy man to steal his car and valuables, he does not gun down the owner and his housekeepers in emulation of Starkweather’s slaughter of the C. Lauer Ward household, but instead generously spares the lives of his captives after robbing them. And rather than flee in terror when the authorities finally catch up with her as Fugate did, Holly breaks off her relationship with Kit long before the final showdown because she’s tired of living on the run. Once arrested, Kit enjoys the attention showered on him by the police and the media and turns on the boyish charm that had so attracted Holly, who likewise seems to bask in the publicity once she’s in custody. Narrated throughout by Holly in a schoolgirl-romance tone which superbly counterpoints the onscreen carnage, Badlands ends with Kit’s execution and Holly’s revelation that once she is placed on probation she will marry the son of her attorney. There have been other movies in which characters based on Starkweather and Fugate have figured into the plot (Pretty Poison, Kalifornia, Stark Raving Mad), and a brace of films in which the actual names, dates and incidents are used (Murder in the Heartlands and Starkweather). But you’d rather hear about what eventually happened to Caril Ann Fugate, right? After serving 17 years in prison, Caril was paroled (but not pardoned) in 1976. She relocated to Michigan where she worked quietly in a variety of jobs, including a position with a patient-transport business where her coworkers formed a protective phalanx around her whenever reporters showed up. She always maintained that she was a prisoner rather than an accomplice during Stark-

weather’s orgy of homicide, and most writers, psychologists, law authorities and sociologists have come to accept her version of the story in recent years. In 2007 Caril Ann Fugate married for the first time, a union that ended tragically six years later when her husband was killed in a car accident.

G ALLO, “CRAZY JOE” The film: The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (MGM, 1971)

Born in 1929, Joseph Gallo was the son of a prominent Brooklyn bootlegger who raised Joey and his two brothers Albert (aka “Kid Blast”) and Larry to follow in daddy’s footsteps. At 5'6" Joey was proof that bad things come in small packages. Though he earned his celebrated nickname “Crazy Joe” after pleading insanity when the cops found him with a cache of burglar tools, the soubriquet could well have described his general demeanor. Most of the time, however, Joey was crazy like a fox, behaving in a swaggering manner calculated to throw his enemies off guard. A year after he and his brothers whacked Albert “Murder Inc.” Anastasia at the behest of New York mob boss Joseph Profaci, Gallo was summoned into the office of Robert F. Kennedy, then in charge of the government’s investigation of Mob activity; the moment he stepped onto the carpeting in Kennedy’s office, Joe remarked smoothly “This would make a great place for a crap game.” Though Joey and his brothers were close friends and associates of gambler Frankie “Shots” Abbatemarco, they dutifully knocked Frankie off on orders from Profaci, who’d promised that he’d split all future profits from Abbatemarco’s rackets with the Gallos. When Profaci reneged on his promise, Gallo declared war on his ex-boss and formed his own gang, known as “The Mod Squad” a full decade before the TV series of that name. As the 1960s began Joey was waging a quixotic campaign to gain control of organized crime in New York, which made him excellent newspaper copy and also an idol of sorts for people not otherwise connected with the Mob. When asked why he later cowrote a song dedicated to Crazy Joe, Bob Dylan explained “I never considered him a gangster. I

Gallo always thought of him as some kind of hero in some kind of way. An underdog fighting against the elements.” Alas, the harder Joey and his brothers tried to kill Profaci, the more they failed, often in ways that provoked laughter from their fellow gangsters—though never in the Gallos’ presence. In 1961 Joey was sentenced to a 10-year prison term for extortion; one year later Profaci died of natural causes and was succeeded by Joe Colombo (who as noted in the separate entry for Vincent Alo was the principal inspiration for Joey Zasa in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather: Part III). Drawing upon his vast knowledge of gangland activities in the Big Apple, columnist and investigative reporter Jimmy Breslin served up a fictional and irresistibly hilarious novel based on the Gallo-Profaci war, The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, in 1969. The following year Breslin was savagely beaten by mob hoodlums—not, surprisingly, because of his characterization of “Kid Sally Palumbo” (the Joey Gallo character) as a bumbling clown, but as a result of a separate series of articles about the Lufthansa robbery that would later inspire the Martin Scorsese gangster flick Goodfellas (1990). The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight was itself committed to film in 1971, under the TVsitcom–style direction of James Goldstone and with a screenplay by Waldo (Midnight Cowboy) Salt. Substituting pig-bladder slapstick for Breslin’s sly, knowledgeable humor, the film stars lanky Broadway luminary Jerry Orbach as Kid Sally Palumbo (thus having the physical advantage over his role model Joe Gallo by approximately 71/2 inches). A trusted lieutenant of the film’s Joe Profaci surrogate Baccala (Lionel Stander), Kid Sally is put in charge of a mobcontrolled New York bicycle race, but causes a public riot when he fails to complete construction of the bike track on time. Demoted to the humiliating position of Baccala’s chauffeur, Kid Sally swears vengeance against his boss, organizing his own gang of misfits and screwups while hoping to exploit the romance between his sister Angela (Leigh Taylor- Young) and one of the Italian bicyclists, a con artist named Mario (played by Robert De Niro, who got so “into”

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his characterization that he was arrested on a shoplifting charge). At present pulling an elaborate scam on Baccala, Mario is more effective in undermining the gangster than Kid Sally and his stooges, who time after time bollix up their mission. On one occasion, Sally’s gun blows up in his hand. Another time, he tries to dispose of the body of a Baccala henchman who’d suffered a fatal heart attack before Sally had the opportunity to whack him; our hero dumps the corpse over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, but instead of plunging into the drink the stiff lands on a passing tugboat. And in still another misbegotten hit, Sally’s gang succeeds only “killing” the intended victim’s new set of tires. The film’s most farcical complication finds Sally as the reluctant owner of a lion after purchasing circus equipment to use for his bicycle track. Attempting to feed the lion its daily ration of meat, Sally accidentally stuffs thousands of Mafia dollars down the beast’s gullet. Throughout the film, Sally and company prove dangerous only by accident, and when he is finally sentenced to a year behind bars it is on a charge of “conspiracy to murder Brooklyn.” Upon his release from prison in 1971, Crazy Joe Gallo expressed public displeasure over his unflattering portrayal in the film version of The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, and arranged to have dinner with Jerry Orbach and his then wife to voice his objections. “Breslin’s book had portrayed Joey as a clown,” Orbach recalled to Time magazine. “Then when I met Joey, I was absolutely amazed to find out that maybe he had been a wild kind of a nut before he went to prison, but something had happened to him inside.” That “something” was his introduction to the literary works of such intellectuals as JeanPaul Sartre, Franz Kafka and Emmanuel Kant; he also became a renaissance man of sorts, taking up painting and poetry. Utterly charmed by the “new” Joey Gallo, the Orbachs became close friends with the man, introducing him to other members of the New York smart set. But though Joey was now the star attraction at many an Alist Manhattan soiree, he hadn’t really changed all that much. No sooner had he gotten out of prison than he called upon several gang contacts

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to arrange the attempted assassination of Joe Profaci’s successor Joey Colombo, jump-starting his efforts to become the Mafia kingpin of all New York. On April 7, 1972, Gallo attended comedian Don Rickles’ show at the Copa Cabana in the company of Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Orbach and several other friends. Joey and his wife then headed to Umberto’s Clam House on Mulberry Street in “Little Italy.” Though well aware that his recent mob activities had painted a target on his back—“Joey compressed time with us because he knew in the back of his head he might not have much time,” noted Orbach—he felt safe at Umberto’s because of the unwritten Mafia rule that no gangster would ever be killed on Mulberry. But as was so often the case in previous years, Gallo had miscalculated. At 4 a.m. a group of shady characters entered Umberto’s and pumped five bullets into Crazy Joe Gallo—a murder worthy of The Godfather, which Joey unfortunately never got to see.

G ARLAND, JUDY—AND ETHEL MERMAN Famously troubled American entertainer Judy Garland’s tumultuous transition from child actress to adult superstar is more or less replicated by Natalie Wood as the title character in Inside Daisy Clover (1965). Judy’s dependency upon liquor and narcotics to keep herself “up” in her later performances is manifested in Patty Duke’s characterization of Broadway luminary Neely O’Hara in the 1967 film version of Jacqueline Susann’s bestseller Valley of the Dolls. Among the film’s dramatic setpieces is an early scene in which talented newcomer Neely is fired from her first Broadway show by temperamental star Helen Lawson (Susan Hayward in a role originally slated for Judy Garland), who fears that the youngster will steal the spotlight. This incident is based on the treatment afforded Betty Hutton in the 1940 Broadway musical Panama Hattie by that show’s divalike star Ethel Merman, who made a practice of removing potential competition throughout her stage career, later ordering Sondra Lee (Tiger Lily in the Mary Martin musical Peter Pan) to be dropped from the cast of the 1959 Merman vehicle Gypsy.

G ARRISON, DONALD GRAHAM The film: Cool Hand Luke ( Jalem Productions/ Warner Bros.–7 Arts, 1967)

There really was a “Cool Hand Luke,” though the 1967 film of that name is by no means a biopic. Born in Salem, Indiana, in 1915, Donald Graham Garrison began his career as a car thief and safecracker in 1932, spending all but six of the next 38 years behind bars. In or out of stir, no one called Garrison by his first name: He chose to be identified as Luke because he’d always “felt like a sissy” when people referred to him as Don. During his third jail term he briefly escaped from a chain-gang farm called Leesburg Road Prison, and in 1945 he managed to break out of the Ohio State Penitentiary, remaining at liberty to commit more crimes for the next six years. Upon recapture he served two more years before his parole, then it was back to the old revolving door between freedom and servitude until he received his final sentence for possession of over $200,000 in federal money orders. His reputation was such that his fellow inmates treated him like a celebrity, with fame extending beyond prison walls when his exposé of inmate abuse at Arkansas’ Cummins Farm State Prison was given fulsome (not Folsom) coverage by the mass media; this story later formed the basis of the 1980 Robert Redford film Brubaker. In 1965 author Donn Pierce, himself an exconvict who’d served time for safecracking, blended Garrison’s saga with his own experiences at Florida State Prison into his 1965 novel Cool Hand Luke. Two years later the property was transferred to the big screen under the direction of Stuart Rosenberg, with screenplay by Pierce and Frank R. Pierson. Garrison was paid $300,000 for the use of his nickname, managing to spend every penny between jail terms. Both novel and film made Luke far more of a noncomformist than in actuality, as any role played by Paul Newman in his prime would have to be. The movie also transforms Luke into a sympathetic victim of a slanted justice system, suggesting that he unfairly winds up on a chain gang for the comparatively minor crime of breaking into parking meters during a drunken binge. Garrison would later point out that unlike the film

Gauguin version of Cool Hand Luke, “I never ate 50 eggs— we’d never get eggs in prison to begin with.” And needless to say, Garrison was not killed after his final escape. Finishing off his last stretch as a guest of the government, Donald Graham Garrison was released in 1980 from the Federal Correctional Institute in Lexington Kentucky (later the temporary residence of tax cheat Leona Helmsley), then settled in Jacksonville, Florida, at a mandatory halfway house. In an interview with UPI’s J. Paul Wyatt, Garrison declared that Cool Hand Luke was in his opinion “incomplete,” and that he was shopping his life story to TV and movie producers: “I want it done just like I lived it.” He died in 1986.

G AUGUIN, PAUL The film: The Moon and Sixpence (David L. Loew–Albert Lewin/United Artists, 1942)

British novelist Somerset Maugham was first exposed to the post-impressionist paintings of Paul Gauguin around the same time that the rest of England became aware of the French-born artist, on the occasion of London’s first major Gauguin exhibition in 1903. That was also the year of the artist’s death on the Marquesan island of Hiva Oa in French Polynesia. It was the final stopping point for the former Parisian stockbroker who in middle age left his home, his job and his failed marriage behind to fulfill his dream of becoming a full-time artist, journeying to what would become his permanent home in Tahiti in 1891. His primitivist paintings, which he described as “savage” befitting the untamed tropical backgrounds and unspoiled indigenous people whom he used as subjects, were distinguished by bold experimentation with color, synthesism and expressionism. It was a complete break from what was accepted as art in Europe at the time, which Gauguin dismissed as “artificial and conventional.” Though his paintings would spearhead the Symbolistic art movement and strongly influence such masters as Matisse and Picasso, in his own lifetime he was grossly underestimated and underappreciated, seldom benefiting financially from his work. Luxuriating in the uninhibited lifestyle denied him in his

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bourgeois earlier years, Gauguin contacted syphilis in 1895. At the time of his death at age 54 he was addicted to the morphine he used to kill the pain from his disease. In certain ways Somerset Maugham was sympatico with Paul Gauguin. Both men suffered from bouts of depression, both felt trapped by middle-class conformity, and both were convinced that they were working beneath their talents. Though Maugham was not exactly bowled over by Gauguin’s paintings, stating that he “is not a great artist” in a 1941 Life magazine essay, the author allowed that Gauguin’s Tahitian period represented a man who was “truly himself ”: “[The paintings] are deliberately stylized, but they have an idyllic character that does recall those lovely islands of the South Seas and for one who has lived in them they evoke memories of a kind of sensual content and a happiness of the spirit which the passing of time can never quite dim.” Still, when Maugham wrote his novel The Moon and Sixpence in 1919, readers and critics perceived his protagonist, British stockbrokerturned-painter Charles Strickland, as less an homage to Paul Gauguin than a mocking parody. If Gauguin’s desertion of his family and friends was fundamentally cruel and selfish, at least he redeemed himself with his artistic achievements. But in Maugham’s eyes, Charles Strickland’s selfish cruelty cannot be excused because the man has no talent. The novel describes “the clumsiness of [Strickland’s] technique” and his selfdelusional conviction that although he has never sold any paintings, he must be a genius because he has never sold any paintings. Like Gauguin, Strickland exiles himself to Tahiti where he paints to his heart’s content and carries on a lustful liaison with a nubile native girl. And like Gauguin, Strickland dies from the ravages of disease, in his case leprosy. The title of the novel, from the old proverb about a poor man so intent at staring at the moon that he fails to notice the sixpence at his feet, perfectly sums up the failed and futile life of the terminally restless Charles Strickland. The challenge of getting under the skin of a complex and contrary literary character so that

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a mass moviegoing audience can understand and even sympathize with him was undertaken by the gifted, sublimely eccentric writer-director Albert Lewin. Persuading independent producer David Loew to underwrite a lush film version of The Moon and Sixpence, Lewin chose the ideal actor to play Charles Strickland: George Sanders, a past master of caddish, self-centered roles, whose innate charm took some of the curse off the otherwise nasty and disagreeable protagonist. As a means of excusing (though not condoning) Strickland’s inconsiderate treatment of others while single-mindedly chasing his dream, Lewin ignored the satirical inner lining of Maugham’s novel by suggesting that Strickland is as brilliant an artist as he thinks he is. But the character’s talent was evidently not enough to excuse his ungodly behavior, and the Catholic Legion of Decency ordered Lewin to add a disclaimer at the beginning and end of the film: “This is the story of Charles Strickland, the painter, whose career has created so much discussion. It is not our purpose to defend him.” Lewin considered using actual Gauguin paintings onscreen as examples of Strickland’s genius, but according to a 1942 Life article the film’s producer and distributor “received a stern letter from the painter’s eldest son, Emile Gauguin, who now lives in Philadelphia. Emile threatened to sue if any Gaugian art was used in the movie, as this would conclusively identify Maugham’s disreputable hero with his father.” Artist Dolya Goutman was commissioned to create the paintings seen in the film; these are so admirable in their own right that it is a shame the budget could not accommodate more than one brief Technicolor sequence. The matter of Charles Strickland’s sex life also came under fire, not from Emile Gauguin but from Hollywood’s Breen Office. Strickland’s passionate romance with Tahitian nymphet Ata (played by 16-yearold Eleana Verdugo, miles removed from Consuela Lopez on TV’s Marcus Welby MD) was without benefit of clergy in the novel. On film, Strickland and Ata are married under the benevolent eye of jolly matchmaker Tiare Johnson (Florence Bates). As in the novel, it is Ata who fulfills Strickland’s dying request and burns all

of his paintings, allowing him to become a martyr as well as a slave to his art. Though The Moon and Sixpence has never been refilmed, an elaborate full-color television production was mounted for the NBC network in 1959, starring Laurence Olivier as Strickland, Judith Anderson as Tiare and future Upstairs Downstairs creator-star Jean Marsh as Ata. The real Paul Gauguin is played by Anthony Quinn (who won as Oscar for his efforts) in the 1955 Van Gogh biopic Lust for Life, and by Donald Sutherland in Oviri, the 1986 life story of Gauguin.

GEIN, ED The films: Psycho (Paramount, 1960); Deranged: Confessions of a Necrophile (Karr International Pictures/American-International, 1974); The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Vortex/Bryanston, 1974); Psycho (Imagine Entertainment/Universal, 1998); The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Focus Features/Radar Pictures/Platinum Dunes/ Next Entertainment/Chainsaw Productions LLC/New Line Cinema, 2003)

May I reminisce? When my family first moved from Cincinnati to Milwaukee in 1961, my new schoolmates were generous enough to regale me with a series of jokes called “Geeners” (hard “g”). All these jokes centered around one person, and ranged from clean to what we 6th graders regarded as dirty. Two samples: “Why doesn’t anyone want to play poker with Ed Gein?” “He always comes up with a good hand.” (Clean). “Didja hear about the time that Ed Gein snuck up behind a woman and goosed her? Didja hear how she said ‘You cut that out!’ and Ed said, ‘Gee, thanks’?” (Dirty). Not wishing to appear un-hip, I laughed heartily at these gags without having the slightest idea who Ed Gein was. It didn’t take me long to find out—and had Gein enjoyed the universal notoriety then that he does now, I would have understood immediately. Until the advent of Jeffrey Dahmer three decades later, Ed Gein was the most celebrated multiple murderer in Wisconsin history. To his neighbors in the town of Plainfield Ed Gein was a shadowy figure, seldom seen much until after the death of his invalid mother Augusta in 1945. Caring for her day and night, Ed

Gein endured her endless barrages of verbal abuse as she screamed at him for his weaknesses and failures; but in her kinder moments, she allowed him to climb in bed with her as she whispered soothing prayers in his ear. Once free from Augusta’s iron grip Ed began frequenting the local tavern, where the patrons chuckled queasily at his sick jokes about death and dismemberment and listened to him obsess over news articles about sex-change operations and Nazi atrocities. Still, they regarded him as harmless, even allowing him to babysit their children on occasion. This went on until November 16, 1957, when the son of hardware store owner Bernice Worden reported that his mother was missing. Tracing a receipt to the home of the then 51-year-old Ed Gein, the police were unprepared for what they found in the summer kitchen behind the house. Hanging by the heels from the ceiling was the naked body of Bernice Worden, headless and disemboweled—“dressed like a deer,” as reported in the press. Gein’s “house of horrors” also yielded the tanned and shrunken faces of several other dead women mounted on the wall, with Bernice’s head in the process of treatment for a similar trophy. Female bones and body parts were found sorted and collected in boxes, in the closet and in the freezer. Dishware, kitchen utensils and furniture upholstery had been fashioned from human skin. Items of Ed’s clothing turned out to be the sewn- together body pieces and genitalia from at least 13 women, while Ed’s favorite housecoat was made from the upper torso of his own mother Augusta, so that he could on occasion actually pretend he was Augusta—to “crawl into her skin” as he explained to the police. It was later determined that from 1947 to 1952 Ed had robbed the graves of several women, including his mother, and when the thrill of this endeavor palled he turned to murder, first shooting tavern owner Mary Hogan in 1954, and more recently the hapless Bernice Worden. Newspapermen at the time could not bring themselves to report all the grisly details of Ed’s activities, so rumors of cannibalism and post-mortem sex abounded. With no death penalty in Wisconsin, Gein was declared insane and locked away in several in-

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stitutions, where he became a model prisoner, so quiet and unassuming that many visitors found it impossible to reconcile this gentle old man with the “Butcher of Plainfield.” Still institutionalized, he died peacefully in his sleep at age 78 in 1984. Author Robert Bloch was living in Weyauwega, Wisconsin, 40 miles from Plainfield, when he heard the first radio reports about some weird guy who’d been digging up graves. “I knew very little about the Gein case per-se, and nothing whatsoever about him, except he was a fiftyyear-old man, a respected citizen for his entire life,” Bloch recalled in an interview quoted by Gein historians Paul Anthony Woods and Errol Morris. What intrigued him about the case was not so much the crimes as the circumstances. “I was amazed that Gein could conduct himself without anyone suspecting the truth. I said, ‘There’s a book here.’” That book was of course Psycho, published in 1959 and featuring a timid and unobtrusive murderer/ghoul named Norman Bates. With only the fragmentary news reports to go on, Bloch determined that his protagonist was a schizophrenic transvestite with an Oedipus complex. In the years to come the author was surprised when he “discovered how closely the imaginary character I’d created resembled the real Ed Gein both in overt act and apparent motive.” To flesh out Norman Bates (no pun intended), Bloch saw to it that he not only robbed his mother’s grave and assumed her

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personality, but also killed her in the first place—and expanded Norman’s other victims to include pretty young girls who’d aroused his dormant libido. It is a safe assumption that the reader is familiar enough with Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film version of Psycho to render unnecessary an itemized list of its similarities to and digressions from the Ed Gein story, except to note the initial objection that Hitch’s screenwriter Joseph Stefano had raised concerning the source material. In Bloch’s novel, Norman Bates is like Ed Gein a stout, middle-aged man with zero sex appeal and a morbid fascination with the Nazi death camps. Stefano didn’t think that he could fashion a workable script with such a negative character, but Hitchcock comforted the writer with the news that he had cast young, attractive Anthony Perkins as Norman. It now became credible that his female victims (Marion Crane especially) would not only be put at ease by the shy, awkward “hero,” but also find him appealing in his own way. Just as Psycho has entered the realm of folklore and need not be recounted in detail here, it should go without saying that the film has in the past half-century spawned scores of imitations and wannabes, including director Gus Van Sant’s deplorable scene-for-scene 2003 remake that is mentioned only because I have to. Infinitely superior are such films as Silence of the Lambs (1981), which references Ed Gein with its elusive serial killer “Buffalo Bill,” who murders and skins chubby young women so he can fashion a coat that will allow him to “become” a woman himself. But Buffalo Bill is only one element of Silence of the Lambs; a more elaborate take on the Gein legend can be found in the equally worthwhile low-budget chiller The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the 1974 film that put director Tobe Hooper on the map. Though more explicit than either the novel or movie version of Psycho, Hooper’s film is not an unrelenting gore-fest but instead emulates the implicit horrors that so impressed Robert Bloch back in the 1950s. The chainsaw-wielding “Leatherface” (Gunnar Hansen), patriarch of a family of cannibalistic murderers, is undeniably a marrow-chilling sight, but

far more frightening are the lingering images of Leatherface’s handiwork, including the bonestrewn floors of his house, the various furnishings assembled from skeletons and carcasses of previous victims, and the neatly butchered human ingredients of the family’s barbecue dinners. Alas, Hooper’s 1986 “sequel” stressed blood-and-guts over suspense, as did the 1997 “Next Generation” rehash starring Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey (both of whom probably changed agents after this assignment). Director Marcus Nipsel’s 2003 remake of the first Texas Chain Saw Massacre likewise trashed all the positive qualities of the original, at the same time eliminating the wry sense of humor that Hooper had invested in the earlier version. Excluding the 2010 biopic Ed Gein starring Steve Railsback as Ed and Carrie Snodgress as his mother, the most literal spin on the Gein legend is the comparatively obscure CanadianAmerican quickie Deranged: Confessions of a Necrophile, codirected by Jeff Gillen and genre specialist Alan Ormsby. As unsubtle as its title, the film is elevated by the oddly sensitive performance of 50-year-old character actor Roberts Blossom as Ed Gein surrogate Ezra Cobb, who manages to elicit audience sympathy even when going far beyond anything the actual Gein ever dreamed up (though otherwise the film is fairly faithful to the known facts). As a tribute to the indelible impression made by Roberts Blossom in Deranged, John Hughes cast the same actor as the reclusive “Old Man Marley,” who is only assumed to be a serial killer, in the 1990 slapstick comedy Home Alone.

GIBSON, JANE — AND EDWARD WHEELER HALL, ELEANOR REINHARDT MILLS The films: The Goose Woman (Universal, 1925); The Bellamy Trial (MGM, 1929); The Famous Ferguson Case (First National, 1932); The Past of Mary Holmes (RKO-Radio, 1933)

Of the many sensational murder cases of the 1920s, the Hall-Mills case holds a special fascination because of its status as an unsolved mystery. It began on the night of September 16, 1922, when the bodies of a man and a woman were found under a crabapple tree not far from

Gibson New Brunswick, New Jersey. The man was Edward Wheeler Hall, a 41-year-old Episcopal priest; the woman was 34-year-old Mrs. Eleanor Reinhardt Mills, one of Hall’s parishioners and a member of his church choir. Both had been shot in the head and Mrs. Mills’ throat had been cut. The shredded love letters beside the bodies revealed that the Rev. Hall and Mrs. Mills had been having a clandestine romance. The most obvious suspect was Hall’s widow, Frances, whose maid would later testify that she heard the murder plot bandied about between Mrs. Hall and her brothers Henry and William Stevens at various drinking parties. Though this was dismissed as hearsay, another servant stepped forward to claim that she’d heard the reverend and his wife quarrelling on the night of the murder. Suspicion of Mrs. Hall was briefly dropped when the authorities arrested an emotionally disturbed war veteran, then picked up again when the man was released. Enter Mrs. Jane Gibson, age 52 or thereabouts, a onetime circus performer who was ekeing out a meager existence on her ramshackle farm. Partly because she raised Polish China hogs, partly because of her disheveled appearance, the widow Gibson was known as “The Pig Woman.” Three weeks after the Hall-Mills murders she showed up at the Middlesex County DA’s office to complain that someone was stealing her corn. Mired in an irksome turf war with another county over who had jurisdiction regarding the murder case, the Middlesex authorities were asking everyone in both counties if they knew anything about the tragedy. At first claiming that she’d heard shots on the night of September 16 but hadn’t connected them with the killings, Mrs. Gibson was soon singing a different tune: She’d been driving her mule cart down De Russey’s Lane (“the moon was shining bright and pretty”) when she not only heard the gunfire but saw the gun aimed at the victims. Four shadowy people, not merely the three main suspects, surrounded the dying couple as an unidentified woman moaned “Oh, Henry, why did you do that?” (Those words “still ring in my ears at night” according to Mrs. Gibson). The story would improve in the retelling as Mrs. Gib-

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son insisted she had seen the whole gory spectacle in the glare of a passing car’s headlights. When asked why she hadn’t come forth earlier, she said that someone had paid her to keep quiet. Only when no other evidence surfaced was the Pig Woman taken seriously, emboldening the DA to take the case before a grand jury. But no sooner had Mrs. Gibson become a darling of the media than her story was systematically discredited by the investigators. Taking into account the myriad of inconsistencies and contradictions, a detective told Mrs. Gibson flat-out that “There are mighty few who believe that story and the authorities believe you lied.” On May 31, 1923, the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times reported that virtually everyone was satisfied that the Pig Woman’s testimony was false. The investigation shifted back to that hapless war veteran as Mrs. Mills’ widower and daughter cried “cover-up.” Then the Hall-Mills case was temporarily put on the back burner by both the prosecution and the press. In a bold pre-emptive move, novelist Rex Beach used the still-unresolved case as the foundation for his 1923 novel The Goose Woman. Per its title, the novel’s focus was on a character resembling the redoubtable “Pig Woman,” her species of preference altered; beyond that, no other circumstances surrounding the actual case were used. The “Goose Woman” is Mary Holmes, formerly celebrated opera star Marie de Narmi and latterly reduced to raising geese on her squalid farm. Having lost her voice when her illegitimate son Gerald was born, she wallows in booze and bitterness. When a murder is committed nearby, Mary sees an opportunity to return to the spotlight and cooks up a phony “eyewitness” yarn. Unfortunately her fraudulent story backfires when her own son is accused of the murder. Improving on the facts, the plot is resolved after Mary retracts her story and the real killer confesses, setting the stage for a tearful reunion between the Goose Woman and her now-grown son. Adapted by Melville Brown, Universal’s 1925 film adaptation of The Goose Woman stars Broadway favorite Louise Dresser in the title

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Louise Dresser as the title character in The Goose Woman, a 1925 film loosely based on the 1922 Hall-Mills murders.

role and Jack Pickford as Gerald Holmes. Sensitively directed by Clarence Brown, the film rises above the sensationalism of Hall-Mills with a number of deft and subtle touches, including one that was probably missed by filmgoers at the time: When Mary Holmes pages through a scrapbook of her past operatic triumphs, all the photos are of a young and beautiful Louise Dresser. Universal’s publicity for the film never referenced the actual murder case; and while the Photoplay review acknowledged that Rex Beach “drew on America’s most famous murder for some of his incidents,” the film itself was praised as “an impressive and original murder story.” In no way could The Goose Woman have ever been the last filmic word on Hall-Mills. In 1926 the case was reopened, with Mrs. Hall arrested along with her brothers Henry and Willie. Having suffered a streak of bad luck after her fleeting brush with celebrity in 1923, Jane “Pig Woman” Gibson was anxious to relive past glories and emerge as “the Babe Ruth of the trial.” On November 19, 1926, the day she was to testify in

court, Mrs. Gibson lay in the hospital with a cancerous growth. Certain that a “deathbed” testimony would carry more weight than the questionable statements of other witnesses, prosecutor Alexander Simpson brought Mrs. Gibson into the courtroom on a stretcher, her head propped up by a pillow. Despite her frail appearance, her voice shook the rafters as she repeated her previous testimony (with emendations), proclaiming at the top of her lungs “I’ve told the truth, so help me God! And you know it, and you know it!” It was all sound and fury, signifying nothing. The jury delivered a not guilty verdict, to which the Pig Woman would only remark “Well! Can you beat that!” Though Mrs. Hall would magnanimously send a letter of forgiveness to Mrs. Gibson, she sued the Hearst papers in general and the New York Mirror in particular for defamation of character, winning a substantial out-of-court settlement but not entirely clearing her name so far as the public was concerned. With far more material to work with than Rex

Gibson Beach, Frances Noyes Hart penned her own spin on Hall-Mills in the Saturday Evening Post serialized story The Bellamy Trial, adapted and directed for the screen by Monta Bell in 1929. Anticipating Citizen Kane, this early talkie opened with a newsreel recapping the details of a murder case, later augmenting the witnesses’ testimony with flashbacks and offscreen narration. Wealthy, two-timing Mrs. Bellamy (Margaret Livingston) has been murdered, and her husband Stephen (Kenneth Thomson) and his alleged girlfriend Sue Ives (Leatrice Joy) are charged with the crime. The prosecution does a thorough job smearing the reputations of both defendants in court, despite Stephen’s chivalrous and self-sacrificial efforts to deflect all blame from Sue. Though acquitted by the jury, Stephen and Sue are still considered guilty in the Court of Public Opinion until a post-trial witness clears them both. All that’s missing here is a “Pig Woman” counterpart. The real Pig Woman managed to live a lot longer than prosecutor Alexander Simpson anticipated, though her 15 minutes of fame evaporated the moment the defendants were released. Jane Gibson died in a Jersey City charity hospital in 1930, her obituary barely warranting a paragraph in the same newspapers that had once made her a front-page attraction. Similarly, her à clef appearance in the 1932 newspaper drama The Famous Ferguson Case, which references both the Hall-Mills and Snyder-Gray murder cases, lasts but a few seconds, as a crotchety old woman (Louise Emmons) briefly pauses her mule cart in front of a mansion when shots are fired from within. While there are a few later references to “The Pig Woman” in the film, she is never seen again, though other elements of HallMills—notably the testimony of a squabble between the victim and his wife on the night of the murder and the wrongfully accused wife’s hefty lawsuit against the newspapers that maligned her—leave little doubt as to their source. (For more on The Famous Ferguson Case, see the separate entry on Judd Gray). Jane Gibson had been all but forgotten when RKO’s talkie remake of The Goose Woman, The Past of Mary Holmes, began its theatrical run in 1933. Currently withheld from exhibition be-

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cause of a story-rights dispute, this programmer stars Helen MacKellar in the title role and Eric Linden as her son Gerald. Scripted by Edward Doherty and Samuel Ornitz and directed by Harlan Thompson, the remake follows the original with reasonable fidelity, adding none of the details about Hall-Mills that had surfaced since 1923. There’s a novel variation near the end, with Mary Holmes playing detective to clear her son’s name and nabbing the real murderer herself. In this, she was one up on the prosecutors of the original case, which remains unsolved to this day. Mrs. Frances Hall and her brother William Stevens died in 1942, preceded in death three years earlier by their brother Henry. Whatever they knew about what really happened under that crabapple tree in 1922, the three siblings carried the story to their graves.

GIBSON, J OSH —AND LEROY “S ATCHEL” PAIGE The film: The Bingo Long Travelling All-Stars & Motor Kings (Motown/Pan Arts/Universal, 1976)

For reasons that should be painfully obvious, the fabulous history of American professional baseball’s Negro leagues was not given decent and proper motion-picture treatment until 1976. Prior to that year the only film to even touch upon the Negro leagues was the 1950 biopic The Jackie Robinson Story, in which Robinson (playing himself) is briefly shown serving his apprenticeship with a fictional black ball club before the film arrives at its raison d’etre, a recounting of Jackie’s 1947 shattering of the Major Leagues’ “color line” established decades earlier by racist baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Even after the release of 1976’s The Bingo Long Travelling All-Star and Motor Kings, the first major film to dwell extensively upon black baseball during the Jim Crow years of the 1930s, the public at large still knew very little about this important chapter in the National Pastime’s history and the brilliant ballplayers who spent their entire careers under the radar in the Negro leagues—such as the great Josh Gibson (1911– 1947), the “Black Babe Ruth” who wouldn’t be installed in Cooperstown’s Baseball Hall of Fame until 50 years after his death.

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Like the 1973 novel by William Brashler that inspired the screenplay by Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins, the film version of Bingo Long doesn’t spend too much time on social commentary, preferring to aim for laughs instead. Played by Billy Dee Williams, the title character is based on Josh Gibson, the subject of an earlier biography by Brashler. Gibson’s larger-than-life personality, volatile temperament and brilliance on the field are all part and parcel of Bingo, though unlike his fictional counterpart Gibson never bolted such formalized Negro league teams as the Homestead Greys and Pittsburgh Crawfords to organize his own barnstorming ball club along the lines of the film’s Travelling All-Stars and Motor Kings. And just as the rambunctious and unpredictable Bingo Long is doomed to remain in the Negro Leagues while younger and more dependable Motor Kings member Esquire Joe (Stan Shaw) is chosen to be the first black ballplayer for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Josh Gibson was bypassed by the Dodgers in favor of clean-living Jackie Robinson largely because of his own behavioral problems, health issues and losing battles with alcoholism and drug addiction. Costarring with Billy Dee Williams in Bingo Long is James Earl Jones as ballplayer Leon Carter, whose value to the Motor Kings is such that rival team owner Sallie Potter (Ted Ross) has Carter kidnapped to prevent the Kings from winning the film’s obligatory Crucial Game. In the original novel, Leon Carter is the Kings’ pitcher, in emulation of the great Satchel Paige (1906–1982), who finally graduated to the white Majors at the advanced age of 41 in 1948. The novel’s Bingo Long is the team’s catcher, trading baseballs and insults with his old pal Carter. In the film version, however, the two players’ positions are switched, with Bingo pitching and Leon Carter catching. This was done for two reasons: James Earl Jones had never played baseball in his youth and was self-conscious about his athletic prowess on the diamond; and as the top-billed star of the film, Billy Dee Williams wasn’t about to have his gorgeous face obscured by a catcher’s mask. For more information on Josh Gibson, Sat-

chel Paige and The Bingo Long Travelling AllStars and Motor Kings—including the trivianight tidbit concerning the film’s director John Badham, who joined the project after the producers’ first choice Steven Spielberg elected to make an obscure programmer about a killer shark instead—the reader is invited to check out the author’s previous book The Baseball Filmography: 1915 through 2001 (McFarland, 2002).

GODFREY, ARTHUR—AND WILL ROGERS The films: The Great Man (Universal-International, 1956); A Face in the Crowd (Newtown Prod./Warner Bros., 1957)

In an world where cable, satellite, dish and the internet have transformed broadcasting into narrowcasting, it is nearly inconceivable that back in the 1950s one solitary man was responsible for 12 percent of the CBS network’s advertising income—and harder still to comprehend that this same man simultaneously had two radio and two television series in the Top 10 ratings. A barely competent ukelele player, mediocre singer and clumsy performer when handling scripted material, Arthur Godfrey (1903–1983) was blessed with a gift of gab that generated warmth, garnered laughs and sustained audience appeal with nothing more than his own native wit. Though he employed writers, Godfrey was at his best when performing off the cuff, abandoning the advertising copy he’d been given to deliver his own spontaneous commercial endorsements: “He is,” insisted Time magazine, “the greatest salesman who ever stood before a microphone.” Millions of fan loved Godfrey almost as much as his legions of sponsors: His folksy manner, his disdain for pretension and his intimate habit of talking as if there were only “two guys” on either side of the microphone, made the “Old Redhead” the biggest attraction in the electronic media. To keep their star happy and his reputation unblemished, CBS appointed one man as the unofficial “Executive in Charge of Arthur Godfrey.” Godfrey entered local radio in 1930, after a serious car accident had forced him to lie in a hospital bed and spend all day listening to professional radio announcers. Shunning the stiff

Godfrey pomposity of what he heard, Godfrey swore to remain just one of the “folks” throughout his own career. After success as a Washington, D.C., disc jockey, Godfrey was tried out as a CBS network personality, hitting his stride with his tearful on-the-spot coverage of President Roosevelt’s funeral in April 1945. That same year he launched a popular CBS daytime show that would remain on the air until he voluntarily ended it 1972. Featured on the program was a live band and a cadre of young entertainers called “The Little Godfreys,” some of them recruited from his long-running nighttime radio and TV series Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts. It was one of these “Little Godfreys,” singer Julius La Rosa, who would irreparably puncture Godfrey’s friendly, avuncular public image. Taking a paternal interest in his staff, Arthur insisted that they bend to his will in all matters, demanding that they sign only with agents whom he personally controlled and forbidding backstage romances, among many other things. Though capable of great generosity towards his employees, he was also given to such icy warnings as “Remember that many of you are here over the bodies of people I have personally slain. I have done it before and I can do it again.” As Julius La Rosa’s popularity grew, the singer began to display what Godfrey perceived as a swelled head, refusing to participate in mandatory dancing lessons, missing rehearsals and recording a song without Arthur’s permission. Punishment for this defiance was swift and sudden: On Godfrey’s morning broadcast of October 19, 1953, La Rosa had no sooner finished singing “Manhattan” than Arthur stepped before the microphone and said “Thanks ever so much, Julie. That was Julie’s swan song with us.” According to La Rosa, he was so naïve that he didn’t know what “swan song” meant and had no idea that he’d just been fired on the air. Several more highly publicized firings would follow, while other brazen displays of arrogance further eroded Arthur’s audience appeal. Though he managed to hold onto his TV programs until 1959, Godfrey never again enjoyed the easy rapport he’d had with his fans prior to the la Rosa incident. Only after surviving a serious bout

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Arthur Godfrey, from the 1942 Radio Annual.

with lung cancer was he “forgiven” by those whom he’d alienated, but it still wasn’t the same as before. Godfrey hadn’t technically been exposed as a fraud (he really wasn’t, as proven on the many occasions that he refused to endorse commercial products that he didn’t believe in), but he may as well have been in the eyes of those who’d imagined him to be a nicer person than he was. Fans were just as disillusioned as they might have been if beloved Oklahoma humorist Will Rogers (1879–1935), whose credo was “I never met a man I didn’t like,” had at the height of his fame been unmasked as a lying S.O.B. Author Budd Schulberg, a longtime admirer of Rogers, was once taken aback when the humorist’s son Will Jr. (who otherwise revered his dad) exclaimed “My father was so full of shit, because he pretends he’s just one of the people, just one of the guys … but in our house the only people that ever came as guests were the richest people in town, the bankers and the power-brokers of L.A. And those were his friends and that’s where his heart is and he was really a goddamned reactionary.” Though there was never any evidence that Will Rogers was cruel or mean-spirited, Schulberg was intrigued by the concept of a revered public figure’s image being totally at odds with reality. This was the inspiration for “Your Arkansas

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Traveler,” which appeared in Schulberg’s 1953 short-story collection Some Faces in the Crowd. Narrated by small-town radio personality Marcia Coulihan, the story revolves around Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes, an itinerant folksinger whom Marcia introduces on her program. Though crude and vulgar, Lonesome nonetheless scores a hit and is soon starring on his own show, regaling listeners with his easygoing tunes and cracker-barrel philosophy. Marcia now finds herself in the position of preventing the public from learning about Lonesome’s profligate boozing and womanizing in order to keep the advertising revenue rolling in. Moving on to a Chicago-based network show, Lonesome is soon entertaining a nationwide audience with tall tales about his rustic family and his charmingly irreverent pitches for his sponsors’ products. Ever so gradually he begins exploiting his popularity to push his reactionary political views, at one point very nearly igniting an international crisis. By the time his show reaches New York, Rhodes is on the verge of making inflammatory public declarations that might set off a war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Only his accidental death prevents Lonesome Rhodes from leading his sheeplike public into Armageddon. At the time of its publication, “Your Arkansas Traveler” was not recognized as a reimagining of the Will Rogers legend, but instead perceived as a warning against investing too much power or influence in a mere radio and TV star—and since the biggest radio and TV star in 1953 was Arthur Godfrey, who happened to share Lonesome Rhodes’ talent for cornpone eloquence, a lot of people in the entertainment industry drew conclusions that the author hadn’t necessarily intended. When Schulberg teamed with director Elia Kazan to assemble a film version of his short story retitled A Face in the Crowd, the general assumption was that Godfrey would be the primary target for the filmmakers’ biting satire of media manipulation. Certainly this was what newspaper columnist Dorothy Kilgallen had in mind when on August 20, 1955, she wrote “Academy Award Winners Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg are in a tizzy over the publication this week of The Great Man, the new Al Morgan

novel which dissects a nationally famous television personality. Kazan and Schulberg for months have been writing a script for a film based on Schulberg’s well-known short story, ‘An Arkansas Traveller [sic],’ which is remarkably similar in theme to the Morgan book. Both tales bring the same TV performers to mind, and there may be a race to get the two productions before the cameras.” In the broadcasting business as a writer since the late 1930s, Al Morgan matriculated to producing when he moved from CBS to NBC in the early 1950s. Published in 1955, Morgan’s first novel The Great Man uses its à clef evisceration of Arthur Godfrey as the launching pad for a devastating attack on the entire broadcast industry. The title character, media favorite Herb Fuller, has gained fame and fortune with his uncanny ability to communicate with “The Great Unwashed” (a phrase coined by Morgan), using an approach which one character describes as “the common man amplified.” Fuller’s lucrative radio and TV programs for the Amalgamated Broadcasting System feature a troupe of entertainers known as “The Fuller Family,” while his broadcasts are like Godfrey’s a folksy blend of harmless jibes and double entendres. Likewise in the tradition of his presumed inspiration, Herb Fuller’s national reputation was founded on an emotional remote broadcast, a wartime appeal for blood-bank contributions recorded under heavy fire at an Army medical unit. Radio commentator Joe Harris is assigned the job of assembling an affectionate memorial broadcast after Fuller’s sudden death in a car accident, with the implication that if the show succeeds he will be Fuller’s replacement at Amalgamated. In the course of his interviews Harris unearths the whole horrible truth about The Great Man, as recalled by Fuller’s vocalist and castoff mistress, his payola-grabbing bandleader, the bumptious religious-radio broadcaster who gave Fuller his first break only to be stabbed in the back, and the late entertainer’s embittered manager, who intends to use his knowledge that the fabled “blood bank” broadcast was a studiofabricated phony in order to blackmail his way into a position of network power. With rare

Goodridge exceptions, everyone connected with Herb Fuller is as corrupt and venal as Fuller himself. The author’s tendentious viewpoint extends to the final chapter, in which after Joe Harris gets a sudden attack of conscience on the air, Amalgamated’s president calmly remarks that “integrity and crusading can sell products too.” The one story conceit that both “Your Arkansas Traveler” and The Great Man have in common is that monsters like Lonesome Rhodes and Herb Fuller will always thrive so long as broadcast executives permit them to remain monsters in order to safeguard their advertising profits. Released in 1956, director Jose Ferrer’s cinemadaptation of The Great Man stars Ferrer himself as Joe Harris; Keenan Wynn as the late Herb Fuller’s craven agent Sid Moore; Julie London and Russ Morgan respectively as Fuller’s amoral vocalist Carol Larson and crooked bandleader Eddie Brand; Ed Wynn as the pathetic Paul Beasley, Fuller’s first employer and the first person to suffer The Great Man’s duplicity; and Dean Jagger as Amalgamated Broadcasting’s Machiavellian president Philip Carleton. As in the novel, Herb Fuller is much talked about but never seen—though he is heard in the notorious blood-bank broadcast, his voice supplied by the novel’s author Al Morgan. In his column of May 8, 1956, Hollywood correspondent Erskine Johnson predicted “Even Arthur Godfrey will be convinced it isn’t Arthur Godfrey if he sees the picture,” adding that other observers had variously identified “Herb Fuller” as Dave Garroway, Milton Berle, Jackie Gleason, Steve Allen and even Liberace. The long-awaited 1957 filmization of Budd Schulberg and Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd neither overlaps The Great Man nor bears all that much resemblance to “Your Arkansas Traveller” beyond the characters of Lonesome Rhodes (played by Andy Griffith in his screen debut) and Marcia Coulihan (Patricia Neal), renamed Marcia Jeffries. The political consequences of Lonesome’s celebrity hubris are still essential to the narrative, albeit tamped down in order to focus on the film’s basic premise of a no-good louse who rises to fame and power through the cynical and contemptuous manipulation of his

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adoring public. Harboring a secret disdain for his fan following that would have been totally foreign to both Arthur Godfrey and Will Rogers, Lonesome Rhodes sneeringly characterizes his viewers as “morons” and “a cage of guinea pigs.” Lonesome’s climactic downfall in A Face in the Crowd is neither an on-the-air firing nor a fatal accident, but rather Budd Schulberg’s skillful rewrite of an urban legend involving popular radio kiddie-show host “Uncle Don” Carney, who is supposed to have ended one of his broadcasts by inadvertently leaving his microphone turned on and muttering “There! I guess that’ll hold the little bastards for another night.”

THE GOODRIDGE FAMILY The film: Andre (Kushner-Locke Co./Paramount, 1994)

It was no accident when on May 16, 1961, Harry Goodridge, a tree surgeon from Rockport Maine, found a male harbor seal pup on Robinson’s Island in Penobscot Bay. A weekend scuba diver, Goodridge had been searching for a seal that he could train as a diving partner. His first two candidates didn’t work out, with one seal choking on a towel and the other devoured by a shark. But this new discovery, who Harry named Andre in honor of Marineland trainer Andre Cowan, definitely had potential. Harry’s five children, who’d grown up amongst dozens of family pets, were rather blasé regarding Andre. According to daughter Susan, Harry’s wife, Thalice, had a long-standing deal with him: “[I]f he was going to bring any animal into the house, he’d have to clean up after it.” We won’t go into detail except to observe that seals can’t be housebroken. By and by the rest of the family acclimated themselves to the new member of their household. Daughter Toni later recalled that Andre “would allow you to touch him as long as you had a fish in your hand.” According to third daughter Peggy, whenever Andre was in the water “he’d let the divers hug him. And he’d steal their flippers.” The kids resigned themselves to the ribbing from their friends and neighbors, who greeted them by clapping their hands and barking “Arr arr arr.” When someone introduced

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Toni with “You’ve heard of Andre, well, this is his sister,” she could only smile and nod, since everybody in town had heard of Andre. During the summer months, Harry enjoying showing off Andre’s repertoire of tricks and stunts to the tourists, using their tips to pay for the seal’s food bill and winter stayovers at the Boston Aquarium. Though each fall the family would transport Andre to Boston by truck, the seal always swam back to Rockport under his own power in the Spring, showing no sign of ever wanting to leave captivity. TV film crews covering Andre’s annual homecoming may have been the bane of the Goodridge family’s existence, but the attendant publicity was a boon to the local Chamber of Commerce. As Andre grew older and bigger he became moody and unpredictable, biting people who approached him, jumping into boats and occasionally capsizing canoers. The Goodridges tried to map out new strategies to encourage him to swim to freedom, but Andre invariably came back home. Meanwhile, Harry Goodridge cowrote A Seal Called Andre in 1976, the same year that a statue of the seal was erected in Rockport. And despite his ever-increasing orneriness, Andre was elected Townsperson of the Year in 1976. Over time Andre’s attacks on humans increased, he lost his “territory” to a younger male seal, and he went blind. In July 1986, Harry found Andre’s lifeless body floating in seaweed just off the harbor. Befitting his celebrity status, Andre was given a lavish funeral in Rockport and a respectful obituary in the New York Times. His like will not be seen again: Though Andre’s presence in the Goodridge home had been given a pass by the 1972 Maritime Mammal Protection Act which normally outlawed the keeping of seals as pets, the act has been strictly enforced ever since. Screenwriter Dana Baratta had grown up reveling in stories about Andre, making her the perfect candidate to pen the 1994 film inspired by the seal’s fantastic story. Filmed in Massachusetts, Mississippi, British Columbia and Australia under the direction of George (Mad Max) Miller, Andre is aimed squarely at the kiddie trade, exhuming every children’s-movie cliché

known to man—including a few that we’d forgotten had ever existed. So many changes were wrought on the actual narrative that the Goodridge family is renamed the Whitneys, albeit with first names retained. Also changed is the species of the protagonist: Harbor seals being notoriously difficult to train, Andre is played by a sea lion named Tory (with two stand-ins from a Los Angeles theme park). Narrated by Annette O’Toole as the adult version of 9-year-old Toni Whitney (Tina Majorino), the film gets under way with the orphaned Andre’s accidental discovery by Rockport harbormaster Harry Whitney (Keith Carradine), deleting any mention of the pup’s two predecessors. Andre’s arrival in their home is greeted with exasperation by Harry’s long-suffering wife Thalice (Chelsea Field), while his teenage kids Paula (Aidan Pendleton) and Steve (Shane Meier) are too busy sniping at each other to notice. Only dewy-eyed Toni shares Harry’s affection for Andre and is willing to share the responsibility of keeping the seal fed and healthy. Since Toni also spouts such lines as “Please don’t die. I’ll be your best friend,” it’s best to watch Andre with an unjaundiced eye. Whenever a screenwriter is confronted with a true story that has no palpable conflict or villainy, it becomes necessary to pick these intangibles out of thin air. Lobster fisherman Billy Baker (Keith Szarabajka), a beer-swilling lout whose entrances are underscored by sinister music, blames Andre for wrecking the fishing business in Rockport and tries to snuff out the poor beast with everything from a pitchfork to a stash of TNT. Mrs. McCann (Shirley Broderick), an alumnus of the Gladys Kravitz School of Obnoxious Neighbors, rails against Andre for his nocturnal prowlings. And a thin- lipped, trenchcoated representative of the Maritime Commission dangles a prison term over Harry’s head if he doesn’t turn Andre over to an aquarium. Even Harry’s daughter Paula joins the enemy camp after Andre rats her out when she sneaks to the barn for a smoke. Synthetic suspense is stirred up on several occasions, first when Andre gets lost in the snow, and later when both Paula and Toni are trapped at sea in the

Gore midst of a raging storm. The plucky seal rescues the girls from the last-mentioned peril, one of the many reasons that Carrie Rickey of the Philadelphia Inquirer described Andre as “Lassie With Flippers.” Rickey could have stretched that point and renamed the picture Andre Come Home, since that’s just what he does whenever his human guardians try to goad him into returning to the sea, most memorability in the final scene where he leaves the confines of Boston’s Eastern Aquarium and makes the 250-mile journey back to Rockport by sheer flipper-power. And we haven’t even mentioned Andre’s adorable habit of emitting a Bronx cheer whenever he’s out of sorts, or his ability to enter the Whitney house by himself—putting him a notch above the real Andre, who always had to be picked up and carried through the door. Since the timeframe of Andre is roughly 1962 to 1963 (reflected by the vintage R&R tunes on the soundtrack), the seal’s 1986 demise is mentioned only in passing by the narrator. The film’s chronological boundaries also force the screenwriter to eliminate one of the more charming incidents from the real story, when Andre served as ring-bearer at Toni Goodridge’s wedding. For all its limitations and fabrications Andre is enjoyable nonsense, and thanks to home video has become an enduring favorite of 7-year-old girls everywhere. It is perhaps just as well that these impressionable moppets are unaware that the heartwrenching scene in which little Toni Whitney cries at the thought of bidding a permanent farewell to Andre was not a result of Tina Majorino’s acting skills, but because the sea lion playing Andre stank so much that the kid could hardly breathe.

GORDY, BERRY, JR .—AND THE SUPREMES The 1981 Broadway musical Dreamgirls was a stylized history of the Motown Sound, tracing the evolution of American rhythm-and-blues through the experiences of a fictional Chicago “girl group.” There is no question that “The Dreamettes” are based on The Supremes, with “Deena Jones” representing lead singer Diana Ross (1944–) and “Effie White” and “Lorrell Robinson” standing in for Ross’ backup singers

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Florence Ballard (1943–1976) and Mary Wilson (1944–). In the 2006 film version of Dreamgirls, the connection with the Supremes is made even more obvious (if such a thing is possible) by moving the Dreamettes from Chicago to Detroit. Beyoncé Knowles, Jennifer Hudson and Anikia Noni Rose star in the film as Deena, Effie and Lorell respectively, with Jamie Foxx as record executive Curtis Taylor, a barely disguised takeoff of Motown founder Berry Gordy, Jr.

GORE, LESLEY The film: Grace of My Heart (Cappa Productions/Gramercy Pictures/Universal, 1996)

Brooklyn-born pop singer Lesley Gore (née Lesley Sue Goldstein) is best known to posterity for her 1963 song hit “It’s My Party (And I’ll Cry If I Want To),” which made her an overnight star at age 16. Many of her later songs similarity dwelt upon heartbreak and loneliness, notably “Judy’s Turn to Cry” and “That’s the Way Boys Are,” with an underlying message of feminism and independence, as witness her million-seller “You Don’t Own Me.” Not that she couldn’t belt out an upbeat number with the best of them; 1965’s “Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows” was her most famous tune in this vein. Even after peaking as a singing star she continued making her mark in show business, earning an Academy Award nomination with her brother Michael for “Out Here on My Own,” introduced in the 1980 movie Fame. By that time it was common knowledge that Lesley was gay, something she had come to terms with while attending Sarah Lawrence College, but which due to the prejudices of the era she kept secret from the public until after her singing fame had subsided. In 1996 Lesley cowrote the song “My Secret Love” for director Allison Anders’ film Grace of My Heart, set in the pop-music world of the 1960s and 1970s. Among the film’s many subplots is the tale of Kelly Porter (Bridget Fonda), an inexperienced teenage singer whose career is nurtured by entrepreneur Joel Milner ( John Turturro), a past master at churning out prefabricated pop idols. At first annoyed and resentful when Milner assigns them to come up with

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Leslie Gore.

a few tunes for his new discovery, singercomposer Denise Waverly (a Carole King–Carly Simon composite played by Ileana Douglas) and her collaborator Cheryl Steed (Patsy Kensit) forge an affectionate and protective bond with Kelly Porter when the girl reveals herself as a closeted lesbian. Inspired, Denise and Cheryl compose a solid-gold hit for Kelly, “My Secret Love”—and the similarity between the fictional Ms. Porter and the song’s actual co-author Lesley Gore is lost on no one. We couldn’t tell you what happened to Kelly Porter after the scripted time-frame of Grace of My Heart. We can tell you that Lesley Gore went on to host a few episodes of the long-running LGBT-oriented public television show In the Life in 2004, eleven years before her death at age 68.

GRAY, HENRY JUDD—AND RUTH SNYDER The films: The Famous Ferguson Case (First National, 1932); Double Indemnity (Paramount, 1944); The Postman Always Rings Twice (MGM, 1946); The Postman Always Rings Twice (CIP Filmproduktion GmbH/Lorimar/New Gold/Northstar International/MGM, 1981)

Long Island housewife Ruth Brown Snyder

had tried and failed to kill her magazine-editor husband Albert at least seven times before the night of March 16, 1927. The difficulty was in making Albert’s death seem to be the result of an unexpected act of violence, or else Ruth couldn’t collect her husband’s $48,000 doubleindemnity insurance policy. What was needed was a foolproof plan; unfortunately for her, it was a plan hatched by fools. Embroiled in an illicit romance with married corset salesman Judd Gray, Ruth inveigled her paramour into helping her do away with Albert. She arranged an alibi for Judd by having witnesses see him in faraway Syracuse before he secretly boarded a train and headed to Long Island. While the Snyders and their 9-year-old daughter Lorraine were attending a party at another house, Judd sneaked into a spare room in the Snyder home, where Ruth had left a pair of rubber gloves and a sash weight. He remained there, drunk as a skunk, until Mr. Gray came home and went to sleep. At 2 a.m. Ruth arose from her bed, went to the spare room and had sex with her co-conspirator. Finally Judd tiptoed into the Snyders’ bedroom and clobbered Albert with the weight. Not quite dead, Albert begged his wife for help; she grabbed the weight and delivered the fatal blow. Taking time out for a few drinks and a bit of conversation, the murderers carried out the rest of their plan: To fake a burglary and make it seem as if Albert had been killed by the thieves. Per her instructions Ruth was bound and gagged by Judd, who then left the house. Ruth played her part by pounding on the floor until her daughter Lorraine awakened, freed her mom and summoned the law. When the police arrived it took only a few minutes to ascertain that all the items Ruth claimed had been stolen by the “burglars” were still in the house. Rather than bluff it out, Ruth spilled everything, placing all blame for the murder scheme on Judd. Once the cops located the railroad ticket that destroyed Judd’s alibi he likewise confessed, insisting that it had all been Ruth’s idea. The “Perfect Crime” had exploded so utterly that Damon Runyon later referred to it as “the dumb-bell murder case.” The Snyder-Gray murder trial was a media

Gray frenzy, with reporters, crime novelists, celebrities and evangelists in attendance. There were rumors that even if Judd Gray was sentenced to death, Ruth Snyder would be spared because she was a woman. But taking into consideration the cold-bloodedness of the crime, the jury turned in a “first degree” verdict in less than two hours and the judge went straight to the death penalty for both defendants. Judd Gray was electrocuted on January 12, 1928; Ruth Snyder followed a few minutes later, achieving immortality when a resourceful reporter from the New York Daily News smuggled a camera into the death chamber and snapped a photo of the condemned woman strapped in the hot seat. The first fictionalized dramatization of the Snyder-Gray case was Sophie Treadwell’s play Machinal, which opened on Broadway in November 1928 with a pre–Hollywood Clark Gable in the cast. Hollywood didn’t get around to the story until 1932’s The Famous Ferguson Case, directed by Lloyd Bacon and scripted by Courtenay “Brick” Terrett, a former reporter who had covered the Snyder-Gray and Hall-Mills murder trials (see separate entry for Jane Gibson). Drawing inspiration from both cases, the film is a blanket condemnation of yellow journalism centering around a small-town murder. The Snyder-Gray references begin with the discovery of the tied-and-gagged widow (Vivienne Osborne) of murder victim George Ferguson (Purnell Pratt) in the couple’s bedroom. Her claim

Police mug shot of “perfect murderess” Ruth Snyder.

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that the crime was committed by burglars seems hesitant, then over-rehearsed. The robbery story is held in contempt by the jaded out-of-town newspapermen covering the case, whose attitude influences the local authorities. While Mrs. Ferguson is held as a material witness, married banker Judd Brooks (Leon Ames), who has been seen around town with the lady, is suspected of being her lover and accomplice. The callousness of the reporters combined with the deplorable behavior of the ambitious city prosecutor indirectly lead to the death of Brooks’ pregnant wife; and when the real murderer is identified (it was a burglar after all) the distraught Mrs. Ferguson borrows a page from the unsolved Hall-Mills case and files an enormous lawsuit against the newspapers. Novelist James M. Cain has cited SnyderGray as the inspiration for two of his best-known works, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) and Double Indemnity (1943). The first of these concerns Frank Chambers, a drifter who gets a job at a remote California diner run by Nick Papadakis. Nick’s much-younger wife, Cora, is immediately attracted to Frank, and the feeling is mutual. Bored with her marriage and desirous of owning the diner herself, Cora persuades Frank to murder Nick and make it look like an accident. His luck no better than Ruth Snyder’s, Frank fails at his first attempt to bump off Nick, but succeeds when he and Cora get Nick drunk, strike him over the head and crash his car. The local prosecutor smells a rat but lacks the evidence to convict the adulterous couple, so he charges only Cora with the crime to force Frank into signing a statement piling all the blame on her. A shyster lawyer takes advantage of Cora’s outrage by tricking her into signing her own statement; the lawyer tears up the document, tells the defendants to stop incriminating each other and takes charge of their defense. The courtroom exoneration of the couple brings Cain to the point of his novel: How can a man and woman continue living together when each knows the other is capable of murder? Justice comes in an ironic fashion for Frank and Cora, though only one of them goes to the death house. The Postman Always Rings Twice was first dramatized in 1936 as a short-lived Broadway play

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starring Richard Barthlemess and Mary Philips. Two unauthorized European film versions would follow before the definitive 1946 cinemadaption of Postman starring John Garfield as Frank and Lana Turner as Cora. Adapted by Harry Ruskin and Niven Busch and directed by Tay Garnett, the film’s source material is toned down to comply with prevailing censorship standards, but is nonetheless quite faithful to the novel, and arguably more entertaining than the sexually explicit 1981 remake directed by Bob Rafaelson and starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange. (In case you’re confused by the title: If they don’t catch you when you deserve it they’ll catch you when you don’t.) James M. Cain wasn’t finished with SnyderGray after Postman. His later novel Double Indemnity is more blatantly inspired by the DumbBell Murder Case, even including as protagonist a crooked insurance agent reminiscent of the ethically challenged gentleman whom Ruth Snyder had talked into forging her husband’s name on the double-indemnity policy (Though this poor sap had no part in the murder, he lost his agent’s license after the trial). Doing a routine check on his company’s clients, agent Walter Huff arrives at the home of a Mr. Nirdlinger, where he is met by the man’s sexy young wife, Phyllis. She casually inquires about accident insurance, all the while undressing Walter with her eyes. The hook is baited, drawing Walter into a scheme to put Mr. Nirdlinger’s signature on a double-indemnity policy, then arranging for the man to die in what seems to be an accident (Phyllis is even craftier than Ruth Snyder, convincing Walter that the whole plan is his idea). As in Postman, Cain explores the tortured relationship of two lovers who have killed to secure their future happiness, as well as the folly of convincing oneself that any murder plot is flawless. Billy Wilder’s classic 1944 screen version of Double Indemnity, cowritten by Wilder and Charles Brackett, metes out retribution by killing off both Walter (given the new last name Neff and played by Fred MacMurray) and Phyllis (rechristened “Dietrichson” and enacted by Barbara Stanwyck). While this is in keeping with Snyder-Gray, it is at odds with the ending of the

novel, which doles out an entirely different punishment expanding upon Cain’s “can you live with and love a murderer?” theme. The legendary “photo finish” of Ruth Snyder has been recreated in at least two films with otherwise no other connection to the original case. In 1933’s Picture Snatcher, reporter James Cagney scoops his competition by strapping a small camera to his leg and snapping a photo of a woman in the electric chair. This vignette is given a scatological twist in Billy Wilder’s 1974 remake of The Front Page, wherein an eager cub reporter likewise witnesses an execution with a camera taped to his leg—only to wreck the picture when his bladder fails him the moment the switch is pulled.

GRAY, JOHN The films: The Picture of Dorian Gray (New York Motion Picture, 1913); The Picture of Dorian Gray (Barker-Neptune/Browne, 1916); The Picture of Dorian Gray (MGM 1945); Dorian Gray (Sargon Films/Terra-Filmkünst/Tower of London, 1970); The Picture of Dorian Gray (Veins of Madness Prod./Worldwind Entertainment/AWP, 2004); Dorian Gray (Fragile Films/UK Film Council/Aramid Entertainment/Prescience/ MPC/Ealing/Alliance, 2009)

John Gray (1866–1934) didn’t keep a portrait of himself in his attic, but to friends like Oscar Wilde he seemed to possess a magic formula to keep himself beautiful under the most trying of circumstances. A British poet in good standing with Wilde’s circle of gay aesthetics in the last decade of the 19th century, Gray matched the description of Wilde’s fictional character Dorian Gray as a “young Adonis” fashioned from “ivory and rose leaves.” As noted by the Manchester Guardian’s Fiona McCarthy in a detailed article on John Gray, even his photographs resemble the Dorian we’ve come to know and love from the various film adaptations of Wilde’s wickedly witty fantasy The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). It is not known if Wilde ever actually had an affair with the real Gray, though Oscar’s biographer Richard Ellman has referred to his novel as a “form of courtship.” It was Wilde who offered to finance John Gray’s first important book of poems, 1893’s Silverpoints, though ultimately the money was put up by Gray’s lover Marc-Andre

Green Raffalovich, a man as hideously ugly as John was impossibly gorgeous. According to Fiona McCarthy, Gray’s seemingly mercenary relationship with Raffalovich destroyed any affection Wilde had harbored for his fellow poet. But the romance with Raffalovich endured until Gray, a late convert to Roman Catholicism, entered the priesthood. Renouncing his former “decadent” lifestyle, Canon John Gray remained a close platonic friend of Raffalovich until both men died in the same year. Only in the 1960s was Gray’s body of literary work recovered and reassessed, amazing the surviving parishioners of Canon Gray who’d never had an inkling of his connection with either Oscar Wilde or The Picture of Dorian Gray. In this context, Wilde’s creative decision to have Dorian Gray guided down the road to degradation and debauchery by the cruel, corrupt and thoroughly cynical Lord Henry Wooten can be interpreted as Oscar’s jealous and disdainful reaction to pretty young John Gray’s devotion to homely old Marc-Andre Raffalovich. I’ll go out on a limb and further suggest that the basic concept of Dorian Gray remaining forever young and handsome while his hidden portrait grotesquely reflects his multitude of sins—each new wrinkle, scar, pockmark and hideous distortion representing a separate outrage against common human decency—was Wilde’s unsubtle warning that the longer the pristine John Gray remained under the spell of Raffalovich the more he’d come to resemble his gargoyle-like lover. But I never got anything higher than a B-minus in English Lit, so why listen to me? It’s a safe bet that few of the filmmakers who have committed The Picture of Dorian Gray to the big screen were even aware of John Gray’s existence, though chances are that writerdirector Albert Lewin, the king of cinematic esotericism, had at least a passing knowledge of the novel’s backstory. The best-known of the movie adaptations, Lewin’s 1946 version of Dorian Gray expertly sustains the novel’s balance between reality and fantasy, with the closeups of the titular portrait lensed in vivid and sometimes horrifying Technicolor. The film benefits

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immeasurably from the perfect casting of Hurd Hatfield as the benighted hero, George Sanders as the malevolent Lord Henry Wooton (uttering marvelous Wilde-like epigrams written especially for the film by Lewin) and Angela Lansbury as pathetic tavern singer Sybil Vane, whose warbling rendition of “Little Yellow Bird” is not only the film’s high point, but also tips us off that she will be the first of many unfortunates who will fall victim to Dorian Gray’s fatal vanity. Other filmizations of the Wilde novel include a 1913 one-reeler codirected by Phillips Smalley and Lois Weber and starring future movie idol Wallace Reid; a 1916 British version, starring Henry Victor (later the long-suffered “Schultz” in Lubitsch’s To Be or Not To Be) and running six reels; 1970’s Dorian Gray, an overheated Rrated Italian production starring Helmut Berger; and another Dorian Gray, this one directed in 2009 by Oliver Parker (who had previously adapted Wilde’s An Ideal Husband) with Ben Barnes as a surprisingly morose and unwitty Dorian. There have also been a few TV adaptations; a plethora of X-rated “remakes” featuring graphic homo- and heterosexual seduction scenes; and a 1999 effort starring Josh Duhamel, released in 2005 under Wilde’s original title—the main differences being that the story is updated to the 1960s and the important character of Basil, the ill-fated artist responsible for Dorian’s cursed portrait, is changed into a woman (played by Rainer Judd).

GREEN, HETTIE The film: Mother’s Millions [The She-Wolf] (Liberty Pictures/Universal, 1931)

The “Witch of Wall Street” was Massachusetts-born Hettie Green (1834–1916), who despite accumulating a personal fortune of $200 million in the stock market wore a ragged black dress, seldom washed her hands and face and lived like a pauper—and expected her son Ned and daughter Sylvia to live in the same miserly fashion. Throughout most of her existence she held to the philosophy of her father, the owner of a whaling-ship business: “Never give anyone anything, not even kindness.” Inheriting $7 million from a maiden aunt at age 31, Hettie poured

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it all into stocks, investments and businesses. After her marriage to silk trader Edward Green she refused to consolidate her savings with her husband’s, making certain she would never owe anyone anything. During the winter months she stuffed newspapers into her children’s clothes rather than buy them warmer outfits; when her son injured his knee in a sledding accident she would not pay for medical attention, and as a result the boy’s leg was amputated; and when she herself suffered a hernia, it took her years to have it treated because she felt the surgeon’s $150 fee was too high. After son Ned earned a law degree Hettie forced him to go to work for her at starvation wages and ordered him never to marry for fear that his wife might demand part of her fortune. Oddly, this harsh treatment served to build up Ned’s strength and fortitude, and he eventually struck out to make good on his own by managing one of his mother’s railroad lines. Her slightly kinder treatment of daughter Sylvia reaped benefits for Hettie when the girl married the grandson of John Jacob Astor, who brought his own millions into the family till. And though she never gave a penny to charity, Hettie was willing to bail out businessmen who found themselves in financial straits, probably as a form of revenge to make the men who’d mocked her business acumen and stingy living habits beholden to her for their well-being. On several occasions, Hettie’s loans and investments saved New York City from financial collapse, notably during the Panic of 1907. After her death, Hettie’s children gave generously to a number of charitable civic concerns as a post-mortem renunciation of their tightwad mother. Occasionally a fictional character resembling Hettie Green would pop up on film, usually played by one of the many Hollywood character actresses who specialized in portraying the proverbial hatchet-faced harridan with a heart of gold. For her talking-picture debut, veteran actress May Robson chose to recreate her stage role in Mother’s Millions, a play by Howard McKent Barnes. Produced by independent Liberty Pictures and released by Universal, the film version of Mother’s Millions barely makes an effort to conceal its inspiration, with Robson cast as

eccentric “she-wolf of Wall Street” Harriet Brean. Adapted by Winifred Dunn and directed by James Flood, the film spends its early reels establishing Harriet as a Bitch in Black. We watch in shock and awe as she forces her daughter Faire (Frances Dade) to stay away from her boyfriend (and Harriet’s employee) David Talbot ( James Hall), and as she kicks her son Tom (Lawrence Grey) out of the house when he borrows money from Hettie’s unscrupulous business rival Remington (Edmund Breese). The old crone also presumptively empties the savings account of her long-suffering secretary Maria (Lillian Harmer). But Harriet’s barely stifled smile and twinkling eyes clue us in that she’s not as horrible as she appears. Determined that her children will not grow up as irresponsible wastrels, mischievous Mrs. Green has roadblocked Faire’s romance so that David will prove that he’s made of the “right stuff ” (which Harriet has known all along), and abandoned Tom to the cold cruel world so he’ll build up the self-confidence to succeed on his own (She has also forbidden Tom to marry his sweetheart Peggy [Elinor Flynn], sensing that by defying her wishes he’ll demonstrate that he’s truly in love with the girl). As for Maria, Harriet reveals near the end of the story that she’s invested her secretary’s “stolen” savings in a solid stock that will earn millions for the astonished woman. But we don’t know the whole truth until after Maria and the Brean children rescue Harriet from financial ruin at the hands of the scoundrelly Remington—and even after proving that Harriet’s bark is worse than her bite, Mother’s Millions conjures up one last plot development that misleads us into thinking that she really is the villain of the piece (This is supposed to be funny. I’m still laughing). Were it possible to find out if Howard McKent Barnes wrote his play out of a grudging respect for his protagonist’s real-life counterpart, we might be able to describe Mother’s Millions as Hettie Green Fan Fiction.

GRIFFIN, JOHN HOWARD The film: Black Like Me (Hilltop Company/ Continental, 1964)

Griffin Dallas-born author John Howard Griffin (1920–1980) was always on the side of the underdog and the oppressed. Relocating to France on a scholarship in 1936, he remained in the country after the Nazi takeover, working with the Resistance to smuggle Jewish children to freedom. During World War II he was stationed in the Solomon Islands, living among the indigenous people and gaining insight to their uneasy relationship with caucasians. Blinded in a postwar accident, Griffin’s eight years of sightlessness convinced him that racial differences are irrelevant when one is incapable of judging people by the color of their skin. Upon regaining his sight in 1957, Griffin decided to further explore the issue of racism by experiencing first-hand the life of a black man. Submitting to lengthy chemical and sunlamp treatments to darken the pigment of his skin, he travelled throughout the South to determine if being black was merely an “inconvenience,” as he was so often told by whites. It didn’t take long to find out. Applying for an office job, he was turned down with the explanation that the company was “weeding out” blacks. He could no longer use a bathroom or a water fountain unless it was designated “Colored Only.” Restaurants, theaters and clothing stores were closed to him. Bus drivers treated him like dirt. Gangs of white youths taunted him with racial epithets and death threats. And even in places where there was a measure of tolerance, he could never escape the laserlike “hate stare” from the white people around him. “Everything is different,” he concluded gravely. “Everything changes.” Griffin’s experiences were compiled in his 1961 bestseller Black Like Me. Published in 14 languages, the book made him one of the most sought-after authors in America—and one of the most despised in certain Southern communities, including his own. Though he and his family chose to remain in their home in Mansfield, Texas, Griffin ruefully observed to Ebony magazine that the town had become “the effigyburning capital of the world. Every time I write an article or deliver a speech on the subject, another effigy is burned. We’re just waiting to see what happens after the movie is released in this area.”

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The aforementioned movie was filmed by cinematic novices Julius Tannenbaum (producer) and Carl Lerner (director) with the utmost secrecy and tight security in Maryland, Virginia, Florida and Washington, D.C., during the turbulent summer of 1963. The interracial cast and crew were kept from public view as much as possible, lest onlookers tip off the wrong people. To keep any hint of the film’s content from leaking out, the working title was No Man Walks Alone. James Whitmore, the white actor chosen to play the John Howard Griffin counterpart John Finley Horton, told the Los Angeles Times’ Don Alpert “We wanted to avoid incidents. The film has had no publicity except for an item that appeared in one of the trade papers. The reason is we wanted to make a motion picture; we didn’t want to make news.” Though the daily 90minute process of making Whitmore appear African American was not as gruelingly thorough as that used on Griffin, it proved most effective when lensed in black and white, and surprisingly convincing even in “living” color. On location in D.C., Whitmore was still wearing his makeup when he entered a restaurant and was instantly subjected to the “hate stare” by a white employee. “I was confused. I hadn’t done anything. I had been pleasant to her. But when I left I realized that to her I was a Negro acting as a white man. I don’t blame this lady. I blame the system.” Though cheaply and sometimes crudely made, Black Like Me contains several effective moments. Most are lifted verbatim from the Griffin book by screenwriters Carl and Gerda Lerner, including the scenes in which the outrages perpetrated against the protagonist are balanced by the few white people who sheepishly apologize to him for the status quo. Even the elaborations on the source material have the ring of truth: Unable to suppress his rage over the bigoted treatment visited upon him, John Finley Horton learns how to keep his emotions in check with the aid of such black friends as Frank Newcomb (played by actor-activist P.J. Sidney), who explains “If we hated them, we’d sink to their level.” Black Like Me received mixed reviews, with

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many black-oriented publications like Ebony and Jet praising the film for its good intentions rather than its cinematic qualities. Some of the more negative comments came from the mainstream press, such as Time’s dismissive summary of the film as “Gentleman’s Agreement in blackface.” Judith Crist of the New York Herald Tribune was downright contemptuous: “Transferred to film by a group of well meaning but singularly inept near-amateurs, what was a voyage of personal discovery turns into a cliché-ridden mixture of sensationalism, sex and pseudo-sociology that would set race relations back a century or two were it not so ludicrously incredible a mishmash…. [T]he hero-journalist, as portrayed by James Whitmore, is so grotesque a paint-faced creature with pale eyes and Northern accent, that he ambles from cliché to cliché as a wandering freak rather than a man on an excruciating and painful journey, and all the honest sentiment he voices emerges as pretentious and sententious mouthings.” (Never mind that the point of both novel and film was that to prove his thesis the protagonist changed only his color and nothing else, least of all his dialect.) Given the current PC climate, it isn’t likely that Black Like Me could be filmed today. Even if a remake was feasible, it would probably be laughed off the screen by those who remember the 2008 comedy Tropic Thunder, in which Robert Downey, Jr., plays a method actor who is so desperate to land a coveted film role that he the undergoes “pigmentation alteration” surgery to make himself look black—compounding the absurdity by speaking in “jive” throughout the picture.

GRÜNDGENS, GUSTAF The film: Mephisto (Mafilm/Manfred Durniok Filmproduktion/Hessischer Rundrunk, Osterreicher Rundfunk/Analysis, 1981)

If it is possible for a mere mortal to be the Definitive Devil, German actor- director Gustaf Gründgens achieved that goal in his 64-year lifespan. Born and trained for his craft in Düsseldorf, Gründgens specialized in the classical roles befitting his florid acting style, most notably Mephistopholes in Goethe’s two-part epic Faust, which he first played in 1932 and immor-

talized on film in 1960 under the direction of his adopted son Peter Gorski. That Gründgens’ career had lasted so long surprised many of his contemporaries in the German theater world, especially since the actor’s alleged collaboration with the Nazis had nearly earned him life imprisonment in the Soviet Union. Prior to stardom, Gründgens was part of the Kammerspiele theater ensemble in Hamburg along with his friend Klaus Mann, the son of novelist Thomas Mann. Gründgens appeared in several Kammerspiele productions with his then-wife, Erika Mann, Klaus’ sister. The marriage ended in divorce in 1929 but Gründgens and his former brother-in-law remained on good terms until 1933, when the Manns were forced by the new Nazi regime to flee to Paris. Klaus begged Gründgens to also leave Germany, but the actor refused: He’d worked long and hard to become a star, and wasn’t about to let mere politics impede his career. Nor did the emigration of such former film collaborators as Fritz Lang (for whom Gründgens costarred in M) and Max Ophuls (the actor had appeared in 1932’s Libelei) faze Gründgens, especially after his ascension to the artistic directorship of the prestigious Prussian State Theater in 1934. With Hermann Goering as one of his biggest fans, Gründgens was able to sustain his career throughout the Third Reich, appearing in the 1941 propaganda picture Ohm Krüger and willingly acceding to such Nazi-dictated artistic compromises as portraying Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a sort of Danish Bismarck, ruthlessly purging his nation of “undesirables.” For all that, he frequently put his career and his life in jeopardy to protect friends and associates who’d been placed on Hitler’s blacklist, notably the Communist actor Ernst Busch, whom Gründgens saved from execution in 1943. When Gründgens himself was arrested by the Soviets two years later, Busch interceded in his behalf. But back in 1936, Klaus Mann, newly arrived in the England and working shoulder to shoulder with Aldous Huxley, Andre Gide and other intellectuals on the anti-fascist periodical Die Sammlung, had little affection for his ex-friend Gründgens. That same year Mann penned a

Gründgens novel entitled Mephisto, centering around vainglorious German actor Hendrik Höfgen, who is so blinded by self-adoration and ambition that he happily accepts the patronage of a theaterloving German general (standing in for Goering) who demands that Höfgen confine himself to his signature role of Faust’s Mephistopholes. Though Mann gives Höfgen points for attempting to protect such “enemies of the state” as his own Jewish butler, the character not only sells out his actress wife, Barbara (read: Erika Mann), divorcing her to marry a more politically acceptable woman, but also his loyal mistress Juliette, a black dancer who unsuccessfully begs him to leave Germany while he still can. Ultimately, despite his ever-increasing success as an actor Höfgen loses his individualism, integrity and soul, though by novel’s end he is so wrapped up in himself that he can’t understand why all his former friends and colleagues have deserted him. Klaus Mann angrily refuted critics who labeled Mephisto a roman à clef, insisting that the novel was not a direct attack on Gustaf Gründgens but a travesty of a specific type of actor. Klaus Mann committed suicide in 1949, while Gründgens himself died of a possibly deliberate drug overdose in 1963. Both men would achieve posthumous fame when in 1966 Gründgens’ adopted son won a seven-year legal battle to have Mephisto banned in East and West Germany. The decision set a precedent in its challenge of existing libel and censorship laws, ruling that Gründgens possessed “personality rights” even in death. The ban on the novel was lifted in West Germany in 1981, the same year that Hungarian director István Szabó and screenwriter Péter Dobai came forth with a lavish film version of Mephisto, the first of three collaborations between Szabó and German actor Klaus Maria Brandauer. Allowing that his star was “very different” from the flamboyant Hendrik Höfgen, Szabó explained “To me what was important was the power and charismatic energy that Klaus possessed.” Brandauer’s somewhat flabby physical unattractiveness (at least by the movie industry’s leading-man standards) bolstered the novel’s intimation that Höfgen might not have achieved his lofty star position without Nazi pa-

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tronage. Co-starring with Brandauer as the illfated women in his life are Krystyna Janda as Barbara and Karin Boyd as Juliette. Mann had conceived his novel as a glib satire, but Szabó and Brandauer invest a great deal of realism and poignancy in the property by playing down the pompous ingenuousness of the protagonist and playing up the tragedy of a man destroyed by his own ego. As noted by film theorist Tomasz Warchol, Höfgen doesn’t realize until it is too late “that in the process he has compromised his integrity and become the victim of political forces that he thought, in his naïve selfdelusion, he could manipulate to his advantage.” The film also uses Höfgen’s trademark play Faust as an analogy: Though celebrated for his interpretation of Mephistopholes, by trading his soul for fame and fortune Höfgen has morphed into a real-life Faust. Unlike the climax of the Goethe original in which Mephistopholes loses his battle to wrest Faust away from God, Höfgen cannot save himself from ending up the Devil’s slave. His capitulation to the Nazis is so complete that his high-ranking sponsor (played by Rolf Hoppe) has no trouble forcing the actor to appear at Nazi events and celebrations in full Mephistopoles costume and clown-white makeup, like a Hellish court jester. In the end, Höfgen is terrified to remove his makeup, knowing full well that there is no longer any human being underneath. Describing Klaus Maria Brandauer’s portrayal of Höfgen in his New York magazine review of Mephisto, David Denby sums him up as “a monster, a clown, a talented and intelligent man, an amalgam of brazenness and cowardice. In brief, an actor.” An Austrian-German-Hungarian coproduction, Mephisto is included here as an exception to the author’s self-imposed rule of confining discussion of à clef films to English-language productions. Like Costa-Gavras’ Z, it can be regarded as a “universal” effort by virtue of its winning the Best Foreign Picture Academy Award. Well, practically universal: In the tradition of its source novel, Mephisto was withheld from exhibition in Germany until 2000.

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GUINAN, MARIE LOUISE CECILIA “TEXAS” American entertainer (born guess where) who after stints as a New York chorus girl and movie western star gained her greatest fame as a nightclub entrepreneur-emcee during the Prohibition Era. Famed for such down- to-earth catchphrases as “Hello, suckers!” and “Give the little girl a great big hand!” She played herself in several early talkies, and was paid tribute before and after her death by such fictional film characters as Damon Runyon’s Missouri Martin, played by Glenda Farrell in Frank Capra’s Lady for a Day (1933); and Panama Smith, played by Gladys George in Raoul Walsh’s The Roaring Twenties (1939).

H AMILTON, JOHN AND MELLANIE—AND IRSIE HENRY The film: Lakeview Terrace (Overlook Terrace/ Screen Gems, 2008)

Reading the court documents regarding the feud between Irsie Henry and Mr. and Mrs. John Hamilton is like watching a Laurel & Hardy movie without the laughs. Moving into a quiet Altadena, California, neighborhood in 2011, veteran LAPD officer Irsie Henry and his family were at first on very friendly terms with their new next-door neighbors, John and Mellanie Hamilton and their children. But after a few weeks things went sour when Henry wanted to remove a fence between their properties and John Hamilton didn’t. Surveyors confirmed that the fence was on Henry’s property, so Henry sued Hamilton, receiving a $6500 settlement from John’s insurance company. Thereafter the two men harassed one another in a childish titfor-tat manner. First, Henry blew leaves and garbage in Hamilton’s yard after John and his son had cleaned the area, forcing the Hamiltons to grow longer grass along the fence; then Henry found ways to kill the grass with chemicals and “accidental” mow-overs. When Hamilton put chicken wire along the property line to prevent this, Henry began throwing debris in Hamilton’s yard, resulting in the same action from his neighbor. It was difficult to determine the root cause of Henry’s hostility until he began harassing Hamilton’s wife, Mellanie, with such slurs as

“black bitch” and “wannabe white.” We should note at this point that Isrie Henry was African American and that John and Mellanie Hamilton were an interracial couple. There was worse to come. Henry hired workmen to paint insulting and threatening messages on Harrison’s side of the fence, splattered eggs on his neighbor’s walls, and piled cigarette butts on John’s lawn. The Hamiltons responded in kind, and soon the entire neighborhood was bearing witness to the feud. Given Henry’s status as a police officer, the court felt it prudent to impose restraining orders on both men, with police supervisors sent out to check on the situation from time to time. When Henry accused Hamilton of dousing him with a water sprinkler it was hard to determine who had become the aggressor, but ultimately Henry overplayed his hand by illegally using police computers to do background checks on the Hamiltons. He had also compelled John Hamilton to install video surveillance cameras, which put the lie to his claim that it was not his idea to paint disparaging remarks on Hamilton’s side of the fence, but that the workmen did it on their own. With 10 charges, 62 exhibits of evidence and 29 witnesses against him, Henry was removed from the police force in October 2006. Yet still he wouldn’t forsake what the assistant DA described as his “obsessive” and “extremely disturbing” behavior, violating yet another restraining order by cutting two tarp covers that the Hamiltons had installed to prevent further trouble. Ultimately Henry was trapped by his own surveillance camera, which showed him first taunting and then using pepper spray on his neighbor. Though he could have gotten a prison term Henry ended up paying a fine; it would be a few more agonizing years before he finally moved out of the neighborhood and took his anger elsewhere. The story of the Henry-Hamilton contre temps was reenacted with actual names used in a 2014 episode of the cable TV series Fear Thy Neighbor. A more nightmarish fictionalization had been offered six years earlier in the theatrical feature Lakeview Terrace, scripted by David Loughery and Howard Korder, directed by Neil

Hampton LaBute, and coproduced by actor Will Smith. Samuel L. Jackson stars as Abel Turner, 28-year LAPD veteran and self-appointed watchdog of his racially mixed high- end neighborhood. Whereas many of Irsie Henry’s neighbors resented his overbearing self-righteousness, Turner is admired and respected by the other residents of Lakeview Terrace for his vigilance in keeping the peace during his off-hours. As Pasadena Weekly reporter Andre Coleman— who received a press award for his coverage of the Irsie Henry saga—noted about Lakeview Terrace, the film got a lot of details right about Irsie Henry “except bringing comfort to anyone.” Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington costar as Chris and Lisa Mattson, a recently married interracial couple who move next door to the widowed-with-children Turner. Though he feigns cordiality towards the Mattsons, Turner is incensed at the thought of a white man married to a black woman and takes every opportunity to harass them, beginning with shining his home-security floodlights on the couple while they make love in their swimming pool. Though Chris is annoyed by this and later intrusions on his privacy and property, he is advised by others (including his own father) not to complain because of Turner’s police-officer status and his popularity in the neighborhood. During the first half of the film the audience’s sympathies are divided between Turner, who despite his lousy attitude seems to be motivated by grief over the circumstances of his wife’s death, and Chris Mattson, who though a basically decent fellow reacts venomously when his wife becomes pregnant ahead of their prearranged “timetable.” Approximately 30 minutes before the end of the picture Abel Turner jumps the shark by committing murder to cover up the extent of his terror campaign against the Mattsons. It is also at this point that Lakeview Terrace jumps that same shark, compelling Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe to conclude regretfully that “the movie might have something to say about black racism, but the conversations go nowhere, and the clichés of the genre take over.”

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HAMPTON, DAVID The film: Six Degrees of Separation (Regency Enterprises/MGM, 1993)

The “six degrees of separation” theory was in existence long before Kevin Bacon was added to the equation. The theory is predicated on the notion that everyone on earth is separated from everyone else by at most six degrees, like six links in the same chain. It isn’t entirely clear until the end of the play and film titled Six Degrees of Separation how this theory applies to the storyline, but we’ll get to that in a moment. First, let’s deal with the man upon whose exploits playwright John Guare based the original theatrical version of Six Degrees of Separation. The son of an attorney and a nurse, David Hampton was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1964. At age 18 he moved west to New York City with vague aspirations of becoming an actor, succeeding only in getting kicked off the SUNY campus for acts of fraud and petty theft. It was in early 1983 that Hampton, an African American, was standing in line with a white friend in hopes of gaining entrance to Manhattan’s hottest nightspot, Studio 54. Precious few would-be patrons ever managed to get past the security guards unless they were “somebody”—that is, a celebrity—or someone who was related to a “somebody.” After several previous turnaways, Hampton and his friend worked out a strategy: The friend would claim to be the son of film star Gregory Peck, while David would pass himself off as “David Poitier,” son of black superstar Sidney Poitier. The ruse worked, and before long Hampton was cadging meals from high-end New York restaurants by explaining to the staff that he was waiting for his “father,” who hadn’t shown up yet; at meal’s end he would leave without paying, grumbling that “dad” had stood him up. In the months that followed Hampton inveigled his way into the homes of three prominent Upper East Side families, hobnobbing with such luminaries as Calvin Klein, Gary Sinise and Melanie Griffith and borrowing huge sums of money. Fortunately for David, none of his pigeons were aware that Sidney Poitier had three daughters but no sons. One of the few people he was unable to fool was artist Andy Warhol,

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who saw through him immediately. “Andy was a con-artist himself,” Hampton later explained. “One salesman can always spot another.” (It couldn’t possibly have been because David overstepped himself by telling Andy that his parents were Sidney Poitier and Diana Ross). Hampton’s luck ran out the night he smoothtalked his way into the home of Osborn Elliott, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, and Elliott’s wife, Inger. As before, “David Poitier” was extended every courtesy by his hosts, who invited him to stay the night. But when Elliott went to check on David in the guest room, he found David in bed with another man. Hampton’s hasty explanation that his bedmate was “the son of Malcolm Forbes” could not save him from being booted off the premises, and by October 1983 there were enough complaints against David to get him arrested. Ordered to pay restitution to his victims, Hampton refused and was sentenced to 22 months in jail. John Guare was in England when the David Hampton story broke in the newspapers. There he connected with his old friends Osborn and Inger Elliott, who greeted him with “Have we got a story for you!” The realization that Hampton’s citywide scam had struck so close to home prompted Guare to ascertain how many others in his circle were affected in one way or another by the erstwhile “David Poitier.” He also purchased Sidney Poitier’s autobiography, fused the separate elements together with his own vivid imagination, and came up with the stage play Six Degrees of Separation, which ran for 485 performances on Broadway beginning May 6, 1990, with an additional 185 off–Broadway performances. In the play, a young black man named Paul (originally enacted by John Cunningham) shows up bruised and bleeding at the doorstep of Fifth Avenue socialites Flan and Ouisa Kittredge ( James McDaniel, Stockard Channing). Paul’s explanation that he’s a friend of the couple’s Ivy League children is enough to gain entry into their home, and his further assertion that he’s the son of Sidney Poitier (whom he claims is in New York directing the film version of Cats) assures him a warm bed for the next several days. The Kittredges have no reason to doubt their

guest: He has intimate knowledge of their children’s activities and of Poitier’s life and work; he possesses the manners, worldliness and intelligence of a celebrity offspring; and best of all he is an excellent cook. Thoroughly won over by the lad, Flan and Louise generously provide him with money, clothing and creature comforts. Paul’s best-laid schemes “gang agley” when he launches another scam targeting a young lovers Rick and Elizabeth, finagling money out of Rick by having sex with him. Elizabeth angrily breaks off with the “outed” Rick, who subsequently kills himself. The distraught Paul confesses his deception to Ouisa Kittridge, then agrees to turn himself over to the police. We never learn of Paul’s ultimate fate, but by relating their story to other East Siders who’d been victimized by the boy the Kittridges and their friends now have a shared experience that in a curious way is something to be treasured—and also proves to Ouisa “How every person is a new door, opening up into other worlds. Six degrees of separation between me and everyone else on this planet.” The trick of course, is “to find the right people.” Having finished his jail sentence by the time Six Degrees of Separation was poised to make its Broadway debut, David Hampton demonstrated the extent of his “rehabilitation” by threatening John Guare with bodily harm if he didn’t share the profits of the play, then crashing the opening-night party by posing as the star of the show. In 1991 Guare was sued for violating the “copyright” on Hampton’s personality (which one?), a case that was quickly dismissed. Hampton also raised a stink when the play was filmed under the direction of Fred Schepisi in 1993, starring Will Smith as Paul, Donald Sutherland as Flan, and Stockard Channing repeating her stage role as Ouisa. In retrospect, David Hampton had nothing to beef about, since both the stage and screen versions of Six Degrees of Separation portray him in a far more likeable and sympathetic light than was actually the case (Three paragraphs into Jeanie Kasindor’s 1991 New York magazine profile of Hampton and you’ll be seized with the overwhelming desire to paste the little creep in his big mouth.) Once he got all the outrage out of his system,

Harris David Hampton resumed his career of adopting false identities and bamboozling the Rich and Gullible, moving to the West Coast where fewer people recognized him. Among his later scams was posing as a writer for Vogue magazine who’d been mugged and had his wallet stolen before he had a chance to interview Bill Gates (one can well imagine what Stage Two of this song-anddance was); he also spent some time in the slammer for credit card theft. David Hampton died of an AIDS-related illness in 2003, a scenario in which he could not help but use his own name.

HARRIS, JED The films: Twentieth Century (Columbia, 1934); The Saxon Charm (Universal-International, 1948)

Whenever he was asked to identify the main inspiration for his deliciously repellant portrayal of Shakespeare’s Richard III, Sir Laurence Olivier would reply that he patterned his characterization after “the cruelest and most sarcastic” man he had ever met: Broadway producerdirector Jed Harris (1900–1979). Having spent “the most miserable month of rehearsals in my life” under Harris’ direction in the 1933 stage play The Green Bay Tree, Olivier told Katharine Hepburn (who’d also been subject to Harris’ volcanic temperament in her notorious Broadway flop The Lake) “I hate Jed so, I have to get rid of all my drive to kill him.” Harris’ reputation was so pervasive that Walt Disney, who never worked with the man, is said to have used Jed as the role model for his cartoon villain The Big Bad Wolf. Born Jacob Hirsch Horowitz in Vienna, Harris came to America with his family in 1901. Intelligent enough to enter Yale at age 17, the restless Harris dropped out to become a press agent and then a theatrical producer. By 26 he was a millionaire, and by the time he was 28 he had produced four Broadway hits in a row, beginning with the extravagant (and aptly titled) Broadway in 1926 and continuing through Coquette (1927), The Royal Family (1927) and The Front Page (1928). His later triumphs included Our Town (1938), The Heiress (1947) and The Crucible (1953), all successful enough to compensate for his many failures, of which the most con-

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spicuous were Spread Eagle (1927), Serena Blandish (1929), Mr. Gilhooley (1930), the aforementioned The Lake (1933) and his final Broadway effort, the ironically yclept Child of Fortune (1956). While his directorial technique was praised to the rafters by critics, Harris’ actors were run ragged by his marathon rehearsals and his precious habit of hectoring and browbeating them to the breaking point. Nor did he have to rely on sheer lung power to strike terror into the hearts of his colleagues: whenever Harris began speaking in a soft whisper, his coworkers braced themselves for the worst to come. It would be nice to report that he balanced his backstage tyranny with personal modesty, but such was not the case. To cite one example from many of his shameless narcissism, when the openingnight audience of The Crucible greeted the curtain call with shouts of “Author! Author!,” Harris elbowed playwright Arthur Miller out of the way and took all the bows himself. No less formidable in private life, Harris was notorious for using honeyed words to woo authors and playwrights into his fold, only to savagely tear their work apart in the rehearsal process. Frederic Wakeman, who started out as one of Harris’ most ardent admirers and even dedicated his novel The Hucksters to the producer, finally had to break off his association for fear that his wife would divorce him if he ever invited Harris home for dinner again. Mrs. Wakeman was hardly the only woman who’d suffered at Harris’ hands. Charles MacArthur has revealed that the plot device in his play The Front Page wherein autocratic newspaper editor Walter Burns endeavors to break up the romance between his star reporter Hildy Johnson and Hildy’s fiancee was based on Harris’ real-life efforts to scuttle MacArthur’s engagement to Coquette star Helen Hayes so that both parties could concentrate on their stage work. Harris was equally ruthless in his own love life, seducing and abandoning such actresses as Judith Anderson and Margaret Sullavan and fathering Ruth Gordon’s illegitimate son. According to biographer Martin Gottfried, Harris may have been responsible for the self-inflicted death of actress Rosamund Pinchot, whose suicide note consisted

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of Emily Webb’s closing speech from the Harrisproduced Our Town. Oscar Jaffe, the tyrannical theatrical impresario in Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s 1932 Broadway comedy Twentieth Century, is said to have been patterned after Jed Harris, though the authors claimed that their inspiration was colorful Manattan press agent Richard Mandy, known as “the Francois Villon of the threesheets” for his wicked wit and his habit of bestowing upon associates such insulting nicknames as “The Mighty Midget” and “the Bantam Barnum” (both referring to pint-sized producer Billy Rose). According to a 1939 article by columnist George Ross, Hecht and MacArthur saw to it that Mandy collected royalties for Twentieth Century in perpetuity. However, Howard Hawks’ 1934 film version of the play (adapted by Gene Fowler and Preston Sturges, among other uncredited hands) leaves no doubt as to the true role model for Oscar Jaffe, especially when in his first scene he is shown rehearsing the climax of Jed Harris’ 1927 Broadway smash Coquette. As played by John Barrymore, Jaffe is Harris to the letter, literally constructing Broadway superstar Lily Garland (Carole Lombard) from the raw material of talentless clothes mannequin Mildred Plotka, breaking up with Lily to pursue a series of pretentious theatrical flops, and then after he has become so impoverished that only a mega-hit with a mega-star will save him, using every underhanded trick at his command to lure Lily back. The apparently improvised scene in which Barrymore pantomimically transforms himself into a camel to describe his proposed Biblical epic is not too far removed from the histrionic extremes to which Jed Harris would go to coax a performance out of a recalcitrant actor. Jed Harris’ onetime friend Frederick Wakeman offered a more full-bodied caricature in his 1947 novel The Saxon Charm, describing his hero-heavy Matt Saxon as a “producer whose greatest production was himself.” Directed and co-adapted by Claude Binyon, the 1948 film adaptation of The Saxon Charm stars Robert Montgomery as Saxon, with John Payne as Wakeman’s alter ego, novelist Eric Busch, and

Susan Hayward as Eric’s long-suffering wife Janet. All of the character traits attributed over the years to Jed Harris are in full attendance: Smooth and persuasive charm counterbalanced by utter disregard for the feelings of others; sudden and unpredictable bursts of temper in the least appropriate places; unwarranted intrusions into the private lives of those within his orbit; spur-of-the-moment strategies to save himself from financial ruin; and the Svengali-like molding of female personalities in whom he senses star quality. This latter example of “The Saxon Charm” is most pronounced in an early scene at a nightclub, where Saxon directs obscure songstress Alma Wragg (Audrey Totter) “on the hoof,” spoon-feeding her every gesture, facial expression and vocal inflection that will assure her success. On a grimmer note, Matt Saxon so mistreats his neurotic ex-wife Vivian (Heather Angel, playing a composite of Rosamund Pinchot and Harris’ one-time spouse Louise Platt) that she kills herself—after which Saxon expresses sorrow just long enough to concoct a scheme to capitalize on her death. The only comment Jed Harris is known to have made about The Saxon Charm was in relation to Frederick Wakeman’s decision, after dedicating his previous novel to Harris, to dedicate his latest work to his own father. “Now,” said Harris sharkishly, “I want to read the novel he writes about his father.”

H ART, BROOKE— AND JACK HOLMES, THOMAS THURMOND The films: Fury (MGM, 1936); The Sound of Fury [Try and Get Me] (Robert Stillman Productions/United Artists, 1950)

Between 1880 and 1952, nearly 4800 individuals were victims of lynch mobs in the United States; of these, some 3500 were AfricanAmerican. Efforts to pass anti-lynch legislation were repeatedly thwarted by political representatives of the Solid South, who regarded a few white lives as collateral damage in the war against allowing black folks their fundamental civil rights. In 1934 the Costigan-Wagner Bill received more support from Congress than any previous anti-lynch legislation, and though it

Hart was shot down by the powerful Southern bloc it sparked a national debate that brought the rate of lynchings to its lowest level in decades. One of the catalysts of Costigan-Wagner was the vigilante hanging of two white men, both accused murderers, in San Jose, California. Like all lynchings it was a disgraceful violation of the right to due process, arguably more disgraceful than most because of the many politicians and editorialists throughout the country who actually applauded this outrage. It should not matter that the two victims were guilty as hell. Twenty-eight-year-old Thomas H. Thurmond claimed his wife was driving him “screwy” with her demands for money. He was on the verge of running off with a former girlfriend when he fell in with 29-year-old Jack Holmes, likewise married and penniless. It was Holmes, described by Thurmond as “the big plotter,” who came up with the idea of kidnapping 22-yearold department-store heir Brooke Hart and holding him for ransom. On the evening of November 9, 1933, Thurmond and Holmes waylaid Hart as he drove home. At first thinking it was all a joke, Hart pleaded for mercy upon realizing that his captors had no intention of letting him go home alive. The two men responded by beating their prisoner to death with a brick. As they formulated plans to dispose of the corpse, Thurmond phoned Hart’s father, demanding $40,000 for the boy’s return. In the days that followed the senior Hart issued a public statement that he was willing to negotiate for Hart’s release— while in San Francisco Bay, two “mysterious men” disembarked from an ocean liner that was taking on fuel and rushed on board an oil tanker, claiming to be looking for a friend. In truth they had just dropped off a non-friend, stuffed in a sack weighed down by bricks. Less than a week later the police located Brooke’s abandoned car, its headlights still blazing; the following morning Brooke’s money purse was found on the taffrail of the tanker. Having tapped Hart Sr.’s phone as a formality, the police were listening in when Thurmond made another ransom call. Tracing the line to a garage approximately 150 feet from San Jose police headquarters, the cops nabbed Thurmond,

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who immediately confessed and led the authorities to the hotel where Holmes was staying. The conspirators fell over themselves blaming each other for masterminding the crime, which mattered little since in the eyes of the law both were equally guilty of kidnapping—and of murder, once Brooke Hart’s body was fished out of Frisco Bay. Thurmond’s attorney Louis O’Neal told the press that the killers had been transported to the jail in San Jose, and that they planned to plead not guilty by reason of insanity. On the morning of November 27, 1933, headlines from coast to coast screamed the news that Thurmond and Holmes had been abducted from the jail by a frenzied mob and hanged from two trees in nearby St. James Park. A “whooping and cheering” crowd of 6000 had looked on as 100 men battered down the doors of the jail after a 2-hour siege, knocking the sheriff cold, overpowering 35 deputies and dragging the whimpering killers to their doom. Thousands of American citizens were appalled by this miscarriage of justice, but just as many thousands sided with the lynchers, incited by certain newspapermen who argued that the end justified the means. California governor James “Sonny Jim” Rolph heartily congratulated the mob for the benefit of a Universal Newsreel cameraman— and in case anyone might assume that he was speaking in the heat of the moment, Rolph subsequently granted an Associated Press interview in which he praised the lynchers for teaching America “a fine lesson,” promising to pardon anyone arrested for the crime and joking that he planned to release convicted kidnappers from Folsom and San Quentin and leave them to the tender mercies of “those fine patriotic citizens of San Jose who know how to handle a situation” (Rolph died the following year, never recanting his words). For his American film debut in 1936, German director Fritz Lang overrode the objections of MGM chieftan Louis B. Mayer and chose Fury, based on a four-page treatment by Norman Krasna and transparently inspired by the San Jose lynching. Lang hoped to emphasize the ironic quandary of capital punishment, of which

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he was a lifelong opponent: “My argument … is that the law forces some other man to commit murder. If he throws a switch or administers poison pills, he is responsible for the death of somebody else; so the State, trying to punish a murderer, makes another man commit murder.” In Fury, prisoner Joe Wilson (Spencer Tracy) miraculously escapes with his life when a lynch mob sets fire to the jail. Assumed to be dead, he plays possum during the subsequent trial of his persecutors so that he can the have the satisfaction of watching the would-be murderers legally executed. So as not to make the proceedings too morally ambiguous, Joe Wilson is shown to be entirely innocent of his charges, a pathetic victim of circumstance. Unusual for an MGM director of the 1930s, Lang was allowed to present his message exactly the way he wanted in every respect but one: “In the picture I had a scene showing a group of Negroes … sitting in a dilapidated Ford car in the South listening on the radio to a transcription of a lynching trial. As the state attorney spoke about the high incident of lynchings in the US each year, I had the old Negro just nod his head silently without a word. Mayer had this scene, and others like it, removed…. Otherwise I was allowed complete freedom.” Producer Robert Stillman offered a more explicit version of the Brooke Hart murder and its grisly aftermath in his 1951 film The Sound of Fury, adapted by Jo Pagano from his novel The Condemned and directed by Cy Endfield. With emotions still running high in San Jose over the long-ago lynching, The Sound of Fury was filmed in Phoenix, Arizona, and set in the imaginary California town of San Sierra. The decision to state outright that the two main characters Howard Tyler and Jerry Slocum were guilty as charged complicated the film’s intention of showing that the men were undeserving of death at the hands of a mob. This was partially resolved by defining Tyler (played by Frank Lovejoy) as a basically decent man who is dragooned into crime by his obsessive devotion to his beloved wife Judy (Katherine Ryan) and son Tommy (Donald Smelick). The action is moved to the post–World War II era, depicting Tyler as a war

veteran frustrated by his inability to find a good job. Determined to give his family everything their hearts desire, he unwittingly assists in a robbery committed by neurotic petty crook Jerry Slocum. Scaldingly played by Lloyd Bridges, Slocum is so maniacal in his pursuit of easy money that he practically froths at the mouth. When their kidnapping of young Donald Miller (Carl Kent) takes a murderous turn at the hands of the sadistic Slocum, Tyler hides his face in horror, ensuring that the audience will remain on his side no matter where the rest of the story takes him. The trackdown of the real culprits is hoked up by showing a drunken Tyler spilling the beans to lovesick waitress Hazel (Katherine Locke). Once Tyler and Slocum are behind bars, “lynch fever” is fomented by yellow journalist Gil Stanton (Richard Carlson), while his scientist friend Vido Simone (Renzo Cesana) tries to persuade Gil that he might regret his inflammatory editorials (Guess what? He does. Too late, but he does). The climactic lynching is every bit as nightmarish as the actual event, and a potent argument against vigilante justice is made without entirely letting the kidnappers off the hook. Publicity for The Sound of Fury downplayed the lynch angle in favor of the manhunt angle, but that didn’t make the film any more palatable to 1951 audiences. Some exhibitors labeled the picture “anti–American” and refused to run it at all. In desperation, United Artists repackaged the film as a “crime caper” with the new title Try and Get Me. A flop by any name, the film has only recently been rediscovered and hailed as a cult classic by a young audience that for the most part is totally ignorant of, and emotionally detached from, the appalling events of November 26, 1933.

HEARST, WILLIAM R ANDOLPH The films: The President Vanishes (Wanger/ United Artists, 1934); Citizen Kane (RKO-Radio, 1941)

Well, you knew he’d be in this book. Publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst (1863– 1951) has in the past eight decades been written about almost as extensively as the imperishable film inspired by his life and career, Orson Welles’

Hearst Citizen Kane. From the time of the film’s release in 1941 until the kidnapping of Hearst’s granddaughter Patty in 1974, the publisher’s last name was seldom mentioned without also referencing Citizen Kane and its auteur Welles. A few impressionable souls may still believe that the character of Charles Foster Kane was an accurate reflection of his role model. Let’s go through the familiar paces of comparing the particulars in Kane with the true story of Hearst. Both men were born in 1863, though Hearst outlived his counterpart Kane by ten years. Both men inherited great wealth, Kane from an unexpected windfall enjoyed by his impoverished parents, Hearst from his millionaire mining-engineer father. Growing up rich and spoiled, both Kane and Hearst were kicked out of expensive colleges and bounced around aimlessly until entering the newspaper business. In the film, Kane purchases the failing New York Inquirer because “I think it would be fun to run a newspaper”; Hearst spent a year learning his trade as a reporter before buying and revitalizing the San Francisco Examiner in 1887. Kane is later seen promoting a war between Spain and the U.S. over Cuba to boost circulation; Hearst helped bring about the Spanish-American war in 1898 for basically the same reason, though rival publisher Joseph Pulitzer was just as responsible for fomenting the conflict. Kane’s first wife is Emily Monroe Norton (Ruth Warrick), niece of the president of the United States; Hearst’s first and only wife was Millicent Veronica Wilson, a Broadway chorus girl whose mother had ties with New York’s Tammany Hall. Kane runs for governor of New York, but loses when it is revealed that he is keeping a mistress named Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore); Hearst was still unmarried when he was elected to the first of two congressional terms. Thanks largely to voter fraud he was narrowly defeated in his 1905 and 1909 attempts to become mayor of New York City, and lost his 1906 bid for state governor to the more qualified Charles Evans Hughes. After a scandal, Kane divorces Emily and marries Susan; Hearst had wanted to divorce Millicent, but she refused, forcing him to live “in sin” with his movie-star mistress Marion

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Davies in California while Millicent and their sons remained in New York. Throughout this period, Kane amasses scores of paintings, sculptures and other objets d’art from around the world; so did Hearst, and on this point there are no qualifications. Now things begin to get a bit dicey. Angered by his enemies’ mockery of Susan Alexander’s singing aspirations and by the refusal of any established opera company to allow her to perform, Kane builds his own opera house, pays for expensive but futile singing lessons, and foists the pretty but untalented Susan on an unwelcoming public. As noted later in this entry, William Randolph Hearst did everything in his power to prevent Citizen Kane from being shown, not so much because he was offended by his own portrayal in the film but because of the unflattering caricature of Marion Davies; even Orson Welles would admit that he and cowriter Herman Mankiewicz had erred in their presentation of the shrill, slatternly Susan Alexander. Deploying an old reliable screenwriter’s trick, Mankiewicz threw in elements from other

William Randolph Hearst.

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famous persons’ lives so as not to be accused of exclusively picking on Hearst and Marion, at the same time altering the facts surrounding the Hearst-Davies relationship. To begin with, the publisher had entered the entertainment industry as a film producer in 1914, three years before he met Davies. Marion was a gifted, dedicated actress who had already enjoyed fame as a Ziegfeld Follies performer and film star before Hearst established Cosmopolitan Productions in 1918 for the purpose of advancing her movie career. Far from devoting all its resources to Marion’s starring vehicles, Cosmopolitan produced a number of successful non–Davies productions, notably Humoresque (1920), The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) and The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936). After Marion’s retirement in 1937 Cosmopolitan remained in business until 1939; among its final efforts was The Story of Alexander Graham Bell. Davies’ own films were neither expensive vanity productions nor rejected by the public: Her silent vehicles When Knighthood Was in Flower (1923) and Little Old New York (1924) were two of the most financially successful pictures of the 1920s, while her best talkies—The Floradora Girl (1930), Blondie of the Follies (1932), Peg o’ My Heart (1933)—were welcomed with open arms by exhibitors and filmgoers alike. Although it’s true that Hearst, like Kane, ordered his in-house critics to heap hyperboles on all of Marion’s productions whether warranted or not, he also did the same for each and every MGM picture during Cosmopolitan’s seven-year association with that studio. It was only after Hearst moved Cosmopolitan to Warner Bros. in 1934 that his aging paramour was subjected to inferior scripts ill-suited to her talents; like many another actress who did not enjoy the patronage of a millionaire boyfriend, Marion simply wore out her welcome. As mentioned, Herman Mankiewicz wove a few other prominent personalities into Citizen Kane. The concept of a wealthy man building an opera house for the express purpose of showcasing his wife was based on an urban legend involving utilities magnate Samuel Insull (see separate entry), whose own faux movie biopic I Loved a Woman has often been cited as one of

the inspirations for Kane. When in 1929 Insull oversaw construction of the lavish Chicago Opera House, some detractors claimed that he did this to avenge his aspiring-singer wife Gladys, who according to which story one believes was either rejected by New York’s Metropolitan Opera or had been subjected to scathing reviews for her first Manhattan performance. In fact Insull’s wife never sang at the Chicago Opera, nor did she pursue an operatic career anywhere else, but the legend does have a glimmer of truth. In October 1925, Gladys Wallis Insull decided to resume her long-dormant acting career at the age of 56. She chose to make her comeback in a charity production of Sheridan’s The School for Scandal as Lady Teazle, who is supposed to be in her late teens. Since it was all for a good cause, Gladys Insull’s miscasting was overlooked by most of the major New York theater critics. But Herman Mankiewicz, then working for the New York Times, was so offended by Mrs. Insull’s inadequacies that he returned to his office stewed to the gills, started to write a vicious and venomous review of her performance, then slumped over his typewriter in a deep stupor. Mankiewicz’s boss George S. Kaufman scanned the unfinished review, and in one of his rare outbursts of rage fired the snoozing Mankiewicz on the spot (though he rehired him the next day). Kaufman then rewrote the notice himself, diplomatically avoiding any reference to Mrs. Insull’s age and acting ability while praising her charm and beauty. This story became the basis for the scene in Citizen Kane wherein Kane’s oldest friend, dramatic critic Jed Leland ( Joseph Cotten), fortifies himself with liquor and begins to type a damning review of Susan Alexander’s disastrous operatic debut. Like Mankiewicz Leland is fired, but unlike Kaufman the enigmatic Kane teaches the “disloyal” Leland a lesson by finishing his review as the scathingly bad notice that Jed had started to write. In addition to injecting a biographical note in Citizen Kane, Mankiewicz also threw in a few details from the life of another millionaire whose love for his opera-diva wife was not only blind but deaf and dumb: Harold Fowler McCormick, who spent a fortune to train the voice

Hearst of his Polish-born prima donna spouse Ganna Walska in the early 1920s, only to become a public laughing stock when virtually every critic in the country panned her vocal ineptitude—and especially after an audience in Havana pelted her with rotten vegetables. The final reels of Citizen Kane spend a lot of time at Xanadu, the immense baronial estate Kane builds for Susan off the Florida coast. This “stately pleasure dome” is more like a mausoleum, with Kane and Susan shouting at each other across the vast emptiness of their living room. Millions of tourists will instantly recognize Xanadu as a stand-in for Hearst’s enormous California estate San Simeon, which for decades has capitalized on the Kane connection in its publicity. Those tourists are generally surprised to discover that the warm, convivial and colorfully appointed San Simeon bears very little resemblance to the grim, dank, foreboding halls of Xanadu. If we are to believe the miles and miles of home movies lensed at San Simeon, Hearst and his lady fair Marion Davies held court over a perpetual party attended by every living celebrity of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Frequently included in the throng was Herman Mankiewicz, who despite the veil of secrecy surrounding the production of Citizen Kane carelessly allowed Davies’ nephew Charles Lederer to read the film’s script, asking Lederer to check with Aunt Marion to see if there was anything that offended her. There was. Though Hearst was advised by his attorneys that he had no grounds for a lawsuit (while at the same time Orson Welles’ attorney advised him to publicly insist that Kane was not about Hearst), the publisher applied pressure elsewhere, banning all mention of Kane, Welles or the film’s distributor RKO- Radio in his newspapers. He also attempted to extort the executives of other Hollywood studios—notably MGM’s Louis B. Mayer—into purchasing and destroying the film by threatening to publish a series of articles about the indiscretions of Tinseltown’s “great men.” In its May 3, 1941, edition, Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin lauded such publishers as Time’s Henry Luce for lavishing attention and praise on Kane, at the same time slamming

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Hearst and the timorous Hollywood big-shots: “[T]here is something that will linger painfully in our memory, and that is the spectacle of the titular heads of a three billion dollar industry running madly from the hollow terror of a cheap, worn-out blackmailing trick.” Apparently caring not a whit that he was blackening his own reputation, Hearst continued waging war against Citizen Kane, managing to prevent most of the major movie-theater chains from booking the film; in consequence, Kane would not post a profit until its 1956 reissue. Hearst also smeared Welles and his associates as left-wing radicals, and later attacked Herman Mankiewicz with reams of scorching head lines about a car accident in which the writer was involved. The publisher’s appalling behavior in these and other related matters was hardly unprecedented. According to biographer Louis Pizzitola, 22 years before Citizen Kane Hearst had successfully blocked the release of another film which he felt had tarnished his image. In 1919 Pathé Pictures previewed its latest production combining the talents of star Fannie Ward and director George Fitzmaurice: Enemies Within, based on a 1918 play cowritten by former Hearst employee E.H. Culbertson. Both play and film dealt with a pair of American-based foreigners who used their wealth and influence on behalf of the Kaiser’s Germany. The principal villain was Scandinavian manufacturer and erstwhile publisher Olaf Hansen, played in the screen version of Enemies Within by Edwin Stevens. While the film no longer exists, the trade publication Variety offered a vivid picture of what had so offended Hearst: “In some manner Mr. Stevens [was] made up to look like W.R. Hearst. A showing was given of the picture last week and the story as well as a description of Mr. Stevens’s make up reached Mr. Hearst. The feature made the part played by Mr. Stevens that of a newspaper owner, pro–German. [Pathé executive] Paul Brunet was interviewed by Hearst’s representatives. Mr. Brunet passed the buck to George Fitzmaurice, with the picture withdrawn.” Hearst’s juggernaut tactics were not entirely unjustified: Because of his initial opposition to America’s involvement in World War I,

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the publisher was frequently and unfairly suspected of being pro–German. Film producer Walter Wanger, a friend of Hearst’s who had overseen the 1933 MGMCosmopolitan production Gabriel Over the White House, described the publisher as “a fantastic man” in a late–1960s interview with Bernard Rosenberg and Harry Silverstein— though like Paul Brunet before him and Orson Welles afterward, Wanger learned the hard way that there was just so far one could go in depicting Hearst on-screen. Describing his 1934 production The President Vanishes, Wanger recalled “In the first scene, Rosalind Russell played a Washington hostess sitting at the head of a table surrounded by national figures. One was a newspaper owner trying to involve us in a war. On account of my great friendship with Hearst, I had purposely picked a little fellow with a black mustache for the role. It was Ralph Morgan…. At the last minute, my casting director called me and said ‘Ralph won’t play the part. It’s too small.’ I asked him to hire someone else. So he hired an actor who was a big man and came on the screen just like William Randolph Hearst. I didn’t want to do retakes because of a tight budget, and it was one of my first independent pictures. We decided to let it go, but I was terrified.” In The President Vanishes, Hearst lookalike Douglas Wood is seen briefly as powerful publisher Roger Grant, part of a conclave of millionaires (mockingly described by Rosalind Russell as “eagles” while the picture dissolves to a flock of ravenous vultures) plotting to involve America in a war for financial profit. Upon getting his marching orders, Grant instructs his subordinates to push a pro-war message in his newspaper chain with the jingoistic slogan “Save America’s Honor.” The President Vanishes had barely premiered before Hearst’s own minions rushed to “The Chief ” and wailed “See what your friend Walter Wanger has done.” Wanger later claimed that he was banned from the Hearst newspapers: “They wouldn’t even take our advertising.” Though research has proven this to be inaccurate, we can believe Wanger’s biographer Matthew Bernstein that the producer was exiled from San Simeon for several months.

Space constrictions prohibit us from dwelling upon Aldous Huxley’s 1939 novel After Many a Swallow, which two years before Citizen Kane violated the unbroken media rule of not casting aspersions upon Marion Davies’ living arrangements by offering a fictional billionaire named Jo Stoyte who shares his California castle with his young concubine Virginia Maunciple. There is also no room to discuss Herman Mankiewicz’s original rough draft for Kane, which serves up a titillating version of Hearst’s rumored murder of film executive Thomas Ince. Nor do I have any intention of repeating the equally unsubstantiated and mildly pornographic story of how Mankiewicz hit upon the name “Rosebud” for Charles Foster Kane’s beloved sled.

HEIRENS, WILLIAM The film: While the City Sleeps (Bert E. Friedlob Productions/RKO-Radio, 1956)

June 26, 1946: After a violent struggle in which his skull was fractured, 17-year-old University of Chicago student William Heirens was arrested and charged with burglary, but this was only the tip of the iceberg. Under the influence of sodium pentathol—the first time the drug was ever used in a major criminal case—Heirens confessed not only to the recent theft but to the murder and dismemberment of 6-year-old Suzanne Degnan in early January of that year. Investigators would soon affirm that his handwriting matched the ransom note sent to Suzanne’s parents and that his fingerprints were all over the girl’s butchered remains. Moreover, eyewitnesses who knew Heirens from his days as a delivery boy said they recognized him as he ran from the child’s home. Because of a mad scramble between the four major Chicago newspapers to outscoop and outsensationalize one another, we can’t be certain exactly when Heirens confessed to the authorities (it was anywhere between July 30 and August 6), but “unimpeachable sources” announced to readers of the Chicago Sun that the culprit had already spilled all to his roommate Joseph Costello. Suzanne’s grisly murder was in itself enough to either fry Heirens or send him away for life, but the police received an unexpected “Easter egg”

Helmer in the course of the interrogation: Heirens also admitted that he was the notorious “Lipstick Killer” who’d been at large since December 10, 1945, when 33-year-old former WAVE Frances Brown was found in her apartment, shot and stabbed to death. It had been impossible at the time to determine the killer’s identity since the fingerprints were smeared with hand lotion (the newspapers reported that there was an APB out for a “woman or effeminate man.”). The only clue the authorities had to go on was a message scrawled in lipstick on the wall of the apartment: “For heaven’s Sake catch me Before I kill more. I cannot control myself.” As the police sat in silence in the interrogation room eight months later, the “Lipstick Killer” also confessed to slashing the throat of 43-year-old widow Josephine Ross, whose nude body was found on her bed the night of June 5, 1945. Despite these spectacular revelations Heirens insisted that he wasn’t the murderer at all, but that the killings had been committed by his “other self,” whom he identified as George Murman. He stuck to the dualpersonality story throughout his trial, and upon being sentenced to three life terms for murder and an additional 25 years for burglary he responded: “I don’t understand why you’re not going to punish George. He did all those things. He ought to go to the electric chair. But I suppose if you were to kill George you’d have to kill me … we’re so close together.” In the years before his death in 2012, Heirens came up with a different scenario, claiming that he was the innocent victim of a frame- up (some lingering shadows of doubt have since been cast over the reliability of the evidence and Heirens’ confession). Directed by Fritz Lang and scripted by Casey Robinson from Charles Einstein’s novel The Bloody Spur, the all-star 1956 film noir While the City Sleeps plays out a string of unsolved slayings against a fierce power struggle in the offices of The New York Sentinel. The feverish print war between the four Chicago newspapers back in 1946 is simplified as an internal competition fueled by boss-man Walter Kyne (Vincent Price) among Sentinel employees Mobley (Dana An-

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drews), Loving (George Sanders), Griffith (Thomas Mitchell) and Kritzer ( James Craig), one of whom has an executive position awaiting him if he can track down the elusive “Lipstick Killer” for an exclusive story. The audience knows from the beginning that angel-faced delivery boy Robert Manners ( John Barrymore, Jr.) is the serial murderer who strikes each time an unfortunate woman arouses his libido, leaving behind the scrawled-in-lipstick message “Ask Mother.” Unlike William Heirens, Manners is not a split personality, nor do the police pick him up for breaking and entering. Instead, it is the recklessness of Kyne’s unfaithful wife Dorothy (Rhonda Fleming) that finally brings the Lipstick Killer out in the open.

HELMER , BETTY—AND D ONALD EDWIN “DEW ” WESTBROOK The film: Urban Cowboy (Paramount, 1980)

If you can remember the original Gilley’s, you’re probably in your fifties, or even worse you’re as old as I am. Conceived by singerentrepreneur Mickey Gilley and building owner Sherwood Cryer in 1971, Gilley’s was a Pasadena, Texas, honkytonk billed as “The World’s Largest Nightclub.” Maybe the largest but hardly the cleanest, the sprawling structure with the long, long bar at 4500 Spencer Highway drew hundreds of regular patrons every night. When not drinking, brawling or picking up dates, the regulars could be found gathered around the bar’s famous mechanical bull, the centerpiece of a weekly rite of passage wherein young cowboy wannabes attempted to earn their macho chops by riding the wildly bucking machine without falling off. Gilley’s and its bull were immortalized in a series of Esquire articles inaugurated by Aaron Latham in the September 12, 1978, issue under the blanket title “The Ballad of the Urban Cowboy.” Latham described the honkytonk, its denizens and its nonstop music as a countrywestern version of Saturday Night Fever, the phenomenally popular 1977 film which singlehandedly launched the disco craze. Even if the author hadn’t been writing with a movie deal in mind, the Saturday Night Fever comparison instantly pricked up the ears of Paramount CEO

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Robert Evans, who was scouting around for a film that would duplicate Fever’s popularity. With a built-in title and a lilting library of C&W tunes, Urban Cowboy came into being in 1980 under the direction of James Bridges, with a screenplay by Bridges and Latham. Though Dennis Quaid was briefly considered as star, producers Evans and Irving Lazoff ultimately went with John Travolta, who had starred in Saturday Night Fever but was then undergoing a career slump. As Travolta’s leading lady, Debra Winger won out over Sissy Spacek and Michelle Pfeiffer. For its story and substance, the film latched onto a real-life pair of Gilley’s regulars, Donald Edwin “Dew” Westbrook and Betty Helmer. Dew was a young form- glass cutter who had achieved local-legend status for the number of times he’d successfully negotiated the mechanical bull. As the story goes, Betty won Dew’s heart the night she climbed on the bull and not only rode it without tumbling off, but did it standing up. As chronicled in Latham’s Esquire piece, “Dew fell in love with Betty at Gilley’s, twang-twang. They had their wedding reception at Gilley’s, twang-twang. But they quarreled over the bull at Gilley’s, twang-twang. And then Dew met somebody new at Gilley’s, twaaaang.” Betty was already divorced from Dew when Urban Cowboy came out, but that wasn’t the story we saw on screen. Heavily bearded hero Bud Davis (Travolta) works at a Houston oil refinery by day and goes tomcatting at Gilley’s by night. He meets and marries Sissy (Winger)— it’s love at first sight when she asks him if he’s a real cowboy—long before the bar has even installed its mechanical bull. That particular contraption is brought into the place after the newlyweds attend the Texas Prison Rodeo and see inmate Wes Hightower (Scott Glenn) on a bucking bronco. Returning to Gilley’s the couple comes upon the establishment’s brand-new bull and are inspired to emulate Wes’ equestrian skills, resulting in a rift between them when Bud feels threatened by Sissy’s ability to remain in the saddle. Then Wes is sprung from jail, saunters into Gilley’s, dukes it out with Bud and claims Sissy for himself, podner. Only after Wes

is exposed as a thief and a gal-abuser can there possibly be a happy ending for Bud and Sissy. If the bull hadn’t been screwed down to its pedestal, the lovers would probably have ridden it off into the sunset. Though Sherwood Cryer enjoyed Latham’s Esquire articles, Mickey Gilley did not and said so. But with Urban Cowboy making his namesake honkytonk the “in” spot of all Texas and most surrounding states, Gilley made peace with his principles and appeared as himself in the film. Dew Westbrook became a bigger local celebrity than ever, his entrances at Gilley’s heralded by the band playing the film’s signature tune “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places.” Not bad for a guy who never saw the movie for which he’d been a major inspiration—at least, not the whole movie. “Who’s got time?” asked Dew in a 2001 Texas Monthly article. “I’ve seen bits and pieces of it. Travolta did good. I think he did a good job from what I’ve seen.” By that time Dew was working construction at a nuclear power plant and had married twice more, while the original Gilley’s in Pasadena existed only in the minds and hearts of its patrons. The club closed its doors in 1989, was gutted by a mysterious fire in 1990, and finally demolished in 2006. Since 2003 a glittering new Gilley’s has been open for business in Dallas, with the old joint’s beloved mechanical bull “El Toro” still bucking away amidst a 90,000-square-foot complex of banquet halls, concert bars and souvenir shops.

HILL, GEORGE WASHINGTON The film: The Hucksters (MGM, 1946)

One of the few anecdotes about colorful tobacco executive George Washington Hill that wasn’t fictionalized in the novel or movie version of author Frederick Wakeman’s The Hucksters involved a pair of personal representatives, Ivy Lee and Edward L. Berman. As related by columnist Leonard Lyons in 1947, during a casual meeting Lee asked Berman who he worked for. “I represent George Washington Hill,” replied Berman. “So do I!” responded Lee with surprise. Contacting their mutual employer, Lee and Berman were answered with Hill’s familiar humorless chuckle: “Sure. It’s true. I hired both of you—so

Hill that my competitors couldn’t hire either of you.” Crushing the competition was not only a sound business practice for Hill; it was also his religion. Born in Philadelphia in 1884, Hill dropped out of college to work for his father’s firm, the American Tobacco Company. He literally grew up with the company, his salary increases and bonuses netting him $6.5 million in the 13 years after he assumed the presidency of American in 1926. While other companies lost money in the wake of the 1929 Stock Market crash, American Tobacco netted upwards of $40 million a year, with Hill himself earning a guaranteed $2 million per annum. Stockholders demanded to check the books to see if Hill was making his money honestly; he was, but not always ethically. An early proponent of the “Hard Sell,” Hill was aided in this pursuit by ace advertising man Albert D. Lasker. Noting that American Tobacco’s Lucky Strike cigarettes were trailing the competition in the 1920s, Lasker told Hill “get women to smoke and you’ll double your market.” Around the same time, Mrs. Lasker’s doctor suggested that she would lose weight if she’d cut out candy and smoke cigarettes as a substitute. Thus was born American’s first surefire ad slogan: “Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet.” Sales jumped 312 percent, and thereafter Hill would pour as much as $200 million into advertising. When network radio blossomed into a big business, Hill grabbed the bull (not the Durham Bull) by the horns and snatched up as many popular programs as possible to promote his cigarette line. It was in the 1930s that he introduced the “repetitive commercial,” with key slogans repeated over and over in the ad copy and even during the entertainment portion of the program: If you didn’t know that Lucky Strike’s motto was “It’s Toasted” by the end of the show, you just weren’t listening. One of Hill’s biggest successes was Your Lucky Strike Hit Parade, which ran on radio and TV over three different networks from 1935 to 1959. Hill’s involvement in program content did not end with the constant repetition of the slogan “L.S.M.F.T.— Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco,” nor with the opening glossolia-like chant of tobacco auctioneer “Speed” Riggs (“Solllld American!”). Though

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the song selections on Your Hit Parade were ostensibly based on listener popularity, in fact Hill chose most of the compositions himself, ordering network executives to show up at rehearsals and dance with the script girls and secretaries while the songs of the week were being played, so that Hill could judge if the tunes were “peppy” enough for his taste. Not everyone in radio was happy with Hill’s intrusions: Daniel Golenpaul, producer of the long-running quiz show Information Please, became so irritated by Hill’s insistence that the wartime slogan “Lucky Strike Green Has Gone to War!” (the package color had changed from green to white) be repeated at every opportunity that he severed all ties with American Tobacco. Conversely, journalist Walter Winchell, who normally bowed to no man, agreed to be photographed with a cigarette in his mouth during his sponsorship by American Tobacco even though he didn’t smoke. Hill knew the value of “presentation” in both the advertising game and the larger-than-life personality he projected to his subordinates, making dramatic entrances into the conference room wearing a wide cowboy hat and an ostentatious bowtie. Hardly a meeting went by without Hill alternately shouting gross insults and gushing praise at his minions, railing on at full throttle about his latest strategies and flailing his arms like one possessed. He would do literally anything to grab the attention of his employees, from throwing his hat out the window to spitting on his desk. Executives may have muttered dark oaths behind his back but were disinclined to quit, especially given Hill’s “incentive compensation” that bought their loyalty at top-dollar prices. When his board of directors finally grew a pair and tried to force him out of the company, he roared back “I AM THE COMPANY.” Who could argue with that? Published in 1946, Frederic Wakeman’s novel The Hucksters was not so much an exposé of postwar radio advertising tactics as it was a confirmation of what everybody along Madison Avenue already knew. “I remember when [the book] first came out, the ad network crowd at the Brown Derby could talk about nothing else,” recalled Hollywood columnist Bob Thomas in

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1958. “There was much speculation as to whom the real life counterparts were.” The novel’s protagonist, brilliant but unprincipled adman Victor Norman, was thought to be American Tobacco’s Albert Lasker, though his profile—a World War II veteran suffering mixed emotions over working for people whom he did not respect and some whom he actively despised— could have fit practically any man at the time. Buddy Hare, the obnoxious comedian who Norman is ordered to groom for stardom on behalf of the Beauty Soap Company, could have been anyone from Red Skelton to Pinky Lee. Dave Lash, the Jewish talent-agency manager whose integrity compels him to butt heads with powerful sponsors, sounded a little like the MCA agency’s Jules Stein, while Lash’s protégé Freddie Callahan might have been inspired by Stein’s own protégé, the legendary Lew Wasserman. And Kay Dorran, the prominent married woman whom Norman hopes will endorse Beauty Soap and with whom he has a steamy affair, couldn’t be pinpointed as anyone (at least not by any true gentleman in the crowd). But there was no question as to the real-life model for tyrannical Beauty Soap manufacturer Evan Llewellyn Evans. Not with his cowboy hat, bow tie, maniacal tirades, childish stunts, tasteless visual presentations, sadistic mind games and constant baiting and browbeating of his underlings. And not with the way he sells his soap by hammering the public with asinine slogans, ceaselessly repeated on all major networks. Go on: Just guess who Evan Llewellyn Evans was supposed to be. Any doubt as to the character’s kinship with George Washington Hill was dispelled by the bull- in-a-chinashop performance of Sidney Greenstreet as Evans in director Jack Conway’s 1947 film version of The Hucksters. While other elements of Wakeman’s novel had to be altered or blunted by screenwriters Edward Chodorov, George Wells and Luther Davis for mass consumption—The romance between Victor Norman (Clark Gable) and Mrs. Dorran (Deborah Kerr) is purified by making her a war widow; Dave Lash (Edward Arnold) is deracinated and Freddie Callahan (George O’Hanlon) reduced

to a bit part to avoid any trouble from Stein and Wasserman—the film’s Evan Llewellyn Evans is every inch the non-benevolent despot that Wakeman intended. In his very first scene, Evans removes his white stetson, rears back his head and spits on his highly polished table. As he wipes away the glob of gob he glares at his nonplussed staff and growls, “Gentlemen, you have just seen me do a disgusting thing. But you will always remember it.” Within 30 seconds we know all we need to know about Evan Llewellyn Evans’ personality and business philosophy— and those who’ve seen The Hucksters more than once are eagerly awaiting the character’s comeuppance, when Victor Norman, having finally regained his self-respect, empties an entire pitcher of water over Evans’ bald and liverspotted head. Since George Washington Hill died a few months before the release of The Hucksters, we can’t say for sure what he would have thought of his onscreen portrayal. It’s easier to gauge the feelings of the radio professionals who’d had to endure Hill’s “hard sell” and repetitive commercials for nearly two decades by relating the (apocryphal?) story of the network news announcer who first reported on the tobacco tycoon’s death: “Ladies and gentlemen, George Washington Hill died today. Yes, George Washington Hill died today!”

HILL, VIRGINIA—AND BENJAMIN “BUGSY ” SIEGEL The films: The Damned Don’t Cry (Warner Bros., 1951); The Godfather (Alfran Productions/ Paramount, 1972)

Not even his best friends dared call him “Bugsy.” Brooklyn-born gangster Benjamin Siegel despised that nickname, derived from “bughouse” and a mocking reference to his notorious hair-trigger temper. If you were close to him, you called him “Ben” or “Benny,” and there were many people close to him outside the Mob, notably journalists, movie stars and sexy socialites. Born in 1906, Siegel counted among his childhood chums two future underworld functionaries, gimlet-eyed gambling-casino “entrepreneur” Meyer Lansky (see separate entry)

Hill and the more good-natured Moe Sedway; another pal from the ’hood was nightclub dancercum-film favorite George Raft. Mixed up in gangland activities from an early age, Siegel helped Lansky organize a powerful lineup of Jewish gangsters in New York, establishing his own reputation as a top assassin for Murder Incorporated. When Lansky and Mafia capo Charles “Lucky” Luciano (see separate entry for Thomas E. Dewey) consolidated the Jewish and Italian mobs of Manhattan into a single criminal empire, Siegel naturally went along for the ride. Sent to California with $500,000 of the Organization’s money to oversee Mob- controlled gambling and prostitution in Los Angeles, the sharkishly handsome and sartorially splendid Siegel banked upon his connection with George Raft to hobnob with Hollywood’s most glamorous actors and actresses, developing a taste for “class” that would endure for the rest of his days. Flashing a wad of bills that would choke a horse, he purchased popular singer Laurence Tibbett’s Beverly Hills mansion with the intention of making the Golden State his permanent home. Sometime in the early 1940s Siegel made the acquaintance of erstwhile showgirl and full-time Mob courier Virginia Hill. Born in 1916 to an impoverished Alabama family, she ran away to Chicago at age 17. There she worked variously as a waitress and call girl until becoming the mistress of gambler-bookie Joseph Epstein, who introduced her to the upper crust of the Windy City underworld. While sleeping her way through the Mob hierarchy she made a bid to enter “polite” society by passing herself off as a wealthy Southern widow. Though no one fell for the act her charms were hard to resist, as Benny Siegel discovered when he linked up with Virginia once she relocated to California. They were still a couple when in 1945 Siegel made a pilgrimage to the desert outside Las Vegas, Nevada—then a moribund frontier town with a laissez-faire police force—and envisioned a glittering mecca for high-rolling gamblers; all the place needed was the right kind of exploitation by his Mob cronies. Though he shuddered at the notion of actually living in Vegas, Siegel was able to convince Meyer Lansky and his other gang-

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ster pals in the East to invest $1.5 million in a new hotel-casino, called the Flamingo in honor of Bugsy’s long-stemmed lover Virginia. Construction on the Flamingo was slow and profits were meager, but Siegel was still able to attract a wealthy and prestigious clientele, upholding his pursuit of “class” by requiring his patrons to wear tuxedos and evening gowns (the fat men in bermuda shorts and the little old ladies in baseball caps would all come later). As the price tag for Siegel’s Vegas project ballooned to $6 million, the Eastern Mob began to suspect that most of the money was going straight into Bugsy’s pockets. This has generally been offered as the reason that Meyer Lansky put friendship aside and ordered Siegel’s murder, though a 2014 Los Angeles magazine article by Amy Wallace suggests that Lansky was even more ticked off by Siegel’s cruel and shabby treatment of their mutual pal Moe Sedway, who’d been installed as the Flamingo’s vicepresident. There are also conflicting stories as to why Virginia Hill was absent from the Beverly Hills mansion she shared with Siegel on the night of June 20, 1947; either she’d walked out on Bugsy after one of their violent arguments, or she’d been advised by Persons Unknown to leave town and make herself scarce for a few days. Whatever the case, Siegel was sitting alone in the spacious living room when someone began firing a .30 caliber military M1 carbine through the window; two of the bullets hit Bugsy squarely in the head, killing him instantly. A few days later Moe Sedway was promoted to president of the Flamingo, while the cash flow was now firmly under the control of Lansky’s longtime partner Lucky Luciano (who didn’t let the fact that he’d just been deported to Italy cramp his style) Fans of the novel and film The Godfather (see separate entry for Vincent Alo) will immediately recognize Bugsy Siegel as the inspiration for fictional Las Vegas kingpin Moe Greene, whose name appears to have been derived from Moe Sedway and “Big Greeny” Greenberg, the latter a mobster whom Siegel reportedly bumped off in 1939. The resemblance is more obvious in Mario Puzo’s novel, in which after being bankrolled by

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New York “godfather” Don Vito Corleone and bringing the Don’s son Fredo into his Vegas fold, Moe incurs the wrath of Fredo’s older brother Michael by treating the kid badly in public. Contemptuously turning down Michael’s offer to buy his entire operation, Greene pays the price when he is gunned down in his own home. Played by Alex Rocco in Francis Ford Coppola’s film version of The Godfather, Moe Greene has less to do onscreen than in the novel, with his assassination merely a small part of Michael’s wholesale slaughter of all Corleone enemies near the end of the film. Still, Moe’s grotesque demise—a well-aimed gunshot through his right eye—was impressive enough to enter the lexicon of crime films as “The Moe Greene Special.” Those Godfather enthusiasts who were equally familiar with the cinematic ouevre of actress Joan Crawford might have been aware that the Coppola film did not represent the first time Bugsy Siegel had been fictionalized in the movies. As noted by Dorothy Kilgallen in an April 1951 newspaper column, “Some of the drama pages have rumored that a movie based on the career of Virginia Hill might be made. Might be? It’s been made. In The Damned Don’t Cry Joan Crawford portrayed a Virginia-ish character whose gangster pal was eradicated a la Bugsy Siegel.” Scripted by Harold Medford and Jerome Weidman from Gertrude Wallace’s short story “Case History” and directed by Vincent Sherman, The Damned Don’t Cry is a Joan Crawford vehicle with a capital “V,” tailor-made for the actress along the same flashback lines as her Oscarwinning 1945 starrer Mildred Pierce. Following the Virginia Hill scenario, Joan’s character Ethel Whitehead lifts herself above the grinding poverty of her Texas hometown to travel in the best social circles in New York City—the major difference being that while Virginia simply wanted to ditch her go-nowhere existence, Ethel is “motivated” to desert her husband (Richard Egan) by the tragic death of their son. Once in New York, Ethel uses her feminine wiles to become a much-sought-after dress model, catching the eye of hardworking CPA Martin Blankford (Kent Smith). Martin in turn introduces Ethel

to his most affluent client, George Castleman (David Brian). Though there’s little doubt that Virginia Hill knew exactly what she was getting into when she began rubbing shoulders with gangland Chicago, in The Damned Don’t Cry both Ethel and Martin are shocked and appalled to learn that Castleman is a Mob-connected gambling boss. Smitten by Ethel, Castleman pulls a “Pygmalion” with the help of socialite Patricia Longworth (Selena Royle), transforming our heroine into a stylish and cultured fashion plate with the new moniker Lorna Hansen Forbes. “Lorna” enjoys her vaunted status until Castleman decides to use her as a come-on for his West Coast representative Nick Pentra (Steve Cochran), hoping to trap Pentra into exposing himself as a double-crossing thief. Just as Virginia Hill was irresistibly attracted to Bugsy Siegel, so too does Ethel/Lorna bollix up Castleman’s scheme by falling hard for Pentra. The film’s camp-o-meter hits “11” when Pentra and Castleman kill each other in a climactic shootout. As the film’s star-and-don’t-youforget-it Joan Crawford emotes for the ages, a couple of onlookers speculate over her character’s future. While The Damned Don’t Cry ends with the likelihood that the heroine will bury her past and live chastely ever after, the real Virginia Hill adopted a “business as usual” philosophy after Bugsy Siegel bit the big one, continuing to latch onto wealthy men who could do her the most good, coasting through her 1951 appearance before the Kefauver Crime Committee by flashing her smile and crossing her gams, and ultimately resettling in Europe to avoid tax-evasion charges. Forty-nine-year-old Virginia Hill died an apparent suicide near Salzburg, Austria, in 1966.

THE HILL FAMILY The film: The Desperate Hours (Paramount, 1955)

Much of what occurred in the Whitemarsh Township, Pennsylvania, home of the Hill Family in early September 1952 sounds like an episode of TV’s Father Knows Best—except that no one found it funny at the time, not even a prerecorded laugh track. Elmer Schuer, Wayne

Hill Nolen and Wayne’s brother Ballard were three convicted bank robbers who on September 2 escaped from Northeastern Federal Penitentiary in Lewisburg. A few days later they showed up at the kitchen door of the Hill home, where they were greeted by Mrs. Elizabeth Hill. Though brandishing weapons, the convicts were polite and courteous as they explained that they would have to spend some time with the Hills until it was safe to leave. Mrs. Hill prepared breakfast for the intruders, found them some shaving articles and helped them restitch a few of her husband’s clothes to exchange for their prison garb. A few hours later the five Hill children—three sons, two daughters—returned from school and assumed at first that that the strangers were joking. Eventually Mr. James Hill arrived home to find his family seated at the dinner table, sharing a spaghetti dinner with the fugitives. Throughout the evening the convicts apologized for inconveniencing their hosts; they helped Mrs. Hill with the household chores, played a friendly game of poker with one of the daughters and were careful not to use any profanity. Just before bed, the escapees helped the family move a couple of mattresses so that everyone could sleep in peace and privacy. In the wee hours of the morning, Mr. Hill awoke to find that the convicts had driven away in the family car, taking care not to disturb anyone. With their phone wires cut by the fugitives, Mr. Hill would have to wait until after dawn to go next door and call the police. Ten days later the authorities caught up with Schuer and the Nolen brothers, killing two of the men in a shootout and recapturing the third. By that time the story of the Hills’ ordeal had gone public and the family had reluctantly posed for newspaper pictures and granted interviews. However, Mr. Hill refused all offers to further publicize or profit from their 19 hours of captivity. While James and the children quickly recovered from any traumas they may have experienced, Mrs. Hill continued to suffer from anxiety and depression, which is probably the reason that the family soon relocated to Connecticut. Though he claimed that this incident was not the main inspiration for his 1954 novel The Des-

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perate Hours, author Joseph Hayes appeared to contradict himself by naming his fictional family the Hilliards. In Hayes’ retelling, a typical suburban family is held at gunpoint for several days by wily escaped convict Glenn Griffin, Griffin’s hotheaded younger brother Hal and the depraved, sadistic Simon Kobish. The three fugitives go out of their way to terrify the Hilliards into cooperating with them, overtly threatening violence to Mrs. Eleanor Hilliard and her son Ralphie, mocking Mr. Dan Hilliard for his inability to protect his family and physically assaulting the Hilliards’ grown daughter Cindy. Four-letter words abound in the novel, with violence exploding at regular intervals as an innocent delivery man is killed, Cindy’s boyfriend, Chuck, is wounded, and both Griffin brothers die in agony. Apprised of the novel’s publication by a friend of the family, the Hills were annoyed by Hayes’ distortions but managed to keep their equilibrium as they were subjected to a second unsolicited round of publicity. Joseph Hayes went on to adapt his novel as a three-act Broadway play, which opened February 10, 1955, under the direction of actor Robert Montgomery. Paul Newman appeared as head convict Glenn Griffin, George Grizzard as his brother Hal, George Mathews as the bestial Kobish, Karl Malden and Nancy Coleman as Dan and Eleanor Hilliard, and Malcolm Brodrick and Patricia Peardon as their children. The Desperate Hours was still playing at New York’s Ethel Barrymore Theater when Paramount produced a film version, to be released after the Broadway run concluded. Directed by William Wyler, the film stars Humphrey Bogart as an older and grittier Glenn Griffin. Bogart’s friend Spencer Tracy was originally slated to costar as Dan Hilliard, but a conflict over billing resulted in Fredric March being cast in the role. Dewey Martin plays Hal, Robert Middleton is Kobish, Martha Scott enacts Eleanor Hilliard, Mary Murphy appears in the expanded role of daughter Cindy (with Gig Young in the likewise expanded role of boyfriend Chuck) and Richard Eyer plays young Ralphie. In both the play and film versions the tension level of the original novel is elevated from “yellow” to “red,” with an excess of

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physical violence from Glenn Griffin’s unstable cohorts and three gasp-inducing onstage/onscreen deaths. In its February 28, 1955, edition, Life magazine offered a multipage photo spread of the stage production with the actors re-enacting several key scenes, among them the cold-blooded murder of the deliveryman, Hal Griffin’s sexually charged tussle with Cindy Hilliard, and the gargantuan Kobish holding little Ralphie in a stranglehold. This in itself was enough to give the real-life Hill family conniptions, but Life made things worse by restaging these lurid scenes in the Hills’ former house in Whitemarsh Township. There was no mention whatsoever that the play was fictionalized, leading casual readers to assume that all these horrors actually occurred. Once more the media hordes swooped down on the Hill family, causing Mrs. Hill to suffer a nervous breakdown. In October 1955 James Hill sued Life’s publisher, Time Inc., for $175,000, citing New York’s privacy law. The first court ruling favored the publisher, but the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division remanded the case for a second trial. In 1962 the Court of Appeals awarded the Hill family $30,000 in damages. Appealing the decision, Time Inc. took the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, with the publisher’s attorney Harold R. Medina asserting that The Desperate Hours was “basically true” and that Life had committed an “unintentional error” in using actual locations without checking the facts. Representing the Hill family, former vice president Richard M. Nixon reaffirmed that the “violence and bloodshed” in The Desperate Hours were figments of Joseph Hayes’ imagination, further arguing that the 1955 Life article was “stating fiction as fact to sell more magazines” and summing up with “Are private persons to be used as gimmicks for a commercial purpose?” On January 9, 1967, the Court ruled in a 5–4 decision to throw out the damage suit against Time Inc., with Justice William J. Brennan issuing the majority opinion that “under the free speech guarantees, damage awards for a magazine article like the one involved here can only be made on a showing that the article was

published with knowledge of its falsity or in reckless disregard of the truth.” It cannot be determined for certain if the Supreme Court’s “absence of malice” ruling contributed to Mrs. Elizabeth Hill’s suicide in 1971, though a 1989 New Yorker article about the case emphatically arrives at that conclusion. As for the turgid 1990 remake of The Desperate Hours starring Mickey Rourke and Anthony Hopkins, the film has so little in common with the earlier versions of the property—or with entertainment— that it is barely worth mentioning. So we won’t.

HOFFA , JIMMY American labor leader, from 1958 through 1971 president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. His strong connections with organized crime brought him under the scrutiny of McClellan Committee in the 1950s and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy throughout the early 1960s, resulting in a five year prison term for bribery. On July 30,1975, he disappeared from a Detroit parking lot and was never seen again (insert “exit lane on the Jersey Turnpike” joke here). Jimmy Hoffa’s life and career was given sympathetic treatment in Norman Jewison’s film F.I.S.T. (1978), starring Sylvester Stallone as Hoffa surrogate Johnny Kovak, president of the mythical Federation of Inter-State Truckers.

HOLMAN, L IBBY—AND Z ACHARY S MITH REYNOLDS The films: Sing, Sinner, Sing (Larry Darmour Productions/Majestic, 1933); Reckless (MGM, 1935); Written on the Wind (Universal-International, 1956)

Actor Clifton Webb once described his close friend Libby Holman as “rotten ripe,” an affectionate term for a woman who is irresistibly attractive without being a raving beauty. Like many other Jewish-American singers of the 1920s and 1930s, Libby’s offbeat appearance and ethnicity precluded her from ingenue roles and peppy cheer-up tunes. Instead she excelled in performing those bluesy ballads popularly known as torch songs: “Body and Soul,” “Why Was I Born?,” “Ten Cents a Dance,” “Love for Sale.” Perhaps she invested so much melancholy

Holman emotion in her songs because her life was drenched in melancholia. Born Elizabeth Lloyd Holtzman in 1904, she was the daughter of a Cincinnati attorneystockbroker who lost his fortune while she was still a child. After working her way through the University of Cincinnati she headed to New York City to try her luck in show business. Libby wouldn’t get her big Broadway break until 1929, when she costarred with Clifton Webb and comedian Fred Allen in the popular revue The Little Show, introducing her signature ballad “Moanin’ Low.” Her fan following cut through several demographics, with men, women, whites, blacks, heterosexuals and homosexuals worshipping at her feet. Libby herself enjoyed both male and female sexual relationships while holding court over a sizeable gay entourage. Among her most ardent admirers was Zachary Smith Reynolds, heir to the Reynolds tobacco fortune. Six years younger than Libby, Reynolds begged her to marry him, threatening to jump out a window if she refused. Despite the strong objections of his family, Reynolds and Libby eloped in 1932. During a dinner party at the Reynolds estate in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on July 6 of that year, Zachary appeared to be in good spirits, eager to start his studies at New York University’s school of aeronautics. But several hours after the guests departed, Libby’s screams alerted the household that something was very wrong. Entering the couple’s bedroom, they found Reynolds dead from a gunshot wound, his wife standing near the body in a state of shock. Libby could only remember that her husband had shot himself, but suspicions were aroused that she herself was responsible for his death, and that she might have had an accomplice. Her slippers were found in the room occupied by the couple’s mutual friend Albert “Ab” Walker, who claimed that he arrived at the death scene only after he finished cleaning up the living room. Despite her protestations that Reynolds was irritationally jealous and had often threatened to kill himself, Libby and Walker were arrested and charged with “willful and premeditated” murder. A coroner’s ruling that Reynolds had most likely committed

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suicide, coupled with a lack of evidence and Libby’s announcement that she was pregnant, led to dismissal of charges against herself and Walker in November 1932. Two months later her son Christopher Smith “Topper” Reynolds was born prematurely, whereupon Reynolds’ uncle arranged to have any further litigation against Libby terminated. Still in mourning, she announced her retirement from show business, determined to fight for a larger share of her husband’s estate for the sake of her sickly baby. Public opinion, which had turned against Libby in the aftermath of Reynolds’ death, shifted back to her side, even when she was implicated in the 1933 death of another young millionaire, Thomas Gay Coltrane. Since that time certain “experts” have speculated that both Reynolds and Coltrane were closeted homosexuals whom Libby had somehow shamed into suicide. Films inspired by the Holman-Reynolds imbroglio have generally come to a climax with the husband’s death. Bypassing such peripherally connected efforts as 1933’s Brief Moment (starring Carole Lombard as a chorus girl who forces her wealthy-wastrel husband to “man up”) and the same year’s Torch Singer (featuring Claudette Colbert as an entertainer who supports her illegitimate son by performing as a radio kiddieshow hostess) the first full-out à clef film treatment was the independently produced Sing Sinner Sing (1933). Brazenly advertised with such come-ons as “Every newspaper reader has followed the headlines of the murder case which suggested the story of the lovely torch singer,” the film stars Leila Hyams as Leila Carson, entertainer on a gambling ship owned by her lover Phil Carida (Paul Lukas). Rebuffing the romantic advances of besotted young millionaire Ted Rendon (Donald Dillaway), Leila tries to sustain her relationship with Carida, but breaks off with him when he refuses to give up his other lovers. After Leila witnesses a murder committed by Carida, she agrees to marry Ted only as a means of making a getaway. While Ted continues drinking despite Leila’s remonstrations, the boy’s wealthy family warns that they will cut him off without a cent unless the marriage is annulled. In an alcoholic frenzy Ted kills himself in such

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Libby Holman.

a way that it appears Leila had pulled the trigger. Suddenly resurfacing after several reels’ absence, Phil Carida takes responsibility for Ted’s death to save Leila from the electric chair. Neither screenwriter Edward T. Lowe nor director Howard Christy ever infer that Ted’s drinking problem might be rooted in sexual confusion, though in one scene the boy takes refuge inside Leila’s closet. A more elaborate but less entertaining variation on this theme was offered two years later in MGM’s Reckless, starring Jean Harlow, William Powell and Franchot Tone. The resemblance between the screenplay by P.J. Wolfson and Oliver Jeffries and the actual events involving Libby Holman is made abundantly clear via Harlow’s character name Mona, as in “Moanin’ Low.” Her singing dubbed and her dancing doubled, the star plays a Broadway showgirl who is amorously pursued by intemperate young socialite Bob Harrison (Tone), heir to a humongous oil fortune. Meanwhile Mona is worshipped from afar by sports promoter Ned Riley (Powell), the man responsible for making her a star. Ned is left in the lurch when Mona elopes with Bob, much to the consternation of the boy’s father Col. Har-

rison (Henry Stephenson) and fiancee Jo Mercer (Rosalind Russell). It turns out that Bob is still in love with Jo, so much so that he drinks himself into a deep blue funk and commits suicide in Ned’s apartment while Mona is present. Ned and Mona are accused of murder but soon acquitted; Mona, who at no point in the film ever gains an ounce of weight, subsequently gives birth to Bob’s son, leading to a highly publicized custody battle. The valiant heroine pulls an East Lynne, relinquishing her baby to the care of the Harrison family and forsaking her husband’s millions. She then attempts to make a showbiz comeback, but is nearly booed off stage by a crowd of MGM dress extras (among them perennial Marx Brothers foil Margaret Dumont). Delivering an impassioned speech to her detractors, Mona wins them over with another dubbed torch song, and faithful Ned asks her to marry him. Considered a low point in the careers of all three of its stars, Reckless is nonetheless interesting for its climactic reference to Libby Holman’s own successful stage comeback in the appropriately titled Revenge with Music. Though well provided for by her inheritance, Holman continued performing until her second marriage in 1939 to Ralph R. Holmes, who like Reynolds was several years younger than his wife. After Air Force service in World War II, Holmes was found dead in his East Side Apartment in 1945, the result of a combination of alcohol and barbiturates, two vices that had also plagued Libby for years. Rumors that Holmes was a latent homosexual were fueled by Holman’s ongoing liaisons with persons of both genders, including a lengthy relationship with bisexual stage and film star Montgomery Clift. Again reviving her career in the 1940s, Libby displayed her lifelong affinity with African Americans and support of the Civil Rights Movement by forming a professional partnership with black folk singer Josh White, losing many important bookings but gaining respect among forward-thinking Americans. Devastated by the 1950 death of her beloved 17-year-old son Topper in a mountain-climbing accident, Libby alternated between lengthy bouts of depression and occasional encore forays into nightclub and

Holmes recording work for the rest of her life; she also donated a great deal of the money she inherited from Topper’s trust fund to charitable and prosocial pursuits. She died of carbon monoxide poisoning in 1971, reportedly having never recovered from the deaths of several close friends, nor the assassinations of her political idols John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. The final film fictionalization of the Libby Holman story harked back once more to l’affaire Reynolds. Adapted by George Zuckerman from a novel by Robert Wilder, Written on the Wind (1956) was the latest in a series of baroque cinematic soap operas directed by genre master Douglas Sirk. The locale was moved from North Carolina to Texas; self- destructive alcoholic playboy Kyle Hadley is the son of an oil magnate; and Lucy Moore, the “outsider” who marries Kyle and tries to wean him off the bottle, is an executive secretary rather than a torch singer. The “Ab Walker” character on this occasion is geologist Mitch Wayne, who loves Lucy as much as he despises Kyle. For good measure, Kyle is given a nymphomaniac sister named Marylee, who has a bad case of the hots for Mitch. The motivation for Kyle’s excessive liquor intake is his belief that he is impotent, but Douglas Sirk’s disciples can easily decipher that code word. When Lucy turns up pregnant anyway, Kyle assumes that Mitch is the father and tries to shoot him to death. Kyle himself is accidentally killed by Marylee, who spitefully threatens to lay the blame on Mitch; but somehow a happy ending emerges from all this tsoris. According to the actor’s biographer David Bret, Rock Hudson had wanted to play the role of Kyle Hadley, but the studio cast him in the less interesting part of Mitch while hiring Robert Stack to portray Kyle. Bret also asserts that Stack was homophobic, but you’d never know it from the H-bomb hints he drops about his character throughout his Oscar- winning performance. Also receiving the coveted statuette was Dorothy Malone as the wanton Marylee, who just about acts nominal leading lady Lauren Bacall (as Lucy Moore)—and everybody else—right off the screen. In conclusion, David Bret states that Written on the Wind was based less on the

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Holman-Reynolds tragedy than Libby’s tortured relationship with Montgomery Clift, adding that the film’s “gay subplot went over the heads of most cinemagoers.” Wanna bet?

HOLMES, JOHN The film: Boogie Nights (Lawrence Gordon Productions/Ghoulardi Film Co./New Line, 1997)

By the early 1970s, what had once been classified as “stag movies” had matured (if that is the correct word) into the multimillion-dollar adult film industry. Replacing the guys with 8-millimeter cameras in dark basements were the highly celebrated auteurs of pornography, while the middle-age men in domino masks and argyle socks and the plump, pockmarked underaged girls who’d appeared in these films had been supplanted by professional “superstars” of porn who regularly granted interviews in mainstream publications. Titles like Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door were now treated seriously as works of art within their limited genre by the cognoscenti of film criticism. It was during this period that a handsome thirtysomething gentleman named John Holmes achieved celebrity status. The product of a difficult childhood, Holmes joined the Army at 16 to escape his environment. He then embarked on a series of “Joe jobs” before starring in his first porno reel, ultimately appearing in approximately 2500 films of varying lengths and quality. What made Holmes stand out from his competition—literally—was the colossal width and length of his penis; at the height of his fame, he had his awesome appendage insured by Lloyds of London for $14 million, which he bragged was a million bucks an inch. During the gray period in which porn stars could still be arrested for public indecency, Holmes stayed out of jail by acting as a police informant against more dangerous criminals. At the height of his fame, Holmes was earning $3000 per day, not only under his own name but as his cinematic alter ego Johnny Wadd, hero of a popular series of porno action films. But by the late 1970s Johnny had turned to drugs, and within a few years his stock in the adult-movie industry plummeted as his heavy

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reliance on cocaine impeded his ability to achieve an erection on cue. Blowing most of his savings and no longer able to make a living in his chosen profession, he drifted into crime, forming an unhealthy relationship with nightclub owner-drug dealer Eddie Nash. At the same time Holmes was an habitué of a drug house at 8763 Wonderland Avenue in L.A.’s Laurel Canyon district, presided over by Rod Launius. On the night of June, 30, 1981, Launius and his “Wonderland Gang” staged a violent robbery in Nash’s home—after which the accounts become contradictory. The consensus of opinion is that John Holmes was suspected of having helped engineer the heist when he was spotted wearing some of Nash’s jewelry, whereupon Holmes was taken to Eddie’s house and given a going-over. According to one version of the story, in order to save his life Holmes identified the burglars, while other accounts suggest that he ratted out Launius because he hadn’t received a cut from the Nash job. All this was prologue to the savage “Wonderland Murders” of July 1, 1981, which claimed six lives and was described by police as the bloodiest crime scene since the 1969 LaBianca murders. A fairly factual account of this slaughter can be found in the 2003 film Wonderland, starring Val Kilmer as John Holmes. Six years earlier, young director Paul Thomas Anderson (who later piloted such critical and financial successes as Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood) assembled a low-budget fictionalization of the John Holmes–Johnny Wadd saga, Boogie Nights. An expansion of The Dirk Diggler Story, a videotaped “mockumentary” about a mythical porn star which Anderson had made in high school, Boogie Nights was despite its hard “R” rating (knocked down from an NC-17) not a pornographic film but a film about the pornography industry from approximately 1977 to the early 1980s, non-judgmental and at times even affectionate and nostalgic in its treatment of the people involved. The biggest star in the film was Burt Reynolds, who earned an Oscar nomination for his performance as prolific porn filmmaker Jack Horner. An amiable fellow who truly loves and respects his profession, Horner be-

comes a surrogate father to his biggest star, exdishwasher Eddie Adams—aka “Dirk Diggler,” so named because of the enormity of his sex organ. Explained director Anderson, “Dirk is in love with the camera that’s shooting him, and in creating that character I drew as much from legitimate celebrities as I took from porn stars.” Anderson also conceded that “Dirk is loosely based on porn star John C. Holmes … and one thing I took quite specifically from Holmes is the way he changed over the course of his career. In his early films, he was obviously a much nicer person than he was at the end of his career, when the effects of his drug use were very apparent.” The superbly shaded performance of Mark Wahlberg as Dirk Diggler bears this out. In his early scenes, Dirk is a near-parody of the typical wide-eyed, ingenuous showbiz newcomer, so eager to please that he asks his first big costar, veteran porn actress Amber Waves ( Julianne Moore), if he’s giving an adequate performance in the middle of an explicit sex scene. In all sincerity Amber declares “you’re a wonderful actor!” just before reaching her scripted climax. But once he is introduced to cocaine, Dirk becomes arrogant, erratic and dangerously self-destructive. Anderson suggests that Dirk has also been adversely affected by the sweeping changes in the porn industry in the 1980s, with producers switching from aesthetically satisfying 35-millimeter film to cheap videotape and forcing their biggest male stars to expand their fan base by making gay-porn pictures—as reflected by Dirk’s character changeover in his films from straight action hero “Brock Landers” to bisexual stud “Rock Harders.” The film’s reenactment of the Nash robbery and the Wonderland Murders is codified into a single sequence in which Dirk and two of his friends show up in the home of drug kingpin Rahad Jackson (Alfred Molina), hoping to scam the man out of $5000 by passing off a half-kilo bag of baking soda as cocaine. The scene is both hilarious and horrifying, with Jackson dancing and singing along with a mix-tape of disco songs while his son (I think it’s his son) sets off firecrackers in the background; meanwhile Dirk sweats and grimaces while Jackson’s behemoth

Hope bodyguard checks to see if the “coke” is genuine. Suddenly things turn ugly as Dirk’s companion Todd (Thomas Jane) pulls out a gun and demands that Jackson empty his safe; a deadly shoot-out ensues and practically everyone but the terrified Dirk is killed. All this carnage forces Dirk to see the error of his ways and return to the loving arms of his parent-substitutes Jack Horner and Amber Waves, but unlike the denouement of Boogie Nights there was no happily ever-after for John Holmes. Though he managed to avoid prosecution for the Wonderland Murders, Holmes was unable to escape becoming HIV- positive in 1985. Neglecting to inform his costars of his medical condition Holmes continued participating in filmed sex scenes, and once the truth came out it all but destroyed the porn industry. Never apologizing for the damage inflicted on his coworkers nor admitting any complicity in the Wonderland killings, 44-year-old John Holmes died of AIDS-related illness in 1988.

HOPE, BOB—AND MARTHA R AYE The film: For the Boys (All-Girl Productions/ 20th Century–Fox, 1991)

Well into her second wave of movie popularity with such late–1980s hits as Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Ruthless People and Big Business, singer-actress Bette Midler toyed with the idea of making a musical biography in the tradition of her 1980 film The Rose, which had been the Janis Joplin story in everything but name. One proposed project was a biopic of wide-mouthed, long-stemmed comedienne Martha Raye (1916– 1994), focusing on Martha’s indefatigable USO tours during the Vietnam War. Approaching Raye with her proposal, Bette was given Martha’s unpublished memoirs as possible story material. Unfortunately Midler was unable to interest any of the major studios in the project, possibly because Raye’s hawkish stance on Vietnam was out of favor in liberal Hollywood, but more likely because many of the young turks in charge of the movie industry had no idea who Martha Raye was. In various interviews, Bette speculated that by the time anyone got around to filming the Raye story, she’d be as old as Martha her-

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self. Quietly dropping the idea, Bette busied herself with other commitments until 1991, when out came her starring feature For the Boys, cowritten by frequent Woody Allen collaborator Marshall Brickman and directed by The Rose’s Mark Rydell. On the surface it appeared as if Bette Midler had gotten to do her Martha Raye picture after all. For the Boys casts her as venerable singercomic Dixie Leonard, famed for her extensive USO tours during World War II, Korea and Vietnam. James Caan appears as Eddie Sparks, a legendary comedian with more than a few resemblances to Raye’s longtime friend and occasional costar Bob Hope. There are enough digressions from the known facts about Martha and Bob to qualify For the Boys as an original work, beginning with the depiction of Dixie as a backup singer in Eddie’s USO troupe who suddenly bursts forth as the star of the show, much to the sexist, self-enamored Eddie’s dismay. In truth, Martha Raye was a far bigger star than Bob Hope when he made his feature-film debut in 1937, and in their three subsequent costarring films Martha was invariably billed above Bob. Their home studio Paramount then decided to build up the duo’s fan following by refashioning Hope as a romantic lead and exploiting Raye’s shapely legs and ample bosom for glamor-girl parts. It worked for Bob but not for Martha, who was soon relegated to supporting roles. Also, while both Hope and Raye performed tirelessly “for the boys” overseas in World War II, Bob had his own autonomous unit while Martha was part of a USO team with Hollywood actresses Kay Francis, Mitzi Mayfair and Carole Landis, later immortalized in Landis’ memoir Four Jills in a Jeep (filmed with the selfsame four in 1944). The rest of For the Boys finds Dixie and Eddie in a lifelong love-hate relationship, emphasis on the latter, culminating with the pacifistic Dixie holding Eddie responsible for the death of her soldier son, killed right before their eyes during a USO show in Vietnam. In contrast, the actual relationship between Hope and Raye constituted a mutual admiration society, with Bob in awe over the grueling and dangerous lengths to which Martha would go in bringing entertainment

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to our men in uniform (she was affectionately known to her khakied fans as “Colonel Maggie”). For her part, Martha proudly displayed photos of Bob and gifts from the comedian in her home, showing them off whenever she had visitors. Finally, For the Boys avoids the less salutary aspects of Raye’s life, notably her seven marriages and her bouts with alcoholism. If anyone had reason to grouse about For the Boys it would have been Bob Hope, whose counterpart Eddie Sparks is cast in an unpleasant light for most of the film. But Bob never said anything publicly about the negative portrait, perhaps because James Caan is so doggedly unfunny in the role (we never even see him crack a joke onstage). Instead, it was Martha Raye who, at the instigation of her seventh husband Mark Harris, filed suit against the filmmakers, not because of how she was portrayed but because it was done without permission. Given the published evidence that Bette Midler had previously considered a Raye biopic, Martha’s $5 million lawsuit was not entirely unfounded, but a judge weighed both sides of the argument and dismissed the litigation. At any rate, For the Boys was a resounding box-office flop, vanishing from distribution so quickly that few of Martha Raye’s fans had much of an opportunity for outrage.

HOPPER , HEDDA American actress and journalist, who after an off-and-on career playing supporting roles in films reinvented herself in the late 1930s as one of Hollywood’s most powerful and feared gossip columnists. She became famous to the general public for her elaborate and sometimes ridiculous hats, but few in the movie industry dared make fun of her at her height—as witness the respectful characterization of Patty Benedict (Ilka Chase) in Robert Aldrich’s 1955 adaptation of the Clifford Odets play The Big Knife. Two years after her death Hedda was savaged as the viciously autocratic Hollywood gossip queen Molly Luther, played by Coral Browne in another Aldrich film, The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968).

HORNER , FLORENCE SALLY Speculative inspiration for the 12-year-old

nymphet “heroine” of Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel Lolita. According to his biographer Brian Boyd (among others) Nabokov got the idea for his novel after reading newspaper accounts of a “middle-aged morals offender” named Frank LaSalle who in 1948 kidnapped 11-year-old Sally Horner and kept her as a “cross-country sex slave” for nearly two years, living mostly in cheap California motels. In both the novel and the film versions of Lolita, the title character (given name: Dolores Haze) is the stepdaughter of bookish Humbert Humbert, who has become sexually obsessed with the girl and marries her mother in hopes of someday carrying out his fantasies. Nabokov’s Lolita is no helpless victim, however, and willingly goes along for the crosscountry ride after the death of her mother: according to Humbert, it is she who seduces him. 14-year-old Sue Lyon plays the title role in Stanley Kubrick’s controversial 1962 film adaptation of Lolita, while 16-year-old Dominique Swain essays the character in the less titillating (but more faithful to the source) 1997 remake. Sally Horner herself died in a car accident three years before the novel’s publication.

HOWEY, WALTER The films: The Front Page (Caddo/United Artists, 1931); Nothing Sacred (Selznick-United Artists, 1937); His Girl Friday (Columbia, 1940); The Front Page (Universal, 1974); Switching Channels (Switching Channels Inc./TriStar, 1988)

One of the talking points posited by film critic Pauline Kael in her controversial two-part 1971 New Yorker essay on Citizen Kane is that the Orson Welles film was a fitting climax to the newspaper-movie cycle so popular in the 1930s. She further opined that the prototype for all the ruthless, hard-driving “anything for a headline” newspaper editors who dominated these films was Walter Howey (1882–1954), who from humble beginnings in Iowa grew up to become one of publisher William Randolph Hearst’s most valued employees. Not long after his arrival in Illinois, Howey landed a job with Hearst’s Chicago American, outscooping the competition with his reporting of the tragic Iroquois Theater fire in December 1903. At 24 he became city editor of Chicago Inter-Ocean, then graduated to

Howey an $8000-per-year editing post at the Chicago Tribune. Preaching a credo of “Don’t ever fake a story or anything in a story—that is, never let me catch you at it!” to his reporters, Howey continued boosting the circulation of the Tribune until 1917, when he had a falling out with Management over a puff piece he’d written about his favorite movie director D.W. Griffith—who by an amazing coincidence had helped Howey’s actress niece Colleen Moore secure her first Hollywood contract. Telling the Tribune where to go, Howey stormed across the street to the Hearst-owned Herald-Examiner, immediately securing a job as managing editor at an annual salary of $35,000. The speed and ingenuity with which Howey managed to get late-breaking stories in print was the envy of friends and foes alike. In the “friend” category was reporterturned-playwright Charles MacArthur, whom Howey stole away from the Tribune with promises of a bigger salary and more editorial leeway. Perhaps MacArthur counted himself lucky that he wasn’t a victim of one of the editor’s favorite ploys: Hiring a reporter from the competition just to get him out of circulation, then firing the man the moment he showed up for work. Conversely, MacArthur’s longtime writing partner Ben Hecht, who also worked for Howey, was none too fond of the man; citing the fact that Howey had one glass eye, Hecht added that you could tell which eye was artificial because it was the warmer of the two. Time magazine would later describe Howey as “a profane romanticist: ruthless but not cruel, unscrupulous but endowed with a private code of ethics. He was the sort of newsman who managed to have hell break loose right under his feet, expected similar miracles from his underlings, rewarded them generously.” To guarantee that he was always ready to pounce on hot stories when and where they occurred, he devised such inventive strategies as renting motorcycles to get his reporters past police lines during the 1919 Chicago race riots. Sometimes the inventiveness was literal: It was Howey who supervised development of an automatic photoelectric engraving machine that revolutionized the illustrated-press industry. As far as Howey was concerned, noth-

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ing was as important as “that story,” not even romance. Time after time he ordered his reporters to steer clear of women: “The bitches will ruin you—they have nothing to do with serious newspaper work.” He often threatened to fire any reporter who even thought of getting married, but generally relented at the behest of his own beloved wife, Gloria. In their 1928 hit Broadway comedy The Front Page, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur paid a backhanded tribute to Walter Howey with the character of Walter Burns, the explosive, exploitive editor of the Chicago Examiner. Determined to beat his competitors to the punch with in-depth coverage of a politically motivated execution, Burns pulls every dirty trick in the book (his own book) to prevent his star reporter Hildy Johnson from leaving the newspaper game in order to get married. In the course of the play’s three acts Burns goes so far as to have Johnson’s mother-in-law kidnapped and thrown in jail, all to keep Hildy focused on hiding escaped prisoner Earl Williams in his rolltop desk long enough to sweat an exclusive story from the man—and incidentally expose the municipal corruption that had railroaded Williams to the gallows. Even after the Examiner nails the story and Williams gets a pardon Burns isn’t through trying to “rescue” Johnson from matrimony so that he can return to work full-time. Generously presenting Hildy with a valuable watch as a honeymoon present, Burns waves goodbye, waits about ten seconds, then phones the train depot with orders to arrest the reporter on sight: “The son-of-a-bitch stole my watch.” The Front Page was filmed four times, first by producer Howard Hughes in 1931 under the direction of Lewis Milestone, and starring Adolphe Menjou (replacing the recently deceased Louis Wolheim) as Walter Burns and Pat O’Brien as Hildy Johnson. As wonderful as this version is, the 1940 remake His Girl Friday is even better, with director Howard Hawks and screenwriter Charles Lederer adding a whole new dynamic to the love-hate relationship between reporter and editor by changing Hildy Johnson into a woman (played by Rosalind Russell), the exwife of the scheming and duplicitous Burns

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(Cary Grant). Billy Wilder’s 1974 remake reverted to the original title The Front Page, with Hildy Johnson restored to manhood in the person of Jack Lemmon and Walter Burns enacted by Walter Matthau. Much was made at the time of the new “freedom” of the screen, allowing Wilder to retain the profanities that peppered the original stage play, a privilege denied Milestone and Hawks. Alas, Billy was unable to leave well enough alone, tossing in even dirtier words than had been imagined by Hecht and MacArthur, as well as gratuitous and pointless jokes about incontinence, homosexuality and (despite the film’s 1920s setting) the Nixon administration. The male-female setup was repeated in the most recent adaptation, 1988’s Switching Channels. Burt Reynolds stars as the Walter Burns character, here named John L. Sullivan IV, with Kathleen Turner as the Hildy Johnson counterpart Christy Colleran. Drearily directed by Ted Kotcheff, Switching Channels has few of the laughs, little of the rat-a-tat pace and none of the charm of the first two versions. Jonathan Reynolds’ screenplay changes the setting from a prison press room to the spacious offices of a cable-TV service, doing nothing for the source material other than making it seem even more dated than in the Billy Wilder version. Most damaging to the film is the utter lack of chemistry between the two stars, especially when compared to the pyrotechnics ignited by Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell back in 1940. Ben Hecht used Water Howey as a role model in one other film property, the 1937 satirical comedy Nothing Sacred, directed by William Wellman under the aegis of producer David O. Selznick. Even more cynical and jaded than the original Front Page, Nothing Sacred is a savage lampoon of newspaper- generated publicity stunts, with enterprising reporter Wally Cook (Fredric March) turning small-town-girl Hazel Flagg (Carole Lombard) into a media superstar while laboring under the misapprehension that she is dying of radium poisoning (Hazel Flagg was also the title of a 1952 Broadway musical based on Nothing Sacred, which in turn was adapted for the screen as the 1954 Martin and

Lewis vehicle Living It Up). The Walter Howey character this time out is Cook’s dyspeptic editor Oliver Stone (!), played by Walter Connolly. In one of the film’s best dialogue exchanges, Wally describes his boss as “sort of a cross between a ferris wheel and a werewolf. But with a lovable streak if you care to blast for it.” That line might have been a fitting epitaph for Walter Howey, except that the werewolf had been defanged and neutered long before his death. In 1939 Howey settled down in Boston as editor-in-chief of three notoriously staid Hearst dailies, eventually taking over supervision of the publisher’s family friendly Sunday supplement The American Weekly. The former tyro who would have slaughtered his own children to get the news out first and fastest was now content to rehash and homogenize old familiar stories and report on the trivial activities of ephemeral celebrities. When Howey’s Boston city editor complained about the “deliberate distortions” of The Front Page, he likely had no firsthand knowledge of the onetime Monster of the Media at the height of his powers. Acknowledging his lifelong debt to the Hearst publishing empire by naming his own son William Randolph Howey, Walter Howey spent his declining years as a trustee of the Hearst estate. If he died with the word “Rosebud” on his lips, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.

HUGHES, HOWARD The films: Look Who’s Laughing (RKO-Radio, 1941); Caught (Enterprise/MGM, 1949); The Barefoot Contessa (Figaro/United Artists, 1954); The Carpetbaggers (Embassy/Paramount, 1964); Diamonds Are Forever (Saltzman-Broccoli/United Artists, 1971)

Squeezing the life and career of the fabulous Howard Hughes (1906–1976) into a few manageable paragraphs is comparable to squeezing a herd of whales into a tin of sardines. I’ll assume that the reader is familiar enough with the Howard Hughes story so that this entry can confine itself to the fictional film characters inspired by the man—and even here we must eliminate the peripheral Hughes imitations in How to Marry a Millionaire, Let’s Make Love, Iron Man and other such films.

Hughes RKO-Radio’s Look Who’s Laughing was released in 1941, at which time the public image of Hughes was as the “boy wonder” who became a millionaire at age 18 upon the death of his father, a prosperous Texas oil-tool manufacturer. Letting others run the family business, the moviestruck Hughes headed to Hollywood at the invitation of his director uncle Rupert Hughes and at the tender age of 20 became a producer, achieving box-office success and an Academy Award with his 1927 war comedy Two Arabian Knights. Though by nature shy and retiring, Hughes cared enough about moviemaking to run roughshod over two experienced directors during production of his silent aviation epic Hell’s Angels and to pour millions of dollars into reshooting the film as a talkie. Hell’s Angels was a smash hit, making Hughes Tinseltown’s fair-haired boy as well as chick magnet attracting such glamorous stars as Billie Dove, Ginger Rogers and Katharine Hepburn. But within a year of the film’s 1931 release Hughes had temporarily lost interest in movies and buckled down to his first love, aviation. He established the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932, and three years later personally broke the speed record for flying a plane over land. He followed this triumph by smashing the transcontinental U.S. speed record in 1938, and that same year completed a round-the-world flight in an unprecedented three days, 19 hours and 17 minutes. At the time of Look Who’s Laughing Hollywood still felt warmly toward Howard Hughes for his generally successful string of films, while the world at large recognized and revered him as an aviation genius. In this spirit, the character of Hillary Horton, played in Look Who’s Laughing by Neil Hamilton, is a good-natured billionaire whose has achieved fame and fortune in the aviation industry. Though a very minor character in a film designed to showcase radio stars Edgar Bergen and Fibber McGee and Molly, Horton performs an important deux ex machina function at the tail end of the story. When Bergen asks Hillary to purchase an airstrip that will enrich Fibber and Molly’s home town of Wistful Vista, the bemused billionaire reveals that Edgar owns a controlling interest in Hor-

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ton’s aircraft firm and could have made the purchase himself way back in Reel Three. Public perception of Howard Hughes began to change in the 1940s, especially after his notorious and overpublicized 1941 western film The Outlaw exposed Hughes to the world as a lecher with a fetishlike breast fixation, personified by the film’s buxom leading lady Jane Russell. More disturbing eccentricities began to emerge after Hughes survived two near-fatal plane crashes in 1943 and 1946. Already suffering from a mild drinking problem, he became addicted to opiates during his convalescence from the second crash, resulting in radical personality changes and mood swings. Where once he’d been charmingly evasive he now became morbidly reclusive, seldom conducting business activities face-to-face but instead relying upon an army of subordinates. In 1948 he returned to filmmaking full-time when he purchased the RKO-Radio studios, his previous reputation for perfectionism morphing into an obsession as he drove directors and stars crazy and bloated the budgets of individual films far beyond their profitability. Even before his association with RKO Hughes had made several enemies with his independent production Vendetta, intended as the American film debut of celebrated European director Max Ophuls. The film was the second collaboration between Hughes and director-writer Preston Sturges, whose once-copacetic relationship had become strained during production of the 1946 Harold Lloyd comedy The Sin of Harold Diddlebock. In addition to devoting an inordinate amount of attention to mammaryladen leading lady Faith Domergue, Hughes became irritated at Ophuls’ shooting methods and ordered Sturges to fire the director. His nerves already worn to a frazzle by Hughes’ constant interference, Ophuls developed a profound hatred for his onetime benefactor which was manifested in his 1949 film Caught, adapted by Arthur Laurents from a novel by Libbie Block. In his autobiography, Laurents recalled that Ophuls ordered him to rewrite the novel’s demented multimillionaire villain Smith Ohlrig to resemble Howard Hughes as closely as possible—and to “make him an

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idiot” in the bargain. Played by Robert Ryan, Ohlrig regards everyone around him as his personal property, referring to his young wife Leonora Eames (Barbara Bel Geddes) as his “best paid employee.” Knowing full well that Leonora married him only for his money, Ohlrig gives back as good as he gets by gaining full custody of their child, forcing his estranged wife to return to their prisonlike mansion. While most viewers end up detesting Smith Ohlrig as much as Max Ophuls detested Hughes, celebrated film historian and collector William K. Everson had an amusingly contrary viewpoint: “Robert Ryan, playing a thinly disguised Howard Hughes, frankly makes a good deal of sense, and seems particularly justified in turning on a wife who has the temerity to giggle in his private projection room.” Hughes harvested a whole new crop of detractors in the Hollywood community when in the late 1940s he became rabidly anti–Communist, firing anyone within his corporate empire who evinced the slightest sign of left-wing leanings, producing strident Red-baiting celluloid trash like I Married a Communist (1949), The Whip Hand (1951) and Jet Pilot (1957) and going so far as to remove the names of “unfriendly” actors and other studio personnel from the credits of already- completed RKO films (Though Lloyd Gough plays the villain who motivates the plot in Hughes’ 1952 western Rancho Notorious, the cast credits ignore him completely). Amidst the many other à clef characters in director-screenwriter Joseph Mankiewicz’ The Barefoot Contessa we find boorish American industrialist Kirk Edwards (Warren Stevens), who to feed his monumental ego decides to become a moviemaker. If we merely despise Edwards as he sadistically humiliates down-and-out director Harry Dawes (Humphrey Bogart as a character who may be based on Hughes’ onetime associate Preston Sturges), we’re ready to throw tomatoes at him when he loudly and obnoxiously proclaims his xenophobic patriotism in a violent quarrel with Latin American playboy Albert Bravano (Marius Goring). Compounding the effrontery of mocking Howard Hughes via the fictional Kirk Edwards in The Barefoot Contessa,

Joe Mankiewicz had the colossal gall to cast Hughes’ ex-lover Ava Gardner in the title role. By the time novelist Harold Robbins came out with his 1961 bestseller The Carpetbaggers, Howard Hughes had all but disappeared from public view. His legend was kept alive via his multitude of thriving business enterprises and rumors of his equally multitudinous quirks, kinks and peccadilloes. Harold Robbins has claimed that The Carpetbaggers’ aviationmagnate hero Jonas Cord was primarily based on inventor-industrialist William Powell Lear, but Lear’s record of failed marriages comes nowhere near the scandalous shenanigans of Robbins’ protagonist, whom most readers and critics immediately tagged as a Howard Hughes clone. Like Hughes, Jonas Cord is a total stranger to his unloving business-mogul father; like Hughes, Cord is barely out of his teens when he inherits his dad’s vast business interests; like Hughes, the great love in Cord’s life is aviation, which Robbins’ purple prose compares to the sex act; like Hughes, Cord plunges into film production, making stars out of his mistresses and buying his own studio; and like Hughes, Jason Cord comes a-cropper trying to develop a revolutionary but structurally flawed aircraft reminiscent of the ill-fated “Spruce Goose.” In both the novel and director Edward Dmytrk’s 1964 film version of The Carpetbaggers there are enough digressions from the facts to sidestep any possible legal action. As Jonas Cord, George Peppard is loud and overbearing in both public and private matters, whereas Hughes was known to be soft-spoken and self-effacing in public; Peppard is also clean-shaven, forsaking the mustache that Hughes grew to hide a facial scar. Jonas Cord is only married once, to Monica Winthrop (Elizabeth Ashley); Hughes was wed twice, to Ella Botts Rice from 1925 to 1929 and actress Jean Peters from 1957 to 1971. Cord has carnal relations with a brace of movie starlets, Rina Marlowe (Carroll Baker) and Jennie Denton (Martha Hyer); if we are to accept these characters as substitutes for Hell’s Angels leading lady Jean Harlow and The Outlaw star Jane Russell, it should also be mentioned that Harlow and Russell were two of the very few Hollywood

Huston actresses whom Howard Hughes didn’t get into bed. Speaking of Hell’s Angels and The Outlaw, Hughes’ decision to expensively convert the former film into a talkie and transform the latter into Hollywood’s first “bosom western” are synthesized into a single scene in the movie version of Carpetbaggers as part of Jonas Cord’s campaign to revitalize the career of western star Nevada Smith (Alan Ladd), who also happens to be Jonas’ surrogate father. Though screenwriter John Michael Hayes eliminates the novel’s closing chapters in his film adaptation of The Carpetbaggers, he still finds time for the last-act redemption that Harold Robbins bestows upon Jonas Cord. The film also devotes a lot of space to the dollar-Freud “explanation” Robbins provides for Cord’s outrageous behavior: It seems that he has become a monster out of fear of ending up as insane as his long-dead twin brother. Though few could ever lay claim to being close to Howard Hughes, film producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli counted himself among the industrialist’s best friends even after Hughes further shut himself off from the world by establishing both headquarters and home in the penthouse of Las Vega’s Desert Inn in 1966. Around the same time, Cubby Broccoli had a dream in which Hughes was replaced by an impostor who wreaked all manner of havoc against the Free World in Howard’s name. This nightmare scenario managed to work its way into Tom Mankiewicz and Richard Maibaum’s adaptation of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novel Diamonds Are Forever (1971), co-produced by Broccoli and directed by Guy Hamilton. Partially filmed on location at several Las Vegas hotels owned by Hughes, the film climaxes with superspy James Bond (Sean Connery) rescuing a reclusive billionaire entrepreneur ( Jimmy Dean) from the clutches of megavillain Ernst Blofeld (Charles Gray). Coming full circle, Diamonds Are Forever echoes the alliterative character name Hillary Horton in Look Who’s Laughing by identifying its Howard Hughes counterpart as Willard Whyte.

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HUSTON, JOHN The film: White Hunter, Black Heart (Malpaso Productions/Rastar/Warner Bros., 1990)

The chaotic history of John Huston’s 1951 comedy-adventure The African Queen has been thoroughly chronicled elsewhere, most entertainingly in Lawrence Grobel’s 1989 family biography The Hustons. The decision to make the film almost entirely in Africa led to a number of complications, most of them humorous in retrospect: The wild eccentricities of the maverick director, the production unit expensively lolling around the African wilds in lieu of a completed script, star Humphrey Bogart’s strong work ethic despite his constant grumbling about his dangerous surroundings and various jungle-related ailments, Bogart’s costar and close friend Katharine Hepburn airily comporting herself like Eleanor Roosevelt both on and off the screen, etc., etc. etc. As recorded by Grobel, the film’s assistant director Guy Hamilton had an insightful theory as to why Huston agreed to the project in the first place. During his initial conference with the director in London, Hamilton noticed that his hotel room at Claridge’s more closely resembled an armory. “There were people who were selling [Huston] crocodile guns and elephant guns. John wanted to shoot an elephant. That was really what the whole picture was about as far as he was concerned.” Author Peter Viertel, who accompanied Huston to Africa to collaborate on the film’s ending (what we see on screen was the result of a great deal of teeth-gnashing and hair-pulling by several other people, including credited screenwriter James Agee), also glommed onto Huston’s obsession with bagging an elephant. Two years after the release of The African Queen, Viertel distilled his experiences in a roman à clef entitled White Hunter, Black Heart. The novel’s protagonist is John Wilson, a gloriously egomaniacal, reckless and hedonistic filmmaker (“If there are women or horses within reach he can’t control himself ”), who heads to Africa to make an action picture. The book’s narrator, Viertel’s alter ego Pete Verrill, enjoys a fly-on-the-wall vantage point throughout the story, beginning with eavesdropping on a night of purple passion

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between Wilson and a temperamental (and considerably older) actress, and especially during the lengthy passages in which Wilson abandons the drudgery of location filmmaking—and puts the rampant racism of the African white population out of his ultra-liberal thoughts—in order to hunt down and kill an elephant. Along the way, Viertel offers caricatures of other film luminaries, notably African Queen producer Sam Spiegel, who as “Peter Landau” is described by John Wilson as “a flesh-peddling pimp”—and Wilson actually likes the man. None of the real-life personalities fictionalized in White Hunter, Black Heart took umbrage with Peter Viertel, least of all John Huston, who read the book in galley form and chuckled heartily all through it, offering suggestions to make John Wilson even more of a roguish reprobate. However, in his autobiography Huston noted that he never really knocked off an elephant and regarded such hunting practices as sinful, a philosophy he extended to his ecologically minded 1958 film The Roots of Heaven. Under the direction of Clint Eastwood, Viertel’s rambling, uneven novel was transformed into a concise, organized character study in the long-overdue 1990 film version of White Hunter, Black Heart. Eastwood himself stars as John Wilson, performing a spot-on vocal and visual impersonation of the John Huston the world had come to know and love by way of his acting performances in such films as Chinatown and The Wind and the Lion. As in Viertel’s novel, several other noteworthy personages are lampooned in the film, notably Sam Spiegel (here called Paul Landers and played by George Dzundzas), Humphrey Bogart (Phil Duncan, played by Richard Vanstone) and Katharine Hepburn (Kay Gibson, enacted by Marisa Berenson). Eastwood the director took as many liberties as Viertel did in his interpretation of the actual events, though the film possesses an agreeable surface accuracy via such devices as using the same prop steamboat Huston had deployed in The African Queen. And for all the muscle-flexing machismo in the film’s magnificently staged elephant-hunting sequences, Eastwood the actor is most effective in his barbed banter with Vier-

tel counterpart Pete Verrill ( Jeff Fahey) and his elegantly vicious putdowns of various antagonists, notably an anti–Semitic British noblewoman in the early scenes. Albert Finney had previously spoofed John Huston with his portrayal of Daddy Warbucks in the Huston-directed musical Annie (1981), but that’s a whole ’nother story.

HUTTON, BARBARA The films: The Adventurers (AVCO Embassy/ Paramount, 1970); Once Is Not Enough (Aries Productions/Sujac Productions/Paramount, 1975)

Two cliched phrases instantly come to mind when one invokes the name of Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton: “Poor Little Rich Girl” and “If You’ve Got It, Flaunt It.” Barbara was born in New York City in 1912, the granddaughter of chain-store founder F.W. Woolworth and daughter of stockbroker Franklyn Laws Hutton (the younger brother of E.F. Hutton). She received her portion of the Woolworth millions at age 5 when her mother committed suicide. With no strong parental figure in her life, she grew up an irresponsible spendthrift who never found full satisfaction in anything, least of all romance. The first of her seven husbands was Prince Alexis Mdivani, from a family of Georgia aristocrats renowned for their marriages to wealthy women willing to support their lavish lifestyle. Barbara ended this marriage by giving the Prince an enormous cash and creature-comfort settlement, setting a precedent for her next six marriages and divorces. Her second marriage produced her only son Lance Reventlow, with whom Barbara was very close until his early death in a plane crash. Husband number three was movie star Cary Grant, who refused to take advantage of Barbara’s money and insisted upon living on his own considerable income; this marriage dissolved when Cary became fed up with the sycophants, parasites and phony noblemen who hovered around his increasingly dissolute spouse. Throughout her fourth marriage and her subsequent unions Barbara continued spending her fortune as if there was no tomorrow and carrying on numerous extramarital affairs, some of

Hutton them allegedly with women. In 1953 she became the fourth wife of Dominican diplomat and international playboy Porfirio Rubirosa (see separate entry), who’d previously been wed to tobacco heiress Doris Duke. By this time the press had given up treating either Barbara or Rubirosa with any deference: Covering the wedding for the International News Service, Phyllis Battelle noted cattily “The bride, for her fifth wedding, wore black and carried a scotch-and-soda.” It was hardly a slanderous comment, since Barbara was known to have turned to liquor and drugs for thrills and solace. Rubirosa’s ongoing romance with Zsa Zsa Gabor was one of the factors that sank this marriage after 53 days; two more husbands followed, the last one a Vietnamese chemist for whom Barbara purchased a tiny monarchy so he could pass himself off as Prince Raymond Doan Vinh Na Champassak. This too ended in divorce, and per her custom Barbara gave the last of her seven husbands an inordinately generous cash-and-gift settlement (only Cary Grant was man enough to turn down this “honor”). With public sentiment towards Barbara Hutton having soured way back in 1938 when she pulled a “Marie Antoinette” with a group of underpaid Woolworth employees picketing her suite at New York’s Pierre Hotel, there was Schadenfreude to spare when she died nearly penniless in 1969. The profligate, promiscuous Barbara Hutton proved ripe for plucking by two of the biggest purveyors of trash-masterpiece novels inspired by real-life celebrities. Harold Robbins’ The Adventurers came out in 1966 when Barbara was still alive, while Jacqueline Susann, in a rare display of taste, waited until 1973 to bring out her à clef tome Once Is Not Enough. Like its source novel, director Lewis Gilbert’s sprawling 1970 film version of The Adventurers revolved around a diplomat/rebel/polo-player/playboy from the mythical South American country of Courteguay named Dax, whom even a newly arrived alien from planet Neptune would instantly recognize as a thinly camouflaged Porfirio Rubirosa. Yugoslav actor Bekim Fehimu played Dax in the film version, his excessively violent past and relentlessly erotic present faithfully retained

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from the Robbins novel by director Gilbert and screenwriter Michael Hastings. Though Dax’s millionaire-heiress bride Sue Ann Daley could have been Doris Duke just as easily as Barbara Hutton, as played by Hutton lookalike Candice Bergen the guessing game is already half over. Evidently to mollify those who might be offended that the film would have the gall to mimic dear dead Barbara, Sue Ann Daley is a blushing 20-year-old virgin the first time she meets Dax at a fashion show he has mounted with his business partner. Asked if she’s interested in purchasing anything, Sue Ann looks Dax over from head to toe and purrs “Everything—including the collection.” But for all her millions Sue Ann prefers the simple things in life, as illustrated by a courtship montage showing the two young lovers riding bicycles, picking flowers and playing Frisbee with a slice of watermelon. After a marriage so ostentatious that it makes the Charles-Diana union look like an elopement to Vegas, Dax deflowers Sue Ann on her 21st birthday, and within the span of a lap dissolve she is radiantly pregnant. Alas, she loses the baby after falling off a swing, a sequence unparalleled in the annals of movie-miscarriage history. “We’ll try again,” she assures her husband. “I won’t even sit on a swing.” But it is not to be: Before long Sue Ann plunges into a depression so deep and profound that it turns her into a lesbian (so that’s how it works). The Adventurers’ place of honor among the worst films of all time was challenged five years later by the screen adaptation of Jackie Susann’s Once Is Not Enough, directed by Guy Green from a screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, who in happier days collaborated on Casablanca. The main characters, fading film producer Mike Wayne (Kirk Douglas) and his love-starved daughter January (Deborah Raffin), may well be based on actual people, but are not as barefaced as the film’s fictional stand-ins for Helen Gurley Brown, Norman Mailer and Mike Todd, among others. Here the Barbara Hutton facsimile is Dierdre Milford Granger (Alexis Smith), “fifth wealthiest woman in the world,” who takes upon herself a fourth husband in the person of Mike Wayne. The marriage is purely a business

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arrangement to save Mike from bankruptcy and allow Dierdre to carry on her devil-may-care lifestyle without hindrance. In the original novel, Jackie Susann makes a limp gesture towards differentiating Dierdre Granger from Barbara Hutton with a throwaway line stating that Mike had been thinking of wedding Hutton but abandoned the plan because she was already married. In the film, the Hutton similitude is circled in red magic marker by having Deirdre carry on a lengthy gay relationship with reclusive foreign actress Karla (Melina Mercouri), a ham-handed reference to the reported romance between Barbara Hutton and Swedish superstar Greta Garbo. One hopes that the Hutton-Garbo liaison was more affectionate than the faltering exchange of kisses between Dierdre and Karla in the film version of Once Is Not Enough.

INSULL, SAMUEL The film: I Loved a Woman (First National, 1933).

A protégé of Thomas Edison, London-born Samuel Insull was Edison’s personal secretary when he emigrated to America at age 21 in 1881. Having proven his worth by drawing up a plan during his first day on the job to save his boss millions of dollars, Insull was encouraged by Edison to create his own electric power firm. In his new headquarters of Schenectady New York, Insull was among those who organized General Electric, becoming vice-president of the firm in 1889. Three years later he moved to Chicago, where with funding from department-store magnate Marshall Field he reorganized that city’s branch of the Edison corporation in such a way that electric power was no longer a luxury limited to the wealthy but an affordable utility that virtually everyone in Chicago could use at minimum cost. By 1907 Insull not only controlled the metropolis’ entire electrical supply but also People’s Gas Company and the Chicago transit system. When the local banks refused to deal with Chicago Edison, Insull and his partners formed Halsey Stuart & Company to issue stock and make investments. Stockholders were able to buy into his business at anywhere from $30 to $100 a share, bargain rates compared with

other major concerns. By the 1920s Insull’s utilities were serving 4 million customers in 32 states—a $3 billion business, with Insull’s own share of the pie amounting to $100 million. In 1926 he seized permanent control of his operation by organizing Insull Utility Investments and buying up most of the securities; and in September 1929 he established yet another investment firm, Corporation Securities, mailing out circulars to potential investors. One month later the stock market crashed, and within a few years the public perception of Insull as a generous benefactor devolved into a negative image as greedy monopolist. With his low-price stocks and bonds rendered worthless, he was charged with mail fraud for “enticing” investors into losing their savings. Insull and his wife, Gladys, took refuge in Athens to avoid extradition, but in 1933 he was arrested in Istanbul and brought back to the States to stand trial. Though acquitted of all charges the Insulls decided to remain in Europe, where contrary to popular belief they did not live in poverty but were able to maintain their standard of living with their own savings. Samuel Insull died in Paris in 1938. If you’ve been reading and not merely skimming the previous paragraph, you will have noticed multiple references to electricity and utilities. And yet, the film which many observers back in 1933 (notably the fan publication New Movie Magazine) claimed was based on Samuel Insull, the Edward G. Robinson vehicle I Loved a Woman, was the story of a prosperous Chicago meat packer named James Mansfield Hayden. About the only connection Insull would seem to have with this character is that he lived in Chicago and probably ate meat for supper. Some have suggested that I Loved a Woman was actually the story of J. Ogden Armour, son of meat magnate Philip Armour (see separate entry), yet the plotline doesn’t bear much relation to his story either—especially the portions in which James Hayden is charged with shoddy business practices for selling tainted meat to the troops fighting the Spanish-American war, and later has a homicide charge slapped on him for similar misdeeds during World War I. While J. Ogden Armour was indeed sued by the government for

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Samuel Insull.

violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the suit never broached the subject of poisoned meat— nor did Armour (who died in 1927) exile himself in Europe, as both Samuel Insull and the fictional James Hayden are forced to do. I Loved a Woman was adapted from Red Meat, a story by essayist and New York Post feature writer David Karsner which may never have appeared in print (I can find no evidence of its publication) but was optioned by Warner Bros.– First National. It was the logical followup to another David Karsner property, 1932’s Silver Dollar, which also starred Edward G. Robinson. As cited in the separate entry on H.A.W. Tabor, the original published version of Silver Dollar was a sensationalized biography of “Bonanza King” Tabor which drew strong complaints from surviving family members. When WB–First National filmed the property, all names were changed to avoid any further discomfort and threatened lawsuits. Charles Kenyon and Scott Sutherland’s screen treatment of Red Meat took no chances, altering not only the character names but also the profession of the protagonist. Samuel Insull’s post–1929 legal travails arising from his monopolistic and barely ethical business practices were rewritten so that his crimes

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and misdemeanors are not in any way related to the marketing of electricity or issuing worthless stock. The film took into consideration that Samuel Insull was still alive and still a telephone call away from his attorneys, hence the dexterous deflections and diversions in the script. Which brings us to the Citizen Kane connection. As noted in the separate entry for William Randolph Hearst, I Loved a Woman has been cited as one of the many inspirations for the finished Kane script by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles. True, there are certain structural similarities between the two films: Like Charles Foster Kane, the young James Mansfield is a wealthy dilettante with no interest in business; just as Kane’s frosty first wife is the niece of the President, Hayden enters into a loveless but prestigious marriage with the daughter (Genevieve Tobin) of his meat-packer father’s chief rival (Robert Barrat); bored with marriage, Hayden like Kane falls in love with a young wouldbe singer, in Hayden’s case aspiring opera thrush Laura McDonald (Kay Francis); and so forth. Beyond all that, I Loved a Woman and Citizen Kane share a specific common link with the Samuel Insull saga. Both Charles Foster Kane and James Mansfield Hayden build expensive Chicago opera houses for the same basic purpose: Kane intends to foist his second wife Susan Alexander on the public as an opera diva, while Hayden is likewise motivated to make a star soprano of his mistress Laura McDonald. According to legend, Samuel Insull bankrolled Chicago’s Civic Opera House, which opened one week after the October 30, 1929, Wall Street crash, to get even with the New York critics who panned his wife Gladys when in 1925 the former actress emerged from retirement to star in a charity production of The School for Scandal. The story goes that Insull vowed to “show” those Manhattan wiseguys by allowing his wife to sing her heart away in her very own opera palace, thus the creation of the Civic. As a final volley against Gladys’ critics, Insull is supposed to have ordered the building to be constructed in the shape of a huge chair which faced towards the West as if turning its back on New York’s Metropolitan Opera, which allegedly refused to engage his wife’s services.

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The separate entry for W.R. Hearst details Herman J. Mankiewicz’s vicious attack on Gladys Insull’s 1925 return to the stage, the inspiration for the scene in Citizen Kane wherein drunken theater critic Jed Leland’s scathing review of Susan Alexander’s opening night is rewritten— still as a bad notice—by Kane himself. In I Loved a Woman, Hayden doesn’t build his opera house out of spite, since Laura McDonald hasn’t yet made her Chicago debut, nor has she suffered any negative criticism. Instead, his costly gesture of affection represents the final phase of a lengthy campaign to “mold” Laura into a beautiful work of art, a goal he’d aspired to as a painter-sculptor in his youth but was thwarted when forced to take over his dad’s business. Hayden has paid for Laura’s training in Europe and purchased her a magnificent stage ward robe: Now he desires to place his “jewel” in its proper setting, a cathedral-like opera house. For decades, otherwise knowledgeable film historians have accepted the tale of Samuel Insull building the Civic as a shrine to his wife’s operatic talents. It’s a charming story, but it’s simply not true. Insull’s actual motivation was to replace Chicago’s crumbling, unwieldly and exclusionary Auditorium Building, which had previously housed the city’s opera troupe, with a magnificent new structure emphasizing safety, good sightlines, comfortable seating, great acoustics, and affordable ticket prices—and incidentally, the only reason the front of the building faced Westward was to provide a convenient street entrance for the patrons. Next time you’re in Chicago, pay a visit to the still resplendent 45story Civic Opera Building at 20 North Wacker Drive. We promise that you will be spared the spectacle offered in I Loved a Woman of Kay Francis singing “Home on the Range” in a dubbed voice.

JOHNSON, JACK The film: The Great White Hope (Lawrence Turman Films/20th Century–Fox, 1970)

He was known as “The Galveston Giant” in honor of his place of birth on March 31, 1878. He was called “Li’l Artha” because of his full name John Arthur Johnson and, with reverse

logic, because at 6'1" and 200 pounds he was far from little. He was nicknamed “The Great Grizzly” because of his status as one of the greatest defensive fighters of all time. And because he was a proud and defiant black man in a whitedominated racist society, he was called a lot of other things I’d rather not repeat here. “Jack” Johnson rode the rails from Texas to New York City as an adolescent, allegedly to meet his idol Steve Brodie, the man who dived off the Brooklyn Bridge in 1886. His size, weight, swiftness and cleverness enabled Jack to become a champion-class heavyweight boxer, winning his first bout in 1899. Though he would hold the Colored Heavyweight title 17 times, for many years Johnson was denied a crack at the World Heavyweight title because black boxers were barred from facing white boxers in that contest (though they could face off in lesser bouts). He had to go to Australia to compete for the title, confronting Canadian Tommy Burns in Sydney on December 26, 1908. Despite anti-black sentiments in both the U.S. and Down Under, Johnson was heavily favored to win, and after 14 rounds he defeated Burns with a TKO. Almost immediately the Caucasian fans of boxing demanded that a “white man’s hope”—or “white hope” in abbreviated form—would defend the noble cause of racial supremacy and bring Johnson to his knees. It wasn’t Jack’s ring prowess that infuriated whites as much as his breezy arrogance, his broad gold-capped grin, his expensive clothes and fast cars, his refusal to behave subserviently to white men and especially his fondness for pretty young white women. Former heavyweight champ James J. Jeffries, who in his prime had refused to fight Johnson, was coaxed out of retirement to put Jack “in his place.” But in Reno, Nevada, on July 4, 1910, it was Johnson who triumphed over Jeffries in the 15th round. A film of that match was produced under the aegis of Vitagraph’s J. Stuart Blackton, with photographers from four different studios (including D.W. Griffith’s longtime cameraman Billy Bitzer) covering every aspect of the action. As film historian Terry Ramsaye reported, the moment Johnson knocked out Jeffries “he terminated the prizefight picture for the United

Johnson States.” Riots broke out in virtually every city (both North and South) where the film was shown; 20 people were killed and many more injured. Legislation was passed to ban all boxing films throughout the country, and in 1912 it became illegal to transport any motion picture of a fight across state borders. Noted David Robinson in his history of pre–1920 American films, this was a “curious parallel” to the method by which Johnson’s enemies hoped to “tame” the boxer when they arrested him for violating the Mann Act in 1912 while he was travelling with his white wife, Lucille Cameron. He jumped bail and fled the country, hopscotching all over Europe and South America before surrendering in California in 1920 to serve an 18-month sentence. Prior to this humiliation came an even greater one in Havana, Cuba, on April 15, 1915, when before an enormous outdoor crowd Johnson traded blows with white boxer Jess Willard. In the 26th round Johnson went down, once more making the world safe for Aryan superiority. Jack would later spread rumors that he’d either been paid to take a dive, or had been promised that the Mann Act charges would be dropped if he lost. Jess Willard sarcastically replied that if this were true he wished Jack had thrown the fight earlier: “It was hot as hell out there.” Before and after retiring from the ring in 1928, Jack Johnson tackled a number of other business endeavors, including several vaudeville tours and a Harlem nightspot which was taken over by gangster Owney Madden and renamed the Cotton Club. 21 years after Johnson’s death in a 1946 automobile accident, the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., assembled its most elaborate theatrical production to date: Howard Sackler’s The Great White Hope, which lasted three hours, required 23 scene changes and boasted a cast of 250. Sackler’s Brechtian pageant was inspired by the story of Jack Johnson, though the author rejected the idea that it was purely a screed against institutionalized racism, insisting that he used the titular quest for a “white hope” to defeat an arrogant black heavyweight champ as “a metaphor of the struggle between man and the outside world.”

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A far from flattering caricature of Jack Johnson, as it appeared in the Spokane (Washington) Spokesman-Review July 30, 1910.

Nor was it intended to be biographical, though it covered the same years that Johnson flourished and ended with his alleged dive in 1915. “My play is not supposed to be historically accurate,” Sackler is quoted as saying by Broadway historian David Sheward. “That’s one reason I changed the fighter’s name to Jack Jefferson. I used story elements of Jack Johnson’s career and created new characters, especially the girl.” Whereas Jack Johnson was married to three white women, only one appears in the play, the fictional Eleanor Bachman. There is no explanation as to how the prim, mousy Eleanor fell in love with the flamboyant Jack Jefferson, though there’s little doubt that she comes to regret her decision on emotional rather than racial grounds. Like Jack Johnson’s first wife, Etta Duryea, Eleanor ends up committing suicide. Though the play seems to have been emblazoned on billboards rather than typed on

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paper—many of the key lines are printed in capital letters in the original text—this brobdingnagian approach is ideally suited to the characterization of Jack Jefferson as conceived by Sackler and played by James Earl Jones, star of both the Arena production and the 556-performance Broadway run of The Great White Hope. Though the circumstances of the plot compel the audience to “pull” for Jefferson every inch of the way, at no time does he ever aspire to be admirable or even likable. He luxuriates in notoriety and controversy, deliberating baiting white sensibilities with such lines as “My Mammy told me Mr. Lincoln done that—ain’t that why you shot him?” (italics not mine). And in concert with the real Jack Johnson, Jefferson refuses to cast himself in the role of spokesman-crusader for his race: He is thoroughly selfish and amoral, character flaws that ultimately destroy him and everyone he cares about. James Earl Jones repeated his stage role in director Martin Ritt’s costly 1970 screen version of The Great White Hope, with Jane Alexander (in her film debut) likewise recreating her role as Eleanor Bachman. While the Broadway version had the pace and flow of a motion picture, the film looks like a typical photographed stage play, with theatrical entrances and exits, long character monologues while other characters stand still, and actor groupings that seem to be blocked in advance. The effectiveness of James Earl Jones’ virtuoso performance as Jack Jefferson is diminished by Ritt’s too- tight closeups, with Jones occasionally coming off like a provincial barnstormer in the fourth act of Othello. And while the “machinery” of Howard Sackler’s theatrical setpieces was seldom obvious on stage, in the film version everything smacks of contrivance, especially the notion that the entire white population of America is part of a vast conspiracy to persecute one single solitary black man. But as an entertaining primer for anyone interested in pursuing the true story of Jack Johnson, The Great White Hope serves its purpose well.

J OHNSTON, BRUCE, S R .—AND BRUCE JOHNSTON, J R ., DAVID J OHNSTON, JAMES JOHNSTON, NORMAN JOHNSTON The film: At Close Range (Hemdale Film/Orion, 1986)

The family that preys together, slays together. And that’s the last wisecrack you’ll find in this macabre account of the Johnston Brothers Gang of Chester County, Pennsylvania. Leader of the pack was Bruce Johnston, Sr. (1939–2002), who with brothers David and Norman cut quite a criminal swath through New England between 1971 and 1979. Though safecracking was their specialty, the Johnston brothers would steal just about anything that wasn’t nailed down, from antiques to prescription drugs. Keeping track of possible pursuers with police scanners, the gang members communicated with each other via walkie-talkie to make sure things were running on schedule. Too wrapped up in his work to look after his sons Bruce Jr., and James (born of separate mothers), Bruce Sr., had abandoned them to the care of a grandmother and great-aunt. When the boys tried to reconnect with their dad, they quickly realized that he regarded them not as his own flesh and blood but as potential accomplices. The elder Johnston assigned Bruce Jr., to organize a group of young criminal wannabes into what he called “The Kiddie Gang.” Their function was to steal tractors and other farm equipment that Bruce Sr., David and Norman had located for them. It was then up to the senior Johnstons to sell the booty and silence potential witnesses by whatever means necessary. While serving time for a minor theft in 1978, Bruce Jr., received word that his 15-yearold girlfriend Robin Miller had been raped by his own father. The boy promptly agreed to cooperate with the authorities in their efforts to round up the gang, but unfortunately Bruce Sr., got wind of this plan. At their brother’s behest, David and Norman Johnston arranged to have Bruce Jr., bumped off. On August 16, 1978, Bruce Jr., his half-brother James, his girl Robin and “Kiddie Gang” member Wayne Sampson were gunned down in Oxford, Pennsylvania; only Bruce Jr., survived his wounds. Nothing on earth could stop the boy from testifying now,

Joplin and as a result Bruce Sr., David and Norman each received multiple life sentences. New York–based film producer Elliott Lewitt was in Philadelphia on business when he first heard the saga of the Johnston gang. While he and his writing partner Nicholas Kazan regarded the tale as ideal movie material, the big studios weren’t so easily persuaded, rejecting it as “too dark and depressing.” Even when Jack Nicholson and Bob Rafaelson were floated as a possible star-director combination, it was no go. Finally in 1985, actor Sean Penn took an interest in the project, arranging for the financing and distribution of the film that now bore the title At Close Range and persuading his then-wife Madonna to record a theme song, “Live to Tell.” Tennessee was selected as the shooting location; one of the production staff noted that the terrain resembled “the Ur version of Pennsylvania.” The director chosen was James Foley, who first learned of the project while a film school student and had gotten to know Sean Penn in the interim. Elliot Lewitt has described At Close Range as “a Greek tragedy about the struggle over allegiances—allegiances between a father and son, a boy and a girl. I think you have to think about this movie in nonconventional ways. It’s a primal crime story, and a primal family story.” With many of the principal players still alive at the time, pseudonyms were mandatory. Sean Penn and real-life brother Christopher were cast as Brad Whitewood, Jr., and his half- brother Tommy, whose only contact with their father Brad Sr. (played in an even more chilling manner than usual by Christopher Walken) is whenever he shows up at their mother’s house to drop off a pile of money. Yearning to win their father’s affection, Brad Jr., and Tommy seek out Brad Sr., whose idea of a cordial greeting is to point a gun at their heads. Though not a natural-born criminal, Brad Jr., is inexorably drawn into his father’s illegal activities, presiding over a junior-level version of Dad’s gang with Tommy and several young friends. What starts as a lark soon turns violent and bloody, and before long Brad Sr., senses that his son wants out of the gang—and might also be inclined to snitch to the cops. As a warning, Brad Sr., rapes Brad Jr.’s girlfriend

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Terry (Mary Stuart Masterson), then in a paranoid frenzy kills Tommy and orders a hit on his remaining son. The boy survives the bullets fired by his uncles Dicky (R.D. Call) and Patch (Tracey Walter), but Terry is killed. Soon afterward Brad Jr., has the opportunity to shoot down his father—an option denied Bruce Johnston, Jr.— but decides that slow death in a prison cell would be a more suitable punishment. A few more deviations from the facts occur in the climactic scenes: Kiefer Sutherland’s character Tim, based on the late Wayne Sampson, remains alive long enough to witness Brad Jr.’s testimony against his father; and whereas Bruce Johnston, Jr., never again laid eyes on Bruce Sr., after the trial, in the film father and son have a rancorous face-to-face confrontation just before the closing credits. Described by one observer as “a mustachioed carbon copy of his father,” Bruce Johnston, Jr., was evidently more at ease with himself as a criminal than his screen counterpart in At Close Range, subsequently serving three prison terms for theft. Bruce Mowday, author of Jailing the Johnston Gang: Bringing Serial Murderers to Justice, had this to say in a 2013 interview with the Southern Chester County News: “Johnston Jr. was both a participant and victim of the gang. After the convictions of his father and uncles on multiple murder charges Johnston Jr. went back to his life of crime. Sadly, I guess it was to be expected, as he was associated with a culture of crime during his early years. The story of the Johnston family doesn’t seem to end.”

JOPLIN, JANIS The film: The Rose (20th Century–Fox, 1979)

This one’s easy. There was never any doubt that The Rose was inspired by the short and tumultuous life of self-destructive, gloriously uninhibited rock-and-blues singer Janis Joplin. In fact the film was originally conceived as a straightforward Joplin biopic titled The Pearl, which happened to be Janis’ nickname and also the title of her posthumously released final album. But the singer’s family refused to sign over the rights to Janis’ life story, so screenwriters Bill Kerby, Bo Goldman and (uncredited) Michael Cimino were obliged to do a makeover,

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up to and including changing the protagonist’s name to Mary Rose Foster. In a November 1979 UPI interview, director Mark Rydell seemed to express relief that The Rose was not strictly biographical. “The picture was conditioned and inspired by Joplin’s life but it had to be fictionalized or else I’d have been stuck with a biography and all the restrictions that would have necessitated. Rose reflects the background of other top rock stars and many superstars. She deals with the same sort of conflicts that faced Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Jimmy Dean, Montgomery Clift and Jimi Hendrix. They were driven, obsessed to fill the bottomless pit of ego gratification…. All these people are doomed, consumed by a desire for people to know they are present and appreciated in the world. It’s almost suicidal.” Some sources indicate that it was the film’s star Bette Midler (in her motion picture debut) who insisted that The Rose be fictionalized because it was “too soon” after Joplin’s 1970 death from a heroin overdose at age 27. Reportedly, it was also Midler who oversaw the changes and deletions in the true story. Among the factual elements not deleted was Janis Joplin’s constant onstage imbibing of Southern Comfort; at one point in her career, Janis suggested that the manufacturers of the popular whiskey pay her a commission for advertising their product. Likewise, the scene in which Rose returns to her home town to brag about her success and settle old scores was based on Janis’ well-documented return to Port Arthur, Texas, for her high school reunion. And sadly, the film’s Rose shares with Janis Joplin a deadly heroin addiction, though unlike her screen counterpart Janis apparently never seriously tried to kick the habit—despite a notorious anti- drug radio PSA which she recorded near the end of her life. Finally, The Rose’s musical soundtrack was produced by Paul A. Rothchild, who had worked with Joplin in the climactic months of her career and thus assured a veneer of verisimilitude despite the film’s morass of rock-movie cliches. Other highlights of The Rose were pure fabrication, notably Rose’s spectacular (and spectacularly photographed) onstage collapse and

death at the height of her homecoming concert. In reality, Janis Joplin died at Hollywood’s Landmark Motor Hotel, three days after her final recording session and nearly two months after her last live performance. But if the film had stuck to the facts, Bette Midler would never have been afforded the opportunity for the bravura death scene that cemented her film stardom and earned her a Golden Globe “best actress” award, as well as an Oscar nomination. The Rose was hardly the last cinematic word on Janis Joplin. As reported by Priya Elan in the Manchester Guardian of August 6, 2010, a proposed warts-and-all film biography, Janis Joplin: Get It While You Can, had burst loose from Development Hell and was slated for a 2012 production launch. We’re still waiting.

JORDAN [SUTTON], CRYSTAL LEE The film: Norma Rae (20th Century–Fox, 1979)

Crystal Lee Jordan was born into a family of North Carolina textile workers in 1940. When she herself went to work for the J.P. Stevens Textile plant in Roanoke Rapids at age 16, she assumed she’d be there until she dropped, resigning herself to long hours, short pay, and coming home each night as bone-weary as her parents. “All their life, all the children ever hear [in Roanoke Rapids] is J.P.,” Crystal Lee told her biographer Hank Leifermann. “The parents come home and say, ‘Lord a mercy, they worked me down today.’” By age 33, Crystal Lee and her second husband, Larry “Cookie” Jordan, who worked at a nearby paper mill, were raising four children, with Crystal Lee still at J.P. Stevens laboring away on second shift in deplorably unsafe working conditions for the company’s top hourly wage of $2.65. Conversely, husband Cookie worked at a union shop for union wages, with benefits. “He had four weeks paid vacation and my parents had one week paid vacation after 30 years,” recalled Crystal. “So I thought if the union had done that much for him, I wanted to have the same thing.” But J.P. Stevens had vehemently and violently resisted unionization for decades— even systematically buying up smaller textile plants for the express purpose of de-unionizing them—so Crystal Lee and her co worker Liz

Jordan Johnson told no one when they attended a union organization meeting in an African American church in April 1973. Head organizer Eli Zivkovich was not surprised that Crystal and Liz were the only Caucasian women in attendance; he’d already complained to his supervisors that white interest in unions was nil in North Carolina. He encouraged Crystal to spread the word to other white coworkers, igniting her commitment to the extent that she demanded to wear the biggest union button Zivkovich had on him. That button stirred up intense hostility from J.P. Miller management, who thereafter treated Crystal Lee as if she “had leprosy.” Management intensified their campaign against organized labor, posting a letter to employees discouraging them from joining the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers (ACTWU) with the McCarthy-like argument that the union was a “front” for a black-power concern that intended to take over the town. Crystal Lee tried to smuggle the letter to the National Labor Relations Board, and when this failed she and several other female workers memorized the letter verbatim. On the Morning of May 30, 1973, Crystal Lee was fired and escorted out of the plant by the police. On the pretext of returning to her work post to retrieve her purse, she defiantly mounted a table and held high a piece of cardboard emblazoned with the word “UNION.” In solidarity, all the other workers shut down their machines. Ultimately Crystal Lee emerged victorious. In 1974 the ACTWU won the right to represent 3000 workers at the various Stevens plants in North Carolina, and three years later Crystal was reinstated at her job with $13,346 in back wages—whereupon she returned to the plant for two days before quitting, just to prove a point. On a personal level, her act of workplace courage emboldened Crystal to reveal her checkered sexual history, including one illegitimate child, to her husband Cookie. Their already crumbling marriage ended in divorce, and in 1977 she entered into a third and more lasting marriage with Lewis Sutton. Hank Leifermann’s 1975 biography Crystal Lee: A Woman of Inheritance was the primary source for director Martin Ritt and screenwriters

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Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr.’s 1979 film Norma Rae. In the first of her two Oscar-winning performances, Sally Field stars as Norma Rae, the film’s slightly glamorized and somewhat slimmer spin on Crystal Lee Sutton. For research purposes, Field and costar Beau Bridges (as husband Sonny) briefly took on jobs at actual textile plants before going on location at a genuine factory in Alabama. The film accurately conveys the drudgery and dismal working conditions suffered by the J.P. Stevens employees, and of course recreates the pivotal moment in which the heroine triggers a sympathetic shutdown by standing on a table with her crude but persuasive “UNION” sign held aloft. Otherwise, the usual liberties were taken. As played by Ron Leibman, charismatic union organizer Reuben Warshowsky is not a nondescript-looking Serbian from Pennsylvania like the real Eli Zivkovich but instead a dashingly handsome New York Jew like … well, like Ron Leibman; Norma Rae swears a blue streak, which Crystal Lee never did; and the heroine is much more a feminist than Crystal Lee, whose driving passion in life was unionization. At the time of Norma Rae’s national release, Crystal Lee Sutton told People magazine that she wasn’t altogether pleased with the film. For one thing, the screenplay’s emphasis on Norma Rae’s randy sex life had inflicted pain on Crystal Lee’s 14-year-old daughter Elizabeth, who phoned her mother in tears after seeing the movie: “How can me and Daddy live in this town now? What will everybody say?” It took a few years before the family came to grips with this aspect of the film, enough so that Crystal Lee could joke about the highly fanciful scene in which Norma Rae and Reuben Washowsky go skinny-dipping: “Isn’t it a shame we didn’t have that much fun?” Crystal Lee’s biggest complaint about the film was its depiction of Norma Rae as a solo act. “The thing is, I wanted it to be a movie that was right—about the union, about what we went through. In the movie they make like it’s only me that’s important, and there were so many others.” Director Martin Ritt gracelessly responded to this criticism by huffing “She’s obviously no longer the free spirit in my movie. She’s

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turned into a middle- class bourgeois woman who doesn’t want anyone to know about her life.” While it is true that in later years she scaled down the activism that had made her a muchsought-after speaker on the lecture circuit and a prominent organizer on behalf of the Workers Union and Service Employees International, Crystal Lee Sutton continued battling against the System all her life. At the time of her death from cancer in 2009, she had been waging a fierce two-year battle with the major insurance company that been dragging its heels about paying for her medical treatment.

JUETTNER , E MERICH The film: Mister 880 (20th Century–Fox, 1950)

We know that Mister 880 is a comedy within its first five minutes as we see a representative of the U.S. Treasury Department scowling over the fact that the title character (named for his file number in Washington), an unknown and very elusive counterfeiter, has been flooding New York City with phony dollar bills full of obvious flaws and imbecilic misspellings like “Wahsington.” How on earth has Mister 880 been able to avoid capture for so long—and worse, how can the general public be so easily fooled by his incompetent handiwork? Here’s a better question: How can this be the true story that 20th Century–Fox claims it is? Answer: Because it can. Check out “The Case of the Kindly Counterfeiter” in the September 11, 1950, edition of Life magazine, or the 1949 series of New Yorker articles by St. Clair McKelway which tell the story in depth. For 10 full years no cashier or merchant ever refused any of the bogus bills circulated by “Old 880” in New York’s upper West Side. He was finally caught in 1948, long after he’d stopped printing his funny money, and his capture was purely by chance. Emerich Juettner was an Austrian immigrant who worked as a building superintendent until his retirement in 1937. The widowed Juettner lived alone with his mongrel terrier, occasionally picking up work as a junkman and spending his free time tinkering with gadgets of his own invention. His criminal career didn’t begin until

he was 63, when he decided to use the engraving skills he’d picked up in his youth to create just enough counterfeit money to purchase the necessities of life. His tools were a small handmade press, a camera, a few zinc plates, and a small acid basin. The first of his phony bucks showed up at a cigar store near the corner of Broadway and 102nd Street. Not only was the spelling off and the artwork shoddy, but it wasn’t even printed on real currency stock; Juettner had used inexpensive bond paper. The U.S. Secret Service had never seen anything like it for the simple reason that $1 bills weren’t considered worth counterfeiting. What started as a minor irritation grew into a major headache as more and more of Juettner’s flawed facsimiles began popping up. The old man had established a pattern of passing his bills only during busy periods when the recipients wouldn’t have time to notice. From an initial collection of 600 bills in 1939, the Secret Service had accumulated more than 5000 of Juettner’s duplicates by 1947. Warning fliers were distributed throughout Manhattan, thousands of interviews were conducted, innumerable stakeouts were set up, but Mister 880 continued to slip through Uncle Sam’s fingers. It wasn’t until January 13, 1948, that Juettner was exposed, a month or so after his apartment had caught fire. The NYFD saved as much junk as they could from the blaze and piled it in an alley where it was promptly buried in a blizzard. Came the thaw, and the revelation that 30 oddlooking dollar bills had been included in Juettner’s junkpile. The Feds moved in and collared “Old 880,” who calmly admitted his guilt with the explanation that he’d only printed enough money to live on. Given his age and lack of a previous record, Juettner received the charitably light sentence of a year and a day in jail, with eligibility for parole after four months, and a cash fine of—you guessed it—one dollar. Walter Huston had been slated to star as Mister 880’s Emerich Juettner “counterfeit” Skipper Miller, but his death in April 1950 obliged the studio to replace him with 73-year-old Edmund Gwenn, a hot property ever since his Oscarwinning performance in Miracle on 34th Street.

Kahn Gwenn’s distinctive London accent precluded his being cast as a mittel–European, hence the Anglicized character name (Coincidentally Juettner had occasionally used “Mueller” as an alias). For box-office insurance Burt Lancaster is topbilled as Steve Buchanan, the Secret Service agent who brings Old 880 to justice, while Dorothy McGuire appears as Ann Winslow, a pretty UN interpreter who falls under suspicion when she inadvertently passes one of “The Skipper’s” bills, and who serves as love interest in a story that originally didn’t have one. Because 20th Century–Fox needed permission from the Secretary of the Treasury to tell its tale (and to show closeups of genuine U.S. currency), the capture of Skipper Miller is the result of Steve Buchanan’s diligent detective work rather than a fortuitous fire. And as written by Robert Riskin and directed by Edmund Goulding, the climactic court trial of The Skipper is played for more gentle whimsy than can be found in the actual transcripts, though the outcome—Miller’s very light sentence—remains intact. Mister 880 was remade in 1956 as “The Moneymaker,” an episode of TV’s 20th Century–Fox Hour anthology, taking a few more liberties with the facts in the film—including the transformation of “Old 880” into a sweet elderly lady played by Spring Byington.

KAHN, HERMAN American industrial theorist and military strategist, a founder of the Hudson Institute. His concise analyses of the immediate aftermath and long-term consequences of a full-scale nuclear war were instrumental in the development of U.S. Cold War nuclear strategy. Kahn was caricatured in two diametrically opposite “doomsday thrillers” released in 1964, as the grim Professor Groeteschle (Walter Matthau) in Sidney Lumet’s Fail-Safe, and as the insanely hilarious title character in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.

KAHN, OTTO The film: Animal Crackers (Paramount, 1930)

Fans of the Marx Brothers tend to regard German-born Otto Hermann Kahn as merely a target for a series of derisive gags in the Marxes’

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Broadway musical and 1930 film Animal Crackers. This is unfair to a man who was one of the most generous and unselfish philanthropists in American history—though Kahn himself apparently didn’t regard it as an insult during his lifetime. Like many German Jews of the mid–19th century, Kahn’s father determined early on the profession that each of his eight children would pursue. Though Otto (born in 1867) would rather have been a musician, Papa Kahn decreed that the boy would become a banker. A banker he became, one so skilled in the trade that by the time he was in his 20s he was appointed second in command at the London branch of Deutsches Bank. Moving to the United States in 1896, Kahn distinguished himself in financial circles as the man who almost single-handedly reorganized the Union Pacific Railroad, putting the tottering company back on its feet. He performed the same magic for several other American railroads and also used his talent for wise investments and corporate diplomacy as head of the influential banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Company. A millionaire many times over, he was an enthusiastic patron of the arts from the early 1910s until his death in 1934, supporting and encouraging the careers of such notables as Arturo Toscanini and George Gershwin and pouring much-needed funds into the Provincetown Players, the Theater Guild, the Metropolitan Opera and Hollywood. He was also a renowned art collector and connoisseur, serving as patron and father-confessor to many a fledgling painter and sculptor. One of the few complaints ever levelled against Otto Kahn was that for social reasons he renounced his Judaism and joined the Episcopalian Church, which some may regard as deplorable today but was not unusual in an era where anti–Semitism was the rule rather than the exception. Groucho Marx never tired of the anecdote involving Kahn and Marshall P. Wilder, a vaudeville artist known as “the hunchback dwarf.” As the two men strolled past a New York synagogue, Kahn declared expansively “You know, I used to be a Jew.” To which Wilder replied, “Yes, I know, and I used to be a hunchback.”

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Scripted by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, the Marx Bros.’ 1928 Broadway hit Animal Crackers had a plot that revolved around a stolen painting. Among the supporting characters was wealthy art patron Roscoe W. Chandler, played by dialect comedian Louis Sorin. Possessed of continental manners and impeccable (if slightly accented) English, Chandler harbors an embarrassing secret: He was born a European Jew, and in fact had been Rabbi Cantor of Prague. While seedy explorer Captain Spaulding (Groucho Marx) tries to hit up Chandler for a huge loan to finance an African expedition, the disreputable Ravelli (Chico Marx) and The Professor (Harpo Marx), aware of Chandler’s hidden past, noisily threaten to expose him unless he pays them hush money (the check he gives them bounces—literally). Later in the play Chandler’s previous life is exposed in a newspaper, whereupon he lapses into the “Oy Gevalte” Yiddish of the standard stage Jew. The 1930 movie adaptation of Animal Crackers is less blunt but no less rough on poor Mr. Chandler, whom Ravelli and The Professor recognize as “Abie Kabbible,” a fish peddler from the Old Country. Though Louis Sorin repeats his stage role in the

Otto Kahn.

film, he no longer falls back on a Yiddish accent in moments of stress. In fact, he gives back as good as he gets: When the Italian-accented Ravelli asks him “How did you get to be Roscoe W. Chandler?,” Chandler shoots back “Say, how did you get to be an Italian?” Beaten at his own game, Ravelli can only mutter “Never mind that, whose confession is this?” If Otto H. Kahn was offended at being caricatured in Animal Crackers, he certainly didn’t let on. In 1930 Kahn wrote the show’s coauthor George S. Kaufman a gushing letter of praise for the playwright’s Broadway comedy Once in a Lifetime: “You must be weary of being assailed with expressions of admiration and congratulations…. But having seen and enjoyed hugely the play last Friday, I cannot refrain from letting my shouts of joy come to your ears.” What a mensch.

KAWAKITA , TOMOYA The film: The Clay Pigeon (RKO-Radio, 1949)

The official excuse for the confinement of California’s Nisei (American-born Japanese) population in various internment camps during World War II was that the government wanted to protect the United States from possible acts of sabotage and insurrection. Even if it had not been ultimately established that no Nisei living in America was ever involved in enemy activity, this humiliating incarceration would remain a blot on the escutcheon of the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. However, a handful of Japanese-Americans did relocate to the country of their ancestors before the war, and some did indeed participate in the Japanese war effort. One such was Tomoya “Tom” Kawakita, born in California to Japanese parents in 1921. At age 18 he left home for Japan, and during the war landed a job as English interpreter with the Oeyama Nickel Mining Company, which was then using some 400 American POWs as slave labor. A fanatical son of the Rising Sun, Kawakita joined in when these POWs were tortured, earning himself the nickname “efficiency expert” for his precise methods of inflicting pain. Not content with this, Kawakita taunted his victims in perfect English with such assurances as “We

Keaton will kill all you prisoners right here anyway, whether you win the war or not.” Managing to avoid capture when Japan surrendered to the Allies, Kawakita obtained an American passport and in 1946 returned to California. While taking graduate courses at USC, Kawakita happened to be standing in front of a Los Angeles store when he was recognized by former POW William L. Bruce. On June 5, 1947, Kawakita was arrested by the FBI; charged with treason, he was sentenced to death in 1948. After several appeals, President Eisenhower commuted Kawakita’s sentence to life imprisonment on the last day of his administration. President Kennedy changed that ruling to time served and ordered Kawakita to be deported to Japan, where he died a “stateless citizen” sometime in the 1990s. This remarkable story was the basis for the otherwise unremarkable 1949 B-movie melodrama The Clay Pigeon, an early directorial credit for Richard Fleischer. Bill Williams plays Seaman First Class Jim Fletcher, who awakens from a two-year coma in a Naval hospital only to discover that he has been accused of treason for betraying his comrades in a Japanese POW camp. Escaping from the hospital, Fletcher spends the rest of the film’s 62 minutes trying to regain his memory and prove his innocence, taking the unwilling Martha Gregory (Barbara Hale), widow of a prisoner who was killed because Jim allegedly ratted him out for stealing rations, along for the ride. During a stopover at a restaurant, Fletcher sees Ken Tokoyama (Richard Loo), whom he recognizes as “The Weasel,” the brutal Japanese guard who mercilessly flogged Jim during his captivity. Carl Foreman’s screenplay takes a noir detour from the Kawakita incident by revealing that Jim’s supposed best friend Ted (Richard Quine) is the real traitor, and is presently Tokoyama’s partner in an illegal business enterprise.

KEATON, BUSTER—AND JOE KEATON, MYRA KEATON The film: April Showers (Warner Bros., 1948)

Born into a family of vaudevillians in 1895, he was christened Joseph Francis Keaton III. After the boy took a fall backstage in his sixth month

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without suffering a single injury, illusionist Harry Houdini commented to Joseph’s parents “That was some buster your baby took”—thus bestowing upon young Keaton his rightful name. The lad’s ability to take falls and smackarounds without damage or complaint came in handy in the popular knockabout comedy act starring Buster and his parents Joe and Myra Keaton. Billed as “the Human Mop,” he was thrown and kicked around the stage by the elder Keatons from age three onward, literally learning his trade through the school of hard knocks. One lesson he figured out for himself was that the audience seldom laughed if he smiled to indicate that no harm was being done, but they roared when he picked himself up off the floor and stared at them with an utterly inscrutable deadpan face. Though the Three Keatons were hounded throughout the country by the Gerry Society, which argued that allowing Buster to perform onstage was tantamount to cruelty against a minor, the team enjoyed a healthy career and widespread fame, with little Buster appearing in full makeup (a carbon copy of his dad’s) on the covers of several trade magazines before reaching the age of 11. As early as 1913, the Keatons were receiving movie offers, but for reasons of his own Joe was insulted by these entreaties and managed to alienate a number of important producers. Joe also had a drinking problem, which as it grew worse made him more violent and unpredictable onstage. Though Buster loved performing, he didn’t love the bruises he was getting from his increasingly abusive father, and at age 21 he struck out on his own. Almost immediately he was swept up into the motion picture industry, first as a member of comedian Fatty Arbuckle’s stock company and then as a solo artist. Throughout the 1920s, Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd comprised the “Big Three” of silent comedy, with Buster turning out such brilliant and inventive feature films as Sherlock Jr., and The General, utilizing all the physical tricks he’d learned onstage and then some. Apparently there were no hard feelings between Buster and his dad Joe, who appeared in a variety of small but significant roles in his son’s starring vehicles. Even after Buster’s career took a nosedive in the early

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1930s due to his own alcoholism and a multitude of personal setbacks, he dutifully supported his entire family by starring in cheap short subjects. He also arranged for the other Keatons to play important roles in such two- reelers as Palooka from Paducah and Way Up Thar. After several feast-or-famine years as a supporting player and Hollywood gag writer, Buster Keaton was on the brink of a major comeback when in 1948 fellow vaudevillian Joe Laurie, Jr., wrote the story for the Warner Bros. musical drama April Showers. Before the film went into release, Laurie informed Buster that he’d based much of the storyline on the Three Keatons, thinking that the veteran comedian would be flattered. April Showers stars Jack Carson and Ann Sothern as Joe and June Tyme, headliners of the turn-of-the-century vaudeville act The Two Tymes. The act is pretty much a washout until Joe and June’s adolescent son Buster (Charles Ellis), aka “Small Tyme,” comes home from military school and begs his parents to let him join them onstage. Wearing the same “tramp” makeup as his old man, Buster fits right in with the roughhouse slapstick of the Tymes’ routines, though unlike the other Buster he does it with a broad and beaming grin. More accurately, “Small Tyme” has the same problems with the Gerry Society as the Keatons did: To circumvent the old law prohibiting children under 16 from performing on the New York stage, the boy disguises himself as a midget, even adopting a “grown-up” voice (dubbed by Mel Blanc). The film contrives to have Buster Tyme emerge as the star attraction of his parent’s nowsuccessful act, whereupon a jealous Joe Tyme takes to the bottle and walks out on his family. Only when June’s new boyfriend Billy Shay (Robert Alda) proves to be even nastier than her absentee husband and tries to bully Buster into teaching him his dad’s old routines does Joe come to his senses for the obligatory happyreunion finale. Though the screenplay uses the bare bones of the Three Keatons saga, April Showers ends up as just another sticky- sweet Hollywood confection (mostly sticky). Joe Laurie, Jr., had miscalculated: Buster Keaton wasn’t flattered. In fact he was as steamed

as he’d been in 1933 when, after Louis B. Mayer fired him from MGM, the studio came up with the musical pastiche Broadway to Hollywood, which revolved around a husband-wife stage team whose fortunes plummet while their arrogant and self-centered son becomes a movie star. Keaton was in no position to sue back then, but in 1948 he was prepared to take Warner Bros. to court for the hundred-and-one distortions in April Showers. He wasn’t doing this as much for himself as for his mother Myra, who was offended at the way she and her late husband Joe were caricatured in the film. The Keatons settled out of court for a pittance, and Warners belatedly paid Buster $3500 for the rights to his life story. Evidently this episode left no gaping emotional wounds on the comedian, who doesn’t mention it at all in his 1960 biography My Wonderful World of Slapstick. Nor does Rudi Blesch have anything to say about April Showers in his authorized biography Keaton, published shortly after Buster’s death in 1966. Three years after Blesch’s Keaton, Dick Van Dyke starred in director Carl Reiner’s film The Comic, the tale of a self-destructive silent movie comedian named Billy Bright. There is more than little of Buster Keaton in Billy, though the character also draws inspiration from Stan Laurel and Harry Langdon, precluding him from further discussion in this entry.

KELLY, REGINA—AND JOHN PASCHALL The film: American Violet (Uncommon Productions/Goldwyn, 2009)

In paramilitary fashion, Texas’ South Central Narcotics Task Force conducted a drug sweep of the town of Hearne on November 24, 2000. With nearly half the population African American and living below the poverty line, Hearne was a convenient target for such sweeps; all the authorities needed was a “snitch.” This time it was a paid informant of questionable reliability who’d been ordered to name 20 names in order to work off his own drug conviction. He enthusiastically pointed out 28 people living in a single housing project, probably not knowing one person from another. Among the “unknowns” was 24-year-old single mother Regina Kelly, then

Kelly working as a waitress and enrolled in night classes at Blinn College. Though she had had a run- in with the law in the previous decade Regina had never dealt in nor with drugs; still, she was advised to plead guilty and make a deal, which she refused to do despite heavy pressure and threats of having her children taken from her. Freed by her mother on $10,000 bail (reduced from $70,000), Regina could consider herself among the lucky ones, in stark contrast with her cellmate Erma Faye Stewart. Once the police informant had been discredited, all open drug cases were dismissed—except for those who like Erma Faye had bowed to pressure, pled guilty and accepted deals (the pleas were considered binding whether true or not). Over the next three years, the destitute Ms. Stewart was unable to get any food stamps or grant money and was denied the right to vote, all because of that plea; she was also placed on 10 years’ probation even though it was her first offense. Outraged by her own treatment and the plight of those who’d been bullied into copping pleas, Regina Kelly went to civil court in 2002 and sued Robinson County D.A. John Paschall on behalf of herself and 15 others—many of them still behind bars. Writing of Ms. Kelly for the Brennan Center of Justice website in 2012, Bruce Reilly noted “Her story highlighted the fact that in a plea-based criminal justice system, facts matter less than situations: Her public defender was over-burdened and under-resourced, and the prosecutor had unchecked power, and a federal mandate to make arrests. Threatened with years of prison time, suffering in jail, taking a plea becomes the smart choice, in spite of being innocent.” The ensuing testimony also exposed the political opportunism and ingrained racism which infested the Texas legal system. Inevitably the ACLU became involved in the case, which was settled in 2005 with the County agreeing to dismiss all charges against 17 of the original 28 defendants (the South Central Narcotics Task Force had already been disbanded). Ms. Kelly received no apology or admission of error from D.A. Paschall, who remained in office until 2012. Nor was Regina free of harassment from the authorities, who seemed to be monitoring her

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every move in hopes of pouncing upon her for the slightest misstep. Undaunted, she embarked upon the first of several lecture tours, speaking before dozens of activist and legal groups. Written by producer Bill Haney and directed by Tim Disney, the 2008 film American Violet stars Nicole Beharie as Dee Roberts, a character inspired by Regina Kelly. “I’m so happy they didn’t get a Hollywood big-name actress; that might have taken away from the film,” Regina told Essence magazine in 2009. “I’ve seen the film many times and every time I see it, it’s like the first time. I still cry and that’s not even all of it. The whole ordeal interrupted my life in the worst way. People shouldn’t be naïve like I was in the beginning and should get involved in the issues and the war on drugs. Minorities deal with it every day and it affects our community so much. Everyone needs to take a stand.” The name-change of the protagonist allowed the filmmakers to occasionally tinker with the facts, beginning with setting the story in the fictional town of Melody in the equally fictional Harmon County. Unlike Regina Kelly, Dee Roberts has no “priors” when arrested on the trumped-up drug charge; and while the film’s D.A. Calvin Beckett (Michael O’Keeffe) is given discretion as to who will get custody should Dee’s children be taken from her, D.A. John Paschall had no such authority in real life. Otherwise there are very few divergences from the truth, with Dee mounting her case against Beckett with the help of her mother (Alfre Woodard), an ACLU attorney (Tim Blake Nelson) and an ex-narcotics officer (Will Patton). A few observers quibbled over the authenticity of American Violet, notably Regina Kelly’s public defender, who adamantly denied ever advising his client to take a plea. Similarly, John Paschall complained that his behavior was distorted in the film, especially regarding his choice of words when referring to African Americans. Not that he’d based this complaint on an actual viewing of American Violet: As he told the Dallas Morning News, “The only way I’d watch [the movie], I’d have to be handcuffed, tied to a chair and you’d have to tape my eyes open.”

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K ERCHER , M EREDITH—AND A MANDA KNOX , R AFFAELO SOLLECITO The film: The Face of an Angel (BBC Films/ Cattleya/Multitrade/Revolution Films/Vedette/ Ypsilon Films/Screen Media, 2014)

As proven by the O.J. Simpson debacle, it is possible to be both fascinated and frustrated when a murder case does not reach the “logical” conclusion of a guilty verdict. This paradox applies to the case that began November 1, 2007, when 21-year-old British college student Meredith Kercher was found dead in her rented cottage in Peruglia, Italy. Having come to Peruglia as part of the Erasmus international studentexchange program, the sociable, hard-working Meredith was overwhelmed by the town’s uninhibited social life, with drugs and sex rampant among the multicultural younger set. How much partying Meredith actually indulged in is unknown, but there’s no doubt that among her new companions were 22-year-old Amanda Knox, who’d come from Seattle on a junior-year trip abroad, and 25-year-old Raffaelo Sollecito, son of a prominent Italian doctor. Despite her agreeable nature, Meredith had trouble tolerating her roommate Amanda’s sloppy housekeeping and steady stream of local boyfriends, some of them frightening specimens indeed. Amanda was especially attracted to the scampish Sollecito, and the two began a romance. They also grew close to Meredith—some say too close. When Meredith’s bruised and battered body was discovered, it first appeared that she’d been the victim of a random burglary, a bloody handprint on the wall of her room seeming to point in that direction. Knox and Raffaelo were questioned at the murder site, perplexing authorities with their detached attitude. Subsequent forensic research indicated that Meredith had been raped, tortured and stabbed, ruling out an ordinary robbery. The police turned to the Social Network in hopes of finding additional clues, tracking 22-year-old African street hustler Rudy Guede all the way to Düsseldorf and confirming that it was his handprint on the wall. He admitted to having consensual sex with Meredith on the night of the murder, but claimed she was still alive when he’d gone to the bathroom, and that

upon returning he found the girl lying in a pool of blood with an “Italian I did not know” standing over her. Guede further claimed that he fought with the man, who escaped after wounding Guede with a knife, hence his bloody hand. Though the authorities doubted this story they dutifully followed up by placing Raffaelo Sollecito and by extension Amanda Knox high upon the suspect list. It helped the couple’s case not at all that Raffaelo had posted internet photos of himself holding a meat cleaver, or that Amanda had posted a number of sexually suggestive comments and a graphic story about a rapist on her own page. The murder now became the subject of international speculation, with even the most reputable news services offering lurid scenarios of a “drug-fueled sex session” in which Meredith had refused to participate, leading to her horrible death. With Guede separately charged with murder and sentenced to 30 years in 2008, Amanda and Sollecito were brought to trial in an Italian court and found guilty in December 2009, each drawing 26 years. While Amanda continued impugning herself with bizarre entries in her prison diary, the couple’s lawyers began their appeals in late 2010. With no corroborating evidence and the appellate judges’ belief that the incriminating statements by the defendants were made under pressure, a “Not Proven” (rather than “Not Guilty”) verdict was rendered on October 3, 2011. This prompted cries of outrage from the public, who had been offended by Amanda’s aloofness throughout the trial and preferred to believe she was guilty because they didn’t like her. Many in the international media also tore into the new verdict, having concluded that the couple had “done it” no matter what the court said. London Telegraph correspondent Nick Squires reported that though there were still a lot of unanswered questions and unexplored pieces of evidence, none of the three defendants had any previous history of violence and sexual assault. When Amanda Knox and Raffaelo Sollecito received their final acquittal in September 2015, Rudy Guede was still appealing his sentence, fueling the argument that he had borne the brunt because he was black.

King Produced for British television and released theatrically elsewhere, The Face of an Angel was directed by Michael Winterbottom and scripted by Paul Viragh from the book Angel Face by journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau, who had covered the Kercher murder and Knox- Sollecito trial for CNN, Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Though by legal necessity all names and some details were changed, there was much speculation and not a little hope that the film would shed some new light on the actual case and possibly offer a more “satisfying” solution. Instead, Face of an Angel uses the facts as a mere backdrop for a bathetic tale of rediscovery and redemption involving a wholly fictional character. The picture starts promisingly with a dispassionate Citizen Kane–like TV recap of the murder of Baltimore-born student Elysabeth Price (Sai Bennett) in the Italian town of Sienna. This is followed by a few neat touches: A scene in which representatives of the press discuss the case through the filters of their own personal agendas; the recreation of the murder on a courtroom computer; and the confining of the “Knox” and “Sollecito” characters Jessica Fuller (Genevieve Gaunt) and Carlo Elias (Ranieri Menicori) to scenes in which we see them only as the public sees them, allowing us to draw our own conclusions. Finally, the film rightly chastises the press for focusing on the accused and forgetting about the victim with a secondslasting press conference held by the dead girl’s grieving family, and with a brief final video clip showing the girl as the sweet, generous person she really was. But any goodwill generated by Face of an Angel is flushed down the pipes with the introduction of burned-out filmmaker Thomas Lang (Daniel Bruhl), fresh from drug rehab and a messy divorce, who hopes to get his life back together by making a documentary of the Elysabeth Price matter. He tags along with reporter Simone Ford (Kate Beckinsale), a character based on Angel Face author Barbie Nadeau— though in contrast with the scrupulously honest and objective Nadeau, Simone advises Lang “If you’re gonna make a movie, make it a fiction. You cannot tell the truth unless you make it a

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fiction.” Lang begins to question his mission when has a fling with young British student Melanie (Carla Devigne), who looks and sounds eerily like the murder victim; can he now film his story with any sort of detachment? The possibility that the screenwriter has come up with a “surprise” killer briefly arises when Lang falls under the spell of self-proclaimed journalist Edoardo (Valerio Mastandrera), who seems to know way too much about the particulars of the murder—or is Lang simply having another cocaine dream? The hatred and ugliness surrounding the murder trial and the craven glory-grabbers trying to profit from the tragedy, plus the isolated moments in which he himself is driven to violence by the poisonous atmosphere, culminate in an epiphany for Thomas Lang, who abandons his documentary in favor of making a film about “love and innocence.” And before you ask: No, it doesn’t play better than it reads.

KILGALLEN, DOROTHY American journalist, gossip columnist and radio-TV personality. In 1936 she made headlines by coming in second in a newspapersponsored race to circumnavigate the globe using only public-access transportation methods. Her subsequent book Girl Around the World was the source for Warner Bros.’ Fly-Away Baby (1937), one of several series films starring Glenda Farrell as intrepid girl reporter Torchy Blane.

KING, GINERVA The films: The Great Gatsby (Paramount, 1926); The Great Gatsby (Newdon Productions/ Paramount, 1949); The Great Gatsby (Paramount, 1974); The Great Gatsby (Village Roadshow Pictures/A&E/Bazmark Films/Red Wagon Entertainment/Spectrum Films/Warner Bros., 2013)

Reckless womanizer though he was, novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald inarguably had two great and true loves in his life. Scotty loved his betwitching, troubled wife, Zelda, for her passion and her tragic flaws; and he loved his first sweetheart, Ginerva King, because she was his ideal—and because she was, in the final analysis, the Great Unattainable.

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Named for the da Vinci painting Ginerva de’ Benci, Ginerva King was a popular Chicago socialite, the daughter of a wealthy financier. While visiting a former schoolmate in Minnesota on January 4, 1915, 17-year-old Ginerva met 19year-old aspiring author Scotty Fitzgerald. Corny as it sounds, it was love at first sight, or at least one gets that impression when reading Ginerva’s subsequent letters to Scotty (his replies, alas, have been lost). “I hear you had plans for kissing me goodbye publicly,” she wrote on January 25, 1915. “My goodness, I’m glad you didn’t. I’d have had to be severe as anything with you! (Ans. This—Why didn’t you?)” Like many young ladies of wealth in the pre– World War I years, Ginerva was a bit of a flirt and manipulator, but even if Scotty was aware that she was playfully twisting him around her little finger it mattered not a whit. “He had invested a good deal of his feeling for the promises of life in her,” says Fitzgerald biographer Arthur Mizener, “and for Fitzgerald that kind of investment was always final.” Scotty would have to be content with their romance-by-correspondence, deliberately keeping his distance from her “to keep the illusion perfect,” as he would tell his daughter years later—and because he saw himself in the role of the “corruptor” of her youth and innocence. More importantly, she was of High Society, which Scotty definitely was not. The ardor gradually cooled on Ginerva’s part, and in 1918 she married another man, William Mitchell. After 19 years she grew unhappy with this arrangement and began an affair—not with Scotty but with married businessman John T. Pirie, of the Carson-Pirie-Scott department store empire. There was a bit of scandal, but the Chicago upper crust forgave Ginerva because of her “good works” as founder of the Ladies Guild of the American Society. She had one last reunion with Fitzgerald while he was working in Hollywood in 1937, but the meeting ended badly and by unspoken mutual consent they never saw each other again. Ginerva died in 1980, 40 years after Fitzgerald’s death. Once established as a writer, Fitzgerald paid tribute to his lost love by using Ginerva as inspiration for the character of Josephine Perry in

his four “Josephine” short stories—and, more famously and significantly, as the flighty but melancholy Daisy Buchanan in his 1925 chef d’ouevre, The Great Gatsby. As the wealthy young woman who inspires the mysterious Jay Gatsby to amass his fortune by fair means and foul so he can win her away from her brutish husband Tom Buchanan, only to find that she is still just as shallow and self-absorbed as she’d been during her furtive fling with Gatsby years earlier, Daisy has always been a topic of heated debate by Fitzgerald scholars, who can’t decide whether Daisy is a weak, cowardly, helpless victim of societal mores of the 1920s, or a conniving villainess who blithely drives several people to their doom. At any rate, the reader is welcome to form his or her own opinion of the terminally vapid Daisy Buchanan—which may be what Fitzgerald, who ultimately realized that his ideal would never become a reality, intended all along. The problem with portraying Daisy Buchanan on stage or film is that she is so vapid, and if you’re unwilling to see her as the other characters see her she’s liable to bore or annoy you to death. It’s hard to determine if leading lady Lois Wilson got a handle on Daisy in the first Hollywood version of The Great Gatsby (with Warner Baxter in the title role) because this 1926 silent production no longer exists. Betty Field, normally an excellent and incisive actress, plays Daisy as a petulant spoiled brat in the 1949 Alan Ladd remake of Gatsby, sort of a reprise of her teenage-heartbreaker role in 1940’s Seventeen. And while Mia Farrow certainly looks the part of Daisy in the 1974 filmization of Great Gatsby, and her mannerisms and speech patterns are entirely authentic to the period of the story, she still can’t manage to make the character any more compelling than she’d been on paper— and consequently not as stimulating to watch as her costar Robert Redford. Paradoxically, the best screen interpretation of Daisy Buchanan appears in the worst film version of The Great Gatsby, director Baz Luhrmann’s perversely anachronistic 2013 adaptation. The drubbing received by the film from audiences and critics alike was qualified by the praise lavished on Leonardo DiCaprio for his work as Jay

Krents Gatsby, and especially Carey Mulligan as the much-maligned Daisy. The viewer senses that Mulligan is on the character’s wavelength to a far greater extent than any previous cinematic Daisy. “I think she’s definitely flawed,” explained the actress to interviewer Sophie Schillaci. “I had to approach her sympathetically, so I did, and I think she initially makes choices that are entirely logical for her time. She’s a product of her time.” “Daisy is a difficult character for any actress to embody to everyone’s satisfaction,” noted The Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy. “…Accordingly, viewers will debate whether or not Mulligan has the beauty, the bearing, the dream qualities desired for the part, but she lucidly portrays the desperate tear Daisy feels between the unquestionable love for Gatsby and fear of her husband.”

KRENTS, HAROLD The film: Butterflies Are Free (Frankovich Productions/Columbia, 1972)

Harold Krents of Mt. Vernon, New York, first came to public attention in 1968, when the 23year-old law student was classified 1A by his local draft board. This was standard procedure for healthy young men at the time—but it was not all that standard among healthy young men who had been legally blind since the age of 9. Though Harold’s father tried to straighten things out with Selective Service, the bureaucracy insisted that when a man is called, he shows up for his physical. Harold himself took the whole thing in stride: “I’m particularly anxious to take my eye test. If I go, my ambition is to be a bombardier.” Young Mr. Krents had been joking about his blindness ever since he realized the seriousness of his affliction. At first “I bawled my head off,” he told Life magazine in 1970. “But I remember lying in bed and growing up. I knew I had to grow up or fold up—to be dependent or independent.” His parents were understanding and supportive, and Harold was forever grateful that they sent him to a mainstream school and not an institution for the blind, which he felt would not properly prepare him for the “sighted” world. Only after a high school football accident exac-

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erbated his blindness did Harold agree to be home-schooled, obviously the right decision inasmuch as he was accepted at the prestigious and very exclusive Harvard Law School. After his run-in with the draft board, Krents wrote “An Open Letter to General Hershey” for Esquire magazine, a lengthy poem meant to be sung to the tune of “On Top of Old Smokey.” This was followed by Laura R. Benjamin’s article in the Harvard Crimson, which among other things pointed out that there were presently six to twelve blind students at the university. Capping this flurry of publicity was Leonard Gershe’s Broadway comedy Butterflies Are Free, which opened in October 1969. Keir Dullea starred as Don Baker, a highly independent blind youth living in a New York loft who enters into a romance with sighted hippie chick Jill Tanner, played by Blythe Danner. Their relationship is frowned upon by Donnie’s mother (Eileen Heckart), who unlike the real Mrs. Krents is a control freak who worries that her son won’t be able to function as a normal adult without the input of “Little Donnie Dark,” a series of children’s books she’s written based on Don’s childhood. Many of the humorous observations that Harold Krents had made in print and talk-show appearances were incorporated in the play, including his complaint that sighted people had a tendency to shout in front of him as if he was deaf as well as blind, and his half-kidding lament that there were no dirty books written in Braille. In 1972, the same year Krents’ autobiography To Race the Wind was published, Butterflies Are Free was filmed under the direction of Milton Katselas, with Edward Albert as Don, Goldie Hawn as Jill, and Eileen Heckart repeating her stage role as Mrs. Baker (and winning an Oscar in the bargain). By that time Krents had graduated cum laude from Harvard and was working towards an advanced law degree at Oxford, where unfortunately he suffered detachment of the retina of his right eye, dashing all hopes that he’d ever be able to see. “The depression lifted,” he told columnist Marilyn Beck, “when I went to my first screening of Butterflies Are Free, and heard the laughter and applause. Somehow that made everything all right again.”

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Kreuger signed to Health Education and Welfare secretary Patricia Roberts Harris. He also built up a computer bank of 20,000 agencies for the disabled with Information Science Inc.; and from 1985 to 1986 he was a consultant to the Vera Institute of Justice. Retaining his amiably caustic sense of humor to the end, Harold Krents died of a brain tumor in 1987.

KREUGER , IVAR The film: The Match King (First National, 1933); The Night of January Sixteenth (Paramount, 1941).

Harold Krents, 1983 (courtesy State Archives of Florida).

Well, almost everything. Speaking to a panel for the President’s Committee on the Handicapped in 1973, Krents noted bitingly “When Butterflies opened, somebody at Harvard said, ‘Now you’ll have no trouble getting a job. Your grades are good, you’ve worked hard, and with that extra publicity you’re all set.’ Well, I was turned down by over 40 law firms. Some of them turned me down twice. One turned me down before I’d even applied, because of a rumor that I was thinking of applying. The problems of getting a job were some of the most disillusioning of my life. I could get on the talk shows of Mike Douglas and Dick Cavett, and talk about my blindness but I wanted to punch anybody in the mouth who said to me, ‘I saw you on TV. You’re fantastic. Have you ever though of becoming a comedian.’ I didn’t bust myself for three years at Harvard Law School to become a comedian.” Krents was 28 years old when he finally secured a position as a trial lawyer in the Washington, D.C., firm of Surrey, Karanik and Morse. In addition to his activism on behalf of the handicapped and his founding of Mainstream Inc., which promoted legal rights for the disabled, in 1980 Krents became a White House Fellow, as-

In a burst of speed that was phenomenal even by the fleetfooted standards of Warner Bros.– First National, the studio had its à clef version of the life of Ivar Kreuger, director Howard Bretherton’s The Match King, in theaters by December 31, 1932, six months after the publication of the Einar Thorvaldson novel on which the Houston Branch–Sidney Sutherland screenplay was based—and nine months after the death of the story’s protagonist. “Warren Buffet with the panache of Sir Richard Branson” is how one modern journalist has described Swedish industrialist Ivar Kreuger, though Bernie Madoff would be a more apt comparison. “The World’s Greatest Swindler” was born in 1880, the son of a match manufacturer. Taking over his father’s financially strapped factory in 1911, he began a series of mergers resulting in the largest match company in all Scandinavia, taking advantage of lax investment laws to monopolize the industry. That his empire was largely built upon pyramiding loans that he had no intention of repaying didn’t faze Kreuger in the least; maintaining the illusion of reliability was all that was important. “Everything in life is founded on confidence” he proclaimed as he set up dummy corporations as tax shelters and launched one Ponzi-like scheme after another. Because he’d cornered the match market he was able to set the prices, but no one minded because prices were low. His stockholders had no voting power but didn’t care because the dividends were so large. And he played fast and loose with the mercantile and monopoly laws of several countries, but no one objected because he

Kreuger was seen as a great public benefactor who had stabilized the European economy. In private life he owned a magnificent mansion in Sweden and a luxury apartment in France, where he hobnobbed with power brokers and celebrities. Along the way he nurtured the career of Swedish actress Greta Garbo, and while their close friendship was known worldwide it apparently never blossomed into romance. Kreuger’s reckless speculations and ghostmoney acquisitions might have continued indefinitely had it not been for the Crash of 1929. Suddenly new loaning policies and anti-trust laws were in effect, and Kreuger was no longer able to raise millions at a second’s notice; also, a lot of his old loans were being called in with new deadlines attached. The whole deck of cards collapsed when it was discovered that he had forged the signatures on $40 million worth of Italian bank notes in hopes of squaring his debts and launching new schemes. Summoned to Paris for an urgent conference with the chairman of the Swedish Riksbank, Kreuger entered his apartment on March 12, 1933, and never came out. He was found shot to death in his bedroom, an apparent suicide. Only after his death was full disclosure made of how desperate his financial situation was, and how many people would suffer because of it. Without making excuses for Ivar Kreuger’s underhanded business practices, it cannot be denied that in death he became a convenient scapegoat for an international monetary crisis that had many fathers. In the last months of Kreuger’s life, a Hollywood studio approached him with an offer to film his life story. After his suicide, his old friend Greta Garbo entertained the idea of becoming an independent producer and filming a sympathetic Kreuger biopic, with herself as “herself.” Though she soon abandoned this project, when First National Pictures purchased Einar Thorvaldson’s novel The Match King in galley form they asked MGM to lend them Garbo for the film version. This would have proven unwieldy for pinchpenny First National and its sister studio Warner Bros., since Garbo was then commanding $200,000 per picture, roughly $25,000 more than the proposed budget of The Match

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Ivar Kreuger, “The Match King.”

King. Minus Garbo, production of the film was completed in a brisk 33 days. In both novel and film, Ivar Kreuger is rechristened Paul Kroll. Warren William, an expert at playing charming reprobates, was cast as Kroll, who within the first 10 minutes has risen from Chicago streetsweeper to owner of his family’s Swedish match factory by swindling and betraying three people, including his dimwitted mistress (Glenda Farrell). Kroll’s plan to revitalize his business by merging with other match companies requires a huge bank loan, which he accepts knowing that he’ll never pay it back. His best friend and business partner Eric (Hardie Albright) questions Kroll’s honesty, but is sidetracked by Paul’s pious insistence that he is thinking of the good of other people. He also puts Eric’s mind at ease with his oft-repeated slogan “Never worry about anything til it happens, and I’ll take care of it then.” Only too late does Eric realize that he is being used by Kroll, as is everyone else Paul comes in contact with—including a string of girlfriends in the major European capitals whom Kroll sweet-talks into sleeping with politicians and businessmen so he can be privy to secret financial information.

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Kürten

A few unfounded legends about Ivar Kreuger are folded into The Match King, beginning with his invention of the superstition “Three on a match” in order to discourage consumers from sharing matches; in truth, the belief that if three soldiers shared a match one of them would be killed was in wide circulation long before Kreuger chose to exploit it. Kroll is also shown squelching the invention of an “eternal match” that can be used repeatedly by convincing the inventor that he plans to patent the device and break up the match monopoly—then arranging for the inventor to be squirreled away in a lunatic asylum. Later on The Match King goes far afield of any fact or fallacy about Kreuger when Kroll hires a forger to create a pile of counterfeit banknotes, after which he murders the forger without batting an eyelash. Finally, Kroll’s climactic suicide is staged so that he winds up in the gutter whence he began—and in case the symbolism has gone over our heads, one of the characters tells us what we’ve just seen. The film’s spin on Kreuger’s protegée Greta Garbo is fictional Swedish film star Marta Molnar, played by French actress Lily Damita in such a flagrantly Garboesque fashion that we’re amazed she stops short of “I vant to be alone.” According to The Match King, Marta is the only woman whom Paul Kroll truly loves, and the only one capable of breaking his heart when she leaves him for a famous violinist whom he’d hired to serenade her. The official running time of The Match King is 79 minutes, but many circulating prints run between 65 and 70 minutes, with Lily Damita’s role severely diminished. It is not known if this was done for legal reasons, but it certainly leaves a lot of loose plotlines dangling in the wind. The Ivar Kreuger legend also inspired the backstory for the central murder trial in Ayn Rand’s 1934 stage play The Night of January Sixteenth, with crooked tycoon “Bjorn Faulkner” purportedly having been knocked off by his secretary- lover shortly after absconding with $20 million. Directed by William Clemens, the 1941 film version of Night of January Sixteenth is less concerned with the Kreuger connection than with the efforts by an amorous sailor

(Robert Preston) to clear the heroine (Ellen Drew). Unlike The Match King, the Ivar Kreuger character is played by a bona fide Scandinavian, Copenhagen-born Nils Asther.

KÜRTEN, PETER The films: M (Nero-Film AG/Vereinigte StarFilm, 1931); M (Superior Pictures/Columbia, 1951)

The “Vampire of Düsseldorf ” was an amiable, soft-spoken, well dressed young man named Peter Kürten. From 1929 until his capture in May of 1930, this unprepossessing fellow held his home town, and most of Germany, in thrall with a series of arsons and robberies. And murders: Gruesome, unspeakable murders. Strolling the streets of Düsseldorf by night, Kürten would strike up acquaintances with various women, then attempt to strangle or stab them; occasionally he struck without announcing his presence. On one eventful Sunday he was particularly industrious, murdering one housewife and two children and setting a couple of fires. Kürten was an equal-opportunity murderer, killing at least one man during his peak activity. But his specialty was children; on two occasions he went to great lengths to befriend little girls, and their families, before killing and mutilating the children. The impact of the terror Kürten spread was so profound that until his arrest some 200 people came forward and confessed that they were the Düsseldorf Vampire. In the meantime the police arrested nearly 250 suspects and followed 12,000 individual clues in their efforts to end the carnage. But the end came only after Kürten’s wife, who worked nights and had absolutely no idea how her husband occupied his time until the day he casually confessed to her, made a phone call to the authorities. He would personally take responsibility for 68 crimes but was probably guilty of many more: “I did it for the thrill,” he explained, revealing that he committed his first murder at age 8. “Given the chance, I would have killed whole masses of people.” With grave understatement, the Lewiston (PA) Daily Sun would later remark “Psychiatrists at the trial found that Kürten was not made in the sense as understood by law.” Nonetheless,

Lambrakis his insanity plea fell upon deaf ears and he received nine separate death sentences, only one of them necessary to send him to the guillotine in 1931. In the years that followed, English press correspondent Margaret Seaton Wagner wrote a detailed history of the Kürten case based on court and police records; mass-murder historian Colin Wilson composed a play about the killer; and scores of psychiatrists and analysts attempted to explain what made Peter Kürten tick, including a Hearst journalist who in 1943 suggested that fiends like Kürten were a byproduct of the horrors of World War I, implying that we should all watch our backs once World War II was over. But the most famous dissertation on the Vampire of Düsseldorf was the landmark 1931 German crime melodrama M, directed by Fritz Lang from a screenplay by Lang and Thea von Harbou. Peter Lorre, a 26-year-old stage actor previously associated with comedy roles, skyrocketed to stardom in the role of loathsome but pathetic child killer Hans Beckert. Once seen and heard, the wild- eyed Lorre’s climactic lament “Who knows what it’s like to be me?” can never be forgotten. Though Fritz Lang denied at the time that M was inspired by Kürten, Lang and his collaborator-wife Von Harbou were known to have pored through the records of the case, visiting the crime scenes and consulting with authorities. The director’s decision to have the film’s murderer pursued not only by the police but also by the criminal underworld, who want to eradicate Beckert so that their activities will be free from police scrutiny, was typical of Lang’s predilection for probing the blurred line between Good and Evil. The professional crooks may be rotten, but they pride themselves on not being as rotten as Hans Beckert. M was remade in in 1951 by American director Joseph Losey, filmed on location in Los Angeles and making excellent use of such landmarks as the Bradbury Building and Angel’s Flight. David Wayne stars as the simpering mass murderer, here named Martin Harrow. On its own terms the American M is an eerily effective film noir, with an aura of doom and despair

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hanging over both the killer and the criminals who ultimately trap him in a deserted underground parking lot. Perhaps this aura was a foreboding: Several of the participants in the M remake would soon fall victim to the Hollywood Blacklist, including director Losey, cowriter Waldo Salt, and actors Luther Adler, Howard da Silva and Karen Morley.

L AMBRAKIS, G RIGORIS— AND CHRISTOS SARTZETAKIS The film: Z (Office National pour le Commerce et l’Industrie Cinématographique/Reggane Films/Victoria Films/Valoria, 1969)

In place of the Motion Picture Association of America’s standard disclaimer at the beginning of the Oscar-winning French political thriller Z, the viewer is treated to a defiant dis-disclaimer signed by director Costa-Gavras and screenwriter Jorge Semprún: “Any resemblance to actual events, to persons living or dead, is not the result of chance. It is DELIBERATE.” Z was adapted from the 1966 novel by Greek writer-composer Vasilis Vasilikos, which in turn was inspired by the politically motivated murder of leftist Greek parliament member Grigoris Lambrakis. As a result of the unsuccessful Communist effort to seize control of Greece during the 1947 civil war, the country’s only legal leftwing political party was the United Democratic Left. One of its most outspoken members was Lambrakis, a physician and lifelong champion athlete who had fought with the Resistance against the Nazis in World War II. Never a member of the Communists, Lambrakis nonetheless sympathized with their goals and ideals, putting his money where his mouth (and heart) was by running a free private clinic for those unable to afford government-regulated medical prices; he also lobbied against the war in Vietnam long before American involvement in that conflict. In 1961 he was elected to the Hellenic Parliament and simultaneously helped establish the Commission for International Détente and Peace. When conservatives in the government began accusing Premier Papandreaou of being soft on Communism, the stage was set for political discord and frequent outbursts of violence

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Lambrakis

throughout the country, with Lambrakis and his followers in the thick of things. At a peace rally in Thessalonia on May 22, 1963, Lambrakis had just finished delivering the keynote speech when he was struck down by a three-wheeled vehicle driven by transport operator Spyros Kotzmanis and house painter Emmanuel Emmanuelides. Eyewitnesses testified that it was not the impact of the vehicle that had felled Lambrakis; rather, one of the drivers had viciously clubbed him while passing by. The rally degenerated into a riot, with elements of the Left blaming the right-wing government for the incident. On May 27 Lambrakis died of his injuries, whereupon Chief Magistrate Christos Sartzetakis, a man renowned for his incorruptibility, took charge of what was now a murder investigation. His first big roadblock was the jury trial which declared that Kotzmanis and Emmanuelides had accidentally struck Lambrakis with no malicious intent. As the investigation deepened, a number of high-ranking officials tried to stymie Sartzetakis, who nevertheless stuck to his task and managed to secure convictions of the police officers involved in the conspiracy to eliminate Lambrakis—convictions that would be overturned after the Military took control of Greece in the 1967 coup d’etat. Sartzetakis himself would be discharged and later arrested and tortured by the Military Police, though he was ultimately “rehabilitated” when the junta was toppled in 1974. In the meantime, the cudgel of the late Grigoris Lambrakis was taken up by a secret and well-funded movement called the Lambrakis Youth, which worked closely with United Democratic Left. It can now be said that the Lambrakis assassination was the catalyst for the many upheavals in Greek politics for years to come. Z author Vasilis Vasilikos was a devout Communist and revolutionary who had publicly accused Greece’s King Paul of issuing the order to murder Lambrakis. Elected to parliament in 1964, Vasilikos too became persona non grata after the 1967 coup and was placed under house arrest. While in confinement, he composed the celebrated score for Z and managed to get the sheet music smuggled to Costa-Gavras. Given

the director’s own leftist leanings and his past and future output of such politically supercharged films as State of Siege, The Confession and Missing, there was no way that anyone could accuse Z of straddling an ideological fence. The actors were just as committed to the film’s antiestablishment message as Costa-Gavras, volunteering to work without pay. Cast in the crucial role of a photographer was Z’s coproducer Jacques Perrin, who had invested $800,000 in the project. With Greece still under military rule Z was filmed in Algeria, while the location of the story was deliberately left to conjecture. Top-billed Yves Montand appears in the first 25 minutes of the film as the Lambrakis character, an unnamed leftist political Deputy. On the day he is to deliver a speech on nuclear disarmament, the Deputy has many things weighing on his mind, including his rapidly disintegrating marriage. There is also what appears to be the minor vexation of being forced to change the venue of his speech from a large hall to a much smaller one, thanks to interference from the corrupt head of the security police (Pierre Dux). Obliged to walk in the open from one hall to the other despite earlier death threats, the Deputy is mobbed by a crowd of admirers and opponents—then falls bleeding to the ground, apparently struck by a speeding three-wheel delivery truck. An autopsy revealing that the Deputy was actually clubbed to death is quickly suppressed and witnesses begin to mysteriously vanish. Though it is obvious to the Chief Magistrate ( Jean-Louis Trintignant) that powerful forces are trying to prevent him from exposing the truth, he remains persistent in his pursuit of justice. Only in the last few moments of the film is it revealed that the Magistrate’s hard-won convictions against the culprits would be nullified by a subsequent military takeover. Z ran into less legal trouble from the Greek government (it wasn’t shown in that country anyway) than from the widow of Grigoris Lambrakis, who filed a $90,000 damage suit against the producers. Reuters reported that she “charged that it distorted his private life as a husband and father” and that she didn’t want her 7-

Landru year-old son to see the character based on his father headed for divorce (the Deputy’s wife was played by Irene Papas) and dallying with other women. No matter how this issue was settled, Z was a spectacular worldwide hit, especially in the United States, which was then going through its own political turmoil vis-à-vis Vietnam and the campus riots. It was not uncommon in 1970 to hear a theater full of college students reacting loudly and negatively as the closing titles of the film listed all of the items banned by the Greek military junta since 1967: Individual books, songs, movies, leisure items, political parties … and the letter “Z,” the Lambrakis Youth’s symbol for “He is Alive.”

L ANDRU, HENRI DÉSIRÉ The film: Monsieur Verdoux (Chaplin/United Artists, 1947)

Charlie Chaplin was born in London in 1889, just one year after the last reported murder of infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper in the city’s Whitechapel district. By the time Chaplin was two years old, an additional brace of killings had been attribute to the elusive Ripper. Thus young Charlie could not help but grow up hearing about the murderer’s reign of terror, and like most London boys he was fascinated by the grotesqueries of the crimes. The “penny dreadfuls” of the era fed into this fascination, and certainly Chaplin was not ignorant of these cheaply printed suspense periodicals. By 1914, Charlie had put away most childish things to pursue a show business career, first in the English music halls and then in Hollywood. That same year in far-off France, a modern Jack the Ripper—or as he was designated by the press, a “modern Bluebeard”—had begun his own murder spree, and like his distinguished predecessor he specialized in female victims. Unlike Spring-Heel’d Jack, Henri Désiré Landru did not slash and run anonymously in dark alleys, but was more patient, precise and methodical in his homicidal habits. A second-hand furniture dealer who’d previously done jail time for swindling lonely widows, Landru was 45 years old when he placed his first classified ad in a Paris lonely hearts column, describing himself

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as “a widower with two children … with comfortable income” in hopes of marrying a rich and eligible widow. Not exactly an Adonis with his bald head and unkempt beard, Landru could rely upon the scarcity of young and handsome bachelors during World War I to attract his prey; he also took the precaution of using a different name for each romantic rendezvous. The first known widow to fall for his line was JeanneMarie Cuchet, who dropped out of sight in early 1915 along with her son André. Ten other women would vanish before the sister of Widow #8 Célestine Buisson attempted to locate her in 1919. Knowing Landru by face if not by name, Célestine’s sister notified the police, who at first could only hold Landru for embezzlement. On the basis of circumstantial evidence and without a corpus delecti, the police finally charged Landru with 11 counts of murder in November 1921, over a year since he’d disposed of his final victim Marie-Thérèse Marchadier. The war- weary French public regarded the murder trial as an entertaining diversion, making sick jokes about the killings and chuckling over the discovery of a ledger in which Landru itemized the names of his victims and his various aliases as if balancing his bank account. No one laughed harder than Landru himself, who after remaining silent during most of his trial regaled the spectators by quipping that he’d been prosecuted “on the missing facts themselves”; and, in reference to Victim #4 Marie-Angélique Guillin (who disappeared in August 1915), “The police took six years to find me, perhaps they will eventually find Mrs. Guillin.” It was theorized that Landru had either stabbed or strangled his victims and burned their bodies—and also that he had given them great sexual satisfaction in the days before dispatching them, which especially titillated French journalists of the time. Landru went to the guillotine in 1922. The following year, Austrian director Hans Otto made the film Landru, der Blaubart von Paris, which downplayed the more sensational aspects of the case to deliver a cautionary tale about susceptible women and charming con artists. There is no indication that Charlie Chaplin ever entertained the notion of making his own Landru

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Lansky

story before Orson Welles approached him in the early 1940s with the idea for a dramatized documentary about “the Bluebeard of Paris.” Perhaps because of his childhood interest in Jack the Ripper, Chaplin paid Welles $5000 for the concept, with the agreement that Orson would be credited on-screen for the original idea. Welles had wanted to write and direct the film himself with Chaplin as star, but Charlie wasn’t about to relinquish the directorial reins to anyone (Welles would later claim that he’d already written a full screenplay, though there’s no record of this in their contractual agreement). Following his usual procedure of gleaning comedy from tragedy, Chaplin decided to play the story for laughs—all the while interweaving the grandiose social commentary that had played so well in his 1940 Hitler travesty The Great Dictator. Billed as “a comedy of murders,” Monsieur Verdoux renames the protagonist and moves the action up from the World War I years to the 1920s and 1930s. Denied the advantage enjoyed by Landru, Chaplin’s Henri Verdoux cannot count upon a shortage of young men in order to attract rich and gullible widows, so he has to use considerably more strategy and invention. Chaplin wisely avoids visualizing any of the murders, preferring instead the gallows-humor aftermath of calmly burning his latest victim’s clothes in his backyard furnace. The two times we actually witness his modus operandi are played for pathos and slapstick rather than melodrama: In the first, he picks up a homeless girl (Marilyn Nash) intending to try out a new poison on her, but abandons the idea after listening to her touching tale of woe; in the second, he tries to drown rambunctious widow Annabella (Martha Raye), only to bungle the job so badly that she ends up rescuing him from a watery grave. To take the edge off Landru’s cold-bloodedness, Verdoux goes about his deadly business merely to provide an income for his wife and son after losing his job as a bank clerk; also, with the exception of Annabella (who of course survives her attempted murder), his potential victims are uniformly unsympathetic and mean-spirited. When finally arrested and placed on trial, Verdoux dis-

plays a philosophical loquaciousness undreamt of by Landru, insisting that his murders are minor and amateurish compared to the wholesale slaughter perpetrated by armies, governments and munitions manufacturers in wartime: “It’s all business. One murder makes a villain; millions, a hero. Numbers sanctify.” Though the prosecution labels Verdoux a “cruel and cynical monster,” the audience is supposed to accept him as a whimsical pragmatist. Many filmgoers in 1947 didn’t want to accept Charlie Chaplin at all, thanks to a few messy scandals in his private life and his alleged pro– Communist sympathies. Monsieur Verdoux tanked at the box office, though an ever-increasing affection for “dark” humor in recent years has elevated the film to classic status. But while we may laugh at Monsieur Verdoux more than the audiences of seven decades ago, the film still can’t put any lipstick on the pig known as Henri Désiré Landru—nor, in all fairness, does it try.

L ANSKY, MEYER—AND SIR HARRY OAKES The films: The Godfather: Part II (Coppola Company/Paramount, 1974); The Betsy (Harold Robbins International Company/Allied Artists/ United Artists, 1978); Eureka ( JF Productions/ RPC/Sunley Prod. Ltd./MGM-UA, 1984)

Like any self-respecting mobster, Meyer Lansky (born Meier Suchowlanski in 1902 in what is now Belarus) was perfectly capable of using physical force or murder to get what he wanted. But that wasn’t really the style of the man known as the “Mob’s Accountant.” In a world of mad dogs he was a Mad Man in the TV-series sense, preferring organization, negotiation, conciliation and mergers to achieve his goals. In concert with Italian-born mob boss Charles “Lucky” Luciano (see separate entry for Thomas E. Dewey), the Jewish Lansky forged a successful alliance that permanently supplanted the Irish as the leaders of organized crime in the United States. While Luciano trafficked in drugs and prostitutes, Lansky specialized in gambling, installing his good friend Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel (see separate entry for Virginia Hill) as the uncrowned king of Las Vegas. Despite his criminal activities, Lansky made sure that the casinos run by Siegel and himself were totally honest; why

Lansky cheat the customers when you can still post a huge profit by playing the odds? When Siegel proved to be a liability to the mob higher-ups, Lansky put friendship aside and conceded that Bugsy would have to be rubbed out—though as always, he made certain to keep his hands clean by allowing others to do the dirty work. He was far more interested in keeping the Mob’s books than handling the physical aspects, a preference that proved beneficial whenever he was targeted for Federal investigation. An acknowledged financial genius, he knew just how and where to apply the money so as to avoid prosecution— and to keep himself from being assassinated by his enemies. And there was plenty of money: Though he may never have actually uttered the quote often attributed to him, “We’re bigger than U.S. Steel,” truer words were never spoken. It has been claimed that Lansky was worth $400 million when he died in 1983, though this may have been an overestimate in light of the huge sums of money he lost when, after years of controlling the gambling industry in Cuba in cahoots with corrupt dictator Fulgencio Batista, he was booted out of the island nation once Fidel Castro took over in 1959. The story of Meyer Lansky’s Cuban adventure was romanticized in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather: Part II, which like its predecessor was taken from the bestselling novel by Mario Puzo. The character based on Lansky was Hyman Roth, played by celebrated acting teacher Lee Strasberg. In the film, Roth organizes an effort to assassinate mob leader Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), despite the earlier partnership between Roth and Michael’s father Don Vito Corleone. Previously in The Godfather, Michael had “purged” the organization of those who might do him harm, including Roth’s man in Las Vegas, Moe Greene (based on Bugsy Siegel). Now Michael chases after Roth and his lieutenant Johnny Ola (inspired by Lansky’s right- hand man Vincent Alo) all the way to Cuba, where Roth controls not only the gambling establishments but the cabarets where pornographic floor shows are the main attraction. Roth manages to survive, but his stranglehold in Cuba ends with the Castro revolution. Threatened with

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Federal prosecution, Roth invokes Israel’s edict that every Jew in the world is automatically an Israeli citizen in order to take refuge in Tel Aviv. In actuality, Lansky had indeed expressed a desire to relocate to Israel, not as a means of escape but to fulfill a lifelong dream. The Israeli government branded him an undesirable and denied him entry—though he’d never been convicted of any crime nor even arrested—resulting in a length and costly lawsuit. In Godfather: Part II Hyman Roth gets no farther in his goal to reach Israel than New York’s Idlewild Airport when he is shot and killed by Michael’s minions, a scene staged by Coppola to resemble the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald. Of course, Meyer Lansky was still alive and kicking when Godfather: Part II was released in 1974, a fact that was hammered home to actor Lee Strasberg, who shortly after the film’s premiere received a late-night phone call which began “Am I speaking to Hyman Roth?” It was Meyer Lansky, who allayed Strasberg’s fears by saying “I wanted to pay you my compliments. Truly a great performance.” But with one minor admonition: “Now, why couldn’t you have made me more sympathetic? After all, I am a grandfather.” It has been reported that Jake Weinstein, the underworld lawyer in the 1978 cinemadaption of Harold Robbins’ The Betsy, was based on Meyer Lansky, but actor Joseph Wiseman appears too late in the film and has too little screen time (in which he brokers a deal between a Henry Ford–like auto manufacturer and the father of a race car driver/inventor) for any such resemblance to register. A more obvious Lansky counterpart appears in Eureka, screenwriter Paul Mayersberg and director Nicolas Roeg’s 1983 film version of Marshall Hout’s fact-based novel King’s X. The novel was reissued under the title Who Killed Sir Harry Oakes?, referencing Hout’s controversial theory that the unsolved decapitation murder of Oakes (1874–1943), an American-Canadian gold billionaire and philanthropist who owned a private island in the Bahamas, was committed not by a covetous in-law (as often claimed) but by the hired goons of Meyer Lansky. According to Hout, Lansky had wanted to

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purchase Oakes’ property to build a casino-hotel complex called Paradise Island, but Sir Harry refused to sell. Lansky then sent a team of henchmen to beat Oakes into submission, but they overdid it and killed him—something Lansky had wanted to avoid, and for which he severely punished the killers. Though this theory has been largely discredited by Oakes historian Jack Marquis, in Eureka the film’s Meyer Lansky clone Mayakovsky ( Joe Pesci) is definitely responsible for the beheading of prospector-cumbillionaire Jack McCann (Gene Hackman), thereby freeing the victim’s mercenary son-inlaw Claude Maillot Van Horn (Rutger Hauer) from suspicion (real-life prime suspect Count Alfred de Marigny has not been so easily let off the hook by posterity, despite his ultimate acquittal). The victim’s fate in Eureka is sealed as tight as a drum the moment Mayakovsky mutters menacingly, “Jack McCann is a dinosaur. And everyone knows what happened to dinosaurs.”

LE MAY, GEN. CURTIS The films: Strategic Air Command (Paramount, 1955); Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Hawk Films/Columbia, 1964)

Ever wonder who coined the phrase “Bomb them back to the stone age!” in reference to nuclear war? No, it wasn’t Ronald Reagan. The gentleman in question was General Curtis LeMay (1906–1990), and the exact quote, delivered circa 1965, went like this: “My solution to the problem would be to tell the North Vietnamese Communists frankly that they’ve got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression or we’re going to bomb them into the stone age.” The Ohio-born LeMay was a colonel in World War II when he designed and carried out a strategic bombing campaign against Japan. There is no argument that the campaign was successful, but even by wartime standards it was considered extreme. Eschewing the accepted policy of daytime bombing to minimize civilian casualties, LeMay preferred to fire-bomb at night, resulting in at least 300,000 deaths. Not that LeMay was always so cavalier about human life: It was he who after the war oversaw the Berlin Airlift,

which at great risk delivered much-needed food and supplies to the Russian-surrounded German city. But as the Hot War simmered down into the Cold War and the U.S. Government sought more peaceful ways to deal with the Soviet Union, LeMay continued arguing in favor of wiping the Rooskies off the face of the earth. His very first war plan after assuming command of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) in 1948 was to deliver “the entire stockpile of atomic bombs in a single massive attack.” Of course this plan was never implemented, but LeMay impressed enough of his fellow sabre-rattlers in the U.S. Military to be promoted to four-star General at age 44, the youngest American to receive this honor since Ulysses S. Grant. At a time when it was vital to maintain an impressive public image, LeMay organized his own public-relations staff. In his book Eyeball to Eyeball, Dion Brugioni, former head officer at the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center, described LeMay’s careful cultivation of his public appearance: “[H]is beetle brows, jutting jaws, sagging jowls, shock of slicked down black hair, and ubiquitous brown cigar.” Especially that brown cigar, which went with the General everywhere, “no smoking” restrictions be damned. To his admirers, he resembled a fierce bulldog; to his detractors he was more like “a rogue elephant barging out of a forest.” When Paramount Pictures assembled its flagwaving aviation epic Strategic Air Command in 1955, they were smart enough to cast real-life USAF Colonel James Stewart in the starring role of Lt. Col. “Dutch” Holland, who is placed in charge of a program to deter possible war with the Soviets using the SAC’s huge fleet of strategic bombers. Holland’s superior officer, who yanks poor Dutch out of the security of a happy marriage and a burgeoning career in pro baseball, is General Ennis C. Hawkes, played by Frank Lovejoy. The role is essentially a valentine to Curtis LeMay, with the trademark brown cigar and brusque no-nonsense demeanor in full attendance (and catch that character name—it sure beats “General Ennis C. Doves”). At one point, Valentine Davies and Bernie Lay, Jr.’s screenplay incorporates an apocryphal story

Leopold about LeMay into the dialogue: When a by-thebook sergeant warns General Hawkes, “Sir, that cigar. Doesn’t the general know that the aircraft might explode?,” Dutch Holland shoots back “It wouldn’t dare!” Director Anthony Mann and actor Frank Lovejoy pull off the daunting feat of transforming their version of Curtis LeMay into a fundamentally likeable human being, just as Lovejoy had previously done with none-toocuddly baseball legend Christy Matthewson in 1952’s The Winning Team. LeMay sailed through the Eisenhower administration with his heroic status intact, retiring from SAC in 1957 and serving as Air Force chief of staff from 1961 through 1965. However, Eisenhower’s successor, John F. Kennedy, intensely disliked LeMay, especially after swallowing the General’s bad intel about the extent of Soviet influence in Cuba. LeMay’s public reaction to the outcome of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis was to label it “the greatest defeat in our history,” indicating that his feelings towards Kennedy were mutual. Liberals who had kept

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mum about their attitude towards LeMay in the 1950s were now emboldened to condemn him for his increasingly dangerous stance on international affairs. It has been said that Jack D. Ripper, the crazed cigar-puffing general who sets worldwide nuclear annihilation in motion in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 black comedy Dr. Strangelove, was inspired by LeMay (see also the entry for Gen. Edwin Walker); but a more likely candidate for that honor would be the film’s gungho Presidential military advisor General “Buck” Turgidson, played with hilarious savagery by George C. Scott. One of Turgidson’s most famous lines takes place while he mulls over the likely number of casualties in an all-out nuclear war with the Russians: “Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.” Is that so far removed from these actual words spoken by General Curtis LeMay: “Restraint! Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards! At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!”

LEOPOLD, NATHAN—AND RICHARD LOEB The films: Rope (Transatlantic Pictures/Warner Bros., 1948); Compulsion (Darryl F. Zanuck Productions/20th Century–Fox, 1959); Murder by Numbers (Schroeder Hoffman Productions/ Castle Rock/Warner Bros., 2002)

General Curtis LeMay.

If MENSA had been founded in 1924 instead of 1946, Chicago teenagers Nathan Leopold and Richard “Dickie” Loeb would have been charter members. Born in 1904, Leopold was the son of a wealthy box manufacturer; Loeb, born the following year, was the son of the vice president of Sears Roebuck. Both boys grew up wealthy, privileged and spoiled, and both displayed genius at an early age. By the time he was 18 Nathan had learned 10 languages and was an acknowledged authority on botany and philosophy. Dickie, the more precocious of the two, entered a high school attached to the University of Chicago at age 12, and in 1923 became the youngest graduate of the University of Michigan. Socially the boys could not be more dissimilar: Nathan was shy, awkward, nonathletic, overly sensitive about

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his appearance and inclined to arrogance that rubbed others the wrong way; Dickie was outgoing, confident, attractive to women, and could charm the birds out of the trees. Nevertheless, when Nathan and Dickie first met they were immediately attracted to each other, mainly because of their aesthetic dedication to the writings of German philosopher Frederich Nietzche (1844–1900) and his concept of the Übermensche—the “Superman” who is intellectually superior to all normal conventions of humanity and morality. For much of his life Dickie Loeb had been pushing the boundaries of acceptable behavior by cheating at cards, breaking windows, committing minor burglaries and drinking heavily. Nathan was mesmerized by his footloose friend, allowing himself to be the “submissive” in their homosexual relationship. In 1923 Loeb began toying with the idea of committing the “perfect crime.” His idle musings took a deadly turn when he suggested to the initially reluctant Leopold that the two of them kidnap and murder a younger boy, then deliver a ransom note to his parents. It would all be just for “kicks,” not so much the thrill of killing but the excitement of getting away with it. Leopold acquiesced “to please Dick,” as he later explained. On May 21, 1924, the boys drove around until they spotted Dickie’s cousin, 14-year-old Bobby Franks. Carrying out the first phase of their plan, they offered Bobby a lift. Once in the car Bobby was bludgeoned four times with a chisel, and when this failed to kill him a rag stuffed down his throat finished the job. Dumping the body in a culvert a few miles away, the boys then sent a ransom note demanding $10,000 from Bobby’s father. Mr. Franks had no sooner prepared a response than the police found Bobby’s corpse. Despite the meticulous care with which Nathan and Dickie had obliterated any evidence connecting them with the crime, they had not noticed a pair of glasses that had fallen from Nathan’s coat pocket. Quickly arrested, the boys freely admitted their guilt, calmly insisting that it was simply “scientific research … no more than impaling a beetle on a pin.” With evidence and confessions in hand, Illinois state prosecutor Robert Crowe confidently told reporters that

here was “the most complete case ever presented to a grand or petit jury.” The local and national press had a field day with the Franks murder, some observers blaming the evils of “progressive education,” some holding the killers’ overindulgent parents to blame, and some regarding the whole sordid affair as emblematic of the libertine 1920s. It was a foregone conclusion that despite their youth and their parents’ money, Nathan and Dickie would receive the death penalty unless their defense attorney, the celebrated Clarence Darrow, pleaded insanity. To everyone’s surprise Darrow entered a guilty plea, intending to use the hearing before Judge John Caverly as a forum for an impassioned argument against capital punishment. In the separate entry on Darrow, his defense strategy and eloquent 12-hour summation are examined in depth. Suffice to say that he managed to sway Caverly, who sentenced both defendants to life imprisonment for murder and an additional 99 years for kidnapping. Still boasting that their superior intellect transcended the more mundane aspects of crime and punishment, the boys expressed no remorse, only relief that the trial was over. Leopold and Loeb were five years into their prison sentences when British playwright Patrick (Gaslight) Hamilton brought forth the first fictionalized dramatization of the Franks murder. Produced in London in 1929, Rope told of two brilliant but sociopathic college students, Wyndham Brandon and Charles Granillo, who as an intellectual exercise murder fellow student Ronald Kentley in their Mayfair home and hide his body in a large chest. Carrying out their “perfect crime” scenario, Wyndham and Charles invite Ronald’s friends and family for supper, using the lid of the closed chest to serve a buffet. Throughout the evening the guests chatter amiably with no clue as to the whereabouts of Ronald nor any notion that he has met with foul play; Wyndham is the perfect host, joshing with Ronald’s former sweetheart and the dead boy’s father and aunt, while Charles, the “submissive” of the pair, has difficulty hiding his anxiety. One of the guests, Brandon and Granillo’s former boarding-school housemaster Rupert Cadell, is

Leopold paid a great deal of respect by the hosts as the person who introduced them to the Nietzchean philosophy that prompted them to commit murder. It is Cadell who ultimately catches on that something is amiss, traps the boys with the gruesome evidence and notifies the police, but not before delivering a curtain speech absolving himself of any blame. Adapted as an early BBC television production in 1939, Rope was filmed in Hollywood nine years later by Alfred Hitchcock, with screenwriter Hume Cronyn transferring the locale to Manhattan and renaming the protagonists Brandon Shaw and Philip Morgan, played respectively by John Dall and Farley Granger. A cast-against-type James Stewart portrays Rupert Cadell, whose quiet ambivalence during the dinner party contrasts sharply with his tormented reaction to the manner in which the boys have distorted his philosophical ramblings. The play’s homosexual subtext is merely implied in the Production Code–controlled film version, with Dall and Granger using attitude and facial expressions to fill in the blanks. The dramatic impact of Rope is slightly mitigated by Hitchcock’s experimental decision to film the piece in uninterrupted ten-minute takes, with only three angle changes in the entire 80-minute film. While undeniably impressive, this device makes the film appear as aloof and detached as the murder of the poor fellow in the trunk. By the time Rope was distributed to theaters Richard Loeb had been dead for 12 years, killed by another inmate at Illinois’ Stateville Prison. Nathan Leopold had become a model prisoner, voluntarily exposing himself to malaria to test a new serum, organizing the Joliet prison library and working in the institution’s hospital. In 1958 he wrote his autobiography Life Plus 99 Years, indicating that by then he had fully grasped the enormity of his crime and was deeply regretful. His book came out two years after Meyer Levin’s novel Compulsion, which was based on the Leopold-Loeb case with all names and locations changed. Leopold reported that the novel had made him “physically sick” and took Levin to court, though he probably realized up front that he didn’t have a legal leg to stand on (the court agreed). Levin adapted Compulsion as a Broadway

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play in 1958; the following year 20th Century– Fox released a film version directed by Richard Fleischer. Bradford Dillman plays the Loeb character Artie Strauss, Dean Stockwell costars as the Leopold counterpart Judd Steiner, and Orson Welles is seen as Jonathan Wilk, based on Clarence Darrow. While the studio’s publicity packet identified the two protagonists by their character names, Welles was pinpointed as “Clarence Darrow” even though the Wilk alias remained in the film. The packet also stated that Richard Murphy’s screenplay “establishes the background and environment of the two boys— their wealthy homes, superior intellects, Nietzsche-like ideas and the pathologically subservient, hinting at homosexual, domination that Artie Strauss holds over Judd Steiner while this develops.” Though the Production Code was in a weakened state in 1959, director Fleischer was still confined to “hinting” at the strange emotional bond between Artie and Judd; it is a tribute to Dillman and Granger that they are able to convey what one psychologist described in 1924 as the “King-Slave” relationship between Loeb and Leopold without resorting to effeminacy or other drama-class acting tricks. Nathan Leopold was released from prison one year before the release of Compulsion, affirming that like the fictional Judd Steiner he had been “pathetically stupid” to enter into his unholy conspiracy with Dickie Loeb. Shunning publicity like the plague, Leopold proved that he was completely rehabilitated by devoting himself to good deeds for others, working in various hospitals and church missions in his new home of Puerto Rico. In 1961 he was married, which “proved” to some observers that his homosexuality was a thing of the past (we won’t go into that). Ten years later Leopold died from complications of diabetes at age 67. With the exception of the low-budget 1992 biopic Swoon, the last filmic variation on the Leopold-Loeb theme to date has been director Barbet Schroeder’s 2002 thriller Murder by Numbers. Played by Ryan Gosling and Michael Pitt, the film’s homicidal high schoolers Richard Haywood and Justin “Bonaparte” Pendleton give no indication that they’ve ever heard of

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Rope or Compulsion, but they’re definitely upholding tradition when they randomly murder a woman just to see what it feels like, then play a game of psychological cat- and-mouse with homicide detectives Cassie Mayweather (Sandra Bullock) and Sam Kennedy (Ben Chaplin). Though Tony Gayton’s screenplay starts out as a smart and compelling study of aberrant behavior, Murder by Numbers quickly morphs into a standard procedural-cum-serial killer melodrama, topped off with a (literal) cliffhanger.

LINGLE, ALFRED “JAKE” The films: The Finger Points (First National, 1931); The Secret Six (MGM, 1931)

There may have been a time in his 18-year career that newspaper reporter Alfred “Jake” Lingle went about his work with total honesty; but that time was not during the years in which he was an intimate of Chicago gang czar Al Capone (see separate entry). A journalist since 1912, Lingle hit his stride in the 1920s on the staff of the Chicago Tribune, covering the activities of organized crime in the wake of mob boss Dion O’Bannion’s murder in 1924. Jake’s great talent was as a “legman,” chasing down crime scoops throughout Chicago and the outlying suburbs and contacting the Tribune rewrite desk whenever he paused long enough to phone in. For this he was paid the princely sum of $65 per week, chicken feed even by the prevailing press standards of the time. His colleagues admired Lingle’s work ethic and his uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time with the right story; they were also in awe of his opulent lifestyle, far beyond the range of his piddly salary. It was assumed that Jake had inherited a fortune, and was in the print racket just for fun. But a different story emerged after 39-yearold Jake Lingle was shot and killed in the Randolph Street subway tunnel on June 9, 1930. The murder was startling not only because it occurred in full view of a crowd but also because of the unwritten Underworld rule that reporters were immune from killing: Bad for business, bad all around. Journalists throughout the nation composed tear-stained tributes for their fallen comrade, eulogizing Lingle as a martyr who died

nobly on behalf of a free press because he “knew too much.” Virtually the only observer who refused to sing beatitudes was a St. Louis reporter who sneered “Only the dumb wits in the newspaper game in Chicago are without a racket.” Within five days of Lingle’s murder, enough evidence had surfaced to prove that he’d been pulling down $60,000 per year in graft and hush money from the very gangsters who appeared in his articles. He also functioned as a go-between for local politicians and privilege-seeking criminals, and aided in brokering patronage deals to keep the police from making trouble for the city’s gamblers, bootleggers and whoremongers. One word from the highly influential and abovesuspicion Mr. Lingle could fix practically anything—with Jake fattening his bank account as a bonus. On the day he was killed Jake was in the process of another “fix,” this one benefiting himself at the expense of his gangland buddies. Beyond the usual demotions and firings that always take place when a city’s respectable citizens are found with their fingers in the cookie jar, Jake Lingle’s murder had one lasting positive effect: A legitimate and surprisingly effective all-out war on gangsterdom in Chicago, organized by Col. R.I. Randolph of the Association of Commerce and called the “Secret Six” committee. The “Secret Six” first swung into action in January 1931. In April of that year, one of the first Hollywood films inspired by the events which sparked this movement emanated from the studios of MGM, directed by George W. Hill and appropriately titled The Secret Six. Though all names were changed, it was simplicity itself to recognize screenwriter Frances Marion’s chronicle of the rise of gangster Louie Scorpio (Wallace Beery) after succeeding his former boss Johnny Franks (Ralph Bellamy) as a replay of Al Capone’s ascendancy following the forced retirement of Johnny Torrio. There was also scant confusion as to the source of the film’s committee of six business leaders who dedicate themselves to toppling the Scorpio empire with the help of ace reporters Hank Rogers ( Johnny Mack Brown) and Carl Luckner (Clark Gable). With a nod to Zorro, the members of the Secret Six wear domino masks to hide their identities,

Lodijenski even from those friendly to their cause. As for the two reporters, unlike Jake Lingle they are as pure as virgin oil, though Hank Rogers suffers a fate similar to Lingle’s when he is gunned down in a subway car. While civic-minded MGM avoided the hotbutton issue of journalistic corruption, First National Pictures pulled no punches in their Jake Lingle yarn The Finger Points, written by John Monk Saunders, Robert Lord and W.R. (Little Caesar) Burnett, directed by John Francis Dillon, and released exactly one week before The Secret Six. Clark Gable also appears in this film, now on the wrong side of the fence as silky mob leader Louis J. Blanco. Richard Barthelmess heads the cast as reporter Breckinridge “Breck” Lee, who arrives in New York from the deep South brimming with naïvete and idealism. Turning down a bribe offered by Blanco, Lee writes an article about an illicit gambling establishment and ends up hospitalized as a result. Worse yet, Breck’s act of bravado does nothing to earn him the pay raise he thinks he deserves. Looking around and realizing that everybody is out for himself, Breck accepts Blanco’s offer to keep mum about gangland activities in exchange for huge payoffs and the occasional exclusive story. Hailed by the public as a topnotch crime reporter, Breck is a hero to everyone but sob sister Marcia Collins (Fay Wray, apparently the only New York reporter with a British accent), who suspects that Breck’s newfound wealth has a few strings attached. Breck ultimately outsmarts himself by double-crossing Blanco for a bigger bribe from a rival gangster. After his inevitable murder (nowhere near a subway this time), Breck is lionized as a hero by his colleagues—while Marcia, who knows the truth, chooses to remain silent. The Finger Points’ authenticity (at least in comparison with The Secret Six) extends to the set used for Breck’s newspaper office, an exact replica of the city room at the Chicago Tribune. While reviewers were quick to catch the similarities between Breck Lee and Jake Lingle, a few managed to miss the film’s “you can’t do business with criminals” message. Frederick James Smith of New Movie Magazine proclaimed that the moral of the story was that

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newspaper editors should pay their reporters better.

LODIJENSKI, GENERAL THEODORE The film: The Last Command (Paramount, 1928)

Among the more enduring and endearing stock movie characters of Hollywood’s Golden Age was the former Russian aristocrat who after the 1917 Revolution is reduced to working as a waiter, a butler, a doorman or a cab driver. Actors like Mischa Auer, Leonid Kinsky and Gregory Ratoff, who specialized in this particular role, were rank amateurs compared to Theodore Lodi. Oh, they may have had more acting talent, but Lodi was the “genuine goods”—for once upon a time, he was known as Theodore Lodijenski of the Czar’s Imperial Gendarmerie. Occasionally he was billed onscreen by his rank and full last name, General Lodijenski (sometimes spelled Lodijensky). As director Robert Florey told film historian Kevin Brownlow, “Between 1919 and 1923, perhaps twenty or more former Russian officers landed in Hollywood. They all said they were Generals. I never met a Captain or a Corporal.” When the 42-year-old Lodijenski arrived in America in 1919 he had quite a story to tell, one that might well have been true. As an attaché to the Czar’s private bodyguard, he claimed to have held Moscow against the revolutionaries for nearly a week, surrendering only to keep everyone from being slaughtered. He and his fellow officers were jailed and threatened with death unless they revealed the names and hiding places of other refugees. Lodijenski refused and was led out be executed three times, only to be returned to his cell. Recognizing this as a ploy to break his will, he resolved to escape, first bribing a guard to contact his friends on the outside, then busting out of jail by sliding down a convenient drainpipe (“One of those miracles that reads like a fairy tale,” he later recalled to Screenland reporter Helen Ludlam). Together with his wife, Lodijenski fled to France and then to America, where he arrived with $50 to his name. Securing a job as a riveter, he saved enough money to open a millinery shop with his wife in

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charge. A newspaper article about Lodijenski resulted in the financial backing needed to open a Russian restaurant, the Double Eagle, on Manhattan’s 57th Street. Through the courtesy of one of his best customers, film star Gloria Swanson, he met director Allan Dwan, who hired him as a technical advisor and actor for the 1924 Swanson vehicle Her Love Story. Not long afterward the Double Eagle went out of business, ruining Lodijenski financially. Once again a Hollywood luminary came to his rescue. Director Ernst Lubitsch, who had known Lodijenski years earlier, was looking over a group of extras for his upcoming film The Patriot. It was not unusual for Russian expatriates to accept extra roles as military characters, but according to NEA columnist Gilbert Swan, Lubitsch was taken aback when he spotted one man: “There stood his friend, the ex-commander, in full uniform, waiting to be called for work—at $7.50 per day.” Lubitsch related this story to fellow director Josef von Sternberg, who used it as the launching pad for his 1928 silent drama The Last Command. Scripted by Lajos Biró and John F. Goodrich with subtitles by Herman J. Mankiewicz, The Last Command is mostly related in flashback, as a shabby Hollywood extra (Emil Jannings) recalls the events that led to his present sorry state. In the days of Czarist Russia he was Grand Duke Sergius Alexander, a general in the Imperial Army. Came the revolution and the Grand Duke risked his life to defend Moscow against the Bolsheviks, only to be betrayed by his sweetheart Natalie Dabrova (Evelyn Brent), in cahoots with rebel leader Lev Andereyev (William Powell). The Grand Duke was gratified to learn that Natalie had only pretended to turn on him to save his life, then horrified to watch her die in a train crash. Broken in body and spirit, he is a pathetic figure as he stumbles into a movie-studio dressing room with a group of fellow extras. Wearing the costume of a Russian general he is brought before the film’s director—none other than his old enemy Lev Andreyev, who savors the opportunity to humiliate the fallen aristocrat. But during the filming of a battle scene, Sergius Alexander forgets he is only an extra and becomes the

Grand Duke all over again, valiantly exhorting his comrades to “victory.” The strain is too much for the old man and he dies in the arms of a tearful Andreyev, who belatedly realizes that here was a great man whom he has General Theodore Lodihorribly wronged. jenski, in character for one The publicity sur- of his film roles. rounding The Last Command was manna from heaven for General Lodijenski, who capitalized on his newfound fame with better and showier roles in such films as The Scarlet Lady, The Cossacks, and most memorably Will Rogers’ first talkie They Had to See Paris (1929), in which the General, cast as Grand Duke Mikhail, shares a very funny scene with Rogers as they crack wise about the selfenamored aristocrats at a fancy Parisian soirée (Lodijenski would repeat this character in Rogers’ 1932 vehicle Down to Earth). Very much in demand for interviews, the General obliged by repeating and re-repeating the story of his life, with fresh details in each successive article (At one point he claimed to have been an officer in the Cossack army, though Robert Florey would later refute this by noting that the Gendarmerie were never at the battlefront). Best of all, Lodijenski was able to reopen the Double Eagle restaurant, this time on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. The place was destroyed in an explosion in the early 1930s but was successfully reconstructed with the help of a wealthy patron, only to permanently close its doors when the area was re-zoned. General Lodijenski returned to movies as a fulltime bit player, making his last known screen appearance 12 years before his death in 1947.

LOEB, HAROLD—AND CAYETANO ORDÓÑEZ, L ADY DUFF T WYSDEN [DOROTHY SMURTHWAITE]

The film: The Sun Also Rises (Darryl F. Zanuck/20th Century–Fox, 1957)

Loeb Ernest Hemingway could be cruel and downright sadistic when using people of his acquaintance as models for his fictional characters. In his first draft of The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Hemingway’s dissolute hero was so savage a caricature of F. Scott Fitzgerald that he was identified by name. Hemingway didn’t go that far in his classic “Lost Generation” novel The Sun Also Rises, though one suspects that the only reason he stopped short of using genuine names was that his publisher held the threat of lawsuits over his head. Among Hemingway’s earliest literary champions was Harold Loeb (1891–1974), scion of a wealthy New York Jewish family who after World War I became manager of the Sunwise Turn, an avant-garde New York bookstore. Here he became acquainted with several promising authors, Hemingway among them. Establishing his own arts- and-literature magazine Broom, Loeb published a number of early pieces by these soon-to-be famous scriveners. The “radical” nature of these formative works compelled him to rush to the defense of his pet authors when they were criticized: In Hemingway’s case, Loeb hotly denied that his friend Ernest was in any way anti–Semitic despite the apparent evidence of his writings. Relocating to Paris in the early 1920s, Loeb maintained his friendship with fellow expatriate Hemingway and frequently financed the famously improvident writer. During this period Loeb fell in love with Dorothy “Duff ” Smurthwaite (1893–1938), the daughter of a Yorkshire wine merchant. Duff had the advantage of an expensive education in Paris, where she met Luttrel Byrom, the first of four wealthy husbands. Byrom’s secret-service activities during the War brought Dorothy in contract with several handsome military officers, among them Sir Robert Twysden of the British Royal Navy. Her romance with Twydsen began while she was still Mrs. Byrom, much to the displeasure of Sir Robert’s aristocratic family. Duff never cared much about propriety where sex was concerned, and in 1917 she shed herself of Byrom and married Sir Robert, in the process becoming Lady Duff Twysden. Before long she was insisting

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that her second husband was a nasty drunkard, though Sir Robert’s family was convinced that it was her own prodigious drinking that had led the young baronet astray. Leaving Sir Robert and heading to Paris, she began making the rounds with her cousin and close confidant Pat Guthrie, likewise an alcoholic. By now involved with Pat despite his homosexual leanings, Duff plunged into the social whirl of Montparanasse, becoming the toast of the town with her libertine lifestyle, trendy close-cropped hair and offbeat wardrobe. Though Pat turned out to be just as abusive as Sir Robert and neglected her in favor of his circle of gay friends, Duff took whatever hand life dealt her without complaint, regret or apology, never worrying if she was rich (which wasn’t often) or poor (which was) and always in full possession of her faculties and earthy sense of humor no matter how much she drank. Is it any wonder that a bookish intellectual like Harold Loeb would be swept off his feet by the dazzling Lady Duff Twysden? Unfortunately for Loeb’s friendship with Hemingway, Ernest was equally enamored of Lady Duff. To what extent the married author acted upon his passion is unknown, though for all her hedonism Duff had made a self-promise to keep her hands off men whose wives she had befriended. For the record, Duff insisted to her third husband (where did he come from?) that she’d never slept with Hemingway; it was clear, however, that Ernest wanted more from her than a drinking friendship. Everything came to a head when Hemingway, Loeb and Lady Duff all found themselves in Pamplona, Spain, for the 1925 running of the bulls. Also in attendance was the redoubtable Pat Guthrie, incensed over Hemingway’s inability to hide his lust for Duff—not to mention Loeb’s puppylike devotion to the woman. One night Guthrie made an unpleasant scene, embarrassing the also-present Mrs. Hemingway and leading Loeb to conclude that he would lose Duff ’s affections if Ernest remained in Pamplona. The air was so thick that Loeb and Hemingway nearly came to blows. Ernest diplomatically patched things up, but the relationships between the main players in this little melodrama would never be the same.

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Meanwhile, Hemingway had a novel to complete. It had started out as a paean to Cayetano Ordóñez (1904–1961), a young bullfighter who since his ring debut in 1923 had become a huge sensation throughout Spain. Indeed, he was the first matador ever to be carried in triumph by the aficionados through the main gates of the 150-year-old Maestranza arena in Ronda. It goes without saying that among Ordóñez’s most fervent fans was Ernest Hemingway, who wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to heap olés upon the youthful torero in print. But when his new novel emerged as The Sun Also Rises in 1926, the Ordóñez character, Pedro Romero, was but one member of a sizeable cast of characters. Of the novel, Hemingway later insisted “Everything that happened in the ring was true, and everything outside was fiction.” Sure it was, Ernie. The Sun Also Rises focuses on a group of aimless expatriates gathered together in Europe in the 1920s. Protagonist Jake Barnes is a disillusioned American war veteran who enters into a relationship with twice-divorced Englishwoman Lady Brett Ashley, a “damned good looking” creature with bobbed hair, a unique wardrobe and a hearty disdain for the accepted conventions of society. Promiscuous in her romances and staggering in her liquor intake, Lady Brett nonetheless represents an ideal to Jake—but alas, never a bedmate. Though not married like his real-life counterpart Hemingway, Jake has been rendered impotent by a war wound. Lady Brett also catches the fancy of Jake’s college chum Robert Cohn, an abrasive, self-pitying intellectual whom many of Brett’s intimates resent, making anti–Semitic remarks in his presence. Almost as if to undermine Cohn, Jake introduces Lady Brett to 19-year-old matador Pedro Romero, with whom she has a brief but torrid affair. This not only causes friction between Jake and Cohn but also with Brett’s erstwhile drinking companion Mike Campbell, who like Lady Duff Twysden’s kissin’ cousin Pat Guthrie is a hot-tempered Scotsman. The fight that never was between Hemingway and Harold Loeb in Paplona becomes an all-out donnybrook between Jake and Robert Cohn, who in the novel

is an expert boxer; Cohn also whales the tar out of the obnoxious Mike Campbell and the hapless Pedro Romero. The last section of The Sun Also Rises is an extended “morning after,” with the now-sober principals regretting their actions, realizing that their relationships have come to an end, and going their separate ways— which, need we add, is just about the same thing that happened with Hemingway, Cohn, Lady Duff and Guthrie. Characteristically, Lady Duff Twysden was amused by The Sun Also Rises, leading Hemingway to assume after her death that she would have been pleased when he dedicated later editions of the novel to her. Cayetano Ordóñez was flattered by his portrayal, if a bit nonplussed by his inclusion in the sexual intrigues. But Harold Loeb not only felt betrayed by Hemingway’s depiction of him as a whining bore, but also sensed that perhaps he’d been premature in defending Ernest against charges of anti–Semitism. The person most offended by The Sun Also Rises was Ernest Hemingway’s wife Elizabeth, who was put out that Ernest hadn’t based the novel’s heroine on her. They would divorce in 1927, whereupon Hemingway wed Pauline Pfeiffer, whom he later claimed had also inspired the character of Lady Brett to a certain extent. After many aborted attempts by adventurous producers to film The Sun Also Rises (RKORadio optioned the novel as early as 1932), the Hollywood Production Code had relaxed sufficiently in 1957 for Darryl F. Zanuck to mount a glossy cinematization filmed partly on the 20th Century–Fox soundstages and partly on location (with Morelli Mexico standing in for Pamplona) under the direction of Henry King. Peter Viertel’s screenplay does not hedge on the topics of Jake Barnes’ impotence or Lady Brett’s promiscuity, though the novel’s homosexual undertones involving Lady Brett’s entourage are discreetly written out. The one criticism that has always been levelled against the film is that most of the main actors were too old for their roles: While Jake Barnes, Robert Cohn and Mike Campbell are all supposed to be in their late 20s, they are respectively portrayed by 43-year-old Tyrone Power, 40-year-old Mel Ferrer and 48-

Loeb year-old Errol Flynn. More age appropriate are 35-year-old Ava Gardner as Lady Brett Ashley, and 27-year-old newcomer (and future movie mogul) Robert Evans as Pedro Romero. Though it went as far as a big-budget 1957 film could go in capturing the zeitgeist of the Hemingway novel, The Sun Also Rises is never as satisfying as its source material, nor is the bloated TV-movie remake of 1984. The works of Ernest Hemingway have seldom been given proper screen treatment, and for all we know they never will. But isn’t it pretty to think so?

LOEB, PHILIP The film: The Front (Devon/Persky-Bright/ Rollins-Joffe/Columbia, 1976)

The 1976 film The Front has been described as a comedy of revenge. Set during the Blacklist era of the 1950s, the film was written by Walter Bernstein, directed by Martin Ritt, and featured in its cast Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi, Lloyd Gough and Joshua Shelley, all of whom had been blacklisted from films and television as part of the House Un-American Activities Committee’s purge of “subversive” show business employees. Bernstein and Ritt would probably have preferred to make a dramatic film about those dark days, but the only way they could sell it to Columbia Pictures was as a comedy. Woody Allen stars as a nebbishy delicatessen owner who is asked to be a “front” for a blacklisted writer friend—that is, to sign his name to his friend’s scripts so they can be sold to television. Before long Woody is fronting for a number of writers who’ve been banned from working on TV, which leads to unforeseen complications, some of them involving brash comedian Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel), who is fired from a prestigious TV anthology because of his youthful political indiscretions and blocked from any other work. Though The Front eventually loses its way when it morphs into a Woody Allen vehicle—critic Roger Ebert complained “The moral issues involved become an inconvenience; blacklisting is the backdrop for a situation comedy”—and subtlety is not the filmmakers’ strong suit, the movie is to be commended for shedding new light on a shameful period in American history.

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While many Hollywood careers were ruined or at least retarded by the Blacklist, most of its victims proved amazingly resilient. In addition to hiring “fronts” for their scripts, writers were able to sell their work pseudonymously or in countries outside the U.S.; directors followed the same route, with blacklistees like Jules Dassin and Joseph Losey carving out successful new careers in England and Europe; and many actors found work in the theater, which was not affected by the Blacklist. Contrary to legend, suicides were rare, at least in show business— which is probably why the tragedy of Philip Loeb was all the more conspicuous. Born in Philadelphia in 1891, Philip Loeb gave up plans for a law career when he began acting in amateur theatricals. He made his Broadway debut in 1916’s If I Were King, distinguishing himself early on when, late for his cue one evening, he made his entrance through a prop fireplace. After World War I service he joined the Theater Guild as actor, director, writer and musician, and for many years was personal assistant to Guild coproducer Theresa Helburn. Specializing in comedy and character roles when not directing, he was a guiding force behind the annual Garrick Garieties revue which provided an early venue for composers Rodgers and Hart. His starring roles included Harry Binion in the popular stage farce Room Service; when the play was filmed by the Marx Bros. in 1938 with Chico Marx as “Harry Binelli,” Loeb was cast in the small but juicy role of repo man Timothy Hogarth. Loeb’s other film appearances were sparse; he was devoted to the theater and especially the Actors’ Equity union, where he found a platform for his radical progressivism. Loeb and fellow actor-activist Sam Jaffe would orchestrate two dramatic divisions in Equity membership drawn along political lines, and on his own he zealously lobbied for fairer wages and better working conditions for non-starring actors. He carried his sociopolitical fervor into his offstage activities via such organizations as the End Jim Crow in Baseball Committee; but though he exhibited pro–Communist sympathies in his support of Stalin’s “purge trials” of the 1930s, there is no

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record of his ever actually joining the party. While not exactly a barrel of laughs, Loeb possessed a wicked sense of humor which endeared him to his coworkers: When a government official cast aspersions on his membership in the left-leaning Artist’s Committee to Win the War, Loeb responded “What, then, to Lose the War?” After appearing in Molly and Me, a 1948 Broadway play based on the evergreen radio series The Goldbergs, Loeb was invited by actressplaywright Gertrude Berg to repeat his role as Jake Goldberg in CBS’ upcoming television version of the property. Debuting in 1949, TV’s The Goldbergs was well into its second successful season when Loeb came under a cloud with the publication of the pamphlet Red Channels, which listed hundreds of TV, film and stage employees as being either Communists or “Commie-symps.” Goldbergs sponsor General Foods was all for dropping Loeb, but Gertrude Berg valiantly stood by the actor. Only when the series changed networks and the sponsor refused to go along with the change unless Loeb was fired did Berg reluctantly acquiesce, though she paid the actor the full $40,000 due him on the remaining two years of his contract. Loeb desperately needed that income; he was the sole support of his schizophrenic son Johnny, who lived in a $12,000-per-annum private sanitarium. After a two-year run in the stage comedy Time Out for Ginger (where among his costars was a young Steve McQueen), the only theatrical work Loeb was able to obtain was an off– Broadway production of The Three Sisters at $87.50 per week. With his bank account depleted and his son shunted off to a state mental hospital, Loeb went into a deep depression, one that could not be lifted by his upcoming acting assignment in another low-paying stage production. At that time he was living with his best friend Zero Mostel, who was forced to keep a close watch on Loeb so that he wouldn’t do something drastic. On August 31, 1955, Loeb left the Mostel home and registered under the name “Fred Lang” at the Hotel Taft in downtown Manhattan. The following morning he was found dead from an overdose of sleeping pills. Though an official investigation into the cause

of death followed, his actress friend Viola Harris knew what had happened: “He died of a disease known as the Blacklist.” In tribute to his late comrade Philip Loeb, Zero Mostel incorporated much of the man’s personality and private demons (minus the tragic plight of Loeb’s son) in his portrayal of Hecky Brown in The Front. Though Loeb’s righteous anger is never far from the surface of the characterization, Hecky is basically apolitical, explaining to HUAC investigators that he’d joined the Communist party to meet a girl with “a nice ass.” Unable to find work, Hecky accepts a measly $250 to appear in a Catskills nightclub, only to discover after the performance that the manager has short-changed him. This incident occurred not to Loeb but to Zero Mostel himself; in his case, he found out that he was going to be stiffed before going on stage and took out his rage on the audience, who thought it was all part of his act. Hecky’s inevitable suicide, like Philip Loeb’s, occurs in a lonely New York hotel room, with the heartrending grace note of having him quietly and delicately jump out the window, his exit confirmed by the soft fluttering of curtains in the gentle breeze.

LONERGAN, EILEEN—AND TOM LONERGAN The film: Open Water (Plunge Pictures LLC/ Lions Gate, 2003)

Thirty-three-year-old Louisiana native Tom Lonergan and his 28-year-old wife, Eileen, had just wrapped up a tour of duty with the Peace Corps in the South Pacific when in early 1998 they embarked upon a trip to Hawaii, where they planned to make their home. By January 25 they had come as far as Queensland, Australia, where they donned scuba gear and climbed aboard the charter boat Outer Edge along with 24 other passengers. Their destination was the Great Barrier Reef, which as diving enthusiasts the Lonergans knew to be an ideal site for their hobby. At the end of the day, the crew counted 24 returnees from the dive, assumed they’d made a mistake and adjusted the manifest to 26, whereupon the party made the 25-mile trip back to Queensland. Only when skipper Geoffrey Nairn noticed two days later that Tom and Eileen’s personal items

Lonergan were still on board the Outer Edge did anyone realize that the couple was missing. When a fiveday search for the Lonergans proved fruitless, the theory was that they had been accidentally left behind by the Outer Edge, then either drowned or were devoured by sharks. This was also the conclusion reached by Eileen’s father, John Hains, who refused to accept an alternate theory proposed by the Australian diving industry that the couple was actually hiding somewhere, perpetrating a hoax. A bookshop owner in Port Douglas reported that the Lonergans had been in her shop two days after their disappearance, while others claimed to have seen the boat that picked them up in the ocean. Could Eileen and Tom have faked their deaths as part of an insurance scam? If so, then why were their bank accounts still intact and their insurance company never contacted? John Hains figured that the hoax rumors were circulated to deflect responsibility from the crew of the Outer Edge. Geoffrey Nairn was later tried and acquitted on manslaughter charges and forced to shut down his charter operation after pleading guilty to negligence and paying a fine. Though the Lonergans were never found, Nairn went along with the consensus of the authorities: “The highest probability is that Tom and Eileen are dead.” Further muddying the waters, so to speak, was a diary left behind by Tom Lonergan which suggested that the couple was having problems. A new theory emerged that Tom had killed Eileen during their swim and then committed suicide; but this went against the grain of the couple’s devout Catholicism, so their disappearance returned to the realm of unsolved mysteries. Indy-film director Chris Kentis had a lifelong fascination with stories of shark attacks. A certified scuba diver, Kentis agreed with most experts that, Jaws notwithstanding, sharks rarely attack humans. “Even the sharks considered dangerous to humans usually only bite out of mistaken identity,” Kentis told Entertainment Weekly. He then qualified his words: “But as dehydration and exhaustion set in and people’s heart rates change, they start resembling a primary food source for sharks: wounded animals. So it’s only

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a matter of time before they do close in.” This, opined Kentis, was the reason for the heavy mortality rate among shipwrecked sailors at the mercy of sharks in the infamous 1945 USS Indianapolis incident, recalled in gory detail by Robert Shaw’s character Quint in Jaws. It had long been the dream of Kentis and his producerwife Laura Lau to make an elaborate motionpicture recreation of the Indianapolis tragedy, but he was unable to raise sufficient funds for such an undertaking. Kentis and Lau opted instead for a dramatization of the Lonergan story, using unknown actors to avoid having star names detract from the power of the narrative. Shot in six weeks on digital video and a budget of $130,000, Open Water features Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis as Susan and Daniel, the screen equivalents of Eileen and Tom Lonergan. With no special-effects budget to play with, Kentis used 40 to 50 real sharks in the underwater scenes, banking on his conviction that they wouldn’t attack healthy human swimmers by placing his actors in the same shots with the finny predators (who were constantly fed tuna by shark-wrangler Stuart Cove to keep them occupied). To prevent his stars from being swept away in the strong ocean currents, the director tethered Ryan and Travis to a boat with fishing line. Despite early trepidations, the actors gamely allowed themselves to be thus restrained as they swam with sharks. These scenes were lensed during the first two weeks of production, at a time when the actors were at their freshest and least exhausted (It might also have been a cautionary measure; if anything untoward happened, Kentis still had four more weeks to get a couple of new leading players). So that no one in Australia would have reason to complain, the locale of Open Water was deliberately ambiguous, with Kentis shooting in the Bahamas, the Grenadines, the Virgin Islands and Mexico, with indigenous Fiji music playing in the background. There is, however, no ambiguity as to the cause of Susan and Daniel’s plight. While it is established early on that the couple is going through a crisis in their marriage, Kentis’ screenplay sticks to the prevailing theory that the real couple was left behind accidentally by

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the charter boat’s crew. Filmed almost entirely from the POV of the hapless hero and heroine, the ocean scenes in Open Water are not recommended viewing for anyone inclined to mal de mer, with the camera weaving and bobbing right along with the stranded protagonists as they go through the classic three stages of anger, denial and (most poignantly) resignation. Without revealing the ending, it can be said that the film, unlike the actual unresolved story, concludes with little doubt as to the ultimate destiny of Susan and Daniel. Transferred from tape to film, Open Water met with such a positive reaction in test showings that it was picked up for distribution by Lions Gate for $2.5 million. The 79-minute indie proved to be a boxoffice success despite those filmgoers who felt that its unrelieved concentration on two people keeping their heads above water was more tedious than tense. And never fear, boys and girls: Both Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis lived to act again.

LONG, HUEY The films: Hold That Co-ed (20th Century–Fox, 1938); Pilot #5 (MGM, 1943); All the King’s Men (Columbia, 1949); A Lion Is in the Streets (Cagney/Warner Bros., 1953); All the King’s Men (Relativity Media/Phoenix Pictures/VIP Medienfonds 3A/4A/Rising Star/Columbia, 2006)

Decades after his death, opinions regarding Louisiana governor and senator Huey Pierce Long remain sharply divided in his home state. To some, the stocky, tousle-haired Long was a knight in shining armor, a Populist champion of the disadvantaged, the man who brought Louisiana kicking and screaming into the 20th century with sweeping economic reforms, vast expansion of and improvements upon the free educational system, the transformation of Louisiana State University into a leading academic center, and the construction and maintenance of roads, bridges and hospitals. To others Long was nothing more than a demagogue who built his career on false claims and base appeals to emotion rather than reason, a chiseler and grafter who paid out more in bribes and patronage than in public welfare, a political hack who stocked all important legislative and judicial of-

fices with hand-picked cronies and stooges, a blackmailer who plundered the closets of his enemies to ruin them professionally and personally, a dictator who effectively abolished local government in Louisiana, and worst of all a drunken philanderer. When President Franklin Roosevelt declared Huey Long one of the most dangerous men in America, the nation’s liberal establishment fell into lockstep with FDR; at the same time, Long’s 1935 third-party Presidential bid was enthusiastically supported by Americans who had no great love for Roosevelt. Born in 1893 to a middle-class farming family, Huey Long never received a high school or college diploma but was smart enough to pass the Louisiana bar exam. Prior to his legal career he was a travelling salesman, using his genial bombast to win friends and influence people; he also learned how to bend rules without breaking them by shamelessly padding his expense account. Establishing a reputation as a lawyer who never took a case against a poor man or sided with monopolies, he ran for governor in 1924, mocking the opposition as “old regulars” in the pockets of Big Business. Though he lost that election he went on to win his second gubernatorial bid in 1928 with a landslide victory that cut across Louisiana’s long-entrenched religious and racial lines. The state’s black population was particularly supportive of Long for making good his promises to pave roads, provide cheap utilities and revitalize schools in their communities, and also because he refused to kowtow to the Ku Klux Klan—though he wasn’t above maligning opponents by claiming they had “Negro blood.” His campaign slogan “Every man a king!” enabled him to uphold the illusion of being a selfless Man of the People, even while packing the bureaucracy with men who danced only to his tune. In 1929 his old nemesis Standard Oil underwrote an effort to impeach Long, but he wriggled out of that one by threatening to expose the past peccadilloes of his enemies. To prevent opponents from blocking his legislation, in 1930 Long got himself elected state senator, refusing to relocate to Washington until he was absolutely certain that the state government would remain in the hands of his own

Long flunkeys. He became a national figure with his “Share Our Wealth” policy, arguing that since according to his calculations 1 percent of the population controlled 66 percent of all the money in the bank, the nation’s richest people should redistribute their wealth to everyone else. While he managed to keep Louisiana’s working force employed after the 1929 Crash, his vicelike hold on all aspects of the state’s government eventually had a negative effect on the economy, sparking the formation of the violently anti–Long Square Deal Association and triggering riots in the streets. On September 8, 1935, Huey Long had just wrapped up a dirty campaign to destroy his longtime foe Judge Benjamin Pavy, and was walking through the corridors of the capitol building in Baton Rouge. Pavy’s son-in-law Dr. Carl Weiss suddenly sprang from the shadows and fired several shots at Long. In the ensuing crossfire the Senator’s bodyguards pumped 62 bullets into Weiss, but the damage to their boss was already done. Mortally wounded, Huey Long died on September 10, after moaning his final words “God, don’t let me die. I have so much to do.” Except for the newsreels that he loved so much because they gave him unfettered opportunity to strut and sing to his heart’s content, Huey Long was largely untouched by Hollywood in the years surrounding his death. John Barrymore’s deliciously ripe portrayal of a an unnamed state governor who lends his support to a failing college for his own political gain in the musical comedy Hold That Co-ed was recognized by critics and fans alike as a broad travesty of Huey Long, though Barrymore made no attempt at an impersonation. Equally obvious but less endearing was Howard Freeman as Governor Hank Durban in the MGM wartime programmer Pilot #5. To explain the dogged determination of protagonist George Braynor Collins (Franchot Tone) to wipe fascism from the face of the earth, the film flashes back to Collins’ pre– World War II experiences as a staffer for Southern governor Durban. Upon recognizing the governor as a demagogue and would-be dictator Collins launches a personal campaign to topple

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Huey P. Long in the late 1920s.

Durban, only to end up ruining his own career. Hank Durban’s cynically calculated Populist image is encapsulated in a brief scene where, just before he is to appear in a newsreel interview, he deliberately buttons his vest the wrong way. Once the cameras are rolling Durban “accidentally” discovers his misbuttoned vest, chuckles at how his wife will give him the dickens for his sloppiness, then launches into his carefully rehearsed “spontaneous” comments. California native and Louisiana transplant Adria Locke Langley began work on her first novel A Lion Is in the Streets in 1933, while Huey Long was still alive. Nonetheless, the novel’s protagonist Hank Martin, a Louisiana backwoods peddler who emerges as a dangerous political force, ends up being assassinated by a personal enemy, a macabre portent of events to come. The author denied that the book was inspired by Long, explaining that it was concerned with the “universal demagogue.” When A Lion Is in the Streets was finally published in 1945 Langley eagerly accepted an invitation to meet Long’s family: “I never met Huey Long and I know very little about him.” Though the novel was a bestseller,

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no Hollywood studio wanted to option it because of the critical consensus that it was badly written and clumsily constructed. But producer William Cagney was attracted to the novel’s theme of “the simplicity with which a demagogue can pervert the democratic system.” Purchasing the property for $250,000 as a vehicle for his movie-star brother James, Bill Cagney signed a three-picture deal with Warner Bros. so that the studio would agree to distribute the Cagneys’ independently produced adaptation of A Lion Is in Streets. The ink was hardly dry on the deal when in 1946 Kentucky-born Robert Penn Warren published All the King’s Men, a novel-length expansion of his 1936 verse play Proud Flesh, written just after Huey Long’s assassination. Like Adria Locke Langley, Warren insisted that his novel’s main character Willie Stark, a self-taught lawyer whose Populism propels him straight into the governor’s office where his initially wellintentioned efforts to serve his poverty-stricken constituents give way to demagoguery, was not specifically based on Huey Long. Warren even took the precaution of never identifying the Southern state where Stark systematically corrupts everyone within his sphere of influence— including the novel’s narrator, idealistic reporter Jack Burden. But the individual details in the storyline, notably Willie Stark’s wanton destruction of Burden’s surrogate father Judge Stanton by dredging up a scandal in the judge’s past, and Stark’s subsequent murder at the hands of the judge’s nephew Dr. Adam Stanton, cannot easily be dismissed as mere fiction. When All the King’s Men attained best-seller status and earned the Pulitzer Prize, Hollywood insiders wondered aloud how the Cagney Brothers would react to this challenge to their ongoing efforts to fictionalize Huey Long onscreen via A Lion Is in the Streets. It was widely known that Bill Cagney had gone through several writers who’d tried and failed to wring a workable screenplay from the cumbersome Langley novel (Luther Davis would end up as the only writer credited onscreen). The inevitable movie sale of All the King’s Men to Columbia Pictures and the ensuing blockbuster 1949 film version starring

Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark was graciously acknowledged by James Cagney, who declared director-screenwriter Robert Rossen’s adaptation of the Warren novel as “one of the best pictures I’ve ever seen.” As for the longdelayed A Lion Is in the Streets, Cagney stated “Except for the theme the two pictures aren’t at all alike.” The public wouldn’t find that out until four years after All the King’s Men had won three Academy Awards for best picture, best leading actor (Crawford) and best supporting actress (Mercedes McCambridge). Released in 1953, the Raoul Walsh–directed A Lion Is in the Streets shows signs of undergoing extensive rewrites to remove all resemblances to its 1949 thematic predecessor. Whereas the novel’s Hank Martin is not killed until after he becomes governor, the film’s Martin (Cagney of course) is shot down even before the votes are counted. And whereas both the original A Lion Is in the Streets and the screenplay of All the King’s Men cover several years and several locations, the Cagney film is confined to a single county (not parish, since unlike the novel Louisiana is not identified by name) and a relatively short timespan. In scaling down the screen adaptation of Lion Is in the Streets to avoid comparison with the more expansive All the King’s Men, the Cagney Brothers also limited the dramatic scope of the story; and with less material to work with, James Cagney has a tough uphill climb bringing more than one dimension to the character of Hank Martin. In consequence, A Lion Is in the Streets is never as entertaining or compelling as All the King’s Men. The same can be said of director-writer Steven Zaillian’s 2003 remake of All the King’s Men, starring Sean Penn as Willie Stark. The film never allows us to get to know the mercurial Stark as intimately as in the 1949 original; and worse, the usually reliable Sean Penn is distressingly hollow and thoroughly forgettable in the leading role. Broderick Crawford may not be as sexy or versatile as Penn, but there’s no way you can forget his powerhouse performance.

LUCE, CLARE BOOTHE—AND HENRY LUCE The films: The Philadelphia Story (MGM, 1940);

Luce The Big Clock (Paramount, 1948); Top Secret Affair (Warner Bros., 1957)

“Behind this latest, most incomprehensible Timenterprise looms, as usual, ambitious, gimlet- eyed, Baby Tycoon Henry Robinson Luce… . Headman Luce was born in Tengchowfu China. Under brows too beetling for a baby, young Luce grew up inside the compound, played with his two sisters, lisped first Chinese.” The above quote is from a 1936 magazine profile of American media mogul Henry Luce (1898–1967), the Yale-educated son of Presbyterian missionaries who became one of the most powerful and influential publishers of his era with such weekly magazines as Time, Life, Fortune and Sports Illustrated (the newly launched Life is referenced in the preceding paragraph’s first sentence). Since the profile is written in the adjective-laden, reverse-order “Timestyle” created by Luce’s partner Briton Hadden, one might assume that it originally appeared in Time magazine itself. Instead, it was published in the rival New Yorker and written in a parody of Timestyle by Wolcott Gibbs. Gibbs’ burlesque of Luce- Hadden’s topsy- turvy prose includes such gems as “Backwards ran sentences until reeled the mind,” “Sitting pretty are the boys,” and “Where it will all end, knows God.” Though Luce didn’t like being thus lampooned, his reactionary political views and smugly arrogant assumption that he was America’s supreme oligarch of news dissemination left him wide open for ridicule—especially regarding his mulishly loyal support of self-proclaimed Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek, with Luce refusing to admit that Chiang was little better than a mercenary warlord. Among Luce’s Yale colleagues was playwright Philip Barry, whose 1939 romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story is in part a gentle lampoon of the publisher’s weekly pictorial Life. One of the magazine’s recurring features was variously titled “Life Goes to a Party” and “Life Goes to a Wedding,” wherein several pages were devoted to a photo spread of a recent social event. In Philadelphia Story, reporter Mike Connor and photographer Liz Imbrie descend upon the Philadelphia mansion of wealthy socialite Tracy Lord,

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hoping to exclusively cover her upcoming wedding on behalf of Spy magazine. This is arranged by Tracy’s ex-husband C.K. Dexter Haven, a former Spy employee who has been promised a substantial sum if he can get Mike and Liz into the mansion despite Tracy’s protests. Katharine Hepburn starred as Tracy Lord in both the 1939 Broadway production of Philadelphia Story and the 1940 film version adapted by Donald Ogden Stewart and Waldo Salt and directed by George Cukor. In addition to Cary Grant as Dexter, James Stewart as Mike and Ruth Hussey as Liz, the film features Henry Daniell as a character frequently referenced but never seen in the stage version: Sidney Kidd, the genially ruthless publisher of Spy. The character’s intentional resemblance to Henry Luce is verified when at one point Dexter lapses into fluent Timestyle: “No mean Machiavelli is smiling, cynical Sidney Kidd.” Partisan Review editor Kenneth Fearing offered a more extended—and more vitriolic— caricature of Luce in his 1946 suspense novel The Big Clock. Built around the murder of glamorous blonde heartbreaker Pauline Delos, the story finds George Stroud, editor of a weekly Time-like news magazine, conducting a widespread search for an eyewitness to the murder at the behest of his boss, imperious publishing magnate Earl Janoth. Trouble is that Stroud was the last person to see Pauline alive, and every lead he follows points to his own guilt. What Stroud doesn’t know until deep into the story is that the real murderer is the mighty Earl Janoth himself. As noted by Ben Terrall in his article on The Big Clock in the Winter 2010 edition of Noir City Sentinel, Janoth “is an odious megalomaniac who attempts to control every aspect of his employees’ lives … pompous and fully capable of launching spontaneously into the kind of treacly, sanctimonious cant that characterizes his enterprise’s favorite scribes.” A onetime employee of Henry Luce, author Fearing did not care for the experience and by his own admission invested all his animosity towards the Emperor of Time Inc. into the character of Earl Janoth. Nonetheless, both the novel and director John Farrow’s 1948 film versions of The Big Clock were given

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enthusiastic reviews in the pages of Time magazine. Richard Maibaum’s screenplay does not in any way diminish Janoth’s insufferable vanity and self-righteous malevolence, though the casting of corpulent, mustachioed, beady- eyed Charles Laughton blurs the character’s resemblance to the trim, clean-shaven, heavily eyebrowed Henry Luce. However, employees of Time Inc. undoubtedly nodded their heads in recognition when in an early scene Earl Janoth snaps on his intercom and says “On the fourth floor—in the broom closet—a bulb has been burning for several days. Find the man responsible, dock his pay.” (The 1987 Big Clock remake No Way Out was totally revamped into a military-espionage melodrama and is thus irrelevant to this entry). Henry Luce’s multitalented, multifaceted wife Clare Boothe Luce (1903–1987) was just as celebrated and controversial a figure as her husband. Her fields of expertise ranged from journalism to politics, serving in the latter capacity as U.S. Ambassador to Italy and Brazil and in the House of Representatives. While Henry Luce was represented in the entertainment industry largely by his weekly filmed documentary The March of Time, his wife was more active in show business, first as a child actress on stage and screen (vide the 1915 Edison film The Heart of a Waif) and later as author of such popular theatrical pieces as The Women, Kiss the Boys Goodbye and Margin for Error. Mrs. Luce also served as the inspiration for the character of Dottie Peale in John P. Marquand’s 1951 novel Melville Goodwin, USA. The titular Goodwin is a legendary American Army general who is poised to make a fool of himself by leaving his wife for another woman (speculation ran rampant at the time of the novel’s publication, suggesting that Goodwin was based variously on Dwight D. Eisenhower, George Patton and Douglas MacArthur). The widow of a wealthy publisher, Dottie Peale is the new woman in the General’s life, a none-too-charitable swipe at Clare Boothe Luce’s own extramarital affairs. Scripted by Roland Kibbee and Allan Scott and directed by H.C. Potter, the 1957 film version of Melville Goodwin, USA was retitled Top

Secret Affair, with virtually everything from the Marquand novel jettisoned save for the names of the principal characters. Kirk Douglas and Susan Hayward are respectively cast as Gen. Melville Goodwin and millionairess Dottie Peale, who here has graduated from the widow of a publishing titan to titan-hood herself. As ultra-liberal as Claire Booth Luce was ultraconservative, Dottie Peale uses all the power and pull at her command to block Goodwin’s appointment to the Joint Atomic International Commission, exhuming an old scandal involving the General and enemy spy Yvette de Fresney. Unable to speak in his own behalf for security reasons, Goodwin is finally given presidential permission to explain his relationship with Yvette and clear his name, simultaneously humiliating Dottie Peale and winning her love. An early scene in Top Secret Affair wherein Dottie watches a March of Time–like summary of Melville Goodwin’s career is about the closest the film version gets to explicitly referencing either Mr. or Mrs. Henry Luce.

MA , JEFF The film: 21 (Relativity Media/Trigger Street Productions/Michael De Lucs Productions/GH Three/Columbia, 2008)

Psst! Wanna win at blackjack in Las Vegas? Follow these easy steps and ya can’t miss. First, you and your friends enter the casino as a team. One member, the “spotter,” sits at the blackjack table counting the dealer’s cards while making small bets as a diversion. The more face cards that remain in the deck, the more the team has a chance to win. Next, the spotter signals the “big player” who has been walking around the room unnoticed. It helps if the big player appears to be slightly tipsy or otherwise disoriented. Remember not to tip off the dealer that the spotter and big player know each other. During the small talk between the players, the spotter uses code words that will be picked up by the big player. This will establish the count on the deck. The big player uses this knowledge to weigh the odds and win. And when there’s more than one blackjack table in the room, other team members can split up and work them as well. Maybe you’ll be able to tote up anywhere from

Ma two to five million dollars: That’s what Jeffrey Ma did back in the high-rolling early 1990s. While working towards his engineering degree at MIT, Jeff Ma joined the school’s blackjack team, founded in 1980 by Harvard graduate Bill Kaplan. Conducting themselves with the utmost discipline, Kaplan and nine other players trained diligently to master their system and went through several checkout procedures before tackling such Vegas casinos as Caesar’s Palace and the Mirage. Eventually as many as 35 players were on the team, including Jeff Ma, Mike Aponte and Bill Kaplan’s co-managers JP Massar and John Chang. Though occasionally the team received threats and admonitions from casino security personnel, there was little physical danger involved in accumulating their winnings; the worst that could happen was banishment from a table or a room if a player was caught counting cards. In addition to Las Vegas, the MIT players also paid a few visits to the gambling palaces of Atlantic City. Jeff Ma had never played blackjack before entering MIT, but after hearing boasts of “big killings” from other students he decided to take a closer look at the campus flyers promoting the school’s card-counting seminars. Unlike others who relied on instinct and emotion to make decisions, Ma depended solely on the numbers. The thrill of victory kept Ma going despite occasional infighting and a couple of house breakins that indicated somebody on the team wasn’t willing to share the wealth equally. Eventually the euphoria of the game palled for Ma: “I probably played two million hands of blackjack by that time, so it was time to move on in life.” Graduating from MIT with a mechanical engineering degree in 1994, Ma kept busy and affluent in various investment and fantasy- sports pursuits. While attending a party in 2000, he approached Wired magazine writer Ben Mezrich with a “great story.” Three months of interviews and a few years’ additional research culminated in Mezrich’s 2003 best-seller Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions. Though promoted as non-fiction, the book used only about 75 percent of the real story, filling up the other 25 percent

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with fiction and fancy (Metzger admitted as much in the foreword). To start with, the names were changed, with Jeff Ma identified as Kevin Lewis, Mike Aponte as Jason Fisher, and Bill Kaplan, JP Massar and John Chang composited into team leader Micky Rosa. Most of the locales were imaginary, as were such isolated incidents as Jason Fisher being beaten up by Casino security, a $75,000 theft committed by an untrustworthy team member, and another player being forced to swallow a casino chip by a mean-spirited private eye. The book also implied that the MIT team was secretly bankrolled by crooked investors, when in fact it was financed by the players themselves. Finally, Metzger demonstrated that he’d had both eyes on the New York Times bestseller list from the very beginning by including heavy dollops of sex. More dramatic license can found in Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb’s screenplay for the 2008 film adaptation of the Metzger book, director Robert Luketic’s 21 (Bringing Down the House had already been claimed as the title of a Queen Latifah picture). Kevin Spacey, who also produced 21, heads the cast as smooth but slightly unsavory team manager Micky Rosa, an MIT math teacher who recruits new members from his brightest students. Jeff Ma is reconfigured as British student Ben Campbell, played by Jim Sturgess. There was a lot of hue and cry over the fact that the Asian-American Ma was impersonated onscreen by a Caucasian actor. Equally galling to some observers was the decision to make practically every other team member non– Asian, contradicting the facts—and it didn’t help matters any that the two principal Asian characters are both “losers.” In a game effort to deflect criticism, 21 coproducer Dana Brunetti explained that there just weren’t enough bankable Asian-American actors in Hollywood to sell the picture to a distributor. Also under attack was Jeff Ma, who responded “My race is important to me, and I see their concerns here. But I’m not sure they understand how little control I had in the movie-making process.” Ma also had to fend off complaints that the message of 21 seemed to be that brilliant students should quit

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school and become gamblers. To this criticism he pithily replied “Reread the book.” While the real Jeff Ma eagerly plunged into the challenge of beating the odds at blackjack, the film’s Ben Campbell only reluctantly joins the team in order to raise the $300,000 necessary to attend Harvard Law School. Another incentive is toothsome team member Jill (Kate Bosworth), with whom he falls in love—unaware that his mentor Micky Rosa has similar yearnings for the girl. 21 recreates the fabricated fistfight in Bringing Down the House between Ben and envious fellow player Jason Fisher ( Jacob Pitts), also ramping up the novel’s suggestion that the team was imperiled by certain brutish casino officers, represented onscreen by the sinister Cole Williams (Denzel Washington). Tipped off by the casino-floor fight between Campbell and Fisher, Williams deduces that someone is “gaming” the house and gives Campbell a brutal beating, apparently to scare him off. 21 is capped by a nailbiter climax as Ben takes charge of the blackjack team and masterminds one last gigantic assault on the tables before the casino’s installation of biometric software will render the card-counting strategy impossible. If you can tear yourself away from the dizzying plot twists in the last part of the film, you may be able to spot the real Jeff Ma and Bill Kaplan in cameo roles. “Honestly,” Ma told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008, “all this movie stuff—all the interviews and promotion—it’s been way more crazy than the actual card-counting we did in school.” Crazy, yes; discouraging, no. As of this writing, Jeffrey Ma is still joined at the hip to show business as the resident “Predictive Analytics Expert” for the ESPN cable network.

worked as a teacher before moving to London. After clerical and journalistic jobs, the 27-yearold MacDonald joined the burgeoning Independent Labour Party. An unsuccessful bid for Parliament in 1895 did not dampen his up-fromthe-ranks idealism, and by 1911 he was leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party, representing several trade unions. Inheriting a group of disorganized and dispirited constituents, he solidified the Party as a bastion of both democracy and socialism. His opposition to World War I compelled him to resign, but he returned to the Party in 1922, at which time it was the leading force against the reigning Conservative Party. A coalition of Labour and Liberal supporters resulted in his election as Prime Minister in 1924, and despite the fears of the Conservatives MacDonald proved that his party could rule England smoothly and competently. The worldwide financial collapse of 1929 forced MacDonald to suspend his ideals and cut a number of public benefits, among them unemployment compensation. This resulted in widespread outrage from MacDonald’s working-class supporters and created a split in the Cabinet that took years to mend. After a lifetime of battling the Conserva-

MACDONALD, R AMSAY The film: Fame Is the Spur (Boulting Bros./Two Cities Films/GFD, 1947)

It was the sort of success story that wouldn’t have been possible 100 or even 50 years earlier: The illegitimate son of a Scottish crofter rises from poverty and obscurity to become Britain’s first Labour prime minister. Born in Lossiemouth in 1866, James Ramsay MacDonald

Ramsay MacDonald.

MacDonald tives, MacDonald found himself joining with them to form the new National Labour Party. By 1931 he and a handful of supporters were all that remained in government of the old Labour forces, the public condemning these stragglers as mere puppets for the Conservatives. Though he believed that his compromises had been necessary to save the British economy, his constituents and many of his friends were convinced that he had sold out to retain his power and social position. Remaining in office until 1935, he became increasingly isolated from the public. His health seriously affected by his dolorous state of mind, MacDonald embarked upon a trip abroad in hopes of mental and physical recovery, but while en route to the U.S. he died in November 1937. Howard Spring, a popular British novelist specializing in windy historical narratives covering several decades in the lives of his protagonists, was exceedingly careful not to pin down Ramsay MacDonald as the inspiration for his 1940 novel Fame Is the Spur. Spring’s protagonist Hamar Shawcross is born out of wedlock and in poverty, but in Manchester and not Scotland. Shawcross is indoctrinated with pro–Labour fervor by his grandfather, a survivor of the infamous Peterboro Massacre of 1819 where the farmers’ demands for “Bread and Liberty” were met with violence and bloodshed. His passion fueled by the writings of Marx and Rousseau, young Shawcross is the prime mover of his childhood friend Alan Ryerson’s Labour Party campaign against the aristocratic Conservative bloc, eventually leading to Ryerson’s installation in Parliament. It seems that Shawcross is on the road to becoming a Man of the People himself as he exhorts a group of striking Welsh miners to launch an attack on the mine owners. But when this results in the death of one of the strikers, he quickly and rather shamefully distances himself from his own inflammatory words. Here we find the most significant difference between Shawcross and Ramsay MacDonald, whose own fall from grace didn’t occur until after he’d been Prime Minister for five years and was compelled to slash government spending. Shawcross never attains PM status, but there are clues aplenty

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that after launching his own political career he has joined the MacDonald cabinet. Otherwise, MacDonald’s alleged sellout is mirrored by Shawcross’ self-protective refusal to intervene when his suffragette wife Ann is imprisoned and force-fed during a hunger strike. Shawcross is later expelled from a meeting of the same Welsh workers he’d once championed when he implores them not to call a strike during World War I; this also loses him the friendship of Ryerson, who is willing to go to jail rather than sacrifice his pacifistic ideals (here the author endeavors to separate Shawcross from MacDonald by transferring the latter’s pacificism to another character). The more Shawcross hobnobs with the wealthy and powerful the less significant he is to Britain’s political destiny. The limit comes when like MacDonald he joins a coalition government during the Depression and severely lowers the public dole. Worse still, Shawcross lobbies for a peerage, the very honor that as a young activist he would have hotly rejected. In his dotage Lord Hamar Shawcross is an embarrassing anachronism, sitting alone in his study and haunted by the ghosts of his past. Despite the reader’s impression that Shawcross is getting his just desserts, Howard Spring invokes a measure of sympathy and empathy for the character, though it’s clearly not easy for him. The Boulting Brothers’ 1947 film version of Fame Is the Spur relies on the nuanced performance of Michael Redgrave as the renamed leading character Hamer Radshaw (a change evidently for legal reasons) to get the audience to “pull” for him during his transitional scenes, since as written and directed he seems to have absolutely no motivation for turning his back on his principles beyond naked ambition and avarice. As noted by Somerset-born film historian William K. Everson, “British politics are singularly dull, mainly because its statesmen usually corrupt themselves (when they do) either for pleasure or at most for security, rarely for power and greed, so that one doesn’t have the inbuilt dramatics as so many films on American politicians.” Thanks to the concerted efforts of the Boultings Fame Is the Spur is never dull, perhaps because it is constructed along the biff-bang-pow

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lines of such American “pageant” films as Citizen Kane—but in the process, it also suffers from the superficiality of Kane and its ilk by showing the results of the protagonist’s misdeeds and betrayals without thoroughly exploring the motivations. Nonetheless, Fame Is the Spur plays well with modern audiences, breathing new life into some of the hoariest of biopic cliches—notably the heavy symbolism of the sword used by Hamer Radshaw’s grandfather at the Peterboro massacre. First drawn by Grandpa as he defends the woman he loves back in 1819, the sword is subsequently brandished by Radshaw himself to arouse the Welsh strikers to rise against their employers—which, as mentioned, is the beginning of the protagonist’s moral downfall. In 1924 we see Radshaw dispassionately placing the sword back in its sheath, representing the hollowness of the Labour Party’s victory. And in the final scene, the shriveled husk that had once been Hamar Radshaw feebly attempts to unsheath the sword for old time’s sake, only to find that it has rusted from disuse and cannot be dislodged.

MACFADDEN, BERNARR American author, publisher, lecturer and body-builder, known to posterity as the “Father of Physical Culture.” In addition to churning such periodicals as Liberty, True Detective and Photoplay, Macfadden Publications launched the very popular Physical Culture magazine in 1899, espousing the owner’s advocacy of daily exercise rituals and vegetarianism. In Paramount’s The Search for Beauty (1934), Robert Armstrong plays con artist Larry Williams, a crooked would- be Macfadden who promotes a co- ed beauty contest primarily to tout his Health Acres magazine as a “skin” rag. A more reputable McFadden takeoff can be found in Columbia’s More Than a Secretary (1935), with George Brent as Fred Gilbert, health-nut publisher of Body and Brawn magazine and boss of heroine Carol Baldwin ( Jean Arthur).

MAJCZEK , JOSEPH—AND TILLIE MAJCZEK , JAMES P. MCGUIRE, JACK MCPHAUL, VERA WALUSH

The film: Call Northside 777 (20th Century– Fox, 1948)

Anxious to clean up Chicago’s tarnished image ahead of the 1933 World’s Fair, Mayor Anton Cermak put the screws on local police to make more arrests and on prosecutors to secure more convictions in the waning days of 1932. Of course Cermak could not entirely keep a lid on lawbreaking so long as Chicago police officers were habitually violating the national Prohibition laws by quaffing a few at the local speakeasies. On December 9, 1932, 67-year-old traffic cop William Lundy was patronizing the “speak” in the back of Vera Walush’s delicatessen on South Ashland Avenue and 43rd Street when two masked men held up the establishment, killing Lundy as they escaped. Walush’s bootlegger Bessie Barron would later recall that she not only witnessed the robbery but had previously seen 24-year-old Ted Marcinkiewicz loitering near the deli and boasting that he was going to “break that joint.” It was the great misfortune of Marcinkiewicz’s friend Joseph Majczek, also 24, that Ted was at Joe’s house when the police closed in—or at least that was the story given to the newspapers. Because of Joe’s previous arrest on a robbery charge, both men were hauled downtown; and on the strength of Vera Walush’s positive ID of Joe as one of the bandits, both were indicted for murder. Flustered by the six separate killings that occurred the same week Lundy was shot, the authorities wasted no time processing the suspects and bringing the case before a judge. Found guilty of all charges, Joe and Ted could have gotten the death penalty, but instead received 99 years each because the judge sensed that the wheels were moving a bit too quickly in this case. After pronouncing sentence, the judge told Joe in confidence “I doubt you are guilty and I intend to give you a new trial.” It never happened. For all Joe knew, he would remain in Joliet the rest of his life. Eleven years passed. On October 10, 1944, a classified ad placed by Majczek’s 52-year-old mother Tillie appeared in the Chicago Times: “$5000 reward for killers of Officer Lundy on Dec. 9, 1932; Call GRO-1758.” Times reporter Terry Colangelo brought the ad to the attention

Majczek of city editor Karin Walsh, who assigned James P. McGuire and Jack McPhaul to check up on Tillie. A former private detective who’d been a reporter long enough to have covered the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, McGuire interviewed Tillie and learned that she’d raised most of the reward money by working as a scrubwoman. Her husband Frank, then serving in World War II, had contributed the rest from his Army allotment. Tillie concluded by presenting McGuire with a history of the case typed by Joe in prison. Handed Tillie’s story for rewrite, Jack McPhaul shared McGuire’s spidey sense that there was something fishy—not with Joe’s protestations of innocence, but with how the prosecution had been handled in the first place. As noted by Gary Houston in the January 9, 1995, Chicago Tribune, “McPhaul was impressed that Joe Majczek and a witness swore that Joe’s judge believed him innocent and had promised a new trial. Though the judge died two years after the trial, he’d had time to make good on this assurance but hadn’t. It came to light that the judge, who sat on a superior court, had been threatened with removal from the Democratic ticket if he pursued the Majczek matter. He complied but six months after the trial he was not reinstated anyway.” Further research revealed that the police were so hungry for a conviction that someone in the department had falsified the booking report that Joe Majczek had been arrested on December 23, 1932, instead of the 22nd marked on the arrest report. This would confirm Joe’s assertion that Vera Walush had the opportunity to see him the day before she identified him, suggesting that her testimony was coerced. There was also the possibility that Ted Marcinkiewicz had not been at Joe’s house when the police closed in and that Joe had been collared only because he and Ted were friends. The Times reporters were able to get witness Bessie Barron to admit that she’d gone along with identifying Ted out of loyalty to Vera, who was still sticking to her original identification. McGuire and McPhaul presented their new evidence to the State Pardon Board in 1945, but even with the backup of Bessie Barron and another witness the Board dismissed virtually everything as heresay. Then the reporters

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played their hole card. State Senator Walker Butler, Maczek’s former defense counsel, testified that during the trial the prosecution had never disclosed Vera Walush’s initial statement to the police that “I was so scared I ran away before I got a look at them.” Receiving a full pardon from Illinois governor Dwight Green, Joe Majczek was freed on August 15, 1945. “It was the first time in Illinois history,” wrote Jack McPhaul years later, “that a person convicted of murder had been pardoned without the arrest and conviction of the actual killer.” Their series of Times stories on Majczek earned James McGuire and Jack McPhaul the Heywood Broun Memorial Award from the American Newspaper Guild, presented to the reporters by comedian Bob Hope. However, it was not this Hollywood connection but instead the December 1946 Reader’s Digest article “Tillie Scrubbed On” that convinced 20th Century– Fox chieftan Darryl F. Zanuck of the excellent movie potential in the story of Majczek’s unfair imprisonment and his mother’s unswerving belief in his innocence. After dispatching producer Otto Lang and writer Leonard Hoffman to Chicago to gather information and interviews, Zanuck paid for releases from the Majczek family to use their characters (though not their names) in the film that would be released in February 1948 as Call Northside 777. Joe Majczek was given $1000, which with the $24,000 compensation he received from the state of Illinois was applied to his son’s education fund. Reporter James McGuire was likewise paid for his inclusion in the script, and as the film’s technical advisor. James Stewart, fresh from It’s a Wonderful Life and Magic Town, was cast against type as hardnosed Times reporter P.J. McNeal, an amalgam of McGuire and Jack McPhaul that heavily favored McGuire. McPhaul, less publicityconscious than his fellow reporter, was cool with the fact that his personality was not incorporated in Leonard Hoffman and Quentin Reynolds’ adaptation or Jerome Cady and Jay Dratler’s screenplay; also, McPhaul had chosen not to accept any money or credit from Fox. He did however express amusement at the scenes

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where P.J. McNeal yells at his city editor Brian Kelly (Lee J. Cobb), noting that no Times reporter in his right mind would have ever raised his voice to real- life city editor Karin Walsh. Others in the cast are Richard Conte as wrongly incarcerated Frank W. Wiecek, Kasia Orzazewski as Frank’s careworn mother Tillie, and Betty Garde as tavern owner and self-proclaimed eyewitness Wanda Skutnik, whose ill-tempered obstinance in maintaining Wiecek’s guilt cost 20th Century–Fox $25,000 when her real-life counterpart Vera Warush sued the studio for being “subject to dishonor and humiliation.” Director Henry Hathaway handled the material in the same semi-documentary fashion as his previous fact-based Fox production The House on 92nd Street. Genuine Chicago and Illinois locations were used whenever possible, and for added verisimiliture Frank Wiecek’s polygraph test in the film was applied by Leonard Keeler, inventor of the lie detector. But Hathaway was an entertainer first and a documentarian second, and accordingly squeezed every drop of melodrama out of the scenes in which reporter McNeil runs up against the stone wall of noncooperation from the police and makes a Heart of Darkness–like descent into the nether regions of South Chicago to pin down Wanda Skutnik. Also played out for full effect is the studiofabricated climax in which McNeil, racing against a deadline imposed by the State Parole Board, painstakingly enlarges an old newspaper photo for the vital evidence that Wanda Skutnik did not identify Wiecek until after seeing him arrested. You may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned Majczek’s co-defendant Ted Marcinkiewicz in a while. Though uncredited actor George Tyne appears in Call Northside 777 as “Tomek Zaleska,” nothing is mentioned of any exoneration for his real-life equivalent. That’s because Marcinkiewicz’s parole had been denied, keeping him behind bars while the Chicago Crime Commission held a new investigation of his conviction. He was finally released on February 23, 1950, when a habeas corpus hearing declared the charges against him “not proven.” Still, Ted would have to wait until 1965

before receiving $35,000 from the state of Illinois for wrongful imprisonment. There is a touching scene in Call Northside 777 in which Frank Wiecek begs his wife Helen ( Joanne de Bergh) to divorce him so that their son will not grow up stigmatized by his father’s reputation; and at film’s end, Helen’s second husband (E.G. Marshall) assures Wiecek that he can visit his son as often as he likes. Thus did the filmmakers skate over the fact that the real Mrs. Majczek had chosen to remarry Joe after his release. And of course neither the scriptwriters nor Majczek had any idea what was in store for him in the coming decades. Following a lengthy stretch of unemployment, Joe finally settled down to the security of working for an insurance company and later for the Cook County Circuit Court. But after a serious auto accident and a stroke, he suffered profound mental problems and was confined to an institution. 73-year-old Joseph Majczek committed suicide in 1983, the same year that his benefactor Jack McPhaul passed away from natural causes.

MARCUS, C YRIL—AND STEWART MARCUS The film: Dead Ringers (Morgan Creek Productions/Téléfilm Canada/Mantle Clinic II/20th Century–Fox, 1988)

The timeworn plot device of an identical twin who is somehow able to convince the sweetheart of the other twin that he (or she) is that other twin has been exercised both comedically (Danny Kaye’s On the Double) and dramatically (Bette Davis’ A Double Life) ever since movies began. Unique among such films is David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers (1988), which believe it or not is based on a true story (well, you will believe it since that’s what this book is all about). Twin brothers Stewart and Cyril Marcus were born in 1940 and grew up in Bayonne New Jersey, where their stunning resemblance to each other proved detrimental in childhood: Whenever one twin misbehaved and their parents weren’t certain which one did it, both ended up being punished. Throughout their lives Stewart and Cyril did everything together, attending the same college and medical school, joining the same fraternity and even sharing the same

Marcus cadaver in one classroom. Their brilliance somehow gave them carte blanche to be insufferably arrogant, stubbornly playing by their own rules and refusing to accept any criticism. Heading their own New York gynecology clinic, they were the envy of their peers for their wealth and impeccable wardrobe, and the bane of their patients for their imperious attitude. As the years progressed their behavior degenerated from merely annoying to potentially dangerous, with wild mood swings, screaming sessions between themselves and with patients and colleagues, and an unsettling detachment from reality. The Marcus twins were also fond of cruel jokes, such as having sex with the same woman at different times while convincing her that she had only one lover. More problematic was the medically risky habit of one twin inaugurating treatment of a patient with the other twin slipping in unobtrusively to finish the job. This was borne less of perversity than necessity; Cyril Marcus had serious drug and liquor problems, and after the breakup of his marriage suffered a series of tiny strokes, compelling Stewart to cover for him— sometimes all the way into the operating room. This was brought to light in Ron Rosenbaum and Susan Edmiston’s 1976 Esquire magazine article “Dead Ringers,” which also dwelled upon various malpractice charges levelled against the brothers and their “powerful aversion to filling out insurance forms.” The fact that none of their colleagues intervened as the Marcuses became more and more erratic and aberrant during their professional stopovers at Cornell University and New York Hospital, coupled with the refusal by hospital officials to speak publicly about this perilous situation, eventually led to sweeping reforms imposed upon the New York Medical Association by the State Legislature. By that time, Cyril and Stewart Marcus had made their exit from both gynecology and the world in characteristically bizarre fashion. On July 19, 1975, their bodies were found in their apartment at 450 E. 63rd Street, surrounded by rotting food and empty pill bottles. The medical examiner’s first conclusion was that death had been the result of barbiturate withdrawal, but no

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drugs were found in Cyril’s system. There was however a pile of excrement on an armchair, circled with a wax pencil and labeled “East Side Doctors.” What now seemed to be the end result of a suicide pact raised even more puzzling questions when evidence indicated that Cyril had died several days after Stewart, and at one point had left the apartment for a considerable length of time. Even in death it was well-nigh impossible to tell the brothers apart, with the morgue attendant placing the toe tags on the wrong corpses. Long before even considering a movie based on the Marcus brothers, director David Cronenberg had written an unpublished novel about a pair of eccentric gynecologists, who weren’t twins but were quite malevolent. The main source used by Cronenberg and cowriter Norman Snyder for Dead Ringers was not, as might be assumed, the Esquire article, but instead Bari Wood and Jack Geasland’s 1977 novel Twins, in which the problems of drug-addicted protagonists Michael and David Ross were rooted in incest and the homosexuality of one of the brothers. As in the 1988 film, the novel’s “selling angle” was both twins having sex with the same woman without her realizing she’s being tag-teamed. Unable to get major-studio backing for his film, Cronenberg produced it himself in Canada, which was also the setting for Twins. Robert De Niro and William Hurt both turned down the dual role of doctors Elliott and Beverly Mantle before it was offered to Jeremy Irons. “Every woman I spoke to said ‘Don’t do it,” Irons recalled. “I can understand that; the film plays on a lot of women’s nightmares.” But in the end he accepted the assignment, delivering such a persuasive performance (or performances) that even if the latest SFX technology hadn’t been employed in the scenes wherein both brothers appear, it would be difficult to convince oneself that both parts are played by the same person. Bypassing the incest and gay angles in Twins, Dead Ringers also ignores the fact that the Marcus brothers walked, talked and behaved exactly alike; in the film, Elliot is outgoing while Beverly is withdrawn. Both get involved with patient Clare Niveau (Genevieve

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Bujold), who hopes their medical ministrations will enable her to have a child and kick her drug habit. The weaker Beverly struggles to break free from his stronger sibling’s hold over him in order to persuade Clare to love him for himself alone, though it’s highly unlikely that a delusional paranoic is really Clare’s type. Thereafter, it’s purely a David Cronenberg film with wide-open throttle and no brakes. Apparently the true story wasn’t kinky enough for the director of The Dead Zone and The Fly, who adds such Grand Guignol touches as having the twins order a custommade set of gynecological tools that will enable them to bring their female patients to orgasm during treatment. One such tool is used to sexually assault and mutilate a woman—and after the brothers are suspended from practicing medicine, that selfsame gadget proves to be a dandy murder weapon. Let’s face it: These boys aren’t the Olsen Twins.

MARION, FRANCIS—AND BANASTRE TARLETON

The film: The Patriot (Centropolis Entertainment/Mutual Film Co./Globar Entertainment Productions GmbH & Company Medien KG/Columbia, 2000)

While it’s perfectly understandable for the names of actual people to be changed in a film depicting events within living memory, it seems odd that producer-star Mel Gibson, screenwriter Ronald Rodat and director Robert Emmerich would use aliases for the two long-dead principal characters in their popular Revolutionary War epic The Patriot. Odd, that is, until one takes a closer look at the film’s myriad of inaccuracies and misrepresentations, removing it a considerable distance from the realm of straightforward “historical drama.” The Patriot focuses on South Carolina landowner Benjamin Martin (Gibson), a widower with two children whose harrowing experiences in the French and Indian War have made him a pacifist, reluctant to align with the Continental army when his colony declares its independence from Great Britain in 1776. But after the British, represented by the sadistic Col. William Tavington ( Jason Isaacs), destroy his home and do harm to his family, Martin organizes a hearty

band of anti–Loyalist guerrilla fighters, headquartered on an idyllic Carolinian island where whites and freed slaves live together in harmony. The damage Martin’s militia inflicts upon the British is nothing compared to the unspeakable atrocities committed by Tavington, which include trapping the entire population of a colonial village inside a church and setting the building afire. Thus does the film’s version of the Revolutionary War boil down to a grudge match between Martin and Tavington, culminating in a bloody confrontation patterned after the pivotal January 17, 1781, Battle of Cowpens. Though in The Journal of American History author William Ross St. George has cited such partisan leaders as Thomas Sumter and Andrew Pickens as partial inspirations for the fictional Benjamin Martin, the character is largely based on Francis Marion (1732–1795), a South Carolina–born military officer who did indeed serve in the French and Indian War and was extremely active with the Continental Army against the British regulars and Loyalists. After the fall of Charleston in 1780, Marion led his own band of irregular militiamen on a fierce guerrilla-warfare

Francis Marion, the “Swamp Fox.”

Marion campaign against the British. Marion’s genius for camouflage, surprise attacks, gathering information and eluding capture earned him the nickname “The Swamp Fox.” Here, however, the resemblances between Francis Marion and Benjamin Martin come to an end. Whereas Martin is a widower, Marion did not marry until after the war. He had no children, certainly none resembling the important Patriot character of Martin’s soldier son Gabriel (Heath Ledger), who apparently is based on Marion’s same-named nephew. Martin’s wartime athleticism and physical prowess are at odds with the fact that Francis Marion had been so badly injured by an earlier fall that he could barely walk. And while Martin is shown to be opposed to slavery and a boon companion to persons of all races, Marion was an unrepentant slaveholder who is known to have raped and impregnated more than one of the women that he owned. Nor did he demonstrate any great affinity towards other people of color, frequently hunting down and killing Cherokee Indians for sport. Because of these problematic racial issues, the makers of The Patriot chose to fictionalize Francis Marion as Benjamin Martin, while still drawing a lot of the mythology about the “Swamp Fox” from the redoubtable Parson Weems’ highly suspect 1805 biography Life of General Francis Marion—which, according to historian Amy Crawford, “exaggerated the Swamp Fox legends for a whole new generation.” Equally exaggerated were many 19th century accounts of the Waxhaws Massacre of May 29, 1780, an engagement which forever blackened the reputation of Liverpool-born Col. Banastre “Bloody Bart” Tarleton (1754–1833). The commander of the British 16th Light Dragoons, popularly known as Tarleton’s Raiders, Col. Tarleton was the officer in charge of the infamous 1780 attack on the Virginia Continentals in the Waxhaws region of South Carolina. In what has been described as a “killing frenzy,” Tarleton’s men took no prisoners as they mercilessly slaughtered most of the 350 Continental soldiers, leaving the wounded to die on the field. Tarleton would later insist that his men had killed indiscriminately without his orders, acting out of

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“vindictive asperity.” In fairness to Tarleton, latter-day historians are of the opinion that Waxhaws was no worse than several equally vicious attacks upon the British by the Continental Army. The first time anyone referred to the battle as a “massacre” was 30 years after the fact, based on testimony from a former Continental officer who hadn’t even been there. But though Waxhaws may not have been the moral outrage that some have claimed, there is no denying that Banastre Tarleton was an uncommonly brutal and ruthless warrior, summarily executing captured guerrillas and sometimes their entire families, burning down the homes of suspected Patriots whether suspicions were confirmed or not, and at one juncture hanging the pregnant mother of two militiamen as a warning to others (even more egregious in the eyes of the Colonials was Tarleton’s habitual refusal to pay his lodging and tavern bills). Unlike his Patriot counterpart Col. Tavington, however, Banastre Tarleton never callously executed wounded Continental Army prisoners, nor did he murder innocent civilians en masse as Tavington does when he incinerates those helpless villagers in the church. That particular atrocity did not occur during the Revolutionary War at all, but was based on a notorious incident from World War II. On June 10, 1944, German soldiers locked 452 women and children into a church at Limoges, France, then set the structure ablaze and machine-gunned the interior. By transferring this crime against humanity from the Nazis to Tarleton’s Raiders, Mel Gibson seemed bent on proving to his detractors that he was not only Hollywood’s foremost xenophobe, but also the World’s Champion Anglophobe. The climax of the film would have us believe that Francis Marion personally killed Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens—and never mind that Marion was nowhere near the battle, while Tarleton survived his defeat and went to a successful political career in England. Mel Gibson of course has never offered any apology for his wanton disregard of facts in The Patriot: “It’s a good thing that historians are going to harangue this and say ‘It’s not accurate.’ Good. It’ll

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make somebody pick up a book.” Or perhaps make somebody pick up a copy of the Manchester Guardian, which chastised the actor with the headline “Mel Gibson’s Latest Hero: A Rapist who Hunted Indians for Fun.” Or the London Evening Standard, wherein U.S. film critic Stephen Hunter observed with measured restraint “Any image of the American Revolution which represents you Brits as Nazis and us as gentle folk is almost certainly wrong.”

MARX , GROUCHO—AND MIRIAM MARX The film: Dear Ruth (Paramount, 1947)

Written by Norman Krasna and directed by Moss Hart, the 1944 Broadway comedy Dear Ruth takes place in the home of Judge Wilkins and his family, including his level-headed wife Edith, his boy-crazy older daughter Ruth and his budding- activist younger daughter Miriam. Tirelessly devoted to “causes,” Miriam sends telegrams to the Secretary of War demanding that women be drafted into the Army and signs her reluctant father’s name as a volunteer to donate blood to the Red Cross. Her patriotism extends to striking up a pen-pal relationship with Army lieutenant William Seacroft. To hide the fact that she’s basically still a kid, Miriam signs Ruth’s name to her letters to Seacroft and also encloses her older sister’s picture. On cue, the handsome lieutenant shows up at the Wilkins doorstep while on a two-day leave, and the resulting comedy of errors wreaks havoc upon the entire household, as well as Ruth’s relationship with boyfriend Albert Kummer. Paramount Pictures bought the rights to Dear Ruth while the play was still running, with the assurance that no film version would be produced until the Broadway production completed a two-year run. Adapted for the screen by Krasna and Arthur Sheekman and directed by William D. Russell, the 1947 filmization of Dear Ruth stars William Holden as Lt. Seacroft, Joan Caulfield as Ruth, Mona Freeman as Miriam, Billy DeWolfe as Albert, and Edward Arnold and Mary Philips as Judge and Mrs. Wilkins. Those of you who read the heading of this entry are no doubt asking yourself, “So how does Groucho Marx fit into all this?” It so happened

that Norman Krasna was a close friend of Groucho and was well acquainted with the comedian’s family, including his outspoken daughter Miriam. Like her namesake in the play, Miriam Marx was politically active at an early age and wrote countless letters to newspapers and government officials espousing her views: “Poor Miriam and her liberal causes,” chuckled Krasna years later an interview with Groucho biographer Charlotte Chandler. Krasna was also aware that the character Groucho played on stage and screen was not the same man whom the author knew in private life: “Mr. Marx,” the playwright said on another occasion, “is one of the most literate, sober men I have ever met.” And though Groucho was married three times, for the most part he enjoyed good relations with his children, at least until they grew up. This is conveyed in Dear Ruth as Judge Wilkins banters with his daughters and makes gentle wisecracks about their foibles. When Ruth declares for the umpteenth time that she’s on the verge of marrying her boyfriend du jour, the Judge replies “We’re glad to get rid of you,” adding sarcastically “I’m glad we discussed this and came to a decision.” Likewise in the Groucho tradition, Wilkins never lets an opportunity pass to find humor in a situation: After being forced to donate blood, the dazed judge returns home and grouses “There were twenty women in the room and I was the only person who had to lie down and have a blanket. I hope the kid that gets my blood doesn’t need it bad. I haven’t got much confidence in it.” Finally, in keeping with old bromide that no man is a hero in his own home, Wilkins suffers the same lack of appreciation for his witticisms that Groucho often did around the family dinner table. Asked by his wife Edith if he slept well, Wilkins answers “Like a top. I spun all night.” No reaction. “That’s pretty good.” To which Edith shoots back “Groucho Marx. We all heard it.” Many Marx Brothers devotees have accepted Norman Krasna’s assertion that the Wilkins clan in Dear Ruth was inspired by the Marx menagerie at face value, going so far as to claim that the character of Ruth was named after Groucho’s first wife, though in fact Krasna gave the character his own wife’s name. But lest anyone doubt

Maxwell that the Judge and Miriam were drawn from life, it must be noted that Krasna actually testified to that in court. In 1946, Columbia Pictures accused the author of plagiarizing Dear Ruth from their own unfilmed screenplay Dear Mr. Private, suggesting that Krasna had somehow sneaked a peek at the earlier script during a brief stopover at Columbia. Affirming his actual source material in the New York Supreme Court (Appelate Division), Krasna insisted that Miriam Marx was as dedicated to political activism as Miriam Wilkins, noting that both Miriams wore a beret to protest the Government’s policy towards France, and that the scene in which the play’s Miriam lobbies for a female draft was based on the real Miriam’s “work in connection with the anti-poll tax, [which] was commended by the wife of the President of the United States.” Even a sequence in the play wherein Miriam overindulges on champagne had its basis in a real-life incident at chez Marx. Columbia’s lawyer grilled Krasna on the Judge Wilkins-Groucho Marx connection, declaring that Groucho “has been identified by the public in this country … as about the biggest zany there is on the screen,” unlike the comparatively sedate Wilkins. Krasna responded that he was writing about the private rather than public Groucho, never intending the audience to make the connection but hoping that the eccentricities of the Marx household would make his fictional Wilkins family amusing and “novel.” Finally the Columbia attorney got on his moral high horse and bellowed that Groucho’s divorce record precluded him from being as good and loving a father as Judge Wilkins. No one bought that one, and on August 20, 1946, it was the judgment of the New York Supreme Court that Dear Ruth was wholly the product of Norman Krasna’s experience and imagination, in no way a ripoff of Dear Mr. Private. It would be marvelous to know what Groucho Marx’s reaction to the court proceedings and verdict might have been, but we beg leave to doubt that he would have found Krasna guilty and sentenced him to Ten Years in Leavenworth or Eleven Years in Twelveworth.

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MAXWELL, IAN ROBERT The film: Tomorrow Never Dies (Eon Productions/United Artists, 1997)

Speculation abounded in 1997 that screenwriter Bruce Feirstein had based Elliot Carver, the megalomaniac villain played by Jonathan Pryce in the latest James Bond film epic Tomorrow Never Dies, on controversial media mogul Rupert Murdoch. After all, would not someone as reportedly ruthless as the Mighty Murdoch really try to use his publishing empire to foment a nuclear war between China and United Kingdom, merely to amplify his own wealth and power by securing exclusive media coverage of the hostilities? And most assuredly, Murdoch’s many enemies chortled when Elliot Carver’s plans came acropper thanks to the highly mechanized derring-do of Secret Agent 007, here portrayed by Daniel Craig. But the giveaway that Carver is not Murdoch occurs at the tail end of the film, when —spoiler alert—James Bond’s superior M ( Judi Dench), in fine “The World Must Never Know” tradition, glosses over Carver’s spectacular demise at the hands of Bond by dispatching the official story that the media giant has drowned after falling off his yacht. Writer Feirstein has revealed on several occasions that his actual inspiration for Elliot Carver was one of Murdoch’s biggest competitors, Ian Robert Maxwell. Born in Czechoslovakia as Ján Ludvik Hyman Binyamin Hoch in 1923, Maxwell rose from humble origins to build a massive British publishing empire, largely by honest means but partially by using funds that were either misappropriated or nonexistent. None too popular in his adopted country for his fervent support of Israel during the Palestine war of 1948, he nonetheless became a Member of Parliament thanks in great part to his spectacular success with the Pergamon Press publishing house. He eventually bought up several similar concerns, including the British Printing Corporation, the London Daily Mirror and Macmillan Inc. Because of his audaciously lavish lifestyle Maxwell was always just one step ahead of his creditors, and in 1989 had to sell a lot of his holdings—though nowhere has it been verified that he ever tried to raise money by starting

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a third world war. While sailing on his luxury yacht in November of 1991, Robert Maxwell apparently fell overboard, possibly as the result of a heart attack; his naked body was found floating in the Atlantic several days later. And that’s not a British Secret Service CYA story.

MCPHERSON, AIMEE SEMPLE The films: The Miracle Woman (Columbia, 1931); Tarnished Angel (RKO-Radio, 1938); Elmer Gantry (Elmer Gantry Productions/United Artists, 1960); There Will Be Blood (Ghoulardi Film Co./Paramount Vantage/Miramax, 2007)

Growing up in Ontario in the first decade of the 20th Century, Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy harbored dreams of becoming an actress. Many of her later detractors (and even some admirers) would say that her dreams came true: Under her married name Aimee Semple McPherson she became as big a star as anyone on Broadway or in Hollywood—and no one could deny that her Barnum & Bailey–style evangelical operation was “show biz” at its gaudiest. The daughter of a Salvation Army singer, Aimee was 17 when in 1907 she married missionary Robert Semple, carrying on her husband’s work as a travelling preacher after his death. Following her second marriage to Harold McPherson, Aimee left Harold and their son Rolf cooling their heels at home while she hit the sawdust trail as a faith healer and motivational religious speaker. Ordained as a Baptist minister in 1923, the following year Aimee established the International Church of the Four Square Gospel, which became its own Protestant denomination in 1927 with 400 churches in the U.S. and Canada. Headquartered in her mammoth Angelus Temple Tabernacle in Santa Monica, Aimee used all the come-on devices of vaudeville and the circus—brass bands, trained animals, cheerleaders, exotic costumes, zany props—to pack ’em in. She also established her

Aimee Semple McPherson.

own Los Angeles radio station, KFSG (Kalling Four Square Gospel), which inflicted so much interference on neighboring frequencies that Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover had to step in and force her to remain in her own spot on the radio dial. When Aimee failed to return from a California swimming excursion on May 18, 1926, news services throughout the world were abuzz with rumors that she had drowned. Thirty-seven days later she stumbled out of the desert, claiming that she’d been kidnapped and held for ransom. Though her story was accepted without question by her followers—and still is to this day among members of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel—there were far too many gaps and inconsistencies to satisfy the skeptics. Most latter-day historians are of the

McPherson opinion that Aimee actually spent her missing days enjoying a romantic rendezvous with KSFG radio technician Kenneth Ormiston. Back in 1926 the authorities decided that even if her kidnapping yarn was a prevarication she had not tried to financially defraud anyone, so the matter was dropped and Aimee went on to even greater success than before. After a series of devastating setbacks and spectacular comebacks in the 1930s, Aimee was on the verge of guiding her ministry into the unchartered wilderness of television when she died suddenly in 1944. A larger-than-life figure like Aimee Semple McPherson virtually begged to be fictionalized by clever writers. In his 1927 novel Elmer Gantry (see separate entry for Billy Sunday), Sinclair Lewis featured a female evangelist named Sharon Falconer who is sometimes sincere and sometimes a religious huckster, not to mention susceptible to the weaknesses of the flesh when she enters into a passionate affair with fellow preacher Elmer Gantry. Author Lewis insisted at the time that Sharon was not meant to be a takeoff of Sister McPherson; indeed, when it appeared in May 1926 that Aimee had drowned, he removed a sequence in his novel where Sister Falconer met a similar fate. The character’s ultimate demise in a tabernacle fire, the midpoint of the novel, serves as the climax for director Richard Brooks’ 1960 screen version of Elmer Gantry, with the added fillip of having Sharon ( Jean Simmons) perform her first genuine act of faith-healing just prior to her immolation— suggesting that if you insist upon playing God you’d better expect to face the consequences. Published the same year as Elmer Gantry, Upton Sinclair’s muckraking novel Oil expanded upon an earlier poem written by the author: “An Evangelist Drowns,” based on Aimee’s highly suspicious kidnapping. In Oil, the McPherson character undergoes a gender switch as male evangelist Eli Watkins, an epileptic who claims to have religious visions and uses his “gift” to dupe the gullible and enrich himself. In the Oscar-winning There Will Be Blood (2007), director Paul Thomas Anderson’s heavily rewritten film adaptation of Oil, Eli Watkins is re-

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named Eli Sunday (a play on famed Biblethumper Billy Sunday) and played by Paul Dano, who also portrays Eli’s honest, hardworking brother Paul. The sincerity of Eli’s religious zealotry ends at his pocketbook, as he willingly renounces his faith during a radio broadcast in order to close a big land deal with corrupt oil magnate Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis). Slightly more fleshed-out Aimee Semple McPherson replicates can be found in a brace of 1930s films. Frank Capra’s The Miracle Woman (1931) was adapted by Jo Swerling from Robert Riskin and John Meehan’s 1928 Broadway satire Bless You Sister. The play starred Alice Brady as Mary McDonald, who, embittered by the dismissal of her minister father in favor of a younger pastor, takes vengeance on the world by exploiting religion for financial gain as a “jazzed-up” evangelist. Other character include Sister Mary McDonald’s atheistic manager Tim Bradle, the evangelist’s reckless kid sister Sandy, and Sandy’s boyfriend Freddy Gribble, son of the hypocritical senator who forced Mary’s father out of the pulpit. The play is chock-full of such delightfully cynical lines as “Bibles sell like forbidden literature if you go about it right”; and when a reformed and redeemed Sister Mary renounces religious racketry at the end, Tim Bradley begins grooming little Sandy for potential evangelical stardom. Reviewing a pre–Broadway performance of the play, the Pittsburgh Press noted “Aimee McPherson’s escapades may have inspired it, but it is certainly not a treatise on her life or experiences even if the play is of timely timber.” After the New York opening, Percy Hammond of the Herald Tribune reported that Sister Mary was not a “wild-eyed hysterical priestess” but instead “an eloquent saleswoman who traffics in salvation.” Overall, Hammond felt that the play failed the credibility test: “The soul-saving business is a cheap racket, but it cannot possibly be as shoddy as it is represented in Bless You, Sister.” Though the play was a flop, Frank Capra was attracted to its theme of “One woman’s life in three acts: disillusion, venality, conversion”—as well as the protagonist’s realization that religion is far more profound and meaningful than any

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get-rich-quick scheme. Adapting Bless You Sister into The Miracle Woman, scriptwriter Swerling changed the names of Mary McDonald to Sister Florence Fallon (played by Barbara Stanwyck) and Tim Bradley to Bob Hornsby (played by Sam Hardy), eliminating the kid sister and her boyfriend and focusing on Sister Florence’s third-act epiphany after falling in love with one of her most ardent followers, a blind man (David Manners). The film ends with a conflagration similar to the destruction of Sharon Falconer’s tabernacle in Elmer Gantry, while the events leading up to the climax mimic the glitz-andglamour of Sister Aimee’s nightly extravaganzas at the Angelus Temple. Shortly before the release of The Miracle Woman, Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons hinted that McPherson was the film’s inspiration, prompting Capra’s studio Columbia to send Louella a sternly worded letter: “We would appreciate it very much if you would run a correction of this as you can readily understand if Miss McPherson should take exception to any of the elements of the story, she might use this as a basis to start trouble.” Though The Miracle Woman is now regarded as one of Frank Capra’s best early talkies, the director felt he’d “turned chicken” with the material. Instead of adhering to the play and showing the damage wrought upon the faith of honest Christians by a dishonest evangelist, The Miracle Woman exonerates Sister Fallon while vilifying her caustic manager: “I insisted on a ‘heavy’ to take the heat off Stanwyck the evangelist. He cons her into it. He gets wealthy…. Did she or did she not believe those ‘inspiring’ sermons delivered in diaphonous robes, with live lions at her side? I didn’t know, Stanwyck didn’t know, and neither did the audience.” It’s doubtful that the folks connected with 1938’s The Tarnished Angel suffered any of Capra’s angst—certainly not with only a threeweek shooting schedule at their disposal. Scripted by Jo Pagano and Saul Elkins and directed by RKO-Radio “B”-meister Leslie Goodwins, The Tarnished Angel stars Sally Eilers as two-bit entertainer Carol Vinson, who does a phony faith-healing act in vaudeville as “Sister Connie.” All this, plus her first-reel conversion

from brunette to blonde, is to throw the cops off her trail; Carol/Connie’s boyfriend ( Jack Arnold) is a jewel thief whom she has helped escape from the authorities. Like Sharon Falconer, Sister Connie discovers to her amazement that she actually possesses a gift for healing; and like Sister Fallon she undergoes a last-act reformation, landing a swell husband (Lee Bowman) in the bargain. Reviewers commented that Sally Eilers’ evangelical robes were near-exact copies of those worn by Aimee McPherson, which may or may not have impressed the double-feature crowd which comprised the principal viewership of The Tarnished Angel.

MENGERS, SUE When producer-director Herbert Ross and screenwriters Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins were assembling their 1973 all-star mystery film The Last of Sheila, Hollywood superagent Sue Mengers was offered a role specifically inspired by her, uh, outgoing personality. As written, the character of Christine is an abrasive and uninhibited high-profile talent agent, one of the suspects in the murder of film producer and inveterate practical joker Clinton Greene ( James Coburn). Sue Mengers turned down the role, insisting that she couldn’t act: Instead, Mengers’ client Dyan Cannon was cast as Christine, imitating the character’s inspiration right down to the raucous laugh (and as a bonus, Christine’s office is an exact replica of Menger’s).

MENKEN, ADAH ISAACS The film: Heller in Pink Tights (Paramount, 1960)

There was always a peregrine aura of mystery surrounding American actress Adah Isaacs Menken during her short but fabulous life. Born Adah Bertha Theodore in 1835, she most likely first saw the light of day in New Orleans and was probably the daughter of a freed slave and a French Creole woman, though she would later offer a bewildering variety of stories about her past, claiming to have been born anywhere from Havana to New York, and that her parents were perhaps Native Americans, perhaps Southern aristocrats. A professional dancer from childhood, she forsook ballet for acting before turn-

Mesta ing 20, along the way acquiring a musician husband named Alexander Isaacs Menken. Though she would leave Alexander because he insisted she abandon the stage, Adah adopted his Jewish faith, adding another layer of exotica to her personality. Carelessly neglecting to divorce Menken, she took a second husband, pugilist Benicia Boy. The scandal surrounding her marital status both during and after her time with Boy only temporarily slowed down her acting career; within a few years she was making new theatrical waves by specializing in male characterizations, her voluptuous figure notwithstanding. Following a successful vaudeville tour with her latest lover, legendary Niagara Falls tightrope walker Blondin, she landed her signature role in a spectacularly staged adaptation of Lord Byron’s narrative poem Mazeppa. Playing the male role of dauntless Cossack warrior Ivan Mazeppa, Adah audaciously appeared onstage wearing pink tights that made her legs look bare under the lights. The climax of the play found Mazeppa stripped nearly nude by his (her?) enemies and bound to the back of a wild horse, which then dashed off into the artificial cliffs to the thunderous applause of the (mostly male) audience. Refusing to be replaced by a dummy onstage, Adah demanded to take the treacherous ride herself, night after night, month after month, in sold-out engagements throughout the country—notably a lengthy run in the actress’ adopted home town San Francisco. As charming and bewitching offstage as on, Adah was wooed and admired by dozens of 19th century notables, including Charles Dickens, Daniel Gabrielle Rossetti and both Alexandre Dumas, Sr., and Jr. But for all the fame, fortune and adulation, Adah was unable to overcome several ravaging bouts with illness; she was only 33 years old when she died in Paris in 1868. Though Adah Isaacs Menken has appeared as a one-shot character in such TV westerns as Bonanza and Sugarfoot, there have as yet been no full-length film biographies. However, director George Cukor’s 1960 comedy western Heller in Pink Tights, adapted by Dudley Nichols and Walter Bernstein from the Louis L’Amour novel Heller with a Gun, pays homage to Adah with its

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heroine Angela Rossini, played con brio by a blonde-wigged Sophia Loren. Sort of a low-rent Menken, Angela is the star of a broken-down frontier travelling troupe, the Healy Dramatic Company, managed by Benicia Boy/Blondin composite Tom Healy (Anthony Quinn). The Company’s one guaranteed success is a tab version of Mazeppa, with Angela proudly displaying her pink-clad legs and fearlessly permitting herself to be strapped to the back of a galloping horse—which, she giggles to the nervous Healy, is probably more frightened than she is. After numerous plot developments the film ends with another staging of Mazeppa, this time as a means of allowing the Company’s erstwhile financial backer, gunslinger Clint Mabry (Steve Forrest), to escape his enemies by taking Angela’s place during the climactic ride.

MESTA , PERLE The film: Call Me Madam (20th Century–Fox, 1953)

“The Hostess with the Mostess” was not merely the title of a song by Irving Berlin; it was the supremely appropriate soubriquet for the fabulous Perle Mesta (1889–1975), undisputed queen of the Washington, D.C., social whirl. Born Pearl Skirvin to a wealthy Oklahoma oil family, at 29 she married millionaire Pittsburgh steel manufacturer George Mesta. When George resettled in D.C. during World War I, Perle made her debut in capitol society, impressing her peers with her hospitality skills and vast expertise in business and politics. After her husband died in 1925 she moved to Newport Rhode Island, where again she reigned supreme over the local social set, never permitting class snobbery to compromise her down-to-earth sense of humor. Moving back to Washington in 1940, the staunchly Democratic Mrs. Mesta became a political patron and good friend of Harry S Truman, serving on his campaign finance committee during the 1948 Presidential race. As a reward for her loyalty, diplomacy and charitable activities, President Truman appointed Perle as U.S. Ambassador to the tiny European duchy of Luxembourg in 1949, where she won over a whole new flock of high-profile admirers.

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Cheerfully discouraging others from deferring to her diplomat status, her standard greeting during this period was “Call Me Madam Minister.” Film characters based on Perle Mesta were usually supporting roles, ranging from Rosalind Russell’s demurely sardonic Sally Voorman in The President Vanishes (1934) to Gene Tierney’s alluring Dolly Hamilton in Advise and Consent (1962). It was playwright-producer Howard Lindsay who on the occasion of Mrs. Mesta’s ambassadorial appointment came up with the idea of building a Broadway musical comedy around a Perle-like character. With his longtime collaborator Russell Crouse, and with star Ethel Merman and composer Irving Berlin together again after their 1946 smash hit Annie Get Your Gun, Lindsay brought forth Call Me Madam, which opened October 12, 1950, at the Imperial Theater, bolstered by the financial input of RCA and direction by the legendary George Abbott. The program notes for the musical set the tone for the evening’s entertainment: “The play is laid in two mythical countries. One is called Lichtenburg. The other is the United States.” And even better: “Neither the character of Miss Sally Adams nor Miss Ethel Merman resemble any person living or dead.” “Where the hell is Lichtenburg?” asks Miss Sally Adams upon her appointment to the itsybitsy European monarchy. Throughout the play she refuses to take on airs despite her lofty position, periodically making gossipy phone calls to President Truman which always begin with a cheeky “Hello, Harry?” (An actor resembling Truman appeared briefly at the end of the Broadway production, eventually demanding his own star dressing room.) In requisite musicalcomedy fashion, Sally carries the plotline and the principal romance with poor- but-proud Lichtenburg aristocrat Cosmo Constantine (originally played by Paul Lukas), while a secondary romance develops between Sally’s IvyLeague press agent Kenneth Gibson (Russell Nype) and the beauteous Princess Maria (Galina Talva). Irving Berlin’s songs include such typical Ethel Merman “belters” as “The Hostess with the Mostess” and “Something to

Dance About,” the jaunty romantic duet “It’s a Lovely Day Today,” and the classic two-melody counterpoint “You’re Just in Love,” which went over so spectacularly on stage that Merman and Russell Nype were invariably urged to perform several encores. The play itself was a gentle but pointed satire of “dollar diplomacy” (articulated in the song “Can You Use Any Money Today?”) but the main attraction was Ethel Merman, who during the run of the show became close friends with her role model Perle Mesta, each lady finding a kindred spirit in the other. Though Merman had become accustomed to movie stars taking over her Broadway roles in the subsequent film versions, 20th Century–Fox broke precedent by hiring La Merm to recreate Sally Adams in the 1953 filmization of Call Me Madam scripted by Arthur Sheekman and directed by Walter Lang. Otherwise, the casting was strictly along box-office lines, with George Sanders exhibiting a pleasant baritone as Cosmo Constantine, and Donald O’Connor and VeraEllen adding exuberant dance routines to the songs performed by “Kenneth Gibson” and “Princess Maria.” While the bawdier dialogue exchanges are laundered and some of the satirical elements muted, most of the Broadway version’s songs remain intact. Ethel Merman would continue appearing in straw-hat-circuit revivals of Call Me Madam into the 1960s, by which time her “Hello Harry?” phone conversations had been rewritten as “Hello Lyndon?” Lasting 644 performances on Broadway and proving a hit all over again on film (it was Fox’s last major production not filmed in CinemaScope), Call Me Madam is the first thing that usually comes to mind when one thinks of the real Perle Mesta, trumping the more factual 1957 Playhouse 90 TV drama starring Shirley Booth as the Hostess with the Mostess. Though Perle’s influence as the doyenne of D.C. society diminished with the entrance of the youthful Kennedy administration, she remained active in politics as a member of the National Woman’s Party, lobbying with her usual boundless energy for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.

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MEYERS, VICTOR The film: Thanks a Million (20th Century–Fox, 1935)

Born in Minnesota in 1898, Victor Meyers moved to Washington State in his teens, where he supported himself as a professional drummer. By age 21 Meyers had organized a 10-piece band, subsequently cutting discs for Brunswick Records and opening his own Club Victor. Spicing up his musical act with jokes about local politics, Meyers’ popularity swelled to the extent that the Seattle newspapers urged him to run for mayor on the 1932 Democratic ticket. His campaign was a crazy- quilt of verbal gags, silly pranks and outlandish promises that no one with half a brain expected him to keep. After hiring Hollywood actress Laura LaPlante for some cheesecake shots for the front pages, he made mockery of a scheduled speech at a woman’s club by sending a stand-in who passionately advocated liquor, marijuana, gambling and prostitution. Clearly he never expected to win, and he didn’t, but the newspapers found him such an entertaining diversion in the midst of worst depression in American history that they exhorted him to run for governor of Washington. Told that the filing fee for the gubernatorial race was $60, he opted to spend only $12 to run for lieutenant governor, later chuckling “I came within 48 dollars of being governor.” Once again peppering his speeches with such gags as “I won’t tell any lies about my opponent if he won’t tell the truth about me” and “I never wear a vest because I don’t want to be accused of standing for vested interests,” no one was more surprised than Meyers when he actually won the election, enjoying the fringe benefits of FDR’s Democratic sweep of the nation. Taking a crash course in parliamentary procedure, Meyers assumed his duties with uncharacteristic solemnity. He worked tirelessly on behalf of the unemployed, and during one of the governor’s absences he took it upon himself to call a special legislative session to secure his constituents a statewide old-age pension. The jokes and japes were still part of his persona, but all fun and games ceased at the doorstep of his office. Meyers was in the second year of his first term

An uncharacteristically subdued Victor Meyers in 1950.

when Darryl F. Zanuck’s 20th Century–Fox assembled a musical comedy under the direction of Roy Del Ruth titled Thanks a Million. During his earlier reign as head of production at Warner Bros.–First National, Zanuck prided himself on hard-hitting dramas “ripped from today’s headlines.” Lightweight entertainment though Thanks a Million may be, Zanuck adhered to his old policy by basing the film’s storyline on Lt. Governor Victor Meyers. Harry Tugend’s incisively hilarious screenplay begins with a travelling theatrical troupe stranded in a jerkwater town in an unnamed state, where to get out of the rain the entertainers crowd into a sparsely attended rally for gubernatorial candidate A. Darrus Culliman (Raymond Walburn), a bibulous, bloviating political hack. Troupe manager Ned Lyman (Fred Allen) suggests to Culliman’s handlers that they pep up the candidate’s yawn-inducing campaign with some musical entertainment. At the next rally singer Eric Land (Dick Powell) scores such a hit with the crowd that they boo Culliman off the stage and demand to hear Eric again. When

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Culliman is bounced from the ticket for past misdemeanors, Eric is persuaded to run in the candidate’s place. The singer refuses to take the “honor” seriously, cracking wise about his own ineptitude in particular and the farce of making campaign promises in general—and the more he gives forth with songs and witty sayings, the more popular he becomes. Eric angrily pulls out of the race when he finds out that the state’s political bosses are using him as a cat’s paw to push through their own crooked agenda, but not before giving one last speech in which he exposes his fellow party members for the scoundrels that they are. A neat twist near the end permits Eric Land not only to win the election (and the heroine, played by Ann Dvorak), but also retain his own principles—as well as his ingratiating sense of humor. Victor Meyers was delighted that Hollywood thought him worthy of an à clef motion picture. Visiting the set of Thanks a Million, he kidded around with cast and crew and bonded with star Dick Powell, declaring “If you ever get tired of pictures, you’ve got a great future in politics yourself.” But that was before Lt. Gov. Meyers saw the finished picture. In the scene wherein Fred Allen’s character tries to convince the state politicos that a band singer would make a viable candidate, Allen observes “Up in Washington they elected a jazz band leader lieutenant governor, and if people will vote for a jazz band leader, they’ll vote for anyone.” According to an Associated Press report of March 26, 1937, Victor Meyers had cut short a California vacation and was bound for Seattle to sue the producers of Thanks a Million for $250,000. Meyers explained that Fred Allen’s quip had “exposed him to ridicule” and “deprived him of the confidence, respect and good will of the people.” He didn’t explain why it had taken him nearly two years to file his suit, and many suspected that good old Vic was pulling everyone’s leg again. Whatever the case, Motion Picture Daily reported on May 3, 1937, that the lawsuit was “dismissed with prejudice” in Seattle by presiding judge Hugh C. Todd, meaning that Meyers could take no further action against the defendants. Just to be on the safe side, however, 20th Century–Fox re-

moved the offending dialogue from their 1945 remake of Thanks a Million, the Perry Como vehicle If I’m Lucky—and in the process also extracted most of the original film’s sharp satirical teeth. Meyers’ argument that Thanks a Million had “irreparably injured” his political future proved unfounded. Remaining Lieutenant Governor during and after World War II, he was finally voted out of office in the Republican landslide of 1952. After briefly returning to bandleading he re-entered politics in 1956 in the largely ceremonial position of Secretary of State. A gambling scandal ended his public career in 1964, though he once again ran for office in his late 70s, cheerfully admitting that he needed the money. Victor Meyers died in 1991 at age 93, outliving practically everyone involved in the making of Thanks a Million.

MICHEL, ANNELIESE The film: The Exorcism of Emily Rose (Lake shore Entertainment/Firm Films/Screen Gems, 2005)

In common with 2011’s The Rite, another film inspired by a real-life Catholic exorcism (see separate entry for Matt Baglio), director Scott Derrickson’s earlier The Exorcism of Emily Rose relies upon the personal convictions of the viewer for total credibility. To paraphrase the foreword of The Song of Bernadette (1943): If you believe in exorcism, no explanation is necessary; if you do not believe in exorcism, no explanation is possible. Derrickson believed the story upon which his film was based, but to make certain that his production was as balanced as possible he collaborated on the script with Paul Harris Boardman, an acknowledged skeptic. It all began with Anneliese Michel, a West German girl born to a devout Catholic family in 1952. Anneliese was a 16-year-old high school student when she experienced her first seizure, thereafter suffering from a mysterious malady that caused hysterical paralysis, slurred speech and the sensation of a huge weight on her chest. Diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy and clinical depression, she underwent a year’s worth of

Michel psychiatric treatment at a tuberculosis sanitarium in Mittelberg Germany. Upon her release she tried to uphold her Catholic faith with daily and nightly prayers but soon developed an aversion to religious artifacts and complained of hearing sinister voices. Doctors prescribed medication with Tegretol, despite warnings that the drug often had adverse effects on women of childbearing years. Even after improving sufficiently to enter college, Annaliese continued experiencing disturbing sounds and visions, and also began inflicting wounds and bites upon herself. Distressed by such pronouncements as “I see devil faces on the walls, they have seven crowns and seven thorns,” Annaliese’s parents begged the Bishop of Würzberg to permit their daughter to be exorcised. Two German priests, Father Arnold Renz and his assistant Father Ernest Alt, were assigned to investigate whether an exorcism was warranted. Convinced not only by Annaliese’s self-destructive behavior but by visual manifestations that they themselves witnessed (her hair standing on end, her hands suddenly swelling), Renz and Alt determined that they would have to rely upon the extremely harrowing 400-year-old rite of Rituale Romanum to expunge the girl’s multitude of demons. Beginning in September 1975, Annaleise submitted to at least two brutal exorcism treatments per week, often under physical or chain restraint: Many of these sessions were recorded on audio tape to confirm the evidence of her possession. Eventually she wrote a letter to Father Renz asking that all exorcisms and psychotropic medication be halted, claiming she’d had a vision which pinpointed the precise date and time that she would finally achieve eternal peace. Annaliese’s last exorcism took place on June 30, 1976; the following night she died in her sleep of malnutrition and dehydration, exactly on the day she had predicted. Though neither priest was present at the time of her death, they dutifully reported it to the police. The Bavarian state government charged both priests and Annaliese’s parents with negligent homicide, asserting that had the girl been given proper medical treatment rather than a scientifically unauthorized exorcism she might have sur-

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vived her ordeal. The trial began on March 30, 1978, and ended with convictions for Fathers Renz and Alt and Mr. and Mrs. Michel. Each parent was sentenced to six months in prison plus probation, while the priests were more harshly punished than the prosecution had originally intended, each receiving six months’ probation. In light of the negative publicity, the Catholic Church backed down from its initial support of the Rituale Romanum, which would be replaced by a less severe process in 1999. Though Anneliese Michel was identified by name in the film’s original script and working title, The Exorcism of Emily Rose ended up using the known facts of the story as the skeleton of a fictional all-names-changed courtroom drama set in the U.S. rather than Germany. When 19year-old Emily Rose ( Jennifer Carpenter) dies of malnutrition and self-abuse after an exorcism, parish priest Father Richard Moore (Tom Wilkinson), the film’s composite of Renz and Alt, is arrested and charged with negligent homicide. Hoping to advance herself professionally, young attorney and self-proclaimed agnostic Erin Bruner (Laura Linney) takes on Father Moore’s defense. At the request of the publicityphobic Archdiocese, Erin advises Moore to accept a deal for a lesser charge, but he insists upon pleading “not guilty” and testifying as to what he witnessed during Emily Rose’s exorcism. In contrast with the goblins-gonna-get-ya graphic “realism” of the 1974 blockbuster The Exorcist, the scenes in which Emily Rose is tormented by paranormal manifestations, unearthly sounds and hellish phantoms during the most agonizing phases of Rituale Romanum are presented in flashback, allowing viewers to decide for themselves whether or not Moore’s testimony and the audiotapes of the exorcism are giving us the whole truth. Though we are spared the more deplorable details of the actual story (among other things, Annaleise Michel devoured insects and licked up her own urine), the flashbacks are sufficiently terrifying to quality The Exorcism of Emily Rose as a horror film—albeit a PG-13 one. Among the screenplay’s suspense-inducing embellishments is the sudden death of Dr. Graham Cartwright (Duncan Fraser) just before he

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is to testify that he witnessed genuine demonic activity during the final stages of the exorcism (No doctors were present during the actual rituals performed by Renz and Alt). The Exorcism of Emily Rose would make a compelling double feature with the 2006 German film Requiem, based on the same story and starring Sandra Hüller as the Annaleise Michel character Michaela Klinger. Directed by HansChristian Schmidt, Requiem concentrates on the events leading up to the troubled heroine’s request for an exorcism, with markedly different results than in the American film.

MONROE, MARILYN The film: The Goddess (Columbia, 1958)

The tortured life of actress Marilyn Monroe would be thoroughly exposed, dissected and subjected to endless interpretation after her tragic death at age 36 in 1962. It’s likely that we will never be able to fully sift the truth from the myths and legends (Even the story of Monroe’s sexual liaison with President John F. Kennedy is largely the product of heresay and gossip); nor will there ever be a complete consensus of opinion as to whether she was a forlorn victim of a cruel world and crueler profession, or a manipulative, pill-popping vixen who used fame and power to get even with everyone who had wronged her. For the purposes of this book, we note that in addition to the filmic representations of the real Marilyn Monroe there have been more than a few fictionalized Monroe “types,” though not all specifically based on the lady herself. The novel and film Valley of the Dolls feature a put-upon starlet named Jennifer North, who kills herself after one failed relationship and humiliation too many. Jennifer is generally accepted to be a stand-in for Marilyn Monroe, though the novel’s author Jacqueline Susann has stated that her inspiration was actress Joyce Matthews, a longtime friend of Susann’s whose four husbands included comedian Milton Berle and showman Mike Todd, and whose rocky show business career never reached the heights of Marilyn’s (nor did she die a suicide). The one film patently based on Monroe was released four years before her death, and scripted

by a man who barely knew her. Directed by John Cromwell, The Goddess boasts a screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky (Marty), his first written especially for the movies. In the light of Chayefsky’s later black-comedy skewering of the American TV industry in Network (1977), it is possible that he intended The Goddess not as a stark drama but as the camp-classic laugh riot it has become in recent years. Subtlety is a stranger to the film, which sets its tone early on as neglected youngster Eileen Ann Faulkner (played by future Valley of the Dolls costar Patty Duke), failing to grab the attention of her selfish mother (Betty Lou Holland), pitifully informs her pet cat “I got promoted today.” We then pick up Eileen in high school, now played by Kim Stanley in her film debut. Though she tries to be a good girl her ripe figure attracts the wrong kind of boys, and in desperation she marries the first guy who asks her, emotionally disturbed former G.I. John Tower (Steven Hill in a “method” performance that out–Brandos Brando). This character is a stand-in for Monroe’s first husband Jim Dougherty, who through no fault of his own has been maligned as the pathetic schlub who let Marilyn get away (For the record, he never exhibited the erratic behavior of the fictional John Tower, getting over his emotional loss and going on to a lengthy career as a police detective). Dumping Tower to try her luck as a starlet under the name Rita Shawn (it will be recalled that Marilyn came into the world as Norma Jean Mortenson), she weds Dutch Seymour (Lloyd Bridges), a retired professional athlete who wants her to give up Hollywood and settle down to domesticity. As originally scripted, Dutch was to have been an ex-baseball player, reminiscent of Monroe’s second husband Joe DiMaggio. By the time the cameras started rolling, Dutch had become a former prizefighter: “Possibly the lawyers thought it wiser,” mused columnist Dorothy Kilgallen at the time. “Rita” gets her first big break when she agrees to sleep with a powerful studio executive, not so much an indictment of Marilyn as a slap in the face of her onetime boss, Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures—the studio which distributed The Goddess. Five years later our heroine is the

Morros biggest star in Tinseltown, but do you think that makes her happy? Dream on! Now heavily dependent on booze and pills, she vainly seeks out the love she has always been denied by her mother, who has become a Carrie-style religious fanatic (not too far removed from Marilyn’s mother, who ended up institutionalized). The curtain falls as the dissolute Eileen Faulker/Rita Shawn is diagnosed as a “hopeless” mental case and placed in the care of her now-rehabilitated first husband. To quote Thelma Ritter in All About Eve, “What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin’ at her rear end.” Naturally Paddy Chayefsky didn’t come right out and say The Goddess was his own slant on the ongoing Marilyn Monroe saga, allowing the press to speculate that the film might be based on actress Ava Gardner. Chayefsky even had the cheek to offer the role of Eileen Faulkner to Marilyn herself. She wanted to do it, but her playwright husband Arthur Miller turned Chayefsky down flat, the latest chapter in the lifelong animosity between the two writers. Show business reporter Leonard Lyons later asserted that Marilyn had threatened to sue Chayefsky, but this was doubtful in light of their friendliness towards one another at various Hollywood parties. Further evidence that it was Arthur Miller and not his wife who was most incensed by The Goddess was his squint-eyed scrutiny of the production in progress, issuing list after list of demanded script changes. For his part, Chayefsky solidified the link between Marilyn and his fictional heroine with the casting of Kim Stanley, who’d studied with Monroe at the Actors’ Studio and had originated the role in the Broadway production of William Inge’s Bus Stop that Marilyn essayed in the 1956 screen version. This led to rumors that Ms. Stanley would end up trashing the Monroe image out of spite for not getting to recreate her Bus Stop character onscreen, despite Kim’s oft-repeated insistence that she’d never seen the picture because she was a little worried that Marilyn might have been better in the part. In a May 1958 interview with London journalist L.R. Swainson, Kim Stanley recalled “When we started shooting The Goddess, Paddy Chayefsky … told us to forget about Miss Mon-

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roe. A lot of the story details might suggest incidents in her career. But they apply equally well to a good many other actresses.” Swainson accepted this on its face, adding “The Goddess is a Hollywood tragedy that brings its heroine to drink-sodden fame. And that certainly isn’t the Monroe pattern.” Uh huh.

MOORE, MICHAEL Portly American filmmaker and political activist, whose so-called documentary features are carefully edited and constructed liberal screeds— albeit generally entertaining ones. Among his most successful “actuality” films are the Oscarwinning Bowling for Columbine, a blistering examination of American’s gun culture, and the box-office smash Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), which trashes the War on Terror inaugurated by President George W. Bush. Conservative producerdirector David Zucker gave Moore a dose of his own medicine in the 2008 comedy film An American Carol. Kevin Farley plays far-left documentarian Michael Malone (wearing Moore’s familiar baseball cap), who after declaring his intention to outlaw the 4th of July experiences a Christmas Carol–type nightmare in which he is plagued by visions of George Washington ( Jon Voight), George S. Patton (Kelsey Grammer) and even Fox News Channel commentator Bill O’Reilly.

MORROS, BORIS The film: Man on a String (Columbia, 1960)

31-year-old Boris Morros (1891–1963) had been a musical prodigy and a student of RimskyKorsakov in his native Russia when he emigrated to the United States. Linking up with Paramount Pictures’ theatrical division, he began composing and arranging music for travelling stage productions in 1925. Ten years later he was hired as musical director at New York City’s Rivoli Theater, and the following year was employed in the same capacity at Paramount’s Hollywood studios. Though he wanted to be a producer, Paramount kept him busy in the music department until 1939, when Morros formed his own independent production company with fellow studio expatriate William LeBaron. Borrowing comedians Laurel & Hardy from Hal Roach and renting

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space at General Service Studios, he made his producing debut with The Flying Deuces, which he later claimed earned ten times its $300,000 budget. His next independent effort, the Fred Astaire musical Second Chorus (1941), did not do as well, but he fared better as producer of 20th Century–Fox’s all-star Tales of Manhattan (1942). All the while he managed the Boris Morros Music Company, a shoestring operation forever in need of outside funds. His fortunes apparently improved in 1943 when the government of the Soviet Union offered to pay him $100,000 if he would allow Alfred and Martha Stern, an American couple with Communist sympathies, to use his company as a front for their political activities. In exchange, the Soviets agreed to allow Morros’ elderly father, still in Russia, to come to Los Angeles. Not until 1945 did Morros discover that the Soviets wanted additional favors: specifically, to have him use his Hollywood and government connections to gather information on such high-profile Americans as Earl Warren, J. Edgar Hoover, and Cardinal Spellman. Thought he would later insist that he headed straight to the FBI upon getting his marching orders from the Kremlin, in fact it was not until 1947 that he approached the Feds. He then agreed to function as a counterspy for the U.S., making 68 trips to Europe and Russia over the next 10 years as part of his mission. Neither his wife nor his friends “had an inkling” of his espionage activities, said Morros, though he risked exposure by informing his father. The Soviets were so taken by Morros’ charm and eagerness to please that they never suspected he was working against them, enabling him not only to spy on behalf of the U.S. but also thwart an attempted assassination of Yugoslav leader Marshal Tito. Though there was peril involved, Morros was confident that an underground FBI agent was always within hailing distance. His career as a spy came to an abrupt end when an unidentified woman (possibly his old “partner” Martha Stern, then living in Czechoslovakia) blew the whistle on him. While in a Munich hotel room in January 1957, he received a one-word message: “Cinerama.” Instantly recognizing this as code for “Come home, your life

is in danger,” Morros hopped a plane and returned to the U.S. post-haste. His subsequent testimony before a Federal grand jury resulted in the breakup of an American spy ring headed by onetime business associate Jack Soble and his wife, Myra, and the arrest of several other Soviet agents in the Western Hemisphere. Boris Morros’ incredible exploits were chronicled in his 1957 memoir My Ten Years as a Counterspy, “as told to” Charles Samuels. A flurry of interviews, personal appearances and lecture tours followed, and in 1960 Morros acted as technical advisor for Columbia’s film adaptation of his book, Man on a String. Though the Communist agents whom Morros had fingered were in no position to sue and he himself had no objection to being identified onscreen, scriptwriters John Kafka and Virginia Chambers and director Andre de Toth took so many liberties with the facts that to use actual names would have been a trifle ludicrous. Ernest Borgnine stars as Russian-American movie producer Boris Mitrov, depicted as a big-time mogul in charge of his own mammoth studio. Boris agrees to be a Russian spy in order to assure the emigration to the U.S. of his ailing father (Vladimir Sokoloff ), whereupon the American “Central Bureau of Investigation” threatens to charge Mitrov with treason unless he agrees to work as a counterspy. Going through the motions of studying subversive techniques in Moscow (one of his instructors is played by future TV sitcom star Ted Knight), he establishes contact with Col. Kubelov (Alexander Scourby), chief of Soviet espionage in the U.S., and an expatriate American couple living in Russia, Adrian and Helen Benson (the film’s counterparts of the Sterns, played by Ed Prentiss and Colleen Dewhurst). Morros’ production assistant Bob Avery (Kerwin Mathews), ostensibly a Russian spy, is actually the undercover “CBI” operative who delivers the fateful “Cinerama” missive. And now that we’ve run dry of fact-based material, the fantasies take over. As a consequence of a romantic triangle involving Kubelov and the Bensons, Mitrov is outed as an American agent. Arrested in East Berlin, our hero manages to shoot his Soviet captor with a tiny gun hidden in his cigarette lighter,

Mundus barely avoiding death at the hands of a KGB sniper as he hightails it to the Western Sector. Laurel & Hardy’s airborne getaway in Boris Morros’ Flying Deuces was easier to swallow. Man on a String was produced by Louis de Rochemont in the semi-documentary fashion he’d popularized in such late–1940s films as Call Northside 777, complete with stentorian offscreen narrator (Clete Roberts). Normally de Rochemont preferred to shoot on actual locations, but for some inexplicable reason the Soviet Union was closed to him. He compensated by including recently unclassified “actuality” footage of modern-day Russia—which occasionally worked against the propaganda value of Man on a String with its glimpses of happy, wellfed Russians going about their business with nary an armed guard in sight.

MUDD, DR . SAMUEL Nineteenth century American physician and Confederate sympathizer, who after setting the broken leg of Abraham Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth was arrested in 1865 and charged with conspiring in the President’s murder. Sentenced to life imprisonment at the Fort Jefferson penal colony in the Dry Tortugas, Mudd valiantly and at risk of his own life ministered to the victims of an 1867 yellow fever epidemic at the Fort. He was granted a pardon by President Andrew Johnson in 1869. Identified by his real name when played by Warner Baxter in John Ford’s Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), Dr. Mudd was fictionalized as Dr. Gilman S. Hanley when portrayed by Sterling Hayden in the 1952 historical drama Hellgate, which also changes other details surrounding Mudd’s ordeal (Lincoln’s assassination does not enter into the story, which begins in 1867 Kansas rather than 1865 Maryland).

MUNDUS, FRANK The film: Jaws (Zanuck/Brown Productions/ Universal, 1975)

The son of a Brooklyn steamfitter, Frank Mundus had been a railroad brakeman since his teens when in 1951 the 26-year-old moved to his permanent home base of Montauk, New York. Taking to the sea as if he’d been a mariner all his

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life, Mundus purchased a charter boat called The Cricket and commenced sailing tourists out on the ocean to fish. Business was slow until he began seeking bigger fish to fry. “I started shark fishing as a joke,” he would tell Newsday years later. “We called it monster fishing—nobody would go shark fishing. It was 20 years later that a stupid movie named Jaws came out, and after that, everybody wanted to go shark fishing.” In a way, Frank Mundus had only himself to blame for Jaws. Journalist Peter Benchley first met and interviewed Mundus while working for Newsweek, and later spotlighted the old tar with the “ear-splitting voice and salty stories” on the TV series The American Sportsman. When time came for Benchley to pen his breakthrough novel Jaws in 1974, he used Mundus as the model for grizzled, garrulous professional shark hunter Quint. By then, Mundus had gained a measure of celebrity for catching the great white shark “Big Daddy” in 1964, at 4500 pounds the largest of its species ever reeled in. He had also designed and constructed the first shark cages to accommodate oceanographers and underwater cameramen, putting his invention to good use in the 1971 documentary film Blue Water, White Death. Released in the summer of 1975, Steven Spielberg’s film version of Jaws brought even more fame to Mundus thanks to Robert Shaw’s colorful portrayal of the irascible Quint. Though gratified that his price for charters went up considerably as a byproduct of the film’s phenomenal success, that didn’t stop Mundus from demeaning “the idiot customers we draw like a magnet.” He also had a few choice words about the film that started it all: “The first thing is, I didn’t read Jaws. When I saw the movie, I was rolling in the aisles with tears in my eyes. For one thing, a shark couldn’t pull a boat backwards like that. I don’t know where the hell they got that piece of information.” He was, however, impressed by the “scary” resemblance between Robert Shaw and himself. It will spoil no one’s enjoyment of Jaws to reveal that Quint ends up being devoured by the persistent Great White known popularly as “Bruce.” At first glance it would appear that

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Murdoch

Frank Mundus had barely escaped the same gnarly fate on several occasions, what with all the bruises and scars on his arm. But in fact those injuries were the result of a childhood bout with osteomyelitis and a fracture he’d endured on dry land. Never once in his career was Frank Mundus even nibbled upon by a shark, nor any other maritime predator.

MURDOCH, RUPERT Powerful and highly influential Australianborn media mogul whose multitudinous enterprises include the Fox TV network, the Fox News Channel, the 20th Century–Fox film studio, HarperCollins publishing, The Wall Street Journal, and the NewsCorp newspaper chain. Murdoch’s engulf-and-devour business methods, controversial political views and fondness for sensationalism have made him a bête noire in certain circles, as witness the unsympathetic portrayal of Murdoch-esque Rod McCain (Kevin Kline), CEO of the imaginary media empire Octopus Inc., in the 1997 film farce Fierce Creatures.

MURIETTA , JOAQUIN Fabled American-born outlaw whose criminal activities south of the Mexican border earned him the designation “Robin Hood of El Dorado” (also the title of a 1936 biopic starring Warner Baxter). Legend has it that he turned to banditry after suffering unspeakable outrages at the hands of the “Anglo” authorities in California, and that he stole solely for the purpose of redistributing the money to the poor. While all this has been hotly refuted by clear-eyed crime historians, such was Murietta’s reputation that he served as inspiration for Johnston McCulley’s masketbandit protagonist Zorro (Spanish for “fox”), introduced in the 1919 magazine serial “The Curse of Capistrano.” The McCulley piece was filmed by Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., as The Mark of Zorro in 1920; since that time the character has been portrayed onscreen by such actors as Tyrone Power, Guy Williams and Antonio Banderas, and also lampooned by George Hamilton in Zorro, the Gay Blade (1981).

MURPHY, GERALD—AND SARA MURPHY The film: Tender Is the Night (20th Century– Fox, 1962)

Members of the “Lost Generation” of the 1920s were never happier than when they’d been “found” by a friendly and wealthy patron. In Paris, the Riviera and the Antibes, authors and artists of the caliber of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos and Pablo Picasso could always depend upon the warm hospitality, gourmet meals and financial largesse of American expatriates Gerald and Sara Murphy. Born in Boston in 1888, Gerald Clery Murphy was scion of the Mark Cross Company, a prosperous leather-goods firm. From age 16 onward Gerald was hopelessly in love with Sara Sherman Wibourg, four years his senior; she was the daughter of a millionaire chemical and art-supply manufacturer. A few years before wedding Sara in 1915, Gerald befriended fellow Yale student Cole Porter, who introduced him to a whole new world of musicians, artists, writers and actors. Forsaking the business career his father had planned for him, in 1921 Gerald moved himself, Sara and their three children to the Riviera, where he took up painting semi-abstracts. His talent was modest but his enthusiasm and generosity to other artists was boundless. Before long each of the three lavish apartments maintained by the Murphys, especially “Villa America” in the Antibes, became a haven and watering hole for talented expatriates. Never as sybaritic as some of their guests, Gerald and Sara exuded maturity and stability no matter how wild their parties became. There were very few poseurs or parasites in the Murphys’ crowd: The couple was respected and adored as much for their sympathetic and supportive understanding of the Arts as for their limitless generosity. And few couples were as devoted to one another as Gerald and Sara, whose relationship was sustained through four decades by their mutual interests. By the early 1930s the never-ending party was drawing to a close. The deaths of both their sons from spinal meningitis had made the Murphys more private and cloistered, while Sara became obsessively germophobic with her surviving daughter. After their return to America in 1932 the couple suffered a devastating financial setback, forcing Gerald to take charge of the family business. Their era came to a decisive end when

Murphy they sold Villa America in 1950 and retired to the Hamptons. But though their home was no longer a mecca for the Creative Class, the Murphys themselves remained as close as ever— even closer, according to their daughter Honoria in her biography of her parents. Gerald Murphy died in 1964; Sara followed in 1972. F. Scott Fitzgerald dedicated his last completed novel Tender Is the Night (1934) to his longtime friends and sometime benefactors Gerald and Sara Murphy. Not content with that, he admittedly used the Murphys as role models for the novel’s main characters Dick and Nicole Diver, folding in elements of his own tumultuous marriage to the mercurial Zelda Fitzgerald. “The book was inspired by Sara and you,” wrote Fitzgerald to Gerald, “and the way I feel about you both and the way you live, and the last part of it is Zelda and me because you and Sara are Zelda and me.” Uh, not exactly, Scotty. In the novel Dick Diver is a psychoanalyst and Nicole is a wealthy patient hoping to purge the memories of her incestuous relationship with her father. Falling in love with Dick, Nicole finances his partnership in a Swiss psychiatric clinic, but his nonstop drinking brings this enterprise to a sorry end. The couple takes up residence in the South of France, immersing themselves in a hedonistic lifestyle with their expatriate hangers-on. Nicole befriends actress Rosemary Hoyt (allegedly based on Fitzgerald’s movie-star mistress Lois Moran), who shows her gratitude by claiming Dick for herself. He proceeds to further sully his reputation by covering up for Rosemary when another of her lovers, a black man, is murdered. Once this mess is sorted out both Nicole and Rosemary declare their independence from the increasingly dissipated Dick, with Nicole entering into an affair with the couple’s mutual friend Tommy Barben. By novel’s end any resemblance to Gerald and Sara Murphy has been superceded by a self-loathing portrait of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, as Dick becomes a hopeless alcoholic and Nicole’s mental stability rapidly deteriorates. “If the tragedy of Zelda was disintegration from within,” wrote Los Angeles Times literary critic Robert Kirsch in 1971, “the Murphys suf-

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fered another sort of tragedy. The tragedy of fate.” There was another big difference: Unlike the Fitzgeralds, the Murphys were never at any time in their lives self-destructive. The only character flaw that anyone could attribute to Gerald and Sara was a tendency to romanticize their past in conversation and correspondence, but this seems to have been a defense mechanism to compensate for the profound personal and financial losses they had endured. As Gerald Murphy once admitted to Fitzgerald, “only the invented parts of our lives had any real meaning.” Referencing Fitzgerald’s own “inventions” in the novel, Gerald observed that Scotty “was fascinated by the way we lived, but he really didn’t understand us at all.” Sara was more to the point: “The book is so shallow.” Producer David O. Selznick spent the better part of the 1950s trying to mount a film version of Tender Is the Night, with his wife Jennifer Jones as Nicole Diver. Unable to secure financial backing he sold the property to 20th Century– Fox, sending along reams of memos advising the proper way to adapt the novel for a contemporary audience and offering a proposed “ideal” cast list. Except for retaining Jennifer Jones, Fox ignored virtually all of Zanuck’s suggestions: Perhaps as a result, the 1962 filmization of Tender Is the Night was a bust, save for the meticulous direction of Henry King and the gushing musical score (including the hit title tune) by Bernard Herrmann. The film suggests that the downfall of Dick Diver (played by Jason Robards, Jr.) is his overindulgence of his selfish wife Nicole, and that the real heavy of the piece is Nicole’s equally toxic sister Baby Warren ( Joan Fontaine). The incest angle in the novel is surgically removed by screenwriter Ivan Moffit, as is the disastrous interracial romance of Dick’s movie-starlet paramour Rose ( Jill St. John). Others in the cast are Cesare Danova as Nicole’s inamorata Tommy Barban and Tom Ewell as the Divers’ bibulous Cole Porter–like friend Abe North. The film ends with a sobered-up Dick Diver trying to resume his career while resigning himself to the loss of his beloved Nicole. Exit music, please.

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Nasseri

NASSERI, MEHRAN KARIMI The film: The Terminal (Amblin/Parkets+MacDonald Image Nation/DreamWorks, 2004)

The illegitimate son of an Iranian physician and a Scottish nurse, Mehran Karimi Nasseri was born on an oil company settlement in Masjed Soleiman Iran in 1942 (or maybe 1945, depending on how old he felt from one day to the next). After attending Britain’s Bradford University he became highly politicized and was tossed in jail for demonstrating against Iranian Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, then was expelled from his country without passport in 1977. After seeking asylum in several other nations Nasseri appealed to the United Nations High Commission, which granted him credentials in 1981. Unfortunately his papers were stolen in a Paris train station (his story, not ours) and he was imprisoned by the gendarmes. Finally on August 26, 1988, he showed up at Paris’ DeGaulle airport, intending to fly to Britain sans passport under the name of Sir Alfred Mehran. Blocked from leaving the country, he opted to remain in DeGaulle’s Terminal 1—and remain he did, for the next 18 years. Performing his daily ablutions in the men’s room and accepting vouchers to dine at the terminal’s fast-food restaurants, he took his phone calls at an airport drug store and his mail at the DeGaulle post office. He became a popular fixture of the place, setting up camp on one of the waiting room couches and offering a brisk, haughty “Bonjour” to passengers and airport employees every morning. His celebrity status was something of an embarrassment for the French authorities, who felt that the goodwill he engendered was outweighed by the negative publicity he was giving the bureaucratic establishment. The government offered him documents allowing him to travel freely throughout the country, but he refused, holding out for the right to fly to the U.K. In 1999 he was granted refugee status by Belgium but still wouldn’t budge. He was reluctant to follow Belgium’s request that he present himself in person to receive his papers, arguing that this would prevent him from returning to his little home- away-fromhome in Paris. He further confused the issue by

claiming that he was not born in Iran at all, but instead hailed from Miami. Through his lawyer, human rights activist Christian Bourgeut, Nasseri ceded the film rights to his life story to Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks Productions for a sum estimated at between $250,000 and $450,000. Directed by Spielberg from a screenplay by Sacha Gervasi and Jeff Nathanson, The Terminal is played for comedy and pathos as befitting the film’s star Tom Hanks, cast as Nasseri surrogate Victor Navorski. Hailing from the fictional Balkan nation of Krakozhia, Navorski shows up at New York’s JFK International only to find that his passport has been voided by a civil war in his native land. Unable to return to Krakozhia and denied entry into the U.S., the reluctant Man Without a Country makes himself at home in the middle of the terminal. Though certain details of his daily activities are drawn from the Nasseri saga, the same cannot be said of his wacky adventures in dodging the flunkeys of unsympathetic customs director Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci) and commiserating with such new-found friends as food service worker Enrique (Diego Lunca), cargo handler Joe (Chi McBride) and janitor Gupta (Kumar Pallana). He also finds time for a whirlwind romance with flight attendant Amelia Warren (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Victor’s exile is telescoped from 18 years to 12 months, apparently so the character can retain his lovability without coming off as a moocher. Though he didn’t see the film, Mehran Nasseri affirmed that the screenplay and the casting met with his approval, adding “Maybe I don’t do it like Tom Hanks does it. My day is just like inside a library. Silence.” He enjoyed an upsurge in daily visitors after the release of The Terminal in 2004, still showing no inclination to ever leave DeGaulle: “Here, it’s not life. It’s just staying like a passenger and waiting for departure. To be here is like being in transit.” Nasseri was ultimately obliged to make his long-delayed departure in 2006, when he was hospitalized for a brief illness; the following year he was transferred to a Paris charity shelter, where he remains as of this writing.

Niland

NETTLESHIP, JOHN We’ll have to take author Joanne K. Rowling at her word that British chemistry teacher John Nettleship, for whom Rowling’s mother was an assistant, is the role model for the strict, sarcastic schoolmaster Severus Snape in the Harry Potter novels and subsequent film series. As Potions teacher to wizards- in-training at Hogwarts School, Snape seems to intensely dislike youthful protagonist Harry Potter, though this turns out not to be the case—and by the end of both the book and film saga, we discover that there’s a lot more to Snape than meets the eye. Beginning with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001), Alan Rickman plays Severus Snape in all eight films based on the Rowling originals.

THE NILAND BROTHERS The film: Saving Private Ryan (Amblin/Paramount/Mutual Film Co./Mark Gordon Productions/DreamWorks, 1998)

The June 6, 1944, D-Day invasion was such a massive undertaking that it would be exactly one month before the first major human-interest story emerged from the operation. It was on July 6, 1944, that newspapers all over the U.S. reported that 25-year-old Army Air Force paratrooper Sgt. Robert J. Niland had been missing since he landed in Normandy. This in itself wouldn’t have been newsworthy had not the citizens of Towananda, New York, been following the saga of the town’s Niland brothers since May 20, when Robert’s 31-year-old brother Edward, an Air Force Technical Sergeant, was reported missing during the Burma Campaign. Everyone in Towananda had also known since June 21 that Robert and Edward’s 29-year-old sibling Lt. Preston Niland of the 22nd Infantry’s amphibious forces had likewise disappeared in occupied France on D-Day. A fourth brother, paratrooper Sgt. Frederick “Fritz” Niland, was certified as safe and healthy—and would remain that way if the U.S. Government had its say in the matter. After the 1942 tragedy of the five Sullivan brothers, all of whom were killed the same day on the same ship, the Sole Survivor Policy had been established, decreeing that members of a family would be spared any further combat duty if they

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had already lost other family members in military service. Because the Policy was still unofficial, Army chaplain Fr. Francis L. Simpson had to go through a lot of bureaucracy and paperwork to locate Fritz Niland, who had landed in Raffoville on DDay and been separated from his unit. Once found, Fritz was sent back home and served out the war as a New York MP, then was honorably discharged and decorated. Sadly, brother Preston’s death was confirmed on July 31, 1944, while Richard was officially reported killed in action on August 5 of that year. On a far more positive note, the family received word on May 5, 1945, that Edward Niland and 400 other prisoners had been rather spectacularly liberated from a Japanese POW camp in Burma by the British. Though he’d lost 80 of his 170 pounds during his ordeal, Edward recovered and prospered, spending the rest of his life in his home town. He died in 1984, one year after the passing of his brother Fritz. Edward’s son Pete Niland conferred with filmmaker Steven Spielberg before and during production of Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg’s romanticized account of Fritz Niland’s rescue and return. Steven and Pete were not only copacetic collaborators but also formed a strong personal bond, inasmuch as both of their fathers had served in Burma. At this point in his career Spielberg seldom filmed anything less than an epic, and the story of Chaplain Simpson hacking through a bramble bush of red tape to get Fritz out of the firing line and send him home— “They had trouble finding him,” affirmed son Pete—was not precisely a tale of epic proportions. So Spielberg and scripter Robert Rodat’s Saving Private Ryan focuses on a squad of weary American warriors led by Ranger captain John Milton (Tom Hanks), who three days after the Normandy invasion embark upon a perilous odyssey to locate paratrooper James Ryan (Matt Damon), sole military survivor of the Ryan family, and escort him back to safety through shot and shell. Like Fritz Nyland, James Ryan survives to a ripe old age, though it hasn’t been documented if Nyland, like Ryan, ever tearfully asked his family if his rescue was worth the lives of several other good men.

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Nixon

N IXON, R ICHARD—AND A DLAI STEVENSON, H ARRY S TRUMAN

The film: The Best Man (Millar/Turman Productions/United Artists, 1964)

The assumption that the characters of Robert Leffingwell and Fred Van Ackerman in the politically charged novel and film Advise and Consent were based respectively on Adlai Stevenson

Normand and Richard M. Nixon is understandable but inaccurate; this is addressed in the entry for Alben Barkley. On the other hand, patently obvious fictionalizations of Stevenson and Nixon are served up in Gore Vidal’s 1960 theatrical play The Best Man, filmed under the direction of Franklin J. Schaffner in 1964. Illustrating the acerbic Vidal’s conviction that there is no real difference between Republicans and Democrats, the playwright contrived to have his versions of Madly-for-Adlai and Tricky Dick in the same political party, vying for the presidential nomination during the summer primaries. Vidal was unyielding in his admiration for Stevenson, who though twice defeated by Eisenhower in the 1950s made a tentative bid for another Democratic nomination in 1960, only to be overwhelmed by the Kennedy Family machine—which the playwright detested as much as loved Adlai. His Stevenson clone William Russell is a committed liberal with high intelligence, a quick and ready wit and a commitment to integrity. Unfortunately his electability is compromised by his habit of talking over the heads of his constituents, his extramarital affairs and a history of mental health issues. Russell’s competitor is the Nixonlike Joseph Cantwell, a self-proclaiming populist who is also a prejudiced phony, well versed in the art of pulling dirty tricks to advance his cause (Conversely, Russell refuses to exploit an alleged homosexual episode in his opponent’s past). Just as Nixon took refuge behind his wife’s “Good Republican Cloth Coat” and his dog Checkers back in 1952, Joe Cantwell surrounds himself with a protective shell of family members, including his overbearing wife and obnoxious children. This can also be seen as a Gore Vidal dig at the omnipresence of John F. Kennedy’s wife and daughter during the 1960 campaign. The Holy Grail for both Russell and Cantrell is the endorsement of their party’s “grand old man,” former president Art Hockstader. Vidal conceived this character as an amalgam of Harry S Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower (both still alive and still very influential in 1960), but with

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wizened, nasal-voiced actor Lee Tracy playing the role in the Broadway production of The Best Man the Truman analogy was the more dominant of the two. Also, Hockstader is given to such salty comments as “There’s nothing like a good, dirty, low down political fight to bring the roses to your cheeks,” which smack more of Harry than of Ike. The stage version of The Best Man starred Melvyn Douglas as William Russell and Frank Lovejoy as Joseph Cantrell. The film version casts Henry Fonda (who always seemed to be playing Adlai Stevenson types) as Russell and Cliff Robertson as a particularly loathsome Cantrell. Lee Tracy repeats his stage role as Hockstader, the Truman strain more pronounced than ever. The outcome of the play and film, in which—spoiler alert—the Party rejects both Russell and Cantrell in favor of a comparatively colorless third candidate, is the reason that Frank Capra did not direct the screen adaptation of The Best Man as originally planned. Though Capra claimed was that he rejected the script because all the main characters were atheists, in fact he was eased out of the project because he planned to diminish the two main characters in favor of the victorious third nominee, whom he envisioned as the Second Coming of the “underdog” protagonist in his 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. If Gore Vidal was outraged over Capra’s intention of bestowing stardom upon a character that barely existed in the original play, he was absolutely apoplectic when (according to many sources) the director announced his intention of having his hero accept the nomination while dressed up as Abraham Lincoln.

NORMAND, MABEL—AND MACK SENNETT The film: Hollywood Cavalcade (20th Century– Fox, 1939)

The usual method of critiquing Hollywood films about the early days of the movie industry is to rattle off the number of details that the moviemakers got wrong. One can certainly apply this rule of thumb to 20th Century–Fox’s

Opposite: 1952 presidential campaign poster for Adlai Stevenson.

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Hollywood Cavalcade, a pageant-like historical drama which alleges to chronicle the rise of the cinema from its infancy in 1913 to the introduction of talking pictures. What’s remarkable is that despite its many errors and anachronisms, Hollywood Cavalcade gets so many things right— especially in its treatment of the two real-life personalities upon whom the main characters are based. A former boilermaker and chorus boy, Canadian-born Mack Sennett (1880–1960) began his film career in 1908 as an actor for D.W. Griffith’s Biograph unit. Sennett learned all he could from his mentor Griffith, hoping someday to produce and direct his own pictures. Another member of the Griffith stock company was teenage model Mabel Normand, who joined Biograph in 1910. Mack and Mabel hit it off immediately, and if we are to believe Sennett’s autobiography the two were deeply in love by the time they decided to leave Griffith in 1912. The energetic and imaginative Sennett then secured enough capital to set up his own Keystone studio for the purpose of making short comedies. From 1912 through 1915 Mabel was Mack’s biggest star, though others like Ford Sterling, Roscoe Arbuckle and especially Charlie Chaplin weren’t far behind. The couple’s romance was compromised by Sennett’s inexhaustible work ethic, and there were times that fun- loving Mabel was convinced that he cared more about his studio than her. But the breakup wouldn’t come until 1915, when Mabel caught Mack in flagrante delicto with starlet Mae Busch. Things were never the same between them afterwards, and though Mabel would work with Mack again in such feature films as Mickey, Molly’O, and Suzanna, it was always strictly business on her part. The stand-ins for Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand in Hollywood Cavalcade are Michael Linnett Connors (Don Ameche) and Molly Adair (Alice Faye). The film begins in 1913, not too far afield from when Keystone was established. Connors is like Sennett a minor functionary in the movie industry, albeit a prop man rather than an actor. Though his meeting with Molly is nothing like Mack and Mabel’s first encounter—Molly is a theatrical understudy

whom Michael sees giving a heart-wrenching performance in the hoary old melodrama The Man Who Came Back (filmed twice by Fox in the 1920s and 1930s, so there was no problem securing movie rights)—very little damage is done to the actual Sennett story, since during the mid–1910s Mack was busily recruiting such stage favorites as Marie Dressler, Eddie Foy and Weber & Fields for his comedy films. Molly’s conversion from dramatic actress to comedienne occurs while Connors is filming a scene between her and Buster Keaton (as himself ), which ends with Buster accidentally splattering the girl with a pie. A legend spread by Sennett in later years was that Mabel indeed participated in Keystone’s first pie fight, so as far as legend goes the scene is accurate—though it also perpetuates the myth that Buster Keaton was a pie-throwing comic in his own films, which he most certainly was not (Nor was Keaton ever employed at Keystone). A lengthy segment in the middle of the film recreating a “typical” Keystone comedy was directed by Mal St. Clair, spelling the film’s official director Irving Cummings. Yes, you’re way ahead of me: St. Clair did some of his earliest screen work for Sennett as both actor and director, while the “Keystone Kops” represented in the film-within-a-film include such Sennett veterans as Hank Mann, Heinie Conklin and James Finlayson. Appearing in this sequence as a telephone operator is Marjorie Beebe, one of Sennett’s stars during the early talkie era and reportedly Mack’s girlfriend at the time; and in another of the film’s silent-movie recreations, onetime Sennett headliners Ben Turpin and Chester Conklin are cast respectively as a crosseyed bartender and a two-gun sheriff. Finally, Mack Sennett himself was hired by Fox to supervise the film’s comedy sequences and to make an onscreen cameo appearance, allowing contemporary reviewers to underline the similarities between the King of Comedy and the character played by Don Ameche—who for a guy specializing in slapstick comedies is pretty darn tactiturn throughout the film. One major link between the two leads and their inspirations is Molly’s displeasure when

O’Grady Connors begins to ignore her as his filmmaking plans become more expansive. After their romance fades, Connors grimly directs a scene between Molly and her new boyfriend Nicky Hayden (Alan Curtis), conjuring up visions of the tense relationship between Mack and Mabel when in 1923 she returned to the Sennett lot to make her final starring feature The Extra Girl. Elsewhere, vignettes from the lives of other filmmakers are included, notably Connors’ gran diose scheme to produce a costly historical epic that looks for all the world like D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, and his brilliant inspiration to salvage a troubled silent picture by reshooting it as a talkie, echoing Harold Lloyd’s last-minute decision to remake his 1929 silent feature Welcome Danger with sound, resulting in one of Harold’s biggest moneymakers. Some observers have singled out this lastmentioned episode as a radical departure from the Mack Sennett saga, citing Mack’s alleged inability to adapt to the sound revolution. This is both unfair and inaccurate: Sennett’s conversion to talkies was smooth and profitable, though by 1933 Mack was forced to close his studio because of Depression-era economics and the bankruptcy of two different distributors. Hollywood Cavalcade closes with Michael Linnett Connors still riding the crest of the wave, happily reunited with Molly Adair—thereby sparing screenwriters Hilary Lynn, Brown Holmes, Lou Breslow and Ernest Pascal the doleful task of recounting Mack Sennett’s downfall and Mabel Normand’s early death in 1930.

O’GRADY, SCOTT The film: Behind Enemy Lines (David Entertainment/20th Century–Fox, 2001)

Brooklyn-born Scott O’Grady was 24 years old when he graduated from Air Force ROTC in 1989; prior to this, he’d been a cadet in the Civil Air Patrol. So it should come as no surprise that when he served in the Bosnian War of 1992–1995, it wasn’t as a Red Cross medic but as an Air Force captain. On June 2, 1995, O’Grady was piloting his F-16 over Bosnia-Herzegovina, enforcing the no-fly zone on behalf of NATO. His plane was suddenly hit by a surface-to-air

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missile fired from a battery at Mrkonjić Grad in western Bosnia. Unable to make contact with the other pilots in his patrol, he was forced to parachute to safety—if making oneself an easy target before landing in unfriendly territory can be called “safety.” For the next six days O’Malley put his survival, evasion, resistance and escape training to practical use. He’d been instructed not to radio for help lest he give away the position of his rescuers, nor to allow himself to be captured by either the Serbs or the Muslims. Keeping hidden from local paramilitaries he subsisted on rainwater, grass and barely edible bugs. Finally on the fourth day he was able to signal NATO with his weakened radio, and on June 8 he spoke over the air to confirm his identity—the first contact he’d had with anything other than a cow or goat in nearly a week. Rescued from a mountaintop by a battalion of Marines, O’Grady still had to make a perilous helicopter journey back to safety. Two days after his release from a medical unit, O’Grady was shipped out on a goodwill tour of the United States, mainly to heal the pain and replenish the loss of morale caused by the recent Oklahoma City terrorist bombing. In lectures, magazine interviews and TV appearances he would credit his survival to his faith in God and country, and his overwhelming desire to see his family again. Asked if he ever doubted that he’d survive his ordeal, O’Grady answered “No, never. I mean, it was actually the opposite. My faith grew from this experience.” In some quarters, negative reaction to American involvement in the Bosnian war led to criticism of O’Grady, with one anti-war organization suggesting that he made up the whole story of being trapped behind enemy lines and had spent the time being fed and sheltered by friendly Bosnian peasants. No one paid much attention to these aspersions, certainly not the producers of the 1997 TV documentary Behind Enemy Lines: The Scott O’Grady Story, a joint effort of Britain’s BBC and America’s Discovery Channel. Described by the Los Angeles Times as “a story loosely based on the experience of American pilot Scott O’Grady after he was shot down in Bosnia in 1995,” the 2001 theatrical feature

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scripted by David Veloz, Zak Penn, Jim Thomas and Bob Thomas, and directed by John Moore, also bore the title Behind Enemy Lines. Renamed (and reclassified) Lt. Chris Burnett, the film’s flight-officer hero is played by Owen Wilson, whose unprepossessing appearance was not at all what audiences expected from a jingoistic war pictures. Producer John Davis explained that Wilson was cast because he was so normal-looking, characterizing modern Air Force pilots as “ordinary men who can do extraordinary things.” The anticipated liberties are taken with the facts, beginning with Lt. Burnett being shot down over hostile territory on Christmas Eve rather than late Spring. As if the real danger level of the story needed enhancing, we are shown a Serb patrol commandeered by the film’s “Snidely Whiplash” villain Gen. Miroslav Lokar (Olek Krupa) brutally executing another downed pilot, who of course is Burnett’s best friend (Gabriel Mecht). The rest of the film is a hound-and-hare pursuit of Burnett by the relentless Lokar, who gets his comeuppance when he is arrested and charged with genocide. Meanwhile, Burnett’s CO Admiral Reigart (Gene Hackman) would give anything for the opportunity to send out rescue parties immediately, but his hands are tied by political constraints imposed by NATO, which doesn’t want to upset impending peace negotiations. Like the Serbians, NATO is represented by a single person, obstreperous Portuguese naval commander Piquet ( Joaquim de Almeida). Once Lt. Burnett has returned safely, the screenplay brews up a little artificial suspense by suggesting that he faces a court-martial for his maverick behavior before and during his ordeal; instead, he continues his Naval career unabated, while poor Adm. Riegert is relieved of command for defying NATO and mounting a rescue mission. Behind Enemy Lines was slated for release in late January 2002 but was moved up to November 30, 2001, which many perceived as a shameless effort by 20th Century–Fox to capitalize on the upsurge in patriotism following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The film was tepidly received by critics who complained that a controversial and costly war had been reduced to a battle of personalities. Also, there was the issue of the film’s

stereotyping of the Serbian warriors as doubledyed villains: As noted by the Boston Globe in a tone that sounded a bit like sarcasm, “If the film is hopelessly devoid of real characterization, it at least isn’t afraid to take a stand on the war in Bosnia. It presents the Serbs as the dirty-tricks guys, slaughtering Muslims.” The film went over strongest with hardcore action fans, its vertigoinducing combat sequences and Rover-Boy heroics suggesting that the producers were hoping to develop a whole new Top Gun franchise (there were two direct-to-video sequels with a different cast and production crew). In his first interviews after Behind Enemy Lines’ release, Scott O’Grady was quick to point out such bloopers as showing his screen counterpart interact with civilians, venture into populated areas and engage in hand-to-hand combat, though he vouched for the accuracy of the flying scenes. Soon, however, he was singing an entirely different tune, suing not only 20th Century–Fox but also Discovery Communications, who telecast the 1997 documentary that inspired the movie. O’Grady’s lawyers charged that both productions were an “invasion of privacy through the misappropriation of his name likeness and identity, false representation and false advertising, unjust enrichment and civil conspiracy,” adding “Captain O’Grady was also troubled that the ‘hero’ in the Fox movie used foul language, was portrayed as a ‘hot dog’ type pilot and disobeyed orders, unlike O’Grady.” While Fox made an undisclosed settlement with O’Grady in 2004, the judge decided in favor of Discovery regarding the TV documentary, ruling that while a person’s likeness or image may be legally protected from unwanted public display, the events in that person’s life do not necessarily enjoy the same protection. Before leaving the military in 2002, Scott O’Grady co-authored two accounts of what has come to be called the Mrkonjić Grad Incident, 1995’s Return with Honor and the 1997 children’s book Basher Five-Two. He re-emerged on the national-media scene in 2012 when he ran for the Texas state senate on the Republican ticket, only to suspend his campaign because of a redistricting dispute.

Onassis

OLIVER , VIC The film: The Entertainer (Woodfall Films/ Bryanston/British Lion, 1960)

Born in Vienna in 1898, Victor Oliver von Samek hoped to train as a doctor but was sidetracked by World War I. After the Armistice he studied music at the Vienna Conservatory. Emigrating to the U.S., he worked steadily as a pianist, cultivating a gift for verbal comedy along the way. As Vic Oliver, he capitalized on his tenuous grasp of English and his fondness for very old jokes, scoring laughs by resurrecting these ancient wheezes with an air of continental sophistication. Relocating to England, he starred in stage and cabaret revues throughout the 1930s. By the end of the decade his career was in a steep decline, but salvation came when he was hired as a regular on Hi Gang!, a very popular BBC radio comedy series starring the American husband-wife duo Ben Lyon and Bebe Daniels. Ben, Bebe and Victor distinguished themselves throughout World War II by broadcasting from the heart of bomb-besieged London, never missing a program and performing innumerable acts of courage and generosity on behalf of the war effort. Oliver’s radio character was that of a pompous, self-enamored musichall headliner whose glory days were behind him, and who like Milton Berle was never above stealing jokes from other comedians. Though his act always brought huge laughs from the studio audience, Oliver was not universally be loved, especially by the family of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who never quite came to terms with Oliver’s 10-year marriage to Sir Winston’s actress daughter, Sarah. Legend has it that Churchill once expressed admiration for Mussolini because “he had the good sense to shoot his son-in-law.” Vic Oliver died in 1964, some seven years after John Osborne, foremost of the Angry Young Man breed of British playwrights, wrote the allegorical drama The Entertainer. The play charts the decline and fall of the British sociopolitical and economic system through the all-butmoribund career of Archie Rice, a seedy, washed-up music hall performer who refuses to acknowledge that he’s not only a relic but a fail-

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ure, destroying the lives of everyone close to him in the process. Noël Coward was Osborne’s first choice to play Archie Rice, but instead the play was optioned by Sir Laurence Olivier. Immersing himself in the role, Olivier accomplished the difficult task of singing, dancing and telling jokes well enough so that Archie Rice would sing, dance and joke as pathetically as possible, deluding himself that he had star quality. Sir Laurence would repeat his role in director Tony Richardson’s 1960 film version of The Entertainer, costarring Joan Plowright, the future Lady Olivier, as Archie’s daughter. Though Archie Rice was to all appearances an original creation, British-born film historian William K. Everson, who owned many of Vic Oliver’s films in his voluminous collection, noted in his written comments on The Entertainer for the New School of Social Research that “for his inspiration (though it was never admitted at the time) Olivier fell back on Vic Oli ver”—citing Oliver’s 1941 vehicle He Found a Star “to stress how remarkable was Olivier’s copy.” The film, asserted Everson, “is a good glimpse of Oliver in his has-been period—trying desperately to be jovial and funny often (through no fault of his own) with poor material.” Thus far, Everson has been the only film expert to dwell upon the link between Vic Oliver and Archie Rice. Yet when this writer managed to catch up with both He Found a Star and the 1941 film adaptation of radio’s Hi Gang!, no other conclusion could possibly be drawn.

ONASSIS, A RISTOTLE— AND JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS The 1978 trash masterpiece The Greek Tycoon stars Jacqueline Bisset as Liz Cassidy, the youthful and gorgeous widow of assassinated American president Jack Cassidy ( James Franciscus), who before his untimely death had broken precedent by appointing his own brother (Robin Clarke) as Attorney General. While still in mourning, Liz is wooed and won by self-made Greek business mogul Theo Tomasis (Anthony Quinn). Their romance is complicated by Theo’s cast-off mistress (Marilù Tolo), a temperamental opera diva not named Maria Callas. Now how

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could anyone assume that The Greek Tycoon was inspired by the marriage of Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis and widowed First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy? Come now.

OWENS, TIM “RIPPER” The film: Rock Star (Bel-Air Entertainment/ Maysville Pictures/Robert Lawrence Productions/Metal Productions Inc./Warner Bros., 2001)

As a rule, a participant in a “tribute” band would never in his wildest dreams get the opportunity to perform as a member of the actual band to whom he is paying homage. But rules are made to be broken, and Tim “Ripper” Owens was made to break them. A disciple of the British heavy- metal band Judas Priest, Owens was working in his home town of Akron, Ohio, as vocalist in the Priest tribute band British Steel when in 1992 a couple of his fans sent a videotape of Owens to Ian Hill, Glenn Tipton, Scott Travis, et al. Four years later, Owens was invited to join Judas Priest as a replacement for lead singer Rob Halford. It was a dream come true, from which Owens would not awaken until Halford returned in 2003. By that time the 36-year-old “Ripper” had recorded four albums with his lifelong idols, and along with the rest of Judas Priest had been nominated for a 1999 Grammy award. That same year, Warner Bros. announced plans to release a movie based on Owens’ story tentatively titled Metal God, adding that Judas Priest was interested in writing music for the project and offering creative input. To the band, that meant “creative control,” which Warners was not prepared to relinquish. As Andrew C. Revkin of the New York Times queried in his article on the film, “If you were Warner Bros. and you were gonna throw $30 million into making a movie, would you want a bunch of middleaged former heavy metal stars to have creative control? No.” So Warners backpedalled, saying they’d had no contact at all with Judas Priest or Tim Owens and that the film would be based on a 1997 Times article about Owens. Executive-produced by George Clooney, directed by Steven Herek and scripted by John Stockwell, the 2001 release Rock Star casts Mark Wahlberg as Chris “Izzy” Cole, who achieves his

heart’s desire when he graduates from the tribute band Blood Dragons to the position of lead vocalist for his favorite heavy-metal group Steel Dragon. The film pushes the actual timeframe back to the 1980s, telescopes such incidents as the departure of the vocalist Cole replaces, and rabbets in a romantic subplot involving “Izzy” and his manager-girlfriend Emily Poule ( Jennifer Aniston). In time-honored “Be careful what you wish for” tradition, Cole learns to his dismay that all is not milk and honey in the world of big-time music, especially when one tries to foist one’s own fresh new ideas on older and more experienced musicians. Bob Chiappardi, in charge of marketing Rock Star for Warner Bros., admitted that “90 percent of the movie is based on pure rock star mythology.” Judas Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton stated publicly that the film wasn’t really the story of Tim “Ripper” Owens, adding that it was so careless with the facts that the band was considering legal action. “Ripper” himself was no happier than Tipton, refusing to even see the film. “They fabricated things and decided to pull away from my story and make their own because I guess mine was too normal,” he complained to MTV News. “There’s no telling what they put in there. If I could sue, I would.” You’ll be happy to know, I’m sure, that Rock Star left no permanent wounds, and that Owens went on to open Ripper’s Rock House (later “Tim Owens’ Travelers Tavern”) in Akron and to perform with such groups as Beyond Fear, Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force, Charred Walls of the Damned and The Norman Luboff Choir (Okay, I threw that last one in myself ).

PARKER , COL. TOM—AND ELVIS PRESLEY At the height of the “Elvis craze” in 1957, writer Paul Monash penned the one-hour drama “The Singin’ Idol” for NBC’s Kraft Television Theater. In his first acting role, pop singer Tommy Sands starred as hip-swiveling, sideburned Southern-boy balladeer Virgil Walker, whose every public move and utterance is dictated by his cynical and autocratic manager Joseph Sharkey (Fred Clark). The parallels between these two characters and Elvis Presley and

Peek his control-freak manager Col. Tom Parker were hard to miss—and harder still when the TV play was adapted as the 1958 theatrical film Sing Boy Sing, with Tommy Sands repeating his role and Edmond O’Brien taking over as Sharkey.

PARSONS, LOUELLA American screenwriter and journalist, long associated with publisher William Randolph Hearst, who vied with fellow dirt-disher Hedda Hopper for the title “Queen of Hollywood Gossip.” Like Hedda, Louella wielded her power like a cutlass, demanding among other things that top Tinseltown celebrities appear on her 1930s radio program Hollywood Hotel free of charge. In addition to occasionally playing herself onscreen, Parsons’ sing- song voice and gushing prose were mimicked in a number of live-action and animated films. Among the most obvious Louella Parsons takeoffs are Louise Fazenda as Helen Hobart in the 1932 filmization of Kaufman and Hart’s 1930 Broadway comedy Once in a Lifetime (the original play’s reference to Helen’s Hollywood mansion “ParWarMet,” a peace offering from three different movie studios, is unfortunately missing from the screen version); and Madge Blake as the smotheringly effusive Dora Bailey in the classic 1952 movie musical Singin’ in the Rain.

PEEK , KIM The film: Rain Man (Guber-Peters Co./Star Partners II Ltd./Mirage Entertainment/United Artists, 1988)

The main selling card of the 1988 Oscarwinner Rain Man is Dustin Hoffman’s wholly believable performance as an autistic savant who is unable to function normally in the outside world despite his photographic memory and genius-level grasp of complex mathematical concepts. Hoffman is such a consummate actor that many people in 1988 were convinced that he’d invented the character of Raymond “Rain Man” Babbitt from the ground up. Given the nature of this book, you’ve probably figured out that there was a real Rain Man—and his name was Kim Peek. Born in Murray, Utah, in 1951, Kim came into the world with a brain 30 percent larger than

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normal. For his first three years his neck muscles could not support his oversized head and he virtually lived on a sofa. He was diagnosed with a disorder known as FG Syndrome, which among other things causes physical anomalies and developmental delays. To the amazement of his family, Kim seemed to overcome his affliction to some degree when he learned to read at age 3—even before he was able to walk. He became an expert on everything he’d ever read, from books to street signs to maps; and while he never memorized the entire Cincinnati phone book as Raymond does in Rain Man (an impossibility, according to UCLA child psychiatrist Dr. Peter E. Tanguay) he was able to tell strangers exactly where they lived simply by being told their Zip Codes. Also unlike Rain Man Kim was not rejected by his parents and shunted off to an institution but remained extremely close to his family, especially his advertising-executive father Fran Peek, who after his 1981 divorce became Kim’s full-time guardian and caregiver. Nor did Kim recoil in terror whenever anyone tried to touch him; though unable to establish eye contact with others until his late 30s, Kim loved hugging people whom he’d gotten to know. One aspect of the film that rang true in real life was Kim’s sudden disruptive outbursts, which subjected him to lengthy psychiatric treatment and got him taken out of public school at age 6. Thereafter he was home-schooled, graduating at the level of a high school senior at age 14. His uncanny brilliance in math and statistics landed him a job in the payroll department of the Salt Lake Community Center in 1969; when the state of Utah took over the Center, they ended up hiring two people to replace him. Though Fran Peek refused to publicize or exploit his son’s talents, it was inevitable that word would leak out to the rest of the world, even more so after Stanford University measured Kim’s I.Q. at 184 “within his limited field of knowledge.” Because FG Syndrome was difficult to explain and because he didn’t fit into the classification “autistic,” a new term was coined for Kim’s condition: “Mega-Savant.” In 1984 Kim befriended screenwriter Barry Morrow, whose previous credits included the

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TV-movie Bill, the true story of an adult with Down syndrome. After spending 41/2 hours with Kim, Morrow had developed the story that would ultimately be filmed as Rain Man. Three years later, star Dustin Hoffman met Kim for the first time and likewise bonded with him. “He was like a second shadow,” Fran Peek would say of the manner in which Hoffman diligently but unobtrusively studied Kim’s every movement and utterance. In the original script by Morrow and Robert Bass, Raymond Babitt was less autistic and more like the real Kim, but for dramatic purposes Hoffman included character bits gleaned from Joe Sullivan, one of two autistic men who spent a great deal of time on the set during filming (Kim was too busy with other activities). It was Hoffman who suggested to Fran Peek that Kim should spend more time with “normal” people and everyday social functions; Fran took Dustin up on this, embarking on a series of lecture tours with Kim to broaden understanding of mental aberrations and offer hope to other parents of disabled children. “Learning to recognize and to respect differences in others and treating them like you want them to treat you will bring the peace and joy we all hope for,” Kim would say with halting eloquence at the end of each lecture. “Let’s care, share and be our best.” Upon receiving an Academy Award for Rain Man in 1989, Dustin Hoffman publicly acknowledged his gratitude to the young man who started it all: “I may be the star, but you’re in the Heavens, Kim.” The film’s director Barry Levinson went one better, giving his own Oscar statue to Kim in 1991. The remarkable Mr. Peek continued to thrive as an inspiration to others and a subject for further research on the mysteries of the intellect: In 2004 NASA studied Kim in hopes of using his peculiar genius to develop new software measuring the effect of space travel on the human brain. Kim Peek died in 2009, the result of an upper respiratory infection.

PEPPER , JACK—AND LELA ROGERS, GINGER ROGERS

The film: The Hard Way (Warner Bros., 1943)

In a February 1962 article for Commentary

magazine, author Daniel Fuchs wove a fascinating and intriguing tale of his first experience as a Hollywood screenwriter in 1942. Mentioning no names, nor even the film’s title, Fuchs recalled that he was engaged to help “with a story of backstage life which was supposed to be fictitious but was actually based on the true experiences of [a] star, an actress then at the height of her success.” As the writer remembered it, the star had been “tampered with” by a travelling entertainer at age 14, whereupon her aunt, “an ambitious woman,” forced the entertainer to marry her niece, simultaneously leaving her own husband and her hometown squalor behind to promote the girl’s show business career. Eventually the reluctant entertainer shed himself of his unwanted child bride, whereupon the girl, under the careful tutelage of her aunt, attained the heights of stardom. At this juncture her exhusband returned, declared that he been “abandoned” by his wife and her aunt, and ended up slashing his wrists, though not fatally. A financial settlement resolved this problem and the girl’s career continued to flourish. It takes only a smidgen of detective work to determine that the film referenced by Fuchs is the 1943 Warner Bros. release The Hard Way, starring Ida Lupino as money-hungry Helen Chernen, who is so desperate to escape her life of genteel poverty that she sacrifices her marriage, her happiness and ultimately her life to push her talented kid sister Katie ( Joan Leslie) to the pinnacle of Broadway musical fame. Katie’s husband, hokey vaudevillian Albert Runkel ( Jack Carson), cannot abide the fact that his wife is more successful than he, nor that he has lost her love to his vaudeville partner Paul Collins (Dennis Morgan)—a turn of events manipulated by the scheming Helen. Unable to stand any more, Runkel kills himself. The Hard Way was adapted from an original story by Irwin Shaw and Jerry Wald, though only Wald receives credit along with screenwriters Fuchs and Peter Viertel. The director was Vincent Sherman, who had brought Fuchs into the project. The above information still doesn’t solve the mystery of which famous star the film is based on. Fuchs would only say that the writers actu-

Pepper ally offered the script to the star in question, and that the similarities to her own life “went right past her.” All she said before turning the film down—she was far too stellar to be billed below Ida Lupino—was “You know, this might almost be the story of me and my aunt.” Fuchs flashed forward a decade or so to another meeting with the same star, who now indicated that she’d figured out the source for The Hard Way and proceeded to inform the writer that he’d gotten most of the details wrong. Without a trace of rancor, Fuchs noted in his article that by this time the star was no longer “fresh and vibrant”

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with “incredible shining beauty”; the intervening years had hardened the muscles on her lovely legs and wrinkles now creased her pretty but no longer flawless face. With these and other tantalizing clues, it was difficult but not impossible to identify the mystery woman as Oscar-winning actress, singer and dancer Ginger Rogers, who owed much of her success to the hard-driving ambition of her mother Lela—not her aunt, not her sister. After divorcing her husband, Lela encouraged her very young daughter to enter as many talent contests as possible, at the same time discouraging the girl from pursuing a teaching career as she’d planned. The relationship between Ginger and Lela was close and affectionate, a far cry from the neurotic friction between The Hard Way’s Helen and Katie Chernin. Nor did Lela’s life end tragically; she enjoyed an extended midlife career as a screenwriter and Hollywood acting coach, living to the ripe old age of 86. As for the film’s unfortunate Albert Runkel, though Ginger would ultimately wed five times it is obvious (once one accepts the Rogers connection) that Runkel represents Hubby Number One, vaudeville artist Jack Pepper. While appearing with comedian Frank Salt as half of the stage act Pepper and Salt in the late 1920s, Pepper was hired to judge a dance contest—and was immediately smitten by the 17year-old winner, Our Gal Ginger. The marriage lasted two years, with the couple separating some time before A March 13, 1943, Showmen’s Trade Review ad for Warner Bros.’ quasi- Ginger became a fullbiographical The Hard Way. fledged star at age 19 in the

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1930 Broadway musical Girl Crazy. It is true that Pepper’s career dimmed while Ginger’s grew brighter, and that Hard Way cowriter Jerry Wald, a former reporter, had once interviewed Pepper while the performer was in the hospital recovering from what may have been a suicide attempt. But though stardom would elude Jack Pepper, he went on to a prolific stage and screen career, often in association with his friend Bob Hope. Jack’s daughter from his second marriage, Cynthia Pepper, would star in the 1961 TV series Margie and as one of Elvis Presley’s leading ladies in Kissin’ Cousins (1964). If one goes only by the Daniel Fuchs article, the identification of Ginger Rogers as role model for The Hard Way’s Katie Chernin is still largely speculative. Happily (at least for this writer), the film’s director Vincent Sherman has verified the correlation in his autobiography Studio Affairs, adding that it was largely Irwin Shaw’s idea to change the mother- daughter relationship to older sister-younger sister, and to have Runkel’s partner Collins fall for Katie himself. Sherman also confirms Fuchs’ story that the script had been offered to Ginger Rogers, though the director suggests that Ginger sort of sensed from the beginning whom Katie Chernin was really supposed to be.

PHILBY, KIM The films: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Paramount, 1965); The Jigsaw Man (Evangrove/ Nightmeg/UFDC, 1984); A Different Loyalty (Forum Films/Movision/fresh media/Lions Gate, 2004); The Good Shepherd (Morgan Creek/ Tribeca/American Zoetrope/Universal, 2006)

The most famous member of the Cambridge Five, a British spy ring recruited by the Soviets to pass Western information to the Communists during the 1940s and 1950s, Harold Adrian Russell “Kim” Philby was also British Intelligence’s most notorious double agent and defector. Work ing in league with fellow spies Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and (allegedly) John Cairncross, Philby’s effectiveness as an agent of the Soviets was curtailed not by the British but by Josef Stalin, who suspected Philby of working against the USSR. As it happened, Philby’s alcoholism and bouts of depres-

sion would make him a liability to both sides, and by 1955 Soviet intelligence had dropped him as a source of information while Britain’s domestic intelligence agency MI5 was using him only in a very limited capacity. The death of Philby’s wife Aileen, also an alcoholic, was followed by his remarriage and relocation to Beirut on behalf of British Intelligence, where his drinking accelerated to the point that he managed to alienate practically everyone who had once liked or admired him. On January 23, 1963, he dropped out of sight, reemerging in Moscow on July 1; less than a month later he was granted political asylum and Soviet citizenship. He’d been led to believe that he would receive an enormous amount of money and a commission in the KGB as a reward for his defection, but instead found himself a virtual prisoner in his adopted country, bereft of any significance or stature. When Philby died in 1988 at age 76, newspapers throughout the Free World gloated over his disillusionment and bitterness. It has been speculated that his friend Graham Greene used Philby as inspiration for the duplicitous Harry Lime, played by Orson Welles in the Greene-scripted espionage thriller The Third Man. However, the film was made in 1949, well before Philby’s double-agent activities were known and two years before he himself was suspected of being the “third man” in the spy ring headed by his Cambridge companions Burgess and Maclean. John le Carre’s 1963 novel The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, and its 1965 film version scripted by Paul Dehn and Guy Trosper and directed by Martin Ritt, focus on harddrinking British intelligence agent Alex Leamas (played onscreen by Richard Burton), who pretends to defect in order to neutralize a dangerous Soviet agent (or so Leamas is led to believe). While only a fragment of Kim Philby’s story is incorporated into the narrative—le Carre was saving him as the model for one of the principal players in the novel and TV miniseries Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy—the well-publicized homosexuality of Philby’s colleague Guy Burgess is manifested in the character of Ashe (Michael Hordern in the film), who recruits Leamas for the Soviets under the pretense of helping him

Post find a civilian job after his dismissal from Britain’s foreign intelligence agency MI6. In 1983’s The Jigsaw Man, adapted from Dorothea Bennett’s novel by Jo Eisenger and directed by Terence Young, Michael Caine stars as Philby clone Sir Philip Kimberly (subtlety is not one of the property’s virtues), former head of British Secret Service. After defecting to the Soviet Union Kimberly undergoes plastic surgery and is sent back to England as the much-younger “Sergei Kuzminsky” to recover KGB documents that have been confiscated by MI6. He uses the opportunity to vengefully play one side against the other, and also to reconnect with his daughter Penelope (Susan George), who greets her “remade” father with “Thank God you are here, whoever you are.” Oh, and Kimberly/Kuzminsky loves his vodka, though he’ll take whiskey in a pinch. Another Philby character, British double agent Arch Cummings, appears in the person of actor Billy Crudup in the sprawling American spy drama The Good Shepherd (2006), detailed in the entry for James Angleton. On this occasion the Guy Burgess counterpart is Dr. Fredericks (Michael Gambon), a closeted homosexual who is outed by Cummings so that the latter can gain the confidence of senior CIA officer Edward Wilson (Matt Damon). And in director Marek Kanievski’s A Different Loyalty, an unacknowledged fictionalization of Kim Philby: The Spy I Loved by Philby’s second wife Eleanor Brewer, Rupert Evans stars as “Leo Caulfield,” with Sharon Stone as his wife “Sally Tyler.” The basic facts and chronology of Philby’s defection remain intact in Jim Piddock’s screenplay, though the genuine names of the principal players (and some of their motivations) do not. Under his real name, Kim Philby is one of the key characters in Frederick Forsyth’s 1983 novel The Fourth Protocol. The 1987 film version features Philby (played by Michael Bilton) just long enough to be murdered by the KGB, in carefree defiance of historical accuracy.

PHILLIPS, DAVID Most people know American civil engineer David Phillips as “The Pudding Guy,” who in

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1999 took advantage of a legal loophole in a mail-in promotion by Healthy Choice Foods to earn over 1.25 million frequent flyer miles. By purchasing every case of the company’s pudding available in Sacramento, California (then donating them to the Salvation Army), he was able to use all the package labels in exchange for the frequent-flyer miles offered by the promotion— not only saving a fortune on flying costs but also receiving a hefty tax deduction. Phillips’ ingenious strategy was amusingly recreated by Barry Egan (Adam Sandler), protagonist of filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2002 comedy PunchDrunk Love.

POOLE, WILLIAM Better known as “Bill the Butcher,” William Poole was the leader of the Bowery Boys—not the popular movie aggregation, but a gang of American criminals who held sway over New York City’s notorious Five Points district in the mid–19th century. Drawing his nickname from the butcher shop his father established in Washington Market, Poole lived up to his bloody soubriquet with a series of robberies, assaults and murders—until he himself was killed by his arch rival John Morrissey in a Broadway barroom. Identified by his real name in Herbert Ashbury’s 1927 nonfiction book The Gangs of New York, in Martin Scorsese’s romanticized 2002 film version Bill “The Butcher” Poole is renamed Bill Cutting (presumably not meant as a joke) and played by Daniel Day-Lewis.

POST, C.W. Screenwriter-director Preston Sturges has cited American breakfast-cereal mogul C.W. Post as the role model for the character of tyrannical, tormented railroad executive Tom Garner, played by Spencer Tracy in Sturges’ Citizen Kane precursor The Power and the Glory (1933). The filmmaker’s statement would seem to be supported by the fact that the mercurial and highly eccentric Post was the grandfather of Sturges’ second wife Eleanor. But according to biographer Diane Jacobs, Sturges may have made the C.W. Post connection merely to stroke the ego of Eleanor’s uncle Harry Close, since the parallels between Post and Tom Garner in Power and

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the Glory (among them a climactic suicide) are superficial at best.

POWERS, HARRY The film: The Night of the Hunter (Paul Gregory Productions/United Artists, 1955)

“Pudgy” and “bespectacled” were the adjectives generally applied to Harry Powers at the time of his arrest in 1931. “Love Racketeer” and “Lonely Hearts Killer” were among the labels attached to him in subsequent headlines. Whatever one called him, Powers was in the center ring of the biggest media circus that ever hit the West Virginia farming village of Quiet Dell, just seven miles from Clarksburg. Born Herman Drenth in the Netherlands in 1892, he became a resident of West Virginia in 1926, along the way acquiring the new name Harry Powers. Actually three new names, if one counts his aliases A.R. Weaver and Cornelius Pierson. It was as Pierson that he placed a classified ad in the circular of the American Friendly Society, a clearing house for lonely adults seeking companionship. Identifying himself as a “wealthy widower worth $150,000,” he claimed that “business enterprises” prevented him from socializing, thus he was using the American Friendly Society to “make the acquaintance of the right kind of woman.” On June 23, 1931, “Cornelius O. Pierson” arrived at the Illinois home of the woman who answered his ad, widowed mother of three Asta Eicher. She’d led him to believe that her husband had left her a substantial sum, though in fact she was nearing the end of her inheritance and was hoping that Mr. Pierson would marry and support her. Two days later, Asta and her new beau departed for a little trip, leaving her three children—14-year-old Greta, 12-year-old Harry, 9-year-old Anabel— with the family nurse. On the morning of July 1, one of the children showed up at the local bank with a note and a check, ostensibly from Mrs. Eicher, and asked to withdraw the family’s bank balance. The signature on the note didn’t match Mrs. Eicher’s, so the child went home emptyhanded to Mr. Pierson, who had returned alone; the gentleman caller then drove off with the children in tow. Three weeks later, the selfsame Mr.

Pierson arrived in Northboro, Massachusetts, to meet another woman who had answered his ad, Dorothy Lemke. Accompanied by Mr. Pierson, Dorothy withdrew $4000 from two bank accounts and left for Iowa, where the couple planned to wed. Neither the Eichers nor Dorothy Lemke would ever be seen alive again. August 26, 1931: The Clarksburg, West Virginia, police were asked to contact local resident Cornelius Pierson to determine the whereabouts of Mrs. Eicher and her children. Though no man by that name lived in Clarksburg, his description matched that pleasant little fellow Harry Powers, who lived with his wife, Lucille, in nearby Quiet Dell. A search of Powers’ garage, which curiously had a large basement, yielded traces of blood and human hair. While the search of the property continued, a teenager told the cops that he’d recently helped Powers dig a trench connecting the garage with a creek. Found buried in the trench were the rotting corpses of Asta Eicher and her three children, dead from strangulation and blows from a blunt instrument. No sooner had Powers signed a confession than another body was found, the strangled corpse of Dorothy Lemke. There was little doubt that Powers had murdered the two women to gain possession of their money; the kids just happened to be in the way. Nor had Powers dispatched his victims in haste; he’d kept them imprisoned in his basement before murdering them one by one. Though it is likely that he had killed dozens of other women whom he had met through the American Friendly Society, there was only time to try and convict him for his known victims. With no courthouse in Harrison County, the trial was held at Moore’s Opera House in Clarksburg, as hundreds of spectators jammed the stalls and thousands more lined up in cars and on foot for miles around. The show folded on March 18, 1932, when Harry Powers, impeccably dressed as always, was led to the gallows. Growing up in Moundsville, West Virginia, Davis Grubb was between the ages of 12 and 13 when the Harry Powers spectacle played itself out 84 miles away in Clarksburg. The grisly details of the case made a profound effect upon

Quinn Grubb and most likely influenced his later short stories and novels, written in that uniquely American style known as Southern Gothic. Published in 1954, Grubb’s first novel Night of the Hunter was loosely based on the story of Harry Powers, incorporating the author’s fascination with the innocent resilience of Depression-era children and the darker side of That Ol’ Time Religion. The wholly evil villain of Grubb’s novel is “Preacher” Harry Powell, not an owleyed lump like Harry Powers but a rakishly handsome bogus evangelist who preys upon lonely and wealthy widows. In director Charles Laughton and screenwriter James Agee’s film version of Night of the Hunter, the powerful hold that Preacher Powell has over susceptible women is never in question since the role is played by Robert Mitchum, who excelled at portraying virile, attractive men with a dangerous edge. The character’s iconic knuckle tattoos, spelling out “HATE” on his left hand and “LOVE” on his right, were borrowed not from Powers but from a grim-looking stranger Davis Grubb had encountered in a West Virginia pool hall. Also unlike Powers, the Preacher is motivated by the twisted belief that he is doing “the Lord’s work” by knocking off rich widows and putting their savings to use. Learning from a condemned prison cellmate that $10,000 in stolen money is hidden somewhere on the Missouri property of the cellmate’s wife Willa (Shelley Winters), Preacher insinuates himself into the home and hearts of lonely Willa and her impressionable 9-year-old daughter Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce). But Pearl’s older brother John (Billy Chapin) instinctively mistrusts Preacher, who after murdering Willa realizes that the only way he’ll get his hands on the money is to kill John as well. Fleeter of foot than Asta Eicher’s children, John and Pearl manage to escape the increasingly unhinged Preacher, finding salvation in the farmhouse of Rachel Cooper, played by Lillian Gish as a fiercely indomitable force of Good. Night of the Hunter provides the Harry Powers legend with a happier and more satisfying ending, leading one to conclude that Clarksburg would have been better off if Lillian Gish had set up shop there back in

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1931 instead of embarking on a European vacation with Noël Coward and Mary Pickford.

QUINN, ROSEANN The film: Looking for Mr. Goodbar (Freddie Fields Productions/Paramount, 1977)

The product of a strict but loving Irish Catholic upbringing, Bronx-born Roseann Quinn was always an attractive girl, but a slight limp caused by a childhood bout with polio had left her self-conscious about her appearance, especially around men. Nonetheless, she was described as “Easy to meet, nice to know” in her high school yearbook, and was praised by a later acquaintance for her “friendly, pleasing personality.” Three years after graduating from Newark State Teacher’s College in 1966, she landed a teaching job at St. Joseph’s School for the Deaf in the Bronx. Like many other homebound girls of the Swinging Sixties, Roseann began to rebel against her white-bread family, hanging with a fast crowd and experimenting with drugs and sex. In a belated bid for independence, 28-yearold Roseann moved into her own apartment on West 72nd Street in 1972. By day, she was demure and reserved at work and with associates; by night, she carried on a wild and uninhibited lifestyle, picking up male acquaintances at Tweed’s Bar and taking them home for the night. A casual observer might conclude that her onenight stands were driven by the thrill of having sex with no strings attached, but to those who knew her better there was a disturbing undertone of sado-masochism. She seemed inordinately attracted to troublemakers and loose cannons, and on more than one occasion could be heard screaming in her bedroom far into the night. Neighbors noticed that she frequently showed up disheveled and bruised “the morning after,” indicating a strong preference for rough and kinky sex. On January 1, 1968, Roseann arrived at Tweed’s to link up with her friend Danny Murray (sometimes identified as Gerry Guest), a gay stockbroker. He had brought along his roommate-lover, 23-year-old John Wayne Wilson. Though aware that Wilson had a dark and unsavory past, Roseanne was intrigued by the quirky

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young man and invited him to spend the night with her. At 2 a.m. the couple left Tweed’s en route to Roseann’s apartment. Three days later her beaten and befouled body was found on her sofa bed, drenched in blood. She had been bludgeoned with one of her household sculptures and stabbed at least 18 times; her corpse was then raped and a candle jammed into her vagina. “ YOUNG TEACHER SLAIN IN WEST SIDE FLAT,” shouted the headline in the New York Daily News, and soon the whole city was held in thrall by the savagery of the crime, with many young people asking themselves if the carnalism of the 1960s was worth the price. Once the murderer was identified as John Wayne Wilson the police converged on his hiding place while he begged them to kill him. Wilson hanged himself in his jail cell five months later. Journalist Judith Rossner regarded the murder of Roseann Quinn as an object lesson for young people eager to kick over the traces and enter the swinging-singles scene without weighing the possible consequences. Unlike many in the mainstream press at the time, Rossner did not hold Quinn entirely responsible for her fate; given the anything-goes philosophy of that pre– AIDs era, the author understood that an intelligent but impressionable woman could make bad and potentially fatal decisions while trying to keep apace with the “in” crowd. In 1973 Rossner wrote a fact-based article about the murder for Esquire magazine, only to have the piece killed at the request of John Wayne Wilson’s lawyers. She reshuffled her research notes to formulate a fictionalization of the story, published in novel form as Looking for Mr. Goodbar in 1975. Rossner fleshed out the sketchy portrait of Roseann Quinn as related by her friends and family and came up with Theresa Dunn, who like Roseann was raised in a Catholic household and was a teacher of deaf children. Not as good-looking as Quinn, Theresa also bears an ugly scar on her back as the result of a childhood attack of scoliosis, making her all the more insecure about her ability to attract men. An unhappy affair with a married university professor sours Theresa on romance in general and sex in particular. Her quickie nocturnal trysts with strangers becomes

an addiction, her revulsion over the sex act translating into a self-destructive quest for “Mr. Goodbar,” her nickname for a man who will treat her violently in bed. It’s as if she is harnessing the sexual revolution of the 1970s as a form of punishment for having unhealthy desires. A lengthy relationship with sadistic hustler Tony leaves her dissatisfied to the point of switching gears and dating respectable social worker James, who meets with her exacting father’s approval. But neither Tony nor James can give Theresa what she wants—nor is she quite certain what her wants really are. On New Year’s Eve she reverts to old habits and lures the sexually confused and extremely edgy Gary to her bedroom. This turns out to be one dangerous liaison that she is unable to keep under control, and the novel ends abruptly with her rape and murder. Without condemning Theresa for her promiscuity, Rossner concludes that her death was all too inevitable given the events leading up to it. Director-writer Richard Brooks, a man to whom taste and subtlety were mere words in the dictionary, was responsible for the controversial 1977 screen version of Looking for Mr. Goodbar. One of Brooks’ few praiseworthy creative decisions was the casting of Diane Keaton as Theresa, her appealing personality and well-scrubbed beauty providing sharp dramatic contrast with the sordidness of her life choices. Otherwise, Brooks uses the same “lay it in their laps” technique he’d employed in his previous films, “explaining” Theresa’s schizophrenic lifestyle as a rejection of her harsh, judgmental father (Richard Kiley) and her control-freak boyfriend James (William Atherton)—and, by extension, of Catholicism, which is bashed mercilessly throughout the picture. Making things even easier for the audience, virtually all the men in Theresa’s life are negative characters, though her erstwhile sexual sparring partner Tony (Richard Gere) comes off more likable than the heroine’s father. And in the tradition of the director’s In Cold Blood, wherein he invokes sympathy for a pair of depraved murderers, Brooks asks us to “understand” the twisted motivations of Theresa’s murderer Gary (Tom Berenger), a self-loathing

Raff bisexual who makes his first appearance in drag. If the director had any compassion for the LGBT community, it begins and ends with Gary; the rest of Looking for Mr. Goodbar is almost as homophobic as it is anti–Catholic. A more factual and objective filmization of the Roseann Quinn case can be found in the 1983 TV movie Trackdown: Finding the Goodbar Killer, starring George Segal as the detective who brings the killer to justice. Though Trackdown begins where Looking for Mr. Goodbar ends, the producers took pains not to promote the 1983 production as a sequel, including an opening disclaimer distancing themselves from Judith Rossner (and spelling her name wrong in the process).

R AFF, RIFF [HORST SIMCO] The film: Spring Breakers (Muse Productions/ O’ Salvation/Division Films/Annapurna/Iconoclast/RabbitBandini Productions/Radar Pictures/A24, 2013)

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Raff, or to ignore his glimmering gold teeth and elaborate tattoos; and after he joined the cast of MTV’s reality show From G’s to Gents his career soared. Now that he was a “signed” rapper under contract to Souija Boy’s SODMG record label, Riff Raff captured the attention of film director Harmony Korine, who wanted the performer for a role in his upcoming film Spring Breakers. Released in 2012, Spring Breakers is the beautifully photographed but sordid saga of four college girls who yearn to head to Florida for spring break but lack the necessary funds. Three of the girls solve this dilemma by getting high, putting on ski masks and pulling off a violent restaurant holdup. Then it’s off to St. Petersburg, where all four of our heroines (for lack of a better word) party day and night until they’re arrested on a minor drug charge. At their court hearing— where, in a scene typical of the film’s level of reality, they’re clad only in bikinis—the girls are bailed out by a local rapper and self-proclaimed “gangsta” named Alien. Unaware of their previous robbery, he takes it upon himself to make the girls as “bad” as he is by enlisting them as sex toys, as well as accomplices in his drugdealing and gun-running activities. In an almost touching story twist, the girls end up seducing Alien rather than the other way around, his libido shifting into hyperdrive when they point two loaded pistols in his face—whereupon he proceeds to simulate fellatio with the gun bar-

Please forgive the archaic prose in this entry. I’ve tried—honest I have—but I just can’t get into the rap-music culture, much less the white rap-music culture. Anyway, this guy Riff Raff was born in 1982 with the given name Horst Simco. The product of a broken home, he and his siblings pingponged between Texas and Minnesota during their formative years. Always odd man out wherever he lived, Simco decided to embrace his uniqueness by becoming a “candy-colored” rap artist, moving to Los Angeles in 2005 and passing out homemade CDs to anyone who’d accept them. Like many another show biz wannabe of the post–MTV generation, he began releasing music and comedy clips on such social-network conduits as MySpace and YouTube. It was impossible to avoid this enterprising young man who Riff Raff promotes a line of trendy sunglasses. now called himself Riff

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rels. We’ve come a long way from Where the Boys Are. You’ve probably guessed by now that Harmony Korine wanted Riff Raff to portray the zoned-out Alien, a role with far more complexity than it would seem at first, especially when he sincerely falls in love with the girls and is willing to commit his first murder when one of them is shot and wounded. Riff Raff and Korine couldn’t come to terms, so James Franco was cast as Alien, playing the role as a Riff Raff clone right down to the gold bridgework, tattoos and profane stream-of-consciousness philosophy of life (oddly, the only tune he sings is not a rap number but instead a languid Britney Spears ballad). Though Franco claimed that he based his character on an “unsigned” rapper named Dangeruss, Riff Raff didn’t see things that way. A feud was sparked between actor and singer, with Riff appearing in the cameo role of “James Franko” on the TV soap One Life to Live and declaring himself “the rap game’s James Franco,” while Franco himself heralded the DVD release of Spring Breakers in a promotional photo captioned “Film game riffraff.” That’s when Riff announced that was going to file a lawsuit against the filmmakers, comparing the unauthorized use of his persona and likeness to the illegal planting of trees and crops on his front yard. He insisted that he bore no grudge against James Franco, telling MTV News “I’m sure he’s cool. I want him to be successful.” The fact that he and Spring Breakers costar Gucci Mane had already recorded a song for the film’s soundtrack, combined with his vague assertion that he was suing for five million or ten million or “whatever” and the absence of any recorded court documents, prompted several major entertainment-news sources to dismiss the proposed litigation as merely the latest of Riff Raff ’s publicity ploys. Or whatever.

REICHENBACH, HARRY The film: The Half-Naked Truth (RKO-Radio, 1932)

“Father of Ballyhoo” Harry Reichenbach was born in Maryland in 1882 and began his career in 1905 as manager of a magician, the Great Ray-

mond. This experience taught Reichenbach that the public enjoys having the wool pulled over its eyes, so he went into the publicity and promotion business. Adhering to the P.T. Barnum philosophy that the more hyperbole you use to advertise an attraction the bigger the crowds will be, Reichenbach spared no horses when publicizing such silent film favorites as Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino and Francis X. Bushman. One of his strategies to promote the career of actress Clara Kimball Young was to stage a fake kidnapping, having Clara carried off by “Mexican bandits” and then rescued by the U.S. Cavalry (not surprisingly, the government vetoed this one). And to promote the 1918 adventure film Tarzan of the Apes, he hired a man in an ape suit to terrorize the folks in the lobby of the Knickerbocker Hotel. The 1920s found Reichenbach huckstering the overbaked and overwritten romantic novel Three Weeks into a bestseller, literally inventing the persona of novelist Elinor Glyn as the leading authority on sex appeal in the United States. For a 1922 German film about Lot’s Wife titled Sodom und Gomorrha, he arranged for a mummy made of salt to be “discovered” in a vacant lot, then produced a letter from an “archeologist” corroborating its authenticity. He might have pulled it off without a hitch if the mummy hadn’t burst open to reveal its straw stuffing: “A few nails cost me a great stunt,” he later chuckled. He seemed to be in on every major promotion of the decade, including the Florida Land boom that had been engineered by fellow ballyhoo artist Wilson Mizner. But the urban legend that Reichenbach was responsible for promoting a piece of artistic kitsch titled September Morn into a priceless (and much-copied) “masterpiece” by claiming that the painting’s modestly nude female subject had been condemned by the Society for the Suppression of Vice and banned in Boston, doesn’t stand up to the cold light of day, especially the claim that Reichenbach earned only $25 for his efforts (he spent that much on his daily supply of cigars). Released one year after Harry Reichenbach’s death in 1931, director Gregory LaCava’s comedy The Half-Naked Truth was adapted by Corey

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A January 14, 1933, Motion Picture Herald ad for The Half-Naked Truth, inspired by the career of colorful press agent Harry Reichenbach.

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Ford, Ben Markson and H.L. Swanson from humorist David Freedman’s “Phantom Fame,” a freewheeling account of Reichenbach’s career. Lee Tracy plays silver-tongued carnival barker Jimmy Bates, who reinvents himself as a hotshot publicity agent by promoting hootchy-kootchy dancer Teresita (Lupe Velez) as Princess Exotica, a fugitive from a Middle Eastern harem. Accompanied by Jimmy’s barrel-chested sidekick Achilles (Eugene Pallette), himself disguised as the Princess’ head eunuch, the flimsily clad Teresita makes a splendiferous entrance into a Manhattan hotel with a live lion in tow, then orders a raw steak from room service to nourish her pet. Far-fetched? It may seem so until one realizes that this was a near-carbon copy of Harry Reichenbach’s promotional stunts for a brace of 1920 silent films, The Virgin of Stamboul and The Revenge of Tarzan—lion and all.

REISER , WILL My self-imposed rule of avoiding film characters who are meant to be the creator’s alter-ego is temporary lifted here because of the overwhelming emotional power of the awardwinning 2011 drama 50/50. Protagonist Adam Lerner ( Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a young journalist who discovers that he suffers from a cancerous tumor in his spine that gives him only a 50 percent chance for survival, is based on the author of the film, screenwriter-producer Will Reiser—who fortunately weathered his ordeal and as of this writing is still active in Hollywood.

REX , NICK Most contemporary sources indicate that Dr. Alan Feinstone, the serial-murderer title character played by Corbin Bernsen in the 1996 horror-comedy The Dentist, was based on Nick Rex, a real-life dentist with homicidal tendencies. Since I have not been able to find any documentation of Nick Rex’s existence, I’ll have to give those sources the benefit of the doubt until proof or disproof of their allegations is made available.

ROGERS, E ARL The film: A Free Soul (MGM, 1931)

“From the heights he plunged to the depths,

and died in 1922 from drink at the age of 52.” Thus began a 1934 Milwaukee Journal piece about the life and career of colorful Californiabased defense attorney Earl Rogers. Though his equally celebrated daughter, journalist Adela Rogers St. Johns, was devoted to her father, even her own published accounts of his exploits came to the conclusion that he was his own worst enemy. The son of a minister, Earl Rogers was in his youth as fascinated with medicine as the law, eventually becoming the first professor of medical jurisprudence at the University of California. Even before that honor Rogers applied a keen analytical and scientific sensibility to his courtroom work, quickly assessing how far he could go with a judge and jury in defending his clients and exhibiting a near-photographic memory in conjuring up legal precedents and obscure bits of contradictory evidence. His most famous (and notorious) techniques included his pompously theatrical entrances, confusing prosecution witnesses with seemingly irrelevant remarks, casting aspersions on the moral and ethical makeup of his client’s victims, using props like grisly photographs and loaded weapons to get a reaction that might sway the jury, moving his client to the spectator section of the courtroom so that eyewitnesses would identify the wrong person, dramatically playing for time until one of his assistants rushed into the courtroom with a vital piece of evidence that had probably been available all along, and lulling the witnesses, opposing attorneys, juries and spectators into near-catatonia by monotonously repeating the facts and hand, then abruptly awakening everyone with a sudden outburst that contradicted everything that had gone before. And it worked: Of the 77 murderers he defended in his career, he lost only three cases. “If you are guilty, hire Earl Rogers” was the legend, and celebrity clients were his specialty, among them L.A. businessman Griffith J. Griffith (of Griffith Park fame), acquitted of the attempted murder of his wife; fellow attorney Clarence Darrow, who’d been charged with bribing a jury; prizefighter Jess Willard, defended on a second-degree murder charge for the death of an opponent in

Rogers the ring; and more than one professional criminal. Such was Rogers’ reputation that it is said that one of his clients paid for his services before committing a murder. Unlike the attorneys we now see on TV, Rogers seldom went into court armed with the presumption of innocence: When an acquitted client tried to shake his hand, Rogers snarled “Get away from me, you slimy pimp! You know you’re guilty as hell!” At his peak Rogers earned $100,000 a year— and spent it all on liquor and gambling. Toward the end of his career, he was so drunk so often that his son tried to get him committed to an asylum, and even his hero-worshipping daughter Adela agreed to testify against her father in a competency hearing. After direct testimony in court, Rogers walked up to Adela in the witness box and whispered “You don’t think I’m crazy, do you, honey?” She broke down in tears, and the case was dismissed. By that time, the onceswaggering Rogers was a shell of his former self, and would soon die alone in a shabby lodging house. It was not until 1962 that Adela Rogers St. Johns was able to write dispassionately about her father in the biography Final Verdict. Over 30 years earlier, however, she offered an appetizing fictionalization of Earl Rogers in her novel and play A Free Soul, filmed by MGM under the direction of Clarence Brown from a screenplay by no fewer than five writers, only one of whom ( John Meehan) was credited. In an Oscar- winning performance, Lionel Barrymore portrays brilliant criminal attorney Stephen Ashe, who in his first courtroom scene secures an acquittal for slick mobster Ace Wilfong (Clark Gable) by using an “if it don’t fit, you must acquit” tactic that would have done Johnny Cochran proud. Ashe’s sexy socialite daughter Jan (Norma Shearer) adores her father despite his excessive fondness for alcohol. An incorrigible thrill-seeker, Jan enters into a torrid romance with the charismatic Wilfong, refusing to give him up even when he physically abuses her. Though Ashe is willing to take Wilfong’s fee he balks at sanctioning him as a son-in-law, so Jan makes a deal with her father: She’ll give up her gangster paramour if daddy will agree to accompany her on an extended camping trip to

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“dry out.” Unfortunately, Ashe goes on a binge the last day of the vacation and disappears from sight, leaving Jan no alternative but to return to Wilfong, who professes love for her while simultaneously plotting to use her father as leverage against the authorities. For the sake of the girl’s future happiness, Jan’s cast-off sweetheart Dwight Winthrop (Leslie Howard) kills Wilfong in cold blood, refusing to defend himself in court for what he regards as a matter of honor. Unexpectedly, Stephen Ashe emerges from his drunken stupor and appears before judge and jury to not only save Winthrop from the gas chamber, but also deliver an impassioned mea culpa in which he blames his own failures as a father and a human being for the mess his daughter has made of things. Filmed in a single 14-minute take using multiple cameras, Ashe’s bravura monologue ends as he collapses and dies. The 1953 remake of A Free Soul, The Girl Who Had Everything, was so eviscerated by the strengthened Production Code that it runs a full 24 minutes shorter than the original. Elizabeth Taylor, William Powell, Fernando Lamas and Gig Young assume the (renamed) roles played in 1931 by Shearer, Barrymore, Gable and Howard; the ex-boyfriend’s justifiable homicide never occurs, with the gangster bumped off by one of his own; and the attorney, now merely a social drinker, remains among the living at fadeout time as his chastened (and chaste) daughter apologizes. While The Girl Who Had Everything is barely worthy of a footnote, we can’t close our discussion of Earl Rogers without mentioning that he was one of the principal inspirations for Erle Stanley Gardner’s fictional defense attorney Perry Mason, the durable hero of six Hollywood features, a radio series and a long-running TV weekly.

ROGERS, MARY CECILIA The film: The Mystery of Marie Roget (Universal, 1942)

As 21-year-old Mary Cecilia Rogers left her home at 126 Nassau St. in New York City on the morning of July 25, 1841, she stopped at the door of her mother’s boarder Daniel Payne. Mary was hoping that Payne, her fiance, would

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accompany her on a trip to her aunt’s house on Janet Street, but he demurred, offering to stop by that night to take her back home. But she never arrived at her destination, and in fact no one saw her en route to her aunt’s. Certainly someone would have noticed “the beautiful cigar store girl” from John Anderson’s tobacco shop at Broadway and Duane if they’d seen her walking alone in her “white dress, black shawl, blue scarf, leghorn hat, light colored shoes and parasol high colored,” as later described by the New York Sun. At first, Mary’s mother dismissed her disappearance and just another caprice of a girl who three years earlier had vanished for a whole month, refusing to explain where she’d been upon her return and refuting the suicide note she’d left behind. But later in the day Daniel Payne and Mary’s former beau Mr. Cromelin were summoned by the police to identify the girl’s corpse, found floating in the Hudson near Hoboken, New Jersey. She’d been strangled by strips of cloth and lace, her throat bound with pieces of her underskirt. The grieving Cromelin insisted that the body be buried immediately near where it had been discovered, which didn’t look good for him when it was later revealed that Mary had visited his empty office the day before, wrote her name on the door slate and left a rose in the keyhole. But both Cromelin and Daniel Payne could account for their whereabouts at the time of the murder, so suspicion shifted to a gang of “ruffians” who’d been terrorizing young girls in the same vicinity all summer long. Then a Weehawken, New Jersey, innkeeper came forth to testify that a girl answering Mary’s description had stopped at the inn with a good-looking young man, whereupon several disreputable gents followed them out the door—after which the innkeeper heard what she thought was a scream. In its extensive coverage of the murder mystery, the Sun used the innkeeper’s words, together with a statement made the following year by a woman who claimed that Mary had actually died from a botched abortion and false clues had been planted to throw the police off the trail, as an invitation to editorialize that the dead girl “has become the victim of the very passions and

vices which her exposure to the public gaze for mercenary gain so well calculated to engender and encourage.” Adding to the lurid nature of the tragedy was the October 7, 1841, death of Mary’s sweetheart Daniel Payne, who took a fatal dose of laudanum near the site of the girl’s demise: “To the World—here I am on the very spot,” read the suicide note found among Payne’s effects. “May God forgive me for my misspent life.” Though no one would ever find out who murdered Mary Cecilia Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe took a whack at a solution in his short story “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” first published in two installments in the November and December 1842 editions of The Ladies’ Companion. Intended as a sequel to his previous mystery yarn “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Poe shifted the action from New England to Paris, with his “scientific” detective hero C. Auguste Dupin tackling the case. Taking a cue from the theory that much of the evidence in the Rogers matter may have been planted as diversion, Dupin uses the initially overlooked clue of a nautical knot in the murder cord to expose the sailor culprit. “Confirming” Dupin’s conclusion were two subsequent confessions to the Rogers murder by a pair of real-life sailors, both quickly debunked. Commemorating the centennial of Mary Rogers’ untimely end, Universal Pictures released a low-budget film adaptation of The Mystery of Marie Roget (no circumflex over the “e”) in 1942, throwing out practically everything of Poe’s except for the title, the murder and two character names, while drawing from a smattering of known facts surrounding the true events; additionally, scriptwriter Michael Jacoby moved the action up to 1889. Poe had transformed his victim from a cigar-store employee to a clerk in a Paris perfume shop; Universal redefined Marie Roget as a sexy musical comedy star, played by the markedly un–French Maria Montez. Under the brisk direction of Phil Rosen, the picture begins with the first of several red herrings as a body identified as Marie is found in the Seine. Shortly afterward, Marie pops up alive and kicking, and like Mary Rogers before her refuses to explain where she’s been (Marie’s formidable

Rosenberg grandmother, played by Maria Ouspenskaya, is given the Rogers girl’s middle name Cecile). Poe’s detective protagonist is partially rechristened as Dr. Paul Dupin (played by Patric Knowles), a navy medical officer working in concert with Paris police inspector Gobelin (Lloyd Corrigan). French Naval Affairs minister Beauvais ( John Litel) is rapidly established as a suspect in the death of the unknown woman found in the Seine—and subsequently in the apparent murder of Marie Roget. Many complications ensue before the first body is identified as the castoff English wife of the real murderer, and Marie is herself revealed to be one of the villains of piece, in cahoots with the killer to purloin the inheritance of Marie’s perpetually imperiled younger sister Camille (Nell O’Day). The Mystery of Marie Roget has about as much relation to Edgar Allan Poe as Universal’s previous adaptions of The Black Cat and The Raven, but it’s an innocuous way to spend a rainy afternoon.

ROSENBERG, ETHEL—AND JULIUS ROSENBERG

The film: Daniel (World Film Services/Paramount Pictures, 1983)

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berg’s co-conspirator Martin Sobell confirmed in 2008 that Julius had stolen documents pertaining to the Manhattan Project (in which he was involved as an Army engineer) were Michael and Robert willing to concede that their father had not only been a recruiter for the Communists since the 1930s, but had indeed spied for the Soviets during and after World War II. However, the sons persisted in the belief that it was neither necessary nor justifiable to execute the Rosenbergs—especially Ethel, who was largely condemned on faulty evidence given by her own brother and co-defendant David Greenglass in order to save himself and his wife, Ruth, from a similar fate. To give Greenglass the benefit of the doubt, it would appear that back in 1953 no one seriously believed that the Rosenbergs would actually be executed. Both had been offered a deal whereby they’d be spared the electric chair if they admitted their wrongdoing and named their accomplices. When they refused, the FBI attempted to schedule Ethel’s “final walk” before Julius’ in order to frighten him into a confession, but the agency was legally blocked from implementing so ghoulish a strategy. Beyond any arguments of guilt, innocence or injustice, there has also been a prevalent theory (famously supported and articulated in 1983 by New Yorker

On June 19, 1953, 35-year-old Julius Rosenberg and his 37-year-old wife, Ethel, became the only American civilians to be executed under the Espionage Act during the Cold War. The case provoked a firestorm of controversy that the ensuing decades have not dampened, with critics of the execution, notably the Rosenbergs’ sons Michael and Robert, arguing that Julius and Ethel were innocent pawns of the McCarthyera Red Scare. For years the sons endeavored to prove that their parents were never involved in smuggling American atomic secrets to the Russians, but were unjustly persecuted in court and put to death as a warning to other political dissiIn custody: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. dents. Only after Julius Rosen-

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film critic Pauline Kael) that the Rosenbergs were victims of postwar anti–Semitism—but this would seem to be contradicted by the fact that their trial judge Irving Kaufman, who rejected all pleas for mercy and proclaimed from the bench “I consider your crime worse than murder,” was himself Jewish. E.L. Doctorow’s 1971 novel The Book of Daniel was a fictional retelling of the Rosenberg affair as seen through the eyes of Daniel Isaacson, whose pro–Red parents Paul and Rochelle Isaacson had been convicted of transmitting nuclear secrets to the USSR and executed as spies. The thrust of the story is the lasting effect of the tragedy on the children the Isaacsons left behind. Though Doctorow reduces the number of the Rosenbergs’ male offspring from two to one, Daniel is given a political-activist sister named Susan. Just before her suicide, Susan accuses the apathetic Daniel of being a cowardly conformist who cannot bring himself to address what happened to his parents, and why. In the course of the narrative Daniel confronts the man who betrayed his mother and father (not his uncle, but instead a neighbor), unearths several discomforting and long-suppressed facts, and becomes radicalized himself. Director Sidney Lumet had wanted to make a film version of The Book of Daniel from the moment of its publication, but would spend over a decade getting his project financed and distributed. Its title shortened to Daniel, the 1983 film was adapted for the screen by author Doctorow and given a limited release by Paramount before heading to the video shelves. Mandy Patinkin and Lindsay Crouse are cast as the foredoomed Isaacsons, with Timothy Hutton as Daniel, Ellen Barkin as his wife Phyllis and Amanda Plummer as his sister Susan. “There is no attempt here to be historically accurate,” noted Peter Kihss of the New York Times, but there are enough similarities to actual events for at least a superficial accuracy. For example, Rochelle Isaacson’s agonizingly protracted execution, in which she must be electrocuted a second time because her heart is still beating, is lifted almost verbatim from an eyewitness account of Ethel Rosenberg’s death by International News Service correspondent Bob Consodine.

Otherwise, the film conveys key plot points through second-hand (and prejudiced) information, most of which never came up during the actual Rosenberg trial. The Isaacsons’ defense attorney (played in flashback by Ed Asner) may well have been manipulated by the defendants to allow them to play the “lone martyr” card in court and thus ensure their execution, but we have only the word of the lawyer’s widow for this thesis. As for the witness who betrayed the Isaacsons, not one word of his testimony is spoken in the film, so again Daniel must draw his own conclusions. In fact, Daniel never finds out whether or not his parents were truly guilty: As director Lumet explained to journalist Richard Freedman, “I don’t deal with guilt versus innocence. I deal with justice miscarried. Whatever the Rosenbergs did—and it’s still unclear—the government I love did worse by electrocuting them.” Still, Lumet makes certain that both Daniel and the audience suspect that the Isaacsons were railroaded by having a fictional New York Times reporter cite a hitherto unreleased Internal Justice Department memo which “favored the defense”—though the equivalent memo in real life stated exactly the opposite. For all its ambiguity, Daniel is unquestionably on the side of the Isaacsons, and on the title character’s climactic crossover into political extremism (a sequence lensed on location at the Central Park peace rally of 1982). In a lengthy newspaper article following the film’s release, conservative columnist George Will trashed Daniel as “a libel of America,” supporting his premise by citing a recently published book on the Rosenbergs. “The perpetrators of Daniel … richly deserve the rotten luck of releasing the movie just as a new book demolishes all attempts to do what the movie attempts—to assert that the Rosenbergs were not spies. When Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton began writing The Rosenberg File, they believed that the Rosenbergs, executed in 1953, were victims of a government frame-up.” According to Will, by the time the book reached print, Radosh and Milton still believed that “the judge and prosecutor used questionable tactics, and that the death penalties were disproportionate, especially for Ethel. But

Rothstein they establish beyond doubt that Julius was at the core of an important Soviet espionage ring and that Ethel ‘was almost certainly his accomplice.’” Will suggested that a film like Daniel would seem to have been rendered irrelevant by The Rosenberg File, but only “if Rosenberg partisans were not impervious to evidence, like those who believe the CIA killed John Kennedy.”

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show Pictures/A&E/Bazmark Films/Red Wagon Entertainment/Spectrum Films/Warner Bros., 2013)

“There is a rumor around Broadway that several people are considering the making of a picture with the story patterned after the life of Arnold Rothstein, noted New York gangster, recently murdered. We hope it is just a rumor for pictures can get along quite well without making

ROSS, JEAN British singer and writer, who while working in Germany just before the Nazi takeover shared lodgings with author and fellow Briton Christopher Isherwood. Ross is said to have been the inspiration for the recklessly decadent Berlin cabaret singer Sally Bowles, introduced in Isherwood’s 1939 memoir Goodbye to Berlin and first played by Julie Harris in the 1951 Broadway play and 1955 film I Am a Camera. The 1966 musical version Cabaret was itself filmed in 1972, with Liza Minnelli winning an Oscar for her performance as Sally Bowles. Jean Ross herself angrily refuted her alleged similarity to the mythical Sally, refusing to grant interviews on the subject or even see any of the dramatizations of the Isherwood original.

ROTHSTEIN, ARNOLD The films: Street of Chance (Paramount, 1930); Czar of Broadway (Universal, 1930); Now I’ll Tell (Fox, 1934); Her Husband Lies (Paramount, 1938); The Great Gatsby (Paramount, 1974); The Great Gatsby (Village Road-

The Hollywood production code wouldn’t allow gambler-gangster Arnold Rothstein to be mentioned by name in the 1934 film based on his widow’s memoirs, but magazines like Picture Play were not subject to similar restrictions.

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capital of a series of events in the life of this man.” So editorialized “W.R.W.” in the November 23, 1928, edition of Exhibitors Daily Review. Undoubtedly the editorialist was disappointed, if not terribly surprised, that the “pictures” managed to get out several films inspired by gamblerracketeer Arnold Rothstein within the next decade. Prior to that, F. Scott Fitzgerald had introduced the character of high-rolling gambler Meyer Wolfsheim in his 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. There was no doubt as to Wolfsheim’s true identity, inasmuch as he is introduced as the man who “fixed” the 1919 World Series, which as anyone who’s seen the film Eight Men Out (1988) can tell you was indeed arranged by Rothstein (played on that occasion by Michael Lerner). Perhaps because Rothstein was still alive when the first film version of Great Gatsby was released in 1926, the Wolfsheim character was written out of the script; nor does he appear in the 1949 remake, possibly out of respect for Rothstein’s widow Carolyn. He finally shows up in the 1974 adaptation of Gatsby in his rightful place as the mentor of the film’s shady- millionaire protagonist Jay Gatsby (Robert Redford). Played by Howard da Silva, Wolfstein displays the smooth, foxy charm of the real Rothstein, though neither da Silva nor actor Amitabh Bachchan in the 2013 Great Gatsby remake are quite as good-looking. Nor for that matter was Michael Lerner in Eight Men Out, or F. Murray Abraham as Rothstein in 1991’s Mobsters. David Janssen came closest to the mark in 1961’s King of the Roaring Twenties—The Story of Arnold Rothstein, which though fairly graphic for its time still applied a layer of Hollywood gloss over the known facts. Say, we haven’t gotten to those facts yet, have we? The son of a prosperous Jewish businessman, Arnold Rothstein was born in Manhattan in 1882. Gravitating to gambling as a youngster, he established his first gaming casino in 1910 and also purchased a horse racing track and stable in Maryland. The year before he had married former Broadway musical performer Carolyn Green, whom he’d met at the races in Saratoga Springs. Carolyn quickly realized what she was

in for when Arnold pawned her jewelry on their wedding day to cover his losses. The Rothsteins lived in a posh apartment on the second floor of his Manhattan gambling emporium, where Carolyn spent many a lonely night unable to leave the premises because of policemen hanging around outside. More than once she begged her husband to give up gambling, but he refused all entreaties, even when offered a legitimate job at a Wall Street brokerage. Outside of the “Black Sox” winnings of 1919, Rothstein scored his biggest bonanza when one of his own horses, Sidereal, won at Aqueduct in 1921—a cleaner victory than the one a few months later when another of Rothstein’s horses, Sporting Blood, won in what was probably a fixed race at the Travers Stakes. With the advent of Prohibition, Rothstein branched out into illegal liquor and narcotics, keeping himself out of jail with his tight political connections and his battery of lawyers, foremost among them “the great mouthpiece” William J. Fallon (see separate entry). He set up unofficial headquarters at Lindy’s restaurant on Broadway and 49th street, where he became close with humorist Damon Runyon, whose recurring character “The Brain” was inspired by Rothstein. For his part, the “King of Gamblers” always denied that he was a crook: “Don’t think you can get rich by being crooked. It takes brains to get rich.” No one knew for sure why Rothstein was shot down in the doorway of the Park Central Hotel on November 4, 1928, though his widow speculated that he had failed to pay a debt and that the assailant was an out-of-town boy. Others have theorized that gangster Dutch Schultz ordered Rothstein’s execution in retaliation for the murder of Dutch’s pal Joey Noel. Whatever the case, Rothstein himself wasn’t about to reveal the truth: As he lay dying, he cracked that “me mother did it” and advised the police to mind their own business. A little over a year after his murder, Arnold Rothstein was reborn as fictional gambling kingpin Joel Marsden, played by William Powell in director John Cromwell’s Street of Chance. Although screenwriter Oliver H.P. Garrett was careful to bestow new names on the film’s famil-

Rubinstein iar characters, the Paramount publicity department was not quite as discreet, ballyhooing the picture with local “Who Killed Rothstein?” contests. More faithful to his wife Alma (Kay Francis) than Rothstein ever was to Carolyn, Marsden is also honest to a fault, enjoying a wide reputation as a man who has never stooped to cheating. But when his younger brother Babe (Regis Toomey) falls prey to gambling fever and endangers his marriage to his new bride Judith ( Jean Arthur), Marsden deliberately throws a card game to disillusion his wayward sibling— sealing his own doom in the process (that’s one theory regarding Rothstein’s still-unsolved death that was never entertained by anyone) Street of Chance was remade and extensively cleaned up for the Production Code in 1938 as Her Husband Lies, starring Akim Tamiroff, Gail Patrick and Ricardo Cortez. During the eight years between these two films, Universal’s Czar of Broadway (1930) offered John Wray as a Rothstein-style character, though the story focuses on a reporter ( John Harron) determined to topple Wray’s empire. Another Universal release, Afraid to Talk (1932) re-enacts Rothstein’s unsolved murder as the starting point for a trenchant study of big-city political corruption, with Eric Linden as a hapless witness who is bounced around like a rubber ball between various interested parties. A fuller exploration of the Rothstein story came about after his widow Carolyn wrote her memoirs in 1933. Originally Now I’ll Tell All, the book’s title gave up its “All” during the journey from manuscript to publication. Its veracity confirmed with a foreword by respected Rothstein biographer Donald Henderson Clarke, the tone of Now I’ll Tell can be summed up with a statement made earlier by Mrs. Rothstein to journalist Douglas Gilbert: Admitting that she was never able to persuade Arnold to settle down in an honest business and raise a family, she observed “So you see, I failed. I was never happy. Fascinated, perhaps, and I loved him…. All his life Arnold lived destructively. And since I was a part of his life, I, too suffered.” The book balances the happy memories with the not-so-happy ones, including Rothstein’s extracurricular romances with two

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Broadway blondes, Bobbie Winthrop and Inez Norton. Those two ladies were rolled into one, renamed Peggy Warren and played by Alice Faye in Fox’s 1934 film version of Now I’ll Tell. The studio purchased Mrs. Rothstein’s memoirs in galley form and had them adapted for the screen by Edwin J. Burke, who also directed. With the recently jump-started Production Code forbidding Hollywood producers to “glamorize” genuine gangsters on film, Arnold Rothstein was rechristened Murray Golden, played by Spencer Tracy, while Carolyn Rothstein became Virginia Golden, played by Helen Twelvetrees. Also in the cast are Tracy’s long-time buddy Robert Gleckler (who until his death in 1939 appeared in most of Spencer’s films) and an uncredited Shirley Temple. No “Black Sox” scandal is mentioned, though Murray Golden runs afoul of both the mob and the law when he starts fixing prizefights. To intensify the anguish of being Mrs. Murray Golden for the benefit of filmgoers who might not think that getting one’s jewels hocked is anguish enough, Virginia is at one point kidnapped by Murray’s hated rival Mositer (Gleckler), a move that not only convinces Mrs. Golden to get a divorce but also indirectly results in the censor-dictated death of Murray’s mistress Peggy (marking the first and only time that Alice Faye was ever killed onscreen). Now I’ll Tell closes with still another speculation on the reason for Arnold Rothstein’s death, with Murray Golden threatening to turn his nemesis Mositer over to the district attorney—thereby selflessly arranging his own “death by mobster” so that Virginia will be able to collect on his life insurance.

RUBINSTEIN, SERGE The film: Death of a Scoundrel (Charles Martin Productions/RKO-Radio, 1956)

“He was born to be murdered.” More than one newspaper article began with those words on the occasion of the death of Serge Rubinstein in 1955. If that seems harsh, perhaps you’d prefer the alternate opening phrase “Serge Rubinstein asked for it.” Which in a way was amusing because Rubinstein seldom asked for anything: He took. And took. And took.

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Born in St. Petersburg Russia in 1908, he was the son of Dmitri Rubenstein, a financial advisor to the Czar. After the Revolution, Dmitri and his family fled to Stockholm and then Vienna, accruing a fortune by buying czarist rubles at a fraction of their worth from fellow refugees, then spreading rumors that the White Russians were poised to overthrow the Bolsheviks so that those same refugees would repurchase their rubles for exorbitant fees. Thus did Dmitri pass along a valuable lesson to son Sergei: In business matters there is no shame and there are no friends. Through the assistance of his brother Andre (whom he would ultimately betray along with everyone else who put faith in him), Sergei attended Cambridge University, where he majored in economics. While allegedly conducting a “student survey” of Swiss banks, he scanned the lists of dormant accounts, found one held by a deceased Russian aristocrat, and from nowhere produced an “heir” who claimed the dead man’s fortune—with Sergei getting a hefty percentage. From a relatively minor position at Banque Franco-Asiatique, he chiseled his way to the position of managing director at age 22. Adhering to his “simple” philosophy of life—“I figure out how much a company is worth dead, not living”—he used other people’s money to hopscotch around Europe and Asia buying failing companies cheap, not to put them back on their feet but to sell the assets for gigantic profits, and to hell with the employees and stockholders. After being booted off the Continent he relocated to London and finagled the notorious “Chosen Corp. Coup,” wresting control of three Korean gold mines and earning $6 million at the stockholders’ expense—simultaneously devaluing the Asian Yen for years to come. With the impending war in Europe threatening his livelihood, Rubinstein headed for the United States in 1938, sidestepping the Immigration Department’s quota restrictions by producing a Portuguese passport. And how did he happen to become Portuguese overnight? Easy as pie: He convinced his own mother to falsely brand herself as a woman of loose morals by swearing that Sergei was illegitimate. Worming around the law prohibiting aliens

from holding more than a quarter interest in any U.S. corporation, Rubinstein managed to further enrich himself by getting in on the merger of the Postal and Western Union telegraph companies. When World War II came along the 33-year-old Rubinstein avoided a 1-A draft classification by falling back on his fraudulent claim of Portuguese citizenship and claiming that his business activities were essential to the war effort— then proceeded to become one of the biggest and crookedest war profiteers in the country. Finally nailed by the U.S. government for draft dodging, he was imprisoned from 1949 through 1951. During his incarceration Rubinstein prevented his wife Laurette Kilbourne from divorcing him for his serial philandering by threatening to commit suicide if she did. Once she weakened, he begged her to write “kind things” in her letters to prison, only to use those letters to challenge her mental-cruelty charges and block her from getting alimony. No sooner was he out of stir than he was charged with stock fraud for resuming his pattern of buying low, selling high, spreading rumors and paying dividends with phantom funds. Though the “better people” shunned him and newspapers throughout the country demanded his deportation, Rubinstein continued living high and wide, nearly always surrounded by a flock of gorgeous women— among them his secretary-lover Pat Wray, whom Rubinstein regarded as no more trustworthy than himself and planted listening devices in her room (he was no stranger to wiretapping, using this tactic for blackmail purposes). On the evening of January 27, 1955, Serge Rubinstein was last seen publicly in the company of model Estelle Gardner at a swank Manhattan restaurant, apparently celebrating a multimillion-dollar oil deal he’d closed that afternoon. Witnesses would later recall that Serge wasn’t his old swaggering self, and seemed nervous about something; also, it appeared that a pair of swarthy- looking gentlemen at another table were keeping tabs on him. Bidding Estelle goodnight, he returned to the luxurious six-story townhouse he shared with his mother and aunt, neither of whom was home that night. The next morning the butler arrived for work and found

Rubirosa 47-year-old Serge Rubinstein strangled to death, his eyes and mouth taped shut, his wrists and ankles bound with curtain cord. The police deduced that he’d been attacked in his sleep, but at first couldn’t figure out how anyone had managed to breach his impenetrable townhouse. It soon developed that Rubinstein had given keys to dozens of girlfriends and business contacts— and this, combined with the acknowledged fact that virtually everyone with whom he’d been in contact had ample motive to kill him, narrowed the suspect list down to approximately half the civilized world. Though Manhattan police detectives vowed never to rest until the guilty party was brought to justice, the murder of Serge Rubinstein would never be solved. Theories and counter-theories were still circulating when in 1956 RKO–Radio Pictures released producer-director-screenwriter Charles Martin’s thinly camouflaged recounting of l’affaire Rubinstein, Death of a Scoundrel. Actor George Sanders, so adept at portraying charming blackguards that he titled his autobiography Memoirs of a Professional Cad, fit the starring role of international freebooter Clementi Sabourin like a silk glove. In fine Hollywood tradition, more than just the actual names were changed: Sabourin is born in Czechoslovakia rather than Russia; his fortune is founded on cornering the penicillin market when the new wonder drug is used to save his life after he is shot by a jealous husband; his brother is killed as a result of misplaced trust in Clementi; he meets his future secretary-sweetheart (Yvonne de Carlo) when he catches her picking another man’s pocket; and so forth. Otherwise, it is unnecessary to offer a detailed synopsis of Death of a Scoundrel, since practically every highlight in the film was inspired by events detailed in the previous paragraphs, including the debasement of Sabourin’s mother (Celia Lovsky) when he cajoles her to claim he was born out of wedlock. Charles Martin also drew inspiration from George Sanders’ own well- publicized private life by casting Sanders’ oft-estranged brother Tom Conway as Clementi Sabourin’s unfortunate sibling Gerry, and the star’s then-wife Zsa Zsa Gabor as one of

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Sabourin’s investors. To keep Death of a Scoundrel from bruising the viewer’s sense of fair play, the hissable Clementi Sabourin is shown to be no worse than most of his associates, who are just as corrupt and conniving as he is—including the man who ultimately kills him, thereby allowing the film to succeed where the New York Police Department had failed by solving its own, tidier version of the Serge Rubinstein Murder Mystery.

RUBIROSA , PORFIRIO The film: The Adventurers (AVCO Embassy/ Paramount, 1970)

Back in the days when the words “jet set” invoked exotic visions of glamour and the glitterati, Porfirio Rubirosa practically cornered the International Playboy market. Born in the Dominican Republic in 1909, he was the son of an officer-diplomat who sent him to Paris for his education. Aspiring to be a lawyer, Rubirosa lacked the needed funds, so he did what he would do so often later in life: He married into wealth and influence, becoming the son-in-law of his country’s dictatorial strong man Rafael Trujillo. During his brief tenure as the husband of Floro de Oro Trujillo, he was appointed his country’s diplomat in France, where his reputation as an adventurer and lothario shifted into high gear. Flagrantly unfaithful to his bride, he soon shed her for a series of women who could support him in the manner to which he was accustomed. Wife number two was Danielle Darrieux, Occupied France’s richest and most popular film star; she was followed by two American heiresses, Doris Duke and Barbara Hutton (see separate entry), each of whose divorce settlements made him even wealthier than before. He also romanced innumerable actresses, models, millionairesses and members of European royalty, and at one point blackened the eye of the estimable Zsa Zsa Gabor when she refused to leave her then-husband George Sanders. It wasn’t Rubirosa’s notoriety that attracted these women, but instead his dazzling good looks, his smooth continental charm, and especially his awesome between-the-legs endowment, which one of his lovers described as resembling “Yul

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Brynner in a turtleneck.” To this day, French waiters refer to their round-and-thick pepper shakers as “Rubis.” His lifestyle was equally as immense, with such headline-grabbing pursuits as gambling, polo, race-car driving, flying and deep-sea diving. He was also quite the fashion plate, his lavish but tasteful wardrobe emulated by Rubirosa wannabes throughout the world. Rubirosa was such great company that many otherwise savvy celebrities were willing to overlook his darker side, which included his wartime racket of selling exorbitantly priced exit visas to desperate European Jews and his alleged activities as a paid assassin on behalf of the Dominican government. After his longtime padrone Rafael Trujillo was gunned down in 1960, Rubirosa was forced to live by his wits rather than his ever-diminishing wealth and property holdings. He became mellower in later years, scaling down his lifestyle and remaining surprisingly faithful to his fifth and final wife, French actress Odile Rodin. On July 5, 1965, an uncharacteristically drunken Porfirio Rubirosa was killed in a crash while speeding through the streets of Paris in his beloved Ferrari. In an interview granted several years earlier, he had virtually composed his own epitaph: “The only things that interested me were sports, girls, adventures, celebrities—in short, life.” Barely a year had passed since Rubirosa’s death before best-selling novelist Harold Robbins came forth with another literary blockbuster, the 800-page The Adventurers. Just as he’d staunchly denied that his previous novel The Carpetbaggers was inspired by Howard Hughes (see separate entry), Robbins insisted that Dax Xenos, protagonist of The Adventurers, was not a thinly disguised Porfirio Rubirosa but rather a composite character. It was sheerest coincidence that Dax hails from the mythical Caribbean dictatorship of Courteguay; that he is the son of a diplomat who is “in tight” with the nation’s corrupt military chieftan President Rojo; that as an adult he romances a progression of beautiful, famous and wealthy women; that one of his wives is an American heiress described as “the richest woman in the world”; and that his fame rests not only on his insatiable libido but also on his love

of fast cars, fast polo ponies and fast planes— not to mention his trend-setting wardrobe (he even arranges for a lavish fashion show with money “contributed” by one of his middle-aged amours). For all his transgressions, Dax Xenos is in his own way more admirable than his role model Rubirosa (and consequently less interesting). Having witnessed the brutal rape and murder of his loved ones as a boy, the adult Xenos swears vengeance on the man responsible, who turns out to be his father’s onetime friend President Rojos. To that end, Dax heads to Europe to raise enough money and support for a Castro-like coup in Courteguay. Thus, his romantic liaisons with wealthy women and his shady business dealings are all a means to a noble end—though he eventually discovers that the world is not neatly divided into easily definable “good” and “evil.” Somehow this single-purposed patriotic mission was translated into a three-hour Doctor Zhivago–style film epic in 1970, coscripted by Michael Hastings and director Lewis Gilbert. The role of Dax Xenos in the movie version of The Adventurers was coveted by Warren Beatty and George Hamilton, and at one point was assigned to Burt Reynolds, who was so little known at the time that Hollywood reporter Jack O’Brien was able to snipe “Altogether now: Who?” Finally producer Joseph E. Levine settled on Yugoslavian matinee idol Bekim Fehimu, who “acts and talks like the late playboy Pofirio Rubirosa,” according to columnist Sheila Graham, but whose performance would be described by Rubirosa biographer Shawn Levy as “a degenerate cross of Ringo Starr and Jean-Paul Belmondo.” The film is crammed with so much steamy sex and sadistic violence that it’s difficult to determine where one ends and the other begins. The all-star cast includes Candice Bergen as the Barbara Hutton–like Sue Ann Daley, Alan Badel as the Trujillo-ish Rojo, Fernando Rey as Dax’s ill-fated father, Olivia de Havilland as the giddy millionairess who finances Dax’s fashion line, Charles Aznavour as Aristotle Onassis replicate Marcel Campion (who owns a private S&M dungeon), and various familiar faces

Salinger posing as fictionalized versions of Zsa Zsa Gabor, Oleg Cassini, Maria Callas and others too humorous to mention. “Turgid tripe based loosely on the Rubirosa gossip garbled by Harold Robbins” was Village Voice critic Andrew Sarris’ assessment of The Adventurers, which lost almost as much money as Porfirio Rubirosa in his own lifetime.

SACKS, OLIVER British neurologist who made a lifetime career of studying the mysteries and oddities of the human brain. One of his first published case histories was 1973’s Awakenings, an account of his efforts in the late 1960s to treat catatonic victims of the 1917–1928 encephalitis lethargica epidemic with the experimental drug L-DOPA. Several of Sacks’ patients awakened from their semi-comatose condition to become fully functioning adults. Penny Marshall’s extensively romanticized 1990 film version of Awakenings stars Robin Williams as the Robin Williams–ized Oliver Sacks counterpart Dr. Malcolm Sayers, with Robert De Niro as “leading patient” Leonard Lowe.

SALINGER , J.D. The films: Field of Dreams (Gordon Company/Universal, 1989); Finding Forrester (Finding Forrester Productions/Fountainbridge Films/ Lawrence Mark Productions/Columbia, 2000)

When novelist W.P. Kinsella included Catcher in the Rye author J.D. Salinger as a character in his 1982 baseball fantasy Shoeless Joe, it was with the assumption that the iconic Salinger would appreciate the tribute. After all, the famously reclusive author had used characters named “Kinsella” in two of his own works, so the real Kinsella felt he was merely repaying the compliment. In Shoeless Joe, Salinger is an initially reluctant but gradually enthusiastic participant in protagonist “Ray” Kinsella’s dream of building a baseball field in the cornfield of his Iowa farm, the better to do the bidding of a mysterious voice who issues such enigmatic pronouncements as “If you build it, he will come” and “Ease his pain.” Articulating his decision to incorporate the real Salinger in his fanciful tale, Kinsella told

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John Geddes of Maclean’s magazine “I was sending my character off on a quest of some kind and I had always been a fan of Salinger’s, who of course made himself conspicuous by hiding, and I just thought, ‘What would happen if…,’ which is what writers are thinking all their lives. What would happen if he went off to New Hampshire and kidnapped Salinger and took him to a baseball game?” Alas, Salinger was not the amiably confused but cooperative chap imagined in Shoeless Joe. According to Kinsella, “His lawyers wrote my publisher’s lawyers saying he was outraged and offended to be portrayed in the novel and they would be very unhappy if it were transferred to other media. Which was legalese for, We really don’t have enough to sue you, but we’ll try to pee on your parade if you try to take it to television or the movies.” When writer-director Phil Alden Robinson adapted the novel as the classic 1989 baseball whimsy Field of Dreams, J.D. Salinger was redefined as 1960s political activist Terence Mann, who like the real Salinger has become a recluse and who like the novel’s Salinger poetically embraces Kinsella’s dream at the end of the story. Anyone who has made a ritual of revisiting Field of Dreams during its many cable telecasts at the start of each baseball season will know that screenwriter Robinson further distanced the Jewish J.D. Salinger from Terrance Mann by casting African-American actor James Earl Jones in the role. Admitting that replacing Salinger with Mann robbed the film of some of the novel’s nostalgic charm, W.P. Kinsella remarked “[The moviemakers’] feeling was that probably only 15 per cent of the moviegoers would have any idea who Salinger was anyway.” Released 11 years after Field of Dreams, Finding Forrester was directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Mike Rich, who protected themselves from a potential lawsuit by naming their J.D. Salinger character William Forrester, portrayed with profane gravitas by Sean Connery. In this film, the celebrated but curmudgeonly Forrester comes out of his self-imposed shell long enough to nurture the writing talents of African-American teenager Jamal Wallace (Rob Brown)—so much so that Wallace is wrongfully accused of

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plagiarism and nearly loses a much-needed scholarship. Though it was hardly necessary, actor Connery has acknowledged publicly that the inspiration for his role was indeed J.D. Salinger, who was still alive at the time, which— spoiler alert—is more than can be said for William Forrester at the end of Finding Forrester.

SCHILLER , MARC Pain & Gain is the 2013 film adaptation of a 1999 series of Miami New Times articles by Pete Collins. The series dealt with a group of violent extortionists, largely comprised of bodybuilders working out of Miami’s Sun Gym. Though most of the actual participants are identified by name in the film, Argentinian-American entrepreneur Marc Schiller, who survived an abduction and attempted murder at the hands of the Sun Gym gang in 1994 and served as key witness in their trial, is renamed Victor Kershaw (played by Tony Shalhoub).

SCHRAGMÜLLER , ELSBETH The film: Stamboul Quest (MGM, 1934)

One of the most brilliant students at the University of Frieburg, Prussian- born Elsbeth Schragmüller graduated as a doctor of philosophy, a remarkable achievement for a woman in pre–World War I Europe. Twenty-seven years old when the war began in 1914, Elsbeth volunteered for the Civil Censorship Bureau in German-occupied Brussels. Able to read and process three times as many letters as anyone else on her staff, she managed to forward vital secret information to General von Beseler that proved instrumental in the fall of Antwerp. Keeping such a low profile that the German High Command at first thought she was a man, Elsbeth gained notoriety as the “Blond Woman of Antwerp” once her gender became known. In late 1914 she was sent to espionage school in Germany, graduating quickly and setting up a similar school in Belgium. She developed a system whereby her student spies never met nor saw one another, so that no one could be betrayed. A few of her male associates considered her just another inferior female, her technical advisor laughing in her face when she reported that the Allies would soon be using tanks at the

battlefront—then committing suicide when she turned out to be right. Now known as “Fraulein Doktor,” Elsbeth was admired by her superiors and detested by the Allies, who had no idea who she really was. When the Germans lost the war in 1918, Fraulein Doktor efficiently destroyed all her records and fled back to her homeland. For all intents and purposes she had vanished from the face of the earth. The longer she was out of sight, the larger grew her legend. One story suggested that Elsbeth had turned to espionage out of grief over a Russian cavalry officer with whom she fell hopelessly in love before his early death. On the verge of suicide, the story continued, she landed her censorship-and-ciphering job, travelling freely in a variety of disguises between the German and Allied lines during the war. Others alleged that she was another Mata Hari, romancing susceptible enemy officers to obtain secret information. Only years later was it confirmed that she neither used sex to complete her assignments nor ever left German-occupied Europe during the war years. In 1935 the Hearst newspapers began printing Sunday-supplement “facts” about the postwar Fraulein Doktor, stating that she’d been training spies for the Nazis but had fallen out of favor with Hermann Goering when he demanded that all female spies wear “lurid” outfits. Hearst columnist Iola Lewis further asserted that the Blond Woman of Antwerp had become a drug addict and “mumbling lunatic,” confined to an asylum. All this speculation was offered at a time when Fraulein Doktor’s true identity was still in doubt. Historians of the Great War believed they’d solved the mystery when a woman named Maria Ann Lesser made a deathbed confession that she was the infamous Fraulein, a story apparently verified when published in Hans Rudolph Berndorff ’s authoritative 1929 book Spionage! Based on this evidence, the character played by Dita Parlo in the British spy thriller Under Secret Orders (1937) was named Dr. Ann-Marie Lesser. The same year that Spionage! was published, Elsbeth Schragmüller emerged from the shadows to write an autobiographical article for the German-language anthology Was Wir Vom

Scopes Weltkrieg Nicht Wissen. Her avowed purpose was to counter all the legends, rumors and falsehoods surrounding her espionage career, though in the process she wove a few fabrications herself, leading some to believe that her claim to the title Fraulein Doktor was flimsy at best. When MGM decided to film its own version of the story, 1934’s Stamboul Quest, Elsbeth’s article was ignored—if indeed anybody at the studio had read it in the first place—and most of the old half-truths and fallacies were incorporated into Leo Birkin and Herman J. Mankiewicz’ storyline, along with a soupçon of fresh fantasies. Framed by scenes in which a melancholy woman named Annmarie (Myrna Loy) ruminates over her past, the Sam Wood–directed film flashes back to World War I, when Annmarie was a German masterspy known as Fraulein Doktor. Despite her own advice to her confederates to avoid Mata Hari’s fatal mistake of falling in love with her enemy, Fraulein Doktor finds herself attracted to Douglas Beall (George Brent), an American working for the British secret service. At first sentencing Beall to death, she tears a page from Tosca and arranges for a fake execution to spare her lover. After successfully completing a dangerous mission she is informed that Beall has been killed after all, whereupon she suffers a nervous breakdown and spends her declining years in a convent asylum, kept alive only by the apparent delusion that someday she and Beall will be reunited. Note the word “apparent”: We wouldn’t dream of giving away the ending for the world. The end for Elsbeth Schragmüller came when she died of tuberculosis in 1940; whether or not she was a “mumbling lunatic” at the time is open to conjecture. Another five years passed before confiscated German intelligence records confirmed for good and all that she, and not Maria Ann Lesser, was the one-and-only “Fraulein Doktor.” Even so, the 1969 Italian-Yugoslav film bearing that title compounded the confusion by identifying the protagonist (played by Suzy Kendall) only by her famous nickname.

SCOPES, JOHN The film: Inherit the Wind (Stanley Kramer Productions/United Artists, 1960)

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Also referenced in the entries on William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, the Scopes “Monkey Trial” of 1925 was more formally known as the State of Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes. It was the inevitable consequence of Tennessee’s Butler Act, named for representative John W. Butler, which prohibited educators in the state from teaching anything other than the biblical version of Creation. Governor Austin Peay signed the act into law when it was added as a rider to another bill, and there is considerable evidence that he was unaware of its content at the time; nor, apparently did any Tennessee lawmaker ever expect that anyone would try to enforce the Act, which at the very most charged an offending teacher with a misdemeanor and imposed a $100 fine. This wasn’t enough assurance for the American Civil Liberties Union, who in cooperation with local school supervisors vowed to challenge the act by goading the authorities into enforcing it. The battlefield chosen was the relatively progressive Tennessee town of Dayton, where 25-year-old John Thomas Scopes was employed as a football coach and substitute teacher at Rhea County High School. A group of local businessmen who like the ACLU were opposed to the Butler Act approached Scopes and asked if he’d be willing to break the law and be placed under arrest to shed national light on the unfairness of the statute. At first reluctant, Scopes agreed to lecture his students on the theory of evolution as set down in the textbook Civic Biology. The local constabulary, working in concert with the ACLU, dutifully served a warrant on Scopes on May 5, 1925, and indicted him ten days later, though it is likely that he never spent a single day in the local jail. News of the arrest was dispatched to the international press, local prosecution and defense teams were assembled, and with a good portion of financial backing provided by the liberal Baltimore Sun a team of celebrity jurists led by the famously agnostic Clarence Darrow descended upon Dayton to argue Scope’s case. Speaking for the prosecution—and by extension the World Christian Fundamentals Association—was former Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan. The

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population of Dayton was swelled beyond its borders by spectators both famous and obscure as what became known as “The Monkey Trial” (referencing the Darwin Theory of human evolution) proceeded in the County Courthouse. With two such dedicated idealogues as Darrow and Bryan involved, the arguments went far beyond the limits of the ACLU’s original strategy and evolved (no pun intended) into a heated debate between God and Science. After eight days of trial the jury found Scopes guilty, as expected, and fined him $100, a decision overturned on appeal. What was outwardly a loss was in truth a gain for the ACLU and the cause of free speech, exposing and discrediting a foolish and presumptuous law. Though the Butler Act would not be repealed until 1967, no other Tennessee educator was ever brought to court for defying it. Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s 1955 Broadway play Inherit the Wind re-enacted the Scopes trial with the names changed for dramatic purposes and the locale shifted to the mythical Southern town of Hillsboro. John Scopes was rechristened Bertram Kates, who in the play is already in jail when the action begins. It appears that Kates took it upon himself to break the law against teaching evolution; however, he harbors doubts over the decision and frequently begs the Clarence Darrow character Henry Drummond to drop the case and let him plead guilty. Kates is in love with Rachel Brown, daughter of the town’s fire-and-brimstone religious leader the Rev. Jeremiah Brown, who regards Kates as an agent of Satan and his daughter as a fallen angel. Instead of the near-unanimous public support enjoyed by John Scopes, Kates is reviled by the townsfolk of Hillsboro, who intend to run him out of town once the trial is over. Stanley Kramer’s 1960 film version of Inherit the Wind pumps up the persecution of Bertram Kates (played on screen by Dick York), having him arrested in full view of his students and later harassed in his cell by a frenzied rock-throwing mob. And though the 1985 TV-movie remake of Inherit the Wind is beyond the range of this book, we cannot pass up the opportunity to observe that Bertram Kates is subjected to even

further torment in this version, the opening scene showing gestapo-like deputies dragging Kates kicking and screaming from his classroom. While John Scopes did eventually leave his teaching post in Dayton, it was on his own volition. He went on to study geology as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, worked extensively as a professional geologist in South America, and married Mildred Seydell—not a preacher’s daughter but a pioneering feminist author, lecturer and publisher. Reticent by nature, Scopes was flattered but self-conscious whenever interviewed about the trial that bore his name, refusing to take undue credit for advancing the cause of academic freedom. In fact, he asserted that he’d skipped the chapter on Evolution in his classroom back in 1925, and that Clarence Darrow and the other lawyers had coached his students to testify against him to make a better show. Spending his last working years as a geologist with the United Gas Company, he died in Louisiana in 1970, three years after the Butler Act was declared null and void.

SHULER , THE REV. ROBERT The film: Angels with Dirty Faces (Warner Bros., 1938)

No, I didn’t misspell the name of Robert Schuller, the relentlessly upbeat Christian televangelist who presided over the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California. Nor was the Rev. Robert Shuler any relation to the muchlater emcee of the weekly TV religious service Hour of Power—though in his own way Shuler was equally persuasive before a microphone. Born in Tennessee in 1880, the Rev. Shuler was all but driven out of his teaching position at the University of Texas in Austin for attacking the local criminal element from his pulpit. Moving to California in 1920, he became pastor of Trinity Methodist Church and later head of the Church Federation of Los Angeles. Continuing to use his sermons and his self-published magazine to crusade against political corruption, he also set up his own radio station, KGEF, in 1926. Once his influence was expanded to the vast radio audience, his battle to rid the local government of thieves and scoundrels became more

Silver inflammatory than ever. “Fighting Bob” Shuler also attacked fellow evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson (see separate entry) for her dubious business practices and obsession with publicity stunts. Ironically it was Shuler who found himself labeled a publicity-monger, his tirades against Sister Aimee losing him much of his following. He would also lose his radio license in 1931, the Federal Radio Commission dismissing his broadcasts “public gossip.” This didn’t stop Fighting Bob from persisting in his battle against organized crime, vice, and dishonest politicos, nor from running for the U.S. Senate on the Prohibition Party ticket in 1932. Despite his election defeat, he continued fighting the good fight, infuriating many high-profile L.A. citizens who trafficked in illicit activities and travelled in the company of men with broken noses and hidden guns. The 1938 Warner Bros. gangster melodrama Angels with Dirty Faces didn’t mention Robert Shuler by name, nor was he referenced in the studio publicity or by movie reviewers of the period. That said, Pat O’Brien’s portrayal of Father Jerry Connolly, a hard-knuckle priest who takes to the airwaves in a reform campaign against the well- connected criminal kingpins within the sound of his voice, bears more than a passing resemblance to Fighting Bob. In the film, crime bosses Frazier (Humphrey Bogart) and Keefer (George Bancroft) order their “boys” to do away with Father Jerry, motivating the priest’s childhood friend, gangster Rocky Sullivan ( James Cagney), to commit the murders that will save the Father from harm but condemn Rocky to the electric chair. Fortunately, the Rev. Robert Shuler never needed a self-sacrificing outlaw to shield him from assassination, surviving long enough to spend 12 contented years in retirement before his peaceful death in 1965.

SIEBER , AL German-American soldier and frontiersman who served under General George Stoneman as Chief of Scouts during the Apache Wars of the 1870s and 1880s. His participation in the capture of Chiricuahua Apache leader Geronimo in 1886 gained him international fame, though he

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himself was not present when Geronimo surrendered. Appearing under his own name when played by John McIntyre in Apache (1954), Richard Widmark in Mr. Horn (1979) and Robert Duvall in Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), Al Sieber was fictionalized as the rabidly Indian-hating Ed Bannon, played by Charlton Heston in the 1953 western Arrowhead.

SILVER , BERNIE The film: The Bank Job (Mosaic Media Group/ Relativity Media LLC/Skyline (Baker St.) Productions/Lionsgate, 2008)

As proof that the British can make outlandish conspiracy-theory films as well the Americans, we submit for your approval director Roger Donaldson’s The Bank Job, inspired by the infamous Baker Street Robbery of September 1, 1971. Tunneling into the vaults of the London branch of Lloyds of London, the thieves made off with an estimated £500,000, most of the loot stored in safety deposit boxes. Scotland Yard had been informed of the robbery-in-progress by a civilian CB radio enthusiast who picked up conversations between the thieves and the lookouts, hence the media-imposed designation “the Walkie-Talkie Robbery.” Though British news outlets initially reported the heist in the most sensational manner possible, after four days all coverage of the incident abruptly ceased, the result of a gag order (known as a D-Notice) imposed by the authorities. Claiming to have located a “deep throat” amongst the investigators of the robbery, screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais later fictionalized the event as The Bank Job. Jason Statham stars as car salesman Terry Leather, who out of boredom agrees to participate in a robbery apparently masterminded by drugdealing Martine Love (Saffron Burrows). In the course of the caper, Terry is perplexed by Martine’s obsessive interest in one particular safety deposit box out of the many that they end up stealing. What our hero doesn’t know is that Martine is working on behalf of British Intelligence to retrieve a cache of explicit photographs detailing the sexual activities of several major public figures—including at least one member

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of the Royal Family. The theory posited by The Bank Job has yet to be borne out by cold hard facts, but it’s still a corking good story. Among those recruited into Terry Leather’s band of thieves is Dave Shilling (Daniel Mays), a porn-film star in the employ of London vice lord Lew Vogel (David Suchet, eons removed from his familiar TV role of Hercule Poirot). Though not in any way involved in the Baker Street Robbery, Vogel has a vested interest in one of the many strongboxes stolen by the crooks; in the box are itemized and annotated lists of the dozens of London policemen and detectives on Vogel’s personal payroll. Though most of the characters in The Bank Job—notably Martine Love—are mere figments of the screenwriters’ imagination, Lew Vogel was transparently based on real-life British crime kingpin Bernie Silver. Born in London’s Hackney District in 1922, Silver was by the 1950s in command of the Syndicate, the city’s leading vice operation. Partnered with Maltese traffic cop “Big Frank” Mifsud, Silver held sway over all prostitution and pornography traffic in London’s Soho District, then known as “the village of vice”; between them Silver and Mifsud also controlled most of Soho’s striptease clubs. It can be no coincidence that many of the British crime films of the 1950s (Beat Girl, Too Hot to Handle et al.) were set in Soho and usually revolved around strip-club owners who were either slimy cockneys or swarthy foreigners. None of these films, however, featured corrupt police officials, who in real life constituted the elephant in the room of Bernie Silver’s criminal empire. Even after the legislative toughening of Britain’s anti-obscenity laws in 1959 and 1964, Silver blithely continued doling out payoffs to the Obscene Publications Squad of the Metropolitan Police—including the squad’s commander. Sweeping reforms and intense internal investigations in the 1970s resulted in the convictions of scores of “dirty” cops, fatally weakening Silver’s stranglehold on Soho and forcing his partner Frank Mifsud to flee the country. In The Bank Job, the evidence contained in Lew Vogel’s strongbox indirectly leads to his imprisonment on separate charges. In actuality, Bernie

Silver was arrested in 1975, charged with the 1956 murder of rival hoodlum Tommy “Scarface” Smithers. Though he managed to beat the rap, Silver drifted into obscurity and possibly a new identity, maintaining a low profile until his death in 2002.

SMITH, SIR C. AUBREY Evidently born at the age of 65, actor C. Aubrey Smith was a champion cricket player in his native England before launching his stage career in 1895. Already a 12-year film veteran when he made his first American picture in 1930, Smith quickly crowned himself the undisputed leader of Hollywood’s so-called “British Colony,” comprised of hundreds of expatriate Britons working in films. Incoming young actors from the Mother Country would not be truly accepted by their peers until they passed muster with C. Aubrey, usually by proving their prowess at cricketing (he wasn’t called “Round the Corner Smith” for nothing). The venerable actor’s benevolent rule over his California-bound countrymen was satirized in Evelyn Waugh’s 1948 novel The Loved One via the character of Sir Ambrose Abercromie, played in Tony Richardson’s 1965 film version by the majestic Robert Morley.

SMITH, MADELEINE The films: Letty Lytton (MGM, 1932); Dishonored Lady (Hunt Stromberg Productions/Republic, 1947)

The case of 21-year-old Madeleine Hamilton Smith was the singular sensation of 1857 Glasgow. Described by contemporary newspapers as “a very young lady of short stature and slight form, with features sharp and prominent, and restless and sparkling eyes,” Madeleine was the daughter of a prosperous Scottish architect who strongly objected to her romance with Frenchman Emile L’Anglier, a humble clerk well beneath her station. Forbidden to see L’Anglier, Madeleine took to her writing desk and carried on a torrid romance by correspondence. The romance became more physical when Madeleine moved into the cellar of her father’s home, where she and Emile had many an amorous rendezvous. Eventually she tired of him and took

Smith up with another man, whereupon Emile threatened to use her letters as blackmail if she didn’t break off with her new sweetheart. Shortly afterward, Madeleine purchased a bottle of arsenic, ostensibly to kill some rats on her property. The next few times Emile came to visit, she plied him with nice hot cups of cocoa. Gradually he became quite ill, which at first the doctors attributed to his laudanum addiction; but when he died, the verdict was arsenic poisoning, and suspicion immediately fell upon Madeleine. In her subsequent trial she had the advantage of her father’s good name and lofty position, making the jury reluctant to send her to the gallows. Also, the fact that Emile was an impoverished foreigner swayed the jurors to regard him as a cad and bounder for whom poisoning was much too good. Their ultimate verdict was the first of its kind in the history of Scottish jurisprudence: “Not proven.” Though Madeleine’s innocence was very much in question, her guilt could not be confirmed. In 1926, 90-year-old Madeleine Smith, by now a longtime resident of the United States,

Madeleine Smith.

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was approached by Hollywood for the film rights to her story, with studio lawyers threatening her with deportation if she refused. The situation was unresolved at the time of her death two years later, but by then the movie deal had evaporated. In February 1930, a play written by Edward Sheldon and Margaret Ayer Barnes, Dishonored Lady, opened on Broadway with Katherine Cornell in the leading role of Madeleine Cary. A thinly disguised modernization of the Madeleine Smith case, the play characterizes its Madeleine as a wealthy young woman of unseemly promiscuity, her loose morals rooted in the dissolute lifestyle of her parents (drunken father, sex-addict mother). While on holiday Madeleine has an affair with South American dancer Jose Moreno, whose sensuality is outweighed by his insane jealousy. Leaving Jose behind when she returns to America, Madeleine becomes engaged to the British Marquess of Farnborough, who knows about her troubled family life but loves her anyway. Re-enter Jose Moreno, who orders Madeleine to break her engagement and return to him. Calling Jose “a half-breed” and “scum,” she spurns him, whereupon he beats her up and threatens to publicly reveal their romance unless she spends the night in his apartment. She agrees, but only after getting her dainty little fingers around a bottle of poison, with which she dope Juan’s coffee “the morning after.” As Juan dies in agony, Madeleine wipes off her fingerprints and returns home. During Act III the D.A. questions Madeleine as to her whereabouts when Moreno died; it seems she overlooked a piece of jewelry left behind at the murder scene. We don’t get to see the subsequent trial, but are told in the final scene that Madeleine has received a Not Guilty verdict. Farnborough wants to take Madeleine on a long vacation to forget her problems, but she pushes him away, confessing not only to killing Moreno but having sex with him. She tells Farnborough to forget all about her because she’s just plain rotten: “At least I won’t ruin your life.” MGM entered into negotiations with playwrights Sheldon and Barnes to purchase the movie rights to Dishonored Lady for $30,000, only to be faced with censorship problems that

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could not be resolved without damaging the story’s effectiveness. Dropping their option on the play, the studio settled instead on another modernized rehash of l’affaire Madeline Smith, Mrs. Belloc Lowndes’ 1931 novel Letty Lynton. Like Madeleine Cary, the novel’s titular heroine is a young woman of wealth—18 years old in fact—who coquettishly draws men to her like sugar draws ants. One of her young swains, a Swede named Axel Ekeborn, is so moonstruck by Letty that he convinces himself that he is engaged to her and she does nothing to discourage him—until she is introduced to London Society and is squired by a handsome nobleman. Unwilling to allow Letty to stomp on his heart, the jilted Axel threatens blackmail with Letty’s indiscreet love letters, leaving her with no recourse but to slip Axel a fatal mickey. MGM found this material less troublesome to clean up for the Production Code, rewriting the action so that the ex-lover is poisoned by accident: Letty had intended to use the knockout drops on herself, but the spiked champagne was consumed by her paramour instead—and before anyone could go to bed with anyone else. In the novel, Letty is saved from prison when her loved ones conspire to provide her an alibi in the form of a suspicious automobile breakdown. This was changed in John Meehan and Wanda Tuchock’s screenplay with a climactic scene in the D.A.’s office, where Letty’s new boyfriend and her mother fabricate a story that will harm the girl’s reputation but absolve her of guilt. Again, the censors okayed this alteration, though it would hardly have passed muster under the strengthened Production Code a few years later. Directed by Clarence Brown, the 1932 screen version of Letty Lynton stars Joan Crawford in the title role, her multiple romances boiled down to a single impulsive affair during a trip to Montevideo. With Danish-born actor Nils Asther cast as her lover, it would have been logical for him to portray the novel’s equally Scandinavian Axel Ekeborn; instead, the character is changed to a suave South American named Emile Renaud, worldlier and more sinister than his literary counterpart. Letty has decided that she and Emile are a bad fit by the time she enters

into a shipboard romance with wealthy Long Islander Hale Darrow (Robert Montgomery). Her future happiness is jeopardized when Renaud stalks his way to the U.S. and produces those damned love letters, which he intends to show the world unless Letty gives Darrow the air; Renaud also smacks her around a bit as she calls him nasty names. Oh, and by the way, Letty has a hyper-judgmental mother (May Robson) who hasn’t trusted any man since the death of her drunken libertine husband. You won’t find anything resembling the above-mentioned plot points in Letty Lynton, but they’re certainly present in Dishonored Lady, as are several other story elements in the MGM film. Edward Sheldon and Margaret Ayer Barnes recognized the “borrowings” immediately and took the studio to court. Not satisfied with merely suing MGM and parent company Loews Inc., Sheldon and Barnes made legal history by seeking damages from all the theater owners who ran the film. MGM’s argument that the Madeleine Smith story was public domain held no water when a comparison of the Letty Lynton script and its two literary predecessors was made. In 1939, 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals judge Learned Hand ruled that Letty Lynton definitely infringed upon the 1930 play and that the plaintiffs were entitled to one-fifth of the film’s profits, whereupon Sheldon vs. Metro-Goldwyn Mayer was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. In its March 30, 1940, issue, Motion Picture Herald encapsulated the outcome: The plaintiffs won a damage verdict totaling $21,000 plus attorney’s fees from MGM, as well as $250 from every theater which showed the picture. Ironically, Sheldon and Barnes were themselves later sued by Broadway producers Guthrie McClintic and Gilbert Miller, and by Paramount Pictures, for half of the $137,000 awarded the authors for an aborted movie version of Dishonored Lady. The original play would not be filmed until 1947, and then by independent producer Hunt Stromberg and director Robert Stevenson for Republic Pictures release. With the Production Code tighter than ever, screenwriter Edmund H. North—and, uncredited, Ben Hecht and André

Stavisky de Toth—had a formidable overhaul job ahead of them with the film version of Dishonored Lady. Played by Hedy Lamarr (who put a lot of her own money into the production), the heroine is rechristened Madeleine Damien, no longer a young girl of wealth and leisure but a highpowered Manhattan magazine editor. Ms. Damien is well known for her many romances, but derives little pleasure from them since most are business arrangements like her brief liaison with advertiser Felix Courtland (played by Lamarr’s then husband John Loder). Suffering a nervous breakdown and a car accident all at once, Madeleine is rescued by kindly psychiatrist Richard Caleb, played by Morris Carnovsky as a representative of cowriter Ben Hecht’s ongoing fascination with psychoanalysis (vide Spellbound). Dr. Caleb diagnoses that Madeleine is suffering from acute nymphomania—though in keeping within the censorship bounds of the time, he never uses the word—and likens the affliction to alcoholism. The only way Madeleine can save herself is to renounce her lifestyle and the men who populate it, so she changes her name and starts life anew as a reclusive artist in a shabby apartment. Her next-door neighbor, pathologist David Cousins (Dennis O’Keefe), falls in love with Madeleine unaware of her true identity or checkered past. When Courtland comes back into her life unannounced, priggish David renounces Madeleine as a cheat and liar. Put on trial for Courtland’s subsequent murder, Madeleine refuses to defend herself in court, still brooding over David’s rejection. It is up to handy headshrinker Dr. Caleb to straighten David out so that Madeleine can prove her innocence and the real murderer can be brought to heel. Maybe if MGM had made this film they could have saved themselves all that trouble ten years earlier. Outside the realm of this book is a factual representation of the Madeleine Smith case, directed by David Lean as a vehicle for his then wife Ann Todd and released in 1949 simply as Madeleine. Thus far it is the only film adaptation of the story to use the real names and to play itself out in the original location and timeframe.

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STAVISKY, SERGE ALEXANDRE The film: Stolen Holiday (Warner Bros., 1936)

The man known to friends and associates as “handsome Sasha” was a career swindler who all but destroyed the socioeconomic structure of France before his highly suspicious suicide in 1934. Born in Kiev in either 1886 or 1888, Serge Alexandre Stavisky already had a lengthy record of scams and arrests when he moved to France just prior to World War I. After a few years of running a shady health clinic he hit upon a more lucrative means of trimming suckers by managing several municipal pawnshops in Bayonne. Using phony emeralds as surety, he sold enormous quantities of worthless bonds over a 6year period, managing to worm out of a trial for fraud along the way. Upon his marriage to Arlette Simon, a gown model for the house of Chanel, he promised to give up his life of crime—a promise as hollow as his assurances of easy money to his gullible investors. Travelling in France’s highest social circles, Stavisky was able to smell out people who were potentially as dishonest as he, and soon had a number of

“Handsome Sasha” Stavisky.

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crooked businessmen, duplicitous politicians and corrupt police officials within his orbit. It is estimated that he paid out the equivalent of $3 million—nearly one- sixth of the money he swindled out of the people of France—in bribes alone, dutifully entering each recipient in a ledger against the day that he might have to blackmail his way out of prison. Inevitably Stavisky’s gravy train was derailed, and faced with exposure and years of penury in Devil’s Island he fled Bayonne in late 1933 for his hideaway in Chamonix. There he reportedly shot himself on January 8, 1934, but from the moment his body was found there were rumors that he’d been murdered by the local police to keep him from informing on his confederates; though the bullet entered his right temple, the gun was in his left hand, meaning he would had to have been a contortionist to knock himself off. The ensuing scandal involved so many highranking public figures that French premier Camille Cheautemps was forced to resign. His successor Edouard Deladier fired the allegedly complicit prefect of the Paris police, sparking an 11-hour riot on February 6, 1934, that resulted in 11 dead and 116 wounded. In November of the following year 20 of Stavisky’s former associates, including his widow Arlette, were arrested and placed on trial. Eleven were eventually acquitted, most likely because one of the main witnesses for the prosecution was murdered just before testifying. In the wake of this pandemonium, Premier Deladier’s successor Gaston Doumergue tried to restore order by creating a “corruption-free” coalition cabinet, but it was too late. The Stavisky affair had so weakened and discredited the French infrastructure that the nation would be easy pickings when the Nazis invaded in 1940. The Hollywood Production Code ban on using the actual names of notorious criminals in fictional films extended beyond the United States. Written by Warren Duff and Virginia Kellogg and directed by Michael Curtiz, Warner Bros.’ Stolen Holiday carried the requisite “Any resemblance to actual persons” disclaimer in a separate opening title card, but it was obvious to anyone who could add 2 + 2 that Stefan Or-

loff, played by Claude Rains, was supposed to be “handsome Sasha” Stavisky, and that the narrative was patterned after the Stavisky Affair from start to finish. But it hardly mattered, since Stolen Holiday was really about its leading lady: As noted by cinema historian William K. Everson, “The main titles, with their gay art design and light romantic music, and of course enormous star billing for Kay Francis, assure us immediately that this is wholeheartedly a Kay Francis vehicle.” Indeed, the film is a showcase for Francis as glamorous Parisian dress model Nicole Picot, who falls head over heels for charming sharpster Stefan Orloff. Though he is up-front enough to admit that he has invited Nicole to his apartment as “window dressing” so he can close an important business deal, she has no clue that he is a con artist and allows him to set her up in her own swank fashion salon. Nicole remains in the dark as Stefan proposes marriage for the express purpose of inviting the most important people in France to the lavish wedding and thus take the onus off his own unsavory cronies. Orloff carries off his scams in an almost lighthearted manner, reveling in the excitement of getting away with his crimes and avoiding jail time while his partners in perfidy (played by such disreputable-looking actors as Frank Conroy, Walter Kingsford, Charles Halton and Frank Reicher) take things entirely too seriously. Nicole doesn’t catch on to her husband’s true nature until after he is exposed and forced to make his getaway from Paris. But when he declares that he has always sincerely loved with her, she agrees to aid in his escape (Rains is marvelous in this scene, never quite letting the audience know if he’s telling the truth or merely pulling off one last con). Orloff ’s subsequent suicide is staged in a manner hinting that it was an officially sanctioned murder, which is not only historically accurate but also satisfies the Production Code’s ban on “suicide as a plot solution.” Following the street riots sparked by Orloff ’s death, poor Nicole is left penniless in the ruins of her lovely salon—but only long enough for dashing British diplomat Anthony Wayne (Ian Hunter), who has loved Nicole from

Steinhagen afar for reels and reels, to materialize from out of nowhere and take her away from it all. Although Orloff and Nicole’s marriage in Stolen Holiday is never consummated due to unscheduled interference by the authorities, the real Alexandre and Arlette Stavinsky were wed long enough to have two children, who after their mother’s acquittal in 1935 travelled with her to the United States. An attempt to establish herself as a Manhattan cabaret entertainer failed, and by 1936 Arlette was back in Paris, where she eked out an existence by selling all her valuables and working as an unlicensed dress designer. After the 1944 liberation of Paris she married an American military officer and relocated to Puerto Rico, where she lived in comfort and security to the end of her days, maintaining a Sphinx-like silence about her tumultuous past. For a more factual (and in many ways more stylish) film version of the Stavisky Affair, the reader is referred to French director Alain Resnais’ 1974 Stavisky…, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo as the title character (without the ellipsis) and Anny Duperey as Arlette.

STEINHAGEN, RUTH A NN—AND EDDIE WAITKUS The film: The Natural (Delphi II Productions/ TriStar, 1984)

On June 14, 1949, former Chicago Cubs first baseman Eddie Waitkus dropped into the city’s Edgewater Hotel at the invitation of a young lady who described herself as his biggest fan. Using an alias, Ruth Ann Steinhagen had sent a note to Waitkus, insisting that she had to talk to him on an urgent matter. The 29-year-old ballplayer could not have known that Steinhagen was obsessed with him to the point of insanity, building a shrine to him in her bedroom and nearly suffering a breakdown when he was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies at the end of the 1948 season. As Waitkus entered Ruth’s hotel room, she pulled out a .22 caliber rifle and shot him. He had only time to gasp “Why did you do that?” before collapsing with a bullet lodged in his lung. Steinhagen then called the desk to report what she’d done, holding the wounded man close to her until the police arrived. Though it was nip

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and tuck in the operating room, Waitkus survived to play baseball again, returning to the field for a special fan tribute two months later and remaining active with the Phillies until he retired in 1955. Proclaiming “If I can’t have him, nobody else can,” Steinhagen was committed to a mental institution. Noticeably guarded and somewhat paranoid in public for the rest of his life, Eddie Waitkus died in 1972. Ruth Ann Steinhagen was released from confinement in 1952, living in obscurity until her death in 2012. The Waitkus shooting was but one of the many celebrated baseball facts and fables woven into Bernard Malamud’s 1952 “mythos” novel The Natural. Scripted by Roger Towne and Phil Dusenberry and directed by Barry Levinson, the 1984 film version of The Natural used most of the Malamud material and some additional baseball lore, emulating the author’s comparison of fictional ballplayer Roy Hobbs’ career to the King Arthur Legend while softening the novel’s Greek-Tragedy denouement. For a more thorough exploration of the rampant symbolism in The Natural, please reference the author’s The Baseball Filmography: 1915 through 2001 (McFarland, 2002). A life-altering moment early in the film takes place in 1923, as arrogant young Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) is inveigled into the hotel room of the beautiful and mysterious Harriet Bird (Barbara Hershey). Barely visible in the darkened room, Harriet asks seductively if Roy wants to be “the best there was.” He replies yes, whereupon she shoots him with a silver bullet, just as she has already shot several other star athletes. The film then flashes forward to 1939, with Harriet Bird long dead by her own hand and the 35-year-old Roy Hobbs struggling towards a long-delayed entree into the majors. Will he be a success, or has he already been cursed by the youthful hubris that nearly cost him his life 16 years earlier? Other baseball-history allusions in The Natural include the barnstorming years of Babe Ruth, cacophonous Brooklyn Dodgers fan Hilda “The Bell” Chester, the outfield-wall collisions that killed ballplayers Earl Combs and “Pistol Pete” Reiser, and the 1919 Black Sox scandal. But

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towering over them all is the revised Eddie Waitkus–Ruth Steinhagen story, as cruel and exacting a test of character as any protagonist in any film has ever been forced to endure.

STEVENS, THADDEUS The film: The Birth of a Nation (Epoch, 1915)

Admired by the North and reviled by the South, fiery abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens was born in Vermont in 1792. With two strikes against him that might have stopped a lesser man in his tracks—born with a clubfoot, deserted by his father at age 12—Stevens persevered and became a brilliant and much sought-after defense lawyer. Though among his early clients was a slave owner who was sued by a runaway slave, Stevens underwent a total change of philosophy and started defending runaways from the Southern hierarchy. Entering politics as a Democrat during the administration of President James Buchanan, his sentiments leaned in the direction of the Republican abolitionists represented by Buchanan’s successor Abraham Lincoln. Stevens’ unflagging support of the Yankee cause in the Civil War cost him dearly—a profitable ironworks that he owned was deliberately destroyed by a vengeful Confederate general—but he was determined to see slavery completely eradicated during his lifetime. Even so, he had no great love for President Lincoln, whom he regarded as a “nobody” who was too moderate on the issue of how the South should be treated after the war. When Lincoln said he intended to welcome back the Rebels “as if they’d never been away,” Stevens was so infuriated that he never spoke to the president again. Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865 led to further clashes between Stevens and new President Andrew Johnson, whose half-hearted Reconstruction policies imposed only token penalties on former slaveholders. Stevens’ own Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands mandated that each freed slave be given 40 acres of confiscated Confederate land—the “40 Acres and a Mule” policy that enraged Southerners who owned neither land nor slaves. “Abolition—Yes!” Stevens once proclaimed. “Abolish everything on the face of the earth but

Thaddeus Stevens.

this Union; free every slave—burn every rebel mansion, if these things be necessary to preserve this temple of freedom to the world and to our posterity.” Pushing hard to cancel pardons and amnesties extended to the South by President Johnson, Stevens regarded any sign of leniency towards the former enemy as anti–Union. Among Stevens’ more radical policies was to partition the South into five military districts, some guarded by black Cavalry troops—a move that exacerbated tensions between the winners and the losers of the war, culminating in the counter–Reconstruction terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan. Seriously ill at this point in time, Stevens had to be carried into the legislative and judicial chambers on a specially designed chair, a sight that seemed to verify the South’s perception of him as a self-appointed emperor. Stevens died in 1868, not long after giving his blessing to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson for suspending Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. In his rabidly racist Civil War novel The Clansman, Thomas Dixon dished up a savage caricature of Thaddeus Stevens in the form of Pennsylvania abolitionist Austin Stoneman. All of Stevens’ physical characteristics—his club foot,

Sunday his ill-fitting wig—were transferred to Stoneman, as well as the widespread belief that he kept a black mistress. While it is true that Stevens, a lifelong bachelor, lived alone with his mulatto housekeeper Lydia Hamilton Smith, evidence of a romance between them is flimsy—but that didn’t stop Dixon from describing Stoneman as “the first full length portrait in history” of the long- dead Stevens. Dixon added “I dare my critic to come from under his cover and put his finger on a single word, line, sentence, paragraph, page or chapter in The Clansman in which I have done Thad Stevens an injustice.” Perhaps Dixon had convinced himself that he’d “humanized” Stoneman by showing him as the loving father of Elsie Stoneman, one of the novel’s two heroines, and the proud parent of two Union-enlistee sons, one of whom is killed in battle. The Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith’s landmark 1915 film version of The Clansman which like its source novel egregiously promotes the Ku Klax Klan as a band of heroes, is nonetheless a major improvement on the original, toning down Dixon’s inflammatory rhetoric and depicting Austin Stoneman (played by Ralph Lewis) as less villainous than misguided. As in the novel, Stoneman malevolently hobbles around on a deformed foot and has trouble keeping his obvious toupee on straight, and he does rant and rave in the presence of the saintly Abraham Lincoln ( Joseph Henabery), but he really isn’t entirely bad. The biggest strike against him, according to the Kentucky-born Griffith, is that he lives openly with his mulatto mistress Lydia Brown (played in blackface by Mary Alden), who is shown to be more craven and mean- spirited than her white lover. In the final reels, Austin Stoneman belatedly sees the error of his ways when his mulatto protege Silas Lynch (George Siegmann) kidnaps Stoneman’s virginal daughter Elsie (Lillian Gish) and tries to force her into an interracial marriage. The overbearing whitesupremacist message of The Birth of a Nation may be impossible to digest for many modern viewers, but they probably won’t leave the theater cursing the memory of the film’s gelded Thaddeus Stevens clone.

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SUNDAY, BILLY The film: Elmer Gantry (Elmer Gantry Productions/United Artists, 1960)

Deadpan satires of the manners and mores of their era, the novels of Sinclair Lewis have traditionally been difficult to translate to film. Silent and sound versions were made of Main Street and Babbitt, though the end results bore only a superficial resemblance to the originals (the sound adaptation of Main Street, retitled I Married a Doctor, even contrives to have a happy ending). For many years, two other Lewis novels were considered too controversial for Hollywood consumption: It Can’t Happen Here, which deals with a fascist takeover of the United States, and Elmer Gantry, a savage skewering of moneydriven religious evangelists. While we’re still awaiting a movie version of It Can’t Happen Here, Elmer Gantry finally received big-screen treatment in 1960, by which time the old Motion Picture Production Code was in its death throes. Written in 1926 and published the following year, Elmer Gantry is the story of a college athlete who spends more time in bars and whorehouses than on the playing field. After a failed stab at law school he enters a Baptist seminary and becomes an ordained minister, but is kicked out before receiving his degree because of drunkenness. Hitting the road as a travelling salesman, he oils his way into the evangelistic ministry of Sharon Falconer, using his sexual wiles to become her manager. After Sharon’s death in a tabernacle fire Gantry builds up his own huge Methodist congregation in the mythical town of Zenith, previously the setting of Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt. Both directly and indirectly, Gantry manages to damage or destroy everyone with whom he comes in contact, sanctimoniously preaching against greed, materialism and promiscuity while hypocritically indulging in all three vices. Elmer Gantry is a relentless assault on what Sinclair Lewis labeled “the religion racket,” as practiced by “fundamentalist capitalistic” preachers who personified “that great negative evil— the turning of young, fresh emotion-charged thought from reality to devotion to symbols,

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priest-worship, ‘church-work,’ listening to shallow sermons and singing damned bad verse, while a whole world of nobility and need waits outside.” The novel’s harpooning of evangelistic bombast was condemned by many clerics, with one California pastor offering to lead a lynch mob against the author. Conversely, the Rev. John Malick of Cincinnati praised Elmer Gantry for indirectly proving the unassailable strength of the Word of God, standing its ground against the slings and arrows of non-believers and fraudulent Bible-thumpers: “What is genuine, we may be sure, cannot be hurt even by a writer of fiction.” Many readers and reviewers perceived that at least two prominent religious figures had been caricatured in the novel. While Sinclair Lewis went to great lengths insisting that Sharon Falconer was not based on Sister Aimee Semple McPherson (see separate entry), he allowed readers to assume that Elmer Gantry was based on popular fire-and-brimstone evangelist William Ashley “Billy” Sunday (1862–1935). A former professional baseball player, Billy Sunday frequently used sports allusions in his sermons, though befitting his impressive physique he concentrated on boxing analogies. In 1896 he turned to evangelism full-time, conducting boisterous revival meetings throughout the U.S. He was especially effective in promoting the Temperance movement, persuading many of his followers to forsake liquor and wholeheartedly support Prohibition. “I am the sworn, eternal and uncompromising enemy of the liquor traffic. I have been, and will go on, fighting that damnable, dirty, rotten business with all the power at my command.” One of his favorite pronouncements was that he would lash out against the scourge of demon liquor until his teeth fell out, then proceed to “gum it to death.” While detractors criticized his expensive lifestyle and the huge amounts of money he raked in from his parishioners, no scandal ever touched Sunday in his lifetime. This would seem to make him the exact opposite of the glass- eye-phony Elmer Gantry, except that Sinclair Lewis himself cited the memory of attending a Billy Sunday tent show in 1917 as one of the novel’s inspirations.

Many of Gantry’s physical attributes and gestures were lifted from Billy Sunday’s familiar repertoire, and at one point Elmer quotes a classic Sunday sermon about an innocent boy who takes the first step down the road to perdition when a harlot gives him a single glass of champagne. The fact that the Rev. Sunday was an outspoken racial bigot also fed into Lewis’ disdain for the man. Perhaps it goes without saying that Billy Sunday was not politely inclined towards the novel. “That there is any market at all for such unconvincing things as this Elmer Gantry appears to be due to the deplorable religious conditions in the country today,” Billy roared to the press. “If I am not mistaken, this same Sinclair Lewis is the ‘bird’ who stood in a pulpit in Kansas City some time ago, ridiculed Christianity and defied God to strike him dead. Had I been the Lord I would have soaked him so hard there would have been nothing left for the devil to levy on.’” This final sentence would circulate for years afterward, variously misquoted as “Oh, boy, if I’d been God, I sure would have landed a haymaker right on the old button!” and “If I’d been God, he’d be knocked down so quickly he wouldn’t have another breath.” Any way you put it, Sunday’s condemnation resulted in an upsurge in sales of the novel, which in turn led to a 1928 stage adaptation by Patrick Kearney, starring Edward Pawley in the title role. But though several filmmakers toyed with the idea of a movie version of Elmer Gantry throughout the 1930s, they were stopped cold by the Production Code’s commandment that “Ministers of religion, or persons posing as such, shall not be portrayed as comic characters or as villains so as to cast disrespect on religion.” In 1945, novelist Richard Brooks befriended Sinclair Lewis, who gave the young writer permission to tackle a film adaptation of Elmer Gantry. Unlike so many other novelists, Lewis encouraged Brooks to make changes in the source material, hoping to counter criticism that had been lobbied against the book when it first came out. In the early 1950s Burt Lancaster became attached to the project, and throughout the rest of decade he and Brooks struggled to

Tabor “lick” the novel so it would conform to Production Code standards. But only after large, gaping holes had been punched in the Code’s clout with such controversial films as Man with the Golden Arm and Anatomy of a Murder could Elmer Gantry graduate from planning stage to actual production, with Brooks as writer-director and Lancaster (who else?) in the leading role. The decision was made to dramatize only the middle section of the novel, concentrating on Gantry’s association with Sharon Falconer ( Jean Simmons). Early in the film Brooks distances the character from the bigoted Billy Sunday by showing Elmer “getting the call” in a Southern black church. To mollify real-life ministers, Gantry is now an unordained preacher—or in Brooks’ words, “merely a scoundrel.” Unlike her namesake in the novel, Sharon Falconer is totally sincere in her religious beliefs, contrasting with Gantry’s cheerful insouciance when he isn’t out front preaching to the flock. Brooks also uses the surefire device of the “severest critic” character who, like the audience, questions Gantry’s motives at the beginning but ultimately becomes convinced that Elmer’s religiosity is genuine. Arthur Kennedy plays atheistic reporter Jim Lefferts (a divinity student in the original novel), who in H.L. Mencken fashion dogs Gantry’s trail on the revival circuit in hopes of springing the hypocrisy trap. Lefferts comes to accept the protagonist’s integrity after witnessing how manfully Gantry copes with a potentially ruinous scandal framed by vengeful prostitute Lulu Bains (Shirley Jones in an Oscar- winning performance). The tabernacle-fire climax, which Lewis used midway through the novel as retribution for Sharon Falconer’s audacity in placing herself on equal footing with God, is in the film version of Elmer Gantry transformed into a censorapproved punishment for Gantry’s past sins, setting him firmly on the Righteous Path ever afterward.

S WANSON, GLORIA Anyone who ever thought that American actress Gloria Swanson’s portrayal of faded, delusional silent film star Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1950) was in any way autobiograph-

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ical would instantly be set aright by Gloria herself: A woman who always lived for tomorrow rather than yesterday, managing to sustain her starring film career for six decades, and keeping herself eternally youthful and alert by taking meticulous care of her health and diet. The one screen character who can definitely be tagged a Swanson clone was Peggy Pepper, played by Marion Davies in the 1928 comedy-drama Show People. Like Gloria, Peggy gets her start in pictures playing in knockabout two-reel comedies (Swanson worked for Mack Sennett from 1916 to 1917), then advances to dramatic roles in class-A feature pictures (Gloria left Sennett to play leading roles for Cecil B. DeMille, then became her own producer in the 1920s). Renaming herself “Patricia Peppoire,” Peggy takes on airs and forgets all her old friends (Gloria didn’t) and endeavors to gain international prestige by marrying Count Andre Telfair (Gloria became the wife of the Marquis de la Falaise, but dumped him in 1930). Both Show People and the life of Gloria Swanson had happy endings, though not the same happy endings.

TABOR , H.A.W. The film: Silver Dollar (First National, 1932)

Directed by Alfred E. Green from a screenplay by Carl Erickson and Harvey Thew, Silver Dollar is for all intents and purposes a biopic. Only the names have been changed to protect the studio. If you grew up in Denver, Colorado, you probably know the story of Howard A.W. Tabor by heart. Born in Vermont in 1830, “Haw” Tabor left home 19 years later to work as a stonemason in various other states. In 1857 he married his ex-boss’ daughter, Augusta Pierce; four years later the couple settled in Colorado, where like many new arrivals Tabor planned to mine for gold. By 1878 Tabor had been elected mayor of the town of Leadville, where he and his wife ran a general store; that same year he became Lieutenant Governor of Colorado, his six-year term overlapping with his election as a U.S. Senator in 1883. Having shifted his sights from gold to silver, Tabor purchased the bountiful “Matchless” silver mine, becoming a millionaire in the process. He ran several of Leadville’s most

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profitable businesses, gave generously to innumerable charities, and built the Tabor Grand Opera House in Denver (a similar structure in Leadville was known more modestly as the Tabor Opera House). Remaining active in politics, he joined the cabinet of President Chester A. Arthur as U.S. Secretary of Interior. The only office Tabor never achieved was governor of Colorado, but it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying. His success in all other fields was in sharp contrast with his chaotic private life. In 1883 he divorced Augusta to marry his longtime mistress Elizabeth “Baby Doe” McCourt. Of the two children from this marriage, the most famous was second daughter Rosemary Silver Dollar Echo Tabor (no kidding), who spent most of her adulthood milking her family’s celebrity as a newspaper reporter, novelist, actress and striptease artiste. In 1893 the silver market collapsed entirely as a result of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. Though no longer wealthy Tabor was still much loved by his community and was awarded a small but greatly needed income as Denver’s postmaster in 1898 (his ex-wife, Augusta, retained her vast personal fortune until her death in 1895). Mortally ill with appendicitis, Tabor died in 1899 with his wife, “Baby Doe,” at his side. Legend has it that his last words to her were “hold on to the Matchless mine … it will make millions again when silver comes back.” Regarded in her heyday as the most attractive and best-dressed woman in Colorado, Baby Doe spent her declining years in abject poverty and near-madness, stubbornly living in a squalid shack built near the played-out Matchless mine and wandering the streets of Leadville clothed in rags and babbling to herself. Outliving her daughter Silver Dollar by a decade, 81-yearold Baby Doe Tabor was found frozen to death on the floor of her shack in 1935. The first important biography of H.A.W. Tabor and his family was 1932’s Silver Dollar, written by newspaper essayist David Karsner. Whenever the book focuses on the rise and fall of “Haw” Tabor himself, it generally sticks to the facts; whenever Baby Doe and Silver Dollar are the topic of discussion, sensationalism is the order of the day. As the author provides Baby

Doe with fanciful interior monologues, she is depicted as a shameless gold-digger (or in this case, silver-digger) who sets her sights on Tabor long before ever meeting him. Once they enter into their scandalous relationship, Baby Doe is made out to be the predator, avaricious and none too faithful. Given the opportunity to interview the woman during the course of his research, Karsner admitted that he ignored much of what she said, preferring to believe the legends and gossip passed along by the citizens of Colorado. Though she was in no position to take legal action against Silver Dollar, Baby Doe was extremely vocal in her displeasure with Karsner’s biography, her lamentations striking a sympathetic chord with the public—so much so that when First National Pictures purchased the book as a vehicle for Edward G. Robinson, the studio felt it provident and tasteful to change all the character names. The basic facts of the story remain intact in the film, even unto identifying the Matchless Mine and Tabor’s daughter Silver Dollar (never seen except in baby pictures) by their actual names. Edward G. Robinson plays the Haw Tabor character Yates Martin, with Aline MacMahon as his first wife, Sarah. The couple’s ascendancy from humble farmers to the social and economic leaders of Leadville and later Denver is depicted in amusingly broad strokes, with Martin’s enthusiasm over the creature comforts that wealth can bring counterpointed with Sarah’s more modest aspirations and long-suffering tolerance of her husband’s foolhardy excesses. Yates and the Baby Doe counterpart Lily Owens (Bebe Daniels) “meet cute” when, while Martin is busily surveying his newly completed opera house, Lily laughs out loud at his ignorance of all things artistic. Lily Owens is a far more likeable and respectable character than David Karsner’s portrait of Baby Doe, with Yates Martin coming off as selfish and insensitive in his acquisition of an expensive mistress and his rejection of everfaithful, ever-patient Sarah. After the destruction of the Silver market reduces Martin to poverty, he is shown wandering around a Washington, D.C., hotel lobby, begging former political friends for handouts. One such man takes pity

Tierney on Martin and offers him a government post, but unlike Haw Tabor, Yates Martin doesn’t live long enough to accept the position. Martin’s death scene is literally Wagnerian, as he collapses and dies on the empty stage of his opera house while the strains of “Tannhauser” boom forth on the soundtrack. Prior to starting work on Silver Dollar, director Alfred E. Green made a pilgrimage to Leadville to immerse himself in local culture and folklore. The film used a lot of authentic props and furnishings from late–19th century Colorado, though location shooting took place in California. Silver Dollar premiered on December 1, 1932, at the still-standing Tabor Grand Opera House in Denver, a gala event where the celebrity patrons were charged $10 a head. With studied magnanimity, the publicity department of Warner Bros.–First National invited Elizabeth “Baby Doe” Tabor to attend the opening as their guest. She merely stared at the studio representatives and told them to go away.

THALBERG, IRVING Brooklyn-born “boy wonder” of early Hollywood, who when barely out of his teens rose from a secretarial post at Universal studios to become the firm’s studio manager. After overseeing such major Universal productions as Foolish Wives and The Hunchbank of Notre Dame he joined the newly formed MGM studio, where in 1925 he was appointed head of production. In addition to nurturing and promoting such stars as Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer (who married him in 1927), Thalberg greatly enhanced the prestige of MGM with his willingness to repeatedly refilm individual scenes until perfection was achieved; he also advocated the preview process to gauge current audience tastes and held lengthy story conferences with his legions of writers. Most people who worked at MGM under Thalberg—including Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Anita Loos and the Marx Brothers—regarded him as the greatest filmmaker of his era; and despite his early death from overwork and a variety of ailments at age 37 his legend lived on. One of the very few studio executives to earn the unqualified admiration of

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novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thalberg served as the model for Monroe Stahr, the movie-mogul hero of Fitzgerald’s last, unfinished novel The Last Tycoon. The novel was filmed by director Ulu Grosbard in 1976 with Robert De Niro as the brilliant, foredoomed Monroe Stahr.

THORPE, JIM Proclaimed “The Greatest Athlete in the World” by King Gustav of Sweden, American Indian Jim Thorpe was the sensation of the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, winning two gold medal and two challenge prizes for his participation in ten different events. But after a 1913 newspaper story revealed that he had once played professional baseball (for a princely $2 a day), Thorpe instantly lost his amateur status and was stripped of all his medals. Several film characters inspired by the tragedy of Jim Thorpe (not to mention a formal 1951 biopic) would follow in the wake of his public humiliation. One of the better—and kinder—such efforts was the 1937 musical comedy Life Begins in College, wherein Nat Pendleton plays millionaire Native American student Little Black Cloud, aka George Black. On the eve of the inevitable Big Football Game, Little Black Cloud is disqualified from playing when it is learned that he once inadvertently played on a professional team— leaving the gridiron fate of the college in the farfrom-skilled hands of the Ritz Brothers.

TIERNEY, GENE In 1943 Hollywood actress Gene Tierney gave birth to her daughter Daria, born mentally impaired and totally deaf. It was only years later that Tierney discovered that the source of Daria’s affliction was a movie fan who broke out of rubella quarantine in order to meet the actress at the Hollywood Canteen. This personal tragedy inspired a motivation for murder in Agatha Christie’s “Miss Marple” mystery novel The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side. Without giving anything away, we can observe that the 1980 film version, retitled simply The Mirror Crack’d, stars Kim Novak and Elizabeth Taylor respectively as feuding Hollywood divas Marina Rudd and Lola Brewster, who are filming on location in a small British town where one of the citizens is

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inexplicably murdered. It’s up to the formidable Miss Marple (Angela Lansbury) to determine if the comparatively insignificant victim was the actual target.

TILSTON, STEVE The film: Danny Collins (Big Indie Pictures/ ShivHans Pictures/Bleecker Street Media, 2015)

Liverpool-born folk musician Steve Tilston launched his show business career at age 21 in 1971, after working for a while as a graphic designer. Transitioning from rock to folk in the mid–1980s, he produced nearly two dozen albums, many of them released by his own Run River record label. Once a member of John Renbourn’s group Ship of Fools, he was later closely associated with British singer- flutist Maggie Boyle, both on and off the stage. In the early 21st century he shifted his creative gears to melodic jazz, and beginning in 2010 toured as lead singer of the D’Urbervilles—who, as indicated by their name, were headquartered in Yorkshire. Critics have been generous in their praise of Tilston’s solid musicianship, with Northern Sky magazine summarizing his album Truth to Tell thusly:

Steve Tilston.

“Steve Tilston shows no sign of faulting on delivering class music that is at once timeless, intelligent and built to last.” In 2012 he earned the BBC Folk Award for Best Original Song of the Year (“The Reckoning”). If you haven’t heard of Steve Tilston, it’s probably because he has always chosen to let his music speak for itself. He has never been a flashy, egotistical star performer in the manner of, say, fellow Liverpudlian John Lennon. We mention Lennon because if it wasn’t for a letter that the former Beatle wrote to Tilston in 1971, the movie Danny Collins would never have happened. The letter was prompted by an interview of Tilston in the British underground magazine ZigZag, in which the up-and-coming singer commented “If you get rich, you must change … your experiences will be different and they probably won’t have the same depth.” These selfdoubting sentiments pervaded the rest of the interview, moving John Lennon to send Tilston a letter of response in care of Steve’s ZigZag interviewer Richard Howell. “Being rich doesn’t change your experience in the way you think,” Lennon began. “The only difference basically is that you don’t have to worry about money-foodroof etc., but all other experiences-emotionsrelationships are the same as anybody’s.” In closing, John drew caricatures of himself and Yoko Ono and wished Tilston their love. Though he never became rich enough to discover for himself if wealth would adversely affect his career, Tilston achieved fullfillment and recognition as a versatile, accomplished artist. As he told the New York Times, “it’s been feast and famine. But really, I’ve lived a charmed life. I wouldn’t change it at all.” Even if he had become a millionaire in his youth, Steve Tilston would not have known how John Lennon felt about it because he never received the letter. Tilston later speculated that someone in the ZigZag office intercepted the missive and held onto it in hopes of making an enormous cash sale to some interested party or other. It was not until 2010 that the letter, then valued at over $10,000, was acquired by an American collector. In 2015 Tilston told the

Toschi London Telegraph “I didn’t hear about [the letter] at all until out of the blue about five years ago, when an American chap got in touch with me and said: ‘Are you the Steve Tilston that John Lennon wrote to?’” The year 2015 was the time of Danny Collins, written and directed by Dan Fogelman and starring Al Pacino in the title role. In contrast with Steve Tilston, Danny is a burned-out American rock star, a dinosaur of the 1970s who despite his loss of fame and fortune insists upon maintaining his booze-broads-and-drugs lifestyle. But when his manager Frank Grubman (Christopher Plummer) gets his hands on an undelivered 40-year-old letter written to Collins by John Lennon, Danny vows to turn over a new leaf. In the film, the letter states outright what Lennon’s words had only inferred: “Stay true to yourself. Stay true to your music.” In the process of following this belated advice, Danny tries to reconnect with his long-estranged son Tom (Bobby Cannavale), and by extension the daughter-inlaw ( Jennifer Garner) and granddaughter (Giselle Eisenberg) he never knew. He also launches a sincere romantic relationship (something new to him) with hotel manager Mary Sinclair (Annette Bening). A regrettable lapse into his old wicked ways nearly destroys every relationship that he is anxious to establish—and worse, Danny learns that he has an advanced case of leukemia. We are pleased to report that Steve Tilston is as sound as a dollar (or pound) as of this writing, and that his domestic situation is nowhere near as bleak as Danny Collins’. Steve’s own children Martha and Joe are skilled musicians in their own right, with Martha pursuing a folk-singing career and Joe active with the ska-punk band Random Hand. And though Tilston himself has apparently not had any lasting relationships since his 1999 breakup with Maggie Boyle (who died in 2014), who’s to say what the future holds? After all, Steve was 61 years old before he found out that John Lennon had cared enough to send the very best.

TOSCHI, DAVE The films: Bullitt (Solar Productions/Warner

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Bros./Seven Arts, 1968), Dirty Harry (Malpaso Company/Warner Bros., 1971)

The ultra–PC San Francisco of the early 21st century, where among other restrictions it is illegal to sell or own a pet goldfish, would hardly tolerate or accommodate a maverick SFPD investigator like those fictional movie favorites Frank Bullitt and “Dirty” Harry Callahan. San Francisco could however still find a suitable niche for the real-life police detective who inspired these characters: David Toschi, who during his 30 years on the force was a by-the-book, rules-are-rules man from head to toe. In filmmaker David Fincher’s fact-based 2007 cop drama Zodiac, Mark Ruffalo as Dave Toschi is seen leaving a private screening of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry (1971), which was inspired by Toschi’s indefatigable search for Northern California’s infamous Zodiac Killer. Commenting on the end of the film in which Harry (Eastwood) goes rogue to track down and kill the smirking, sadistic “Scorpio Killer” (Andy Robinson), Toschi’s companion remarks “Dave, that Harry Callahan did a hell of a job closing your case.” “Yeah,” Toschi replies with weary sarcasm, “no need for due process, right?” Joining the SFPD in 1952 when he was 21, Toschi would during the next 15 years become a home-town celebrity, not so much for his record of arrests as for his stylish persona. When he wasn’t tooling around in fast, flashy cars, Dave was instantly identifiable by his ever-present bow tie, wide suspenders and tan trenchcoat, not to mention his incessant munching of Animal Crackers. While preparing for his role as a Frisco police inspector in director Peter Yates’ 1968 actioner Bullitt (adapted for the screen by Alan R. Trustman and Harry Kleiner from Robert L. Fish’s novel Mute Witness), star Steve McQueen consulted with Inspector Toschi in matters pertaining to police protocol. Impressed by Toschi’s upside-down, fast-draw shoulder holster, McQueen insisted that a similar armament be designed for him. Again referencing Zodiac, there’s a scene in which one of the detectives makes a mildly disparaging reference to Dave Toschi: “Dude, he wears his gun like Bullitt.” But beyond the

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superficial resemblance, McQueen’s portrayal of Frank Bullitt is nothing like the precise and methodical Tosci, as the fictional character recklessly breaks all manner of departmental rules and blissfully ignores due process in his singleminded pursuit of the underworld kingpin who bumped off a federal witness under Bullitt’s protection. Dave Tosci has seldom articulated his opinion of Bullitt, though I’m sure he was as thrilled as everyone else in the audience by the film’s justly celebrated centerpiece car chase, pitting Bullitt’s Ford Mustang GT-390 against the villains’ black Dodge Charger. Despite the box-office success of Bullitt, McQueen’s role model Dave Toschi did not rise to national prominence until after October 11, 1969, when San Francisco cabdriver Paul Stine was murdered by the elusive Zodiac Killer. By his own account, Zodiac had been on a killing spree since 1966, bragging in letters to the San Francisco Chronicle that he’d dispatched at least 37 victims (though only seven have been officially attributed to him). Making the capture of Zodiac his personal mission in life, Toschi followed every lead and scrutinized even the tiniest of clues, achieving celebrity status in the process. Dirty Harry star Clint Eastwood, director Don Siegel and screenwriters R.M. and Harry Julian Fink, Dean Reisner and John Milius have acknowledged the inspiration of Dave Toschi— though as in the case of Bullitt the film’s Harry Callahan is temperamentally the antithesis of the doggedly rule-bound Toschi. Even if the reallife lawman had ever actually used a .357 Magnum, it is doubtful that he would growl “Do ya feel lucky, punk?” to a cowering perpetrator. Ultimately Dirty Harry throws the rule book out the window and tramples on every civil liberty known to man as he doles out retribution to the despicable Scorpio Killer. When it’s all over, Harry expresses his revulsion over a judicial system that ties the hands of the police and seems to coddle criminals by tossing his badge away (though he manages to recover it in time for the first of the four Dirty Harry sequels, 1973’s Magnum Force). Unfortunately Dave Toschi never had the opportunity to “feel lucky.” Frustrated over his in-

ability to find the Zodiac Killer despite several very likely suspects, he remained on the investigation long after it had been abandoned by the rest of his SFPD colleagues. In 1978 the case sprang back to life in the eyes of the public when a new message signed by Zodiac, the first in four years, appeared in the Chronicle. A heavy shadow of doubt would descend upon this development when it was revealed that several letters mailed to San Francisco journalist Armistead Maupin, ostensibly written by private citizens in support of Dave Toschi’s quixotic investigation, had actually been authored by Toschi himself. Though the detective was cleared of subsequent accusations that he had also forged the latest Zodiac letter, Toschi was taken off Homicide and reassigned to pawnshop detail. At the time of his retirement in 1987, Toschi was no closer to solving the Zodiac case than he’d been in 1969. Interviewed on the 40th anniversary of Paul Stine’s murder, Dave Toschi ruefully revealed that he’d made a personal pilgrimage to the crime scene every previous October 11: “I always park exactly where I parked the radio car that night…. I look around the intersection and I wonder what the heck happened. Did we cover all the bases? Did we miss anything at the scene? Why didn’t we get this guy? I ended up with a bleeding ulcer over this case. It still haunts me. It always will.”

TURNER , TED Ohio-born billionaire media mogul and philanthropist Ted Turner was an easy target for satire thanks to his overbearingly abrasive public behavior, especially in matters regarding one of his most successful enterprises, the Atlanta Braves baseball team. In both Blue Skies Again (1983) and A Talent for the Game (1990) the ballplayer protagonists are bedeviled by wealthy and dictatorial team owners who use the skills of their athletes to vicariously stoke their own egos: In Blue Skies Again the Turner counterpart is Sandy Mendenhall (Harry Hamlin); in Talent for the Game, it’s Gil Lawrence (Terry Kinney). Ted Turner’s towering state-of-the-art Atlanta headquarters and his Caesar-like control of his media empire (which at one time included the

Valland CNN news service and the Turner Classic Movies cable channel) is genially lampooned, along with his presumptive habit of computercolorizing classic black & white movies, in the 1990 comedy-fantasy Gremlins 2: The New Batch. The difference between this film’s billionaire media titan Daniel Clamp ( John Glover) and earlier cinematic Ted Turner clones is that Clamp is a much more sweet- natured fellow than the real Turner—or for that matter the character’s other inspiration, who won’t be identified here beyond mentioning that he would ultimately run for a very high political office.

VALLAND, ROSE The films: The Train (Les Films Ariane/Les Productions Artistes Associés/Dear Film Produzione/United Artists, 1964); The Monuments Men (Columbia/Fox 2000/Smokehouse/Obelisk Productions/Studio Babelsberg/Sony, 2014)

A Hollywood casting director could hardly do better to fill the role of a typical 1940s librarian than by hiring Frenchwoman Rose Valland. Studious, soft-spoken and unassuming, she even looked like a librarian with her severe hairdo, pale complexion and horn-rimmed spectacles. It was this very manner and appearance that enabled Mlle. Valland to pull off one of the boldest acts of patriotism in World War II. Though she held several degrees in art history when she began her career at Jeu de Paume museum in Paris in 1940, the 38-year-old Valland was at first an unpaid volunteer. Only when her employer Andre Dezorrois became incapacitated the following year did she take charge of the museum as assistant curator. By that time, Paris had fallen to the Nazis and the Jeu de Paume had become the clearing house for Hermann Goering’s Einsatzstab Reichsleter Rosenberg, an organization dedicated to looting private art collections throughout France (mostly from Jewish owners) so that the stolen paintings and statuary could be transferred to Hitler’s proposed Führermuseum in Austria. Instructed by the director of the French National Museums to remain at her job and spy on the Nazis, Valland stood by silently watching and listening, never letting on to the officers in charge that she understood German perfectly. Whenever the Nazis

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made a photograph of a confiscated masterpiece, she would smuggle the negative home for copying; and with the meticulous attention to detail necessary for her job, she covertly drew up a list of the destinations of each crateful of art, as well as a map of those locations. In August 1944 she looked on as the Nazis loaded their ill-gotten gains onto 52 cars of a German-bound train. By now accustomed to regularly risking her life she contacted the French Resistance, who arranged for bureaucratic red tape to keep the train endlessly circling at the station, unable to budge until the liberation of Paris on August 25. Valland was then introduced to American Army captain James Rorimer of the Monuments Men, a special Allied unit assigned to recover Nazi-confiscated art and restore it to its rightful owners. At first unwilling to cooperate with Rorimer because the presence of Nazi collaborators in Paris had made her wary of everyone, she finally relented and handed over her records, enabling the Allies to recover some 20,000 priceless items from hiding places throughout Europe. After VE Day in 1945 she requested and received a commission from the French First Army to personally participate in the Monuments Men mission. Her valiant and tireless efforts earned Rose Valland the rank of Capitaine in the French Army and Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army, as well as the Médaille de Résistance, the Legion of Honor and several other decorations. Her story was made known to the world with the July 1946 opening of an exhibition of rescued masterpieces in the Tuileries Garden. The best of the many books about Rose Valland’s rescue of France’s plundered artwork is her own 1961 account, Le Front de l’Art. The book was filmed in 1964 as the big-budget war thriller The Train, scripted by Franklin Coen and Frank Davis (with uncredited contributions by Walter Bernstein and Nedrick Young) and directed by John Frankenheimer. With Burt Lancaster and Paul Scofield starring respectively as pragmatic French Resistance leader Labiche and art-loving Nazi colonel Von Waldheim, the story was reshaped and romanticized as a battle of wills between the two main characters, as

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Labiche races to prevent the masterpiece-heavy German train from reaching its destination— after the train gets out of Paris with a minimum of difficulty, breezily ignoring the facts so that the film will run longer than two reels. Thirdbilled Jeanne Moreau was not, as one might assume, a glamorized version of Rose Valland, but rather a fictional French tavernkeeper with mixed loyalties. The Valland character, renamed Mlle. Vallard and played by age-appropriate French actress Suzanne Flon, appears just long enough to persuade a very reluctant Labiche to risk the lives of his fellow Resistance fighters for the sake of a trainload of paintings and sculptures, which she describes as “the soul of France.” Thirty-four years after her death in 1980, Rose Valland would again be fictionalized onscreen in director-star George Clooney’s Monuments Men, an episodic version of the Great Wartime Art Recovery based on a book by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter, told from the viewpoint of an Allied platoon ordered to undertake the dangerous search-and-rescue mission. This time Mlle. Valland has become the slightly younger Claire Simone, played with esprit and a convincing Gallic accent by British actress Cate Blanchett. Allowing for its streamlining of a sprawling wartime mission involving hundreds of Allied operatives into a comparatively compact endeavor carried out by a group of amusingly mismatched art nerds (played by Bill Murray, Bob Balaban and John Goodman, among others), Monuments Men adheres more faithfully to the facts than The Train. Screenwriters Clooney and Grant Heslov even allow Rose Valland to step off her “Modern Joan of Arc” pedestal with Blanchett’s portrayal of Claire Simone as a guarded and highly skeptical young woman, who balks at handing over her records to either Lt. Frank Stokes (George Clooney) or Lt. James Granger (Matt Damon)—characters loosely based on actual “Monuments Men” George Stout and James Rorimer—because she fears that once the Americans recover the stolen art they will themselves confiscate it for their own museums. That may not be the authentic reason for Rose Valland’s reluctance, but it’s just

the sort of objection the real Mlle. Valland might have raised.

WALKER , GEN. EDWIN The films: Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Hawk Films/ Columbia, 1964); Seven Days in May ( Joel Productions/Seven Arts/Paramount, 1964)

Virtually forgotten today, Texas-born General Edwin A. Walker (1909–1993) was at one time one of the most over-referenced bête noires of the American liberal movement, in much the same way that the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch would be to later generations. After leading a commando unit in World War II Walker rose to prominence by helping put down a Communist takeover of Greece in 1947. During the Korean War he became convinced the American troops were being severely demoralized by the psychological-propaganda warfare waged by the Communists. His obsession with perceived assaults on red-blooded Americanism would soon push him into the realm of political extremism. Assigned to militarily enforce the integration of Little Rock High School in 1957, Walker carried out his orders under protest, privately expressing his own opposition to desegregation to President Eisenhower. Refusing to accept Walker’s subsequent resignation, Eisenhower assigned him to command the 24th Infantry Division stationed in Germany. It was during this period that Walker, acting on his own, created the “Pro-Blue” program, expressing his admiration for the ultra-right-wing John Birch Society by indoctrinating his troops with rabidly anti–Soviet speeches and leaflets. Objecting to Walker promoting personal politics while in uniform, Eisenhower’s successor John F. Kennedy and defense secretary Robert McNamara relieved the General of his command in 1961, whereupon he was given no choice but to resign. The following year Walker made headlines by organizing protests against black student James Meredith’s enrollment in the all-white University of Mississippi. He also ran for governor on the Republican ticket in his home state of Texas, losing by a considerable margin to Democrat John Connally. His defeat notwithstanding,

Walker Walker was by now a leading figure in the anti– Kennedy, anti–Civil Rights, anti–U.N. movement, delivering rambling, hate-filled lectures to various radical-right organizations. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy was so unnerved by Walker’s jeremiads that he charged the general with sedition and tried to have him committed to a mental asylum. When JFK was assassinated on November 22, 1963, CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite’s first impulse in the hours before the shooting was confirmed as fatal was to implicitly hold Gen. Walker responsible for whoever pulled the trigger—a theory that lost traction when it was revealed that alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had planned to kill Walker before he even considered Kennedy as a target, and that Oswald may well have been the person who had tried to assassinate the general the previous April. Two films with characters based on the volatile Edwin Walker were filmed in 1963 for a scheduled release in December: Stanley Kubrick’s black comedy Dr. Strangelove and director John Frankenheimer’s political thriller Seven Days in May. The first film concerned an insane Air Force general who triggers a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union; the second film told of a non-insane Army general who engineers a military takeover of the United States. The release of both films was delayed in the wake of the JFK assassination; Strangelove would finally be released the last week of January 1964, while Seven Days in May followed two weeks later. The Kubrick film was based on Red Alert, a 1958 novel by Peter George. Named Quinlen in the novel, the demented general is determined to commit suicide-by-war, deliberately sending planes to nuke Moscow knowing that the pilots will be obliged to follow orders no matter how they feel personally about such a calamitous mission. Quinlen is purely a fictional character without basis in reality, but by the time the script for Dr. Strangelove was hammered into shape by Kubrick, George and Terry Southern there were two real-life American generals in the cross-hairs of liberal Hollywood: Edwin Walker, for reasons mentioned, and Air Force general Curtis LeMay

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(see separate entry), whose “nuke ’em into the stone age” attitude towards the Soviets had made him a sworn enemy of President Kennedy. In Strangelove, LeMay and Walker are combined into the certifiable General Jack D. Ripper, played by Sterling Hayden. Because another of the film’s characters, Gen. Buck Turgidson, also displays characteristics associated with Curtis LeMay, Jack D. Ripper is left with only LeMay’s ubiquitous cigar, which he smokes throughout his lunatic ramblings. What locks Ripper into the Edwin Walker mode is his belief that the Russians are poisoning the minds and bodies of the American public via fluoridation of the drinking water. “Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face?” Ripper asks his nonplussed aide-de-camp Mandrake (Peter Sellers). It is the General’s intention to destroy all mankind so as not to “sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.” This was deliberately intended to sound like a page from the playbook of Edwin Walker’s beloved John Birch Society—which didn’t exactly argue that fluoridation was a form of Commie mind control, but did regard the process (created in the 1940s to prevent tooth decay) as “involuntary mass medication.” And while Jack D. Ripper is meant to be a satirical exaggeration, his demeanor is not unlike that described by a Mississippi police officer who arrested General Walker on a 1962 insurrection charge: “I didn’t feel like I was talking to a rational man. There was a wild, dazed look in his eyes.” Curtis LeMay was the first person who came to mind when Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey wrote their novel Seven Days in May in 1962. Knebel had in fact interviewed LeMay, who described President Kennedy as a coward for his handling of Cuba—words echoed by the novel’s villain, General James Matoon Scott, regarding the fictional President Lyman. Small wonder that JFK personally requested director John Frankenheimer to make a film version of Seven Days in May, even giving the moviemakers unprecedented access to the White House and the Pentagon for certain scenes. By the time the film was adapted for the screen by Rod Serling,

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Knebel was making public statements that General Scott had more in common with Edwin Walker than Curtis LeMay, emphasizing the character’s humiliating forced resignation at the end of the story. Also, while it isn’t likely that the intensely loyal LeMay would have ever expressed his displeasure over a presidential administration by the staging of a coup, a looneytune like Walker was just the sort of person who might conceivably go around lining up military and non-military allies to topple a president whom he regarded as too soft on Communism. Like Knebel, John Frankenheimer invoked the name of General Walker in later interviews about the film; and Serling’s script mentions the General by name at one juncture. Burt Lancaster’s portrayal of the Walker clone General Scott in Seven Days in May does not come off as unbalanced as Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove, but his righteous intractability is far more terrifying.

WALKER , JAMES J. “JIMMY ” The films: The Night Mayor (Columbia, 1932); Hallelujah, I’m a Bum (Lewis Milestone Productions/Feature Productions/United Artists, 1933)

James J. “Jimmy” Walker (1881–1946) was arguably the worst mayor in the history of New York City, but there’s no argument that he was the most flamboyant. Working his way up the political ladder within the powerful Tammany machine, Walker was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1910, then the State Senate in 1915. His well-publicized playboy lifestyle and sartorial splendor, not to mention his strong opposition to Prohibition, endeared him to New York City’s working-class voters, who in 1925 elected him mayor. He enjoyed the firm support of state Governor Alfred E. Smith, who turned a blind eye to charges of Walker’s corruption and toleration of illegal liquor, preferring to focus on Jimmy’s prosocial activities on behalf of his constituents, including his establishment of the Department of Sanitation and his improvements of the city’s transportation system, parks, playgrounds, and free hospitals. Known as “Beau James” because of his Brummel-esque wardrobe and “The Night Mayor” because of his 24/7 so-

cial life, he could do no wrong in the eyes of his supporters, not even when he deserted his wife in favor of chorus girl Betty Compton. But Walker’s wall of invulnerability came tumbling down when Judge Samuel Seabury formed a commission to investigate reports that Jimmy had accepted enormous bribes to grant municipal contracts to influential businessmen. Though Walker had been the author of the popular song “Will You Love Me in December as You Do in May?,” no amount of love could save him from the Seabury Commission. Under intense pressure from the new governor Franklin D. Roosevelt Jimmy resigned from office in September 1932, avoiding prosecution by taking an extended vacation to Europe in the company of Compton. Though he never again held public office, Jimmy Walker continued living in the manner to which he was accustomed, accepting a CEO position with a prominent entertainment company. Based on the highly fanciful biography by Gene Fowler, the 1956 Bob Hope vehicle Beau James is a fascinating if historically suspect chronicle of Jimmy Walker’s mayoral years. While he was still alive, Hollywood came forth with two Walker-inspired fictional characters, the first seen in Columbia’s 1932 comedy-drama The Night Mayor. Written by Samuel Marx and Gertrude Purcell and directed by Benjamin Stoloff, the film stars Lee Tracy, who bears a striking resemblance to Walker, as New York mayor Bobby Kingston. All of the “Beau James” mythos is in attendance as Mayor Kingston juggles his civic duties with a boisterous nightlife. The film purifies his romance with showgirl Doree Dawn (Evalyn Knapp) by depicting Bobby as a bachelor, and sidesteps a career-killing scandal when Doree nobly walks out of Bobby’s life rather than let him destroy himself for her sake. Night Mayor ends with Bobby Kingston returning to the work(?) he loves as the leader of a probeer parade, with a typical Columbia Pictures “crowd” of twenty or so extras posing as hundreds of fans cheering from the sidelines. Motion Picture Herald not only acknowledged the Walker connection but advised exhibitors to exploit it, albeit with reservations: “There is obviously

Wambaugh no mistaking the New York personage who is supposed to be portrayed by Tracy. This becomes a strong selling angle, of course, but at the same time it requires something in the nature of delicacy in treatment.” The following year, Frank Morgan was seen as Walker-like mayor John Hastings in the Al Jolson musical fable Hallelujah, I’m a Bum. Steering clear of City Hall to spend his days strolling through Central Park and his nights indulging in booze and broads at all the best nightspots, Hastings displays his egalitarianism by palling around with self-styled hobo king Bumper ( Jol-

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son). Directed by Lewis Milestone and supplied with an endless stream of clever rhyming dialogue by scenarists Ben Hecht and S.N. Behrman and composers Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, the film takes a serious turn when Bumper prevents the Mayor’s disillusioned mistress June (Madge Evans) from killing herself. Upon awakening, June has completely lost her memory, and thus becomes a willing companion to the charming, carefree Bumper. Eventually she regains her senses, recoils in horror at her shabby benefactor and returns to the arms of the chastened Mayor Hastings, allowing the sadder but wiser Bumper to resume his life of carefree vagabondage.

WAMBAUGH, JOSEPH

Lee Tracy is New York City mayor Jimmy Walker in everything but name in The Night Mayor (1932), as indicated by this ad from Motion Picture Herald.

Former Los Angeles Police Department detective sergeant, who while still on the force began parlaying his experiences into a long career as a best-selling novelist and nonfiction writer (The New Centurions, The Blue Knight, The Glitter Dome). The 1987 film Best Seller stars Brian Dennehy as copturned-author Dennis Meechum, who like Wambaugh makes an effort to remain an active police officer even after achieving fame with his crime novels. Also like Wambaugh, Meechum establishes connections with known criminals to glean information. In the film, the protagonist enters into an unholy alliance with self-proclaimed corporate hit man Cleve— played by James Woods, an “inside” reference to Woods’ previous appearances in the film adaptations of Joseph Wambaugh’s The Choirboys and The Onion Field.

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WARDE, JOHN WILLIAM The film: Fourteen Hours (20th Century–Fox, 1951)

The first time John William Warde tried to kill himself was when he cut his own throat on July 11, 1938. After his release from the hospital, the 26-year-old former bank clerk managed to land a job at the Long Island travel agency owned by Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Valentine. But this failed to lift his spirits, and a week later John jumped off a bridge at Hampton Bays. This time the police fished him out of the water, and though his increasingly disturbing behavior cost him his job his former employers invited John and his sister Catherine on a pleasure trip to Chicago. The foursome returned to New York on July 26 and checked into the Gotham Hotel on the corner of 55th Street and 5th Avenue, taking a room on the 17th floor. If anything, John was more depressed and despondent than ever, and when Catherine made a remark that offended him he announced that he was going to go out the window—then made good his threat, climbing onto an 18-inch perch some 200 feet above the pavement. It was 11:40 a.m.; within 30 minutes a crowd had gathered far below to gawk at the “Man on the Ledge,” as he was dubbed by the press. During the next 11 hours, tens of thousands of spectators gathered to witness John’s self-imposed ordeal, some taking bets as to when he would jump while ice cream and popcorn vendors circulated through the throng. The New York City police and fire departments were summoned in hopes of averting tragedy, but no one dared make a move to snatch John from the ledge for fear that he would suddenly leap into oblivion. Sister Catherine briefly joined John on his perch, a rope tied around her waist, to plead with him; his mother phoned long-distance from Southhampton; and both a psychiatrist and a priest implored John to come to his senses. But he would not be moved, drinking incredible amounts of water and chainsmoking while turning a deaf ear to his wouldbe rescuers. Only soft- spoken NYPD officer Charles Glasco seemed able to gain Warde’s confidence, to the extent that John whispered a se-

cret to Glasco on condition that the policeman never divulge that secret as long as he lived (he never did). Just when Glasco had convinced Warde to return to safety, a photographer barged into the room and took a flash picture, agitating John all over again. A last-ditch effort was made to save Warde with a cargo net, but the plan came to naught. At 10:38 p.m. John made his final statement to psychiatrist J.C. Presser: “There’s no way out of it. I have been up here many hours, trying to convince myself of a reason for living. I’ve made up my mind.” With that, he stepped off the ledge and plummeted to his death, crashing through the Gotham Hotel marquee on his way down. As the police solemnly surrounded John Warde’s body, souvenir hunters eagerly snatched up the broken glass from the shattered marquee. The incident was still fresh in the memories of those who witnessed it when Joel Sayre wrote his article “Man on the Ledge” for the April 16, 1949, issue of The New Yorker. The article was purchased by 20th Century–Fox for a film version that originally bore the same title, but was changed before its 1951 release to Fourteen Hours out of respect for John Warde’s mother, who had always despised the label slapped upon her late son. Directed in the blunt semi-documentary fashion that had become a trademark of Henry Hathaway, Fourteen Hours was shot at both the Fox studios and on location in New York, with several young Manhattan-based actors (Ossie Davis, John Cassavetes, Harvey Lembeck, Joyce Van Patten and others) appearing in bit parts. Cinematographer Joe MacDonald effectively conveys the reality established by director Hathaway, framing many shots of the spectators in exactly the same manner as the contemporary newspaper photos. To break the monotony of a man standing on a studio-bound ledge for 92 minutes, Hathaway and screenwriter John Paxton alternate between the drama 17 floors above ground and the personal stories of the people at sidewalk level whose lives are affected in various ways by the would-be suicide’s ordeal; among the actors in these scenes was Grace Kelly in her big-screen debut. Richard Basehart stars as the anguished protagonist, here renamed Robert

Warren Cosick, while top-billed Paul Douglas copped most of the best reviews in the “Charles Glasco” role of Officer Charlie Dunnigan. Two endings were filmed, one adhering to the grim facts of the event; Hathaway has claimed that this was because of the recent suicide of the daughter of a Fox executive, though it appears that it had been planned all along to test both endings with preview audiences. Since 1938 a variety of psychologists and pedants have offered a multitude of explanations as to why John Warde took his own life, ranging from an inferiority complex to delusions of grandeur. One of the most prevalent theories, fueled by the never-disclosed confidence Warde whispered to Charles Glasco, was for the most part unmentioned in the mainstream press of the period. In Fourteen Hours, however, that particular motivation for self-destruction was decidedly implicit. The tortured Robert Cosick feels all alone in the world; his mother (Agnes Moorehead) is a castrating virago, while his father (Robert Keith) is weak and absent from his life; and he rejects the love of his fiancee (Barbara Bel Geddes) for reasons he refuses to explain. If these statements seem “coded,” it’s because they are presented that way in Fourteen Hours, produced at a time when same-sex romance was still taboo in Hollywood films. Fourteen Hours still works with audiences as a nail-biting suspense piece, though one would like to have seen how it would have turned out had the originally intended director Howard Hawks not turned down the project. Rejecting the suicide angle, Hawks suggested that the story be transformed into a romantic comedy, with Cary Grant playing a jaunty lothario who clambers onto the ledge to escape the wrath of a jealous husband.

WARREN, EDWARD H. “BULL” The film: The Paper Chase (Thompson-Paul Productions/20th Century–Fox, 1973)

The correlation between real-life Harvard Law School professor Edward H. Warren and the intimidatingly eloquent Professor Charles W. Kingsfield Jr., in the film and TV-series versions of John Jay Osborn, Jr.’s novel The Paper

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Chase is explored in depth in this author’s previous book Television Law Shows: Factual and Fictional Series About Judges, Lawyers and the Courtroom, 1948–2008 (McFarland, 2009). To recap with a few emendations, “Bull” Warren was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1873. As a Harvard undergraduate he headed the editorial staff of the Crimson, distinguishing himself by butting ideological heads with school president Charles W. Elliott. After graduation Warren practiced law with a major New York firm, then returned to Harvard Law School as a teacher, determined to follow the pattern set by his favorite instructor James Barr Ames. As Warren wrote in 1942, Ames conducted classes “chiefly by means of Socratic dialogues between himself and fifteen or twenty of the best students who formed, so to speak, a Greek chorus.” It was rough going for those select students: according to Harvard Law Review contributor W. Barton Leach, Prof. Warren possessed a “cutting, merciless wit in class” marked by “his impatience with stupidity, his insistence upon discipline of action as well as of thought.” Leach summed up “The Bull” as “a figure to be feared, if not admired.” There was a method to Warren’s dictatorial tactics. He wanted to impress upon his students the importance of thinking things out for themselves so that others could place their full confidence in them; moreover, no one in the Real World was going to make things any easier on these young budding lawyers than Warren had in his classroom. As noted by W. Barton Leach, “It’s tough, and nobody’s going to help you, but a good man can do it; are you a good man? This brought the right type of young man to Harvard Law School and still does.” “Bull” Warren remained a legend in Harvard long after his death in 1945, the year that Paper Chase author John Jay Osborn, Jr., was born. Himself a lawyer and legal academic, Osborn recognized that the technique which worked best with students, even the most brilliant ones, was to shake them out of their immaturity and dependence on others and force them to make their own decisions. A 1970 Harvard Law School graduate, Osborn incorporated his own

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experiences into his novel, resurrecting Warren in the person of imperious contract-law professor Kingsfield, who expresses his credo in no uncertain terms the moment he is introduced in the 1973 film version: “You’ll teach yourself law but I’ll train your minds. You come in here with a skull full of mush and, if you survive, you’ll leave thinking like a lawyer.” Leavening Kingsfield’s autocratic methods is a dry sense of humor and a willingness to accept challenges from students if the challenger has the wherewithal to back up his words. But neither novel nor film revolves around Kingsfield; the hero of the piece is first-year law student James T. Hart, played in the film by James Stephens. The plot thickens, as it were, when Hart falls in love with Kingsfield’s lissome daughter (Lindsay Wagner). After James Mason dropped out of The Paper Chase, several A-list actors were considered for the role of Kingsfield, including James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Melvyn Douglas and John Gielgud. Finally the film’s director-screenwriter James T. Bridges settled upon a man who’d essentially been playing Kingsfield all his life: 71year-old John Houseman, veteran Broadway and Hollywood producer, collaborator-mentor of Orson Welles, and founder of the acting program at New York’s Julliard School of the Arts. Though he’d played small parts in two earlier films, Houseman balked at making his onscreen starring debut until he succumbed to the persuasive powers of his former UCLA Theater Group colleague Bridges. Though he would insist that he was nowhere near as frosty and fearsome as Professor Kingsfield, Houseman’s former students have affectionately refuted that assertion. For his work in The Paper Chase Houseman earned an Academy Award, opening a whole new world for him as a much-in-demand character actor. His later film roles included a flint-hearted bureaucrat in Three Days of the Condor (1975), a Sidney Greenstreet spoof in The Cheap Detective (1978) and a distinguished citizen with a terrible secret in Ghost Story (1981). Houseman died in 1988 at age 86, defiantly outliving the seemingly indestructible Edward “Bull” Warren by 14 years.

THE WENDEL FAMILY The films: The Eleventh Commandment (M.H. Hoffman/Allied, 1933); Double Door (Paramount, 1934)

Though millionaire families were expected to be a tad eccentric in the late 19th and early 20th century, the Wendel clan of New York’s Fifth Avenue exceeded all expectations, at times entering the realm of “nutty as a fruitcake.” Theirs was a dark and melancholy story, with the mood established by reclusive eldest sibling John Wendel (1835–1914), whose income consisted of collecting rents on the family’s many real estates holdings, some dating back to the Revolutionary era. Even into the first decade of the 1900s the seldom-seen Wendel insisted upon dressing and comporting himself in the manner of 1876, the year of his father’s death—and demanded that his younger sisters do the same. Cloistered with John Wendel in their stately midtown mansion were Rebecca (1842–1930), who became even more withdrawn from the outside world when she went blind; Augusta (1845–1912), adjudged insane by her family and frequently shunted off to asylums; Josephine (1849–1914), childlike and delusional; Georgiana (1850–1929), the defiant “madcap” of the bunch who occasionally could be seen dancing on restaurant tables and capturing alligators in Florida; and Ella (1853– 1931), who after a brief and scandalous love affair transferred all her affection to her dozens of pet dogs. Of the remaining sisters, Henrietta died young and Mary Elizabeth was virtually anonymous. Despite their fabulous wealth—estimated at anywhere between $35 million and $100 million—John Wendel paid his sisters tiny allowances and refused to allow them to replace their increasingly threadbare clothing. He also forbade them to marry for fear of dispersing the family fortune, though that didn’t stop him from conducting numerous clandestine affairs. Only Rebecca gathered up enough courage to take a husband at the tender age of 61, and only Rebecca enjoyed such upper-class privileges as round-the-world vacations. The last surviving sibling Ella Wendel left the entire family fortune to the Methodist church, the YMCA, and a handful of charities. Despite

Wepner the absence of any close relatives, some 2000 people crawled out of the woodwork to contest the will and lay claim to the money, a dilemma that would not be resolved until $1 million was dispersed to 60 different claimants in 1933. As one reporter had observed seven years earlier, “You would have to go back to the works of Dickens to find a tale as curious and fascinating as that of this old mansion and its occupants.” The mansion was razed in 1934, with a lone plaque acknowledging its existence today. Only after all of the Wendels had gone to their reward did Hollywood dare to make a film inspired by their strange story—or at least, the tail end of that story. Released by independent Allied Pictures in 1933, The Eleventh Commandment gets under way when “world’s richest spinster” Annie Bedell dies in the foreboding mansion that has been both home and selfimposed prison all her life. Her $50 million fortune will go directly to her attorney John Ross (William V. Mong) if no living heir can be located. Winters’ scheming junior partner Wayne Winters (Theodore Von Eltz) has secretly arranged with the late Annie to inherit her mansion as a wedding present for his girlfriend, Ross’ daughter Corinne (Marian Marsh). To grab up the rest of the estate, Winters digs up brothel owner Tessie Florin (Marie Prevost) as a prospective claimant to the will; at the same time embezzler Charlie Moore (Arthur Hoyt) shows up in New York, posing as Annie’s deceased nephew Peter. Everyone’s plans are thrown into disarray when Annie’s husband Max Stäger (Alan Hale, Sr.), long presumed dead, suddenly returns from Germany. Theft, deceit, dark secrets revealed, knives thrown with deadly accuracy and a fatal gunshot ensue, and by film’s end we are all too aware that the titular Eleventh Commandment is “Thou Shalt Not Be Caught.” Also in 1933, Elizabeth McFadden’s three-act stage melodrama Double Door opened on Broadway, starring Mary Morris and Anne Revere as wealthy siblings Victoria and Caroline Van Bret, characters blatantly inspired by the last surviving Wendel sisters Rebecca and Ella. Victoria also seems to be channeling John Wendel, exercising a diabolically powerful hold over her neurotic,

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weak-willed younger sister Caroline. In the cellar of the ladies’ huge, crumbling mansion is a secret chamber hidden behind an impenetrable double door, which can only be opened from the outside by a combination known exclusively to Victoria. Keeping Caroline under her thumb with threats of sending her to an asylum—or worse, locking her sister in that tiny chamber as she has done on previous occasions—Victoria also attempts to destroy the marriage between her halfbrother Rip and his new bride Anna. When all other methods fail, Victoria suddenly turns on the charm and offers to give Anna a necklace that belonged to Rip’s mother as wedding present, though secretly she intends to lure the girl into the dreaded subterranean chamber and lock her in for all time. Shall we tell you the ironic fate in store for Victoria, or have you already guessed? Reviewers of the 1934 film version of Double Door, adapted by Gladys Lehman and Jack Cunningham and directed by Charles Vidor, recognized its various-and-sundry references to the Wendel family and their similarly spooky mansion while praising the performances of Mary Morris and Anne Revere, both repeating their stage roles. Evalyn Venable costars as the imperiled heroine, with Kent Taylor as Victoria’s halfbrother. Double Door doesn’t altogether hold up today, if only because its plot devices and horror trappings have been repeated ad infinitum in subsequent “old dark house” melodramas, but the film does provide a suitably macabre coda to the incredible story of the weird Wendels.

WEPNER , CHUCK The films: Rocky (Chartoff-Winkler Productions/United Artists, 1976) [and sequels]

Former Marine Chuck Wepner had trained in the Golden Gloves program before turning professional boxer at age 25 in August 1964. His first bout with Lightning George Cooper was good for the ego but didn’t bring Wepner much in the way of money; Time magazine later referred to him as a “moonlight boxer,” supplementing his ring income with a day job as a liquor salesman. Fighting in the heavyweight class, Wepner had the distinction of being the

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only man to take on George Foreman, Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali. The fact that he lost to all three men cannot detract from this honor, nor his lifetime record of 35 wins (17 by TKO). After losing consecutively to Foreman and Liston in 1970, “The Bayonne Bleeder”—so named by sports reporter Jerry Rosenberg, who went home from one bout speckled with Wepner’s blood—looked like he was through: “I got fucked up pretty bad,” he admitted years later to journalist Robert Ecksel. But instead of retiring, Wepner changed his technique to defensive fighting, and in this mode demanded the opportunity to enter the ring with Muhammad Ali in a bid for the world’s heavyweight title on March 24, 1975. The event was held at Ohio’s Richfield Coliseum, with a guaranteed purse of $1.5 million for Ali and $100,000 for Wepner. In the ninth round, Ali fell when Wepner stepped on his foot, but rose again for an additional six rounds. “We thought he’d get tired,” Wepner said later. “He did get tired, but unfortunately he had enough in his tank and by the thirteenth round I was pretty exhausted myself.” It was in Round 15 that “a punch that ordinarily wouldn’t have bothered me” stopped Wepner in his tracks. Fifteen seconds before the end of the round, Ali was declared the winner by TKO. Nevertheless, Wepner was emboldened by his own durability (acknowledged by no less an authority as Ring magazine) to continue boxing until his final loss in 1978 prompted his retirement at age 39. Though Sylvester Stallone had witnessed the Ali-Wepner match in 1975, he would deny that Chuck Wepner was his principal source for the character of Rocky Balboa in the actor’s Oscarwinning breakthrough film Rocky. But the audience saw things differently when the film opened in New York, chanting Wepner’s name as Rocky duked it out with Muhammad Ali clone Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers). Wepner himself later insisted that he was slated to play a character named Ching Webber in the film, but the part was cut before shooting started. The Balboa-Wepner connection would seem to be verified in the second sequel Rocky III (1983), in which our hero takes on professional wrestler

Hulk Hogan (as “Thunderlips”) and gets thrown out of the ring—a carbon copy of what had happened in 1976 when Wepner confronted Andre the Giant. It wasn’t until 2001, when Stallone used Wepner’s name without compensation to promote the 25th anniversary DVD release of Rocky, that the Bayonne Bleeder took the filmmaker to court, suing for an undisclosed sum. Wepner’s arrest as part of a counterfeit autograph scheme in 2002 somewhat damaged his credibility, but the ensuing publicity led to renewed interest in Wepner’s career, culminating in the ESPN television documentary The Real Rocky in October 2011. A feature-length biopic, The Bleeder, was announced in 2012 with Liev Schreiber as Chuck Wepner, Naomi Watts as his wife Linda and Ron Perlman as his trainercutman Al Braverman. The film debuted under new title Chuck in May 2017.

WHITMAN, CHARLES The film: Targets (Paramount, 1968)

Unceremoniously dumped onto the drive-in circuit when originally released in 1968, Peter Bogdanovich’s maiden directorial effort Targets has since taken its rightful place as a masterpiece in the terror-suspense genre. Twenty-first century film enthusiasts are invariably left drained and breathless by the sheer virtuosity of this inexpensive tale of a boyishly handsome serial killer. They may only be dimly aware that it was based on a true story. If the designation “All American Boy” had not existed in 1966, it would surely have been invented for Charles Joseph Whitman. Born in Florida in 1941, Charles learned how to handle a rifle at an early age to please his ultra-perfectionist father. It was this same concern (or fear) for how his dad perceived him that made the boy a top student in school and a much-decorated Eagle Scout. To escape the pressures at home, Charles enlisted in the Marines on his 18th birthday. Stationed at Guantanamo Bay he entered OCS, continuing his academic studies at the University of Texas. In 1962 he married Kathleen Leisner, then re-entered the Marines in 1963, his low grades dashing his hopes to become an officer. After attending East Carolina

Whitman State College he was honorably discharged from the service and reenrolled at University of Texas as an architectural engineering major, also taking classes at Alvin Junior College and spending his spare time as a scoutmaster. Outwardly Charles Whitman, the the picture of an “Texas Tower” killer. ambitious young man with a fabulous future ahead of him, inwardly he was disturbed enough to make several visits to a college psychiatrist, but stopped going when he decided to handle his problems— which now included the breakup of his parents’ marriage—on his own. On the morning of August 1, 1966, Whitman shot and killed his mother and his wife, leaving behind notes of apology but no explanation. Later that morning he went to a weapon store and purchased a shotgun and several rounds of ammunition, telling the mildly inquisitive clerk that he was going to “shoot some pigs.” Stopping off to pick up his footlocker and enough food to last the rest of the day, he headed to the 28-story University of Texas tower, where he mortally wounded the receptionist, rushed to the tower’s observation deck and shot four people coming up the stairs, killing two of them. For the next three hours Whitman remained atop the tower, randomly shooting anyone he saw on the campus or the surrounding streets. Ten of his victims died and nearly three dozen were seriously wounded before Whitman was himself killed by police officers Ramiro Martinez and Houston McCoy, who later credited several armed civilians with helping take Whitman down. The 17 deaths on that August day joined the roster of other senseless murders during the violent summer of 1966, including the eight student nurses slaughtered by Richard Speck and the killing of Illinois senator Charles Percy’s daughter in her

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own bedroom. Though an autopsy revealed that Charles Whitman suffered a brain tumor that may have exacerbated his mental state, no motive for his killing spree was ever determined. A year had passed since the Texas Tower killings when aspiring filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich was given permission by producer Roger Corman to direct a film of his own, provided he use Boris Karloff for the two days the actor owed Corman on his current contract, and also stock footage from Corman’s 1963 quickie The Terror, which also starred Karloff. The script written by Bogdanovich and his then wife Polly Platt so impressed Karloff that he agreed to go beyond his allotted two days for free to make sure the film was completed. Essentially playing himself in Targets, Boris is cast as aging horrormovie star Byron Orlok, who wants to retire because he feels that his type of film can no longer keep apace with the real-life horrors of the 1960s. Director Bogdanovich doubles as actor in the role of filmmaker Sammy Michaels, who must convince Orlok to make one more picture. In a seemingly unrelated secondary plot, clean-cut Vietnam veteran Bobby Thompson (Tim O’Keefe) spends a pleasant if mildly uncomfortable day with his mousy wife Irene (Tanya Morgan) and his severe father Robert Sr. ( James Brown). The next morning, while Orlok grudgingly prepares for a personal appearance at a local drive-in theater showing The Terror, across town Bobby finishes typing a letter in his room. He then calmly shoots his wife, his mother, and an unfortunate delivery boy. A closeup of the letter reveals that Bobby intends to kill many more people before the police catch up with him. After purchasing the necessary ammunition (insert the “shoot some pigs” line here) he sets about his lethal task, first using a long-range rifle to pick off motorists from a rooftop overlooking the freeway, then setting up a sniper post behind the huge screen of the drive-in where, unbeknownst to him, Orlok will be appearing. Only after dozens of innocent people are killed or wounded does Targets arrive at the inevitable showdown between bewildered “old horror” stalwart Byron Orlok and impersonal “new horror” representative Bobby Thompson.

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Making Targets all the more frightening—and compelling—are the same factors that chill the spine when one reads accounts of real- life “Tower slayer” Charles Whitman. The face of evil is not that of a demon but of an angel; and the reason that so many lives are wasted in so short a time is simply because the perpetrator felt like it.

WILLIAMS, ESTHER American aquatic star, a champion swimmer who became a popular movie attraction with such films as Bathing Beauty and Million Dollar Mermaid. Cole Porter’s 1955 Broadway musical Silk Stockings and its subsequent 1957 movie adaptation poke gentle fun at Esther with the character of Hollywood actress Peggy Dayton, who after years of appearing in films spotlighting her swimming prowess yearns to play dramatic roles. As she grants an interview early in the film version, Peggy (played Janis Paige) continually slaps herself on the side of the head, as if to get all the water out of her ears (she never does). And in the Coen Brothers’ Hail Caesar! (2016), Scarlett Johansson is seen as Hollywood swimming star DeeAnna Moran, who becomes pregnant in the midst of shooting her latest film— just as Esther Williams did during production of 1953’s Dangerous When Wet.

WINCHELL, WALTER The films: Love is a Racket (First National, 1932); Is My Face Red? (RKO-Radio, 1932); Okay America! (Universal 1932); Blessed Event (Warner Bros., 1932); Shoot the Works (Paramount, 1934); Take the Stand (Liberty, 1934); The Broadway Melody of 1936 (MGM, 1935); Risky Business (Universal, 1939); Sweet Smell of Success (NormaCurtleigh Productions/United Artists, 1957)

You couldn’t make up someone like Walter Winchell; he was his own exclusive invention, at one time the most powerful newspaper columnist in America and the man who transformed gossip into both an art form and a weapon. Born Walter Weinschel in 1897, he grew up in New York’s toughest neighborhoods, quit school in the sixth grade to go on the vaudeville stage as a song-and-dance man, entered journalism by contributing backstage chatter to Variety and swiftly worked his way up to Hearst’s New

York Mirror in 1929. Calling in his Broadway connections Winchell hobnobbed with the denizens of “café society,” show business, politics and organized crime. A fearless crusader in his early years of fame, he attacked the “Ratzis” of Hitler’s Germany and the “Chicagorillas” of gangsterdom at a time when many journalists were cowed into silence. His close association with the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover and his nightly tours in police squad cars provided him enough clout to inveigle Louis “Lepke” Buchalter of Murder Inc. to surrender to Winchell personally. But it was his “keyhole-peeping” into the private lives of showbiz celebrities that cemented his fame throughout the nation, especially after he inaugurated his network radio career in 1930. Walter Winchell’s Jergens Journal became as popular with listeners as the variety programs of Fred Allen and Jack Benny, opening with the pulsating sound of a telegraph key and Winchell’s high-pitched salutation “Good evening Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea! Let’s go to press!” Delivering bulletins and gossip bites at a rate of 197 words per minute, Winchell may not have been the best newscaster on the air but he was certainly the most exciting. Within a year of his radio bow listeners and fellow journalists were repeating his celebrated “Winchellisms,” a special form of slang that no less a linguistics expert than H.L. Mencken lauded as enriching the English language. If a famous couple had fallen in love, Winchell announced that they were “that way” or “Garboing it.” If the couple was headed for marriage or had already tied the knot, Winchell reported that they were “middle-aisling it” or “Lohengrinning.” And if the couple was bound for divorce, Winchell duly noted that they were “splitsville,” “phfft!” or “Reno-vated.” The first dramatic piece inspired by Walter Winchell drew its title from a Winchellism referring to childbirth. Opening February 12, 1932, Manuel Seff and Forrest Wilson’s Broadway play Blessed Event starred Roger Pryor as dynamic New York gossip columnist Alvin Roberts, who after building his reputation on inside information about the rich and famous (mostly involving pregnancy and impending births)

Winchell takes aim at high-profile gangsters and a nightclub crooner whom he dislikes—this latter a reference to the good-natured feud between Winchell and bandleader Ben Bernie. Adapted by Howard Green and directed by Roy Del Ruth, Warner Bros.’ film version of Blessed Event stars Lee Tracy in the first of many Winchellesque performances as Al Roberts, with supporting players Allen Jenkins and Isabel Jewell carried over from the Broadway version. This basically sympathetic fictionalization of Winchell depicts Al Roberts as an egotistical glory-grabber willing to step on anyone and everyone to get a scoop and increase his popularity, yet still capable of remorse when he goes too far and ruins the reputation of an unwed mother ( Jewell) who has had an unhappy liaison with a gangster. Though he’s just as self-aggrandizing and bombastic after his epiphany as before, Al’s moral reformation is enough to win him the love of heroine Gladys (Mary Brian). Preceding Blessed Event into America’s movie houses by two days, Universal’s Okay America! was likewise titled after one of Winchell’s familiar catchphrases. Walter himself was to have starred in the film as his fictional counterpart Larry Wayne, but prior commitments got in his way and the role went to a miscast Lew Ayres. Directed by Tay Garnett from a screenplay by William Anthony McGuire, Okay America! is a more barbed portrayal of the seedy gossipcolumn milieu than Blessed Event, caricaturing Wayne as a conscienceless cynic (at least in the early reels) who doesn’t bat an eyelash when publicly attacked for destroying reputations. At the urging of his secretary Sheila Barton (Maureen O’Sullivan), who carries a torch for her boss, Wayne agrees to forsake gossip for genuine journalism by covering the kidnapping of politician’s daughter Ruth Drake (Margaret Lindsay). Wayne redeems himself for past sins by sacrificing his life to rescue Ruth and force her abductors out in the open. Okay America! was remade and given a thorough post–Code defenestration as 1939’s Risky Business, starring George Murphy. While the theatrical version of Blessed Event was still running on Broadway, RKO-Radio beat

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both Warner Bros. and Universal to the faux– Walter Winchell punch with the William Seiter– directed Is My Face Red?, drawing its title from a phrase used by Winchell whenever he was caught in a reporting error. Thus preceding both Lee Tracy and Lew Ayres was Ricardo Cortez, whose characterization of “William Poster” was the most acidulous and unsympathetic of the three. As gossipmonger of the Morning Gazette, Poster garners most of his information from his showgirl sweetheart Peggy Bannon (Helen Twelvetrees). Illustrating the ancient showbiz adage “if you want a friend, buy a dog,” Poster borrows the ring he’d given Peggy and slips it on the finger of heiress Mildred Huntington ( Jill Esmond), announcing that he’s engaged to her—all for the sake of another exclusive story. Even after the inevitable act of contrition when he confesses his misdeeds in print and is shot by gangster Tony Mugatti (Sidney Toler), Poster is no more admirable nor even likeable than when we first meet him. So does that make Ricardo Cortez the first actor to impersonate “Mrs. Winchell’s Little Boy Walter” onscreen? Incredibly, no: That honor goes to, of all people, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., as Jimmy Russell, who pens a daily column called “Up and Down Broadway” in director William Wellman’s Love Is a Racket. Lee Tracy, who was put on this earth to play such parts, is shunted to the thankless supporting role of Jimmy’s legman Stanley Fiske. While Love Is a Racket may have been inspired by Winchell (though this time the title was not Winchell-ese), the film is an otherwise standard romance involving Jimmy Russell’s infatuation with reckless Broadway actress Mary Wodehouse (Frances Dee) Other Winchell stand-ins can be seen in the persons of Jack LaRue as “George Gaylord” in the poverty-row murder melodrama Take the Stand, William Frawley as “Larry Kane” in Paramount’s 1934 Ben Bernie vehicle Shoot the Works (remade five years later as the Bob Hope starrer Some Like It Hot), and (brace yourself!) Jack Benny as Broadway columnist Bert Keeler— who seemingly can’t talk about anything except “blessed events” on his radio program—in Broadway Melody of 1936. Walter Winchell

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himself was a frequent movie drop-in via several short subjects, a voice-over (and “original story” credit) in producer Darryl F. Zanuck’s Broadway Thru a Keyhole (1933), and genial replays of his “feud” with Ben Bernie in a brace of 20th Century–Fox musicals, Wake Up and Live (1936) and Love and Hisses (1937). Though he generally comes off as hard-boiled but warm-hearted in his own film appearances, Winchell had by the late 1930s gained a reputation for reptilian cold-bloodedness, not only in business matters but in personal affairs. He basked in the knowledge that press agents groveled at his feet while he held court at Seat 50 in the Cub Room of New York’s Stork Club, and wielded his power like a scimitar as he merrily lopped off the heads of enemies both powerful and defenseless. Throughout World War II Winchell’s saving grace remained his humanitarianism in the field of civil rights, especially his staunch defense of African Americans and his merciless attacks on anti–Semitic hate groups. After the war, Winchell’s political sentiments took a sharp turn to the right as he became one of the most fervent supporters of the HUAC hearings and Red-baiting senator Joseph McCarthy. Many of Winchell’s former allies now turned on him; enemies who’d once feared his wrath were suddenly willing to attack him in print and on the air; and in a dramatic reversal of fortune he was banned from his beloved Stork Club after an argument with owner Sherman Billingsley. During this period certain unsavory aspects of his private life were exposed, notably his mistreatment of his daughter Walda, whom he had institutionalized in order to break up her romance with two-bit entrepreneur Billy Cahn (who himself fled to Israel to escape Winchell’s persecution). Novelist and screenwriter Ernest Lehman had in the late 1940s worked for Manhattan press agent Irving Hoffman, one of the few men who could tell Walter Winchell to go to hell and still remain the columnist’s friend. In 1950 Lehman wrote a novella published in Cosmopolitan magazine, “Tell Me About It Tomorrow,” chronicling the fractious relationship between powerful gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker and parasitical press

agent Sidney Falco. The crux of the story is Falco’s efforts to get back into Hunsecker’s good graces by sabotaging the love affair between J.J.’s sheltered sister Susan and jazz musician Steve Dallas. Though unlike Walter Winchell J.J. Hunsecker is described as a huge, overweight man who loves to play golf, the inspiration is clear as glass—and who could miss the connection between the J.J.-Susan relationship and the Walterand-Walda-Winchell situation? Convinced that he’d been the model for the scheming Sidney Falco, Hoffman felt betrayed by Lehman, but apparently Winchell was too big and impenetrable to give the novella a thought. It was a different story when “Tell Me About It Tomorrow” was filmed as Sweet Smell of Success in 1957. Winchell’s clout had diminished greatly throughout the decade, he had just lost his long-running radio show, and his muchballyhooed TV variety series—an attempt to beat his hated rival Ed Sullivan at his own game—perished after 13 weeks. It still took a degree of courage to slam Winchell on the big screen in 1957, though not quite as much as it had in 1950. Ernest Lehman himself was only marginally involved with the project, having “ankled it” (to use another Winchellism) because of his opposition to hiring Scottish director Alexander MacKendrick, late of Britain’s Ealing Studios comedy unit, to helm the film. In Lehman’s stead, playwright Clifford Odets used Sweet Smell of Success to settle old scores with Winchell, who had applauded Odets’ persecution by the HUAC. Odets fashioned one of the nastiest and most quotable screenplays ever written: “I’d hate to take a bite out of you— you’re a cookie full of arsenic”; “the cat’s in the bag and the bag’s in the river”; “My right hand hasn’t seen my left hand in 30 years”; and perhaps best of all, “I love this dirty town.” The film’s coproducer Burt Lancaster enjoyed one of his greatest roles as the stingingly sarcastic J.J. Hunsecker, described as having “the morals of a guinea pig and the scruples of a gangster”—but ultimately no worse than the grasping, backstabbing Sidney Falco, brilliantly played by Tony Curtis. For his part, Walter Winchell predicted that Sweet Smell of Success would be a flop, and

Wintour to his immense satisfaction he was right. Movie audiences in 1957 resented the script’s exposé of how mass entertainment is the end product of barters and bribery almost as much as they hated cinematographer James Wong Howe’s relentlessly tawdry glimpses of “glamorous” New York City. Since that time, Sweet Smell of Success has entered the Valhalla of cult classics, an object of adulation even for those who know nothing of Walter Winchell outside of his 4-season gig as narrator of the TV crime series The Untouchables. Winchell was en route to oblivion long before Sweet Smell of Success premiered. TV host Jack Paar would soon make the columnist look like an anachronistic fool by laughing off Winchell’s attacks on his nightly NBC talk show. A few years later Walter lost his flagship when the New York Mirror folded, and by the late 1960s the ageing journalist was pathetically handing out his self-published column to embarrassed friends. When the man who had once owned Broadway died in 1972, no one attended the funeral except his benighted daughter Walda.

WINTOUR , ANNA The film: The Devil Wears Prada (Fox 2000/ Dune Entertainment/Major Studio Partners/ 20th Century–Fox, 2006)

Born in London in 1949, Anna Wintour had been fascinated with the publishing world from childhood—only natural, since her father was editor of the London Evening Standard. A teenager at the height of Carnaby Street’s “Swinging London” era, she became an expert in the everchanging fashion scene, eventually editing two magazines devoted to the trendy subject. After a brief professional stayover in the U.S. she returned to London to take over the British edition of Vogue magazine, totally overhauling the publication’s staid image and transforming it into a leading worldwide arbiter of women’s fashions. As ruthless as she was brilliant, Wintour kept several paces ahead of her competition by raiding the talent pools of rival magazines and especially by riding herd on her beleaguered staff with the merciless drive of a Roman hortator. Her imperious and demanding personality earned her the nickname “Nuclear Wintour”— and that was from her admirers.

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Written by Laura Weisberger, Anna Wintour’s onetime assistant at the American Vogue, the 2003 bestseller The Devil Wears Prada is the story of aspiring young journalist Andrea Sachs, whose first job after graduating from Brown University is as junior assistant for British-born Miranda Priestley, Boadicean chief editor of the fashion magazine Runway. It isn’t long before Andrea’s life is no longer her own as she is forced to be at the constant beck and call of the dictatorial Miranda, whose impossible demands on both her staff and her high-profile clients, not to mention her sudden tantrums and loud public tongue-lashings of those who have the temerity to displease her, force Andrea to rethink her selfpromise to stick it out at Runway for a year to see if she’s got what it takes to survive in the publishing game. Finally turning on her abusive mentor in words of one syllable and four letters, Andrea is fired—but instead of being blacklisted from the industry she is turned into a celebrity by the mercurial Miranda and is set firmly on the road to success. It didn’t require a Geiger counter to detect that The Devil Wears Prada was inspired by the author’s experiences as a subordinate to the estimable Anna Wintour. This was even more obvious in director David Frankel’s 2006 film version, starring Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestley and Anne Hathaway as Andrea Sachs. Though Aline Brosh McKenna’s screenplay does nothing to blunt the edge of Miranda’s stiletto-like words and chopping-block personality, the film gives points to Miranda by showing a method in her madness: If you push your employees to the edge of insanity, you may also goad them into developing their own talent and perseverance. The end of the film states baldly what the novel hints at: Andrea’s ultimate success in a very tough industry is directly the result of input from Miranda, who after firing our heroine recommends her to an important New York publishing firm, telling the powers-that-be that they’d be the “biggest idiots” if they didn’t scoop up Andrea immediately. In an interview with the Manchester Guardian, Meryl Streep said that she “deliberately avoided” imitating Wintour in The Devil Wears

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Prada: “To make her English in any way like Anna Wintour I felt was too restricting. I wanted a free range.” To that end, she made Miranda an American, though otherwise she kept faith with the basic characterization as set down in the novel. “It is a fantasy story. But people like Miranda exist in corporate life. Usually they are men, so we put a dress on them.” Conversely, Emily Blunt, the Londoner cast in the supporting role of Miranda’s much-maligned senior assistant Emily Charlton, altered that character from an American to an English lass. A number of prominent designers refused to lend their copyrighted wardrobe to The Devil Wears Prada, in mortal fear of the Wrath of Wintour. They needn’t have worried. Though she didn’t like the original novel, Wintour told Barbara Walters that she thought the film was “entertaining” and approved the fact that her screen twin Miranda Priestly was “decisive,” adding “Anything that makes fashion entertaining and glamorous and interesting is wonderful for our industry. So I was 100 percent behind it.” And yes, the Devil Known as Anna Wintour wore Prada when she attended the first New York screening of the film, which despite her predictions that it would “tank” at the box office became the surprise hit of the summer of 2006.

WOLFE, THOMAS The film: Youngblood Hawke (Warner Bros., 1964)

Born in Asheville, North Carolina, Thomas Clayton Wolfe was the wunderkind of early 1930s American literature. After graduating from Harvard in 1922 Wolfe aspired to be a playwright, but was unable to sell any of his works because of their extreme length—he was a great admirer of the equally long-winded Balzac and Proust— and settled for the mundane life of a schoolteacher. Returning from a trip to Europe in 1925, he entered into a shipboard romance with Aline Bernstein, 18 years his senior and already married. As scenic designer for the Theatre Guild, Bernstein used her money and influence to promote Wolfe’s writing career, which reached an early peak with the publication of his long, rambling but irrefutably brilliant autobiographical

novel Look Homeward, Angel in 1929. Having personally toted his mammoth 1100-page manuscript from publisher to publisher in New York City, he finally struck gold with Scribner’s Maxwell Perkins, the most talented and perceptive editor of his time. The relationship between Perkins and Wolfe blossomed from editorauthor to surrogate father-surrogate son, which came in handy for Wolfe’s peace of mind when his relatives expressed displeasure over how they’d been fictionalized in the novel. On the negative side, too many critics attributed the success of Look Homeward, Angel and Wolfe’s three subsequent novels (two published posthumously) to the cut-and-slash skills of Perkins, a perception that persists in some circles to this day. While working on his final novel with a new editor, Wolfe developed tuberculosis of the brain, a disease which would kill him in September 1938 three weeks shy of his 38th birthday. Twenty years later, Ketti Frings’ stage adaptation of Look Homeward, Angel won six Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize. Sharing the late Thomas Wolfe’s affection for Balzac was novelist Herman Wouk, author of The Caine Mutiny and Marjorie Morningstar. In the late 1950s Wouk planned to write a roman à clef about Balzac, whom he described as “a talented man, driven by his ambition, his women and his greed,” and a man who burned himself out at a comparatively early age; but eventually Wouk opted for a more contemporary model. Published in 1962, Youngblood Hawke is the story of a young writer from a dirt-poor Kentucky clan who becomes famous overnight with his first novel Alms for Oblivion. Thomas Wolfe was not only the inspiration for Youngblood Hawke but also, by virtue of the example set by Look Homeward, Angel, dictated the “gargantuan” (the author’s own word) 738-page length of Wouk’s tome. Like Wolfe, Hawke arrives in New York armed with a massive, unwieldy manuscript which has to be hammered into a readable length by a sympathetic editor. Unlike Wolfe, who wrote for the love of it, Youngblood’s main motivation is to make a lot of money in a hurry. Hawke’s prolific love life accommodates Frieda Winter, a married socialite along the lines

Wolfit of Aline Bernstein, and lonely female editor Jeanne Greene (Maxwell Perkins in drag) who emerges as the heroine of the piece. Though the protagonist’s Southern heritage was completely foreign to him, Wouk compensated by injecting some of his own experiences into Youngblood Hawke, specifically the portrait of a naïf coming up against the depersonalized machinery of the publishing industry and the crass merchandising of best-sellers. Getting back to the Wolfe correlation, Hawke crashes, burns and dies of pneumonia while still under the age of 40 (in fact, at 33 he isn’t even as hardy as his prototype); but before his early demise, Youngblood manages to win a Pulitzer, which Thomas Wolfe did only by indirection and long after it could do him any good. Author Anthony Burgess has described Youngblood Hawke as “the best book about writers and money since New Grub Street”—no small praise, given that George Gisling’s New Grub Street was published in 1891. Held in rather less esteem is director-screenwriter Delmar Daves’ lush 1964 film version of the Herman Wouk novel, which befitting its source material runs a protracted 137 minutes. Lessening the effectiveness of this adaptation is the casting of lightweight TV favorite James Franciscus as Youngblood Hawke, though he certainly is more age-appropriate than the director’s original choice Burt Lancaster (Warren Beatty, George Peppard and Bobby Darin were also considered). Suzanne Pleshette wins the film’s acting honors hands- down as the lovesick Jeannie Greene, while Geneviève Page brings glamor if not much else to the role of Frieda Winter. And just as the original novel moved the saga of Thomas Wolfe from the 1920s and 30s to the postwar 1940s, the cinematization of Youngblood Hawke is propelled forward even farther into the 1950s and ’60s. It also provides James Franciscus fans with a sort-of happy ending, transferring Hawke’s early death to another character.

WOLFIT, DONALD The film: The Dresser (Goldcrest Films International/World Film Services/Columbia, 1983)

The last of the great British actor-managers,

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Sir Donald Wolfit (1902–1968) was in many respects a living caricature of the sort of Shakespearian ham lampooned by such characters as radio’s Fallstaff Openshaw (played by Alan Reed, Sr.) and cartoon con man Waldo Wigglesworth (voiced by Hans Conried). Undeniably talented, Wolfit tended to be more temperamental than his skills warranted, browbeating underlings and fellow actors alike and insisting upon taking center stage with special lighting when performing soliloquies. His taste in costuming and makeup, designed to attract maximum attention, was usually outlandish, offperiod and tasteless. As for his declamatory style, a story is told of when Wolfit learned that his colleague Robert Helpmann was about to stage a ballet based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Accosting Helpmann, Wolfit snorted “Are you really going to dance Hamlet, Bobby?,” to which Helpmann replied “Why not? After all, Donald, you’ve been singing it for years.” Even his detractors (among them John Gielgud, with whom he feuded for decades) allowed that Wolfit’s interpretation of King Lear was among the finest in the English-speaking theater, though they couldn’t resist citing the time at Stratford that he became so wrapped up in his performance that his false beard fell off. In 1937 he established his own touring company, determined to bring the Bard to the provinces at affordable prices. Hermione Gingold quipped at the time that “Olivier is a tour-de-force, and Wolfit is forced to tour,” while critics had a field day with the cheapness of his productions and the mediocrity of his supporting players. All this changed during World War II, when Wolfit armored himself against all attacks as the only actor-director to perform Shakespeare in England’s outlying districts throughout the war; he also worked steadily on the London stage in bold defiance of the Nazi bombing raids. “Shakespeare represents more than anything else the fighting spirit of our country,” he proclaimed at the outset of hostilities. “Only the best is good enough for people who are starving and enduring as Londoners today.” He continued touring until 1953, at which time his principal leading lady was his third wife, Rosalind Iden. Despite

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his reputation for tyranny, young British theatrical hopefuls continued to work for Wolfit and regard him as their mentor, including actor Peter O’Toole and playwright Harold Pinter. Wolfit’s screen work ranges from the heights of 1962’s Lawrence of Arabia (as General Murray) to the depths of 1954’s Svengali (as guess who). A good director could curb Wolfit’s excesses and coax a subtle performance from him, but most didn’t bother. There’s a lot of Wolfit in Vincent Price’s portrayal of a homicidal ham in Theater of Blood (1973), but a more on-target takeoff of Sir Donald can be found in director Peter Yates’ 1983 film version of Ronald Harwood’s 1980 play The Dresser. Having spent 14 years as Wolfit’s backstage dresser, Harwood was eminently qualified to write this fictionalized version of Sir Donald’s touring days, focusing on a grandiloquent old barnstormer known only as “Sir.” Though the playwright did not go to work for Wolfit until 1953, The Dresser is largely set during the World War II days when the actor was at his peak. Even the most hilarious and outré of the film’s highlights have a ring of authenticity, including Sir’s never-ending battle with theatrical critics (“I have nothing but compassion for them. How can I hate the crippled, the mentally deficient and the dead?”) and his spectacular mental meltdown during a disastrous performance of—what else?—King Lear. Harwood wrote himself into the narrative as “Norman,” who is not only Sir’s dresser but also his consul, confidante and self-appointed protector, the latter responsibility coming into play whenever Sir seeks refuge from his formidable wife “Her Ladyship.” Albert Finney plays Sir the way Donald Wolfit would have played it if he’d had a sense of humor, while Tom Courtenay’s Norman is an effete modernization of The Fool in King Lear, the only character in the Shakespeare play permitted (and in fact encouraged) to tell the self-deluding title monarch the absolute truth. Need we add that the Lear-Fool relationship mirrors the pungent backstage banter between Sir and Norman throughout The Dresser?

WOOLLCOTT, ALEXANDER The films: The Man Who Came to Dinner (War-

ner Bros., 1941); Laura (20th Century–Fox, 1944); House of Horrors (Universal, 1946); The Unsuspected (Michael Curtiz Productions/Warner Bros., 1947)

Just as today’s film buffs might genuinely believe that they know all they have to know about William Randolph Hearst (see separate entry) by watching Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, so too is it easy to assume that Sheridan Whiteside in George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s hit play (and later film) The Man Who Came to Dinner is an accurate reflection of critic-author-raconteur Alexander Woollcott. Come to think of it, that’s not a bad assumption at all. Described by James Thurber as “Old Vitriol and Violets,” Woollcott was born in 1887 and raised in a house that had once been the nerve center of an experimental commune in Phalanx New Jersey. Witty and vituperative, he learned the newspaper game at the New York Times, and during World War I wrote for the military periodical Stars and Stripes alongside such future comrades-in-print as columnist Franklin Pierce Adams and New Yorker magazine founder Harold Ross. In the 1920s Woollcott settled at the New York World as one of America’s most influential and devastating theater critics. Writing in a florid, Dickensian style, he was never less than entertaining, especially when spitting out such crushing reviews as “Number Seven opened last night. It missed by five.” Playing the role of the flamboyant eccentric to the hilt, he promenaded around Broadway in a floppy hat and opera cape, instantly identifiable by his owllike features, toothbrush mustache and paunchy midsection. Never happier than when he was center of attention, he presided over his fellow scribes at the legendary Algonquin Hotel “round table” and on his own private island in Vermont. He also luxuriated in the knowledge that he was a bulging mass of contradictions: Merciless to actors and plays that bored him but overly effusive in praising performers and writers who were personal friends; sadistic in his condemnation of “significant” books and films but enthusiastic to the point of nausea over such modest efforts as James Hilton’s Goodbye Mr. Chips and Disney’s Dumbo; capable of magnificent acts of

Woollcott

Alexander Woollcott.

kindness and largesse offset by malevolent acts of cruelty and stinginess; effeminate in voice and gesture, yet so ferocious in asserting his masculinity that he pulled strings to be allowed into the Army after flunking the physical; an indefatigable advocate of civil rights who enjoyed getting a rise from his Jewish friends by making anti–Semitic remarks; and given to interrupting his highly literate and intellectually stimulating conversations with bursts of annoying baby-talk. Such prominent personalities of the era as Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontaine, Harpo Marx and Eleanor Roosevelt adored him; others like William Faulkner, Bennett Cerf and John Mason Brown despised him. But no one was indifferent to him. The general public was by the mid–1930s as well aware of Woollcott’s personality quirks and circle of celebrity admirers as it was with his popular radio broadcasts as “The Town Crier,” his lucrative lecture tours and his fascination with murder stories, syrupy sentimental yarns, parlor games and puzzles. It thus seemed a “natural” to George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart when in 1939 they bundled all the familiar Woollcott esoterica into the three-act comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner. The playwrights

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had previously promised Woollcott that they’d write something he could act in; though not a professional thespian, Alec had portrayed characters written with him in mind in two S.N. Behrman plays, Brief Moment and Wine of Choice, but these had not been starring roles. Kaufman and Hart concluded that Woollcott would only be able to pull off a leading character if the leading character was Woollcott. Thus was born Sheridan Whiteside, who while on a lecture tour in Ohio breaks his leg on the icy doorstep of über-conservative Mr. and Mrs. Stanley and is forced to remain in their home until he is able to walk again. In no time flat he turns the Stanley household topsy-turvy with his imperious demands, spectacular mood swings and endearing (?) habit of stage-managing other people’s lives. He also holds court over a steady flow of celebrity friends including a Noël Coward type named Beverly Carlton, a Gertrude Lawrence–style actress named Lorraine Sheldon, and a pixieish Harpo Marx clone named Banjo. (Another celebrity knockoff, a wacky Spanish artist based on Salvadore Dali, was cut from the show during tryouts.) Sheridan Whiteside was less a lampoon than a love letter to Woollcott; though the character is bullying, meddlesome, manipulative, obstinate and overbearing, he is also capable of great warmth and generosity. Whiteside may be impossible, but never insufferable. As the play took shape, Kaufman & Hart determined that Woollcott was not an accomplished enough actor to sustain a leading role for two hours. They were spared the necessity of telling this to Alec when he decided on his own that it would be tasteless to exploit his name and reputation in someone else’s play. Eventually the role of Whiteside went to Monty Woolley, a former Yale professor who late in life began playing small film parts. Boasting a full white beard, a resonant British-affected voice and a stocky rather than corpulent physique, Woolley neither looked nor sounded like Woollcott, but his delivery of sarcastic dialogue and mellifluous insults was perfectly in synch with the public’s perception of Old Valentines and Vitriol. With Woolley backed by an expert cast including

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Edith Atwater, Mary Wickes, John Hoyt and David Burns, The Man Who Came to Dinner was a hit from the moment it opened in New York on October 23, 1939. The play ran 739 performances, and would become Kaufman & Hart’s most financially successful work thanks to thousands of later professional and amateur productions—a rare instance in which a fictional piece based on an actual person did not require an intimate knowledge of that person to thoroughly entertain and amuse an audience. Monty Woolley repeated his performance as Whiteside in the 1941 film version of The Man Who Came to Dinner, directed by William Keighley and adapted for the screen by the Epstein Brothers. Though the play underwent some trimming to accommodate the expansion of the roles played by top-billed Bette Davis and Anne Sheridan, little harm was done to the piece. The first-rate supporting cast includes Jimmy Durante as Banjo, Reginald Gardiner as Beverly Carlton, and dear Mary Wickes in her stage role as Whiteside’s long-suffering nurse Miss Preen. The real Alexander Woollcott was happy as a clam with both the stage and film versions, and especially touched when a few of his friends rushed to his defense after witnessing what they perceived to be a hurtful slam against him. Woollcott would eventually play Whiteside on stage himself, though never on Broadway, in the years before his death in 1943. Though Man Who Came to Dinner has come to be accepted as the definitive Alexander Woollcott representation, he also appeared as a fictional character in other works, beginning with the acidulous portrayal of “Thaddeus Hulbert” in Charles Brackett’s 1934 novel Entirely Surrounded. Two years later Frank Capra featured a takeoff of the Algonquin Round Table in his film Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, with amateur poet Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) held up for ridicule by a group of hoity-toity New York intellectuals. The scene is vague enough so that we don’t know if one of Deeds’ tormentors is supposed to be Woollcott, or if Alec is represented by the cheerfully besotted poet (Walter Catlett) who invites Deeds to go off on a toot. The caricature is more blatant in Vera Cas-

pary’s detective novel Laura (1942), which is narrated in part by waspish columnist/radio personality Waldo Lydecker. In the novel, Lydecker is both obese and a student of murder mysteries. He also exhibits a bit of Woollcott’s famous petulance when, unable to purchase a valuable antique because another person has beaten him to it, he smashes the artifact to bits, declaring that if he can’t have it no one can. This vignette is not included in Otto Preminger’s 1944 film version of Laura, though originally the studio had planned to stress the Woollcott resemblance by casting portly Laird Cregar as Lydecker; Preminger chose instead to cast pencil-thin Clifton Webb. Perhaps screenwriters Dwight Babcock and George Bricker had both Lydecker and Webb in mind when they dreamed up their Woollcott replicate, vicious art critic F. Holmes Harmon (played by the gaunt Alan Napier), in the 1946 B-grade thriller House of Horrors. By 1947 the movies’ perception of Alexander Woollcott had shifted from the brusque-butloveable Sheridan Whiteside to the lip-curling nastiness exhibited in Laura and House of Horrors. Adapted by Bess Meredyth from a novel by Charlotte Armstrong and directed by Michael Curtiz, The Unsuspected stars Claude Rains as Victor Grandison, the suavely arrogant host of a radio mystery anthology. Like Woollcott before him, Grandison signs on by speaking his last name only, unfolding his narratives in a lugubriously loquacious manner while backed up by a studio orchestra, a la The Town Crier. It is giving nothing away to reveal that Victor Grandison is himself a murderer, though considering that both The Unfaithful and Man Who Came to Dinner were released by Warner Bros. it is morbidly amusing when Grandison deploys the Sheridan Whiteside technique of slyly manipulating others to do his bidding, tricking one intended victim into blithely writing her own “suicide” note. We’d like to think that both Woollcott and Whiteside would have gotten a kick out of The Unsuspected’s finale, where elegant-to-the-last Victor Grandison takes it upon himself to confess his crimes while on the air.

Yates

WRIGHT, FRANK LLOYD The common assumption that innovational American architect Frank Lloyd Wright was the sole inspiration for the character of the supremely arrogant and individualistic Howard Roarke in Ayn Rand’s 1943 novel The Fountainhead was partly fueled by Rand herself, at least early on. “I am writing about a thing impossible these days,” Rand wrote to Wright while the novel was in progress. “You are the only man in whom it is possible and real.” But in fact Rand had intended her protagonist to represent “the sanctity of the highest type of man possible” before she’d even thought of Wright or asked to interview him (which he either declined, or Rand didn’t show up herself ). True, the architectural designs in the 1949 film version of The Fountainhead starring Gary Cooper as Roarke are in the same modernistic, organic style as Wright’s, but are also broad exaggerations of his technique which he himself dismissed as “grossly abusive caricatures.” Additionally, despite his own arrogance Wright was more diplomatic in dealing with clients than the brusque, dismissive Howard Roarke—and he also loved money über alles, which Roarke clearly doesn’t. Moreover, Frank Lloyd Wright habitually espoused left-wing political views, which we need hardly add were not shared by Ayn Rand. But while she eventually admitted to Wright that Howard Roarke was not him, “his spirit is yours—I think.”

YATES, ANDREA The film: The Cradle Will Fall [Baby Blues] (Neverending Light Productions/Lab 601/RedPill Productions/Sweat Shop Films/Symposium Productions/Allumination Filmworks, 2008)

Postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis are not interchangeable terms, nor does one illness invariably lead to the other. But both terms have been used indiscriminately when describing the unspeakable crimes committed by Texas housewife Andrea Kennedy Yates. Her first psychiatrist had advised Mrs. Yates not to have any more children after the birth of her fourth child and her subsequent nervous breakdown in 1999, but a fifth pregnancy soon followed. Against the instructions of another psychiatrist, her husband Rusty left Andrea alone

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with the kids on the morning of June 20, 2001. Rusty had gone to work assuming that his mother would soon arrive at his home to lend Andrea a helping hand. But the gap between her husband’s departure and her mother-in-law’s arrival was all the time Andrea needed to drown all five children in the bathtub. The three youngest boys were killed first, then her daughter Mary, and finally oldest son Noah after a futile effort to escape. When her husband phoned to see if all was well at home, all Andrea said was “It’s time,” over and over. In March 2002 a jury rejected Mrs. Yates’ insanity defense and found her guilty of premeditated murder. The conviction was reversed in 2005 when the testimony of a prosecution witness that Andrea had been inspired to kill by a similarly themed episode of TV’s Law and Order proved to be rife with discrepancies. Released on bail in 2006, Mrs. Yates finally got her “not guilty by reason of insanity” verdict and was committed to a mental hospital. She will be eligible for release in 2047. A popular nickname for postpartum depression is “baby blues,” explaining the alternate title for the 2008 melodrama The Cradle Will Fall, which after a few tentative theatrical engagements went straight to DVD. “The following is based on actual events” reads the introductory title, whereupon we are introduced to Colleen Porch as a woman known only as Mom. Though in the tradition of Andrea Yates the poor woman suffers a breakdown after the birth of her last child, neither psychology nor empathy enter into The Cradle Will Fall, which is played purely for shock and sadism. Left alone too often on her remote farm while her self-absorbed husband is out of town, it doesn’t take Mom long to go off her chump and inaugurate her filicide spree. The first death appears to be accidental, but then the older boys all bear witness as Mom attempts to drown their sister. Confusion and disillusionment give way to sheer unadulterated terror, and before long only oldest son Jimmy (Ridge Canipe) is left alive. The climax of the film is regulation cat-and-mouse scare stuff, with the terrified Jimmy trying to make himself scarce as Mom taunts him with such movie-serial-killer clichés as “here piggy piggy piggy” and “playtime’s

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over.” The children of Andrea Yates deserve a far better memorial than this grotesque slasher flick, filmed in Georgia by the one-time-only directorial team of Lars Jacobson and Amardeep Kaleka.

YOUSSOUPOV, PRINCE FELIX—AND PRINCESS IRINA YOUSSOUPOVA

The film: Rasputin and the Empress (MGM, 1932)

Through a quirk of the alphabet, the legal case that in many ways made this volume of à clef films possible appears here near the tail end of the book. Is it my fault that the key player’s name begins with “You”? (I don’t even want to mess with the Cyrillic-alphabet equivalent ëҗ). Producer Irving Thalberg planned the sweeping MGM historical epic Rasputin and the Empress as the first-ever screen teaming of all three leading members of the Barrymore acting family. Set in the years surrounding the 1917 Russian Revolution, the film stars Ethel Barrymore as Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, John Barrymore as fictional Russian prince Chegodieff, and Lionel Barrymore as the sinister monk Grigori Rasputin. The supporting cast is headed by Diana Wynyard in her screen debut as Chegodieff ’s equally fictional wife Natasha, Ralph Morgan as Alexandra’s husband Czar Nicholas II, and Tad Alexander as Nicholas and Alexandra’s hemophiliac son, Czarevitch Alexei. Making her first screen appearance since 1919, Ethel Barrymore agreed to star in Rasputin on condition that she complete her role quickly to fulfill a stage commitment. Though she hoped to be billed first, Ethel was forced to acquiesce to brother John, then in his romantic-lead period with such hits as Arsene Lupin and Grand Hotel. And though Rasputin dominates the film, MGM contractee Lionel Barrymore had to be

content with third billing. The opening credits list the names “John-Ethel-Lionel” at the top and “BARRYMORE” just below, in the manner of the three Marx Brothers. At times the filming was as chaotic as a Marx picture, with Ethel channeling Empress Alexandra (whom she had met in her youth) by making imperious demands upon the cast and crew, and John and Lionel shamelessly upstaging each other in their scenes together. Adding to the production woes was Ethel’s dislike of initial director Charles Brabin, leading to his replacement by Richard Boleslavsky; and the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey screenplay by Charles MacArthur, who wrote the script on the fly and didn’t finish until just before the picture wrapped. Thalberg had initially engaged poet-novelist Mercedes de Acosta to write Rasputin and the

After Rasputin, the deluge…

Youssoupov Empress. De Acosta was a longtime friend of exiled Russian prince Felix Youssoupov and his wife Princess Irina, daughter of the Czar’s uncle Grand Duke Alexander Michaelovich. The Oxford-educated Youssoupov had by his own admission masterminded the December 30, 1916, assassination of the politically dangerous Rasputin, who had insinuated himself into the royal court after using “mystical” powers to save the young Czaravetich from an early death (he never truly stopped the boy’s hereditary bleeding, but used hypnosis to lessen the pain). Incredible though it seems, the film’s “money scene” is fundamentally factual, as Rasputin survives being poisoned, shot and beaten before a second bullet and a tumble into the Malaya Revka river finishes him off. “Rasputin is dead! Russia is saved! I’ve killed him! To our house is the honor!” Youssoupov allegedly proclaimed when the deed was done, differentiating himself and his conspirators from the usual “vulgar assassins” by the nobility of their act. After the Revolution the Youssoupovs fled Russia with as many family treasures and paintings as they could gather up. Arriving in Paris in 1920, the couple sold the paintings for ready cash, doing same with their jewels when they finally settled in England. Their posh London home became a gathering place for other deposed Russian aristocrats, with the Prince supporting his lifestyle by writing articles under the pen name Irfe. He also signed a Hollywood movie contract, but never appeared in any films. A genial publicity hound, Youssoupov kept his name in the papers for years with such stunts as his “sighting” of Rasputin’s ghost in 1927. Though the characters were officially composites, Rasputin and the Empress’ Prince Chegodieff and Princess Natasha were clearly inspired by the Youssoupovs. Ethel Barrymore warned Irving Thalberg that the couple was still alive and might not cotton to being melodramatized onscreen, but the producer ignored her. When Mercedes de Acosta objected to writing a scene which implied that Princess Irina and Rasputin were intimate, she was fired and replaced by Charles MacArthur, who dutifully put the scene back in the script.

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Prince Youssoupov was no stranger to courtrooms in 1932. Five years earlier, Rasputin’s daughter Marie took him to court for murdering her father, but evidently the statute of limitations had expired. When Rasputin and the Empress was previewed in Los Angeles, it was Youssoupov himself who filed suit against MGM, at first only because the film hadn’t given him sufficient credit for Rasputin’s death; at the same time, a man named Chegodieff also sued because he didn’t want to be associated with the killing. The Chegodieff litigation went nowhere but Youssoupov persisted, now insisting that his objection to the film had nothing to do with himself but with the depiction of his wife, Irina. As originally written and filmed, there was no doubt that the lecherous Rasputin first mesmerizes and then rapes poor Nastasha Chegodieff. MGM couldn’t wriggle out of that one except by completely removing the offending scene and making several obvious and ragged cuts elsewhere. In the final release print, Natasha is supportive of Rasputin in the early reels, then abruptly and with no explanation has a change of heart, reacting in wide-eyed horror whenever the Mad Monk is mentioned in her presence. After each gasp, shudder and near-swoon, Natasha seems poised to explain why she is so terrified by Rasputin—but invariably stops before uttering a single word. During one such moment, Prince Chegodieff thunders “I have a right to know!” and by that time the audience shares his exasperation. MGM’s post-preview trimming hardly mollified the Youssoupovs: By not clarifying what had happened to Natasha at the hands of Rasputin, the film allowed audiences to assume the absolute worst. Prince Youssoupov’s lawsuit began gathering steam, the first major case of its kind in Hollywood. Simultaneously, the couple sued MGM’s London office to block showings of the film in England. While Rasputin was banned in the United Kingdom and the Youssoupovs settled there for $127,373, the Hollywood suit against MGM—and by extension every theater that had exhibited the film—dragged on for years. MGM attorney William Jowett did his best to counter the Prince and Princess’ accusations:

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Zarem

“I submit that there is nothing in this film which paints Natasha as anything other than a pure, trusting loyal and devoted woman” (“Who just happens to be jumpy as a jackrabbit for no discernable reason,” he didn’t add). When all was said and done, the studio reportedly shelled out $1.1 million to the aggrieved aristocrats, though the couple’s lawyer Fanny Holtzman would later declare “The settlement was a lot more than they’ll admit at MGM.” A dud at the box office, Rasputin and the Empress disappeared from view until its TV premiere in 1956, at which time the film underwent even more cuts to protect the studio from further headaches. Prince Youssoupov died aged 80 in 1967, just after serving as technical adviser for Robert Hossein’s film I Killed Rasputin; Princess Irina followed her husband in death three years later. The couple had been subjected to one more burst of adverse publicity back in 1965 when the prince filed a $1.5 million suit against CBS for a TV dramatization of Rasputin’s murder in the 1962 drama If I Should Die. Much of his complaint revolved around the inaccuracies in the assassination scene, with an additional snipe against the script’s suggestion that Irina was also involved in the plot. The suit was settled out of court, but not before Youssoupov collapsed on the witness stand. This particular event has long since been forgotten, but the legacy of Prince Youssoupov’s case against MGM and Rasputin and the Empress will live on each and every time an American motion picture begins (or ends) with the disclaimer “Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.”

Z AREM, BOBBY The film: People I Know (Myriad Pictures/ Wildwood Enterprises/Galena/GreenStreet Films/Chal Productions/In-Motion AG Movie & TV Productions/WMF V/Miramax, 2003)

If anyone ever doubted that peripatetic celebrity press agent Bobby Zarem was the creator of the classic tourism campaign “I Love New York,” Bobby himself would gladly confirm the fact. With boundless energy and profanity, the Georgia-born Zarem merrily pulled strings and kissed butts to promote such film and the-

atrical entertainments as Tommy, Saturday Night Fever and Dances with Wolves and to keep the names of luminaries like Dustin Hoffman, Cher and Sylvester Stallone in constant circulation. As much diplomat as publicist, he often as not managed to patch things up personally if not professionally with those clients who’d dropped him after the inevitable squabbles and ego clashes. His volatile temper was legendary—he is said to have thrown a typewriter at one of his underlings because she screwed up a phone message—and he was seldom above such ethically suspect actions as swiping studio publicity photographs in order to promote projects that only he had any faith in. But Bobby Zarem never worried about getting into Heaven as long as he could get his people into print. Eli Wurman, the neurotically ruthless PR flack played by Al Pacino in director Daniel Algrant and screenwriter Jon Robin Baitz’s 2003 crime drama People I Know, could be described as a doped-up and washed-up Bobby Zarem, minus the raffish charm. Pacino even manages to pull off Zarem’s oddball New York–Georgia accent, which some critics panned as unwieldy and unbelievable. One who didn’t share that opinion was Roger Ebert, who commented that Pacino “has listened to [Zarem] so closely that if you know Zarem and you close your eyes, it sounds like Bobby’s voice from the screen.” Covering two days in Wurman’s hectic life, the film provides the character a wide berth to display his feverish brilliance at calling in favors and tuchus-smooching amongst the rich and well-connected in order to publicize a major political benefit. Juggling several crises at once, Wurman must also cover up a potentially careerdestroying scandal involving Warren Beatty–like actor Cary Launer (Ryan O’Neal) and TV personality Jilli Hopper (Tea Leoni), the latter luring Wurman into a secret Wall Street club where deals of worldwide importance are brokered with the impetus of expensive drugs and kinky sex. Among the club’s patrons are many of the same VIPs whom Wurman hopes will help promote the upcoming benefit. But while collaring these celebrities is merely business as usual for the press agent, the celebs are convinced that he

Ziegfeld plans to blackmail them, thus placing our hero’s life in jeopardy—a fact that hits home when Jilli is killed in the presence of a barely conscious Wurman. So sordid is the depiction of New York’s political elite in People I Know that the film, completed in 2001, was shelved for nearly two years so as not to reflect negatively on the Big Apple in the wake of 9/11. Bobby Zarem publicly denied any resemblance between himself and Eli Wurman in People I Know. But you’ll notice that in doing so, Bobby got both his name and Al Pacino’s back in the newspapers.

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ZIEGFELD, FLORENZ, JR . Legendary American theatrical impresario who launched the girl-filled annual Ziegfeld Follies revue beginning in 1907, and also produced such musical-comedy hits as Rio Rita and Show Boat. When Ziegfeld lookalike Eddie Kane appeared as Francis Zanfield in the Oscar-winning 1929 movie musical The Broadway Melody, the 40-year-old actor effectively typecast himself in “Big Broadway Producer” roles for the rest of his film career—when he wasn’t playing headwaiters, that is.

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Newspapers and Periodicals The Age [Melbourne, Australia] Athens [GA] Banner-Herald Baltimore Sun Beaver County [PA] Times Boston Globe Buffalo Courier-Express Charlotte Gazette Chicago Sun-Times Chicago Tribune Christian Science Monitor Columbus [OH] Dispatch Commentary Denver Post Deseret News [Salt Lake City, UT] Ebony Entertainment Weekly Esquire

Bibliography Essence Exhibitors Daily Review Film Pictorial Films in Review (formerly National Board of Review) Forbes Harrison’s Reports Hartford [CT] Courant Harvard Crimson Hollywood Reporter Houston Chronicle Houston Press The Independent [U.K.] Independent Exhibitor’s Film Bulletin Journal of the American Revolution Jump Cut Las Vegas Sun Lewiston [PA] Journal Life Magazine London Daily Express London Daily Mail London Daily Mirror London Telegraph Los Angeles Times Manchester [UK] Guardian Maxim Miami News Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (separate newspapers before 1995) Modern Screen Montreal Gazette Motion Picture Daily Motion Picture Herald Motion Picture News National Review New Movie Magazine New Orleans Times-Picayune New York Magazine New York Sun New York Times The New Yorker Newsday Newsweek The Onion AV Club People Magazine Philadelphia Inquirer Photoplay Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (previously the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times) Pittsburgh Press Radio Times Reading [PA] Eagle St. Petersburg Independent St. Petersburg Times San Francisco Chronicle Sarasota Herald Tribune Schenectady Gazette Schenectady News Screenland Seattle Times Smithsonian magazine

379

Southeast Missourian [Cape Girardeau, MO] Spartanburg [SC] Herald-Journal Sydney Morning Herald Time Magazine Toledo Blade TV Guide USA Today Vanity Fair The Village Voice Washington Post Wilmington [NC] Morning Star World Film and Television Progress magazine

Websites and Blogs Media-Related (including online periodicals) A&E, www.aetv.com. ABC, www.abc.go.com. BBC, www.bbc.com. CNN, www.cnn.com. The Daily Beast, www.thedailybeast.com. Dateline-NBC News, www.nbcnews.com/dateline. ESPN, www.espn.go.com. 48 Hours-CBS News, www.cbsnews.com/48-hours. History.com, www.history.com. Huffington Post, www.huffingtonpost.com. MSNBC.com, www.msnbc.com. MTV, www.mtv.com. NPR, www.npr.org. PBS, www.pbs.org. Slate Magazine, www.slate.com. truTV, www.trutv.com. Whudat, www.whudat.com.

Historical Sources American Hauntings, www.americanhauntings.net. Dead Men Tell No Tales, sarahchristoffersen.blogspot. com. Diabolical Confusions, diabolicalconfusions.word press.com. Ephemeral New York, ephemeralnewyork.wordpress. com. History vs. Hollywood, www.historyvshollywood.com. Horror Film Central, horrorfilmcentral.com. The Irish in Film, www.irishfilm.net. Listverse, www.listverse.com. Murderpedia, murderpedia.org. Tennessee Historical Society, www.tennesseehistory. org. Texas State Historical Association, tshaonline.org. A Trip Down Memory Lane, greatestentertainersar chives.blogspot.com. Turner Classic Movies, www.tcm.com. U.S. Department of Justice, justice.gov. U.S. Senate Virtual Reference Desk, www.senata.gov/ reference/virtual.htm. Unsolved Mysteries, www.unsolved.com. William K. Everson Collection, www.nyu.edu/proj ects/wke/.

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INDEX Numbers in bold italics indicate pages with illustrations Abbatemarco, Frankie “Shots” 174 Abbott, George 288 Abel, Walter 137, 142 Abraham, F. Murray 324 Absolute Quiet 47 Accident on Hill Road 70 The Accused 28 Ace, Goodman 63 Ace in the Hole [The Big Carnival] 112 Acosta, Oscar “Zeta” 7–9 Ada 133 Ada Dallas 132–133, 134 Adams, Alvena 133 Adams, Amy 20 Adams, Franklin Pierce 366 Adams, Nick 139 Adams, Col. Sam 117 Adams-Young, Natasha 9, 10 Adjani, Isabelle 167 Adler, Luther 251 Adrian, Iris 24 The Adventurers (novel and film) 229, 328 Advise and Consent: novel and film 44–46, 288, 300; play 44, 45, 46 Afraid to Talk 325 African Bush Adventure see Killers of Kilimanjaro The African Queen 227 After Many a Swallow 208 Agee, James 228, 313 Aherne, Ryan 169 The Air Race 150 Airport 144 Ajar, Jonathan “Johnny Dangerous” 11, 12 Al Capone 97 Albert, Edward 247 Albertson, Jack 67 Albright, Hardie 249 Alcazar, Damien 115 Alda, Robert 242 Alden, Mary 341 Alden, Richard 173 Aldrich, Robert 222 Alex & Emma 144 Alexander, Jane 234 Alexander, Tad 370 Alexander’s Ragtime Band 34 Alexei, Czarevitch 370, 371

Algonquin “Round Table” 366, 368 Ali, Muhammad 358 All About Eve 62–64 All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) 96 All Good Things 149 All That Jazz 60 All the King’s Men (novel and film versions) 270 Allen, Charles 13 Allen, Eugene 12–14 Allen, Fred 217, 289, 290 Allen, Helene 13, 14 Allen, Karen 73 Allen, Penelope 36 Allen, Robert 114 Allen, Woody 164–165, 265 Allgood, Sara 24 Allhoff, Fred 137 Allied Artists 156 Allied Pictures 357 Allmon, Clint 166 Alo, Vincent 14, 16, 20 Alpert, Don 195 Alpha Dog 10 Alt, Father Ernest 291 Altman, Robert 48 Alvarado, William 116–117 Alvarez, Enrique 17–19 Alvarez-Belón, Lucas 18 Alvarez-Belón, Simon 18 Alvarez-Belón, Tomas 18 Ameche, Don 302 America Kneels see The World Changes American Broadcasting Company (ABC) 38 An American Carol 293 American Dreamz 94 American Friendly Society 312 American Hustle 16, 19–21 American Idol 94 The American Sportsman 295 American Tobacco Company 211, 212 An American Tragedy: film 81–82; novel 80–81; play 81; see also A Place in the Sun American Violet 243 The American Weekly 224 Ames, Courtney 11, 12

381

Ames, James Barr 355 Ames, Leon 191 Amoroso, Anthony, Jr. 19, 20 Anastasia, Albert 174 Anchorage Dispatch 144 Anders, Allison 189 Anderson, Edward 47 Anderson, Jack 20 Anderson, Judith 178, 201 Anderson, Maxwell 120–121 Anderson, Paul Thomas 220, 285, 311 Andre 188–189 Andre the Giant 358 Andrews, Ann 53 Andrews, Dana 124, 127, 209 Andrews, Edward 46 Andrews, James J. 2 Angel, Heather 202 Angel Face see The Face of an Angel Angels with Dirty Faces 333 Angleton, James Jesus 21, 143, 311 Animal Crackers (musical play and film) 239, 240 Aniston, Jennifer 306 Annan, Albert 22 Annan, Beulah 22, 23, 25 Annie 228 Anthony, Stuart 153 Apana, Chang 25–27 Aponte, Mike 273 Apple Daily 89 Aprea, John 16 April Showers 242 Araujo, Cheryl A. 27–28 Arbó, Manuel Arbuckle, Roscoe “Fatty” 28, 241, 302 Archer-Shee, George 28–29, 29, 30, 31 Archer-Shee, Martin (elder) 29, 29 Archer-Shee, Martin (younger) 29 Arlington, Andrew 11, 12 Armour, J. Ogden 230–231 Armour, Philip Danfourth 31–32, 230 Armstrong, Charlotte 368 Armstrong, Louis 58 Armstrong, Robert 276 Arnall, Ellis 90, 92

382

Index

Arnold, Edward 212, 282 Arnold, Frank 74 Arnold, Jack 286 Arnstein, Nicky 33–35, 160 Aron, Ernest [Elizabeth “Liz” Eden] 35, 36, 37 Arrowhead 333 Arthur, Chester A. 344 Arthur, Jean 139, 276, 325 Asbury, Herbert 311 Ashley, Elizabeth 226 Asner, Ed 322 Asquith, Anthony 30 An Assassin’s Diary see Bremer, Arthur Astaire, Adele 37 Astaire, Fred 37, 39, 294 Asther, Nils 250, 336 Astin, Sean 115 Astor, John Jacob 194 Astor, Mary 33 At Close Range 235 Atherton, William 314 Atienza, Belen 18 Atlanta Constitution 170 Atlanta Journal 170 Attenborough, Richard 65 Atwater, Edith 368 Atwill, Lionel 47 Aubrey, James T. 37–39 Aubrey, Skye 38, 39 Avedon, Richard 39 Avery, Tex 4 Awakenings (book and film) 329 Ayres, Lew 45, 361 Aznavour, Charles 328 Babbitt 341 Babcock, Dwight 368 Baby Blues see The Cradle Will Fall Bacall, Lauren 58, 219 Bachcan, Amitabh 324 Back, Terence 29 Bacon, Lloyd 191 The Bad and the Beautiful 49–51 Badel, Alan 328 Badge 373 155 Badham, John 184 Badlands 173–174 Baer, Max 99, 100 Baer, Robert 39, 40 Baglio, Matt 40, 41–42 Bailey, Charles W. 351 Baitz, Jon Robin 372 Baker, C. Graham 42, 47, 163 Baker, Carroll 226 Baker, Dorothy 59 Baker, Richard 35, 36 Bakewell, Baroness Joan 42 Bakewell, Michael 42 Bakshi, Ralph 9 Balaban, Bob 350 Baldwin, Alec 21 Baldwin, Earl 160 Bale, Christian 20 Ball, Lucille 69 Ball, Shirley 35, 36 “The Ballad of the Urban Cowboy” 209, 210; see also Urban Cowboy Baltimore Sun 86, 132, 331

Balzac, Honoré de 364 Bancroft, Carolyn 83 Bancroft, George 106, 333 Banderas, Antonio 296 The Bank Job 333–334 Bankhead, Tallulah 62–63, 64 Banks, Jonathan 71 “The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat” see Where the Buffalo Roam Baranski, Christine 25 The Barefoot Contessa 227 Barker, Arizona Donie “Ma” 42, 42, 43–44 Barker, Arthur “Doc” 42, 43 Barker, Fred 42, 43, 44 Barker, George 42, 43 Barker, Herman 42 Barker, Lex 119 Barker, Lloyd 42, 43 Barkin, Ellen 322 Barkley, Alben 44, 44, 45 Barlip, Donald 84 Barlip, Ronald 84 Barnes, Ben 193 Barnes, Binnie 153 Barnes, Howard McKent 194 Barnes, Margaret Ayer 335, 366 Barrat, Robert 231 Barratta, Dana 187 Barrett, Robert 35, 36, 37 Barrie, Elaine 3, 53 Barrie, James M. 148 Barring, Nora 148 Barron, Bessie 276, 277 Barrow, Clyde 46–49 Barry, Julian 68 Barry, Philip 271 Barrymore, Diana 49, 50–51 Barrymore, Ethel 51, 53, 370, 370, 371 Barrymore, John 3–4, 50, 51, 53–54, 97, 138, 160, 202, 269, 370, 370 Barrymore, John, Jr. 209 Barrymore, Lionel 52, 164, 319, 370, 370 Bart, Peter 38 Barthelmess, Richard 192, 261 Bartlett, Marion 172 Bartlett, Sy 142 Barwood, Hal 184 Basehart, Richard 354 Basher Five-Two see O’Grady, Scott Bass, Robert 308 Bates, Alan 167 Bates, Florence 178 Bates, Kathy 83 Batista, Fulgencio 255 Battelle, Phyllis 229 Baxter, Anne 62 Baxter, Warner 26, 246, 295, 296 Bayona, Juan Antonio 19 Bazna, Elyesa 54, 54, 55 Beach, Rex 181, 182 Bean, Henry 93–94 Beast of the City 152 Beatty, Warren 46 Beau James 352 Beban, George 17 Beck, Albert 55 Beck, Dave 156

Beck, Jackson 165 Beck, Marilyn 247 Beck, Martha Jule 55–57 Beckinsale, Kate 245 Bee, Busy 159 Beebe, Marjorie 302 Beecham, Sir Thomas 57 Beery, Wallace 97, 98, 260 Begley, Ed, Sr. 46, 127 Beharie, Nicole 243 Behind Enemy Lines 304 Behind Enemy Lines: The Scott O’Grady Story 303 Behind That Curtain 26–27 Behrman, S.N. 353, 367 Beiderbecke, Bix 57, 57, 58 Bel Geddes, Barbara 226, 355 The Believer 93–94 Bell, Dr. Joseph 25–26 Bell, Monta 183 Bell, Rex 78 Bellamy, Ralph 43, 97, 260 The Bellamy Trial 183 Belloc Lowndes, Mrs. 336 Belmondo, Jean-Paul 339 Belón, Maria 17–19 Benchley, Peter 295 Benedict, Richard 112 Bening, Annette 347 Benítez, Fr. Sergio Gutiérrez [Fray Tormenta] 59–60 Benjamin, Laura R. 247 Bennet, Seymour 74 Bennett, Charles 124, 125 Bennett, Dorothea 311 Bennett, Joan 74 Bennett, Michael 60 Bennett, Sai 245 Benny, Jack 361 Bentley, Irene 153 Berenger, Tom 314 Berenson, Marisa 228 Berg, Alan 60–62 Berg, Gertrude 266 Berg, Judith 61 Bergen, Candice 229, 328 Bergen, Edgar 225 Berger, Helmut 193 Bergner, Elisabeth 62, 63, 63, 64 Bergsland, Per 64, 66 Berle, Milton 67–69, 292 Berlin, Irving 4, 34, 287, 288 Berman, Edward L. 210 Berman, Susan 149 Berman, Zev 114, 115 Berndoff, Hans Rudolph 330 Bernie, Ben 361, 362 Bernsen, Corbin 318 Bernstein, Aline 364, 365 Bernstein, Matthew 122, 208 Bernstein, Walter 265, 287, 349 Berry, John 69 The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas: film 166–167; musical play 166 The Best Man (play and film) 301 Best Seller 353 Betrayal (play and film) 42 The Betsy (novel and film) 168, 255 Betz, Carl 153 Betz, Matthew 97

Index Beuttler, Fred W. 128 Bieri, Ramon 174 Bifulco [Wojtowicz], Carmen 35, 36, 37 The Big Carnival see Ace in the Hole The Big Clock (novel and film) 271– 272 The Big Knife 222 The Big Lebowski 145–147 The Big Show 62–63 Bigelow, Kathryn 70 Biggers, Earl Derr 26, 27 Biggs, Gregory 69 Bikowsky, Alfreda Frances [“Jen”] 70, 71 Bill 308 Billingsley, Sherman 362 Bilton, Michael 311 Bin Laden, Osama 70 Bingham, Hiram III 71–72, 72, 73 The Bingo Long Travelling All-Stars and Motor Kings: film 183–184; novel 184 Binns, Edward 156 Binyon, Claude 202 Birken, Leo 331 Biró, Lajos 262 The Birth of a Nation 86, 341 Biskind, Peter 110 Bissell, Richard M. 21 Bisset, Jacqueline 305 Bissonette, Matt 70, 71 Bittaker, Lawrence 145 Bitzer, Billy 232 Black, Jack 60 Black, Morris 149 Black Camel 27 The Black Cat (1934 film) 124 Black Like Me: book 194; film 194– 195 Blackman, Honor 158 Blackmer, Sidney 113 Blackton, J. Stuart 232 Blair, George 56 Blair, Tony 73 Blake, Madge 307 Blanc, Mel 242 Blanchett, Cate 350 Blauner, Peter 62 Blaylock, Mattie 152 Blesch, Rudi 242 Bless You Sister see The Miracle Woman Blessed Event: film 361; play 360–361 The Bling Ring (book, 2011 TV movie and 2013 film) 12 The Blitz Wolf 4 Bloch, Robert 179–180 Block, Libby 225 Block-Heads 4 Blondin 287 Blood Simple 146 The Bloody Spur see While the City Sleeps Bloom, Orlando 11 Blossom, Roberts 180 Blue Skies Again 348 Blue Water, White Death 295 Blunt, Anthony 310 Blunt, Emily 364

Blyth, Aubrey 73–74, 75 Blyth, Edith 73–74 Blyth, H.E. 99 Boal, Mark 70, 135 Boardman, Paul Harris 290 Bodison, Wolfgang 117 Boehm, Sidney 72 Bogart, Humphrey 100, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 215, 226, 227, 228, 333 Bogdanovich, Peter 75, 149, 358, 359 Bogeaus, Benedict 74 Bogosian, Eric 61–62 Boleslavsky, Richard 370 Bologna, Joseph 94 Bombeck, Tony 168 Bombshell 78 Bonanno, Joe 16, 17 Bonanno, Salvatore “Bill” 14, 16, 17 Bond, Ward 152, 153 Bonifas, John 129 Bonnie and Clyde 46, 49, 173 The Boo 116 Boogie Nights 220–221 The Book of Daniel see Daniel Boomerang 127 Boorman, John 94 Booth, Charles G. 149 Booth, John Wilkes 295 Booth, Shirley 288 Borderland 114–115 Borgnine, Ernest 107, 294 Boshears, Bill [“Norman Dodd”] 75– 77 Boshears, “Bouncin’ Beulah” 77 Bosworth, Kate 274 Boulting Brothers 275–276 Bourgeau, Christian 298 Bout, Alla 77 Bout, Viktor 77–78 Bow, Clara 78 Bowers, John 78 Bowie, David 78 Bowman, Lee 122, 286 Boy, Benicia 287 Boy, Souija 315 Boy Meets Girl 42 Boyd, Brian 222 Boyd, Karin 197 Boyer, Sully 36 Boyle, Maggie 346, 347 Boyle, Peter 8, 9 “The Boys in the Bank” see Dog Day Afternoon Brabin, Charles 370 Brackett, Charles 83, 192, 368 Bradbury, Ray 108 Bradford, Virginia 25 Bradshaw, George 49, 50 Brady, Alice 285 Braga, Alice 41 Brand, Millen 110 Brandauer, Klaus Maria 197 Brando, Marlon 17, 102 Brashler, William 184 Brasselle, Keefe 38, 89 Braverman, Al 358 Breen, Richard L. 83 Breese, Edmund 193 Breland, Mark 116 Bremer, Arthur 78–79

383

Brennan, John 71 Brennan, Walter 153 Brennan, William J. 216 Brent, Evelyn 262 Brent, George 141, 161, 276, 331 Breslin, Jimmy 175 Breslow, Lou 303 Bret, David 219 Bretherton, Howard 248 Brewer, Eleanor 311 Brian, David 214 Brian, Mary 51, 361 Brice, Fanny 33–35 Bricker, George 368 Brickhill, Paul 64, 65 Bridges, Beau 237 Bridges, James 210, 356 Bridges, Jeff 105, 145, 146, 292 Bridges, Lloyd 155, 204 Bridges, Styles 46 Brief Moment (1933 film) 217 Brief Moment (play) 367 Bright, John 147 Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions 273, 274 Briscoe, Dolph 165 British Agent 87–88 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) 303, 305 British Steel 306 The Broadway Melody 373 Broadway Melody of 1936 361 Broadway Thru a Keyhole 161–162, 162, 163, 362 Broadway to Hollywood 242 Broccoli, Albert “Cubby” 227 Broderick, James 36 Broderick, Shirley 188 Brodine, Norbert 142 Brodrick, Malcolm 215 Bromberg, J. Edward 150 Bronson, Charles 66 Brook, Clive 106 Brooks, Mel 94, 167 Brooks, Richard 285, 314, 342–343 Brophy, Ed 129 Brosnan, Pierce 73 The Brothers Karamazov 14, 144 Broussard, Israel 12 Brown, Clarence 182, 319, 336 Brown, David 117 Brown, Frances 209 Brown, Grace 80, 81, 82 Brown, Harry 81 Brown, Helen Gurley 82, 229 Brown, James (actor) 359 Brown, John Mason 367 Brown, Johnny 82 Brown, Johnny Mack 152, 260 Brown, Margaret “Molly” Tobin 82, 82, 83 Brown, Melville 181 Brown, Rob 329 Browne, Coral 222 Brownlow, Kevin 261 Brubaker 176 Bruce, Lenny 68 Bruce, Nigel 24 Bruce, Sally Jane 313

384

Index

Bruce, William L. 241 Bruckheimer, Jerry 128 Brugioni, Dion 256 Bruhl, Daniel 245 Brunet, Paul 207, 208 Brunett, Dana 273 Bruno, Anthony 83–84 Bryan, William Jennings 85–87, 131– 132, 167, 331, 332 Brynner, Yul 138 Buchalter, Louis “Lepke” 89, 360 Buchanan, James 340 Buck, Scott 145 Budberg, Moura [Zakrevskaya] 87– 88 Buisson, Célestine 253 Bujold, Genevieve 279–280 Bulger, James “Whitey” 88–89 Bullitt 347–348 Bullock, Sandra 260 Bundy, Ted 145 Bureau of Missing Persons 120 Burgess, Anthony 365 Burgess, Guy 310 Burgoyne, Jacob 134–135 Burke, Edwin J. 325 Burke, Jimmy “The Gent” 89 Burke, Michael 89–90 Burke, William 90 Burnett, W.R. 65, 140, 152, 261 Burns, Clara 92 Burns, David 368 Burns, Robert E. 90–93 Burns, Tommy 232 Burns, Vincent 91, 92 Burros, Daniel 93, 94 Burrows, Saffron 333 Burton, Richard 310 Bus Stop (play and film) 293 Busch, Ernst 196 Busch, Mae 302 Busch, Niven 192 Bush, George W. 73, 94, 104–105, 293 Bushell, Roger Joyce 64, 65 Bushman, Francis X. 316 The Butler see Lee Daniels’ The Butler Butler, Barbara Ann 75–77 Butler, John W. 331 Butler, Walker 277 Butler Act 132, 331, 332 “The Butler Well Served by This Election” see Allen, Eugene Butterflies Are Free (play and film) 247 Bwana Devil 75 Byington, Spring 239 Byrom, Luttrel 263 Byron, Lord 287 Caan, James 221, 222 Cabaret: film 323; musical play 24, 323; see also I Am a Camera Cabot, Bruce 129, 130, 137 Cady, Jerome 277 Caesar, Sid 94 Cage, Nicolas 77, 144 Cagney, James 43, 138, 141, 142, 147, 163, 192, 270, 333 Cagney, Jeanne 43

Cagney, William 270 Cahill, Martin 94–95 Cahn, Billy 362 Cahn, Edward L. 152 Cain, James M. 191–192 Cairncroff, John 310 Calhern, Louis 51 Calhoun, Rory 153 Call, R.D. 235 Call Northside 777 277–278 Callahan, John 88 Calleia, Joseph 139 Calvet, Corinne 153 Cambridge Five 310 Cameron, James 83 Cameron, Lucille 233 Campbell, William 108 Campbell, Robert 108 Cam’ron 159 Candaele, Helen Callaghan 96 Candaele, Kelly 96 Canipe, Ridge 369 The Cannabist 146 Cannavale, Bobby 347 Cannon, Dyan 286 Cantor, Eddie 89 Capone, Al 97–99, 113, 147, 260 Capra, Frank 198, 285–286, 301, 368 Carey, Harry, Sr. 152 Carlin, Gloria 167 Carlson, Richard 204 Carmichael, Hoagy 58 Carnera, Primo 99–100 Carney, “Uncle” Don 187 Carnovsky, Morris 337 Carpenter, Jennifer 291 Carpenter, Kim 100–102 Carpenter, Krickitt 100–102 The Carpetbaggers (novel and film) 226–227 Carr, Lawrence 24 Carradine, David 48 Carradine, John 153 Carradine, Keith 188 Carrillo, Leo 98, 114 Carroll, Kevin 159 Carroll, Leo G. 51, 149 Carson, Sir Edward 28, 29 Carson, Jack 43, 242, 308, 309 Carter, Harper 83 “Case History” see The Damned Don’t Cry “The Case of the Kindly Counterfeiter see Mister 880 Cash, Jim 128 Casino 125–126 Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas 125 Caspary, Vera 368 Cassady, Neal 102 Cassavetes, John 354 Cassavetes, Nick 10 Cassie, Alex 64, 65–66 “Casting the Runes” see Night of the Demon Castle, William 102 Castle Rock Entertainment 118 Castro, Fidel 21, 22, 255 Cat People 50 Catcher in the Rye 329

Catlett, Walter 368 Caught 225–226 Caulfield, Joan 123, 282 Cavanaugh, Hobart 42 Cavendish, Lord Charles 37 Caverly, John R. 131, 258 Cazale, John 36, 37 Cell 2455 Death Row (book and film) 108–109 Central Intelligency Agency (CIA) 21–22, 39–40, 70–71, 89, 90, 141, 143 Cerf, Bennett 367 Cermak, Anton 2, 102–103, 103, 104, 276 Cesana, Renzo 204 Chambers, Stan 164 Chambers, Virginia 294 Chambers, Whittaker 45 Chandler, Charlotte 282 Chandler, George 24 Chandler, Kyle 71 Chang, John 273 Chang, Katie 12 Channing, Stockard 200 Channon, Jim 104, 105 Chapin, Billy 313 Chapin, Charles 105–106 Chapin, Nellie 106 Chaplin, Ben 260 Chaplin, Charlie 4, 241, 253–254, 302 Charlie Chan (character) 26–27; see also Apana, Chang Charlie Chan Carries On 27 Chasanow, Abraham 106–107 Chase, Andrew 31 Chase, Ilka 222 Chastain, Jessica 70 Chayefsky, Paddy 292, 293 Cheautemps, Camille 338 Cher 372 Chessman, Caryl 108, 108, 109 Chester, Hal E. 124–125 Chetwind, Lionel 167 Chiappardi, Bob 306 Chicago: musical play 24; 1927 film 23, 24, 25; play 23, 24, 25; 2002 film 25; see also Roxie Hart Chicago American 222 Chicago Civic Opera House 206, 231 Chicago Herald-Examiner 223 Chicago Inter-Ocean 222 Chicago Sun 208 Chicago Times 276, 277, 278 Chicago Tribune 260, 261 The Chicken Ranch 165–166 The Chinese Parrot (novel and film) 26 Chodhorov, Edward 31, 212 Christie, Agatha 345 Christopher Strong 150 Christy, Howard 218 Chrzanowski, Gerard “Dr.Kik” 109– 110 Chuck 358 Churchill, Sarah 305 Churchill, Winston 74, 142, 305 Ciannelli, Eduardo 137 Cimino, Michael 235

Index Cirulnick, Matthew 159 The Citadel 115–116 Citizen Kane 3, 49, 183, 205–207, 208, 222, 231, 232, 276, 311, 366 Claire, Ina 51, 52–53 The Clansman 340–341; see also The Birth of a Nation Clanton (family) 151, 152, 153 Clark, Fred 306 Clark, Jason 71 Clark, William Arthur 75–77 Clarke, Donald Henderson 325 Clarke, Mae 147 Clarke, Robin 305 Clarkson, Kelly 94 Clavell, James 65 The Clay Pigeon 241 Clemens, William 250 Clement, Dick 333 Cleveland, Herbert 69 Clift, Montgomery 81, 82, 218, 219 Clinton, Bill 110–111 Clinton, Hillary 110–111 Cloak and Dagger 89, 90 Clooney, George 39, 40, 104–105, 306, 350 Clork, Harry 47 Close, Harry 311 Cobain, Kurt 111 Cobb, Irvin S. 106 Cobb, Lee J. 127, 278 Coburn, James 66, 286 Cochran, Steve 214 Coco, James 28 Coen, Franklin 349 Coen Brothers (Ethan and Joel) 146, 360 Coffee, Lenore J. 25 Coffey, Thomas G. 21, 22, 143 Cohen, Harold W. 35, 136 Cohen, Lester 164 Cohen, Mickey 118 Cohn, Harry 15, 292 Colangelo, Terry 276 Colbert, Claudette 217 Coleman, Andre 199 Coleman, Nancy 215 Collins, Ashley Jude 155 Collins, Floyd 111–113 Collins, Frank J. 160 Collins, Michael 3 Collins, Pete 330 Collins, Wilkie 26 Collison, Merle 173 Colombo, Joseph 14, 16–17, 175, 176 Colorado Territory 140 Colosimo, “Big” Jim 97, 98, 113, 113, 114 Colt, Russell 52 Coltrane, Thomas Gay 217 Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) 37, 38, 184, 185, 351, 372 Columbia Pictures Corporation 100, 108, 109, 114, 117, 137, 265, 270, 276, 283, 286, 292, 294, 352 Columbo, Russ 162, 163 Colvert, Robert 172 The Comic 242 Comingore, Dorothy 205 Como, Perry 290

Compton, Betty 352 Compulsion (novel, play and film) 131, 259 Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur 25 The Condemned see The Sound of Fury Conklin, Chester 302 Conklin, Heinie 302 Conley, Jim 169, 170 Connally, John 350 Connery, Sean 118, 158, 227, 329, 330 Connolly, John 88–89 Connolly, Walter 224 Connors, Mike 119 Conrad, Robert 139 Conried, Hans 365 Conroy, Frank 338 Conroy, Pat 115–116 Conselman, William M. 153 Consodine, Bob 322 Conte, Richard 138, 142, 278 Conway, Tom 327 Cook, Donald 33, 138 Cook, Elisha, Jr. 171 Cool Hand Luke (novel and film) 176–177 Coolidge, Philip 127 Cooper, Bradley 20 Cooper, Gary 75, 89, 368 Cooper, Jackie 39 Cooper, Lightning George 357 Coppola, Francis Ford 14, 15, 16, 21, 175, 214, 255 Coppola, Sofia 12 Coquette 201, 202 Corbin, Barry 166 Cormack, Bartlett 138 Corman, Roger 359 Cornell, Katherine 335 Cornwell, Charlotte 115 Corrigan, Lloyd 321 Cortez, Ricardo 325, 361 Cosmopolitan magazine 62, 82, 362 Cosmopolitan Productions 206, 208 Costa-Gavras 4, 251, 252 Costanzo, Adolfo de Jesús 114, 115 Costello, Frank 14, 15, 15, 17 Costello, Joseph 208 Costigan-Wagner Bill 202, 203 Cottell, Louis C. 35, 36 Cotten, Joseph 206 Courtenay, Tom 366 Courvoisie, Lt. Thomas Nugent “Boo” 115–116 Cove, Stuart 267 Cowan, Andre 187 Coward, Noël 305, 313, 367 Cowell, Simon 94 Cox, Brian 145 Cox, David 116–118 The Cradle Will Fall [Baby Blues] 369–370 Craig, Carolyn 156 Craig, Daniel 283 Craig, Helen 110 Craig, James 209 Crane, Cheryl 118, 119 Crane, Stephen 119 Crater, Judge Joseph Force 119–121 Crawford, Amy 281

385

Crawford, Broderick 270 Crawford, Joan 214, 336 Crazy Rulers of the World 104, 105 Cregar, Laird 368 Crime Takes a Holiday 137 Crist, Judith 196 Cromelin, Mr. 320 Cromwell, John 292, 324 Cronenberg, David 278, 279, 280 Cronkite, Walter 351 Cronyn, Hume 259 Crosby, Bing 121–122, 123 Crosby, Dennis 122 Crosby, Dixie Lee see Lee, Dixie Crosby, Gary 122 Crosby, Juliette 23 Crosby, Lindsay 122 Crosby, Philip 122 Crosman, Henrietta 51, 53 Cross, Mrs. Joe 104 Crouse, Lindsay 322 Crouse, Russell 288 Crowe, Robert 258 Crowley, Aleister 123, 123, 124–125 The Crucible 201 Crudup, Billy 22, 311 Cruise, Tom 117, 127, 128 Cryer, Sherwood 209, 210 Crystal Lee: A Woman of Inheritance 237 Cuchet, Jeanne-Marie 253 Cuevas, Beto 115 Cukor, George 53, 271, 287 Culbertson, E.H. 207 Cullotta, Frank 125, 126 Cummings, Constance 98, 162, 163 Cummings, Homer 126, 127 Cummings, Irving 302 Cummins, Peggy 49 Cunningham, Jack 98, 357 Cunningham, John 200 Cunningham, Nancy 128 Cunningham, Randall “Duke” 127– 128 “The Curse of Capistrano” see The Mark of Zorro Curse of the Demon see Night of the Demon Curtis, Alan 303 Curtis, Tony 362 Curtiz, Michael 58, 87, 138, 338, 368 Cusack, John 13, 144 Custer, George Armstrong 128–129 Czar of Broadway 325 Czinner, Paul 63–64 Dade, Frances 194 Dafoe, Willem 94 Dahme, Father Hubert 126 Dahmer, Jeffrey 78, 178 Dailey, Dan 139 Dainard, William 129 Dall, John 49, 259 Dallesandro, Joe 138 Dalton, Timothy 90, 167 Damita, Lily 250 The Damned Don’t Cry 214 Damon, Matt 21, 40, 88, 143, 299, 311, 350 Dangerous 150

386

Index

Dangerous When Wet 360 Dangeruss 316 Daniel 322–323 Daniell, Henry 271 Daniels, Bebe 305, 344 Daniels, Lee 13 Danner, Blythe 247 Danny Collins 346, 347 Dano, Paul 285 Danova, Cesare 297 Dante, Joe 102 D’Antoni, Philip 155 Dantine, Helmut 140 Darmour, Larry 137 Darnell, Linda 153 Darrieux, Danielle 55, 327 Darrow, Clarence 85, 86, 87, 130, 130, 131–132, 258, 259, 318, 331, 332 Dash, Damon “Dame” 159 Dassin, Jules 265 da Sylva, Howard 48, 251, 324 Daves, Delmar 139, 365 Davi, Robert 138 Davies, Marion 205, 206, 207, 208, 343 Davies, Valentine 256 Davis, Anna Gordon 133 Davis, Bette 62, 63, 64, 119, 136, 137, 140, 150, 167, 368 Davis, Frank 349 Davis, Geena 96 Davis, Jimmie 132, 133, 134 Davis, John 304 Davis, Lanny 134, 135, 136 Davis, Lavone “Pepper” Paire 96, 97 Davis, Luther 212, 270 Davis, Ossie 354 Davis, Remy 134, 135 Davis, Richard T. 134–135 Davis, Thulani 159 Davis, Wee Willie 100 Dawson, Rosario 169 Day, Doris 58 Day-Lewis, Daniel 140, 285, 311 Dayton [OH] Daily News 75 de Acosta, Mercedes 370–371 Dead Ringers 278, 279–280 “Dead Ringers” (magazine article) 279 Deadlier Than the Male see Gun Crazy de Almeida, Joaquim 304 Dean, Jimmy 227 Dean, Man Mountain 100 Dear Mr. Private see Dear Ruth Dear Ruth (play and film) 282–283 Death in the Deep South see They Won’t Forget Death of a Scoundrel 327 “The Death of Captain Washkow” see The Story of G.I. Joe de Bergh, Joanne 278 Debs, Eugene V. 130 de Carlo, Yvonne 327 Dee, Frances 81, 361 Deep Crimson 56 The Defense Rests 160 de Filippis, Father Carmine 40, 41 Degnan, Susan 208

de Grunwald, Anatole 29–30 de Havilland, Olivia 110, 328 Dehn, Paul 158, 310 Dehner, John 153 Deladier, Eduoard 338 de la Falaise, Marquis 343 De La Motte, Marguerite 78 de La Reguera, Ana 60 Del Ruth, Roy 92, 361 del Toro, Benicio 9 DeLuise, Dom 166 de Marigny, Count Alfred 256 DeMille, Cecil B. 23, 343 Denby, David 197 Dench, Judi 283 Denham, Maurice 124 Denham, Reginald 63 De Niro, Robert 16, 17, 20, 21–22, 69, 79, 89, 125, 143, 175, 329, 345 Dennehy, Brian 353 Denning, Richard 43 The Dentist 318 The Departed 88–89 Deported 138 Depp, Johnny 9, 139 Deranged: Confessions of a Necrophile 180 de Rochement, Louis 142, 149, 295 Derrickson, Scott 290 DeSimone, “Two-Gun” Tommy 89 Desny, Victor 112 The Desperate Hours: novel 215; play and film 215, 216 de Toth, Andre 294, 337–338 Devigne, Carla 245 The Devil Wears Prada: film 363– 364; novel 363 Devil’s Cabaret 97 Devine, Andy 152 De Voe, Daisy 78 De Vosjoli, Philipe Thyraud 136 Dewey, Thomas E. 136–137, 137 Dewhurst, Colleen 294 DeWitt, Jack 108, 157 DeWolfe, Billy 282 Dezorrois, Andre 349 Diaghilev, Serge 138 Diamonds Are Forever 227 DiCaprio, Leonardo 89, 246 Dickens, Charles 287 Dickson, Gloria 171 A Different Loyalty 311 DiGregorio, Gaspare 14, 16 Dillane, Steven 71, 95 Dillaway, Donald 217 Dillinger (1945) 139 Dillinger, John 43, 47, 138–140 Dillman, Bradford 259 Dillon, John Francis 261 DiMaggio, Joe 292 Dinnerstein, Leonard 170 The Dirk Diggler Story see Boogie Nights Dirksen, Everett 44, 45 Dirty Harry 347, 348 Discovery Channel 303 Discovery Communications 304 Dishonored Lady: film 336–337; play 335–336; see also Letty Lynton Disney, Tim 243

Disney, Walt 201, 366 Dixon, Rev. Thomas 86 Dmytrk, Edward 119, 226 Dobai, Péter 197 The Doctor and the Devils 90 Dr. Strangelove 239, 257, 351 Doctorow, E.L. 322 Dodge, John 66 Dodsworth 167 Dog Day Afternoon 35, 36–37 Doheny, Edward L. 140 Doherty, Edward 183 Donald, James 65 Donat, Robert 30, 31 Donner, Richard 140 Donovan, Dr. James 95 Donovan, William “Wild Bill” 22, 89–90, 141, 141, 142–143 Doogin, Pat 143, 144 Doran, Ann 56 Dorian Gray see The Picture of Dorian Gray Dorsey, Hugh 169, 170 Dorsey, Tommy 14 Dos Passos, John 296 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 144 Doty, Thomas G. 144 Double Door (play and film) 357 Double Indemnity: film 192; novel 191, 192 Dougherty, Jim 292 Douglas, Illeana 190 Douglas, John E. 144–145 Douglas, Kirk 49, 58–59, 112, 229, 272 Douglas, Melvyn 301 Douglas, Paul 355 Doumergue, Gaston 338 Dove, Billie 225 Dowd, Jeff 145, 146–147 Down to Earth 262 Downey, Robert, Jr. 171, 196 Downing, Delphine 56 Downing, Rainelle 56 Downs, Cathy 153 Doyle, Laird 87 Dratler, Jay 277 Dreamgirls (musical play and film) 189 Dreamworks Productions 298 Dreiser, Theodore 80, 81, 82 The Dresser (play and film) 366 Dresser, Louise 181–182, 182 Drew, Ellen 250 Drew, Mrs. John 52 Drew, Sidney 52 Dreyfus, Alfred 29 Driscoll, Willie 128 Driskill, William 133 Druggan, Terry 147–148 Drury, Allen 44, 45, 46 Duff, Warren 338 Duffy, Father Francis 141 Duhamel, Josh 193 Dujmovic, Nicholas 21, 143 Duke, Doris 229 Duke, Patty 176, 292 Dullea, Keir 247 Dulles, Allen 21, 141 Dumas, Alexandre (father and son) 287

Index Du Maurier, Gerald 148 Dumbo 366 Dumbrille, Douglass 137 Dumont, Margaret 218 Dunaway, Faye 46 Dunlop, Arthur 42, 43 Dunn, Emma 98 Dunn, Winifred 194 Dunne, Phillip 107, 108 Dunst, Kirsten 149 Duperey, Anny 339 Duquesne, Fritz 148, 149 Durante, Jimmy 368 The D’Urbervilles 346 Durning, Charles 36, 166 Durst, Kathie 149 Durst, Robert 149 Duryea, Etta 233 Dusenberry, Phil 339 Duvall, Robert 155, 168, 333 Duvall, Shelley 48 Dux, Pierre 252 Dvorak, Ann 99, 290 Dwan, Allan 149, 153, 262 Dylan, Bob 174 Dzundzas, George 228 Eagels, Jeanne 150 Earhart, Amelia 150–151 Earhart, Muriel 151 Earp, James 151, 152, 153 Earp, Josephine 152, 153 Earp, Morgan 151, 152, 153 Earp, Virgil 151, 152, 153 Earp, Wyatt 151, 151, 152–154 The Earth Abides 147 Eastwood, Clint 228, 347, 348 Eaton, Shirley 158 Ebb, Fred 24 Ebert, Roger 265, 372 Ecksel, Robert 358 Ed Gein 180 The Eddie Cantor Story 38, 89 Edeson, Robert 25 Edison, Thomas 230 Edmiston, Susan 279 Edsel, Robert M. 350 Edwards, Alan 152 Edwards, Guy 31 Edwards, Penny 153 Egan, Eddie “Popeye” 154, 154, 155 Egan, Richard 214 Ehle, Jennifer 70 Eicher, Asta (and children) 312, 313 Eight Men Out 324 Eilers, Sally 286 Einstein, Charles 209 Eisenberg, Giselle 347 Eisenger, Jo 311 Eisenhower, Dwight 13, 45, 141, 241, 257, 301, 350 Eisenstein, Sergei 81 Elan, Priya 236 Eldredge, John 56 The Eleventh Commandment 357 Elkins, Fred 156 Elkins, James Butler “Big Jim” 156, 157 Elkins, Saul 286 Elliott, Charles W. 355

Elliott, Inger 200 Elliott, Osborn 200 Elliott, Sam 147 Ellis, Charles 242 Ellis, Edward 23, 121, 164 Ellman, Richard 192 Elmer Gantry: film 285, 342–343; novel 285, 286, 341–343; play 342 Emlou, Raymond 156 Emmanuel, Art 157 Emmanuelides, Emmanuel 252 Emmerich, Robert 280 Emmons, Louise 183 Endfield, Cy 204 Enemies Within 207 Engel, Samuel G. 153 Engelhard, Charles W., Jr. 157–158 Entertainment Sports Network (ESPN) 358 Entirely Surrounded 368 Entourage 157 Epps, Jack, Jr. 128 Epstein, Joseph 213 Epstein, Julius J. 229, 368 Epstein, Philip 368 Eran Trece see Charlie Chan Carries On Erickson, Carl 343 Errichetti, Angelo 19, 20 Escape in the Desert 140 Esmond, Jill 361 Esquire magazine 247, 314 Eureka 255, 256 “An Evangelist Drowns” see There Will be Blood Evans, Madge 129, 353 Evans, Robert 210, 265 Evans, Rupert 311 Eversole, Sgt. Frank “Buck” 158 Everson, William K. 82, 226, 275, 305, 338 Ewell, Tom 297 Exline, Peter 146 Exodus 75 The Exorcism of Emily Rose 290–292 The Exorcist 41, 291 The Extra Girl 303 Eyeball to Eyeball 256 Eyer, Richard 215 Eythe, William 149 A Face in the Crowd 186, 187 The Face of an Angel 245 Fahey, Jeff 228 Fail-Safe 239 Fairbanks, Douglas, Jr. 361 Fairbanks, Douglas, Sr. 296, 316 Faison, Azie 158–159 Fall, Albert 140 The Fall of a Nation 1, 85, 86, 167 Fallon, Rita 161 Fallon, William J. 159–161, 324 Fame 189 Fame Is the Spur: film 275–276; novel 275 The Famous Ferguson Case 183, 191 Fanelli, Joe 106–107 Farina, Dennis 145 Farley, Kevin 293 Farmiga, Taissa 12

387

Farmiga, Vera 89 Farrell, Glenda 92, 249 Farrow, John 271 Farrow, Mia 246 Faulkner, William 50, 367 Faust 196, 197 Fay, Janet 55–56, 57 Fay, Larry 161–163 Faye, Alice 34, 35, 53, 302, 323, 325 Faye, Herbie 67 Faye, Joey 67 Faye, Julia 25 Fazenda, Louise 307 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: book 8, 9; film 9 Fear Thy Neighbor 198 Fearing, Kenneth 271 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 19, 20, 42, 43, 88, 129, 130, 144, 145, 148, 149, 294 Fehimu, Bekim 229, 328 Feirstein, Bruce 283 Fellow Traveller 69 Fencil, Lillian 173 Fenton, Leslie 147 Feodorova, Czarina Alexandra 2, 370; see also Czar Nicholas, II Ferber, Edna 52, 53 Ferguson, James “Pa” 133–134 Ferguson, Miriam “Ma” 132, 133–134 Ferguson Forum 134 Fernandez, Raymond Martinez 55– 56 Ferrer, Jose 187 Ferrer, Mel 264 A Few Good Men (play and film) 116, 117–118 Fibber McGee and Molly 225 Field, Betty 246 Field, Chelsea 188 Field, Marshall 164, 230 Field, Sally 75, 237 Field of Dreams 329 Fields, Stanley 97 Fierce Creatures 296 50 Cent 144 50/50 318 Final Verdict 319 Fincher, David 347 Finding Forrester 329–330 The Finger Points 261 Fink, Harry Julian 348 Fink, R.M. 348 Finkel, Abem 136 Finlayson, James 302 Finney, Albert 228, 366 The First Earth Manual 104 First National Pictures 231, 248, 249, 261, 344, 345; see also Warner Bros. Pictures Fiscus, Kathy 112, 164–165 Fish, Robert L. 347 Fishburne, Laurence 145 Fisher, Carrie 140 Fisher, Lucinda 70 F.I.S.T. 216 Fitzgerald, Ella 58 Fitzgerald, F. Scott 245–246, 263, 296, 297, 324, 345 Fitzgerald, James M. 23

388

Index

Fitzgerald, Zelda 245, 297 Fitzgibbon, Constantine 55 Fitzmaurice, George 207 FitzSimmons, Foster 50 Five Fingers 55 Fleischer, Richard 131, 241, 259 Fleming, Ian 158, 227 Fleming, Rhonda 209 Flemmi, Steve “The Rifleman” 88 Flight for Freedom 150–151 Flippen, Jay C. 48 Fliss, Edward 129 Flon, Suzanne 350 Flood, James 160, 194 Flood, Wally 66 Florey, Robert 261, 262 Flothe, Cherry 143, 144 Flothe, Glenn 143, 144 Flournoy, T.J. 165, 166 Floyd, Pretty Boy 43, 47 Fly-Away Baby 245 The Flying Deuces 294, 295 Flynn, Elinor 194, 265 Flynn, Errol 147 Foch, Nina 107 Fogelman, Dan 347 Foley, James 235 Fonda, Bridget 189 Fonda, Henry 44, 47, 129, 153, 167, 301 Fonda, Jane 14, 167 Fontaine, Joan 51, 297 Fontanne, Lynn 167, 367 Fook, Lee 26 For the Boys 221–222 Ford, Betty 13 Ford, Corey 89, 318 Ford, Edsel 167 Ford, Ford Maddox 167 Ford, Gerald 13 Ford, Harrison 71 Ford, Henry 86, 167–168 Ford, John 129, 153, 295 Ford, Paul 149 Ford, Wallace 47 Foreman, Carl 58, 241 Foreman, George 358 Forrest, Steve 287 Forson, Terry 168 Forsyth, Frederick 311 Forsythe, Henderson 166 Fort Apache 129 Fosse, Bob 24, 60, 68 Foster, Ben 10 Foster, Jodie 28, 79, 145 Foster, Preston 103, 152 The Fountainhead (novel and film) 369 Four Jills in a Jeep 221 Fourteen Hours 354–355 The Fourth Protocol 311 Fowler, Gene 83, 160, 202 Fox, Megan 11 Fox, Sidney 161 Fox Film Corporation 26–27, 103, 104, 121, 152, 302, 325; see also 20th Century–Fox Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 121 Foxx, Jamie 189 Foxx, Jimmie 96–97

Foy, Eddie, Jr. 153 Foy, Eddie, Sr. 153 Francis, Kay 87, 106, 221, 231, 232, 325, 338 Franciscus, James 305, 365 Franco, James 316 Frank, Harriet, Jr. 237 Frank, Leo 169–170, 170, 171 Frankel, David 363 Frankenheimer, John 155, 349, 351, 352 Frankovich, Mike 39 Franks, Bobby 131, 258 Fraser, Duncan 291 Fraulein Doktor (1969) 331; see also Schragmüller, Elsbeth Frawley, William 361 A Free Soul (novel and film) 319 Freedman, David 318 Freedman, Richard 322 Freeman, Howard 110, 269 Freeman, Kathleen 51 Freeman, Mona 282 French, Mike 73 The French Connection: book 154; film 154–155 The French Connection II 155 Fresh, Doug E. 159 Friedkin, William 154, 155 Friedman, Milton 107 Frings, Ketti 364 Fritz, Ernest 160 Fröbe, Gert 158 Frohman, Charles 51 From G’s to Gents 315 From Here to Eternity 14 The Front 265, 266 Le Front de l’Art see The Train The Front Page: 1974 film 192, 224; 1931 film 223; play 201, 223, 224; see also His Girl Friday; Switching Channels Frontier Marshal (1934) 152–153 Frontier Marshal (1939) 153 Fryer, Robert 24 Fuchs, Daniel 308–309, 310 Fugate, Caril Ann 171, 172–173, 174 Fugate, Velda 172 Fuller, Barbara 56 Fuller, Dale 114 Fuller, William Allen 2 Funny Face 39 Funny Girl (play and film) 33–34 Funny Lady 34 Fury 203–204 G-Men 139 Gable, Clark 49, 191, 212, 260, 261, 319, 345 Gabor, Zsa Zsa 229, 327 Gabriel Over the White House 97, 208 Gaddafi, Muamar 77 Gaertner, Belva 22, 23, 25 Gaertner, William 23 Gaghan, Stephen 39, 40 Gallo, Albert 174 Gallo, “Crazy Joe” 16, 174–176 Gallo, Larry 174 Galvin, Oscar 169 Gambino, Carlo 17

The Gambler 144 Gambon, Michael 311 Game Over 159 Gandolfini, James 71 The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (novel and film) 175 Gangs of New York (book and film) 311 Ganz, Lowell 96 Garbo, Greta 230, 249, 250, 345 Garcia, Andy 138 Garde, Betty 278 Gardenia, Vincent 149 Gardiner, Reginald 368 Gardner, Ava 51, 226, 265, 293 Gardner, Cyril 53 Gardner, Erle Stanley 319 Gardner, Estelle 326 Garfield, John 192 Gargan, William 47 Garland, Judy 78, 176 Garner, James 66 Garner, Jay 166 Garner, Jennifer 347 Garnett, Tay 192, 361 Garrett, Oliver H.P. 150, 324 Garrick Gaieties 265 Garrison, Donald Graham 176–177; see also Cool Hand Luke Gauguin, Emile 178 Gauguin, Paul 177–178 Gaunt, Genevieve 245 Gaynor, Janet 78 Gayton, Tony 260 Geasland, Jack 279 Geddes, John 329 Gein, Augusta 179 Gein, Ed 78, 178–179, 179, 180 Geisler, Jerry 112 Gelb, Arthur 93 The General (1926 film) 2, 241 The General (1998 film) 94–95 General Foods 266 Genn, Leo 110 Genovese, Vito 14 George, Gladys 163, 198 George, Peter 351 George, Susan 311 Gere, Richard 25, 314 Geronimo 333 Gershe, Leonard 247 Gershwin, George 239 Gervasi, Sacha 298 The Get-Away 139 The Ghost in the Darkness 75 Giacobbe, Barry 83, 84 Giancana, Sam 21 Gibbs, Wolcott 271 Gibney, Sheridan 31, 92 Gibson, Jane 180, 181–182, 183 Gibson, John 183–184 Gibson, Mel 280, 281–282 Gide, Andre 196 Gielgud, John 365 Giesecke, Albert 71, 72 Gilbert, Douglas 325 Gilbert, Helen 118 Gilbert, Lewis 229, 328 Gillen, Jeff 180 Gillette, Chester 80

Index Gillette, Ruth 153 Gilley, Mickey 209–210 Gilliam, Terry 9, 22 Gingold, Hermione 365 Girl Around the World see Fly-Away Baby The Girl on the Volkswagen Floor see Man on a Swing The Girl Who Had Everything 319; see also A Free Soul Gish, Lillian 313, 341 Gisling, George 365 Glasco, Charles 354, 355 Glasmon, Kubec 129, 147 Glazer, Benjamin 58 Gleckler, Robert 325 Gleeson, Brendan 94 Glenn, Scott 145, 210 Glover, John 349 Glyn, Elinor 316 Glynn, Carlyn 166 The Goddess 292–293 The Godfather: film 14–16, 17, 155, 163, 213–214; novel 14, 15, 16, 44, 213–214 The Godfather: Part II 16, 17, 20, 21, 255 The Godfather: Part III 16–17, 175 The Godfather Returns 16 Godfrey, Arthur 184–185, 185, 186, 187 Goering, Hermann 196, 197, 330, 349 The Goldbergs 266 Golden, Ray 164 Goldfinger (novel and film) 158 Goldkette, Jean 57 Goldman, Bo 235 Goldstein, Buggy 97 Goldstone, James 175 Golenpaul, Daniel 211 Golitsyn, Antoliy 21, 22 Gone with the Wind 50 Gonzales, Cesar [Silver King] 60 Good, John 19–20 The Good Shepherd 21, 143, 311 Goodbye Mr. Chips 366 Goodbye to Berlin 323; see also Cabaret; I Am a Camera Goodfellas 89, 175 Goodkin, Brett 12 Goodman, David Zelag 76 Goodman, John 102, 350 Goodrich, John F. 262 Goodridge, Harry 187, 188 Goodridge, Peggy 187 Goodridge, Susan 187 Goodridge, Thalice 187 Goodridge, Toni 187, 188, 189 Goodwins, Leslie 286 The Goose Woman: film 181–182, 182, 183; novel 181; see also The Past of Mary Holmes Gordon, C. Henry 97 Gordon, Ruth 201 Gordon, Stuart 69 Gordon-Levitt, Joseph 318 Gordy, Berry, Jr. 189 Gore, Lesley 189–190, 190 Gore, Michael 189

Goring, Marius 226 Gorki, Maxim 87 Gorshin, Frank 156 Gorski, Peter 196 Gosling, Ryan 93, 149, 259 Gotham Hotel 354 Gottfried, Martin 201 Gough, Lloyd 226, 265 Goulding, Edmund 239 Goutman, Dolya 178 Grace of My Heart 189–190 Grady, Billy 162 Graham, Billy 108 Grahame, Gloria 50 Grammer, Kelsey 293 Granger, Farley 48, 259 Granlund, Nils T. 161 Grant, Cary 224, 228, 229, 271, 355 Grant, Hugh 94 Gray, Charles 227 Gray, Henry Judd 183, 190–192 Gray, John 192–193 Grayson, Kathryn 167 The Great Dictator 4 The Great Escape: book 64–65; film 65–67; TV play 65 The Great Gatsby (novel and film versions) 246–247, 324 The Great Man: film 187; novel 186– 187 The Great Mouthpiece 160 The Great Profile 54 The Great White Hope: film 234; play 233–234 The Greek Tycoon 305–306 Green, Alfred E. 68, 343, 345 Green, Brian Austin 11 Green, Dwight 277 Green, Edward 194 Green, Guy 229 Green, Hettie 193–194 Green, Howard 361 Green, Ned 193, 194 Green, Paul 49, 50 Green, Remo 159 Green, Seth 165 Green, Sylvia 193, 194 The Green Bay Tree 201 Greenberg, “Big Greeny” 213 Greenberg, Jerry 155 Greene, Bob 19 Greene, Ellen 61 Greene, Graham 310 Greene, Ward 170 Greenglass, David 321 Greenstreet, Sidney 212 Gremlins 2: The New Batch 349 Grey, Joel 76 Grey, Lawrence 194 Griffin, John Howard 194–195 Griffith, Andy 187 Griffith, D.W. 86, 149, 223, 232, 302, 303, 341 Griffith, Griffith J. 318 Griffith, Melanie 199 Griffith, Raymond 2 Grizzard, George 44–45, 215 Grobel, Lawrence 227 Grosbard, Ulu 345 Gross, Laurence 61

389

Gross, Pearl 162 Grosso, Salvatore “Sonny” 154–155 Grubb, Davis 312–313 Gründgens, Gustaf 196–197 Guare, John 199, 200 Guede, Rudy 244 Guest, Gerry (aka Danny Murray) 313 Guillin, Marie-Angélique 253 Guilty by Suspicion 69 The Guilty Generation 98, 99 Guinan, Marie Louise Cecilia “Texas” 161, 162, 163, 198 Gun Crazy 49 Gussow, Mel 61 Guthrie, Pat 263 Gwenn, Edmund 238–239 Gypsy 176 Haas, Lukas 10 Hackman, Gene 140, 154–155, 256, 304 Hadden, Briton 271 Hadley, June 45 Hadley, Reed 149 Håfström, Mikael 41 Haggis, Paul 135 Hail Caesar! 360 Hailey, Arthur 144 Hain, Lord Peter 76 Hains, John 267 Hale, Alan, Sr. 357 Hale, Barbara 241 Haley, Jack, Jr. 39 The Half-Naked Truth 316, 317, 318 Halford, Rob 306 Hall, Arch, Jr. 173 Hall, Arch, Sr. 173 Hall, Carol 166 Hall, Edward Wheeler 180–183, 191 Hall, Frances 181, 183 Hall, James 194 Hall-Mills Case see Hall, Edward Wheeler; Mills, Eleanor Reinhardt Hallelujah, I’m a Bum 353 Halliday, Fred 166 Halperin, H. Russell 10 Halton, Charles 23, 338 Hamill, Pete 155 Hamilton, George 296 Hamilton, Guy 158, 227 Hamilton, Hale 92 Hamilton, John 198 Hamilton, Mellanie 198 Hamilton, Neil 225 Hamilton, Patrick 258 Hamlin, Harry 348 Hammond, Percy 285 Hampden, Walter 55 Hampton, David 199–201 Hampton, Ruth 152 Hand, Judge Learned 336 Hands Up 2 Haney, Bill 243 Hanks, Tom 96, 298, 299 Hannibal (film and TV series) 145 The Hanoi Hilton 167 Hansen, Darla 144 Hansen, Gunnar 180 Hansen, Robert 143–144

390

Index

Happy Days (1930 film) 121 The Hard Way 308–309, 309, 310 The Harder They Fall (novel and film) 100 Harding, Warren G. 140 Hardwicke, Cedric 30 Hardy, John Howard, Jr. 92 Hardy, Oliver 4, 293, 295 Hardy, Sam 286 Hare, William 90 Harlib, Edward 23 Harlow, Jean 78, 218, 226, 345 Harmer, Lillian 194 Harmon, Mark 139 Harrelson, Woody 171 Harris, Jed 49, 50, 201–202 Harris, Julie 323 Harris, Leonard 79 Harris, Mark 222 Harris, Patricia Roberts 248 Harris, Robert 73 Harris, Thomas 145 Harris, Viola 266 Harris, Wood 159 Harrison, Rex 57 Harron, John 325 Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone 299 Hart, Brooke 202, 203 Hart, Frances Noyes 183 Hart, Lorenz 353 Hart, Moss 282, 307, 366, 367, 368 Hart, William S. 151, 152 Harwood, Ronald 366 Hasso, Signe 149 Hastings, Michael 229, 328 Hatfield, Hurd 193 Hathaway, Anne 363 Hathaway, Henry 127, 142, 148, 278, 354, 355 Hatosy, Shawn 10 Hatton, Raymond 152 Hauer, Rutger 256 Haver, Phyllis 24, 25 Hawke, Ethan 78 Hawks, Howard 113, 223, 224, 355 Hawn, Goldie 25, 247 Hawthorne, Nigel 31 Hayden, Sterling 295, 351 Hayek, Salma 57 Hayes, Bernardine 47 Hayes, Helen 201 Hayes, John Michael 119, 227 Hayes, Joseph 215, 216 Haygood, Will 12, 13 Haynes, Todd 111 Hays, Will 138, 163 Hayward, Susan 119, 122, 133, 176, 202, 272 Haywood, Big Bill 130 Hazel Flagg see Nothing Sacred Hazelwood, Roy 143 He Found a Star 305 Healthy Choice Foods 311 Heaney, Christopher 71 Hearst, Millicent Veronica Wilson 205 Hearst, Patty 205 Hearst, William Randolph 3, 49, 160, 204–205, 205, 206–208, 222, 223, 224, 231, 251, 307, 330, 360, 366

Heatherton, Joey 119 Hecht, Ben 23, 42, 98, 99, 202, 223, 224, 336, 337, 353 Heckart, Eileen 247 Hedlum, Garret 102 Heflin, Van 144 Heineman, Eda 23 Heirens, William 208–209 Heisler, Stuart 123, 140 Helburn, Theresa 265 Heller in Pink Tights 287 Hellgate 295 Hellinger, Mark 163 Hellman, Sam 153 Hell’s Angels 225, 226, 227 Helmer, Betty 209, 210 Helms, Richard 21 Helmsley, Leona 177 Helpmann, Robert 365 Hemingway, Elizabeth 264 Hemingway, Ernest 73, 74, 75, 263– 265, 296 Henabery, Joseph 341 Henriksen, Lance 36 Henry, Irsie 198, 199 Henry, William 43, 48 Hepburn, Katharine 150, 201, 225, 227, 228, 271 Her Husband Lies see Street of Chance Her Love Story 262 Herbert, Victor 86 Herek, Steven 306 Herrmann, Bernard 297 Hershey, Barbara 339 Herzog, Buck 151 Heslov, Grant 105, 350 Hess, Jacob 60 Heston, Charlton 72, 73, 333 Heyes, Herbert 81 Hi Gang! (radio series and film) 305 Hickman, Bill 155 Higby, Mary Jane 57 Higgins, Annie Marie 31 Higgins, Colin 166 High Sierra 140 Higham, Charles 167 Hill, Elizabeth 215, 216 Hill, George Roy 115 Hill, George W. 260 Hill, George Washington 210–212 Hill, Ian 306 Hill, James 215, 216 Hill, Steven 292 Hill, Virginia 212, 213, 214 Hilton, James 366 Hilton, Paris 11, 12 Hinckley, John 79 Hirsch, Emile 10 Hirsch, Ruth Maxine [Martina Lawrence] 63–64 His Girl Friday 223–224; see also The Front Page Hiss, Alger 45 Hitchcock, Alfred 49, 51, 136, 148, 180, 259 Hitchcock, Alma 49, 51 Hitler, Adolf 4, 54, 64, 93, 360 Hodge, Patricia 42 Hoffa, Jimmy 216

Hoffenstein, Samuel 81 Hoffman, Dustin 62, 68, 307, 308, 372 Hoffman, Irving 362 Hoffman, Leonard 277 Hogan, Hulk 77, 358 Hogan, James 43 Hogan, Mary 179 Hold That Co-Ed 269 Holden, William 282 Holland, Anthony 60 Holland, Betty Lou 292 Holland, Tom 19 Holliday, John “Doc” 151, 152, 153 Holloway, Stanley 30 Hollywood, Jack 9, 10 Hollywood, Jesse James 9, 10 Hollywood Cavalcade 302–303 Hollywood Hotel 307 Hollywood Legion Stadium 161 Holm, Celeste 63 Holman, Libby 216–217, 218, 218, 219 Holmes, Brown 303 Holmes, Jack 202, 203 Holmes, John [“Johnny Wadd”] 219–220, 221 Holmes, Katie 128 Holmes, Ralph R. 218 Holt, David 129 Holt, Jack 137, 160 Holtzman, Fanny 372 Home Alone 180 Home Box Office (HBO) 149, 157 The Honeymoon Killers 57 Hooper 75 Hooper, Tobe 180 Hoover, Herbert 284 Hoover, J. Edgar 21, 42, 43, 48, 136, 360 Hope, Bob 221–222, 277, 310, 352, 361 Hopkins, Anthony 41, 145, 216 Hopkins, Miriam 81 Hoppe, Rolf 197 Hopper, Hedda 222, 307 Hopper, Jerry 72 Hopton, Russell 152 Hordern, Michael 310 Horner, Florence Sally 222 Hornsby, Russell 69 Horton, Edward Everett 42 Hosfield, Jon 168 Hossein, Robert 372 “Hostess with the Mostess” 287 Houdini, Harry 241 House of Horrors 368 The House on 92nd Street 127, 142, 278 The House Without a Key (novel and film) 26 Houseman, John 37, 47, 48, 49–51, 356 Houston, Gary 277 Houston, Jack 20 Houts, Marshall 255 Hovey, Helen 173 Howard, Leslie 87, 139, 167, 318 Howe, James Wong 363 Howell, Richard 346

Index Howey, Gloria 223 Howey, Walter 222–223, 224 Hoyt, Arthur 357 Hoyt, John 368 Hoyt, Ryan 9, 10 The Hucksters: film 212; novel 201, 210, 211–212 Huddleston, David 145 Hudgins, Vanessa 144 Hudson, Jennifer 189 Hudson, Kate 144 Hudson, Rochelle 130, 150 Hudson, Rock 219 Huerth, Harry 156 Huffington Post 128, 146 Hughes, Charles Evans 205 Hughes, Howard 98, 119, 223, 224– 227 Hughes, John 180 Hughes, Rupert 225 Hull, Diane 76 Hüller, Sandra 292 Hume, Cyril 75 Hunt, Lester C. 44, 46 Hunter, David 145 Hunter, Ian 338 Hunter, JA 75 Hunter, Stephen 282 Huntley, G.P. 323 Hurt, William 21, 84 Hussey, Ruth 271 Huston, John 152, 227–228 Huston, Walter 152, 167, 238 The Hustons 227 Hutton, Barbara 228–230, 327 Hutton, Betty 175 Hutton, E.F. 228 Hutton, Franklin Laws 228 Hutton, Timothy 322 Huxley, Aldous 196, 208 Hyams, Leila 217 Hyde-White, Wilfred 133 Hyer, Martha 226 Hymer, Warren 129 I Am a Camera (play and film) 323 I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang 90, 91, 91, 92, 93 I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang 92 I Am the Law 137 I Died a Thousand Times 140 I Killed Rasputin 372 I Love You to Death 84 I Loved a Woman 206, 230–231 I Walked with a Zombie 4 I Was Cicero 55 If I Should Die 372 If I’m Lucky 290 Iglesias, David 117 I’ll Never Heil Again 4 Illegal 161 The Impossible 19 In the Life 190 In the Valley of Elah 135–136 Ince, Ralph 97, 113 Ince, Thomas 208 Iden, Rosalind 365 USS Indianapolis 267 Inescourt, Freda 121

Infernal Affairs see The Departed Information Please 211 Inge, William 293 Ingram, Rex 123–124 Ingster, Boris 121 Inherit the Wind: film 85, 86–87, 131– 132, 332; 1985 TV movie 332; play 85, 86–87, 131, 332 Inside Daisy Clover 176 Insull, Gladys Wallis 206, 230, 231 Insull, Samuel 206, 230–231, 231, 232 International Church of the Four Square Gospel 284 Intolerance 303 Irish, Johnny 161, 162, 163 Irons, Jeremy 42, 279 Irving, George 137 Is My Face Red? 361 Isaacs, Jason 280 Isaacs, Sir Rufus 29 Isherwood, Christopher 323 Israel, Harold 126, 127 The Italian 17 It’s Love I’m After 167 Ivanir, Mark 22 Iwerks, Ub 150 Jackson, Chet 69 Jackson, Joseph 160 Jackson, Samuel L. 199 Jacobs, Alexander 155 Jacobs, Diane 311 Jacobson, Lars 370 Jacoby, Michael 320 Jaffe, Sam 265 Jagger, Dean 107, 187 Jailing the Johnston Gang: Bringing Serial Murderers to Justice 235 James, Harry 59 James, “Lefty” 161 James, M.R. 124 Janda, Krystyna 197 Jane, Thomas 221 Janney, William 33 Jannings, Emil 262 Janssen, David 324 Jarecki, Andrew 149 Jaws: film 267, 295; novel 295 The Jazz Singer 162 Jeffries, James J. 232 Jeffries, Oliver 218 “Jen” see Bikowsky, Alfreda Frances Jenkins, Allen 361 Jensen, Robert 173 Jessel, George 63 Jewell, Isabel 361 Jewison, Norman 216 The Jigsaw Man 311 Jiménez, Héctor 60 The Jinx: The Life and Death of Robert Durst 149 Joe Forrester 155 Johansson, Scarlett 360 John Birch Society 350, 351 Johnson, Amy 150 Johnson, Andrew 295, 340 Johnson, Chris 117 Johnson, Erskine 187 Johnson, Jack 232–233, 233, 234

391

Johnson, Liz 237 Johnson, Lyndon 13 Johnson, Nunnally 23 Johnson, Russell 152 Johnson, Tor 100 Johnston, Bruce, Jr. 234, 235 Johnston, Bruce, Sr. 234, 235 Johnston, David 234, 235 Johnston, James 234 Johnston, Norman 234, 235 Jones, Gemma 31 Jolie, Angela 21 Jolson, Al 34, 161, 162, 163, 353 Jones, James Earl 184, 234, 329 Jones, Jennifer 297 Jones, Shirley 343 Jones, Tobias 41 Jones, Tommy Lee 135, 172 Joplin, Janis 221, 235–236 Jordan, Crystal Lee [Crystal Lee Sutton] 236–238 Jordan, Elizabeth 237 Jordan, Larry “Cookie” 236 Joslin, Samuel 19 Joslyn, Allyn 83, 171 Jowett, William 371 Joy, Leatrice 183 Judas Priest 306 Judd, Rainer 193 The Judge Steps Out 121 Juettner, Emerich 238–239 Julien, Claire 12 The Jungle 32 Juran, Nathan 152 Just Imagine 167 Kael, Pauline 57, 222, 322 Kafka, John 294 Kahn, Herman 239 Kahn, Otto 239–240, 240 Kaleka, Amardeep 370 Kalsteadt, Harry 22 Kamenshek, Dorothy “Dottie” 96 Kandel, Aben 170 Kander, John 24 Kane, Eddie 373 Kansas, Rocky 147 Kantor, Mackinlay 49 Kaplan, Bill 273, 274 Kaplan, Jonathan 28 Kapp, Nele 54, 55 Karloff, Boris 98, 124, 359 Karpis, Alvin 42, 43, 129 Karsner, David 231, 344 Kasdan, Lawrence 84 Kasindor, Jeanie 200 Kastle, Leonard 57 Katims, Jason 101 Katselas, Milton 247 Kaufman, George S. 52, 53, 206, 240, 307, 366, 367, 368 Kaufman, Irving 322 Kawakita, Tomoya 240–241 Kaye, John 8 Kazan, Elia 127, 186, 187 Kazan, Nicholas 235 Kearney, Patrick 81, 342 Keaton 242 Keaton, Buster 2, 241–242, 302 Keaton, Diane 115, 314

392

Index

Keaton, Joe 241, 242 Keaton, Myra 241, 242 Keel, Howard 167 Keeler, Leonard 278 Keeler, Ruby 161–162, 163 Keeping Up with the Kardashians 11 Keighley, William 368 Keitel, Harvey 79, 145 Keith, Brian 75 Keith, David 116 Keith, Robert 355 Kellogg, Virginia 338 Kelly, Brian 39 Kelly, Elijah 13 Kelly, Gene 86 Kelly, Grace 354 Kelly, “Machine Gun” 48 Kelly, Nancy 153 Kelly, Paul 43, 162–163, 163 Kelly, Regina 242–243 Kendall, Suzy 331 Kennedy, Arthur 127, 343 Kennedy, John F. 13, 44, 46, 219, 241, 257, 292, 301, 350, 351 Kennedy, Robert F. 156, 174, 216, 351 Kensit, Patsy 190 Kent, Carl 204 Kentis, Chris 267 Kenyon, Charles 139, 231 Kerby, Bill 235 Kercher, Meredith 244, 245 Kerkorian, Kirk 38 Kerouac, Jack 102 Kerr, Deborah 212 Keystone studio 302 KFI (Los Angeles, California) 62 KFSG (Los Angeles, California) 284, 285 KGEF (Los Angeles, California) 332 KGMC (Denver, Colorado) 61 Kibbee, Roland 272 Kiddell, Jimmy 64, 66 Kihss, Peter 322 Kilbourne, Laurette 326 Kiley, Richard 314 Kilgallen, Dorothy 186, 214, 245, 292 Killers of Kilimanjaro 75 Kilmer, Joyce 141 Kilmer, Val 75, 220 Kilroy, Mark J. 114 Kim Philby: The Spy I Loved see A Different Loyalty King, Carol 173 King, Carole 190 King, Ginerva 245–246 King, Henry 265, 297 King, Larry 62 King, Larry L. 166 King, Louis 48, 153 King, Martin Luther 219 King Bros. 139 King Lear 365, 366 King of the Roaring Twenties—The Story of Arnold Rothstein 324 King’s X see Eureka Kingsford, Walter 338 Kingsley, Ben 42 Kinney, Terry 348 Kinsella, W.P. 329 Kirsch, Robert 297

Kiss Me Kate 167 Kitchener, Lord 148 Klein, Calvin 199 Klein, Joe 110 Klein, Robert 75 Kleiner, Harry 347 Kline, Kevin 84, 296 Kluge, R.F. 35, 36 Knapp, Evalyn 352, 353 Knatchbull-Hugessen, Sir Hughe 54 Knebel, Fletcher 351, 352 Knight, Evelyn 19, 20, 21 Knight, Ted 294 Knowles, Beyoncé 189 Knowles, David 108 Knowles, Patric 321 Knowlton, Hollie 169 Knowlton, Jess 168, 169 Knox, Alexander 121 Knox, Amanda 244, 245 Knox, Dr. Robert 90 KOA (Denver, Colorado) 61, 62 Kohl, Helmut 14 Kohn, Abby 101 Kojak 155 Kolbe, Fritz 54 Korando, Russell 135 Korda, Alexander 87 Korda, Zoltan 74 Korder, Howard 198 Korine, Harmony 315, 316 Kostmayer, John “Cos” 84 Kotcheff, Ted 224 Kotzmanis, Spyros 252 Krafft, John W. 25 Kraft, Hy 67, 68 Kraft Television Theater 306 Kramer, Stanley 85, 131, 332 Krasna, Norman 203, 282–283 Krents, Harold 247–248, 248 Kreuger, Ivar 248–249, 249, 250 Kruger, Otto 52, 171 Krupa, Olek 304 KTLA (Los Angeles, California) 164 KTRK (Houston, Texas) 165 Kubrick, Stanley 222, 239, 257, 351 Kürten, Peter 250–251379 Kuwa, George 26 Kyser, Kay 42 LaBute, Neil 199 LaCava, Gregory 97, 316 Ladd, Alan 227, 246 The Ladies’ Companion 320 Lady for a Day 198 La Frenais, Ian 333 The Lake 201 Lake, Frankie 147 Lake, Stuart M. 151–152, 153 Lakeview Terrace 198–199 Lamarr, Hedy 337 Lamas, Fernando 319 Lambert, William 156 Lambrakis, Grigoris 251–253 L’Amour, Louis 287 La Nasa, Katherine 144 Lancaster, Burt 239, 342, 343, 349, 352, 362 Landis, Carole 221 Landis, Deborah Nadoolman 73

Landis, James 173 Landis, Kenesaw Mountain 183 Landru, Henri Désiré 253–254 Landru, Das Blaubart 253 Lane, Mike 100 Lane, Priscilla 163 Lang, Fritz 47, 49, 51, 89, 196, 203– 204, 209, 251 Lang, Otto 277 Lang, Stephen 105 Lang, Walter 288 Langdon, Harry 160, 242 Lange, Jessica 60, 101, 192 Langella, Frank 149 Langley, Adria Locke 269, 270 L’Anglier, Emile 334 Lansbury, Angela 193, 346 Lansky, Meyer 16, 20, 212, 213, 254– 256 LaPaglia, Anthony 138 LaPlante, Laura 289 Lardner, Ring, Jr. 69, 89 Larmoyeux, Mary May 101 La Rosa, Julius 185 Larrimore, Francine 23 Larson, Lee 62 LaRue, Jack 361 LaSalle, Frank 222 Lasker, Albert D. 211, 212 The Last Command 262 Last Days 111 The Last of Sheila 286 The Last Tycoon (novel and film) 345 Laster, Gwendolen 164 Latham, Aaron 209, 210 Latifah, Queen 25 Lattimore, Frank 142 Lau, Andrew 89 Lau, Laura 267 Laughton, Charles 44, 272, 313 Launius, Rod 220 Laura (novel and film) 368 Laurel, Stan 4, 242, 293, 294 Lauren, S.K. 150 Laurents, Arthur 225 Laurie, Joe, Jr. 242 Law, John Phillip 39 Law, Walter 23 Law and Order (1932, 1940 and 1953 film versions) 152 Law and Order (TV series) 369 Lawford, Peter 37, 46 Lawrence, Gertrude 367 Lawrence, Jennifer 20 Lawrence, Jerome 85, 131, 332 Lawrence, Martina see Hirsch, Ruth Maxine Lawrence of Arabia 366 Lawyer Man 160 Lay, Bernie, Jr. 256 Lazoff, Irving 210 Leach, W. Barton 355 Leachman, Cloris 83 A League of Their Own 96–97 Lean, David 337 Lear, William Powell 226 LeBaron, William 293 le Carre, John 115, 310 Lederer, Charles 207, 223 Ledger, Heath 281

Index Lee, Dixie 121–122, 122, 123 Lee, Ivy 210 Lee, Newt 169 Lee, Pinky 212 Lee, Rachel Jungeon 11, 12 Lee, Robert E. (playwright) 83–84, 131, 332 Lee, Rowland V. 98 Lee, Sondra 176 Lee Daniels’ The Butler 13–14 The Legend of Lylah Clare 222 Lehman, Ernest 362 Lehman, Gladys 357 Leibman, Ron 237 Leifermann, Hank 236, 237 Leighton, Margaret 30 Leisner, Kathleen 358 LeMassena, William 60 LeMay, Gen. Curtis 256–257, 257, 351, 352 Lembeck, Harvey 354 Lemke, Dorothy 312 Lemmon, Jack 224 Lenin, Vladimir 87 Lennart, Isobel 33 Lennie, Angus 66 Lennon, John 62, 346, 347 Lenny: film 68–69; play 68 Leonard, Benny 147 Leoni, Tea 372 Leopold, Nathan 131, 257–259 Leopold and Loeb see Leopold, Nathan; Loeb, Richard Lerner, Carl 195 Lerner, Gerda 195 Lerner, Michael 324 Leroy, Joyce “Josh” 119 LeRoy, Mervyn 31, 92, 170 Leslie, Joan 140, 308, 309 Lesser, Maria Ann 330, 331 Let ’Em Have It 139 Leto, Jared 78 Lettieri, Al 15 Letty Lynton (novel and film) 336; see also Dishonored Lady Levin, Harvey 131 Levin, Meyer 259 Levine, Joseph E. 119 Levinson, Barry 308, 339 Levy, Shawn 328 Lewin, Albert 178, 193 Lewis, Anthony 106 Lewis, George 56 Lewis, Iola 330 Lewis, Joseph H. 49 Lewis, Juliette 171 Lewis, Ralph 341 Lewis, Sinclair 167, 285, 341–342 Lewiston [PA] Daily Sun 250 Lewitt, Elliott 235 Lewton, Val 4, 49, 50 Leykis, Tom 62 Leyton, John 66 Liberty magazine 35, 137 Liebowitz, Sam 4 Life magazine 35, 36, 216, 271 The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp 151 Life Begins in College 345 Life of General Francis Marion see The Patriot

Life Plus 99 Years see Leopold, Nathan Lillienthal, David E. 45 Lincoln, Abraham 295, 340, 341 Linden, Eric 183, 325 Lindley, Bill 152 Lindsay, Howard 288 Lindsay, Margaret 361 Lingle, Alfred “Jake” 260–261 Linney, Laura 291 A Lion Is in the Streets: film 270; novel 269–270 Lions Gate 268 Lipman, William R. 43, 48 Liston, Sonny 358 Litel, John 137, 321 Lithgow, John 60 Little Caesar 97–98, 99, 113–114 The Little Drummer Girl 115 The Little Show 217 Litvak, Anatole 110 “Live to Tell” 235 Living It Up see Nothing Sacred Livingston, Margaret 183 Lloyd, Harold 225, 241, 303 lo Bianco, Tony 57 Locke, Katherine 204 Lockhart, R.H. Bruce 87–88 Loder, John 337 Lodijenski, General Theodore [Theodore Lodi] 261–262, 262 Loeb, Allan 273 Loeb, Harold 262, 263 Loeb, Phili 265–266 Loeb, Richard 131, 257–259 Loew, David 178 Loews Inc. 336 Lohan, Lindsay 11, 12 Löhr, Marie 30 Lolita (novel and film versions) 222 Lombard, Carole 202, 217, 224 London, Julie 187 London Evening Standard 363 Lonely Hearts 56–56 Lonely Hearts Bandits 56, 57 Lonergan, Eileen 266–267 Lonergan, Tom 266–267 Long, Huey 268–269, 269, 270 Longworth, Alice Roosevelt 136 Loo, Richard 241 Look Homeward, Angel (novel and film) 364 Look Who’s Laughing 225, 227 “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places” 210 Looking for Mr. Goodbar: film 315– 316; novel 315 Loos, Anita 149, 345 Lopez, Roy, Jr. 11, 12 Lord, Robert 31, 261 Lord of War 77–78 The Lords of Discipline (novel and film) 116 Loren, Sophia 287 Lorre, Peter 150, 251 Losey, Josph 69, 251, 265 Lost City of the Incas 72 The Lost Weekend 110, 123 Lou Grant 93 Loughery, David 198

393

Louisiana Purchase 4 Louisville [KY] Courier-Journal 111, 112 Love and Hisses 362 Love Is a Racket 361 The Love Machine (novel and film) 39 Love Me Forever 114 The Loved One (novel and film) 334 Lovejoy, Frank 107, 204, 256, 257, 301 Lovsky, Celia 327 Lowe, Edward T. 218 Loy, Myrna 331 Lubitsch, Ernst 262 Lucas, George 71 Lucchese, Tommy 14, 15 Luce, Clare Boothe 270, 272 Luce, Henry 207, 270–271, 272 Luciano, Alberto [Pope John Paul I] 14, 17 Luciano, Charles “Lucky” 15, 136– 137, 138, 213, 254 Ludlam, Helen 261 Lugosi, Bela 124 Luhrmann, Baz 246 Lukas, Paul 217, 288 Luketic, Robert 273 Lumet, Sidney 36, 37, 87, 239, 322 Lund, Lucille 124 Lundy, William 276 Lunt, Alfred 167, 367 Lupino, Ida 140, 308, 309, 309 Lust for Life 178 Lynch, David 76 Lynch, Pat 105 Lyndon, Barré 149 Lynn, Hilary 303 Lynn, Jeffrey 141, 163 Lynn, Judy 67 Lyon, Ben 305 Lyon, Sue 222 Lyons, Leonard 210, 293 M: 1951 film 251; 1931 film 196, 251 Ma, Jeff 272–275 Ma Barker’s Killer Brood 43 MacArthur, Charles 42, 50, 201, 202, 223, 224, 370, 371 Macaulay, Richard 163 MacBride, Donald 140 MacDonald, Joe 354 MacDonald, Ramsay 274, 274, 275 MacDougall, Ranald 72 MacFadden, Bernarr 276 MacFadden, Hamilton 103 MacGinnis, Niall 124 Machinal 191 MacKellar, Helen 183 MacKendrick, Alexander 362 MacLaine, Shirley 140 MacLane, Barton 47 MacLean, Alastair 89 Maclean, Donald 310 MacMahon, Aline 32, 161, 344 MacMurray, Fred 129, 150, 192 The Macomber Affair 74–75 The Mad Genius 138 Madden, Owney 99, 233 Madeleine 337 Madonna 235

394

Index

The Magician: film 124; novel 123– 124 Magnum Force 348 Mahon, Barry 66 Mahoney, Jock 75 Maibaum, Richard 75, 158, 227, 272 Mailer, Norman 108, 229 Mainwaring, Daniel 153 Majczek, Frank 277 Majczek, Joseph 276–277 Majczek, Tillie 276–277 Majorino, Tina 188, 189 Malamud, Bernard 339 Malden, Karl 127, 215 Malick, John 342 Malick, Terrence 173 Malone, Dorothy 152, 219 Maloney, Thomas 156 Maltin, Leonard 145 Maltz, Albert 89 Mamet, David 31 The Man-Eaters of Tsavo see Bwana Devil; Killers of Kilimanjaro The Man in the Golden Mask 60 Man on a String 294–295 Man on a Swing 76–77 “Man on the Ledge” see Fourteen Hours The Man Who Came to Dinner: film 366, 368; play 366, 367–368 The Man Who Dared 2, 103 The Man Who Talked Too Much 161 Mandan, Robert 166 Mandel, Babaloo 96 Mandel, Loring 44 Mandy, Richard 202 Mane, Gucci 316 Manhattan Melodrama 138, 139 Manhunter 145; see also Red Dragon Mankiewicz, Herman 53, 205–206, 207, 208, 231, 232, 262 Mankiewicz, Joseph L. 55, 62, 64, 226, 331 Mankiewicz, Tom 227 Mann, Anthony 257 Mann, Daniel 133 Mann, Erika 196, 197 Mann, Hank 302 Mann, Klaus 196–197 Mann, Leslie 12 Mann, Michael 145 Mann, Thomas 196 Manners, David 124, 286 Manning, Marilyn 173 Mannix, Daniel P. 75 Mantegna, Joe 16 Mantle, Mickey 154 Marcari, Don 117, 118 March, Fredric 51, 53, 78, 86, 132, 215, 224 March, Joseph Moncure 28 The March of Time 272 Marchadier, Marie-Thérèse 253 Marcinkiewicz, Ted 276, 277, 278 Marcus, Cyril 278–279 Marcus, Stewart 278–279 Marion, Frances 260 Marion, Francis 280, 280, 281 The Mark of Zorro 296 Marked Woman 136–137

Markowitz, Ben 9, 10 Markowitz, Jeff 9, 10 Markowitz, Nick 9–11 Markowitz, Susan 9, 10, 11 Markson, Ben 318 Marmor, Lenny 125 Marquand, John P. 272 Marquis, Jack 256 Marsh, Jean 178 Marsh, Marian 357 Marshall, E.G. 65, 149, 278 Marshall, George (director) 129 Marshall, Herbert 148, 150 Marshall, James 118 Marshall, Penny 96, 329 Marshall, Rob 25 Martin, Charles 327 Martin, Dean 133 Martin, Dewey 215 Martinez, Alberto 134, 135 Martinez, Alpo 158, 159 Martinez, Ramiro 359 Martino, Al 14 Marx, Chico 239, 265, 345 Marx, Groucho 63, 239, 282–283, 345 Marx, Harpo 239, 345, 367 Marx, Miriam 282, 283 Marx, Samuel 352 Mason, James 55, 78, 356 Massar, JP 273 Massey, Herbert Martin 64, 65 Mastandrera, Valerio 245 Masterson, Mary Stuart 235 Masterson, Peter 166 Mata Hari 330, 331 The Match King: film 248, 249–250; novel 248, 249 Mathews, Bob 60 Mathews, George 215 Matinee 102 Matthau, Walter 224, 239 Matthews, Jennifer Lynne 71 Matthews, Joyce 292 Matthews, Kerwin 294 Mature, Victor 153 Maugham, Somerset 123, 150, 177, 178 Maupin, Armistead 348 Maurey, Nicole 73 Maxwell, Ian Robert 283–284 Mayer, Jane 71 Mayer, Louis B. 203, 204, 207, 242 Mayersberg, Paul 255 Mayes, Wendell 44 Mayfair, Mitzi 221 Mayo, Archie 139 Mayo, Virginia 140 Mays, Daniel 334 Mazeppa 287 McAdams, Rachel 101 McBride, Chi 298 McCain, Cilla 135 McCambridge, Mercedes 270 McCarthy, Dennis 247 McCarthy, Fiona 192, 193 McCarthy, Joseph 44, 45, 362 McCarty, Mary 24 McClintic, Guthrie 336 McCollim, Gary 21, 143

McConaughey, Matthew 180 McCormick, Harold Fowler 206–207 McCourt, Elizabeth “Baby Doe” 344, 345; see also Tabor, H.A.W. McCoy, Horace 43, 48, 150 McCoy, Houston 359 McCracken, Joan 60 McCrea, Joel 140 McCulley, Johnston 296 McDaniel, James 200 McFadden, Elizabeth 357 McGee, Ernest 160 McGillis, Kelly 28, 128 McGovern, George 79 McGregor, Ewan 19, 73, 105, 111 McGuire, Dorothy 239 McGuire, James P. 276, 277 McGuire, Tucker 83 McGuire, William Anthony 361 McIntyre, John 333 McKellar, Kenneth 44, 45 McKelway, St. Clair 238 McKenna, Aline Brosh 363 McKinney, Helen Benzinger 82 McNamara, James 130 McNamara, John 130 McNamara, Robert 73, 350 McPhaul, Jack 276, 277–278 McPherson, Aimee Semple 284, 284, 285–286, 333, 342 McPherson, Harold 284 McQueen, Steve 65, 66, 266, 347, 348 Mdivani, Prince Alexis 228 Mecht, Gabriel 304 Medford, Harold 214 Medina, Harold 216 Meehan, John 285, 319, 336 Meeker, Ralph 133 Meier, Shane 188 Melville Goodwin, USA see Top Secret Affair Memoirs of a British Agent see British Agent The Men Who Stare at Goats 40, 104– 105 Men Without Names 129 Mencken, H.L. 86, 360 Mendes, Lothar 150 Mengers, Sue 286 Menicori, Ranieri 245 Menjou, Adolphe 24, 53–54, 223 Menken, Adah Isaacs 286–287 Menken, Alexander Isaacs 287 Mephisto (novel and film) 197 Mercer, Johnny 67 Merchant, Vivien 42 Merchant-Ivory 167 Mercouri, Melina 230 Meredith, Burgess 45, 58, 158 Meredith, James 350 Meredyth, Bess 368 Merman, Ethel 176, 288 Mesta, George 287 Mesta, Perle 45, 287–288 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) 2, 3, 38, 39, 49, 51, 82, 83, 139, 203, 204, 206, 207, 218, 242, 249, 260, 261, 269, 331, 335–336, 337, 345, 370, 371–372

Index Metz, Robert 38 Meyer, August 172 Meyers, Jonathan Rhys 78 Meyers, Victor 289, 289, 290 Mezrich, Ben 273 Miami New Times 330 Michaelovich, Grand Duke Alexander 371 Michel, Anneliese 290–291 Middleton, Charles 97 Middleton, Robert 215 Midler, Bette 221, 222, 236 Mifsud, “Big Frank” 334 Mighty Joe Young 100 Miles, A.D. 94 Milestone, Lewis 223, 224, 353 Milius, John 348 Milland, Ray 107 Millard, Chanti Jawan 69, 70 Miller, Arthur 201, 293 Miller, George 188 Miller, Gilbert 336 Miller, Robin 234 Miller, William “Skeets” 111, 112–113 Miller, Winston 153 Mills, Eleanor Reinhardt 180–181, 182–183, 191 Milton, Edna 165, 166 Milton, Joyce 322 Mindhunter 145 Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit 145 Minnelli, Liza 25, 323 Minnelli, Vincente 49–51 Minow, Newton 38 The Miracle Woman 285–286 Miramar Naval Air Station 128 Miranda, Carlos 12 Mirisch, Harold 65 Mirisch, Walter 65 The Mirror Crack’d 345–346 The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side 345 Missing Witnesses 137 Mr. Deeds Goes to Town 368 Mr. District Attorney (radio, film and TV series) 137 Mister 880 238–239 Mr. Moto Takes a Chance 150 Mitchell, Cameron 153 Mitchell, Rhada 144 Mitchell, Thomas 73, 209 Mitchell, William 246 Mitchum, Robert 158, 313 Mizener, Arthur 246 Mizner, Wilson 316 “Moanin’ Low” 217, 218 Mob-Style 159 Mobsters 324 Moffit, Ivan 297 Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Shah 298 Mohr, Gerald 89 Molina, Alfred 220 Molly and Me see The Goldbergs Monahan, William 88 Monash, Paul 306 Mong, William V. 357 Monks, John, Jr. 142, 149 Monogram Pictures 139 Monroe, Marilyn 292–293

Monsieur Verdoux 254 Montana, Lenny 15 Montand, Yves 252 Montez, Maria 320 Montgomery, David 79 Montgomery, George 24 Montgomery, Robert 202, 215, 336 Monuments Men 350 The Moon and Sixpence: film and TV drama 178; novel 177–178 Moore, A. Harry 92 Moore, Bill 304 Moore, Colleen 223 Moore, Demi 117 Moore, Grace 114 Moore, Julianne 145, 220 Moore, Mandy 94 Moore, Michael 293 Moore, Robin 154, 166 Moorehead, Agnes 355 Moorehead, Jim 9 Morales, Esai 159 Moran, George “Bugs” 99 Moran, Lois 26, 297 More, Thomas F. 35, 36 More Than a Secretary 276 Moreau, Jeanne 350 Moretti, Willie 14, 15 Morgan, Al 186, 187 Morgan, Dennis 308, 309 Morgan, Frank 353 Morgan, Harry 164 Morgan, Ralph 208 Morgan, Russ 187 Morgan, Tanya 359 Morison, Patricia 48 Morley, Karen 98, 251 Morley, Robert 334 Morris, Chester 137, 139 Morris, Errol 179 Morris, Mary 357 Morris, Wesley 199 Morrissey, John 311 Morros, Boris 293–295 Morrow, Barry 307–308 Morton, Gary 69 Morton, Samuel “Nails” 147 Mostel, Zero 265, 266 Mother’s Millions 194 The Mouthpiece (play and film) 160– 161 Mowbray, Alan 153 Mowday, Bruce 235 Moynihan, Bridget 78 Moyzisch, Ludwig 54, 55 Mudd, Dr. Samuel 295 Muir, Jean 33 Müller, Jens 64, 66 Müller, Nils R. 66 Mulligan, Carey 247 Mulworthy, Jake 115 Mundus, Frank 295–296 Muni, Paul 31, 32, 91, 92, 98, 113 Munir, Mazhar 40 Murder by Numbers 259–260 Murder in Baker Company 135 The Murder of Mary Phagan 170 “Murders in the Rue Morgue” 320 Murdoch, Rupert 283, 296 Murfin, Jane 150

395

Murietta, Joaquin 296 Murphy, George 361 Murphy, Gerald 296–297 Murphy [Donnelly], Honoria 297 Murphy, Mary 215 Murphy, Ralph 129 Murphy, Richard 127, 131, 259 Murphy, Sara 296–297 Murray, Bill 8, 350 Music Television (MTV) 315 Mute Witness see Bullitt My Darling Clementine 153 My Dear Children 54 My Favorite Year 94, 167 “My Man” 34 “My Secret Love” 189, 190 My Ten Years as a Communist see Man on a String My Wonderful World of Slapstick 242 “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (short story) 320 The Mystery of Marie Roget (1942 film) 320–321 Mystery of the Wax Museum 120 Nabokov, Vladimir 222 Nabors, Jim 166 Na Champassak, Prince Raymond Doan Vinh 229 Nacho Libre 60 Nadeau, Barbie Latza 245 Nairn, Geoffrey 266, 267 Naish, J. Carrol 43, 48, 88 Naked Fear 143 Napier, Alan 368 Nash, Eddie 220 Nash, Marilyn 254 Nasseri, Mehran Karimi 298 Nathanson, Jeff 298 Natick [MA] Bulletin 118 National Broadcasting Company (NBC) 67, 68, 82, 112, 178, 306 National Geographic 71, 72 The Natural: film 339–340; novel 339 Natural Born Killers 171 Naturile, Salvatore 35, 36, 37 Navarette, Mario 134, 135 Neal, Patricia 164, 187 Needham, Hal 75 Negley, Howard 56 Neiers, Alexis 11, 12 Neiers, Gabby 11, 12 Neill, Sam 101 Nelson, Tim Blake 243 Netflix 145 Nettleship, John 299 Nettleton, Lois 166 New School of Social Research 305 New York Daily News 191, 314 The New York Hat 149 New York Herald Tribune 196, 285 New York Mirror 360, 363 New York Sun 320 New York Times 93, 306 New York World 105, 366 The New Yorker 71, 271 Newman, Paul 176, 215 Newman, Walter 112 Niccol, Andrew 77, 78

396

Index

Nicholas II, Czar 2, 370; see also Feodorova, Czarina Alexandra Nichols, Dudley 103, 287 Nichols, Mike 140 Nicholson, Jack 89, 117, 192, 235 Nickelodeon 75, 149 Nicol, Alex 152 Nietzche, Frederich 131, 258 Night Heat 155 The Night Mayor 352–353, 353 The Night of January Sixteenth (play and film) 250 Night of the Demon 124–125 Night of the Hunter (novel and film) 313 A Night to Remember 83 Nijinsky, Vaslav 138 Niland, Pete 299 Niland Brothers (Edward, Frederick [Fritz], Preston, Robert) 299 Nipsel, Marcus 180 Nitti, Frank 104 Nixon, Richard M. 13, 45, 79, 216, 300, 301 No Easy Day see Zero Dark Thirty Noel, Joey 324 Nolen, Ballard 215 Nolen, Wayne 214–215 Noonan, Fred 150 Norma Rae 237 Normand, Mabel 301, 302, 303 Norris, Edward 130, 170, 171 Norris, Roy 145 North, Edmund H. 58, 336 North, Neil 30, 31 Northam, Jeremy 31 Northern Sky magazine 346 Norton, Inez 325 Nosenko, Yuri 21, 22 Nothing Sacred 224 Novak, Kim 345 Now I’ll Tell: book 325; film 323, 325 “Un nuevo dia brillára” 18 Nugent, Elliott 160 Nype, Russell 288 Oakes, Sir Harry 254, 255–256 Oates, Warren 139, 174 Obama, Barack 13, 70 O’Bannion, Dion 260 Oboler, Arch 75 O’Brien, Edmond 307 O’Brien, George 152 O’Brien, Jack 328 O’Brien, Pat 141, 223, 333 O’Brien, W.W. 23 O’Connor, Donald 288 O’Connor, Robert Emmet 147 O’Day, Nell 321 Odets, Clifford 362 O’Donnell, Cathy 48 O’Donnell, Dick 26 O’Donoghus, Colin 41 Office of Strategic Services (OSS) 21, 89–90, 142; see also Central Intelligence Agency Ogden, Malvina Belle 31 O’Grady, Scott 303–304 O’Hanlon, George 212 Oil! see There Will Be Blood

Okay America! 361 O’Keefe, Dennis 337 O’Keefe, Tim 359 O’Keeffe, Michael 243 Oland, Warner 27 Oliver, Vic 305 Olivier, Sir Laurence 168, 178, 201, 305 On the Road 102 Onassis, Aristotle 305, 306, 328 Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy 305, 306 Once in a Lifetime 307 Once Is Not Enough: film 82, 229– 230; novel 229 One Life to Live 316 One More Victim: The Life and Death of an American Nazi 93 O’Neal, Louis 203 O’Neal, Ryan 149, 372 O’Neal, Tatum 149 Ono, Yoko 346 “An Open Letter to General Hershey” see Krents, Harold Open Water 267–268 Ophuls, Max 196, 225, 226 Oppenheimer, J. Robert 89 Orbach, Jerry 24, 175, 176 Ordinary Decent Criminals 95–96 Ordóñez, Cayetano 262, 264 The Oregonian 156 O’Reilly, Bill 293 Ormiston, Kenneth 285 Ormsby, Alan 180 Ornitz, Samuel 183 Orr, Mary 62, 63, 64 Ortiz, Peter 142 Orzazewski, Kasia 278 Osborn, John Jay, Jr. 355 Osborne, John 305 Osborne, Thomas Mott 160 Osborne, Vivienne 191 Osbourne Naval College 29 O’Sullivan, Maureen 361 O’Sullivan, Thaddeus 95 Oswald, Lee Harvey 255, 351 O’Toole, Annette 188 O’Toole, Peter 167, 366 Otto, Hans 253 Our Mrs. McChesney 52 Our Town 201, 202 Oursler, Fulton 127 Ouspenskaya, Maria 321 The Outlaw 225, 226, 227 Overman, Lynne 24, 48 Oviri 178 Owens, Tim “Ripper” 306 Oyelowo, Daniel 13 Paar, Jack 363 Pachall, John 242, 243 Pacino, Al 17, 36, 37, 255, 347, 372, 373 Pagano, Jo 204, 286 Page, Geneviève 365 Paid in Full 159 Paige, Janis 360 Paige, Leroy “Satchel” 183, 184 Pain & Gain 330 Palance, Jack 140

Paley, William S. 38 Pallana, Kumar 298 Pallette, Eugene 25, 318 Palmer, Leland 60 Panama Hattie 176 Panetta, Leon 71 Papa, Vincent 15 Papandreaou, Premier George 251 Papas, Irene 253 The Paper Chase: film 356; novel 355–356 Papich, Sam 21 Paramount Pictures 4, 43, 53, 81, 106, 112, 122, 129, 138, 209, 215, 221, 256, 282, 293, 322, 325, 336 Park, E.L. 27 Parker, Bonnie 46–49 Parker, Dorothy 123 Parker, Eleanor 164 Parker, Oliver 193 Parker, Col. Tom 306, 307 Parlo, Dita 330 Parsons, Lindsley 157 Parsons, Louella 53, 90, 286, 307 Partisan Review 271 Parton, Dolly 166 Partos, Frank 110 Partridge, Audrina 11 Pascal, Ernest 303 The Past of Mary Holmes 183; see also The Goose Woman Pathé Pictures 207 Patinkin, Mandy 322 Patrick, Dorothy 56 Patrick, Gail 325 The Patriot (1928) 262 The Patriot (2000) 280, 281–282 Patterson, Frances 74 Patterson, John Henry 73–75 Patton, Will 243 Paul of Greece (king) 252 Paulson, Cindy 143–144 Pavlova, Anna 138 Pavy, Judge Benjamin 269 Pawley, Edward 342 Paxton, John 354 Payne, Daniel 319, 320 Payne, John 202 Peardon, Patricia 215 Peay, Austin 331 Peck, Gregory 75, 199 Peek, Fran 307, 308 Peek, Kim 307–308 Pegler, Westbrook 93 Peña, Michael 20 Pendergrast, Oaklee 19 Pendleton, Aidan 188 Pendleton, Nat 345 Penhall, Joe 145 Penman, Lea 156–157 Penn, Arthur 49, 173 Penn, Christopher 235 Penn, Sean 235, 270 Penn, Zak 304 People I Know 372–373 Peppard, George 226 Pepper, Cynthia 310 Pepper, Jack 308, 309, 310 Percy, Charles 359 Peretz, Susan 36

Index “The Perfect Case” see Boomerang Perkins, Anthony 180, 286 Perkins, Maxwell 364, 365 Perkins, Osgood 98, 113 Perlman, Ron 358 Perrin, Jacques 252 Perrine, Valerie 68 Perry, Frank 76 Persons in Hiding: book 43, 48; film 48–49 Pesci, Joe 22, 89, 125, 256 Peters, Jean 226 Petersen, William 145 The Petrified Forest 139–140 Petrovich, Iván 124 Petty, Lori 96 Pfeiffer, Pauline 264; see also Hemingway, Ernest Phagan, Mary 169, 170, 171 “Phantom Fame” see The HalfNaked Truth 318 The Phenix City Story 156 Phifer, Mekhi 159 The Philadelphia Story (play and film) 271 Philby, Aileen 310 Philby, Kim 22, 310–311 Philco Television Playhouse 65 Philips, Mary 192, 282 Philips, Stevie 166 Phillips, David 311 Phillips, John McCandlish 93 Phoenix, Joaquin 84 Phoenix, Summer 94 Physical Culture magazine 276 Picasso, Pablo 296 Pick a Star 138 Pickford, Jack 182 Pickford, Mary 313 The Picture of Dorian Gray: film versions 193; novel 192–193 Picture Snatcher 192 Piddock, Jim 311 Pidgeon, Matthew 31 Pidgeon, Rebecca 31 Pidgeon, Walter 45, 50 Pierce, Augusta 343, 343 Pierce, Bruce 61 Pierce, Don 176 Pierson, Frank R. 36, 37, 176 Pileggi, Nicholas 125 Pilot #5 269 Pinchot, Rosamund 201–202 Pine, Chris 168 Pinter, Harold 42, 366 Pirie, John T. 246 Pitt, Michael 111, 259 Pitts, Jacob 274 Piven, Jeremy 157 Pizarro, Francisco 71 Pizzitola, Louis 207 A Place in the Sun 81–82; see also An American Tragedy Platt, Louise 202 Platt, Polly 359 Playboy magazine 135 Playhouse 90 288 Pleasence, Donald 65 Pleshette, Suzanne 365 Plowright, Joan 305

Plummer, Amanda 322 Plummer, Christopher 39, 347 Poe, Edgar Allan 26, 124, 320, 321 Poitier, Sidney 199, 200 Polanski, Roman 73 Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorium 41 Poole, William “Bill the Butcher” 311 Pop, Iggy 111 Porch, Colleen 369 Porter, Cole 167, 296, 297 Porter, Donnell 159 Porter, Rich 158, 159 Portland Exposé 156–157 Post, C.W. 311 Postcards from the Edge (novel and film) 140 The Postman Always Rings Twice: 1946 and 1982 film versions 192; novel and play 191–192 Potter, H.C. 272 Powder River 153–154 Powell, Colin 13 Powell, Dick 50, 289, 290 Powell, Jane 37 Powell, William 160, 218, 262, 319, 324 Powell and Pressburger 138 Power, Tyrone 34, 35, 264, 296 The Power and the Glory 311–312 Powers, Harry 312–313 Powers, Lucille 312 Pratt, Purnell 191 Preminger, Otto 44, 46, 75, 368 Prentiss, Ed 294 The President Vanishes 208, 288 Presley, Brian 115 Presley, Elvis 306, 307 Presser, J.C. 354 Pressley, Graham 9, 10 Pressman, Edward 62 Preston, Robert 74, 250 Prevost, Marie 357 Price, Vincent 209, 366 Primary Colors (novel and film) 110– 111 Prince, Harold 60 Prisoner of Shark Island 295 The Prizefighter and the Lady 99 Profaci, Joseph 17, 174, 175, 176 Profile in Terror see The Sadist Prosky, Robert 116 Proud Flesh see All the King’s Men Prugo, Nicholas 11, 12 Pryce, Jonathan 90, 283 Pryor, Roger 360 Psycho: film 180; novel 179–180 The Public Enemy 147 Public Enemy’s Wife 139 Public Hero #1 139, 140 Pulitzer, Joseph 205 Punch-Drunk Love 311 Purcell, Gertrude 53, 352 Purvis, Melvin 138 Putnam, George 150 Puzo, Mario 14, 16, 213, 255 Pyle, Ernie 158 Quaid, Dennis 94, 210 Quartet 167

397

Queen, Ellery 55 Queen of the Mob 43 Quine, Richard 241 Quinn, Anthony 178, 287, 305 Quinn, Roseann 313–315 Rabe, Lily 149 Racket Busters 137 Radio Days 164–165 Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) 100 Radosh, Ronald 322 Rafaelson, Bob 192, 235 Raff, Riff [Horst Simco] 315, 315, 316 Raffalovich, Marc-Andre 192–193 Raffin, Deborah 229 Raft, George 99, 138, 213 Raiders of the Lost Ark 71, 73 Railsback, Steve 180 Rain 150 Rain Man 307, 308 Rains, Claude 170, 171, 338, 368 Ramsaye, Terry 232 Rand, Ayn 250, 369 Randall, Tony 86 Randolph, Col. R.I. 260 Random Hand 347 Rasputin, Grigori 2, 3, 370, 371, 372 Rasputin and the Empress 2–3, 370, 370, 371–372 Ratoff, Gregory 34, 35, 53 Rattigan, Terrence 29–30, 31 Ravetch, Irving 237 Ray, Nicholas 48 Raye, Martha 221–222, 254 Rea, Stephen 69, 90 Reader’s Digest 168, 277 Reagan, Nancy 14 Reagan, Ronald 13, 14, 79, 152, 256 The Real Rocky 358 Reckless 218 Red Alert see Dr. Strangelove Red Channels 266 Red Dragon (novel and film) 145; see also Manhunter Red Meat see I Loved a Woman The Red Shoes 138 Redford, Robert 176, 246, 324, 339 Redgrave, Michael 275 Redgrave, Vanessa 115 Redina, Victor 15 Redmayne, Eddie 21 Reed, Alan, Sr. 365 Reed, Carol 87 Reed, Donna 139 Reed, Tom 152 Reichenbach, Harry 316, 317(caption), 318 Reicher, Frank 338 Reid, Hal 170 Reid, Harry 125 Reid, Tara 146 Reid, Wallace 193 Reilly, Bruce 243 Reilly, John C. 25 Reilly, Sidney 87 Reiner, Carl 242 Reiner, Rob 117 Reischer, Walter 83 Reiser, Will 318 Reisner, Dean 348

398

Index

Remsen, Bert 48 Renbourn, John 346 Renner, Jerry 20 Reno, Janet 88 Reno, Jean 60 Renz, Father Arnold 291 Republic Pictures 56, 57, 336 Requiem 292 Resnais, Alain 339 Return of the Jedi 140 Return with Honor see O’Grady, Scott The Revenge of Tarzan 318 Revenge with Music 218 Reventlow, Lance 228 Revere, Anne 357 Revkin, Andrew C. 306 Rex, Nick 318 Rey, Fernando 328 Reynolds, Burt 75, 166, 220, 224, 328 Reynolds, Christopher Smith “Topper” 217, 218, 219 Reynolds, Debbie 83, 140 Reynolds, Helene 24 Reynolds, Jonathan 224 Reynolds, Quentin 277 Reynolds, William 131 Reynolds, Zachary Smith 216, 217, 219 Rhine, Joseph B. 76 Rhys, Jean 167 Rice, Condoleeza 13 Rice, Ella Botts 226 Rich, Mike 329 Richardson, Ralph 75 Richardson, Tony 305, 334 Rickey, Carrie 189 Rickles, Don 176 Rickman, Alan 13 Riggs, “Speed” 211 Ring magazine 358 Riskin, Robert 239, 285 Risky Business (1939) see Okay America! Ritchard, Cyril 30 The Rite (book and film) 41–42, 290 Ritt, Martin 234, 237, 238, 265, 310 Ritter, Thelma 83 Ritz, Sally 120 Ritz Brothers 345 Rivera, Chita 24 Rivers, Ed 90 RKO Radio Pictures 3, 50, 121, 137, 150, 183, 207, 225, 264, 327, 361 Roach, Hal 293 The Roaring Twenties 163, 198 Robards, Jason, Jr. 297 Robarge, David 21, 143 Robbins, Harold 44, 119, 168, 226, 229, 255, 328, 329 Robbins, Mathew 184 Rober, Richard 164 Roberts, Clete 295 Roberts, John 9, 10 Robertson, Cliff 76, 301 Robinson, Andy 347 Robinson, Casey 74, 209 Robinson, David 233 Robinson, Edward G. 97, 98, 113, 137, 161, 230, 231, 344

Robinson, Jackie 183, 184 Robinson, Phil Alden 329 Robson, Mark 100 Robson, May 25, 194, 336 Rocca, Ray 21 Rocco, Alex 214 Rock, Georgia 12 Rock Star 306 The Rocketeer 167 Rockford Peaches 96 Rocky 358 Rocky III 358 Rodat, Robert 280, 299 Roddam, Franc 116 Rodgers, Richard 353 Rodine, Odile 328 Roeg, Nicolas 255 Rogers, Earl 130, 159, 160, 318–319 Rogers, Ginger 23, 225, 308, 309– 310 Rogers, Lela 308, 309 Rogers, Mary Cecilia 319–320 Rogers, Will 184, 185, 186, 187, 262 Rogers, Will, Jr. 185 Roizman, Owen 155 Roland, Gilbert 50 Rolling Stone magazine 8 Rolph, James 203 Roman, Ruth 164 Romero, Cesar 129, 130, 153 Ronson, Jon 104, 105 Room Service (play and film) 265 Roosevelt, Eleanor 45, 108, 228 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 44, 45, 102, 103, 104, 120, 141, 185, 268, 300, 352, 367 Root, Stephen 105 Root, Wells 139 Rope: film 259; play 258–259 Rorimer, James 349, 350 The Rose 221, 235–236 Rose, Anikia Noni 189 Rose, Billy 34, 202 Rose of Washington Square 34–35 Rose Marie 67 Rosemond, Clinton 170 Rosen, Phil 320 Rosenbaum, Ron 279 Rosenberg, Bernard 208 Rosenberg, Ethel 321, 321, 322 Rosenberg, Julius 321, 321, 322 Rosenberg [Meerpohl], Richard 321 Rosenberg [Meerpohl], Robert 321 Rosenberg, Stuart 176 The Rosenberg File 322, 323 Rosenthal, A.M. 93 Rosenthal, Frank “Lefty” 125, 126 Rosenthal, Geraldine 125 Ross, George 202 Ross, Harold 366 Ross, Herbert 286 Ross, Jean 323 Ross, Josephine 209 Ross, Ted 184 Rossdale, Gavin 12 Rossen, Robert 136, 137, 163, 170 Rossetti, Daniel Gabrielle 287 Rossner, Judith 314, 315 Rotarian magazine 127 Rothchild, Paul A. 236

Rothstein, Arnold 160, 323–325 Rothstein, Carolyn Green 324, 325 Rourke, Mickey 216 Rouse, Russell 164 Rowell, Victoria 70 Rowling, Joanne K. 299 Roxie Hart 23–24; see also Chicago The Royal Family 52–53, 201 The Royal Family of Broadway 51, 53 Royal Wedding 37 Royle, Serena 214 Ruben, Albert 155 Ruben, J. Walter 139 Rubinstein, Andre 326 Rubinstein, Dmitri 326 Rubinstein, Serge 325–327 Rubirosa, Porfirio 229, 327–329 Ruffalo, Mark 347 Rugge, Jesse 9, 10 Rumsfeld, Donald 136 Run River records 346 Runyon, Damon 190, 324 Ruskin, Harry 192 Russell, David O. 19 Russell, Don 173 Russell, Jane 225, 226 Russell, Rosalind 150, 208, 218, 223, 224, 288 Russell, Theresa 94 Russell, William D. 282 Ruth, Babe 58 Ryan, Blanchard 267, 268 Ryan, Edmon 164 Ryan, Katherine 204 Ryan, Paddy “The Bear” 147 Ryan, Robert 226 Rydell, Mark 236 Ryskind, Morrie 240 Sacco, Nicola 121 Sacco and Vanzetti see Sacco, Nicola; Vanzetti, Bartolomeo Sackler, Howard 233, 234 Sacks, Oliver 329 The Sadist 173 Sage, Anna 138 Sage, Jerry 66 St. Clair, Mal 302 St. George, William Ross 280 St. John, Jill 297 St. Johns, Adela Rogers 318, 319 Saint Johnson 152 Sakata, Harold 158 Salamme, “Cadillac Frank” 88 Salazar, Ruben 8 Sales, Nancy Jo 12 Salinger, J.D. 329–330 Salisbury, Chas 9, 10 Salt, Frank 309 Salt, Waldo 175, 251, 271 Die Sammlung 196 Sampson, Wayne 234, 235 Samuels, Charles 294 Samuels, Lesser 112 San Diego Tribune 128 San Francisco Examiner 205 San Simeon 207, 208 Sánchez, Sergio G. 18 Sanders, George 62, 178, 193, 209, 288, 327

Index Sandler, Adam 311 Sands, Tommy 306, 307 Santell, Alfred 121 Sarandon, Chris 36 Sarandon, Susan 135 Sarris, Andrew 36, 329 Sartzetakis, Christos 251, 252 Saturday Evening Post 183 Saturday Night Fever 209–210 Saunders, John Monk 261 Savalas, Telly 155 Savelli, Guy 104, 105 Savinar, Tad 61 Saving Private Ryan 299 Sawyer, Joe 153 The Saxon Charm 202 Sayre, Joel 354 Scandal Sheet 106 Scarface (1932 film) 98–99, 113 Scarface (1983 film) 158 Schaaf, Ernie 100 Schaffner, Franklin J. 301 Schary, Dore 49 Scheider, Roy 60, 155 Scheihauer, Bernard 65 Schepisi, Fred 200 Scheuer, Michael 71 Schillaci, Sophie 247 Schiller, Marc 330 Schmidt, Hans-Christian 292 Schnee, Charles 48, 49, 50 Scholl, Danny 67 The School for Scandal 206 Schrader, Paul 79 Schragmüller, Elsbeth 330–331 Schreiber, Liev 358 Schroeder, Barbet 259 Schuer, Elmer 214, 215 Schulberg, Budd 50, 100, 185–186, 187 Schulberg, J.P. 50 Schultz, Dutch 136, 324 Schuster, Max 106 Schwartz, Stephen 60 SciZone 77 Scofield, Paul 349 Scopes, John 85, 132, 331–332 Scorsese, Martin 57, 69, 79, 88, 89, 125, 175, 311 Scott, Allan 272 Scott, George C. 257 Scott, Lizabeth 63 Scott, Martha 215 Scott, Randolph 153 Scott, Ridley 145 Scott, Tony 128, 168, 169 Scourby, Alexander 294 Scripps-Howard 106 Seabury, Judge Samuel 352 A Seal Called Andre 188 The Search for Beauty 276 Sears, Fred F. 108 Seay, James 43 Seattle Today 135 Sebold, William G. 148, 149 Second Chorus 294 Secret of the Incas 71, 72–73 The Secret Six 97–98, 98, 99, 260– 261 Sedway, Moe 213

See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War Against Terrorism 40 Seeley, Blossom 62 Seff, Manuel 360 Segal, George 315 Seiler, Lewis 152 Seitz, George B. 47 Sellers, Peter 351 Selznick, David O. 49–50, 51, 224, 297 Selznick, Lewis J. 50 Semple, Robert 284 Semprún, Jorge 251 A Senate Journal 45 Sennett, Mack 25, 301, 302, 303, 343 El Señor Tormenta 59 September Morn 316 Serling, Rod 351, 352 Sessions, John 22 Setz, Val 153 Seven Days in May: film 351–352; novel 351 The Seven-Ups 155 Sex and the Single Girl 82 Seydell, Mildred 332 Seyfried, Amanda 10 Shalhoub, Tony 330 The Shamrock and the Rose 167 Sharif, Omar 33 Sharkey, Jack 99 Shaw, Irwin 308, 310 Shaw, Robert 267, 295 Shaw, Stan 184 Shearer, Moira 138 Shearer, Norman 319, 345 Sheehan, Winfield 121 Sheekman, Arthur 133, 282, 288 Sheen, Martin 139, 173 Sheldon, Edward 335, 336 Shelley, Joshua 265 Shepherd, Cybill 79 Sheridan, Anne 368 Sherlock Holmes (character) 25–26 Sherman, Lowell 163 Sherman, Vincent 214, 308, 310 Sherwood, Robert E. 139 Sheward, David 233 Ship of Fools 346 Shire, Talia 16 Shoeless Joe see Field of Dreams Shoot the Works 361 “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” 73, 74; see also The Macomber Affair The Show of Shows 97 Show People 343 Show Them No Mercy 129–130 Shuck, John 48 Shuler, Rev. Robert 332–333 Shurlock, Geoffrey 109 Siddig, Alexander 40 Sidney, P.J. 195 Sidney, Sylvia 47, 81 Sieber, Al 333 Siegel, Benjamin “Bugsy” 15, 99, 212–214, 254–255 Siegel, Don 348 Siegel, Robert 40 Siegmann, George 341

399

Silence of the Lambs (novel and film) 145, 180 Silk Stockings 360 Silver, Bernie 333, 334 Silver, Ron 69 Silver Dollar: book 344; film 2, 231, 343, 344–345 Silverpoints 192 Silvers, Phil 67–68 Silverstein, Harry 208 Silverstein, Mark 101 Simco, Horst see Raff, Riff Simmons, Jean 285, 343 Simon [Stavisky], Arlette 337, 338, 339 Simon, Carly 190 Simpson, Alexander 182, 183 Simpson, Father Francis L. 299 The Sin of Harold Diddlebock 225 Sinatra, Frank 14–15 Sinclair, Eric 56 Sinclair, Upton 32, 140, 285 Sing , Baby, Sing 3, 53 Sing Boy Sing 307 Sing Sing Bulletin 106 Sing Sinner Sing 217–218 Singer, Eric Warren 19 “The Singin’ Idol” see Sing Boy Sing Singin’ in the Rain 307 Singular, Stephen 62 Sinise, Gary 199 Sirk, Douglas 219 Six Degrees of Separation (play and film) 199, 200 Sizemore, Tom 172 Skelton, Red 212 Skidmore, William 9, 10 The Skin of Our Teeth 63 Skolsky, Sidney 137 Slayton, John M. 170 Sloan, Tod 3 Sloane, Everett 65 Smalley, Phillips 193 Smash Up: The Story of a Woman 122–123 Smashing the Rackets 137 Smelick, Donald 204 Smith, Alexis 229 Smith, Alfred E. 352 Smith, C. Aubrey 334 Smith, Cotter 145 Smith, Frederick James 261 Smith, Howard K. 166 Smith, James W. 107 Smith, Kent 214 Smith, Lane 76 Smith, Lydia Hamilton 341 Smith, Madeleine 334–335, 335, 336, 337 Smith, Mike 168 Smith, Will 199, 200 Smithers, “Scarface” 334 Smothers, Dick 125 Smurthwaite, Dorothy see Twysden, Lady Duff The Snake Pit: film 110; novel 109– 110 Snodgress, Carrie 180 The Snows of Kilimanjaro 263 Snyder, Albert 190

400

Index

Snyder, Lorraine 190 Snyder, Norman 279 Snyder, Ruth Brown 190–191, 191, 192 Snyder-Gray Case see Gray, Henry Judd; Snyder, Ruth Brown Sobell, Martin 321 Soble, Jack 294 Soble, Myra 294 Sodom und Gomorrha 316 Sojin 26 Sokoloff, Vladimir 294 Sollecito, Raffaelo 244, 245 Some Faces in the Crowd 186 Sondheim, Stephen 286 Sorin, Louis 240 Sorkin, Aaron 117 Sorkin, Deborah 117 Sorvino, Paul 89 Sothern, Ann 121, 242 The Sound of Fury [Try and Get Me] 204 Southern, Terry 351 Spacek, Susan 173 Spacey, Kevin 95, 105, 273 Spears, Britney 316 Speck, Richard 359 Speedman, Scott 101 Sperling, Milton 89, 90 Spewack, Bella 167 Spewack, Sam 167 Spiegel, Sam 228 Spielberg, Steven 71, 184, 295, 298, 299 Spilotro, Anthony 125, 126 Spilotro, Michael 125, 126 Spionage! 330 Sports Illustrated 8 Spring, Howard 275 Spring Breakers 315–316 The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (novel and film) 310–311 Squires, Nick 244 Stack, Robert 75, 219 Stafford, Frederick 136 Stalin, Josef 310 Stallone, Sylvester 216, 358, 372 Stamboul Quest 331 Stander, Lionel 175 Stanley, Helene 118 Stanley, Kim 292, 293 Stanton, Edwin 340 Stanton, Harry Dean 10 Stanwyck, Barbara 192, 286 A Star Is Born 78 Stark, Ray 33 Starkweather, Charles 172, 172, 173, 174 Stars and Stripes 366 State’s Attorney 160 Statham, Jason 333 Stavisky… 339 Stavisky, Serge Alexandre 337, 337, 338–339 Steadman, Ralph 9 Steele, Freddie 158 Stefan, Oleg 22 Stefano, Joseph 180 Steiger, Rod 100 Stein, Jules 212

Steinem, Gloria 28 Steinfeld, Peter 273 Steinhagen, Ruth Ann 339, 340 Stenbridge, Gerard 95 Stephens, James 356 Stephenson, Henry 218 Sterling, Ford 302 Sterling, Jan 112 Sterling, Robert 139 Stern, Alfred 294 Stern, Marcus 128 Stern, Martha 294 Stevens, Charles 153 Stevens, Edwin 207 Stevens, George 81, 82 Stevens, Henry 181, 183 Stevens, Mark 110 Stevens, Thaddeus 340, 340, 341 Stevens, Warren 226 Stevens, William 181, 183 Stevenson, Adlai 44, 45, 300, 300, 301 Stevenson, Robert 336 Stewart, Donald Ogden 271 Stewart, Erma Faye 243 Stewart, George R. 147 Stewart, James 58, 256, 259, 271 Stewart, William S. 23 Stillman, Robert 204 Stine, Paul 348 The Sting Man 19 Stockwell, Dean 259 Stockwell, John 306 Stolen Holiday 338–339 A Stolen Life 64 Stoler, Shirley 57 Stoloff, Benjamin 352 Stompanato, Johnny 118–119 Stone, Lewis 97 Stone, Oliver 61–62, 171 Stone, Sharon 10, 11, 125, 311 Stoneman, Gen. George 333 Storm, Tempest 157 The Story of G.I. Joe 158 Stout, George 350 Straight, Charley 57 Strasberg, Lee 16, 255 Strategic Air Command 256–257 Straughan, Peter 105 Streep, Meryl 140, 363–364 Streisand, Barbra 33 Stromberg, Hunt 336 Strong, Daniel 13 Strong, Rider 114 Strysik, John 69 Stubblebine, Gen. Albert 104, 105 Stuck 69–70 Studio Affairs 310 Sturges, Eleanor 311 Sturges, John 65 Sturges, Preston 57, 202, 225, 226, 311 Sturgess, Jim 273 Suchet, David 334 Sullavan, Margaret 58, 201 Sullivan, Barry 50 Sullivan, Ed 362 Sullivan, Joe 308 Sullivan Brothers 299 Sumnerr, Allen 23

The Sun Also Rises: film 264–265; novel 263, 264 Sunday, Billy 285, 341, 342, 343 Sunset Boulevard 343 Suplee, Ethan 169 The Supremes (Diana Ross, Florence Ballard, Mary Wilson) 189 Suriano, Philip 125 Surprise Package 138 Susann, Jacqueline 39, 82, 176, 229, 230, 292 Suscy, Michael 100, 101 “The Suspects Wore Loubotins” see The Bling Ring Sutherland, Donald 178, 200 Sutherland, Kiefer 235 Sutherland, Scott 231 Sutton, Crystal Lee see Jordan, Crystal Lee Sutton, Lewis 237 Suvari, Mena 69, 70 Svengali (1954) 366 Swain, Dominique 10, 222 Swainson, R.L. 293 Swan, Gilbert 262 Swanson, Gloria 262, 316, 343 Sweepings (novel and film) 164 Sweet Smell of Success 362–363 Swerling, Jo 137, 285, 286 Swift, Gustav 31–32 Switching Channels 224; see also The Front Page Swoon 259 Syriana 39–40 Szabó, István 197 Szarabajka, Keith 188 Tabor, H.A.W. 2, 231, 343–345 Tabor, Rosemary Silver Dollar Echo 344 Tabor Grand Opera House 344, 345 Taft, Robert A. 44, 46 Take the Stand 361 A Talent for the Game 348 Tales of Manhattan 294 Talk Radio: film 61–62; play 61 Talked to Death 62 Talva, Galina 288 Tamayo, Diane 11 The Taming of the Shrew 167 Tamiroff, Akim 325 Tanguay, Dr. Peter E. 307 Tannenbaum, Julius 195 Tarantino, Quentin 171 Targets 358, 359–360 Tarleton, Banastre 280, 281 The Tarnished Angel 286 Tarzan of the Apes (1918) 316 Tatum, Channing 101 Taxi Driver 79 Taylor, Charles 77, 78 Taylor, Elizabeth 81, 319, 345 Taylor, Kent 357 Taylor, Robert 49, 75 Taylor, Samuel 39 Taylor, Tess 11, 12 Taylor-Young, Leigh 175 Teal, Ray 112 Telephone Time 83

Index “Tell Me About It Tomorrow” see Sweet Smell of Success Temple, Shirley 325 Tenaldi, Renata 64 Tender Is the Night (novel and film) 297 The Terminal 298 Terrall, Ben 271 Terrett, Courtenay “Brick” 191 The Terror 359 Terry, Alice 124 Tewksbury, Drew 102 Tewksbury, Joan 48 Texaco Star Theater 67 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (original film, remake and sequels) 180 Texas Monthly 210 Thalberg, Irving 345, 370, 371 Thanks a Million 289–290 That’s Right—You’re Wrong 42 Thaxter, Phyllis 38 Thayer, Judge Webster 119, 121 Theater Guild on the Air 63 Theater of Blood 366 There Will Be Blood 140, 285 Theron, Charlize 135, 145 Thew, Harvey 343 They Had to See Paris 262 They Live by Night 47–48; see also Thieves Like Us They Won’t Forget 4, 170–171 Thieves Like Us (novel and film versions) 47–48; see also They Live by Night The Third Man 310 13 Rue Madeleine 142 Thomas, Bob (journalist) 107, 211 Thomas, Bob (screenwriter) 304 Thomas, Dylan 90 Thomas, Father Gary 40, 41 Thomas Jim 304 Thomas, Kevin 94 Thompson, “Big Bill” 102, 113 Thompson, Emma 111 Thompson, Harland 183 Thompson, Hunter S. 7–9 Thomson, Kenneth 183 Thornton, David 10 Thorpe, Jim 345 Thorpe, Richard 75 Thorvaldson, Einar 248, 249 Thou Shalt Not Kill 170 Three Brave Men 107–108 Three Secrets 164 Three Sons see Sweepings The Three Stooges 4 Three Weeks 316 Thurber, James 366 Thurmond, Thomas 202, 203 Tibbett, Laurence 213 Tidyman, Ernest 154 Tierney, Gene 45, 288, 345 Tierney, Lawrence 139 “Tillie Scrubbed On” 277; see also Call Northside 777 Tilston, Joe 347 Tilston, Martha 347 Tilston, Steve 346, 346, 347 Timberlake, Justin 10 Timberline 83

Time Inc. 216, 272 Time magazine 79, 271, 272 Time Out for Ginger 266 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 310 Tinsley, Elaine 118 Tipton, Glenn 306 Titanic (both the 1953 and the 1997 film) 83 Titcomb, F. Rodman 129 Tito, Marshal 294 To Race the Wind see Krents, Harold Tobin, Genevieve 231 Todd, Ann 337 Todd, Hugh C. 290 Todd, Mike 229, 292 Toler, Sidney 361 Tolo, Marilù 305 Tomorrow Never Dies 283 Tone, Franchot 45, 218, 269 Toomey, Regis 325 Top Banana: film 68; musical play 67–68 Top Gun 127, 128, 304 Topaz 136 Topor, Tom 28 Torch Singer 217 Torrio, Johnny 97, 98, 113, 260 Toscanini, Arturo 239 Toschi, Dave 347–348 Toto, Anthony “Tony” 83–84 Toto, Frances 83–84 Totter, Audrey 202 Tourneur, Jacques 124–125 The Town Crier 368 Towne, Gene 42, 47, 163 Towne, Roger 339 Trackdown: Finding the Goodbar Killer 315 Tracy, Lee 301, 318, 352, 353, 361 Tracy, Spencer 86, 132, 204, 215, 311, 323, 325 Trafton, Nellie 126, 127 The Train 349–350 Travis, Daniel 267, 268 Travis, Richard 56 Travis, Scott 306 Travolta, John 111, 210 Tre Kom Tilbake 66 Treadwell, Sophie 191 “Tribute to a Bad Man” see The Bad and the Beautiful Triesault, Ivan 51 Trintignant, Jean-Louis 252 Tropic Thunder 196 Trosper, Guy 310 Trotti, Lamar 103 True Detective magazine 92 Trujillo, Flora de Oro 327 Trujillo, Rafael 327, 328 Truman, Harry S 13, 45, 137, 142, 287, 288, 300, 300, 301 Trumbaur, Frank 57 Trumbo, Dalton 49 Trustman, Alan R. 347 Truth to Tell 346 Try and Get Me see The Sound of Fury Tucci, Stanley 138, 298 Tuchock, Wanda 336 Tucker, Jonathan 135

401

Tucker, Larry 46 Tucker, Michael 165 Tugend, Harry 289 Tune, Tommy 166 Turner, Kathleen 224 Turner, Lana 50, 118–119, 170, 192 Turner, Ted 348–349 Turner, Wallace 156 Turpin, Ben 302 Turturro, John 21, 189 Twelvetrees, Helen 323, 325, 361 Twentieth Century (play and film) 202 20th Century–Fox 34–35, 53–54, 62, 63, 83, 107, 127, 142, 148, 149, 153, 238, 239, 259, 264, 277, 278, 288, 289, 290, 294, 297, 301, 304, 354, 355 The 20th Century-Fox Hour 239 20th Century Pictures 161; see also 20th Century–Fox 21 273–274 Twins see Dead Ringers Two Arabian Knights 225 The Two Mrs. Carrolls 63, 64 Twysden, Lady Duff [Dorothy Smurthwaite] 262, 263, 264 Twysden, Sir Robert 263 Tyne, George 278 Ullman, Tracey 84 Ulmer, Edgar 124 Under Secret Orders 330 Unfaithfully Yours 57 United Artists 204 Universal Newsreel 138, 203 Universal Pictures 62, 124, 132, 138, 166, 181, 182, 194, 320, 325, 345, 361 The Unsinkable Molly Brown (musical play and film) 83 Unstoppable 168–169 The Unsuspected 368 The Untouchables (TV series) 363 Uris, Leon 136 Urson, Frank 25 Vaccari, David 70 Vaccaro, Brenda 82 Valentine, Mr. and Mrs. Patrick 354 Valentino, Rudolph 316 Valland, Rose 349–350 Valley of the Dolls (novel and film) 176, 292 Vallone, Raf 17 Van Der Stok, Bram 64, 66 Van Dyke, Dick 242 Vanity Fair magazine 12 Van Patten, Joyce 354 Van Ryn, Frederick 35 Van Sant, Gus 111, 180, 329 Vanstone, Richard 228 Vanzetti, Bartolomeo 121 Varconi, Victor 25 Vargas, Fernando 10 Vario, Paul 89 Vasilikos, Vasilis 251, 252 Veiller, Anthony 121 Vejar, Harry J. 98, 113 Velez, Lupe 318, 319

402

Index

Veloz, David 304 Velvet Goldmine 78, 111 Venable, Evelyn 357 Vendetta 225 Vera-Ellen 288 Verdon, Gwen 24, 60 Verdugo, Eleana 178 Verschuere, Gilles 73 Victor, Henry 193 Vidal, Gore 301 Vidocq, Eugène François 26 Vidor, Charles 357 Viertel, Peter 227–228, 264 Vigoda, Abe 16 Villa, Pancho 141 Vincent, Frank 126 Vineyard, Jennifer 10 Vinson, Helen 92 Viragh, Paul 245 The Virgin of Stamboul 318 Vitagraph 232 Vogue magazine 363 Voight, Jon 94, 293 Volkman, Donald 57 Volonte, Gian Maria 138 Von Beckendorff, Count Djon 87 von Beseler, General 330 von Budberg-Bönningshausen, Nikolai 87; see also Budberg, Moura Von Eltz, Theodore 357 von Harbou, Thea 251 Von Papen, Franz 54 von Sternberg, Josef 81, 262 Voskovec, George 76 The Vow 100, 101–102 Wagner, Lindsay 356 Wagner, Margaret Seaton 251 Wahlberg, Mark 220, 306 Waitkus, Eddie 339 Wake Up and Live 362 Waked, Amr 39 Wakeman, Frederic 50, 201, 202, 210, 211 Walbrook, Anton 138 Walburn, Raymond 47, 289 Wald, Jerry 163, 308, 310 Walenn, Gilbert “Tim” 64, 65 Waley, Harmon Metz 129, 130 Waley, Margaret 129 Walken, Christopher 235 Walker, Albert “Ab” 217, 219 Walker, Eamonn 78 Walker, Gen. Edwin 350–352 Walker, James J. “Jimmy” 352–353 Walker, Scott (director) 143 Wallace, Amy 213 Wallace, George 78, 79 Wallace, Gertrude 214 Wallach, Eli 73 Wallis, Hal 138 Walsh, Karin 277, 278 Walsh, Raoul 140, 149, 163, 198, 270 Walska, Ganna 207 Walter, Tracey 235 Walter Winchell’s Jergens Journal 360 Walters, Barbara 364 Walush, Vera 276, 277, 278 Wambaugh, Joseph 353 Wanger, Walter 47, 122, 123, 208

War Pilot of Orange 66 Warchol, Tomasz 197 Ward, C. Lauer 173, 174 Ward, Clara 173 Ward, Fannie 207 Ward, Mary Jane 109–110 Warde, Catherine 354 Warde, John William 354–355 Warhol, Andy 199–200 Warner Bros. Pictures 13, 58, 92, 136, 137, 138–139, 140, 141, 160, 163, 206, 231, 242, 248, 249, 270, 306, 308, 345, 361, 368 Warren, Edward H. “Bull” 355–356 Warren, Robert Penn 270 Warrick, Ruth 205 Warshofsky, David 169 Was Wir Vom Weltkrieg Nicht Wissen 330–331 Washington, Denzel 168, 274 Washington, Kerry 199 Washington Post 12, 13 Washkow, Capt. Henry T. 158 Wasserman, Lew 212 Watkins, Maurine 23, 24 Watling, Jack 30 Watson, Emma 12 Watts, Naomi 19, 358 Waugh, Evelyn 334 Wayne, David 251 Weathers, Carl 358 Webb, Clifton 83, 216, 217, 368 Weber, Lois 193 Weeks, Barbara 323 Weems, Parson 281 Wegener, Paul 124 Weidman, Jerome 214 Weinberg, Cynthia 19, 20–21 Weinberg, Melvin 19–21 Weisberger, Laura 363 Weiss, Dr. Carl 269 Weiss, Hymie 147, 164 Weisz, Paul 94 Welcome Danger 303 The Well 164 Welles, Orson 49, 131, 204–205, 207, 208, 222, 231, 254, 259, 310, 356, 366 Wellman, William 23, 147, 224, 361 Wells, George 212 Wells, H.G. 87 Wells, Jacqueline 124 Wendel, Augusta 356 Wendel, Ella 356, 357 Wendel, Georgiana 356 Wendel, Henrietta 356 Wendel, John 356, 357 Wendel, Josephine 356 Wendel, Mary Elizabeth 356 Wendel, Rebecca 356, 357 Wepner, Chuck 357–358 Wepner, Linda 358 Westbrook, Donald Edwin “Dew” 209, 210 Westcott, Gordon 33 Westernberg, Bobby 35 Weyerhaueser, George 129–130 Weyerhaueser, J.P. 129 Wheaton, Glenn 104, 105 Wheeler, Stella 120

Where Love Has Gone (novel and film) 119 Where the Buffalo Roam 8 While the City Sleeps 209 Whitaker, Forrest 13 White, Frank 33 White, Isaac 13 White, Josh 218 White Heat 43 White Hunter, Black Heart: film 228; novel 227–228 Whiteman, Paul 57–58, 121 Whitman, Charles 358–359, 359, 360 Whitmore, James 195, 196 Who Killed Sir Harry Oakes? see Eureka Who Was Cicero? see Five Fingers Wickes, Mary 368 Widmark, Richard 333 Wild Bill Hickok (1925) 151, 152 The Wild Party 28 Wilde, Brian 124 Wilde, Oscar 192–193 Wilder, Billy 112, 192, 224 Wilder, Marshall P. 239 Wilder, Robert 219 Wilkinson, Tom 291 Will, George 322–323 Willard, Jess 233, 318 William, Warren 161, 249 Williams, Bill 241 Williams, Billy Dee 184 Williams, Cara 127 Williams, Esther 360 Williams, Guy 296 Williams, Harrison 20 Williams, Paul 94 Williams, Robin 13, 329 Williams, Wayne 144, 145 Williams, Wirt 132, 133, 134 Willis, Bruce 10 Wilson, Colin 251 Wilson, Forrest 360 Wilson, John Wayne 313–314 Wilson, Kim 96 Wilson, Lois 152, 246 Wilson, Luke 144 Wilson, Michael 55, 81 Wilson, Owen 304 Wilson, Patrick 199 Wilson, Woodrow 85, 108 Winchell, Walda 362, 363 Winchell, Walter 34–35, 89, 161–163, 211, 360–363 Windhorn, Stan 99–100 Wine of Choice 367 Winfrey, Oprah 13, 84, 101 Winger, Debra 210 Winningham, Calder 48 The Winslow Boy: 1948 film 30, 31; 1999 film 31; play 30 Winterbottom, Michael 245 Winters, Shelley 81, 82, 140, 313 Winterset (play and film) 120–121 Winthrop, Bobbie 325 Wintour, Anna 363–364 Wired magazine 273 “The Wisdom of Eve” see All About Eve

Index Wise, Robert 164 Wiseman, Joseph 255 Witter, Bret 350 Wojtowicz, John 35–36, 37 Wolf, Victor 136 Wolfe, Thomas 364, 365 Wolfit, Donald 365–366 Wolfson, P.J. 218 Wonderland 220 Wood, Bari 279 Wood, Douglas 208 Wood, Natalie 82, 176 Wood, Sam 331 Woodard, Alfre 243 Woodcoff, Douglas 134 Woods, Edward 147 Woods, James 125, 353 Woods, Paul Anthony 179 Woollcott, Alexander 366–367, 367, 368 Woolley, Monty 367–368 Woolworth, F.W. 228 Worden, Bernice 179 Workers at the White House 13 The World Changes 31, 32, 32 Worth, Irene 64 Wortz, George F. 47 Wouk, Herman 364 Wray, Fay 261 Wray, John 325 Wray, Pat 326 Wright, Frank Lloyd 369 Wright, Haidee 52 Wright, Jeffrey 40 Wrigley, Philip K. 96 Written on the Wind 219

The Wrong Stuff 128 Wyatt, J. Paul 177 Wyatt, Jane 127 Wyatt Earp—Frontier Marshal 152 Wycherly, Margaret 43 Wyler, William 215 Wynn, Ed 187 Wynn, Keenan 187 Wynyard, Diana 370 Yale, Frank 113 Yates, Andrea 369, 370 Yates, Mary 369 Yates, Noah 369 Yates, Peter 347, 366 Yates, Rusty 369 Yelchin, Anton 10 Yonay, Ehud 128 Yordan, Philip 100 York, Dick 132, 332 “You Are My Sunshine” 133 You Nazty Spy 4 You Only Live Once 47, 48 Young, Clara Kimball 316 Young, Gig 215, 319 Young, Nedrick 349 Young, Robert 73, 98 Young, Terence 311 Young, William 28 Young Man with a Horn (novel and film) 58–59 Youngblood Hawke: film 365; novel 364–365 “Your Arkansas Traveler” see A Face in the Crowd Your Lucky Strike Hit Parade 211

403

Your Show of Shows 94, 167 Youssoupov, Prince Felix 2, 3, 370, 371–372 Youssoupov [Youssoupova], Princess Irina 2, 3, 370, 371–372 Yurka, Blanche 43 Z: film 4, 251, 252–253; novel 251 Zallian, Steven 270 Zane, Billy 94 Zangara, Giuseppe 103, 104 Zanuck, Darryl F. 53, 127, 161, 163, 264, 277, 289, 362 Zanuck, Richard 131 Zaphiropoulos, Dr. Milton 109 Zarem, Bobby 372, 373 Zellweger, Renée 25, 180 Zero Dark Thirty 70–71 Zeta-Jones, Catherine 25, 298 Ziegfeld, Florenz, Jr. 373 Ziegfeld Follies 33, 34, 86, 206, 373 ZigZag magazine 346 Zindler, Marvin 165 Zinnemann, Fred 15 Zivkovich, Eli 237 Zodiac 347 The Zodiac Killer 347, 348 Zonen, Ronald J. 10 Zorro, the Gay Blade 296 Zsigmond, Vilmos 173 Zucker, David 293 Zuckerman, George 219 Zugsmith, Albert 68