Kirk Douglas – that icon of explosive virility – died at age 103. Douglas will be forever remembered for the epic Spartacus, a blockbuster hit that he produced, with his own searing performance as the star and the effect of ending the Hollywood blacklist. He could play sexy and despicable at the same time in Out of the Past, Ace in the Hole and In Harm’s Way and a profoundly decent hero in Seven Days in May. Two of my guilty pleasures are Ulysses and The Vikings, with Kirk as a shirtless warrior.
If we’re going to talk about male cinema stars with overpowering magnetism and studly charisma, we’re going to start with Sean Connery, who has died at age 90.
No screen actor has more personally defined a role than did Connery with James Bond. The character of James Bond in Ian Fleming’s source novels is nothing special; Bond was made iconic by Connery’s gifts. The Bond movies are cartoonish, but Connery’s James Bond never is. Connery’s Bond is hunky, but he’s not just a hunk. He is supremely confident. He is cunning. He always assesses a risk before he takes it.
My favorite Connery performance (and the best movie he was in) is The Man Who Would Be King (1975).
Sixty-three years after the chess game with Death himself in The Seventh Seal, actor Max Von Sydow has finally succumbed. Von Sydow is justifiably most well known among cinephiles for his many roles in a cascade of Ingmar Bergman’s grimness, including The Seventh Seal, The Magician, The Virgin Spring, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, Shame and The Passion of Anna. And in The Magician, he had to don the most off-putting of facial hair. His biggest hit, of course was as the title character in The Exorcist. Contrary to his image, he had the capacity for hilarity, which he demonstrated in Hannah and Her Sisters as a ridiculously pretentious and selfish artist. Along with that role, my favorite Von Sydow performances were in Jan Troell’s The Emigrants and The New Land as a Swedish settler in frontier America.
No one has been more important in the evolution of American comedy than Carl Reiner, who has died at age 98. Reiner was a writer and performer on Sid Caesar’s seminal Your Show of Shows. He created one of the greatest and most influential TV sitcoms, The Dick Van Dyke Show. Reiner was the comedy partner who helped Mel Brooks form his work. And he directed four Steve Martin comedies. Reiner was the third person awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. My favorite Carl Reiner performance was in The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!
Silicon Valley native and icon of classic Hollywood, Olivia de Havilland (her real name) was raised in Saratoga and went to Los Gatos High. Her performance in A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream in the Saratoga Community Theater led directly to her appearing in the Hollywood film version of the play at age 19. She starred as the leading lady in her next film, Captain Blood, the first of a series of Warner Brothets costume romances that matched her with Erroll Flynn, with whom she had undeniable chemistry: The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Santa Fe Trail, Dodge City, They Died with Their Boots On and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. In this period, she was loaned to David O. Selznick for her most remembered role, that of the profoundly sweet and decent Melanie in Gone with the Wind. De Havilland won her contractual freedom from Warner Brothers through landmark litigation in 1943. She went on to more serious fare and earned yhree Oscar nods in the next six years, winning for To Each His Own and The Heiress.
Actress Rhonda Fleming has died at age 97. She was known as the “Queen of Technicolor” when movie studios exploited her blazing red hair, blue eyes, ivory complexion and uncommon beauty in a series of Western, sword-and-sandal and adventure films; in this period, she was a candidate for the world’s most beautiful woman, along with her age peers Gene Tierney, Lana Turner and Marilyn Monroe. But Fleming’s very best acting work was in black-and-white, in Spellbound, Out of the Past, Cry Danger and While the City Sleeps. My favorite Fleming performance is in Cry Danger, where she plays the girlfriend of the guy who had framed the hero (Dick Powell) – an irresistible woman of uncertain loyalty.
The actor Brian Dennehy stood a bear-like 6’3”and could have filled his career by playing menacing heavies (and he had his share of those). But Dennehy had uncommon range, as evidenced by his most well-remembered roles – Rambo’s nemesis in First Blood and the alien in Cocoon. My favorite Dennehy movie roles were the crooked sheriff in Silverado and Harrison Ford’s morally complicated boss in Presumed Innocent. Dennehy was even a bigger star on stage – he won Tony Awards for his Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman and his James in Long Day’s Journey into Night (the role Ralph Richardson played in the movie).
Fred Willard, as much as anyone, invented the deadpan mockumentary, starting with his talk show sidekick, Jerry Hubbard character in 1977’s Fernwood 2 Night with Martin Mull. Willard’s zenith was in This Is Spinal Tap and the Christopher Guest ensemble mockumentaries that followed: Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, For Your Consideration, A Mighty Wind and Mascots. He finished up by playing yet another uncontrollable character, Phil Dunphy’s dad on Modern Family.
Here are some tidbits from Willard’s unashamedly unprepared dog show commentator Buck Laughlin in Best in Show:
- If you put them in a race, who would come in first? You know if you had a little jockey on them, going like this imitates jockeys hitting the side of the horse].
- And to think that in some countries these dogs are eaten.
- I went to one of those obedience places once… it was all going well until they spilled hot candle wax on my private parts.
- [sees the trophy] I’ve taken a sponge bath in smaller bowls than that.
Chadwick Boseman, an emerging superstar after his iconic role in Black Panther, was able to humanize real life icons like Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall and James Brown. My favorite Boseman performance was in Marshall.
Tomorrow: Part 2