The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (130 page)

By now, Elliott had a new international reputation as a reliable support, as evident in occasional trips to Hollywood:
The Night They Raided Minsky’s
(68, William Friedkin);
The Sea Gull
(68, Sidney Lumet);
Too Late the Hero
(70, Robert Aldrich), with Caine again;
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer
(70, Kevin Billington);
Percy
(71, Thomas);
Quest for Love
(71, Thomas);
A Doll’s House
(73, Patrick Garland);
Madame Sin
(73, David Greene);
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
(74, Ted Kotcheff);
Russian Roulette
(75, Lou Lombardo);
Robin and Marian
(76, Richard Lester), as Will Scarlett;
To the Devil a Daughter
(76, Peter Sykes); a weatherman in
A Bridge Too Far
(77, Richard Attenborough);
The Boys from Brazil
(78, Franklin J. Schaffner); fully appreciated in
Saint Jack
(79, Peter Bogdanovich).

His work may have seemed both stranger and loftier in his last decade or so, but he gathered one Oscar nomination (
A Room with a View
) and two British Film Awards (
A Private Function
and
Defence of the Realm
). He was in
Cuba
(79, Lester); the husband in
Bad Timing
(80, Nicolas Roeg);
Sunday Lovers
(80, Bryan Forbes);
Raiders of the Lost Ark
(81, Steven Spielberg);
The Missionary
(82, Richard Loncraine);
Brimstone and Treacle
(82, Loncraine);
The Wicked Lady
(83, Winner);
The Hound of the Baskervilles
(83, Douglas Hickox);
Trading Places
(83, John Landis);
The Razor’s Edge
(84, John Byrum);
A Private Function
(85, Malcolm Mowbray);
Past Caring
(85, Richard Eyre);
A Room with a View
(86, James Ivory); superb as the aging journalist in
Defence of the Realm
(86, David Drury);
Maurice
(87, Ivory);
September
(87, Woody Allen);
The Bourne Identity
(88, Roger Young); in the twelfth century in
Stealing Heaven
(88, Donner);
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
(89, Spielberg);
Toy Soldiers
(91, Daniel Petrie Jr.);
Noises Off
(92, Bogdanovich)—with Caine once more, and brilliant.

Roland Emmerich
, b. Stuttgart, Germany, 1955
1979:
Franzmann
. 1984:
Das Arche Noah Prinzip
. 1985:
Joey
. 1987:
Hollywood Monster
. 1990:
Moon 44
. 1992:
Universal Soldier
. 1994:
Stargate
. 1996:
Independence Day
. 1998:
Godzilla
. 2000:
The Patriot
. 2004:
The Day After Tomorrow
. 2008:
10,000 B.C
. 2009:
2012
.

Despite the horrendously stupid (and dull)
Godzilla
, the word in Hollywood is that Emmerich (with his onetime producer partner, Don Devlin) was a ready-made handler for big sci-fi and special-effects franchises. This is because of the surprise hit of
Stargate
and the boxoffice sensation of
Independence Day
. The latter was spectacular, zany, and touched up with wild humor—things strikingly absent from
Godzilla
, or the brutal, history-less
The Patriot
. Emmerich was raised in Germany and trained at the Munich Film School. He made some awful cheap pictures in Germany—and then carried on in America. It has to be said that no other German director has known his commercial success in the U.S. But in the globalization of film history, why are we obliged to swallow the preposterous and coarse Emmerich when once we had Murnau and Lubitsch? If the latter had “touch,” then Emmerich has “crunch.” That said,
2012
has giddy effects.

Cy Endfield
(Cyril Raker Endfield) (1914–95), b. Scranton, Pennsylvania
1946:
Gentleman Joe Palooka
. 1947:
Stork Bites Man
. 1948:
The Argyle Secrets
. 1949:
Joe Palooka in the Big Fight
. 1950:
The Underworld Story; The Sound of Fury
. 1952:
Tarzan’s Savage Fury
. 1953:
Limping Man
(codirected with Charles de Latour). 1954:
The Master Plan
. 1955:
Impulse
(codirected with de Latour);
The Secret
. 1956:
Child in the House
(codirected with de Latour). 1957:
Hell Drivers
. 1958:
Sea Fury
. 1959:
Secret Storm
. 1961:
Mysterious Island
. 1964:
Hide and Seek; Zulu
. 1965:
Sands of the Kalahari
. 1969:
De Sade
(codirected with Roger Corman). 1971:
Universal Soldier
.

From Joe Palooka to the Marquis de Sade is an eventful journey, especially with Tarzan and Welsh soldiers fighting Zulus along the way. Endfield had a very respectable grounding in the American theatre. From Yale and the New Theatre School he became a producer and a drama teacher. After the war, he went into movies as a writer and then took up direction. He was compelled to leave America during the McCarthy period and worked in England uncredited or under a pseudonym.

Hell Drivers
was an unexpectedly raw look into the lives of English lorry drivers with much of the flavor and violence of an American thriller. It is an obvious, sensational film, but still Endfield’s best and worth seeing for its pitching together of Stanley Baker and Patrick McGoohan. The meeting with Baker proved very profitable for Endfield; it led to a joint production company that made
Zulu
and
Sands of the Kalahari
. The first is a well-told, old-fashioned war story that includes some exciting footage of tribesmen.

Endfield has been rediscovered, or factually amended. Most reference books—this one included—said he had been born in South Africa. One went so far as to say he had died in 1983. I met him in the summer of 1992, in his cottage not far from Oxford, England, and there established that he had been a magician who had caught the attention of, and worked with, Orson Welles around the time of
The Magnificent Ambersons
.

He helped with the scripts of most of his own films and contributed to
Sleep My Love
(48, Douglas Sirk);
Crashout
(55, Lewis R. Foster);
Night of the Demon
(58, Jacques Tourneur); and
Zulu Dawn
(79, Douglas Hickox).

Of his own films,
The Underworld Story
is revealed as an unusually somber mood piece, much helped by Dan Duryea.
Impulse
, made in England, has Arthur Kennedy in a rut as an estate agent and drawn into romance and intrigue while his wife’s away. The plot grows farfetched, but the first half hour is very sharp and Losey-like. But many of Endfield’s films are still very hard to find.

Ray Enright
(1896–1965), b. Anderson, Indiana
1927:
Girl from Chicago; Jaws of Steel; Tracked by the Police
. 1928:
Domestic Troubles; Land of the Silver Fox; Little Wildcat
. 1929:
Stolen Kisses; Skin Deep; Kid Gloves
. 1930:
Dancing Sweeties; Scarlet Pages; Golden Dawn; Song of the West
. 1932:
Play Girl; The Tenderfoot
. 1933:
Blondie Johnson; Silk Express; Tomorrow at Seven; Havana Widows
. 1934:
I’ve Got Your Number; Twenty Million Sweethearts; Circus Clown; Dames; St. Louis Kid
. 1935:
Travelling Saleslady; While the Patient Slept; Alibi Ike; We’re in the Money; Miss Pacific Fleet
. 1936:
Snowed Under; Earthworm Tractors; China Clipper; Sing Me a Love Song
. 1937:
Ready, Willing and Able; Slim; Back in Circulation; The Singing Marine; Swing Your Lady; Gold Diggers in Paris
. 1938:
Hard to Get; Going Places
. 1939:
Naughty But Nice; On Your Toes; Angels Wash Their Faces
. 1940:
An Angel from Texas; Brother Rat and a Baby; River’s End
. 1941:
The Wagons Roll at Night; Thieves Fall Out; Bad Men of Missouri; Law of the Tropics; Wild Bill Hickok Rides
. 1942:
The Spoilers; Men of Texas; Sin Town
. 1943:
The Iron Major; Gung Ho!; Good Luck, Mr. Yates
. 1945:
China Sky; Man Alive; One Way to Love
. 1947:
Trail Street; Albuquerque
. 1948:
Return of the Bad Men; Coroner Creek
. 1949:
South of St. Louis
. 1950:
Montana
(codirected with Raoul Walsh);
Kansas Raiders
. 1951:
Flaming Feather
. 1953:
The Man from Cairo
.

The coloring of an unassuming artisan’s career could alter radically if he switched companies. For Ray Enright, the change came in 1941 when he left Warners for Universal. Trained as an editor and supplier of comic material by Mack Sennett, he had served Warners for a dozen years, handling its cheerful musicals.
Dames
is Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, and Joan Blondell, with choreography by Busby Berkeley. The title is expressive of Warners’ attitude to musicals and women, just as Berkeley’s presence speaks for their most creative aspect. But
Twenty Million Sweethearts
(Powell and Ginger Rogers);
Ready, Willing and Able; Gold Diggers in Paris;
and
Naughty But Nice
are robust, run-of-the-mill products. By 1940, Warners had shifted Enright into action pictures, and when he left the studio it meant his abandonment of the musical for good. Instead, he directed Universal adventures and Westerns, several of them B pictures. They proved no better and no worse than the musicals, routine products, sure of their own limits, too knowing to waste stars or mishandle set pieces.
The Spoilers
has Dietrich, John Wayne, and Randolph Scott;
Gung Ho!
is Scott again; while
Trail Street
, at RKO, is an excellent Western with Scott and Robert Ryan.
South of St. Louis
, back at Warners in 1949, is a Western made with some skill, still looking better than later, more ambitious works in the genre. In short, Enright is usually worth seeing, so long as certain limits are recognized in advance.

Nora Ephron
, b. New York, 1941
1992:
This Is My Life
. 1993:
Sleepless in Seattle
. 1994:
Mixed Nuts
. 1996:
Michael
. 1998:
You’ve Got Mail
. 2000:
Lucky Numbers
. 2005:
Bewitched
. 2009:
Julie & Julia
.

Up until about the early nineties, it seemed that Nora Ephron had done, and succeeded at, everything. She had gone from being the child of a screenwriting partnership (Henry Ephron and Phoebe Wolkind), to a juvenile character in their play
Take Her, She’s Mine
(played on screen by Sandra Dee), to a Wellesley student, a writer, a wit, a cook, a novelist, a screenwriter, and even a director, and the director of a smash hit,
Sleepless in Seattle
.

She makes films on just the kind of ideas that might appeal to a newspaper columnist—and with a superficiality that even the public now seems to have caught on to. Though blessed with the amiable couple from
Sleepless
, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan,
You’ve Got Mail
did less well. Never forget (or forgive) that it also sought to improve and smarten up
The Shop Around the Corner
, many lines from which could adorn Ms. Ephron’s grave—make that the grave around the corner.

Her first screenplay—for
Silkwood
, written with Alice Arlen (83, Mike Nichols)—was not just her best, but the one that shows the most interest in real people.
Heartburn
(85, Nichols), from her “novel” (based on her marriage to Carl Bernstein—her second—and its failure) was an embarrassment. But
When Harry Met Sally …
(89, Rob Reiner) showed a grave case of “cutes,” and its deli orgasm scene pushed Ms. Ephron into the realm of shtick for which there are no maps home. It’s a sign that she may like actors more than people. She also wrote
My Blue Heaven
(90, Herbert Ross).

Just because she rates as a successful woman in Hollywood is no reason to omit the feeling that she is the director of at least five supine pictures. That said,
Julie & Julia
was a glorious entertainment, one of the finest American tributes to marriage, an obvious coup for Meryl Streep, and final evidence that Stanley Tucci is one of our best actors.

Joe Eszterhas
, b. Gaskanydoroszlo, Hungary, 1944
Mr. Eszterhas is one of those professionals who read an earlier edition of this book and felt disgruntled. He complained to a magazine that had asked me to write about him that I viewed the writing of Ben Hecht as essentially subordinate to the achievement of von Sternberg, Preminger, and others. “I can’t believe he’s serious,” wrote Eszterhas. “Sternberg?
Preminger?”
He was aggrieved—with justice—that I had omitted such screenwriters as Paddy Chayefsky, Ernest Lehman, Robert Riskin, and William Goldman.

Well, I have filled some of those holes, and so I ought to say a few words about Mr. Eszterhas. We did have lunch together, and I found him enormously entertaining. He is large, hirsute, florid, reflective, anecdotal, self-deprecating (he admitted that he had done script doctoring for as little as $600,000 a week), and someone to make the Korda family young again.

If only his work was as much fun. After coming to this country as a child, and graduating from Ohio State, he became a journalist at the Cleveland
Plain Dealer
. He was bold and controversial: on one story he interviewed children without their parents’ permission so that the paper lost an invasion-of-privacy suit. He went on to
Rolling Stone
and wrote two books:
Thirteen Seconds: Confrontation at Kent State
(1970) and
Charley Simpson’s Apocalypse
(1974), which won the National Book Award.