The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (205 page)

Huston’s career ended with four shaggy parts: the rather callow oldtimer in his son’s
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
(47) for which he got the supporting actor Oscar;
Summer Holiday
(47, Rouben Mamoulian); the gambling-mad father in
The Great Sinner
(49, Robert Siodmak); and the patriarch in
The Furies
(50, Anthony Mann).

Betty Hutton
(Betty June Thornburg), b. 1921, Battle Creek, Michigan
1944: “Betty Hutton is almost beyond good and evil, so far as I am concerned …”

1945: “I may begin to tire of Betty Hutton’s violence some day, but I haven’t yet …”

1945: “Betty Hutton just about saves
[Incendiary Blonde]
, but no more, for those who like her, and I do.”

The uncharacteristically defensive note is James Agee’s, and I feel defensive, too, about liking her—but I do. A lot of people couldn’t (and can’t) stand her, but for a decade she was a highly popular star, appearing in at least three central movies of the period. She belted, she hoofed, she grinned, she smirked, she goofed, she mugged—she was a bombshell, or at least a hand grenade. But the more you watch her, the more she appeals, with her naïve belief that she can blast you into appreciation. And as the years, and films, go by, she actually starts to act. In
The Perils of Pauline
(47, George Marshall) she softens after the classically rambunctious sewing-machine number, and her singing of the hit ballad “I Wish I Didn’t Love You So” is simple and affecting. And how would
you
cope with having John Lund as your love interest? (Hutton is usually the girl pursuing rather than the girl pursued—in other words, she’s cast in the girlcomic tradition, like a Martha Raye or Cass Daley; but she’s pretty, too, so she can get the handsome guy at the end, even if he
is
a lox.) It’s the old story: vanished father, alcoholic mother, singing anywhere and everywhere to help the family survive (her sister became the successful band singer Marion Hutton), vocalist with the Vincent Lopez band. Then Broadway
—Two for the Show
and Cole Porter’s
Panama Hattie
, from which she was plucked by Paramount and her first feature movie,
The Fleet’s In
(1942, Victor Schertzinger). (Dorothy Lamour got William Holden, Hutton got comic Eddie Bracken—but she also got Johnny Mercer’s “Arthur Murray Taught Me Dancing in a Hurry.”) She was to appear opposite Bracken in her finest movie by far, Preston Sturges’s hilarious
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
(44), as the ultimate ditzy blonde, Trudy Kockenlocker, who—apparently unmarried—gives birth to sextuplets. (This movie was considered too risqué for kids!) She and Bracken were also together as a kind of glue for the all-star
Star-Spangled Rhythm
(42, Marshall) and in
Happy Go Lucky
(43, Curtis Bernhardt), in which she steals the show—from Mary Martin and Dick Powell—with the Frank Loesser–Jimmy McHugh “Murder He Says.” She played opposite Bob Hope in
Let’s Face It
(43, Sidney Lanfield), Bing Crosby in
Here Come the Waves
(44, Mark Sandrich), even Fred Astaire in
Let’s Dance
(50, Norman Z. McLeod)—less terrible than people claim). But her Big Two in terms of box office were
Annie Get Your Gun
(50, George Sidney), in which she replaced the ailing Judy Garland for MGM and did a frenzied but more than acceptable job, and De Mille’s
The Greatest Show on Earth
, which won the Oscar as best picture of 1952. It’s pretty ghastly, but she’s okay as the trapeze artist, Holly. This movie earned more money than anything Paramount had released before.

You’d think Hutton was riding high, but there was only one more real vehicle, a biopic of Blossom Seeley,
Somebody Loves Me
(52, Irving Brecher). She had been getting more and more temperamental and confrontational, and walked out of Paramount in a contract dispute. There was to be a minor film in 1957, and then decades of trying to make it in theatre and TV, followed by breakdowns and recovery with the help of a Catholic priest. (She became a housekeeper in a Rhode Island rectory.) With the help of God and therapy, she’s apparently found her way to self-acceptance and a decent life, appearing in 2001 in a sympathetic documentary about her career and her travails. The career lasted a decade, but while it lasted she was at the top. And as she said, “Some kinds of fun last longer than others.”

Films:
The Fleet’s In
(42, Victor Schertzinger/Hal Walker);
Star Spangled Rhythm
(42, George Marshall);
Happy Go Lucky
(43, Curtis Bernhardt);
Let’s Face It
(43, Sidney Lanfield);
And the Angels Sing
(44, Marshall);
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
(44, Sturges);
Here Come the Waves
(44, Mark Sandrich);
Incendiary Blonde
(45, Marshall), as Texas Guinan;
The Stork Club
(45, Marshall), a mess, but it gave her a number-one hit, “Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief”;
Duffy’s Tavern
(45, Walker), in a cameo as herself;
Cross My Heart
(46, John Berry), a remake of Lombard’s
True Confession
and a big mistake;
The Perils of Pauline
(47, Marshall), as Pearl White, the Serial Queen;
Dream Girl
(48, Mitchell Leisen);
Red, Hot and Blue
(49, Robert Fellows)—not, alas, the Cole Porter musical;
Annie Get Your Gun
(50, George Sidney);
Let’s Dance
(50, Norman Z. McLeod), Hutton first-billed over Astaire!;
The Greatest Show on Earth
(52, De Mille);
Somebody Loves Me
(52, Irving Brecher);
Spring Reunion
(57, Robert Pirosh).

Any remaining doubters should be aware that Betty Hutton was Ludwig Wittgenstein’s favorite actress.

I

Kon Ichikawa
(1915–2008), b. Ujiyamada, Japan
1946:
Musume Dojoji
(unreleased). 1947:
Toho Sen-Ichiya
(unfinished). 1948:
Hana Hiraku; Sanbyaku Rokujugo-ya
(two parts). 1949:
Ningen Moyo; Hateshinaki Jonetsu
. 1950:
Ginza Sanshiro; Netsudei-chi; Akatsuki no Tsuiseki
. 1951:
Ye-Rai-Shang; Koibito; Mukokuseki-Mono; Nusumareta Koi; Bungawan Solo; Kekkon Koshin-kyoku
. 1952:
Lucky San; Wakai Hito; Ashi ni Sawatta Onna; Ano te Kono te
. 1953:
Pusan; Aoiro Kakumei; Seishun Zenigata Heiji; Aijin
. 1954:
Watashi no Subete O; Okuman Choja/A Billionaire; Josei ni Kansuru Junisho
. 1955:
Seishun Kaidan; Kokoro/The Heart
. 1956:
Biruma no Tategoto/The Burmese Harp; Shokei no Heya/Punishment Room; Nihonbashi
. 1957:
Manin Densha; Ana; Tohoku no Zunmutachi/The Men of Tohoku
. 1958:
Gennama to Bijo to San-Akunin; Enjo/Conflagration
. 1959:
Sayonara Konnichiwa; Kagi/The Key; Nobi/Fires on the Plain; Keisatsukan to Boroyuku-dan
. 1960:
Ginza no Mosa; Bonchi; Jokyo; Ototo/Her Brother
. 1961:
Kuroi Junin no Onna
. 1962:
Hakai/The Sin; Watashi wa Nisai/Being Two Isn’t Easy
. 1963:
Yukinojo Henge/An Actor’s Revenge; Taiheiyo Hitoribotchi/Alone on the Pacific
. 1964:
Dokonji Monogatari
. 1965:
Tokyo Orinpukko/Tokyo Olympiad
(d). 1966:
Genji Monogatari
(episodic film for TV). 1967:
Topo Gigio e i sei Ladri
. 1968:
Tournament/Kyoto
. 1971:
Ai Futatabi
. 1973:
Matatabi/The Wanderers
. 1975:
Wagahai wa Neko Dearu
. 1977:
Akuma no Temari-uta; Inugamike no Ichizoku
. 1978:
Gokumon-to; Hi no Tori; Joh-on Bachi
. 1980:
Koto
(d);
Hi no Tori
. 1982:
Kofuku
. 1983:
Sasame Yuki; Biruma no Tategoto; Ohan
. 1986:
Rokumeikan
. 1987:
Eiga Joyu; Taketori Monogatari
. 1988:
Tsuru
. 1991:
Tenkawa Densetsu Satsujin Jiken
. 1993:
Fusa
. 1994:
Shi-jushichinin no Shikaku
. 1996:
Yatsuhaka-mura
. 1999:
Dora-heita
. 2001:
Kah-chan
. 2002:
Tobo/Escape
(TV); 2003:
Musume no Kekkon
(TV). 2006:
Yume Jû-Ya Ten Nights of Dream; Inugamike no Ichizoku The Inugamis
.

Ichikawa is a director of contradictions, a haphazard obsessive, disconcertingly versatile for the Western spectator who expects concentration and integrity in Oriental cinema. With Mizoguchi, such anticipation seems justified. The greatest characteristic of his films is the elegiac, narrative camera style and the vindication of traditional material—although that appreciation may owe something to our being familiar with only his late work. Ichikawa, in contrast, is restless, speculative, and unresolved; it is easy to call him flashy, unstable, and modish. Donald Richie has commented on the unpredictable talent of Ichikawa and quoted the director: “People are always surprised at my humor and then they are always surprised at the bleakness of whatever philosophy I have. To me they seem perfectly complementary.”

At the same time, Ichikawa has frankly conceded that he sometimes makes films to order. And it is ultimately difficult to reconcile the technological preoccupation with muscle in
Tokyo Olympiad
and the gloating over flesh in
The Key
. The first was a film made in the spirit of the Japanese photographic industry—all ingenious lens effects, picking out spectacular detail, but oblivious of the overall effect, whether sport or public occasion.
The Key
is a study of sexual obsession within a family, compelling but lewd, perhaps reflective of Japanese society but mordantly unsympathetic to characters. Both films seemed inspired by a cold-eyed interest in the mechanics of the body. Against that,
Alone on the Pacific
is a charmingly homespun account of the mundane heroics of a singlehanded trans-Pacific sailor. While
The Burmese Harp
is sometimes hailed as a monument of humanist cinema. Which is to say nothing of the startling cross-fertilization of identities in
An Actor’s Revenge;
the calm anguish of
The Sin;
the frenzy of
Conflagration
, based on a Yukio Mishima novel; or the remorseless ordeal of
Fires on the Plain
. The variety is alarming, the inconsistency his most striking trait.

Ichikawa was a cartoonist when he left school, and he worked on animated films during the 1930s and the war years. This led to employment as an assistant director at Toho and his first project—
Musume Dojoji
—a puppet film banned by the occupying authorities. Animation has remained one of Ichikawa’s interests: thus
Pusan, Topo Gigio e i sei Ladri
, and
Being Two Isn’t Easy
, which uses cartoon to illustrate a child’s view of the world. That playfulness may or may not be complementary to the anguish that dominates many of the films. The sudden sliding into humor may be creative, or evasive. Perhaps Ichikawa proves how many differences of understanding separate us from Japanese cinema. It may also be that his oscillation shows the distracted modern Japanese torn between his past and present.

Shohei Imamura
(1926–2006), b. Tokyo, Japan
1958:
Nusumareta Yokujo/Stolen Desire; Nishi Ginza ekimae/Nishi Ginza Station
. 1959:
Nianchan/My Second Brother
. 1961:
Buta to Gunkan/Pigs and Battleships
. 1963:
Nippon Konchuki/The Insect Woman
. 1964:
Akai Satsui/Intentions of Murder
. 1966:
Jinruigaku Nyumon/The Pornographers—An Introduction to Anthropology
. 1967:
Ningen Johatsu/A Man Vanishes
. 1968:
Kamigami no Fukaki Yokubo/The Profound Desire of the Gods
. 1970:
Nippon Sengoshi—Madame Onboro no Seikatsu/History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess
(d). 1971:
In Search of Unreturned Soldiers
(d). 1972:
Pirates of Bubuan
(d). 1973:
Muhomatsu Returns Home
(d). 1974:
Karayukisan—The Making of a Prostitute
(d). 1975:
Still in Search of Unreturned Soldiers
(d);
Report on Two People Named Yoshinobu
(d). 1979:
Fukusho Suruwa Ware Ni Ari/Vengeance Is Mine
. 1981:
Eijanaika/Why Not?
1983:
Narayama-bushiko/The Ballad of Narayama
. 1987:
Zegen
. 1989:
Kuroi Ame/Black Rain
. 1997:
Unagi/The Eel
. 1998:
Kanzo Sensei/Dr. Akagi
. 2001:
Akai Hashi no Shita no Nurui Mizu
.

Imamura has never been easy to pin down. Although he often seems to identify with the lower orders, he was a doctor’s son. But when he failed to gain admission to agricultural school, he studied Western history at Waseda University and then made another sideways leap to a film studio job. As such, he became an assistant to Ozu—only to declare that he wanted to explore a kind of cinema opposed to that of his master. He wanted more real turbulence or untidiness, less literary resignation and acceptance, more actual greed and desire. “I am interested in the relationship of the lower part of the human body and the lower part of the social structure,” he proclaimed.

Fair enough: Imamura came of age in a Japan of convulsions, and he has been fascinated by lowlife sexuality, prostitution, and television. He has exhibited a robust, sensual approach that is not unlike the style of Dennis Potter. In the seventies, he stepped aside from feature filmmaking to do a series of TV documentaries with a special interest in the lost soldiers of Japan and the prostitutes that the country had employed or dragooned. This period also crystallized his belligerent, ironic wariness with documentary—as evident in
A Man Vanishes
, an apparent documentary survey of missing persons in which the fiancée whose man has vanished begins to fall for the interviewer. Similarly, in
Intention of Murder
, the raped woman develops a strange fascination with the rapist. Whether he really believes in such forces, or whether emotionally he prefers them to more rational schemes, Imamura is a gourmet of the dark, irrational underside. If he had made
Kane
, Thompson might have become the tyrant.