The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (417 page)

Lily Tomlin
, b. Detroit, Michigan, 1939
Once upon a time, there was a new film magazine. It was called
The Movies
, and it had a lot of design thought and apparently plenty of money behind it. Film writers rallied with enthusiasm as the touring editor entertained them and listened to ideas. This was July 1983. The only trouble was that Lily Tomlin was the chosen cover for the first issue—looking off into the distance and smoking a cigarette as she recalled being an usherette. The magazine didn’t last.

I don’t blame that on Ms. Tomlin, or even on
The Movies’
studious reluctance to notice that she was gay—and why not? But the result was a seeming miscalculation, with the decision to place Lily Tomlin as a cover girl who somehow had access to the romance of the 1940s and 50s. What was needed was a piece in which Tomlin—surely smart enough—was able to talk about being gay in a frozen tundra of sexual attractiveness. We are still waiting for that.

Meanwhile Lily Tomlin has to be put on record as a “failure” in the movies—so long as we are prepared to toe the line and admit that a good deal of the failure is ours. It’s not just that she is an inspired comedienne (as was evident in
LaughIn
) who might have carried a kind of elegant, sour stand-up into the movies. Alas, in her strongest attempt to be herself (cowritten with her longtime partner, Jane Wagner),
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe
(91, John Bailey), the air of a smart but very limited nightclub act was too apparent—and surely Ms. Tomlin was herself too nice, or too kind. If only she had had one streak of Sandra Bernhardt’s meanness—and if Bernhardt had had Lily’s tenderness.

In many ways, Tomlin never surpassed her debut as Linnea in
Nashville
(75, Robert Altman), almost the heart of that deliberately dismembered film. She was good in
The Late Show
(77, Robert Benton), yet clearly a character actress. After that it was one glum thing after another: the horrible miscalculation of
Moment by Moment
(78, Wagner), with John Travolta;
Nine to Five
(80, Colin Higgins);
The Incredible Shrinking Woman
(81, Joel Schumacher);
All of Me
(84, Carl Reiner), with Steve Martin;
Big Business
(88, Jim Abrahams); awful in
Shadows and Fog
(92, Woody Allen);
The Beverly Hillbillies
(93, Penelope Spheeris). She was excellent again in
Short Cuts
(93, Altman), finding great rapport with Tom Waits. But then it was
Blue in the Face
(95, Wayne Wang);
Flirting with Disaster
(96, David O. Russell);
Getting Away with Murder
(96, Harvey Miller);
Krippendorff’s Tribe
(98, Todd Holland); much better in the starry group of
Tea with Mussolini
(99, Franco Zeffirelli); Disney’s
The Kid
(00, Jon Turteltaub);
I Heart Huckabees
(04, Russell); a lot of TV—including running parts in
Murphy Brown, The West Wing
, and
Desperate Housewives; A Prairie Home Companion
(06, Altman);
The Walker
(07, Paul Schrader).

Franchot Tone
(1905–68), b. Niagara Falls, New York
Tone perhaps was all Franchot had—that and Joan Crawford. She liked his pedigree and his Group Theatre reputation. The son of a wealthy industrialist, educated privately and at Cornell, he was an ingenue from New York’s radical theatre who was used in movies as romance fodder: the best friend, a feeble cad, or the sticky end of eternal triangles. He made his debut in Paramount’s
The Wiser Sex
(32) but was signed up by MGM for
Gabriel Over the White House
(33, Gregory La Cava) and Howard Hawks’s
Today We Live
(33) on which he met Joan Crawford, whom he married in 1935. Inevitably, this attachment sustained his presence in so many of the studio’s romantic comedies:
Stranger’s Return
(33, King Vidor);
Bombshell
(33, Victor Fleming), with Jean Harlow;
Sadie McKee
(34, Clarence Brown), with Crawford;
The Girl from Missouri
(34, Jack Conway), with Harlow;
Dancing Lady
(35, Robert Z. Leonard), with Crawford.

He generally found better parts on loan: in John Ford’s
The World Moves On
(34) at Fox; in
Gentlemen Are Born
(34, Alfred E. Green) and
Dangerous
(35, Green) at Warners; and in Henry Hathaway’s
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer
(35) at Paramount. But he could not exceed handsomeness as the midshipman in
Mutiny on the Bounty
(35, Frank Lloyd);
One New York Night
(35, Conway);
Reckless
(35, Fleming);
No More Ladies
(35, Edward H. Griffith);
The King Steps Out
(36, Josef von Sternberg);
Suzy
(36, George Fitzmaurice); and
The Gorgeous Hussy
(36, Brown).

Despite so many hollow parts, Tone was never to be as busy again. He was in
Quality Street
(37, George Stevens) and unusually cast as a gangster in
They Gave Him a Gun
(37, W. S. Van Dyke). His marriage broke up and his MGM contract ended acrimoniously with
The Bride Wore Red
(37, Dorothy Arzner), with Crawford;
Manproof
(38, Richard Thorpe);
Three Comrades
(38, Frank Borzage); and
Fast and Furious
(39, Busby Berkeley).

Tone stayed in Hollywood for another ten years, freelancing and finding more varied parts; but his stock steadily declined:
Trail of the Vigilantes
(40, Allan Dwan);
She Knew All the Answers
(41, Richard Wallace);
The Wife Takes a Flyer
(42, Wallace);
Pilot No. 5
(43, George Sidney);
Five Graves to Cairo
(43, Billy Wilder);
His Butler’s Sister
(43, Borzage);
True to Life
(43, George Marshall);
The Hour Before the Dawn
(44, Frank Tuttle);
Phantom Lady
(44, Robert Siodmak);
Dark Waters
(44, André de Toth);
Because of Him
(46, Wallace);
Honeymoon
(47, William Keighley);
Every Girl Should Be Married
(48, Don Hartman);
Jigsaw
(49, Val Guest, in England);
Without Honor
(49, Irving Pichel);
The Man on the Eiffel Tower
(49, Burgess Meredith), which he produced; and
Here Comes the Groom
(51, Frank Capra).

His second marriage, to actress Jean Wallace, ended in divorce and the short-lived third, to starlet Barbara Payton, was embroidered by nightclub brawls. Tone went back to the theatre where he played in
Uncle Vanya
and O’Neill’s
A Moon for the Misbegotten
. In 1958, he acted in, produced, and directed with John Goetz a disastrous film version of
Uncle Vanya;
in 1959, his fourth marriage broke up. A visibly sadder man, Tone was recalled to play the dying president in Preminger’s
Advise and Consent
(62)—a striking cameo as good as anything he had ever done. And after
La Bonne Soupe
(63, Robert Thomas), he made two more, brief but memorable appearances: in Preminger’s
In Harm’s Way
(65) and as Ruby Lapp in Arthur Penn’s
Mickey One
(65), magnificently foreboding as he tells Mickey of the way “they” will want him to pay for every little pleasure in life.

Rip
(Elmer Rual)
Torn
, b. Temple, Texas, 1931
Those of us who have delighted in Rip Torn’s performances on
The Larry Sanders Show
could easily be forgiven for forgetting, or not knowing, that Rip Torn was once touched by danger and violence. As an actor, he was famous for going his own way, and for bringing a real darkness to the screen. Hadn’t he turned on his director and fellow actor, Norman Mailer, on camera, during the making of
Maidstone
(71)? By now, Torn is a figure of fun, an overplayer or a rather thick-coated villain. But the younger man could be alarming, uncouth and full of life. It would be no surprise if Torn resents the ways in which his passion has been tamed. But, of course, that name was always verging on self-parody.

He had been set on ranching as a career, but he hitchhiked to Hollywood and was led astray by offers: a small part in
Baby Doll
(56, Elia Kazan);
Time Limit
(57, Karl Malden);
A Face in the Crowd
(57, Kazan);
Pork Chop Hill
(59, Lewis Milestone); Judas in
King of Kings
(61, Nicholas Ray); very nasty in
Sweet Bird of Youth
(62, Richard Brooks);
Critic’s Choice
(63, Don Weis); an early drawling Southerner in
The Cincinnati Kid
(65, Norman Jewison);
One Spy Too Many
(66, Joseph Sargent);
You’re a Big Boy Now
(66, Francis Coppola);
Beach Red
(67, Cornel Wilde);
Sol Madrid
(68, Brian G. Hutton);
Coming Apart
(69, Milton Moses Ginsberg); as Henry Miller in
Tropic of Cancer
(70, Joseph Strick);
Slaughter
(72, Jack Starrett); as a country singer in
Payday
(73, Daryl Duke);
Crazy Joe
(74, Carlo Lizzani);
The Man Who Fell to Earth
(76, Nicolas Roeg);
Birch Interval
(77, Delbert Mann);
Nasty Habits
(77, Michael Lindsay-Hogg);
The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover
(77, Larry Cohen);
Coma
(78, Michael Crichton);
The Seduction of Joe Tynan
(79, Jerry Schatzberg);
One-Trick Pony
(80, Robert M. Young);
The First Family
(80, Buck Henry); unusually restrained in
Heartland
(80, Richard Pearce);
Jinxed!
(82, Don Siegel);
The Beastmaster
(89, Don Cascarelli); a psycho in
A Stranger Is Watching
(82, Sean Cunningham);
Cross Creek
(83, Martin Ritt);
City Heat
(84, Richard Benjamin);
Songwriter
(84, Alan Rudolph);
Misunderstood
(84, Jerry Schatzberg);
Summer Rental
(85, Carl Reiner);
Nadine
(87, Robert Benton);
Extreme Prejudice
(87, Walter Hill);
The Hit List
(89, William Lustig).

In 1988, for reasons that are not clear, he directed the disastrous
The Telephone
, which its star, Whoopi Goldberg, tried to ban. He acted again in
Cold Feet
(89, Robert Dornhelm); as Walt Whitman in
Beautiful Dreamers
(90, John Kent Harrison); the defense attorney in
Defending Your Life
(91, Albert Brooks); uncredited in
Hard Promises
(92, Martin Davidson);
RoboCop 3
(93, Fred Dekker);
Canadian Bacon
(95, Michael Moore);
How to Make an American Quilt
(95, Jocelyn Moorhouse);
Down Periscope
(96, David S. Ward);
Trial and Error
(97, Jonathan Lynn);
Men in Black
(97, Barry Sonnenfeld);
Senseless
(98, Penelope Spheeris);
The Insider
(99, Michael Mann).

Alas, the actor has deteriorated, and the work gets harder to find:
Wonder Boys
(00, Curtis Hanson);
Men in Black II
(02, Sonnenfeld);
Love
Object
(03, Robert Parigi);
Eulogy
(04, Michael Clancy); at his best in
Forty Shades of Blue
(05, Ira Sachs);
Yours, Mine and Ours
(05, Raja Gosnell);
Marie Antoinette
(06, Sofia Coppola);
Zoom
(06, Peter Hewitt);
Turn the River
(07, Chris Eigeman);
August
(08, Austin Chick).

Leopoldo Torre Nilsson
(1924–78), b. Buenos Aires, Argentina
1947:
El Muro
(s). 1950:
El Crimen de Oribe
(codirected with Leopoldo Torres Rios). 1953:
El Hijo del Crack
(codirected with Torres Rios). 1954:
Días de Odio; La Tigra
. 1955:
Para Vestir Santos
. 1956:
Graciela; El Protegido
. 1957:
Precursores de la Pintura Argentina
(d);
Los Árboles de Buenos-Aires
(d);
La Casa del Angel
. 1958:
El Secuestrador
. 1959:
La Caída/The Fall
. 1960:
Fin de Fiesta; Un Guapo del ’900
. 1961:
La Mano en la Trampa/Hand in the Trap; Piel de Verano/Summer Skin
. 1962:
Setenta Veces Siete; Homenaje a la Hora de la Siesta/Homage at Siesta Time
. 1963:
La Terraza/The Roof Garden
. 1964:
El Ojo de la Cerradura
. 1966:
Cavar un Foso; Monday’s Child
. 1967:
Los Traidores de San Angel
. 1968:
Martin Fierro
. 1970:
El Santo de la Espada
. 1971:
Guernes
. 1972:
Mafia
. 1974:
Boquitas Pintadas/ Painted Lips
. 1975:
El Pibe Cabeza
. 1976:
Piedra Libre/Free for All; Diario de la Guerra del Cerdlo
.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, as film festivals grew in size and self-importance, Torre Nilsson was everyone’s South American entry. Thus we had to sit through his judicious melodramas to convince ourselves that we were seeing, say,
Tirez sur le Pianiste
or
L’Avventura
in a proper perspective. He was the son of Leopoldo Torres Rios, another director, and of a Swedish mother. While reading philosophy and writing poetry, he helped his father and eventually became his country’s most prestigious director. Who knows whether he is representative? In 1960, Argentina was producing some thirty movies a year; only Mexico took the medium more seriously in Latin America. Nilsson’s movies aspire toward Europe; they say little about the pampas or about a country where a raw actress named Eva Peron could become a goddess. Nilsson was the writer on many of his early films, but he also collaborated on scripts with his wife, novelist Beatriz Guido. He seems to me less interesting, or more solemn, than Hugo Fregonese, an Argentine-born wanderer, with something of the way of a gaucho. Yet,
Días de Odio
is taken from the Borges story, “Emma Zunz”; and
Boquitas Pintadas
is a fierce piece of social criticism, taken from a novel by Manuel Puig.