The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (23 page)

Rick Baker is the master craftsman of a following generation, yet even now stands like a primitive, his brushes and masks redundant as electronics simply adds a scar, a dimple, or a third eye to this face. Frequently in his very busy career, Baker has been credited as doing not just makeup, but “special effects.” Equally, he has often enjoyed dressing up in monkey suits and acting in films—an activity that must be near its last days.

He was in pictures by the early seventies, working as an assistant to makeup artist Dick Smith. But then he went freelance and began to accumulate fascinating credits: aging Cicely Tyson in
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
(74, John Korty);
It’s Alive
(74, Larry Cohen);
King Kong
(76, John Guillermin), where he also played Kong in some scenes, inserting himself in the ape suit he had made;
Star Wars
(77, George Lucas), where he played a couple of characters;
The Incredible Melting Man
(78, William Sachs);
The Fury
(78, Brian De Palma), with alarming skin eruptions;
The Howling
(80, Joe Dante);
The Incredible Shrinking Woman
(81, Joel Schumacher).

It was for his work on
An American Werewolf in London
(81, John Landis) that Baker won the first-ever Oscar for makeup (though honorary Oscars had gone to William Tuttle for
7 Faces of Dr. Lao
, in 1964, and John Chambers for
Planet of the Apes
, in 1968). Baker carried on with
Videodrome
(83, David Cronenberg); work on the Michael Jackson music video “Thriller” (83), where he also played a zombie;
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes
(84, Hugh Hudson);
Ratboy
(86, Sondra Locke);
Harry and the Hendersons
(87, William Dear);
Coming to America
(88, Landis);
Gorillas in the Mist
(88, Michael Apted);
The Rocketeer
(91, Joe Johnston);
Ed Wood
(94, Tim Burton), where he did the Bela Lugosi makeup;
Wolf
(94, Mike Nichols);
Batman Forever
(95, Schumacher);
The Nutty Professor
(96, Tom Shadyac)—where extraordinary electronic enlarging effects set in.

He did
The Frighteners
(96, Peter Jackson);
Escape from L.A
. (96, John Carpenter);
Men in Black
(97, Barry Sonnenfeld);
Critical Care
(97, Sidney Lumet);
Mighty Joe Young
(98, Ron Underwood);
Life
(99, Ted Demme);
The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps
(00, Peter Segal);
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
(00, Ron Howard), on which he shared in a second Oscar;
Planet of the Apes
(01, Burton);
Men in Black II
(02, Sonnenfeld);
The Ring
(02, Gore Verbinski);
Hellboy
(04, Guillermo del Toro);
X-Men: The Last Stand
(06, Brett Ratner);
Tropic Thunder
(08, Ben Stiller);
The Wolfman
(10, Joe Johnston).

Sir Stanley Baker
(1927–76), b. Rhondda, Wales
Until the early 1960s, Baker was the only male lead in the British cinema who managed to suggest contemptuousness, aggression, and the working class. He is the first hint of proletarian male vigor against the grain of Leslie Howard, James Mason, Stewart Granger, John Mills, Dirk Bogarde, and the theatrical knights. Which is not to disparage these players, but to say that Baker was a welcome novelty, that he is one of Britain’s most important screen actors, and that he has not yet been equaled—not even by Michael Caine. Baker was for years typed as ugly, boorish, indelicate:
Undercover
(43, Sergei Nolbandov);
All Over the Town
(48, Derek Twist);
Captain Horatio Hornblower
(51, Raoul Walsh);
Whispering Smith Hits London
(52, Francis Searle);
The Cruel Sea
(53, Charles Frend);
The Red Beret
(53, Terence Young);
Hell Below Zero
(54, Mark Robson);
Knights of the Round Table
(54, Richard Thorpe); and
The Good Die Young
(54, Lewis Gilbert). It was notable that his glowering hostility won him parts in American films—
Beautiful Stranger
(53, David Miller);
Alexander the Great
(55, Robert Rossen); and
Helen of Troy
(55, Robert Wise)—but in Britain he remained a heavy: as the upstart Welshman Henry Tudor in
Richard III
(55, Laurence Olivier) and in
Campbell’s Kingdom
(57, Ralph Thomas). The turning point came through Cy Endfield who directed Baker in three surprisingly American films set in moderately plausible British settings:
Child in the Home
(56);
Hell Drivers
(57)—about lorry drivers; and
Sea Fury
(58). Baker appeared as a credible Gestapo man in
The Angry Hills
(59, Robert Aldrich) and then fell in with Joseph Losey who capitalized on his growing power: first as the police inspector with a cold in
Blind Date
(59); next as Bannion, the doomed hero in
The Criminal
(60); and then as Tyvian, the fraud besotted with
Eve
(62). His Bannion captured all the rough strength of his early work and is one of Losey’s subtlest heroes. As for Tyvian—a Welshman—Baker lost nothing of the man’s maudlin self-loathing and showed that a utility-style actor was quite capable of the baroque.

As soon as he was established, Baker branched into production. Acting now seemed a secondary interest and he did not take enough time choosing his parts:
The Guns of Navarone
(61, J. Lee Thompson);
Sodom and Gomorrah
(62, Aldrich);
A Prize of Arms
(62, Cliff Owen);
In the French Style
(63, Robert Parrish);
Accident
(66, Losey);
La Ragazza con la Pistola
(67, Mario Monicelli);
Where’s Jack?
(68, James Clavell);
The Games
(69, Michael Winner); and
The Last Grenade
(69, Gordon Flemyng).

He had produced, with great success:
Zulu
(64, Endfield), about Welsh soldiers in South Africa;
Sands of the Kalahari
(65, Endfield);
Robbery
(67, Peter Yates)—a rather coy version of the Great Train Robbery; and
Perfect Friday
(70, Peter Hall). Acting in all four, his thoughts had seemed fixed on the papers in his office.

Sir Michael Balcon
(1896–1977), b. Birmingham, England
Against the spectacular setting of Alexander Korda’s attempt to make the British film industry a dashing, lightweight Hollywood, Michael Balcon cultivated a “little-England” production unit. He extolled aspects of Englishness that the English themselves would enjoy recognizing: both the Hitchcock thrillers and the Ealing comedies derive from a fantasy England of village seclusion, benign eccentrics, cockney spunk, official pomposity, pretty girls, and brisk young men. Although the feeling for cruelty in
The Man Who Knew Too Much
(34, Hitchcock) and for the macabre in
The Ladykillers
(55, Alexander Mackendrick) clearly derive from their directors, Balcon’s cheerful endorsement of a conservative but independent England—just as capable of nurturing lurid antistate plots as schemes to preserve railway engines—is as consistent and entertaining as it is erroneous. His provincialism
—Passport to Pimlico
(49),
Whisky Galore
(49)—is idyllic and escapist. His England is the one that liberals liked to concentrate on during the 1930s until the Depression seeped away. Engaging silliness is the abiding theme and ideal of these films, but all credit goes to Balcon for picking directors who were able and free to lead his own good nature into rather harsher territory. In the best sense, Balcon was a general manager of modest, thriving companies, a man who took pleasure in blending prickly talents, and the chief sponsor of Robert Hamer and Harry Watt.

He had had a spell in the rubber industry as a manager before he set up Victory, a film distribution company, with Victor Saville. They soon went into production and, with Graham Cutts, Balcon formed Gainsborough Pictures. He had charge there through the 1930s, furnishing films for Gaumont British. But from 1938, allowing for the making of war-service documentaries, he was head of Ealing Studios, producing films for Rank. He stayed there until 1959 and then formed his own company, which led to his unproductive chairmanship of Bryanston and British Lion. By 1960, his England was almost faded away and often the target for recrimination. In addition, his paternal notions of small, efficient studios had been undermined by the decay of the industry.

His long career included the producer’s role on the following:
Woman to Woman
(22, Graham Cutts), with script and art direction by Hitchcock;
The White Shadow
(23, Cutts), Hitchcock doing art direction and editing;
The Passionate Adventure
(24, Cutts);
The Blackguard
(25, Cutts);
The Prude’s Fall
(25, Cutts);
The Pleasure Garden
(25, Hitchcock);
The Mountain Eagle
(26, Hitchcock);
The Lodger
(26, Hitchcock)—subtitled “A Story of the London Fog”;
Downhill
(27, Hitchcock);
Easy Virtue
(27, Hitchcock);
The Good Companions
(33, Saville);
I Was a Spy
(33, Saville);
Man of Aran
(34, Robert Flaherty), which he persuaded Gaumont British to finance;
Little Friend
(34, Berthold Viertel);
The Thirty-nine Steps
(35, Hitchcock);
The Secret Agent
(36, Hitchcock);
Sabotage
(36, Hitchcock);
Tudor Rose
(36, Robert Stevenson);
A Yank at Oxford
(38, Jack Conway), made during a short spell at MGM;
The Ware Case
(39, Stevenson);
The Big Blockade
(41, Charles Frend);
Went the Day Well?
(42, Alberto Cavalcanti);
Next of Kin
(42, Thorold Dickinson);
Nine Men
(43, Harry Watt);
San Demetrio, London
(43, Frend);
The Bells Go Down
(43, Basil Dearden’s first film);
Champagne Charlie
(44, Cavalcanti);
Painted Boats
(45, Charles Crichton); the ambitious
Dead of Night
(45, Cavalcanti, Crichton, Dearden, Robert Hamer);
Pink String and Sealing Wax
(45, Hamer);
The Captive Heart
(46, Dearden), based on an idea from Balcon’s wife;
The Overlanders
(46, Watt);
Nicholas Nickleby
(47, Cavalcanti);
Frieda
(47, Dearden);
It Always Rains on Sunday
(48, Hamer);
Against the Wind
(48, Crichton);
Scott of the Antarctic
(48, Frend);
Kind Hearts and Coronets
(49, Hamer);
Passport to Pimlico
(49, Henry Cornelius);
Whisky Galore
(49, Mackendrick);
Eureka Stockade
(49, Watt);
The Blue Lamp
(50, Dearden);
The Man in the White Suit
(51, Mackendrick);
The Lavender Hill Mob
(51, Crichton);
Where No Vultures Fly
(51, Watt);
Secret People
(52, Dickinson);
Mandy
(52, Mackendrick);
The Cruel Sea
(53, Frend);
The Long Arm
(56, Frend);
Man in the Sky
(56, Crichton);
Nowhere to Go
(58, Seth Holt); and
The Scapegoat
(59, Hamer).

Alec Baldwin
, b. Amityville, New York, 1958
For years, American movies acted as if Alec Baldwin were a proper lead player. To these eyes he was rarely convincing, or even comfortable. Think of the name—Alec Baldwin! It doesn’t even sound American! It ought to go with a sturdy soccer center forward from the 1950s. But the movies insist that he’s romantic and adventurous.… Is it all a cunning game to drive me mad?

Consider his Doc McCoy in the pallid remake of
The Getaway
(94, Roger Donaldson), less nasty than the Peckinpah version, which was already a tame account of the Jim Thompson novel. Baldwin is so much less resonant than Steve McQueen, no matter that his real wife, Kim Basinger, makes a splendid tramp (much better than the slumming model, Ali MacGraw). Baldwin never really seems jealous, in danger, or tired—qualities that grooved in McQueen’s mean blue eyes. (In McQueen’s version, Baldwin would have been cast as the guy who steals the bag—or would have been, if Richard Bright hadn’t done it so well.) Yet Baldwin is evidently smart—I wonder if he isn’t better suited to comedy? Being tough all the time can be so stultifying. He was Joshua Rush for a season on
Knot’s Landing
(84–85). He did some good theatre, including the role Gary Oldman originated in
Serious Money
, and
Prelude to a Kiss
. However, he managed to be no more than a party boy as Stanley Kowalski in the 1992 revival of
A Streetcar Named Desire
.

He made
Sweet Revenge
(84, David Greene); and
Love on the Run
(85, Gus Trikonis) for TV; and played Colonel Travis in the TV miniseries
The Alamo: 13 Days to Glory
(87, Burt Kennedy);
Forever, Lulu
(87, Amos Kollek);
Beetlejuice
(88, Tim Burton); very funny in
Married to the Mob
(88, Jonathan Demme) as the offed husband;
She’s Having a Baby
(88, John Hughes); as the boyfriend in
Working Girl
(88, Mike Nichols);
Talk Radio
(88, Oliver Stone);
Great Balls of Fire!
(89, Jim McBride); and
Alice
(90, Woody Allen).