The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (276 page)

He died six years later, having made not another film during his efforts to attack and undermine the board of Loew’s.

Archie L. Mayo
(1891–1968), b. New York
1926:
Money Talks; Unknown Treasures; Christine of the Big Tops
. 1927:
Johnny, Get Your Hair Cut
(codirected with B. Reaves Eason);
Quarantined Rivals; Dearie; Slightly Used; The College Widow
. 1928:
Beware of Married Men; Crimson City; State Street Sadie; On Trial; My Man
. 1929:
Sonny Boy; The Sap; Is Everybody Happy?; The Sacred Flame
. 1930:
Vengeance; Wide Open; Courage; Oh! Sailor, Behave!; The Doorway to Hell
. 1931:
Illicit; Svengali; Bought
. 1932:
Under 18; The Expert; Two Against the World; Night After Night
. 1933:
The Life of Jimmy Dolan; Mayor of Hell; Ever in My Heart; Convention City
. 1934:
Gambling Lady; Desirable; The Man With Two Faces
. 1935:
Go Into Your Dance; Border Town; The Case of Lucky Legs
. 1936:
The Petrified Forest; I Married a Doctor; Give Me Your Heart; Black Legion
. 1937:
Call It a Day; It’s Love I’m After
. 1938:
The Adventures of Marco Polo; Youth Takes a Fling
. 1939:
They Shall Have Music
. 1940:
The House Across the Bay; Four Sons
. 1941:
The Great American Broadcast; Charley’s Aunt; Confirm or Deny
. 1942:
Moontide; Orchestra Wives
. 1943:
Crash Dive
. 1944:
Sweet and Low Down
. 1946:
A Night in Casablanca; Angel on My Shoulder
.

Although a Warners contract director from sound until 1937, Mayo’s record there is not striking.
Black Legion
, about the Ku Klux Klan, is a trenchant social melodrama, visually much darker than its tacked-on optimism. But
The Petrified Forest
is far worse than its reputation. A schematic stage play is never escaped, and Bogart, Leslie Howard, and Bette Davis remain separate trees in an unlikely forest. Later, Mayo made a good Walter Wanger thriller,
House Across the Bay
, and took over from Fritz Lang on
Confirm or Deny
and
Moontide
. It shows his flexibility that, in the same year, he could make
Orchestra Wives
, which has some nice catty bickering. And it was Mayo who directed the scene in
Night in Casablanca
in which Harpo is found leaning against a building. What are you doing? he is asked. Holding it up? So he removes himself and the building collapses.

Virginia Mayo
(Virginia Jones) (1920–2005), b. St. Louis, Missouri
With all the well-fed carnality of wartime blondes, Mayo made her debut in 1943 in bit parts:
Sweet Rosie O’Grady
(43, Irving Cummings) and
Pin-Up Girl
(43, Bruce Humberstone). She came to greater attention in
The Princess and the Pirate
(44, David Butler), as romantic interest for Danny Kaye in
Up in Arms
(44, Elliott Nugent),
Wonder Man
(45, Humberstone),
The Kid from Brooklyn
(46, Norman Z. McLeod),
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
(47, McLeod), and
A Song Is Born
(48, Howard Hawks). By then, she mixed musicals and adventure films, usually at Warners: very good in a rare, modern-dress drama,
The Best Years of Our Lives
(46, William Wyler);
Colorado Territory
(49, Raoul Walsh);
Always Leave Them Laughing
(49, Roy del Ruth); roughed up by Cagney in
White Heat
(49, Walsh);
The Flame and the Arrow
(50, Jacques Tourneur);
Along the Great Divide
(51, Walsh); as Lady Barbara in
Captain Horatio Hornblower
(51, Walsh);
Painting the Clouds with Sunshine
(51, David Butler);
She’s Working Her Way Through College
(52, Humberstone);
The Iron Mistress
(52, Gordon Douglas);
She’s Back on Broadway
(53, Douglas);
Pearl of the South Pacific
(55, Allan Dwan);
Great Day in the Morning
(56, Tourneur);
Congo Crossing
(56, Joseph Pevney);
The Big Land
(57, Douglas);
Fort Dobbs
(58, Douglas); and
Westbound
(59, Budd Boetticher).

She was limited but not unaware of the fact, and not without a cosmetic splendor in the hands of Tourneur and Walsh. Retired for the next seven years, she reappeared, ill-advisedly, in
Fort Utah
(66, Lesley Selander) and
Castle of Evil
(66, Francis D. Lyon). And then in
French Quarter
(78, Dennis Kane).

Paul Mazursky
(Irwin Mazursky), b. Brooklyn, New York, 1930
1969:
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
. 1971:
Alex in Wonderland
. 1973:
Blume in Love
. 1974:
Harry
and Tonto
. 1975:
Next Stop, Greenwich Village
. 1977:
An Unmarried Woman
. 1980:
Willie & Phil
. 1982:
Tempest
. 1984:
Moscow on the Hudson
. 1986:
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
. 1988:
Moon Over Parador
. 1989:
Enemies, a Love Story
. 1991:
Scenes from a Mall
. 1993:
The Pickle
. 1996:
Faithful
. 1998:
Winchell
(TV). 2004:
Coast to Coast
(TV). 2006:
Yippee
(d).

Mazursky began with a juicy boxoffice success, an amiable satire on the new permissiveness and its fashion for encounter-group philosophy. But the wide appeal of his first film soured some critics, so that they thought the picture opportunist, lightweight, and cynical. It begins at an encounter-group session in which Robert Culp and Natalie Wood discover their freedom, independence, and responsibility amid the embraces of a body-contact group. Far from being sly or superior, Mazursky managed to show that what might seem a comic, undignified performance was actually capable of a domestic revolution. As Culp and Wood preach their new doctrine, to themselves and to friends Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon, Mazursky never loses control of searching comedy of manners, real vulnerable feelings, and the way his characters are torn between idealism and prejudice. At its heart there lay the intriguing notion that sexuality and marriage might be too important to people to require liberation: some of us need some prisons. With excellent performances—especially from a revived Natalie Wood—and a fluent style,
Bob & Carol …
awaits the remorse of some critics. Now that its first gloss has passed, it should be easier to see that it is a serious comedy where we laugh on behalf of the characters.

Mazursky showed his mettle by taking as his second project his own situation—a young director with one hit, wondering what to do next.
Alex in Wonderland
is a deliberately indulgent film that can have had little doubt about being a flop. It suffers from the shadow of
8½
, but lacks the nerve to satirize Fellini. Its dream sequences are a mess. But those scenes involving the director and his family are observant, fresh, and touching, and make excellent use of Donald Sutherland, Ellen Burstyn, and Mazursky’s own daughter. In addition, Mazursky contributes a witty cameo as a movie mogul that reveals sharp timing and taste for unmalicious caricature.

Alex in Wonderland
may have been made to restore his own equilibrium. It was worth it if it assisted the clear advance in maturity of
Blume in Love
, the story of a man trying to regain his divorced wife. As in his debut, Mazursky reexamines the institution of marriage (and divorce) and reasserts the strength of affection and tenderness. More than in
Bob & Carol …
, pain intrudes in
Blume in Love
and excludes any note of flippancy or modishness. George Segal and Susan Anspach are always alert to its fragile tone and underlying character.

Greenwich Village
was a very underrated study of a bohemian group, but
An Unmarried Woman
was a good movie right on target with public taste. Its ending is soft, but it was still two-thirds honest on divorce.

Mazursky has remained congenial, good-natured, and capable of rising to fine material. Thus
Beverly Hills
and
Parador
are coarsegrained, unashamed entertainments—and both very funny. Yet
Enemies
is worthy of Renoir, a comedy of lies and consequences, beautifully acted, not least by the slippery Ron Silver who embodies Mazursky’s fondness for dishonest heroes. In hindsight, it’s hard to know why
Willie & Phil
did so poorly, or
Moscow on the Hudson
so well. But Mazursky is seldom less than good value (
Scenes from a Mall
is the one film that failed to take—but Allen is a long way from Mazursky’s rowdy, generous nature).

In most cases, Mazursky helps write his own pictures, and he has an irrepressible urge to pop up here and there as an actor, notably as a weary judge in
Carlito’s Way
(93, Brian De Palma).

Yippee
was a documentary about a trip to the Ukraine, charming and humane—the very qualities that make us miss Mazursky.

Mercedes McCambridge
(1918–2004), b. Joliet, Illinois
I don’t know whether it is a matter of good luck, or bad luck, but there are people one sometimes meets in real life who have a smell of danger about them. Sometimes they are self-destructive, but that is not necessarily an answer to the matter. Are there really people who have been picked out by God, or fate, as the recipients of special, remarkable, hideous burdens of misfortune? Or is it in some way their fault, or in their nature—a response to a kind of recklessness that keeps them off balance? Or is all of this just one aghast way of trying to rationalize misfortune?

Of the people in this book that I have met, Nicholas Ray had something of that quality. Among the others, who can fail to be moved by (yet terrified of) the bare facts of being Mercedes McCambridge?

First, let us say that she is a great, uncommon actress who never possessed a trace of conventional loveliness. Of course, in certain dark moods she could seem beautiful—but beauty is another matter next to that serene, alluring, unthreatening look that was essential when McCambridge was a young woman. Add to that her major bout with alcoholism in the 1960s and her foundation of the Livengrin organization as a means of help for drunks. But then, in the late eighties, her son (by second husband Fletcher Markle) shot his wife, their two daughters, and then himself.

Of course, these disasters came after the small body of her film work. Which leaves us helpless with that retrospective understanding—the way of seeing hints of future agony in her fierce, twisted, desperate face.

She had worked in theatre and radio before she made her debut—flat-out brilliant—as the political manager in
All the King’s Men
(49, Robert Rossen), for which she won the supporting actress Oscar. Thereafter, she did
Inside Straight
(51, Gerald Mayer);
Lightning Strikes Twice
(51, King Vidor);
The Scarf
(51, E. A. Dupont); riveting in
Johnny Guitar
(54, Ray); nominated again and by far the most Texan figure in
Giant
(56, George Stevens); the hospital matron in
A Farewell to Arms
(57, Charles Vidor); in black leather, so scary we’re still catching up with the fear, in
Touch of Evil
(58, Orson Welles—one of her greatest admirers);
Suddenly Last Summer
(59, Joseph L. Mankiewicz);
Cimarron
(60, Anthony Mann); magnificent in
Angel Baby
(61, Paul Wendkos); in the women’s-prison picture
99 Women
(69, Jess Franco); the uncredited voice of Satan coming up out of Regan in
The Exorcist
(73, William Friedkin);
Like a Crow on a June Bug
(72, Lawrence Dobkin);
Thieves
(77, John Berry); a Russian gymnastics coach in
Concorde: Airport ’79
(79, David Lowell Rich);
Echoes
(83, Arthur Allan Seidelman).

Leo McCarey
(1898–1969), b. Los Angeles
1921:
Society Secrets
. 1929:
The Sophomore; Red Hot Rhythm
. 1930:
Let’s Go Native; Wild Company; Part-Time Wife
. 1931:
Indiscreet
. 1933:
The Kid from Spain; Duck Soup
. 1934:
Six of a Kind; Belle of the Nineties
. 1935:
Ruggles of Red Gap
. 1936:
The Milky Way
. 1937:
The Awful Truth; Make Way for Tomorrow
. 1939:
Love Affair
. 1942:
Once Upon a Honeymoon
. 1944:
Going My Way
. 1945:
The Bells of St. Mary’s
. 1948:
Good Sam
. 1952:
My Son John
. 1957:
An Affair to Remember
. 1958:
Rally Round the Flag, Boys!
. 1962:
Satan Never Sleeps
.

Society Secrets
, an Eva Novak picture made for Universal, is now only an item in the reference books. McCarey claims to have begun as a “script girl,” so enthusiastic that he accepted work usually passed off on women. He dogged the steps of directors, learning whatever he could, and became assistant to Tod Browning:
The Virgin of Stamboul
(20) and
Outside the Law
(21). In the mid-1920s, he made several comedy shorts with Charlie Chase and, in 1926, as production executive for Hal Roach, he was responsible for pairing the innocent Stan Laurel with the worldly Oliver Hardy. He made some of their finest shorts—including
From Soup to Nuts
and
Putting Pants on Philip
—developed one of the classic comedy teams (with all its undertones of scrawny mysticism and fat stupidity in mutually dependent disharmony), and discovered his own talent as a purveyor of visual gags.