The Forgotten Prince

Growing up a big movie/TV buff, there was one actor who was always a favorite of mine, but I am ashamed to admit that I did not rhapsodize about him the way I would others.  In a sense, I sort of took him for granted, even though he was one of our finest and most underrated actors ever, but I always sincerely enjoyed his work.  I recently rediscovered William Prince while watching him in the underrated screwball comedy "Pillow to Post" (1945) starring Ida Lupino and Sydney Greenstreet.  Lupino plays a flaky heiress who takes on a sales job with her father's oil rig company in an effort to help contribute to the war effort after her father's regular salesman has left for the frontlines.  She finds, while traveling from town-to-town that the only way she can get a room for the night at local motels is if she pretends to be a military spouse.  She persuades hapless Army Lieutenant Prince to help sign in with her at the motor court where she has been promised a room, but complications ensue when Prince's commanding officer (Greenstreet) happens to live in the same motor court.  In an effort to avoid being court-martialed, Prince and Lupino must continue the ruse of being married as their little white lie spirals out of control.

Prince made this film during his brief tenure under contract at Warner Brothers during the 1940s after Warners discovered him while he was appearing in The Eve of St. Mark on Broadway.  He had already appeared in several Broadway plays by that point, including productions of "Hamlet," "King Henry IV, Part I," and "Ah, Wilderness!"  Many of Prince's roles at Warner Brothers cast him in roles that reflected how the country was currently at war.  He officially debuted on-screen in the featured role of Pills, the athiest ship's pharmacist who unexpectedly finds religious faith, in the classic submarine drama "Destination Tokyo" (1943) starring Cary Grant.  He next appeared as Andrea King's sailor husband, who discovers while on leave from the Navy that his wife did not remain faithful to him, in Warners's touching homefront drama "The Very Thought of You" (1944).  Prince cameo'd as himself volunteering at the "Hollywood Canteen" (1944)--he appears very briefly in the Andrews Sisters musical number "Gettin' Corns for My Country," wearing an apron and carrying a tray filled with milk bottles while serving GI Dane Clark.  Prince was the ill-fated high school history teacher from Schenectady, Lt. Sid Jacobs, tortured to death by Japanese soldiers, in Raoul Walsh's "Objective, Burma!" (1945) starring Errol Flynn.  Prince's face is off-screen when Flynn finds his dying character, but his voice effectively conveyed Lt. Jacob's anguish and pain that the scene has always been sad and touching.

After playing mostly serious roles, it was refreshing to see Prince display his comedic chops in "Pillow to Post."  He is absolutely hilarious as the hapless Army Lieutenant whose military career is threatened by Lupino's scatterbrained heiress.  Unlike many of his other Warner Brothers films, Prince actually gets to be the leading man in this film, winning the girl at the end, and doesn't have to play second-fiddle to Cary Grant or Errol Flynn.  He and the surprisingly hilarious Ida Lupino have great chemistry together.  I particularly like the humorous way Prince gets embarrassed and awkward while watching Lupino adjust her stockings getting dressed in the morning.  Prince's wide-eyed and nervous reactions to the events un-spooling around him adds to the hilarity of the film.  He isn't just playing the stuffy straight-man in this underrated comedy.  It would have been nice to have seen them paired together in more comedies at Warner Brothers.  For those who are now curious about the movie, you can watch it on YouTube here.

Alas, it wasn't to be.  Prince's Hollywood movie career never quite took off, and he returned to Broadway within four years to star in the hit "John Loves Mary" with Nina Foch.  The remainder of his 1940s film output included the Busby Berkeley comedy "Cindarella Jones" (1946) with Joan Leslie; the film noirs "Shadow of a Woman" (1946) and "Dead Reckoning" (1947); Edgar G. Ulmer's off-beat musical drama "Carnegie Hall" (1947), where he had another rare leading role playing a musician torn between his mother's desire to be a classical music pianist, and a jazz musician; reunited with Lupino (though not playing her leading man) in the western "Lust for Gold" (1949); and playing the bland Christian opposite Jose Ferrer's Oscar-winning performance in "Cyrano De Bergerac" (1950).  Prince's role in "Cyrano" is generally considered his best screen role, but I still prefer him in "Pillow to Post," where his character is less inherently colorless and he has more to do.

Prince spent most of the 1950s and 1960s based in New York, and enjoyed a very prestigious and successful career appearing on Broadway, live TV anthology dramas, and daytime soaps.  His rare movie role during this time was the lead in William Castle's suspense thriller "Macabre" (1958).  Some of Prince's most notable Broadway productions during this time included "As You Like It" with Katharine Hepburn, originating the role of Christopher Isherwood in "I Am a Camera," "Mary, Mary," "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe," and "The Little Foxes" opposite Anne Bancroft.  Later on, however, he enjoyed a career renaissance when his movie and TV appearances picked up steam in the 1970s thanks to roles in "The Stepford Wives" (1975), Alfred Hitchcock's final film "Family Plot" (1976), Sidney Lumet's "Network" (1976), "The Gauntlet" (1977) with Clint Eastwood, and many others.  He also distinguished countless TV movies and miniseries including "Sybil" (1976), "Captains and the Kings" (1976), "Gideon's Trumpet" (1980), and "War and Remembrance" (1988) playing Admiral Chester Nimitz.

William Prince was an excellent character actor who helped enhance everything he was ever in.  He always had decent parts but, as a fan of his work, I wish he was given more showy roles on the big or small screen where he could truly distinguish himself.  It was likely that it was on the Broadway stage that he was given the opportunities to demonstrate what he was capable of.  To this day, he is still a bit of a mystery figure in the history of TV and movies.  Prince rarely gave interviews, so one has no clue what his real-life persona was truly like, or what he thought of his career.  In addition, Prince's name is rarely mentioned in interviews conducted with his colleagues, adding to the mystery of who he was.  Internet searches of his name inevitably turn up references to Prince William of England, and not to "William Prince" the actor.  I wrote him a fan letter when I was still in High School in the late 1980s.  I received in the mail a few weeks later a short note and a picture, which was not autographed.  I think, because Mr. Prince was such a busy character actor at the time, he may have forgotten to sign the photo before he mailed it.  Because his response to my letter was so short, that made him even more mysterious to me.

Nevertheless, even though very little has been written about him, Prince always remained an interesting, accessible actor which is why I believe he is worthy of rediscovery.  He never came across as an affected "thee-uh-tah" actor.  Because he worked so much in films and TV in his later years, more than making up for his abbreviated tenure as a leading man at Warner Brothers in the 1940s, I choose to believe that Prince was not a typical Broadway stage elitist who looked down his nose at his brief opportunity as a Hollywood leading man.  I'd like to believe he enjoyed his Warners tenure and that he was content with his impressive accomplishments as an actor.  He certainly had a career that most aspiring actors would envy.

The Shrewd, "Street Smart" Ann Rutherford

Noah called her back sooner than we expected.

I am referencing a running joke that the late actress, and my friend, Ann Rutherford always made about her incredible vitality and longevity.  She often joked that she came over with Noah on the Ark and that, until Noah called for her to come home, she intended to live life to the fullest, but that she didn't expect him to come calling for her for another 30 years, at least!  Unfortunately, for the rest of us, 30 years came too quickly.  She passed away on Monday at age 91. 

As you may have already read from most of her obituaries, Ann Rutherford was a contract player at MGM and 20^th Century-Fox in the 1930s and 1940s.  She was best known for playing Polly Benedict in a dozen entries of the “Andy Hardy” series opposite Mickey Rooney, as well as playing Careen O’Hara, Scarlett’s kind and level-headed younger sister, in “Gone with the Wind” (1939).  I became friends with Ann while researching  a book I am still working on about the Hollywood Canteen during WWII.  It was a servicemen's nightclub where the movie stars of the era entertained and danced with military personnel who were in Los Angeles before being deployed overseas.  Ann was listed on Wikipedia as one of the movie stars who entertained there.  So I wrote to her to ask if I could interview her about it.  She called me on the phone after she received my letter.  It turns out Wikipedia was wrong (surprise, surprise!), she did not volunteer at the Canteen.  But she did extensively tour the country selling War bonds and visiting military installations to entertain the troops.  I still interviewed her because I felt her anecdotes about selling War bonds and visiting military installations would be relevant, and they were.  She had great anecdotes and insights about WWII and how Hollywood responded to the war effort.  We stayed good friends as a result.  She introduced me to her friends such as Anne Jeffreys, Joan Leslie, and Faye McKenzie who I also interviewed about their WWII memories volunteering at the Canteen.  I would look her up when I visited Los Angeles, and I spent time with her when she was visiting the Williamsburg Film Festival in the Spring of 2011, and we talked on the phone frequently.  When I think of it now, it amazes me how we became fast friends and she was just an incredibly positive, encouraging person.

Many of the write-ups and obituaries, I am happy to say, are very respectful, but only one managed to capture what I feel was the essence of Ann Rutherford.  In Adam Bernstein’s well-researched and well-written essay on Ann in the June 13, 2012 issue of the  Washington Post, Bernstein cites her business acumen and shrewdness in dealing with the studio bosses at MGM.  Bernstein hits the nail right on the head.  She was an incredibly intelligent and shrewd person, and her native street smarts allowed her to survive and thrive in the jungle known as Hollywood.  She never suffered fools gladly and knew how to take care of herself and her finances (which many actors and actresses, I am sorry to say, do not know how to do).  I learned a lot from her about being a business professional, and how one must diligently explore all opportunities that are presented to them in life.  She told me how, between making movies at MGM, she would do magazine and newspaper interviews and radio shows because she realized that doing publicity was important in helping to maintain a career.  She felt networking was as important, if not more so, than the actual work as an actress because she realized that, if people don't know who you are, they won't pay money to see you in a movie. 

She was never pretentious and never copped an "artsy" attitude as an actress, even though she did a lot of fine work and was as accomplished an actress as any of her peers—she worked in theatre, movies, radio and television during her career.  She had no patience for pretentious “thespians” who thought they were too good for Hollywood or the responsibilities that came with working in the movies.  (Believe you me, there are plenty of them and I can think of one particular pretentious actress, for example…but I’ll save that for another time!)  I think Ann lacked any sort of pretentions because she knew how fortunate she was to have broken into the business and she wasn’t hindered by false pride and false humility the way other actors and actresses, who openly disdained the dictates of the classic Hollywood studio system, were.  Having been brought up during the Great Depression and living through WWII, Ann never had a sense of entitlement or elitism.  She knew that striving for success was what regular people hoped to achieve for themselves, and was nothing to be ashamed of.  I think she felt that everybody owed it to themselves to fulfill their goals and aspirations, no matter what it was.  This had to do with the fact that she never lost touch with the "common man."  As far as she was concerned, she was part of the "common folk" and never pretended to be better than they were. 

There's a story she told that took place when she was a young teenager.  She and a bunch of kids in the neighborhood built a boat and sailed to Catalina.  She had packed sandwiches for lunch and when they were far from shore, the calking of the boat came loose because it hadn't dried, and the boat started sinking and capsized.  She remembered seeing her sandwiches unwrapping from their paper and sinking to the bottom of the ocean.  She and her friends clung to the side of the boat until she saw a ship from far in the distance.  It was the USS Arizona, and its crew spotted her and her friends and rescued them and later, towed their little boat back to shore.  Years later, when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor occurred, she was deeply affected because that ship had saved her life.  But she told the story very matter-of-factly, with very little drama or emotion, and I think her calm reaction to that day reflects her survival instincts were already intact from an early age.

Ann appreciated the fan letters and interest in her career, especially when it came to discussing "Gone with the Wind."  She was indeed deeply proud of "The Wind," as she would call it, and felt like she was both the book and the movie's cultural ambassador at times.  But, even though she had a healthy appreciation for her past, she lived very much in the present.  She was always active, going out to social events, seeing friends, traveling, staying engaged in the world.  (Ann would always joke about “going dancing in the streets together!” whenever she described planning a get-together with any of her friends.)  At her home, there were no mementos from her career displayed anywhere, just photos of her family and friends in the living room.  She valued the close relationship she had with her daughter Gloria, her grandsons, and her stepdaughter Debbie.  She told me once that she got married and started a family after Louis B. Mayer sold her MGM contract to 20^th Century-Fox, where she was miserable.  She found the atmosphere at Fox to be oppressive, and studio head Darryl Zanuck did nothing for her career—he cast her in thankless roles in B movies, and loaned her out constantly to other studios.  She decided that, since she had little control over the direction of her movie career, it was time for her to focus on her personal life.  This was a woman who always made proactive choices in her life. 

Her best friend was actress Anne Jeffreys.  The two were inseparable and were great fun to be around.  They often traveled together, went to shows and premieres in town together, and always made sure they were color-coordinated in the elegant clothes and fashions they wore to events.  But, most importantly, they really looked out for each other and cared deeply for one another.  It is appropriate that Jeffreys was the one who was by Ann’s bedside when she passed away at home on Monday.  I am glad Jeffreys was there for Ann at the end. 

Turner Classic Movies plans to honor Ann on July 3^rd with a 10-movie marathon that day.  It climaxes that evening with an airing of “Gone with the Wind.”  I think Ann would have appreciated that.  She once told me that all she ever wanted was to work in this wonderful industry—Hollywood--that had allowed her to be a part of it, and not take anything away from anybody.  The evidence indicates she accomplished all of that and much, much more.

A Universal Centennial

I was reminded that earlier this week was the 100th anniversary of the founding of Universal Pictures.  I make note of it because, ever since I was a child, Universal has always been my favorite of the major Hollywood studios.  My interest in Universal started because of the fact that the Universal Studios Tour was an attraction that always held a great mystique for me.  Everytime we went on the studio tour, I had a wonderful time, imagining all of the movies and TV shows that were shot there.  But it wasn't just that alone.  It had to do with the fact that Universal made most of my favorite movies and TV shows throughout the years.  I could sit here and recite the 1930s and 1940 horror classics that I used to record on our family VCR from KTLA Channel 5's "Movies 'til Dawn" during Junior High School.  I could discuss how much I enjoyed the Deanna Durbin musicals that I discovered on KDOC Channel 56.  I could describe how much I enjoyed the "Airport" disaster movies of the 1970s.  Or I could discuss how "Dragnet" and "Adam-12" reruns made my hometown of Los Angeles seem like it was the most exciting city in the world.

I grew to love Universal movies and shows so much that I can immediately recognize the sets and building facades on sight.  I can also recognize a particular staircase that appeared in countless productions.  I think it was called the "Notre Dame" staircase and was originally constructed for their silent production of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."  I saw it used often in many Universal horror films, including "The Wolf Man" (1941) and "Night Monster" (1942) and saw it as recently as the 1980s in a "Murder, She Wrote" episode.  It would be repainted or redressed for each production it appeared in, but I always knew it was the same staircase.

Sometimes Universal's detractors criticize the studio for how it became mostly a television studio by the 1960s through the 1980s and that the quality of its feature films during that time often looked like it was made-for-television.  I won't dispute that argument because I often felt it myself.  It may not have been a studio that promoted individuality in terms of its directors during that time, but I would argue that it had an identifiable branding as a studio so that a Universal Picture couldn't be mistaken for a movie from any other studio.

In college, I had a summer internship at Universal and I truly enjoyed being there everyday.  I had chills going down my spine in realizing that I was standing where many of my favorite movies and shows were made.  Whenever I visit Universal Studios Tour, I still get that feeling.  It is nice how some things that were a big deal since childhood still have an effect on you when you are an adult.

Tanya Roberts' first film "The Last Victim"

 
The other night, I discovered on YouTube a rare 1975 film called "The Last Victim" starring Tanya Roberts in her acting debut.  It is a gritty suspense/horror film that was directed by Jim Sotos and written and produced by Henry Scarpelli, an esteemed artist responsible for the "Archie" comic book series.  "The Last Victim" spends its running time cutting back and forth between two characters.  The first one is Carl (Ron Max), a garage mechanic who is also a serial rapist/killer of young women in the areas surrounding Staten Island and Verona, New Jersey.  The scenes featuring Carl attacking women are truly disturbing and I skimmed through those sections.  Perhaps the movie came across a bit too believable so that those scenes were more unsettling than expected.

The second, much more compelling, character is Nancy (Tanya Roberts), a modest, low-key suburban housewife with two children, a nice home, and a successful husband who has turned emotionally distant to her.  She is, in essence, the title character of the film--the last victim.  Throughout much of the running time, we see Nancy going about her business running errands, preparing meals for her family, picking up and dropping her children off at school, bringing the family car to the service station, and feeling a bit stifled by her lonely existence as her husband Peter (Brian Freilino) has clearly taken her for granted and begun neglecting her.  Unbeknownst to her, Carl has become obsessed with Nancy and starts stalking her at all hours, calling her on the phone and hanging up, and the audience begins to dread what he has in-mind for her.  In the last 30 minutes of the film, while Peter is away on a business trip and her children are at school, Nancy is terrorized and held hostage by Carl when he breaks into her house.

The last act of the film is very sad and depressing to watch because, by that point, Roberts has created a very sympathetic, believable character in Nancy.  I had read about "The Last Victim" for years and, as much as I have always liked Tanya Roberts, I thought it odd that she was cast as a housewife when I knew she must have been only 20 years old when the film was shot.  I was skeptical as to whether she would be believable in the role.  Actually, Roberts gives probably the best performance, and has the most complex role, of her career in this modest little horror film.  She effectively conveys Nancy's sweet and meek nature so that, even before Carl breaks into her home, you are already rooting for her to break out of her unhappy, lonely existence.  In fact, all of the scenes depicting Nancy's family and homelife have a remarkably authentic feel, as if the audience is peering into the lives of their neighbors next door.  The believably mundane aspects of Nancy's suburban malaise existence makes her character easily much more compelling than the obvious and overt Carl serial-killer storyline.  Roberts plays Nancy in a low-key, natural style that never seems false.  Unlike the glamorous Tanya Roberts we would later come to know in "Charlie's Angels," "The Beastmaster" (1982), "Sheena" (1984) and "A View to a Kill" (1985), the Tanya Roberts of "The Last Victim" is pretty and attractive, but in a realistically modest manner.  Wearing an atypical page-boy haircut and demure clothes, Roberts brings dignity to the character even in the final act of the film when Carl terrorizes her.  In contrast to the other victims in "The Last Victim," Tanya Roberts's Nancy does no explicit nudity (except for a very brief shower scene), suggesting that the filmmakers were reserving their sense of propriety for her.  The final confrontation between Nancy and Carl is well-acted and suspenseful, as you have no confidence that Nancy will survive the encounter.  I found the final shot of the movie, a view of Nancy's house from across the street as her children return home from school, haunting and memorable.  Because we do not see or hear her children's reaction to the scene of horror they have walked into, the movie leaves you with an understanding that Nancy's family will be living with the ramifications of Carl's actions long after the credits have rolled.

"The Last Victim" is also available on YouTube in an alternate version entitled "Forced Entry."  This version was released on VHS in 1984, after Tanya Roberts and Nancy Allen, who has a small role as one of Carl's victims, had risen to prominence in the ensuing decade.  (Several years ago, Code Red DVD had announced that they were releasing a special edition DVD of this film with both "The Last Victim" and the "Forced Entry" versions to allow the viewers to compare them side-by-side.  Unfortunately, that DVD has still not seen the light of day.)  "Forced Entry" is a heavily doctored version of "The Last Victim" that botches whatever virtues the original had in its favor.  Obviously inspired by Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" (released the year after "The Last Victim" was originally shot), the new "Forced Entry" version features ridiculous steam-of-consciousness narration illustrating Carl's rambling, psychotic thoughts; replaces the original music on "The Last Victim" soundtrack with a new score; reassembles the sequencing of the scenes to bring Tanya Roberts (who is mostly absent in the first 20 minutes of "The Last Victim" version) into prominence earlier in the story; removes the effectively chilling montage during the opening credits of black and white photos from real-life crime scenes (establishing the notion that the movie we are about to see is a case study of one of those types of crimes) accompanied by an ominous "doink doink" music that predates "Law & Order;" and tacks on a ridiculous epilogue depicting various characters in town narrating their thoughts about Carl and of the events that have transpired in the film (which dilutes the impact of the hauntingly ambiguous original ending).  They even have another actress narrating Nancy's role in the new epilogue, as Tanya Roberts was likely unavailable and unaffordable by that point in her career.

Probably the most unfortunate change in "Forced Entry" is the deletion of a sequence that existed in "The Last Victim" version where Nancy daydreams of happier times with her husband Peter.  While an effectively syrupy 1970s Karen Carpenter-type love song plays on the soundtrack, Nancy thinks back to times when she and Peter were still deeply in love and remembers moments when they took the children to the amusement park, went fishing with them, went on picnics, played in the yard, etc.  Deleting this sequence from "Forced Entry" removes Nancy's inner turmoil as we also lose any suggestion that her marriage is troubled, making her character less complex, more objectified and stylized, and unfairly tipping the scale of importance between characters in favor of the repulsive Carl.  Because Roberts is so sympathetic in the lead role, the sequence avoids being maudlin and allows the viewer to understand what Nancy has already lost in her marriage and deepens the sadness of "The Last Victim."  You begin to understand that Carl's reprehensible actions in the final act of the film did not cause the destruction of Nancy's family and existence.  Sadly, her home had already cracked long before he broke into it.

The first "Final Girl"

Film Scholar Carol Clover first coined the term "final girl" while writing in her seminal work Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.  The term has come to define the last woman alive to confront the killer or monster in horror films.  While the term primarily refers to heroines in slasher horror films since the late 1970s, I would make the case that the very first "final girl" appeared at least three decades earlier with the character of female news photographer Billie Mason (Louise Currie) in the 1943 Monogram poverty row horror "The Ape Man," starring Bela Lugosi in the title role.  In the movie, Lugosi plays a mad scientist whose experiments have rendered him into a half-human/half-ape creature.  In an attempt to find a cure and return himself to full human form, he commits a series of murders to obtain freshly drawn human spinal fluid.  His activities arouse the attention of newspaper reporter Jeff Carter (Wallace Ford), and his female photographer sidekick Billie Mason (Ms. Currie).

In the finale of "The Ape Man," Lugosi has kidnapped Billie Mason and taken her to his basement laboratory to draw spinal fluid from her.  When she comes to, and realizes the danger she is in, she looks for a way to escape and grabs a nearby circus bullwhip to fend off Lugosi's murderous advances.  You can see a clip from that finale here.  When Lugosi struggles and fights with Billie Mason to get the bullwhip away from her, she stumbles backwards and accidentally releases the angry captive gorilla who causes Lugosi's death.  (We wouldn't see another horror heroine taking proactive measures to defend herself until Gretchen Wells's feisty coed in Herschell Gordon Lewis's "The Gruesome Twosome" nearly a quarter of a century later!)  By taking a more active role than the average 1940s horror heroine, Louise Currie's Billie Mason represented a small, yet significant, advance forward in depicting female assertiveness and determination in horror films.  In the average horror film up to that point, the heroine usually stands by helplessly awaiting rescue, or faints out of fright, until she comes to later after the danger has passed.  In "The Ape Man," the Billie Mason is allowed to take matters into her own hands in order to ensure her survival in the film.  When she holds off Lugosi's Ape Man monster by cracking the bullwhip, Louise Currie foreshadows Jamie Lee Curtis in "Halloween" and all of her other horror vehicles, Amy Steel in "Friday the 13th, Part 2," Sigourney Weaver's Ripley character in the "Alien" films, and Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox in the "Scream" series, making her their spiritual big sister.  Her feisty quality reflected how WWII-era American women found themselves having to resolve issues on their own while men were away fighting the war overseas. Film audiences, by that point, might have been more willing to accept assertive females in horror films as they were witnessing women around them taking on new roles by assuming factory jobs and serving in the military. 

With her character's masculine first name, sophisticated and witty manner (she and Wallace Ford spar delightfully throughout the movie), photographic talent (which reflected a technical and creative thought-process), and deep speaking voice, the underrated Louise Currie set a refreshing contrast to the milquetoast, frail-voiced starlets who usually top-lined poverty row horrors.  Currie was a Max Reinhardt acting-protege who balanced lead roles in Republic serials and Monogram horror films with bit parts in films for major studios, including a notable one as a reporter in the finale of Orson Welles's "Citizen Kane" (1941).  Currie and Lugosi worked together for the first time in the RKO mystery comedy "You'll Find Out" (1940) and re-teamed at Monogram a year after "The Ape Man" in the horror vehicle "Voodoo Man."  In "Voodoo Man," Currie again depicted an unusual quality for 1940s horror heroines as her character reacts to being kidnapped by Lugosi, John Carradine and George Zucco with an atypically calm directness and intelligence that remains fresh and impressive almost 70 years later.  When her character is freed at the end of "Voodoo Man" from a lifetime of being held captive in a catatonic state, Currie reacts to her rescue with an appealingly flippant attitude.  Nothing, not even Ape or Voodoo men, could faze her for long.  She deserved better out of her career, but distinguished herself by bringing a level of class into films and serials that rarely received it.  At the very least, Louise Currie, as Billie Mason in "The Ape Man," deserves greater recognition for her modest, but important, contribution in helping to advance the depiction of women in the history of horror films.

Why all the hate for the Julian Fellowes "Titanic"?

I was riveted this weekend with the 4-part miniseries "Titanic" that aired on ABC.  I approached it with skepticism due to lukewarm reviews and news that ratings for the miniseries in the UK (where most of it had already aired in the past few weeks) had declined continuously after the first episode.  I thought I was only going to be mildly interested, but within minutes I was sucked into the drama!  I have been surprised at the chilly-to-downright-hostile reaction this miniseries has received from the public.  It's an intelligently written and acted drama that ranks well with the classic network-TV miniseries of the 1970s and 1980s, truly a lost art form.  I enjoyed how Fellowes plays with our expectations of retelling the story by laying out familiar elements, and then turns everything upside down by taking us down a completely different path!  In what could be considered the disaster-version of the underrated TV drama "Boomtown," each episode of "Titanic" takes us back to the beginning of the story before the ship even sets sail, and focuses on an entirely new set of characters, who we had only glimpsed earlier, and tells the story from their perspective.  Scenes we had witnessed earlier are replayed, but from a different perspective with a new nuance and meaning to be discerned from it.  The net effect allows us to realize that none of the characters in the background are just "extras," because their stories will come to the forefront later.

The opening segment focuses much of its attention on the Earl and Lady of Manton (Linus Roache and the unsympathetic Geraldine Somerville--a chilly actress who exudes as much sex appeal as you would expect from someone with that name) and their annoying daughter, Lady Georgiana (Perdita Weeks).  I started off thinking that Lady Georgiana would end up being the centerpiece of the whole miniseries, as her character was vaguely reminiscent of Kate Winslet's Rose in the famous James Cameron telling of this story.  But, by the second episode, the story of the Manton's retreated into the background and we found ourselves enmeshed in the other, more interesting passengers aboard the ship.  I was much more taken with the unrealized love between the Manton's servants Barnes (Lee Ross) and Mabel Watson (Lyndsey Marshal).  The subplot where Barnes attempts to redeem himself after he has ruined Mabel's copy of "Aesop's Fables" (after he snatched it from her teasingly) takes on surprising levels of depth and feeling later on.  I have never seen Ross or Marshal before, but they commanded the screen with great confidence and feeling and I look forward to following their careers in the future.

But best of all is Jenna-Louise Coleman's radiant performance as second-class stewardess Annie Desmond.  In later episodes, Annie's character comes into greater prominence and eclipse's Lady Georgiana to become the miniseries's actual romantic heroine.  Unlike Lady Georgiana's fake progressive activism (we first encounter her in jail after she has been arrested for protesting for suffrage rights in the UK), Coleman's Annie Desmond truly represents the future of English womanhood.  With her cockney accent, warmth, intelligence, heart, courage, and can-do attitude, she represents the sort of young woman who will likely rise to the occasion and volunteer for leadership roles as the 20th Century progresses and her nation faces two impending world wars in the decades to come.  Her intelligence, wit, and sensitivity is reminiscent of the servant maids played by Kelly Macdonald and Emily Watson in the Fellowes-scripted "Gosford Park" (2001), not coincidentally my favorite characters from that film.  Coleman is a real find--when she appeared on-screen I said to myself "Ah, a star is born!"--and I rooted for her character to survive.

Coleman isn't alone in the miniseries--Fellowes allows many of his female characters moments to shine.  He doesn't just put all his eggs in one basket the way James Cameron did with Kate Winslet in his Titanic movie.  Silent film star Dorothy Gibson (Sophie Winkleman) and Benjamin Guggenheim's French mistress Madame Aubart (Josephine de la Baume) are depicted as feisty women who had the courage to thumb their noses at the British class system on board that seeks to put them in their place.  Aubart even gets my favorite line in the whole miniseries.  After she has been insulted by the shallow Lady Manton (the one irredeemable woman in the story), Aubart dismisses the slight by wryly commenting, "No one is more morally indignant than a beauty on the wrong side of 40."  I particularly liked the sequence, after the ship has gone down, where Molly Brown and other women aboard the lifeboat stage a mini-mutiny by disobeying the the cowardly seaman who refuses to go back to look for survivors.  Fellowes at least plays fair with Molly Brown, who lives up to her feisty reputation in this version of the story, not the toothless counterpart that Cameron depicted in his film who lets herself gets shouted down by others on the lifeboat when she insists on going back for survivors.  Fellowes generally shares the courage equally among his women, rather than limiting it to just one woman as in the Cameron version.  That in itself gives this version of the "Titanic" tragedy enough of an edge to distinguish itself from the many interpretations of this story.

My Ode to Miss Ellie

Thirty-four years ago this week, on April 2, 1978, "Dallas" premiered on CBS.  It told the story of the wealthy Ewing family, led by patriarchal oil baron Jock Ewing (Jim Davis), and his sons Bobby (Patrick Duffy) and JR (Larry Hagman), and of the Ewing’s on-going feud with the poor Barnes clan, led by drunken Digger Barnes (David Wayne and, later, Keenan Wynn) and how that feud escalates to epic proportions when Bobby marries Digger’s beautiful daughter Pamela (Victoria Principal).  The public and the media nowadays narrowly view "Dallas" as a show about 1980s opulence and excess and know it only for its memorable “Who Shot JR?” cliffhanger at the end of its second season in March 1980. 

But its true fans know that it is much more than that.  They stayed with the show even after its eighth season (1985-86) turned out to be a dream; recognize that Morgan Brittany (and not Morgan Fairchild) was the Morgan who had a regular role on the series as Pamela’s scheming half-sister Katherine Wentworth; and remember that actors other than Ted Shackelford, Mary Crosby, and Priscilla Presley originated the roles of Gary, Kristin, and Jenna.  They also know that, at its heart, "Dallas" was really a family drama about a clan whose existence and way of life was dictated by a larger-than-life father, who set stringent standards for his sons to become competitive, ruthless oilmen with guts that results in decades of turmoil and misery as his children (and their wives and extended relatives) almost destroy one another in an attempt to live up to those expectations.  The psychological and emotional pathos of how the Ewing's unhappiness stems from their inability to recognize the impossibility of completely reaching that goal gives “Dallas” a subtext that belies ordinary expectations and interpretations of the series.  Even the Barnes clan is not immune from this: Digger’s desperate son Cliff Barnes (Ken Kercheval) spends the entire series in an increasingly futile effort to compete with, and defeat, the Ewings--JR in particular--in order to redeem his father's name.  Sue Ellen (Linda Gray) also acknowledges at one point that her mother groomed her and her sister Kristin to believe their only purpose in life was to marry rich husbands someday, which ultimately proved to be the root of her unhappiness.  In short, "Dallas" is about parents who expect too much from their children, and the devastating effects on them. 

It is for these reasons that “Dallas” still has enough resonance in 2012 that TNT will debut a revival series, bringing the saga of the Ewings up to current times, later this summer.  Whether the new series lives up to expectations set by the original, not unlike the standards Jock set for his family, remains to be seen.  Nevertheless, as long as the new series recognizes the theme of people attempting to define what it truly means to be an Ewing, it may have a fighting chance to make an impression of its own.  There is a reason why “Dallas” (despite its ups and downs through the years) remains part of the popular consciousness, while its competitor prime time soaps of the 1980s (such as “Dynasty,” “Knots Landing,” “Falcon Crest,” and “Flamingo Road”) have not been revived.

What also truly sets "Dallas" apart from other shows in its genre was Barbara Bel Geddes's beautifully subtle and touching performance as Ewing family matriarch Miss Ellie.  Miss Ellie defied typical feminist expectations of powerful women because she was a socialite and homemaker who didn't wield her influence and authority with an attache case.  She contradicted other television images of women set in the 1970s (when the series premiered) in that she did not pursue a professional career.  And, yet, few characters on "Dallas" projected such authority and strength as Miss Ellie.  As Julie Grey (Tina Louise) tells Miss Ellie in a 1979 episode, "You're Ellie Ewing.  You don't need a man to give you power."  Ironically, "Dallas" creator David Jacobs has said that he intended Miss Ellie to be more of a powerful, professional Southern woman, describing his original intention that she be an Ann Richards-type character.  He felt Miss Ellie, as played by Bel Geddes, turned out boring in his opinion.  Jacobs proves, with his short-sighted assessment, that series creators are sometimes the last people to fully understand what made their brainchild work.  (This statement on the interpretation of Miss Ellie is not surprising considering that Jacobs, IMHO, has always appeared in interviews to be disappointed that "Dallas," a show that he had less influence on after its first season, was always more successful, and continues to have more of a widespread cultural impact, than his other successful series "Knots Landing," which he had greater influence on and has said felt reflected his values better than "Dallas."  I liked "Knots Landing" very much, but I find it ludicrous for Jacobs and its cast to practice reverse-snobbery and allege it was inordinately superior to "Dallas" simply because it was about middle-class suburbanites and, purportedly, more "realistic" than "Dallas."  They conveniently ignore how "Knots Landing" stopped being about middle-class suburbia when it went upscale after Season 4, heartlessly dismissed original cast members such as Kenny & Ginger and Richard who didn't fit into this new upscale image, and also had its share of ridiculous melodramatic storylines.)  Had Miss Ellie turned out to be the Richards-prototype that Jacobs had envisioned, the audience would have dubbed "Dallas" a modern-day imitation of "The Big Valley" and immediately compared her to Barbara Stanwyck's Victoria Barkley character.  It would not have stood out as something unique and different as to inspire a new TV genre in the 1980s.

Miss Ellie reflects Camille Paglia's view that women who maintain a strong influence over their family are the ultimate leaders of the world.  She was one of the few characters whose words could single handedly put JR, Bobby and Jock in their place, and whose courage, humility, and integrity was boundless.  Her heart and ability to continue to love her children, even as she disapproved of their actions, made her instantly recognizable to all of us who have disappointed our own mothers at one point or another in our lives.  But she wasn't perfect.  She was occasionally blinded by her own hurt and rage.  There was the storyline where Miss Ellie opposed Jock and Ray Krebbs's (Steve Kanaly) involvement in the Takapa resort real estate project ostensibly on environmental grounds.  It later turned out that her opposition to Takapa was more rooted in her resentment of Jock welcoming ranch foreman Ray into the family, once it became apparent that Ray was his illegitimate son, at the expense of her own son Gary, who never wanted to move back to Southfork from his Knots Landing cul-de-sac due to his bad memories growing up there.  Her inability to forgive Jock, and accept the fact that Gary did not want to come home for reasons other than Ray's presence in the family, almost leads to the dissolution of their marriage.  She ultimately comes to the realization that, despite her deep love for her favorite son Gary, she was never an effective parent in addressing the demons that had haunted him from childhood on.  She must, once and for all, relinquish the hope that Gary will someday return to Southfork permanently.  One year later, after Jock has died, Miss Ellie ostracizes her best friend Donna Krebbs (Susan Howard), Ray's wife, after Donna uncovers unflattering facts about Jock while researching a book.  She shuns Donna and refuses to acknowledge the truth of Donna's discovery, all in effort to keep Jock's memory alive and deny that he had truly died in a plane crash in South America.  Just as Miss Ellie could be a formidable ally, she could also prove to be a devastating adversary when crossed. 

Nevertheless, the moments I remember most about Miss Ellie are the heartfelt moments where she openly expresses love and caring for her own children.  In the 1979 episode "Return Engagement," the segment that spins off into "Knots Landing," Miss Ellie offers to buy the re-marrying Gary and Val a new house in California so they can start their lives over again.  Both Gary and Val try to talk Miss Ellie out of such an extravagant gift, citing all the things she has done for them, including raising their daughter Lucy (Charlene Tilton) after JR had run Gary and Val off of Southfork 20 years earlier.  The humility of Miss Ellie's speech still awes me to this day--she acknowledges her own complicity in how Gary and Val were mistreated due to her silence and inaction at the time.  She rhetorically asks them "Do you think my giving you a house makes things right?  I don't.  So if you're going to refuse the gift, refuse it because the gift is too small.  Otherwise take it, please take it."  I also recall the lovely scene in 1988 when Cliff Barnes calls a truce to the Barnes/Ewing feud by finally acknowledging that Jock never cheated his daddy Digger out of his fortune.  It was appropriate that Miss Ellie, and not JR or Bobby, proved to be the peacemaker who brought an end to the family squabbling. 

Barbara Bel Geddes might seem an unlikely choice to play the genteel Miss Ellie.  Born in New York, the daughter of theatrical and industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes, she was a sophisticated, urban Yankee who was as far from being Southern as you can imagine.  And, yet, there has always been a truthful, direct earthiness to Bel Geddes that made her believable as a Texas rancher's daughter with a great love of the land.  Her deep voice gave her gravitas and presence as she faced off against Jock, JR and Bobby on the series.  In one episode, when Miss Ellie overhears Jock condescendingly describe what he considers a woman's "proper" place in society, she responds "You believe that the woman's place is two steps behind the man...except when walking through a minefield!"  Nobody could've delivered that line better.  Briefly, in the 1984-85 season, Bel Geddes took a sabbatical and was replaced by Donna Reed, who turned out to be woefully inadequate for the role.  Reed, with her frail voice, awkward vocal cadences, and extravagant wardrobe, stripped away the subtleties of what made Miss Ellie a compelling character and made her a conventional soap opera matriarch.  Reed attempted to turn Miss Ellie into the Ann Richards-prototype envisioned by the series's creator, and proved how that interpretation for the role was completely wrong for the series.  Thankfully, Bel Geddes returned to the series the following season, and not a moment too soon, as "Dallas" was then fully entrenched in the dreaded "dream season" and needed as much grounding and gravitas as it could get. 

In later seasons, Miss Ellie was married to the dignified and kind Clayton Farlow (Howard Keel), a man whose warmth, patience and understanding rivaled the enormity of Jock Ewing's ego.  We finally saw her in a marriage where she wasn't expected to live up to expectations of being either Miss Ellie Ewing or Miss Ellie Southworth (her maiden name), and could simply be "Ellie," as Clayton often referred to her.  Bel Geddes and Keel had great chemistry together, probably even more natural chemistry than she had with Jim Davis, and the two of them even had a fun storyline in the 1989-90 season, when Miss Ellie became a Jessica Fletcher-type sleuth and solved several mysteries with Clayton as her trusty companion.  This might have been during the waning years of the series, but I liked this storyline because it allowed us to see a different side of Miss Ellie.  After that, Bel Geddes decided to call it a day, retired from acting for good, and did not return for the final season of "Dallas."  The last time we see Miss Ellie, she is getting into a limousine for an extended cruise around the world and this allowed the character to go out on top.  After the years of turmoil Miss Ellie had endured, she had more than earned the vacation.

Nevertheless, Miss Ellie, the reluctant Ewing who originally married Jock during the Great Depression to save her family's ranch, ultimately proved that she understood what it meant to be an Ewing even better than Jock or her sons.  In the 1981 episode, "Waterloo at Southfork," Miss Ellie calls the entire oil cartel, including Cliff Barnes, to the carpet at Ewing Oil offices late at night after learning how they have charged an outrageous amount of interest on loans they have made to JR, who has hocked Ewing Oil assets as part of an effort to regain custody of his son John Ross.  She castigates them for taking advantage of JR's situation by betraying the friendship and trust that their family, especially Jock, has bestowed upon them through the years before announcing that she has intervened in the situation, and that Ewing Oil is now prepared to repay the loans with interest.  Before she does that, however, she issues a stern warning to the cartel that sums up the Ewings better than anybody else could: "We may be wrong, and we may be right, but we're Ewings and we stick together.  That makes us unbeatable!"