The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (435 page)

With a cultivated, clingingly sincere voice and very winning charm, Robert Walker could easily present himself as an appealing boy next door and an object of orthodox romantic interest. Most of his film work was in that vein, and he was particularly successful during the war as a young soldier at MGM: a debut in
Bataan
(43, Tay Garnett); and then in
Madame Curie
(43) and
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
(44), both for Mervyn Le Roy; in Wesley Ruggles’s
See Here, Private Hargrove
(44); and above all, opposite Judy Garland in
The Clock
(45, Vincente Minnelli), one of Hollywood’s most endearing love stories.

After the war, Walker’s career never quite fulfilled its promise, partly because of MGM’s insistence on his eligibility for blithe heroines, partly because of his reaction to the failure of his marriage. He was in
Her Highness and the Bellboy
(45, Richard Thorpe);
What Next, Corporal Hargrove
(45, Thorpe)—a series foreclosed only by peace;
The Sea of Grass
(46, Elia Kazan); he played Jerome Kern in
Till the Clouds Roll By
(46, Richard Whorf); the young Brahms in
Song of Love
(47, Clarence Brown);
One Touch of Venus
(48, William A. Seiter);
Please Believe Me
(50, Norman Taurog); and
Vengeance Valley
(51, Thorpe).

Walker was by then in a bad way: divorced by Jennifer Jones, he had been convicted for drunken driving, spent a long period in the Menninger clinic, and had a second marriage, to John Ford’s daughter, break up. The unease lurking behind faded boyishness was recognized by Alfred Hitchcock in
Strangers on a Train
(51). His Bruno Anthony in that film was not only his best performance but a landmark among villains—a man of piercing ideas transformed by crossed lines into a smiling psychopath. Walker manages to be very disturbing and yet never loses our sympathy. See how much he suggests in the first meeting: the inactive man who dominates the athlete Granger, the subtle notes of homosexuality, and that beautiful moment when he leans back, sighs, and tells how he “puts himself to sleep” scheming up plans. Bruno is one of Hitchcock’s greatest creations and a sign of how seriously Walker was cramped by wholesomeness. He so monopolizes the film that he may even have led Hitchcock to appreciate its underground meanings. This demonic vitality is the key to the film and one of Hitchcock’s cleverest confusions of our involvement. Touched and intrigued by his gestures—the boyish pleasure at the fairground, the mischievous bursting of the little boy’s balloon, the evident superiority of his mind to that of Guy’s brassy wife—we become accomplices to the murder he commits. Thus he hands the dead body down to us, distorted by the spectacles that have fallen from the victim’s goggling head.

That great performance is bizarrely recalled elsewhere. Walker’s last film,
My Son John
(52, Leo McCarey), another evident proof of his sense of madness, was not completed when Walker died; Hitchcock kindly gave McCarey one of the spare takes of the death scene from
Strangers
, and so Bruno dies twice, even if the character lives on.

Walker’s own death was the final breath of bad luck. He was drinking; he was having psychiatric treatment; his moods were very volatile. Doctors came to his house one night to find him ranting and incoherent. He was given a sedative, sodium amytal; it mixed with the alcohol in his body and he died from respiratory failure. It was far more a case of medical incompetence than suicide, yet Walker had been self-destructively inclined for years.

Eli Wallach
, b. Brooklyn, 1915
Of Polish and Jewish descent, Eli Wallach went to the University of Texas at Austin and then made a mark on Broadway opposite Maureen Stapleton in
The Rose Tattoo
, winning a Tony. It was in 1948 that he married Anne Jackson, one of the most celebrated of show-business marriages. It was because he had then been cast in
Camino Real
that he had to decline the part of Maggio in
From Here to Eternity
—thus allowing Frank Sinatra to get the role and the prize. But Wallach was marked in New York as a vital, mischievous actor and Elia Kazan gave him his movie debut as Vacarro in
Baby Doll
(56) playing one of the screen’s great seducers.

He was doing a lot of television drama, but he made a notable impact in
The Lineup
(58, Don Siegel). He was Rafael in a TV version of
For Whom the Bell Tolls
(59, John Frankenheimer), but then his career exploded with
Seven Thieves
(60, Henry Hathaway); the bandit chief Calvera in
The Magnificent Seven
(60, John Sturges), and Guido in
The Misfits
(61, John Huston). He was in
Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man
(62, Martin Ritt);
How the West Was Won
(62, John Ford, Hathaway, and George Marshall);
The Victors
(63, Carl Foreman);
Act One
(61, Dore Schary);
The Moon-Spinners
(64, James Neilson);
Lord Jim
(65, Richard Brooks).

He was a reliable villain, but very varied in his ethnic casting: so he was in
Genghis Khan
(65, Henry Levin);
The Poppy Is Also a Flower
(66, Terence Young);
How to Steal a Million
(66, William Wyler), before he was cast in
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
(66, Sergio Leone), which had the effect of settling his creative passport. Wallach could do the unshaven, laughing rogue upside down, but his facility surely dictated his future so that past the age of fifty the quality of his roles declined.

He worked furiously. He did a lot of television. He was known and trusted by those who cast him, and audiences were fond of him. Still, the second half of his career is less impressive than the first:
The Tiger Makes Out
(67, Arthur Hiller), with his wife;
How to Save a Marriage (and Ruin Your Life
) (68, Fielder Cook);
A Lovely Way to Die
(68, David Lowell Rich);
Mackenna’s Gold
(69, J. Lee Thompson);
The Adventures of Gerard
(70, Jerzy Skolimowski);
Romance of a Horsethief
(71, Abraham Polonsky); a Mexican bandit in
Don’t Turn the Other Cheek
(71, Duccio Tessari);
Cinderella Liberty
(73, Mark Rydell);
Crazy Joe
(74, Carlo Lizzani);
The Sentinel
(77, Michael Winner);
Nasty Habits
(77, Michael Lindsay-Hogg);
The Domino Principle
(77, Stanley Kramer);
The Deep
(77, Peter Yates);
Circle of Iron
(78, Richard Moore);
Movie Movie
(78, Stanley Donen);
Winter Kills
(79, William Richert);
The Hunter
(80, Buzz Kulik).

At which point, aged sixty-five, Wallach had another seventy acting assignments still to come! He had ability still—as witness his uncle in
The Executioner’s Song
(82, Lawrence Schiller)—but he had become very broad and energetic so as not to be forgotten:
Tough Guys
(86, Jeff Kanew);
Nuts
(87, Ritt);
The Two Jakes
(90, Jack Nicholson). He was Don Altobello, the ultimate villain, in
The Godfather Part III
(90, Francis Coppola), but his presence betrayed the problems of that film. He did
Night and the City
(92, Irwin Winkler);
Two Much
(96, Fernando Trueba);
Keeping the Faith
(00, Edward Norton); a liquor-store owner in
Mystic River
(03, Clint Eastwood); Noah Dietrich in
The Hoax
(06, Lasse Hallstrom), and so on all the way to
Shutter Island
(10, Martin Scorsese). In 1957, he had won a BAFTA for most promising newcomer, in
Baby Doll
—but he has never had a nomination for supporting actor.

Hal B
. (Brent)
Wallis
(1898–1986), b. Chicago
By 1943, one production executive had won the Irving Thalberg Award twice. It wasn’t Goldwyn, or Zanuck, or Selznick. It was Hal Wallis who has a fair claim to be the producer who worked at the top of the business for the longest time. In 1938 (for his first Thalberg Award) three of his movies were in contention for best picture
—The Adventures of Robin Hood, Four Daughters
, and
Jezebel
. In 1943, he won his second Thalberg along with best picture for
Casablanca
(as Aljean Harmetz’s invaluable book on the making of that picture shows, Wallis was as detailed and determined as Selznick—and rather more efficient). He would have more best picture nominations down the road for
The Rose Tattoo, Becket
, and
Anne of the Thousand Days
.

Wallis was tough, smart, a tremendous manager, and a man of unshakable self-confidence. Studio boss Jack Warner literally beat Wallis to the stage to pick up the
Casablanca
Oscar, and Wallis was so angry and so firm that the incident led to his departure from Warners. It is arguable that neither he nor his old studio was ever quite as good again.

Wallis came into movies in the publicity department at Warners, which he headed from 1922 onward. In 1928, he was made head of Warners’ First National subsidiary, and in 1930 he became a producer. As such, he had his name on several of the studio’s most pungent crime pictures:
Little Caesar
(30, Mervyn Le Roy);
Five Star Final
(31, Le Roy);
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
(32, Le Roy);
The World Changes
(33, Le Roy); and
Gold Diggers of 1933
(33, Le Roy). It must be said that this is Le Roy’s best period, and the panache of
Little Caesar
as well as the somber conviction of
Chain Gang
may owe something to Wallis’s youthful force.

In 1933, Darryl Zanuck left Warners and Wallis was put in charge of production. Thereafter, he took overall responsibility for what is a more remarkable run of staple products than Thalberg’s record at MGM:
Flirtation Walk
(34, Frank Borzage);
Captain Blood
(35, Michael Curtiz);
Sweet Adeline
(35, Le Roy);
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
(35, William Dieterle and Max Reinhardt);
The Story of Louis Pasteur
(35, Dieterle);
G Men
(35, William Keighley);
The Charge of the Light Brigade
(36, Curtiz);
Stolen Holiday
(37, Curtiz);
Green Light
(37, Borzage);
Kid Galahad
(37, Curtiz);
The Life of Emile Zola
(37, Dieterle);
Confession
(37, Joe May);
Tovarich
(37, Anatole Litvak);
The Adventures of Robin Hood
(38, Curtiz and Keighley);
Four Daughters
(38, Curtiz);
Jezebel
(38, William Wyler);
The Dawn Patrol
(38, Edmund Goulding);
The Sisters
(38, Litvak);
They Made Me a Criminal
(39, Busby Berkeley);
Juarez
(39, Dieterle);
Daughters Courageous
(39, Curtiz);
The Roaring Twenties
(39, Raoul Walsh);
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex
(39, Curtiz);
We Are Not Alone
(39, Goulding);
The Old Maid
(39, Goulding);
The Story of Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet
(40, Dieterle);
All This and Heaven Too
(40, Litvak);
The Sea Hawk
(40, Curtiz);
They Drive by Night
(40, Walsh);
A Dispatch from Reuters
(40, Dieterle);
The Letter
(40, William Wyler);
The Great Lie
(41, Goulding);
The Sea Wolf
(41, Curtiz);
The Strawberry Blonde
(41, Walsh);
Manpower
(41, Walsh);
The Bride Came C.O.D
. (41, Keighley);
Sergeant York
(41, Howard Hawks);
The Maltese Falcon
(41, John Huston);
They Died With Their Boots On
(41, Walsh);
High Sierra
(41, Walsh);
King’s Row
(42, Sam Wood);
The Male Animal
(42, Elliott Nugent);
Desperate Journey
(42, Walsh);
Yankee Doodle Dandy
(43, Curtiz);
Casablanca
(43, Curtiz);
Air Force
(43, Hawks);
Watch on the Rhine
(43, Herman Shumlin); and
Passage to Marseilles
(44, Curtiz).

In 1944, Wallis formed his own production company as a part of Warners, and in 1948 he moved it over to Paramount. He remained on that footing ever after, and, while his output there was not without interest, it is remarkable how suddenly it loses the halcyon swagger at Warners:
Love Letters
(45, Dieterle);
You Came Along
(45, John Farrow);
Saratoga Trunk
(46, Wood);
The Searching Wind
(46, Dieterle);
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
(46, Lewis Milestone);
I Walk Alone
(47, Byron Haskin);
Sorry, Wrong Number
(48, Litvak);
The Accused
(49, Dieterle);
My Friend Irma
(49, George Marshall), the first Martin and Lewis picture;
Rope of Sand
(49, Dieterle);
The File on Thelma Jordon
(49, Robert Siodmak);
Paid in Full
(50, Dieterle);
The Furies
(50, Anthony Mann);
Dark City
(50, Dieterle);
September Affair
(51, Dieterle);
Peking Express
(51, Dieterle);
Red Mountain
(51, Dieterle); the forlorn introduction of Shirley Booth in
Come Back, Little Sheba
(53, Daniel Mann);
Scared Stiff
(53, Marshall);
About Mrs. Leslie
(54, Mann);
The Rose Tattoo
(55, Mann);
Artists and Models
(55, Frank Tashlin);
Hollywood or Bust
(56, Tashlin);
The Rainmaker
(56, Joseph Anthony);
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
(57, John Sturges); Elvis Presley’s second film,
Loving You
(57, Hal Kanter);
Last Train from Gun Hill
(58, Sturges);
G.I. Blues
(60, Norman Taurog);
Summer and Smoke
(61, Peter Glenville);
Boeing Boeing
(65, John Rich);
The Sons of Katie Elder
(65, Henry Hathaway);
Anne of the Thousand Days
(69, Charles Jarrott);
True Grit
(69, Hathaway);
Mary, Queen of Scots
(71, Jarrott);
Bequest to the Nation
(73, James Cellan Jones);
The Don Is Dead
(73, Richard Fleischer); and
Rooster Cogburn
(75, Stuart Miller).