The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (369 page)

But the next ten years were far worse; good dialogue became scarcer, and Sanders was forced to roam Europe for cheap movies. Only a diligent biographer would recall such stray mercies as
Moonfleet
(55, Lang);
While the City Sleeps
(56, Lang);
The Seventh Sin
(57, Ronald Neame and Vincente Minnelli);
Solomon and Sheba
(59, King Vidor);
That Kind of Woman
(59, Sidney Lumet);
Bluebeard’s Ten Honeymoons
(60, W. Lee Wilder);
A Shot in the Dark
(64, Blake Edwards); and although Sanders derived no pleasure from it,
Viaggio in Italia
(53, Roberto Rossellini). In fact, Rossellini boldly cut through irritability to the shy observer of life who hid behind Sanders’s barbs. The actor was visibly unsettled by this and by the heat and spontaneity of Naples, and thus he more profoundly resembled an inhibited English snob at a loss with his marriage.

In his last years he worked on films of such dreadfulness that one longs to know his comments on them. He was in drag in
The Kremlin Letter
(70, John Huston) and the voice of Shere Khan in
The Jungle Book
(67, Wolfgang Reitherman). He was found dead in a Barcelona hotel room, having left a plangent suicide note that complained of boredom. It is Nabokov pinned helpless in Locustland.

There was also the undergrowth of his marriages—four in all, yet since two of the wives were Gabor sisters (Zsa Zsa and Magda), the number must have seemed greater. The movie business feels so flat nowadays without figures like George Sanders.

Adam Sandler
, b. Brooklyn, New York, 1966
Adam Sandler is an industry. On
Anger Management
(03, Peter Segal), he earned $25 million against 25 percent of the gross, and was plainly the lead player in a film that also included Jack Nicholson. It was a pretty good way to waste a couple of hours—if that’s what they’re showing on your aircraft. In other words, at that great peak, Adam Sandler was a mild, passing entertainment if you were eating your lunch, speaking to friends, and even looking out of the window at rather more majestic views than
Anger Management
offered. Sandler is close to forty, yet inescapably boyish, so it remains to be seen whether he can move on, whether he can enter the troubled list of great screen comics (Jim Carrey is really the only person on that list now), or whether he’s going to end up looking like a puffy, boyish, middle-aged man. He is prolific, but not very striking or courageous—as witness his general preference for servant directors. But then there is
Punch-Drunk Love
(02, Paul Thomas Anderson), a different kind of movie, a director’s vision, and a work where Sandler suddenly seemed darker, more poetic, and more dangerous. But
Punch-Drunk Love
didn’t do “Adam Sandler business.”

From an early age, Sandler enjoyed standing up and making people laugh. That’s fine, but it can establish childish habits in a genre that still has adult potential. He had an occasional role on
The Cosby Show
, from 1984, and he was a figure on
Saturday Night Live
. It is worth noting that he likes to write his own material, and is invariably the producer on his projects—but he was neither on
Punch-Drunk Love
.

He worked hard throughout the nineties and built a large following:
Shakes the Clown
(92, Bobcat Goldthwait);
Coneheads
(93, Steve Barron);
Airheads
(94, Michael Lehmann);
Mixed Nuts
(94, Nora Ephron);
Billy Madison
(95, Tamra Davis);
Happy Gilmore
(96, Dennis Dugan);
Bulletproof
(96, Ernest Dickerson);
The Wedding Singer
(98, Frank Coraci), for which he also wrote some songs; uncredited in
Dirty Work
(98, Bob Saget);
The Waterboy
(98, Coraci);
Little Nicky
(00, Steven Brill);
Mr. Deeds
(02, Brill); voices in
Eight Crazy Nights
(02, Seth Kearsley); uncredited again in
The Hot Chick
(02, Tom Brady); doing a TV short,
Couch
(03, Anderson);
50 First Dates
(04, Segal); and another fascinating venture,
Spanglish
(04, James L. Brooks).

He is by now among the most consistent stars America has. He formed Happy Madison Productions in 1999, and he now serves as producer on most of his films (and writer on several). He keeps a close circle of friends as cohorts, and that may encourage his laziness or self-indulgence. But he improves, and he has the potential of a real artist
—Funny People
might have been a great film. It was not: could do better, much better:
The Longest Yard
(05, Peter Segal);
Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
(05, Mike Bigelow);
Click
(06, Coraci);
Reign Over Me
(07, Mike Binder);
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
(07, Dugan);
You Don’t Mess with the Zohan
(08, Dugan);
Bedtime Stories
(08, Adam Shankman);
Funny People
(09, Judd Apatow);
Grown Ups
(10, Dugan).

Mark Sandrich
(1900–45), b. New York
1928:
Runaway Girls
. 1930:
The Talk of Hollywood
. 1933:
Melody Cruise; Aggie Appleby, Maker of Men
. 1934:
Hips, Hips, Hooray!; Cockeyed Cavaliers; The Gay Divorcee
. 1935:
Top Hat
. 1936:
Follow the Fleet; A Woman Rebels
. 1937:
Shall We Dance?
. 1938:
Carefree
. 1939:
Man About Town
. 1940:
Buck Benny Rides Again; Love Thy Neighbour
. 1941:
Skylark
. 1942:
Holiday Inn
. 1943:
So Proudly We Hail
. 1944:
Here Come the Waves; I Love a Soldier
.

Without ever suggesting that he had the orgiastic eye of Busby Berkeley, the wit of Stanley Donen, or Minnelli’s sense of character and fantasy, Mark Sandrich still has a place in the history of the musical. He it was who maintained that sprightly, asexual elegance and the black hat/white tie contrast of
The Gay Divorcee, Top Hat, Follow the Fleet, Shall We Dance?
, and
Carefree
, the main body of the Astaire/Rogers musicals at RKO. Perhaps Sandrich was no more than an able recorder of Astaire’s designs, but those movies have a genuine gaiety and a happy feeling for decent luxury and polite exuberance that is a part of our view of the 1930s. Sandrich expired on a wave of patriotic movies that have dated less well, but
Holiday Inn
—a Paramount pairing of Astaire and Crosby—has the bright confidence of the RKO films and an easy coverage of dance that was innovatory in its intimacy. Sandrich and Astaire showed that dance in films could be like conversation; at Warners, it had been magnificent, but always a set piece.

Susan Sarandon
(Susan Tomalin), b. New York, 1946
In what must be called her middle age, Susan Sarandon moved from the status of reliable trouper to American favorite. She works hard, she has had children with the younger actor Tim Robbins (without seeming inclined to marry him), and if she seems just a touch too world-weary to commit too deeply to anything, still she has Bette Davis eyes and enough knockout punch to command romantic roles. She has made enough bad or routine films to know that making a movie may be just a matter of luck and fortitude. If ever one hoped that, past fifty, she would become more dangerous, the reality was sadder. She seems to be looking for dignity now—and sooner or later dignity means plastic surgery.

She studied drama at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. She was then a model and, as she got into pictures, she took her name from her marriage to actor Chris Sarandon. She appeared in
Joe
(70, John G. Avildsen);
Lady Liberty
(72, Mario Monicelli); playing the woman in “The Last of the Belles” for TV in
F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Last of the Belles
(74, Anthony Page);
Lovin’ Molly
(74, Sidney Lumet); enshrined in late-night cult as Janet in
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
(75, Jim Sharman); eyes popping from the danger of wing-walking in
The Great Waldo Pepper
(75, George Roy Hill);
One Summer Love
(76, Gilbert Cates); in a thousand-mile off-road car-race picture with Joe Don Baker in
Checkered Flag or Crash
(77, Alan Gibson)—that look of disbelief has been earned; and
The Other Side of Midnight
(77, Charles Jarrott), facing more silken idiocies.

She coproduced a documentary,
The Last of the Cowboys
(77, John Leone), and was a stunning, milk-breasted mother in
Pretty Baby
(78, Louis Malle). She felt the hysteria of
King of the Gypsies
(78, Frank Pierson). After
Something Short of Paradise
(79, David Helpern Jr.) and
Loving Couples
(80, Jack Smight), she found her best part as the would-be croupier in
Atlantic City
(80, Malle), a woman helplessly romantic and cunning at the same time. She rose wonderfully to the John Guare script, and had her first great onscreen love affair, with Burt Lancaster.

Still, Sarandon was not quite a lead actress. If that hurt, she never showed it. Instead, she has gone greedily after a range of parts that stars might have disdained:
Tempest
(82, Paul Mazursky); with Christopher Walken in
Who Am I This Time?
(82, Jonathan Demme) for TV;
The Hunger
(83, Tony Scott);
The Buddy System
(84, Glenn Jordan); as the dictator’s daughter in
Mussolini: The Decline
and Fall of Il Duce
(85, Alberto Negrin), with Bob Hoskins as Dad and Anthony Hopkins as her husband, Count Ciano, 192 minutes of it for cable;
Compromising Positions
(85, Frank Perry); as a leader of P.O.W. women in the Philippines in
Women of Valor
(86, Buzz Kulik) for TV.

Then she hit the run of parts that allowed her to be a forty-year-old standing up for herself, getting many of the best lines and ready to use a gun:
The Witches of Eastwick
(87, George Miller);
Bull Durham
(88, Ron Shelton), with Tim Robbins and Kevin Costner;
Sweet Hearts Dance
(88, Robert Greenwald);
The January Man
(89, Pat O’Connor);
A Dry White Season
(89, Euzhan Palcy); with James Spader in
White Palace
(90, Luis Mandoki); managing to make a very literary character seem like a smalltown waitress in
Thelma and Louise
(91, Ridley Scott); and making the most of the hints in the script of
Light Sleeper
(92, Paul Schrader). She had cameos in
The Player
(92, Robert Altman) and
Bob Roberts
(92, Robbins), and she was nominated for best actress for her mother in
Lorenzo’s Oil
(92, George Miller), a woman to alarm Corleones;
The Client
(94, Joel Schumacher).

The next year, Sarandon won the Oscar as Sister Helen Prejean in
Dead Man Walking
(95, Robbins). It was a fine performance, and a deserved victory, but it seems to have persuaded her that she was an institution. She narrates high-minded documentaries, she lends her voice to animated films, but she hasn’t done anything very interesting since Oscar: the Spider in
James and the Giant Peach
(96, Henry Selick);
Twilight
(98, Robert Benton);
Illuminata
(98, John Turturro); dying gracefully in
Stepmom
(98, Chris Columbus);
Earthly Possessions
(99, James Lapine);
Cradle Will Rock
(99, Robbins);
Anywhere but Here
(99, Wayne Wang);
Joe Gould’s Secret
(00, Stanley Tucci); Coco LaBouche in
Rugrats in Paris
(00, Stig Bergqvist and Paul Demeyer);
Time of Our Lives
(00, Mary Agnes Donoghue); Ivy in
Cats & Dogs
(01, Lawrence Guterman).

She remains reliable and enterprising:
Igby Goes Down
(02, Burr Steers); with Goldie Hawn in
The Banger Sisters
(02, Bob Dolman);
Moonlight Mile
(02, Brad Silberling);
Children of Dune
(03, Greg Yaitanes);
Ice Bound
(03, Roger Spottiswoode);
Shall We Dance?
(04, Peter Chelsom);
Alfie
(04, Charles Shyer);
Romance & Cigarettes
(04, John Turturro);
Elizabethtown
(05, Cameron Crowe);
Mr. Woodcock
(07, Craig Gillespie);
In the Valley of Elah
(07, Paul Haggis);
Enchanted
(07, Kevin Lima);
Emotional Arithmetic
(07, Paolo Barzman); Her best role in years came in
Bernard and Doris
(08, Bob Balaban), for TV. Since then, the work gets milder:
Speed Racer
(08, the Wachowski brothers);
Middle of Nowhere
(08, John Stockwell);
Leaves of Grass
(09, Tim Blake Nelson);
The Lovely Bones
(09, Peter Jackson).

Carlos Saura
, b. Huesca, Spain, 1932
1957:
La Tarde del Domingo
(s). 1958:
Cuenca
(d). 1960:
Los Golfos
. 1964:
Llanto por un Bandido
. 1966:
La Caza/The Hunt
. 1967:
Peppermint Frappé
. 1968:
Stress es Tres, Tres
. 1969:
La Madriguera
. 1970:
El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights
. 1973:
Ana y los Lobos
. 1974:
La Prima Angélica/Cousin Angelica
. 1976:
Cría Cuervos
. 1977:
Elisa, Vida Mía
. 1978:
Los Ojos Vendados
. 1979:
Mama Cumple 100 Anos
. 1980:
Deprisa, Deprisa
. 1981:
Bodas de Sangre/Blood Wedding
. 1982:
Antonieta; Dulces Horas
. 1983:
Carmen
. 1984:
Los Zancos
. 1986:
El Amor Brujo
. 1988:
El Dorado
. 1989:
La Noche Oscura
. 1990:
Ay, Carmela
. 1992:
Sevillanas; El Sur
. 1993:
¡Dispara!
. 1995:
Flamenco
. 1996:
Taxi
. 1998:
Pajarico; Tango; ¡Esa Luz!
. 1999:
Goya
. 2001:
Buñuel y la Mesa del Rey Salomón
. 2002:
Salomé
. 2004:
El Séptimo Día
. 2005:
Iberia
. 2007:
Fados
.