The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (159 page)

Garnett’s early movies are his best:
Her Man
is a lost film with a great reputation, a version of “Frankie and Johnny” set in Havana;
One Way Passage
is a classic women’s picture, with Kay Francis and William Powell deliriously sophisticated in forlorn romance, while
China Seas
benefits from a Jules Furthman script tossed back and forth by Gable and Harlow. But within two years, Garnett was landed instead with Tyrone Power and Loretta Young in
Love Is News. StandIn
is a wordy comedy about Hollywood, and
Trade Winds
and
Eternally Yours
are far behind the earlier films.
Seven Sinners
has Dietrich and John Wayne uneasy with each other, and by the end of the war Garnett was producing routine, patriotic fodder,
Bataan
, and two Greer Garson pictures:
Mrs. Parkington
and
Valley of Decision
. But
The
Postman Always Rings Twice
begins as a sultry and moody melodrama with John Garfield and Lana Turner, and
Wild Harvest
is a good Alan Ladd adventure. After that, Garnett made an assortment of poor films and worked as a director in TV.

Greer Garson
(1903–96), b. County Down, Northern Ireland
Having worked with some success in the English theatre, she was spotted by Louis B. Mayer, signed up, and given an impressive cameo debut in Sam Wood’s
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
(39). After a poor comedy,
Remember
(40, Norman Z. McLeod), she embarked on a sequence of films in which she embodied qualities of ladylike appeal, uxorial and maternal loyalty, and above all (blowing back her stray curls) dutiful sacrifice that made her almost an Allied totem of the war years: badly miscast as Elizabeth Bennett in
Pride and Prejudice
(40, Robert Z. Leonard);
Blossoms in the Dust
(41, Mervyn Le Roy);
When Ladies Meet
(41, Leonard); phenomenally popular opposite Walter Pidgeon as
Mrs. Miniver
(42, William Wyler), a film that won her the best actress Oscar and conditioned American public opinion to the sentimental explanation for a necessary war; opposite Ronald Colman in
Random Harvest
(42, Le Roy); again with Pidgeon in one of the last old-fashioned biopics,
Madame Curie
(43, Le Roy); and in
Mrs. Parkington
(44, Tay Garnett).
Mrs. Miniver, Random Harvest
, and
Madame Curie
—her most characteristic work—were all produced by Sidney Franklin. She was a major star, nominated for the Oscar every year from 1941 to 1945.

Two more films sustained her,
The Valley of Decision
(45, Garnett) and
Adventure
(46, Victor Fleming), which was billed, “Gable’s back, and Garson’s got him.” But with peace her popularity faded as suddenly as it had materialized. She had little innate talent other than the ability to gather a rather sedate gaiety to her bosom: she could easily seem like a duke’s wife talking to peasants. After the war, she made several blighted attempts to broaden her range:
Desire Me
(47, Jack Conway and George Cukor);
Julia Misbehaves
(48, Conway); was more convincing as Irene in
That Forsyte Woman
(49, Compton Bennett); was mistakenly persuaded to reprise past successes in
The Miniver Story
(50, H. C. Potter). Her career at MGM petered away with
The Law and the Lady
(51, Edwin H. Knopf);
Scandal at Scourie
(53, Jean Negulesco); Calpurnia in Mankiewicz’s
Julius Caesar
(53); and
Her Twelve Men
(54, Leonard). At that point she asked for her release, made
Strange Lady in Town
(55, Le Roy) at Warners, and then went back to the theatre. She made only three more films: as Eleanor Roosevelt in the disastrous
Sunrise at Campobello
(60, Vincent J. Donohue); as a benign Mother Prioress in Henry Koster’s
The Singing Nun
(65); and as Fred MacMurray’s wife in the Disney
Happiest Millionaire
(67, Norman Tokar).

Vittorio Gassman
(1922–2000), b. Genoa, Italy
In the early 1950s, Gassman’s conceited beauty brought him a Hollywood contract and marriage to Shelley Winters. Neither association lasted long. Indeed, any director might have shied away from pairing those two, anticipating the juicy smack of colliding hams. For Gassman has always been an outrageous monopolizer of films. To call him an overactor is to suggest a willful stepping on the gas. Whereas the swamping effusion seems quite natural and innocent. In drama, or in parts that exploited his posturing handsomeness, he was persistently overpowering. But in 1957, he acted in and directed with Francesco Rosi
Kean
, based on Sartre’s study of the great English actor. The dissection in that play of histrionic manipulation may have taught Gassman to see the humor in acting, for afterwards he concentrated on comedy as well as his own stage company, the Teatro Popolare Italiano.

Although originally a stage actor, Gassman has worked regularly in films since the end of the war:
Preludio d’Amore
(46);
La Figlia del Capitano
(47, Mario Camerini);
Daniele Cortis
(47, Mario Soldati);
Bitter Rice
(49, Giuseppe De Santis);
Anna
(51, Alberto Lattuada);
Cry of the Hunted
(53, Joseph H. Lewis);
Sombrero
(53, Norman Foster);
Mambo
(54, Robert Rossen);
Rhapsody
(54, Charles Vidor);
La Donna Piu Bella del Mondo
(55, Robert Z. Leonard);
War and Peace
(56, King Vidor);
Tempest
(57, Lattuada);
I Soliti Ignoti
(57, Mario Monicelli);
Audace Colpi dei Soliti Ignoti
(59, Nanni Loy);
Il Mattatore
(59, Dino Risi);
La Grande Guerra
(60, Monicelli);
Il Giudizio Universale
(61, Vittorio de Sica);
La Marcia su Roma
(62, Risi);
Barabbas
(62, Richard Fleischer);
Il Sorpasso
(62, Risi);
Frenesia dell’Estate
(63, Luigi Zampa);
I Mostri
(63, Risi);
Il Gaucho
(64, Risi);
L’Armata Brancaleone
(65, Monicelli);
Questi Fantasmi
(67, Renato Castellani);
Il Tigre
(67, Risi);
Il Profeta
(67, Risi);
Woman Times Seven
(67, de Sica);
Contestazione Generale
(70, Zampa);
In Nome del Popolo Italiano
(71, Risi);
Brancaleone alle Croziate
(71, Monicelli);
Che c’Entriamo noi con la Rivoluzione?
(73, Sergio Corbucci);
Tosca
(73, Luigi Magni);
Profumo di Donna
(74, Risi);
Riva Italia
(78, Risi); excellent as the waiter in high places in
A Wedding
(78, Robert Altman); and
Quintet
(79, Altman).

Gassman remained very active in fields not easy to observe:
The Immortal Bachelor
(79, Marcello Fondato);
The Nude Bomb
(79, Clive Donner);
Sono Fotogenico
(80, Risi);
La Terrazza
(80, Ettore Scola);
Sharky’s Machine
(81, Burt Reynolds);
Camera D’Albergo
(81, Monicelli);
Tempest
(82, Paul Mazursky);
De Padre in Figlio
(82, which he directed with his son Alessandro);
Il Conte Tacchia
(81, Corbucci);
La Vie est un Roman
(83, Alain Resnais);
Benvenuta
(83, André Delvaux);
Le Pouvoir du Mal
(85, Kryzstof Zanussi);
I Solitia Ignoti—20 Anni Doppo
(86, Amanzio Todini);
La Famiglia
(87, Scola);
I Picari
(87, Monicelli);
Di Menticare Palermo
(90, Francesco Rosi); and
Sheherezade
(90, Philippe de Broca).

Any Italian will tell you that to appreciate Gassman you had to behold him on stage. But, till the end, he gave his presence to the movies, too:
I Divertimenti della Vita Privata
(90, Cristina Comencini);
Rossini! Rossini!
(91, Monicelli);
El Largo Invierno
(91, Jaime Camino);
Tolgo il Disturbo
(92, Risi);
Quando Eravamo Repressi
(92, Dino Quartullo);
Abraham
(94, Joseph Sargent);
Tutti gli Anni una Volta l’Anno
(94, Gianfrancesco Lazotti); splendid and saturnine in
Sleepers
(96, Barry Levinson);
Deserto di Fuoco
(97, Enzo G. Castellari);
La Cena
(98, Scola);
La Bomba
(99, Giulio Base).

Janet Gaynor
(Laura Gainor) (1906–84), b. Philadelphia
Having worked four years as an extra, she won parts in two-reel Westerns. Fox put her in her first full-length movie,
The Johnstown Flood
(26, Irving Cummings), and signed her up. She had an impressive wide-eyed appeal in
The Blue Eagle
(26, John Ford),
The Midnight Kiss
(26, Cummings),
The Shamrock Handicap
(26, Ford), and
The Return of Peter Grimm
(26, Victor Schertzinger); and she rose to eminence in three films that won her the first best actress Oscar:
Seventh Heaven
(27, Frank Borzage), as a tart brought to pure love by Charles Farrell;
Street Angel
(28, Borzage), again with Farrell; F. W. Murnau’s
Sunrise
(27)—a glorious performance of humility and sacrifice in one of the silent cinema’s masterpieces.

For a moment, she was a huge star, the nation’s waif. Fox, in the person of Winfield Sheehan, adored her—as did cinema audiences, especially when she was teamed with Farrell. In 1929 she made
Christina
(William K. Howard);
Four Devils
(Murnau);
Lucky Star
(Borzage), with Farrell; her first sound picture,
Sunny Side Up
(David Butler). She was by now established as an innocent victim—a character enhanced by her wholesome beauty and saucer eyes. But after
High Society Blues
(30, Butler), she quarreled with Fox, was suspended, and returned, humiliated, as a drug addict in
The Man Who Came Back
(31, Raoul Walsh). Contrite, she settled back into “sweetheart” roles:
Daddy Long Legs
(31, Alfred Santell);
Merely Mary Ann
(31, Henry King);
Delicious
(31, Butler);
Tess of the Storm Country
(32, Santell); and
The First Year
(32, Howard). Fox put her in
State Fair
(33, King) with Will Rogers. She then made
Adorable
(33, William Dieterle);
Carolina
(34, King);
Change of Heart
(34, John Blystone);
Servant’s Entrance
(34, Frank Lloyd);
One More Spring
(35, King); and
The Farmer Takes a Wife
(35, Victor Fleming), opposite Henry Fonda.

The studio now had little time for her, and she made
Small Town Girl
(36, William Wellman) at MGM before joining Selznick for
A Star Is Born
(37, Wellman), where she felt too old for the ingenue. She is the emotional engine of that film, but time has been kinder to Fredric March’s elegant despair. She was also in
The Young in Heart
(38, Richard Wallace). After
Three Loves Has Nancy
(38, Richard Thorpe) at MGM, she retired. Perhaps she had waited for a flourish, sensing that she was more happily a silent screen actress, too demure and loyal for the 1930s. The retirement was broken, for no clear reason, in 1957, when she appeared as Richard Sargent’s mother in
Bernardine
(Henry Levin).

In 1939, she married the clothes designer Adrian—but stories abound now about her feelings for Mary Martin.

Ben Gazzara
(Biago Anthony Gazzara), b. New York, 1930
The son of Sicilian immigrants, he spoke Italian as his first language. In 1948 he was awarded a drama scholarship and in 1951 he joined the Actors’ Studio, where he stayed three years, attracting special attention as Jocko de Paris in the Studio production of
End as a Man
, a role he repeated for his film debut in 1957. On the stage, he also starred in
A Hatful of Rain
and
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
. His movies have not fulfilled the promise of stored-up hostility so casually implied in
End as a Man
(57, Jack Garfein). It remains an open question as to whether he is a remarkable actor or simply a glowering ham. Characteristically, Preminger emphasized this very ambiguity in
Anatomy of a Murder
(59). After that, amid much work for TV, he has made only a few, insignificant films:
The Young Doctors
(61, Phil Karlson);
La Citta Prigioniera
(62, Joseph Anthony);
Reprieve
(62, Millard Kaufman);
A Rage to Live
(65, Walter Grauman);
The Bridge at Remagen
(69, John Guillermin); as one of the central trio in John Cassavetes’s
Husbands
(70); and
The Neptune Factor
(73, Daniel Petrie). The question at the end of
Anatomy
remains attached to Gazzara. Nor is it settled by the florid
Capone
(75, Steve Carver), tamer than de Paris. He was the strip-club operator in
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
(76, Cassavetes); in
Opening Night
(77, Cassavetes); secondhand Rick in
Saint Jack
(79, Peter Bogdanovich); and in
Bloodline
(79, Terence Young).

Since then, he has become an actor who moves easily between Italy and America:
Inchon
(81, Young);
They All Laughed
(81, Bogdanovich);
Tales of Ordinary Madness
(81, Marco Ferreri); as the cop in the Budd Schulberg-scripted
A Question of Honor
(82, Jud Taylor) for TV;
La Ragazza di Trieste
(82, Pasquale Festa Campanile);
Uno Scandalo Perbene
(84, Campanile);
La Donna delle Meraviglie
(85, Alberto Bevilacqua);
Figlio Mio Infinitamente Caro
(85, Valentino Orsini);
A Letter to Three Wives
(85, Larry Elikann);
Il Comorrista
(86, Giuseppe Tornatore); as the father in
An Early Frost
(86, John Erman) on TV;
Downpayment on Murder
(87, Waris Hussein);
Police Story: The Freeway Killings
(87, William A. Graham);
Quicker than the Eye
(88, Nicolas Gessner); and
Road House
(89, Rowdy Herrington). In 1990, he acted in and directed
Oltre l’Oceano
.