The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (24 page)

He got a lead role in
The Hunt for Red October
(90, John McTiernan), and he was frightening and comic as the psychopath in
Miami Blues
(90, George Armitage)—he seemed so much more alert when wicked.
The Marrying Man
(91, Jerry Rees) was his first pairing with Basinger, and the chemistry was palpable
and
funny. Since then, he was with Meg Ryan in the movie of
Prelude to a Kiss
(92, Norman René), briefly nasty in
Glengarry Glen Ross
(92, James Foley), devilishly superior in
Malice
(93, Harold Becker); and as
The Shadow
(94, Russell Mulcahy).

An intriguing desperation seemed to overtake Baldwin in the next years. His marriage to Kim Basinger ended; the quality of his films slipped. Yet he made more noise—in semi-political statements, in “appearances” and in something like effrontery. And he had taken on bulk, age, and the idea of being a supporting player. He was in
A Streetcar Named Desire
opposite Jessica Lange (95, Glenn Jordan);
The Juror
(96, Brian Gibson);
Heaven’s Prisoners
(96, Phil Joanou);
Looking for Richard
(96, Al Pacino);
Ghosts of Mississippi
(96, Rob Reiner);
The Edge
(97, Lee Tamahori);
Mercury Rising
(98, Becker);
The Confession
(99, David Hugh Jones);
Thick as Thieves
(99, Scott Sanders); uncredited as the movie-star boyfriend (hiss!) in
Notting Hill
(99, Roger Michell);
Scout’s Honor
(99, Neil Leifer);
Outside Providence
(99, Michael Corrente).

He was Justice Robert Jackson in the TV miniseries
Nuremberg
(00, Yves Simoneau);
State and Main
(00, David Mamet);
Speak Truth to Power
(00, Marc Levin);
The Acting Class
(00, Jill Hennessy and Elizabeth Holder); as Jimmy Doolittle in
Pearl Harbor
(01, Michael Bay);
The Royal Tenenbaums
(01, Wes Anderson).

He acted in and directed a version of
The Devil and Daniel Webster
(02); as Robert McNamara in
Path to War
(02, John Frankenheimer);
Second Nature
(02, Ben Bolt); nominated for
The Cooler
(03, Wayne Kramer);
The Cat in the Hat
(03, Bo Welch);
Along Came Polly
(04, John Hamburg);
The Aviator
(04, Martin Scorsese);
Elizabethtown
(05, Cameron Crowe);
Fun with Dick and Jane
(05, Dean Parisot);
Mini’s First Time
(06, Nick Guthe);
The Departed
(06, Martin Scorsese);
Running with Scissors
(06, Ryan Murphy);
The Good Shepherd
(06, Robert DeNiro);
Brooklyn Rules
(07, Michael Corrente). But everything paled beside his role on TV in
30 Rock
—it returned fame and confidence and gave him a couple of Emmys.

Christian Bale
, b. Haverfordwest, Wales, 1974
These days, doing Bruce Wayne and John Connor, Christian Bale is an essential figure in digital epic. But the idea that propels this book cherishes him for another reason—for the harrowing, exhilarating urchin Jim Graham, the dodger of Japanese internment camps, and one of the greatest performances ever delivered by a child (he was thirteen when the film opened) in
Empire of the Sun
(87, Steven Spielberg), which is still its director’s best work. When Jim confronts the sky, the planes, and the ultimate horror of the camps and remains a boy at ruined play, we are in a world that makes up for the soppy aspirations of
E.T
.

Bale had worked before
Empire of the Sun
—he was in
Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna
(86, Marvin J. Chomsky) and
Mio min Mio
(87, Vladimir Grammatikov). He was a boy in
Henry V
(89, Kenneth Branagh); Jim Hawkins to Charlton Heston’s Silver in
Treasure Island
(90, Fraser Clarke Heston);
A Murder of Quality
(91, Gavin Millar);
Newsies
(92, Kenny Ortega);
Swing Kids
(93, Thomas Carter);
Prince of Jutland
(94, Gabriel Axel). As a young adult, he was in
Little Women
(94, Gillian Armstrong);
The Portrait of a Lady
(96, Jane Campion); blown up in
The Secret Agent
(96, Christopher Hampton);
Metroland
(97, Philip Saville);
Velvet Goldmine
(98, Todd Haynes);
All the Little Animals
(98, Jeremy Thomas); Demetrius in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
(99, Michael Hoffman); and Jesus in
Mary, Mother of Jesus
(99, Kevin Conner).

That was not quite what one might have predicted, or hoped, after
Empire of the Sun
, but then Bale delivered a really compelling performance as
American Psycho
(00, Mary Harron), where he was like Schrader’s
American Gigolo
with iced poison in his blood. He was a villain in
Shaft
(00, John Singleton);
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
(01, John Madden);
Laurel Canyon
(02, Lisa Cholodenko);
Reign of Fire
(02, Rob Bowman);
Equilibrium
(02, Kurt Wimmer); wasting away in
The Machinist
(04, Brad Anderson).

That seemed to establish his futuristic stare: so he was ready for
Batman Begins
(05, Christopher Nolan), which uses his melancholy very well. He then did
Harsh Times
(05, David Ayer);
The New World
(05, Terrence Malick); Dieter in
Rescue Dawn
(06, Werner Herzog); and
The Prestige
(06, Nolan). He worked hard to feel like a westerner in
3:10 to Yuma
(07, James Mangold); Batman again in
The Dark Knight
(08, Nolan); and
Terminator Salvation
(09, McG). He then played Melvin Purvis, opposite Johnny Depp, in
Public Enemies
(09, Michael Mann).

Lucille Ball
(1911–89), b. Jamestown, New York
Even a half-thorough life of Lucille Ball would hold an important place in the history of the cinema. No one so completely outflanked the industry; certainly no woman has been as successful. For two decades, it is likely that most of us saw more of Lucille Ball than of any other actor or actress. Time well spent, it should be said, for she was a brilliant comedienne, endlessly resourceful and appealing in situation comedy, unsurpassed in the timing of visual disaster jokes, the best impersonator of Charlie Chaplin, and one of the few to maintain the hectic ballet of 1930s screwball comedy.

In her teens, she toured in
Rio Rita
and became a model. She was a Goldwyn Girl in her first film,
Roman Scandals
(33, Frank Tuttle), and she had a number of small parts at Columbia before RKO put her in
Roberta
(35, William A. Seiter) and gave her a contract. She was rather in the shadow of Ginger Rogers, even if events proved her to be the more versatile performer. But she gradually worked up to lead status with
I Dream Too Much
(35, John Cromwell);
Follow the Fleet
(36, Mark Sandrich);
Stage Door
(37, Gregory La Cava);
The Joy of Living
(38, Tay Garnett);
Having Wonderful Time
(38, Alfred Santell);
Room Service
(38, Seiter);
Next Time I Marry
(38, Garson Kanin);
Five Came Back
(39, John Farrow); and
That’s Right, You’re Wrong
(40, David Butler). At about this time, Orson Welles considered using her in his first movie project but was overruled by RKO. Instead they wanted her in a series of comedies and cheap musicals
—Dance, Girl, Dance
(40, Dorothy Arzner);
Look Who’s Laughing
(41, Allan Dwan); and
Seven Days’ Leave
(42, Tim Whelan)—so that she made only one other worthwhile film at the studio:
The Big Street
(42, Irving Reis), with Henry Fonda. Her performance in that film, as a selfish cripple, only makes one regret the few real dramatic opportunities she was given. MGM signed her and starred her in
Du Barry Was a Lady
(43, Roy del Ruth). They talked about making her a major star, but she never managed that transition on the large screen and her relations with MGM were bad:
Best Foot Forward
(43, Edward Buzzell);
Thousands Cheer
(43, George Sidney);
Meet the People
(44);
Without Love
(45, Harold S. Bucquet);
Ziegfeld Follies
(46, Vincente Minnelli);
Easy to Wed
(46, Buzzell); and
Two Smart People
(46, Jules Dassin). She was freelance now:
The Dark Corner
(46, Henry Hathaway);
Lured
(47, Douglas Sirk);
Her Husband’s Affairs
(47, S. Sylvan Simon);
Sorrowful Jones
(49, Sidney Lanfield), her first film with Bob Hope; and
Easy Living
(49, Jacques Tourneur). She signed a three-picture deal with Columbia and made
Miss Grant Takes Richmond
(49, Lloyd Bacon) and
The Fuller Brush Girl
(50, Bacon). After
Fancy Pants
(50, George Marshall), with Hope again, she had to make
The Magic Carpet
(51) to complete her obligation to Columbia. Then pregnancy forced her out of
The Greatest Show on Earth
in favor of Gloria Grahame.

This was the turning point. In 1951, she had started the TV show
I Love Lucy
with her husband, Desi Arnaz. A few years later, their company, Desilu, purchased RKO and turned it over to TV work. Remarkably, after divorce, Lucille Ball bought out Arnaz and continued as a star of the medium with
The Lucy Show
and
Here’s Lucy
. As well as an energetic performer, she was the majority shareholder of Desilu and executive president, selling only in 1968 to Gulf and Western for $17 million. Films took the second place that they persistently applied to her:
The Long, Long Trailer
(54, Minnelli);
Forever Darling
(56, Alexander Hall);
The Facts of Life
(60, Melvin Frank)—with Hope, as was
Critic’s Choice
(63, Don Weis); and
Yours, Mine and Ours
(68, Melville Shavelson). In 1974, she made
Mame
(Gene Saks), and then in 1985, her last film,
Stone Pillow
(George Schaefer), trying to be a homeless person.

Anne Bancroft
(Anna Maria Luisa Italiano), (1931–2005), b. Bronx, New York
The daughter of Italian immigrants and educated at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Actors’ Studio, she worked in TV before going to Hollywood in 1952. Although she was not happy with this first film career, her early work is quirky and eye-catching:
Don’t Bother to Knock
(52, Roy Baker);
Treasure of the Golden Condor
(53) and
Demetrius and the Gladiators
(54), both for Delmer Daves;
Gorilla at Large
(54, Harmon Jones); Fregonese’s
The Raid
(54); Russell Rouse’s
New York Confidential
(55); blonde in
The Last Frontier
(55), one of the few striking female performances in Anthony Mann’s work;
Nightfall
(56, Jacques Tourneur);
Walk the Proud Land
(56);
The Girl in Black Stockings
(57, Howard W. Koch); and Allan Dwan’s
The Restless Breed
(57). She went back to New York and made her stage debut, creating the leading parts in
Two For the Seesaw
and
The Miracle Worker
. It was Arthur Penn’s film of the latter (1962) that brought her back to movies and to a working of raw emotion, torn between independence and her bond with Helen Keller, great enough to justify the dissatisfaction with her early films. The Oscar for that part was irrelevant to its frightening complexity. As well as nursing the performance of Patty Duke, she so dramatized the struggle between liberty and discipline that she probably helped reveal Penn’s own talent to himself. She was again excellent as the agonized wife in Jack Clayton’s
The Pumpkin Eater
(64); reminiscent of Robert Mitchum as the realist in Ford’s
Seven Women
(66); as the attempted suicide in Pollack’s
The Slender Thread
(66); and so wearily curt as Mrs. Robinson in
The Graduate
(68, Mike Nichols) as to throw the film off balance. She plainly needed large parts and demanding directors, for as the mother of
Young Winston
(72, Richard Attenborough) she got away with dutiful gestures, but she may think more highly of the theatre, where she played Golda Meir in an earnest tribute. She was out of place on
The Hindenburg
(75, Robert Wise), but delightful tangoing with her husband, Mel Brooks, in his
Silent Movie
(76). She seemed to go along with the silliness of
The Turning Point
(77, Herbert Ross), though her dedicated attempts to take up a ballet position—always forestalled by the cutting—hinted at a camp comic potential. A mad Bette Davis movie was lurking within Ross’s dull tidiness, and Bancroft was the actress who might have rescued it.

In 1980, she acted in and also directed the uncertain
Fatso
. She made a fine cameo as the actress Madge Kendal in
The Elephant Man
(80, David Lynch—a Brooks film); she played with her husband in the misguided
To Be or Not to Be
(83, Alan Johnson); was very funny as the mother in
Garbo Talks
(84, Sidney Lumet);
Agnes of God
(85, Norman Jewison); was badly overdone as the mother in
’Night, Mother
(86, Tom Moore); as Helene Hanff in
84 Charing Cross Road
(87, David Jones);
Torch Song Trilogy
(88, Paul Bogart);
Bert Rigby, You’re a Fool
(89, Carl Reiner);
Broadway Bound
(91, Bogart); and
Malice
(93, Harold Becker).