The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (253 page)

His involvement in movies was principally as the conveyor of reliable theatrical packages to the screen, although
Camelot
did not keep up its stage success as a movie. Until
Picnic
, he had only dabbled in films, working on the dialogue for two Charles Boyer movies,
The Garden of Allah
(36, Richard Boleslavsky) and
History Is Made at Night
(37, Frank Borzage).
Picnic
was therefore something of a shock: a stage play (by William Inge) given cinematic life and authentic rural atmosphere, with a sense of color and design, a better-than-average William Holden, and a quartet of exceptional female performances—Rosalind Russell, Betty Field, Susan Strasberg, and Kim Novak looking like confectioner’s custard.

There is no sham about
Picnic:
it wears well, especially the slumberous nocturnal dancing sequence, which is better than most of Logan’s musical set pieces. Apart from that, he did a good comedy,
Tall Story
, early indication of Jane Fonda’s vitality. And in
Bus Stop
(also from Inge) he coaxed the very best out of Marilyn Monroe, played fair by the provincial charm of the story, and helped Marilyn to make the “Black Magic” routine both excruciating and endearing. Did Monroe ever come closer to living with her limitations?

All too often, however, Logan was overwhelmed by theatrical originals. The films of
South Pacific
and
Paint Your Wagon
are dismal, inert versions of great shows. They are so depressing that they offer an oblique reminder that Logan was, for most of his life, a famous depressive.

Gina Lollobrigida
(Luigina Lollobrigida), b. Subiaco, Italy, 1927
Gina Lollobrigida: knickerbocker glory—not quite an anagram, but an indication of fruit and cream, unnourishing sweetness, and sheen. She was very beautiful, but it was the name that endeared her to non-Italian audiences and conveyed an erotic flavor. The full name is redolent of curvaceous softness on a firm framework—like Boucher’s Miss O’Murphy sprawled on a sofa; but the abbreviation, “La Lollo,” melted hearts and minds and confirmed foreign opinions of Italian frivolity.

She went to art school, but was apparently kept from her own easel by demands from her fellows that she pose. Under the name of Diana Loris—Anna Doloris?—she modeled for magazine picture stories. In the years after the war she had her first parts in films:
Aquila Nera
(46, Riccardo Freda);
Il Delitto di Giovanni Episcopo
(47, Alberto Lattuada); and
Campane a Martello
(49, Luigi Zampa). She soon became a continental star:
Achtung, Banditti!
(51, Carlo Lizzani);
Fanfan la Tulipe
(51, Christian-Jaque);
Altri Tempi
(51, Alessandro Blasetti);
Night Beauties
(52, René Clair);
The Wayward Wife
(52, Mario Soldati);
Le Infedeli
(52, Stefano Vanzina Steno and Mario Monicelli);
Pane Amore e Fantasia
(53, Luigi Comencini);
Le Grand Jeu
(53, Robert Siodmak);
Pane, Amore e Gelosia
(54, Comencini); and
La Bella di Roma
(54, Comencini).

It was
Woman of Rome
(54, Luigi Zampa) that made her famous beyond Italy. John Huston put her in
Beat the Devil
(54) and, after
La Donna piu Bella del Mondo
(55, Robert Z. Leonard), she was in
Trapeze
(56, Carol Reed). She now appeared in several “international” movies and had a few years in America:
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
(56, Jean Delannoy);
Anna di Brooklyn
(58, Reginald Denham);
La Loi
(58, Jules Dassin);
Solomon and Sheba
(59, King Vidor);
Never So Few
(59, John Sturges);
Go Naked in the World
(61, Ranald MacDougall); and
Come September
(61, Robert Mulligan).

Since then, she has slipped from eminence:
Venus Imperiale
(61, Delannoy);
Mare Matto
(62, Delannoy);
Woman of Straw
(63, Basil Dearden);
Strange Bedfellows
(64, Melvin Frank); with Akim Tamiroff in the “Monsignor Cupido” episode from
Le Bambole
(64, Mauro Bolognini);
Les Sultans
(65, Delannoy);
Hotel Paradiso
(66, Peter Glenville);
Cervantes
(67, Vincent Sherman);
La Morte la Fatto L’Uovo
(67, Giulio Questi);
Un Bellissimo Novembre
(68, Bolognini);
Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell
(68, Frank);
Bad Man’s River
(71, Eugenio Martin); and
King, Queen, Knave
(72, Jerzy Skolimowski).

In 1985, she did a TV movie,
Deceptions
(Robert Chenault and Melville Shavelson), and she appeared in the series
Falcon Crest
. In 1997, she was in
XXL
(97, Ariel Zeitoun).

Herbert Lom
(Herbert Kuchacevich ze Schluderpacheru), b. Prague, 1917
Several earlier editions of this book “passed” on the magnificent longevity, the real menace, and the lugubrious comedy of Herbert Lom. I can only apologize for being so slow, so late. He would likely be the first to concede the quantity of honest and less honest junk that bears his name. Let us therefore pick out the exceptional things from this actor who arrived in Britain in 1939, and remained despite that country’s urge to cast him as all manner of foreign (and criminal) rogues and idiots:
My Crimes
(40, Norman Lee); as Napoleon in
The Young Mr. Pitt
(42, Carol Reed);
The Seventh Veil
(45, Compton Bennett);
Good Time Girl
(48, David MacDonald);
The Girl in the Painting
(48, Terence Fisher);
Night and the City
(50, Jules Dassin);
The Black Rose
(50, Henry Hathaway);
State Secret
(50, Sidney Gilliat);
The Golden Salamander
(50, Ronald Neame);
Cage of Gold
(50, Basil Dearden);
The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By
(53, Harold French);
The Ladykillers
(55, Alexander Mackendrick); Napoleon again in
War and Peace
(56, King Vidor);
Fire Down Below
(57, Robert Parrish);
I Accuse!
(58, José Ferrer);
The Roots of Heaven
(58, John Huston);
Intent to Kill
(58, Jack Cardiff);
The Big Fisherman
(59, Frank Borzage);
I Aim at the Stars
(60, J. Lee Thompson);
Spartacus
(60, Stanley Kubrick); as the fascistic leader of the Moors in
El Cid
(61, Anthony Mann);
The Phantom of the Opera
(62, Fisher);
A Shot in the Dark
(64, Blake Edwards);
Gambit
(66, Neame);
Villa Rides!
(68, Buzz Kulik);
Assignment to Kill
(68, Sheldon Reynolds);
The Secret of Dorian Gray
(70, Massimo Dallamano);
Count Dracula
(70, Jess Franco);
Murders in the Rue Morgue
(71, Gordon Hessler);
The Return of the Pink Panther
(75, Edwards);
The Pink Panther Strikes Again
(78, Edwards);
The Dead Zone
(83, David Cronenberg);
The Pope Must Die
(91, Peter Richardson);
Son of the Pink Panther
(93, Edwards).

Carole Lombard
(Jane Alice Peters) (1908–42), b. Fort Wayne, Indiana
Lombard didn’t give a fuck, and she was famous for saying so. Although she died when only thirty-four, she had made forty-two talking pictures, four of which are among the best comedies America has produced:
Twentieth Century
(34, Howard Hawks);
My Man Godfrey
(36, Gregory La Cava);
Nothing Sacred
(37, William Wellman); and
To Be or Not to Be
(42, Ernst Lubitsch). In these, and many other films, she is still as enchanting and witty as any Hollywood actress. That brusque blonde superiority, the offhand hints of sexuality, and the exposure of feelings beneath screwball comedy made Lombard something of a legend in her own time. The tragically early death, and the way it interrupted a happy marriage to Clark Gable, ensured her reputation as someone slightly more than human. But, in truth, her range was narrow; she was best just being herself.

Her film debut was in 1921 when Allan Dwan spotted her playing baseball in the street and gave her a tomboy part in
A Perfect Crime
. By 1925 Fox had her under contract and she made
Marriage in Transit
(25, R. William Neill) and
Hearts and Spurs
(25, W. S. Van Dyke) before a motor accident caused the cancellation of the contract. In 1927, she joined Mack Sennett and made several two-reelers for him. Small parts in
The Perfect Crime
(28, Bert Glennon) and Raoul Walsh’s
Me, Gangster
(28) led to a contract with Pathé which involved
High Voltage
(28, Howard Higgin), her first alltalking picture;
Racketeer
(29, Higgin), and Gregory La Cava’s
Big News
(29).

After
Safety in Numbers
(30, Victor Schertzinger), and
The Arizona Kid
(30, Alfred Santell), she was put under seven-year contract by Paramount where she established herself as a romantic comedienne:
Fast and Loose
(30, Fred Newmeyer);
It Pays to Advertise
(31, Frank Tuttle);
Man of the World
(31, Richard Wallace)—the latter with William Powell, whom she married. She felt, with some justice, that Paramount did not fully appreciate her, and she made several films as little more than glamorous decoration:
Up Pops the Devil
(31, Edward Sutherland);
I Take This Woman
(31, Marion Gering); and
No One Man
(32, Lloyd Corrigan). She was loaned out on several occasions to Columbia, but was good at her own studio, opposite Clark Gable, in
No Man of Her Own
(32, Wesley Ruggles) and with Charles Laughton in
White Woman
(33, Stuart Walker). Having played opposite George Raft in
Bolero
(34, Ruggles), she really proved herself, grappling with John Barrymore in Hawks’s
Twentieth Century
(34)—one of the comic masterpieces of the American cinema and the first of Hawks’s double-edged sexual battles.

After
We’re Not Dressing
(34, Norman Taurog) and Hathaway’s
Now and Forever
(34), she was again loaned to Columbia and to MGM:
Lady by Choice
(34, David Burton) and
The Gay Bride
(34, Jack Conway). After
Rumba
(35, Gering), another Raft vehicle, she embarked on the most fruitful period of her career:
Hands Across the Table
(35, Mitchell Leisen);
Love Before Breakfast
(36, Walter Lang);
My Man Godfrey
(36, La Cava);
The Princess Comes Across
(36, William K. Howard);
Swing High, Swing Low
(37, Leisen), her most flawlessly romantic picture; and
Nothing Sacred
(37, Wellman), this made for Selznick, and her most gloriously cynical; and a liar in
True Confessions
(37, Ruggles).

After
Fools for Scandal
(38, Mervyn Le Roy) for Warners, she made
Made for Each Other
(39, John Cromwell) and
In Name Only
(39, Cromwell), the first for Selznick, and both emphasizing emotional strain rather than comedy. George Stevens’s
Vigil in the Night
(40) and Garson Kanin’s
They Knew What They Wanted
(40) made greater demands on her as a serious actress than she could match.

In 1941, she made
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
, for Hitchcock, an underrated film, and a hint of how well she and Hitch might have worked together. Her last film was arguably her best, Lubitsch’s
To Be or Not to Be
(42), a black comedy about ham actors defrauding Nazi enquiry. The audacity of that film owes a lot to Carole Lombard’s nerve, just as its sense of real danger, feeling, and romance grows out of her personality. Wit, glamour, and emotion came together in her adroit reply to a Gestapo invitation: “I’d like to present the Polish case in a more suitable dress.” In 1939, she had married Clark Gable, and her death in a plane crash in 1942, while on a war bond tour, was an emotional shock for millions. We live now with blunt, indolent actresses who would be shamed by a retrospective of Carole Lombard movies.

Anita Loos
(1891–1981), b. Sisson, California
“There was a time a number of years ago,” wrote Anita Loos in the introduction to
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
(1925), when she and a number of Hollywood cronies were on the Santa Fe, headed west. They had just had a holiday in New York, “for we belonged to the elite of the cinema which has never been fond of Hollywood.” There’s the first sign that this inside voice has it in her to tell you something fresh about the movies—the truth. There was a girl with them, Doug Fairbanks’s new costar, and everyone was waiting for her to drop something—handkerchiefs, handbags, or
g
’s—and she was blond. The “situation”—the way gentlemen preferred blondes—“was palpably unfair,” but it is the beginning of smart social commentary on movies. After all, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” is a phrase that warns us how education, civilization, and justice are all at an end.

Ms. Loos had a case. She was gamin, but very pretty and delicately smart, and years later she had to find out that her husband—silent director John Emerson, who had lived off her—was himself inclined to pursue witless blondes. So it was all the more generous that Anita Loos the writer did not kill blondes—she celebrated them, she showed the poor lambs their way home, and then she helped teach Jean Harlow how to be a bombshell and gave Marilyn Monroe one of her few serene roles. Nevertheless, Ms. Loos has let us all know, for the foreseeable future, that we are idiots over a pretty girl—to such an extent that that girl can come out of Little Somewhere, without an education, and wait for the rocks to find her.