The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (162 page)

Then came the miracle: in 1977, he came upon David Mercer’s script and played the radiant, racked novelist in
Providence
(77, Alain Resnais). Mortal pain and helpless creation worked together like the instruments in a double concerto—and Gielgud looked like a man in a trap, not just an actor on holiday.

Did he then appreciate that real work could be done in film? Did that confidence foster his urge for senior-citizen security? Whatever, he plunged into film with magnificent, indiscriminate zest. Like notorious starlets, he will do anything now to get in a picture:
Les Misérables
(78, Glenn Jordan) on TV;
The Human Factor
(79, Preminger);
The Conductor
(79, Andrzej Wajda);
Caligula
(80, Tinto Brass); the surgeon, Carr Gomm, in
The Elephant Man
(80, David Lynch);
The Formula
(80, John G. Avildsen);
Lion of the Desert
(80, Moustapha Akkad); as Charles Ryder’s dry father in
Brideshead Revisited
(81, Charles Sturridge);
Sphinx
(81, Franklin J. Schaffner); winning the supporting actor Oscar as the butler in
Arthur
(81, Steve Gordon);
Chariots of Fire
(81, Hugh Hudson); on TV in
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
(82, Michael Tuchner);
Inside the Third Reich
(82, Marvin J. Chomsky); Lord Irwin in
Gandhi
(82, Attenborough);
The Scarlet and the Black
(83, Jerry London) on TV;
Wagner
(83, Tony Palmer);
Invitation to the Wedding
(83, Joseph Brooks);
The Wicked Lady
(83, Michael Winner);
The Master of Ballantrae
(84, Douglas Hickox);
Scandalous
(84, Rob Cohen);
Camille
(84, Desmond Davis);
The Shooting Party
(84, Alan Bridges);
Leave All Fair
(85, John Raid); as the ambassador with a little knowledge of Ingmar Bergman in
Plenty
(85, Fred Schepisi);
Time After Time
(85, Bill Hays);
Romance on the Orient Express
(85, Lawrence Gordon Clark);
The Whistle Blower
(86, Simon Langton);
Appointment with Death
(88, Michael Winner);
A Man for All Seasons
(88, Charlton Heston) as Wolsey;
Arthur 2: On the Rocks
(88, Bud Yorkin);
Getting It Right
(89, Randal Kleiser);
Strike It Rich
(90, James Scott); realizing a dream in doing
The Tempest
on film in
Prospero’s Books
(91, Peter Greenaway), and then realizing he hadn’t seen enough Greenaway films; and
Shining Through
(91, David Seltzer).

He exited as only he could, in a flurry of work, all fun, some of it distinguished:
The Power of One
(92, Avildsen); as Sydney Cockerell in
The Best of Friends
(94, Alvin Rakoff);
First Knight
(95, Jerry Zucker);
Haunted
(95, Lewis Gilbert); as the Professor of Sunlight in
Gulliver’s Travels
(96, Sturridge);
Looking for Richard
(96, Al Pacino); as the teacher in
Shine
(96, Scott Hicks); as Priam in
Hamlet
(96, Kenneth Branagh); as Touchett, superb in death, in
The Portrait of a Lady
(96, Jane Campion);
A Dance to the Music of Time
(97, Rakoff and Christopher Morahan); King Constant in
Merlin
(98, Steve Barron); the voice of Merlin for
Quest for Camelot
(98, Frederik Du Chau); as the pope in
Elizabeth
(98, Shekhar Kapur);
The Tichborne Claimant
(98, David Yates);
Catastrophe
(00, David Mamet).

John Gilbert
(John Pringle) (1895–1936), b. Logan, Utah
Gilbert is one of the notorious instances of Hollywood stars destroyed or rejected by the system. But it is hard to view him with much sympathy. He seems more like a dinosaur in film history, an extravagant creature hobbled by evolution.

In Gilbert’s case, sound was his ostensible crisis. And yet the details of why he declined from a great star to a has-been within a few years are still not clear. The general version is that his voice was inappropriate to his handsomeness. But he did make sound films. Perhaps it is more to the point to ask whether he was really handsome. Or were his looks not too staring and brooding, too carried away by the
thought
of handsomeness? Others say that MGM planned his downfall, driven beyond endurance by his posturing, the endless problems of handling him, and the vast salaries he demanded ($250,000 a picture).

Probably both factors played their part. His voice was prim, and the studio made little effort to avert or cushion his humiliation. But Gilbert’s central difficulty had less to do with voice production or bad relations with the studio than with the conception of himself as an actor that he had acquired. For he was committed to emotional grandeur and to the conviction that he needed to lose himself in his part. King Vidor has recalled the way Gilbert liked romantic music played while he acted, and preferred never to read a script. He carried his parts home with him and attempted to bathe his private life in their warmth. As Vidor puts it: “John Gilbert was an impressionable fellow, not too well established in a role of his own in life. The paths he followed in his daily life were greatly influenced by the parts that some scriptwriter had written for him. When he began to read the publicity emanating from his studio which dubbed him the ‘Great Lover,’ his behavior in real life began to change accordingly.”

Vidor directed five of Gilbert’s most successful silent pictures, and knew him socially. He made this comment on why the actor failed to survive sound: “Jack’s speaking voice on the sound track was a problem, but I don’t think it was a question of tone or quality. The literal content of his scenes, which in silent films had been imagined, was too intense to be put into spoken words.” That is a charitable way of saying that Gilbert had always been a coarse actor. The wonder is that he flourished in the silent era, for it is hard to see how his playing can ever have been thought other than it seems now—blatant, monotonous, and unappealing. Gilbert defines ham by seeming oblivious of his own excessiveness. Sound may have exposed that ignorance, but it always marred Gilbert as an actor.

When Garbo came to Metro, Gilbert was designated as her screen lover. The two actors then fell in love—or in that heady sex that is infected by endless takes—and the studio played up the romance to help the pictures. This was not a kindness. Garbo was capricious, and Gilbert was insecure. There was a famous “wedding” in 1926 when Garbo left Gilbert at the altar. The facts are now buried in legend, but some say Louis B. Mayer nudged the actor and said, why worry, you can always fuck her. Gilbert went berserk. He attacked Mayer and turned dislike into enmity. At the heart of it all, he had been laughed at in public, the great lover humiliated.

Gilbert was educated at military academies and had a variety of jobs before he joined Thomas Ince to play bit parts. He struggled for several years, and was sacked by Ince. It was Maurice Tourneur who rediscovered him in 1919 and engaged him as writer and assistant as well as actor. Gilbert was in
The White Heather
(19, Tourneur),
The Great Redeemer
(20, Clarence Brown),
The White Circle
(20, Tourneur), and
Deep Waters
(21, Tourneur), and he was put under contract by Fox. Still less than a star, he made a number of dull films, directed by Jack Dillon and Jerome Storm. He won more acclaim for
Monte Cristo
(22, Emmett J. Flynn),
Cameo Kirby
(23, John Ford),
While Paris Sleeps
, a Tourneur film shot years before but only released in 1923, and
The Wolf Man
(24, Edmund Mortimer).

But it was only at MGM that Gilbert reached his brief eminence:
He Who Gets Slapped
(24, Victor Sjostrom);
His Hour
(24, Vidor);
The Snob
(24, Monta Bell);
Wife of the Centaur
(24, Vidor); a big hit in
The Big Parade
(25, Vidor);
The Merry Widow
(25, Erich von Stroheim);
La Bohème
(26, Vidor); and
Bardelys the Magnificent
(26, Vidor). This was his triumphant period, perhaps because he was best displayed by the romantic exuberance of Vidor.

His second period at MGM was still successful, but he was increasingly shown up by the detailed reticence of his costar, Greta Garbo, in
Flesh and the Devil
(26, Clarence Brown);
Love
(27, Edmund Goulding); and
A Woman of Affairs
(28, Brown). She dominated their very potent love scenes—she was the center of attention. In addition, he made
Man, Woman and Sin
(27, Bell), with Jeanne Eagels;
The Show
(27, Tod Browning) and
The Cossacks
(28, George Hill and Brown), with Renée Adorée; two films with Joan Crawford:
Twelve Miles Out
(27, Jack Conway) and
Four Walls
(28, William Nigh).

By 1929, he was compelled to speak on film. His debut was disastrous—as Romeo to Norma Shearer’s Juliet in the balcony scene cameo from
Hollywood Revue of 1929
(29, Charles Reisner). He then made two features:
His Glorious Night
(29, Lionel Barrymore)—allegedly a deliberate studio sabotage—and
Redemption
(30, Fred Niblo). The drop in his following was immediate, and after
Way for a Sailor
(30, Sam Wood),
A Gentleman’s Fate
(31, Mervyn Le Roy),
The Phantom of Paris
(31, John S. Robertson),
West of Broadway
(32, Harry Beaumont), and
Downstairs
(32, Bell), he placed the famous notice in
Variety
to the effect that MGM would neither release him nor give him parts.

In fact the studio put him in
Fast Workers
(33, Browning) and agreed to Garbo’s request that he play with her in
Queen Christina
(33, Rouben Mamoulian). His last film was made at Columbia,
The Captain Hates the Sea
(35, Lewis Milestone), and within a year Gilbert had drunk himself to death. Dietrich bought his bed sheets at auction; Garbo was widely reported as his mistress; and he had been married to actresses Olivia Burwell, Leatrice Joy, Ina Claire, and Virginia Bruce.

Lewis Gilbert
, b. London, 1920
1947:
The Little Ballerina
. 1950:
Once a Summer; There Is Another Sun
. 1951:
The Scarlet Thread
. 1952:
Emergency Call; Time, Gentlemen, Please; Cosh Boy
. 1953:
Johnny on the Run; Albert R.N.; The Good Die Young
. 1954:
The Sea Shall Not Have Them
. 1955:
Cast a Dark Shadow
. 1956:
Reach for the Sky
. 1957:
The Admirable Crichton
. 1958:
Carve Her Name With Pride; A Cry from the Streets
. 1959:
Ferry to Hong Kong
. 1960:
Sink the Bismarck!; Light Up the Sky
. 1961:
The Greengage Summer/Loss of Innocence
. 1962:
H.M.S. Defiant
. 1964:
The Seventh Dawn
. 1966:
Alfie
. 1967:
You Only Live Twice
. 1969:
The Adventurers
. 1971:
Friends
. 1974:
Paul and Michelle
. 1975:
Operation Daybreak
. 1976:
Seven Nights in Japan
. 1977:
The Spy Who Loved Me
. 1979:
Moonraker
. 1983:
Educating Rita
. 1986:
Not Quite Paradise
. 1989:
Shirley Valentine
. 1991:
Stepping Out
. 1995:
Haunted
. 2002:
Before You Go
.

Gilbert was a child actor. His first feature was for children, and his most appealing movie,
The Greengage Summer
, is a whimsy on adolescence that makes good use of Susannah York and Jane Asher, while
Friends
and
Paul and Michelle
are further sticky studies of young love.

In the war, he was attached to the American Air Corps film unit and immediately afterwards he made documentaries. But there is precious little authenticity in his jingoistic war films:
Reach for the Sky
, the Douglas Bader story for audiences with wooden heads;
Carve Her Name With Pride
, with Virginia McKenna insisting on Englishness in the French Resistance; and
Sink the Bismarck
, with an exclamation mark.
The Seventh Dawn
harked back to the Malaya troubles, but
H.M.S. Defiant
went much further, to faded memories of
Mutiny on the Bounty
. Gilbert abandoned all in three tame James Bond films, the shameful
Adventurers
, and a coy romance about a navy Prince and a pretty Japanese.

But he made a comeback with the crowd-pleasing
Educating Rita
and
Shirley Valentine
, clever variations on the idea that a middle-aged woman can still make a lot out of life—and both taken from plays by Willy Russell.

Terry Gilliam
, b. Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1940
1974:
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
(codirected with Terry Jones). 1976:
Jabberwocky
. 1981:
Time Bandits
. 1985:
Brazil
. 1988:
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
. 1991:
The Fisher King
. 1995:
Twelve Monkeys
. 1998:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
. 2004:
The Brothers Grimm
. 2005:
Tideland
. 2009:
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
.