The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (158 page)

He broadened his range after the war, at MGM, shaded by Lana Turner in Tay Garnett’s
The Postman Always Rings Twice
(46) and in two Negulesco women’s pix:
Nobody Lives Forever
(46) and, with Joan Crawford in
Humoresque
(47) where Isaac Stern’s hands and a clever suit allowed him to “play” the violin.

His contract with Warners ended, Garfield set up independently, and through his own company, Enterprise Productions, he starred in Rossen’s
Body and Soul
(47), as a boxer, and Polonsky’s
Force of Evil
(48).
Body and Soul
was tough but orthodox. But
Force of Evil
allows Garfield to show what a stylish little Caesar he could be. In truth, his crooked organizer is mesmerizing. He also played the Jew in Kazan’s
Gentleman’s Agreement
(47) and was a Cuban revolutionary in Huston’s
We Were Strangers
(49).

The tone of his later work, plus the novelty of his breakaway and the list of his associates, brought him under suspicion as a possible Communist. Uncooperative with the House Committee on Un-American Activities, he found it hard to get movie work, played the actor in Odets’s
The Big Knife
on stage, but was forced back to earlier modes:
Under My Skin
(50, Negulesco) and
The Breaking Point
(50, Curtiz), a remake of
To Have and Have Not
with Garfield too short on Bogart’s panache, but nearer to Hemingway’s mid-1930s radicalism. He died of a heart attack having reacted badly to neglect, and after a last interesting movie, John Berry’s
He Ran All the Way
(51). As Polonsky has said, “He defended his street-boy’s honor and they killed him for it.”

Judy Garland
(Frances Ethel Gumm) (1922–69), b. Grand Rapids, Minnesota
Garland left deep impressions on many viewers, but ruinous ones in herself. Long before her actual death, it was clear how far her career had been given over to disasters, breakdown, and a general messiness that sprang from her emotional intensity. Her greatest admirers were able to interpret the chaos as almost a proof of her integrity. And as if to torment herself, she never completely lost her talent. Not only was she capable of the deepest sentimental immersion in her material, but her own technical flaws and professional shortcomings were made to seem touching proof of her survival. She was always much more than a film actress. She was a great
dramatic
singer, and she thrived on personal appearances when, at her best, she could dominate the Palladium or Carnegie Hall.

If not born in a trunk, she was the daughter of vaudeville parents who introduced her to the stage at the age of three. With her sister she survived billing as “The Gumm Sisters,” and at the age of thirteen she was taken on by MGM for her screen debut in 1936 in a short,
Every Sunday
(Felix Feist), and
Pigskin Parade
(David Butler), on loan to Fox. She was never more successful than as a teenage star, often with Mickey Rooney:
Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry
(38, Alfred E. Green);
Everybody Sing
(38, Edwin L. Marin);
Listen Darling
(38, Marin);
Love Finds Andy Hardy
(38, George Seitz); entering folklore as Dorothy in Victor Fleming’s
Wizard of Oz
(39), where she first sang “Over the Rainbow”; in four Busby Berkeley musicals:
Babes in Arms
(39);
Strike Up the Band
(40);
Babes on Broadway
(41); and
For Me and My Gal
(42). In these hectic late teenage years, she also made
Little Nellie Kelly
(40, Norman Taurog);
Andy Hardy Meets Debutante
(40, Seitz);
Ziegfeld Girl
(41, Robert Z. Leonard);
Life Begins for Andy Hardy
(41, Seitz);
Presenting Lily Mars
(43, Taurog);
Girl Crazy
(43, Taurog); and
Thousands Cheer
(43, George Sidney).

But she was several degrees more beautiful and touching in four films made by her then husband Vincente Minnelli: at her very best in
Meet Me in St. Louis
(44);
The Clock
(45);
Ziegfeld Follies
(46); and
The Pirate
(47). Already marked down as temperamental, her career at Metro petered out—despite
The Harvey Girls
(45, Sidney) and Charles Walters’s
Easter Parade
(48) with Fred Astaire—and ended in 1950 with
Summer Stock
(Walters) after she had broken down during the making of
Annie Get Your Gun
. In
Summer Stock
she is evidently plump—the more so for her farm-girl’s dungarees—in everything except the beautifully smart and streamlined “Get Happy” (the result of crash dieting and a bizarre farewell to the hungry lion).

Having worked hectically for fourteen years, she made only four more films before her death. In one,
Judgment at Nuremberg
(61, Stanley Kramer), she was very bad. In another, Cassavetes’s
A Child Is Waiting
(62), she was miscast. A third,
I Could Go On Singing
(63, Ronald Neame), with the generous support of Dirk Bogarde, has fine moments despite a grotesque note of autobiography. The fourth, Cukor’s
A Star Is Born
(54), is one of the greatest flawed movies ever made and shows Garland as the actress with the surest intuition of the drama in musicals. Warners took evident fright at the notion of a puffy Garland playing an ingenue who finds fame in the movies. But every physical handicap could not prevent Garland from catching the scent of her own horrible greasepaint life. Because it is the man who suffers—the James Mason part—Garland was enabled to see showbiz’s glib tragedy from a distance. She sang and yearned for someone else and the scenes with Mason, wonderfully assisted by Cukor, are as moving as “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” in
Meet Me in St. Louis
where she comforts Margaret O’Brien. Perhaps she yearned to care for people; is that the vibrato always trembling in her voice? Her voice is alive still, and Judy Davis—on TV—helped show why people keep writing and reading books about Garland.

James Garner
(James Scott Baumgarner), b. Norman, Oklahoma, 1928
This book has always believed that its target was careers made in film—the movies. Yet even in the mid-seventies it was evident that many movie stars had moved over to the smaller screen to keep in business. There was still an active snobbery at work that believed movies were more prestigious than television. To this day, there are a few stars who don’t do television. But there are careers like that of Lucille Ball that say, Wake up. For decades now, more people have watched TV than have gone to the movies. In the last twenty years, there have been undoubted star careers made on the small screen (and not included in this book): for instance, Mary Tyler Moore, Ed Asner, Carroll O’Connor, Henry Winkler, Larry Hagman, Joan Collins … Shelley Long, Ted Danson, and Roseanne Arnold.

With apologies to all of those people, and with a profound sense that television has been neglected, let us consider the case of James Garner. Garner has made a lot of movies; he has been nominated as best actor. Yet he is known for his presence on television—in the living room. I stress that domestic intimacy because it is one of Garner’s strengths. Thus, his “series” have included the droll ads for Polaroid with Mariette Hartley, as well as
Maverick
(which ran from 1957–62) and
The Rockford Files
(which ran from 1974 to 1980). Approximately, for Garner, that was an hour a week for twenty-six weeks a year for ten years. That is the equivalent of well over one hundred movies—and if any actor could claim one hundred movies made with the wit, narrative speed, and good-natured ease of
Maverick
and
Rockford Files
he would be … Cary Grant?

So let us at least list the mere movies that Garner made, no matter that he could seldom muster the intensity to match the great screen actors:
The Girl He Left Behind
(56, David Butler);
Toward the Unknown
(56, Mervyn Le Roy);
Sayonara
(57, Joshua Logan);
Shoot Out at Medicine Bow
(57, Richard L. Bare);
Darby’s Rangers
(58, William Wellman)—his first lead role;
Cash McCall
(59, Joseph Pevney);
Up Periscope
(59, Gordon Douglas); the male stooge in
The Children’s Hour
(61, William Wyler);
Boys’ Night Out
(62, Michael Gordon);
The Great Escape
(63, John Sturges); with Doris Day in
Move Over, Darling
(63, Gordon), once intended as the Monroe-Dean Martin
Something’s Got to Give; The Thrill of It All
(63, Norman Jewison), with Doris Day again; and
The Wheeler Dealers
(63, Arthur Hiller).

The closest he came to true movie stardom was in the clever
36 Hours
(64, George Seaton);
The Americanization of Emily
(64, Hiller);
The Art of Love
(65, Jewison);
Mister Buddwing
(66, Delbert Mann);
Duel at Diablo
(66, Ralph Nelson);
Grand Prix
(66, John Frankenheimer);
A Man Could Get Killed
(66, Ronald Neame); as Wyatt Earp in
Hour of the Gun
(67, Sturges);
How Sweet It Is!
(68, Jerry Paris);
The Pink Jungle
(68, Mann); doing Raymond Chandler in
Marlowe
(69, Paul Bogart)—actually a model for Rockford; very funny in
Support Your Local Sheriff!
(69, Burt Kennedy); rather nasty in
A Man Called Sledge
(70, Vic Morrow); very good in
Skin Game
(71, Bogart);
Support Your Local Gunfighter
(71, Kennedy);
They Only Kill Their Masters
(72, James Goldstone);
One Little Indian
(73, Bernard McEveety); and
The Castaway Cowboy
(74, Vincent McEveety).

Too many of these films were like bad TV movies, so Garner settled for the very demanding
Rockford
, which eventually took its physical toll on him. But he won an Emmy in it in 1977 and became a beloved figure.

He has made only a few theatrical movies since then:
H.E.A.L.T.H
. (80, Robert Altman);
The Fan
(81, Edward Bianchi); very funny in
Victor/Victoria
(82, Blake Edwards); the very silly
Tank
(84, Marvin Chomsky); getting his nomination as the pharmacist in
Murphy’s Romance
(85, Martin Ritt); as Wyatt Earp again in
Sunset
(88, Edwards);
Fire in the Sky
(93, Robert Lieberman); with Mel Gibson, in
Maverick
(94, Richard Donner).

But that is not all. He has become the actor and producer of prestigious TV movies: with Mary Tyler Moore in
Heartsounds
(84, Glenn Jordan);
Promise
(86, Jordan), in which he looks after a schizophrenic brother (James Woods);
My Name Is Bill W
. (89, Daniel Petrie), in which he and Woods form Alcoholics Anonymous; most spectacularly, in the satiric
Barbarians at the Gate
(92, Jordan), a project that made
Wall Street
seem slow and cautious; and
Breathing Lessons
(94, John Erman).

Garner’s popularity is undimmed: with Jack Lemmon as ex-presidents in
My Fellow Americans
(96, Peter Segal);
Dead Silence
(97, Petrie);
Twilight
(98, Robert Benton);
Legalese
(98, Jordan);
One Special Night
(99, Roger Young); as God in
God, the Devil and Bob
(00, Jeff DeGrandis and Dan Fausett);
Space Cowboys
(00, Clint Eastwood);
The Last Debate
(00, John Badham);
Roughing It
(01, Charles Martin Smith); on TV in
First Monday
(02),
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
(02, Callie Khouri);
The Notebook
(04, Nick Cassavetes); the short
First Night
(07, Martin Spanjers).

Tay Garnett
(William Taylor Garnett) (1898–1977), b. Los Angeles
1928:
Celebrity; The Spieler
. 1929:
The Flying Fool; Oh Yeah!
. 1930:
Officer O’Brien; Her Man
. 1931:
Bad Company
. 1932:
One Way Passage; Okay America; Prestige
. 1933:
Destination Unknown; S.O.S. Iceberg
(codirected with Arnold Fanck). 1935:
China Seas; She Couldn’t Take It; Professional Soldier
. 1937:
Slave Ship; Love Is News; StandIn
. 1938:
Joy of Living; Trade Winds
. 1939:
Eternally Yours
. 1940:
Slightly Honorable; Seven Sinners
. 1941:
Cheers for Miss Bishop
. 1942:
My Favorite Spy
. 1943:
Bataan; The Cross of Lorraine
. 1944:
Mrs. Parkington
. 1945:
Valley of Decision
. 1946:
The Postman Always Rings Twice
. 1947:
Wild Harvest
. 1948:
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
. 1950:
The Fireball
. 1951:
Soldiers Three; Cause for Alarm
. 1952:
One Minute to Zero
. 1953:
Main Street to Broadway
. 1954:
The Black Knight
. 1956:
Seven Wonders of the World
(codirected). 1960:
A Terrible Beauty
. 1963:
Cattle King/Guns of Wyoming
. 1970:
The Delta Factor
.

A writer first, Garnett spent several years scripting and adapting:
Who’s Your Friend
(25, Forrest K. Sheldon);
The Cruise of the Jasper B
(26, James W. Horne);
No Control
(27, Scott Sidney and E. J. Babille);
Rubber Tires
(27, Alan Hale);
Turkish Delight
(27, Paul Sloane);
White Gold
(27, William K. Howard);
The Wise Wife
(27, E. Mason Hopper);
The Cop
(28, Donald Crisp);
Power
(28, Howard Higgins); and
Skyscraper
(28, Higgins).