The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (436 page)

Wallis was not neurotic, or much of a showoff. He was married twice, to actresses Louise Fazenda and Martha Hyer, but without scandal. Men with less potent records and more garish manners became household names. Maybe efficiency was never part of Hollywood’s dream.

Raoul Walsh
(1887–1981), b. New York
1912:
The Life of General Villa
(codirected with Christy Cabanne). 1915:
The Regeneration; Carmen
. 1916:
Honor System; Blue Blood and Red; The Serpent
. 1917:
Betrayed; The Conqueror; The Pride of New York; The Innocent Sinner; Silent Lie
. 1918:
Woman and the Law; This Is the Life; The Prussian Cur; On the Jump; Every Mother’s Son; I’ll Say So
. 1919:
Evangeline; Should a Husband Forgive?
. 1920:
From Now On; The Deep Purple; The Strongest
. 1921:
The Oath; Serenade
. 1922:
Kindred of the Dust
. 1923:
Lost and Found on a South Sea Island
. 1924:
The Thief of Bagdad
. 1925:
East of Suez; The Spaniard
. 1926:
The Lady of the Harem; The Lucky Lady; The Wanderer; What Price Glory?
. 1927:
The Loves of Carmen; The Monkey Talks
. 1928:
Me, Gangster; The Red Dance; Sadie Thompson
. 1929:
The CockEyed World; Hot for Paris; In Old Arizona
(codirected with Irving Cummings). 1930:
The Big Trail
. 1931:
The Man Who Came Back; Women of All Nations; The Yellow Ticket
. 1932:
Wild Girl; Me and My Gal
. 1933:
Bad Boy; Sailor’s Luck; The Bowery; Going Hollywood
. 1935:
Under Pressure; Baby Face Harrington; Every Night at Eight
. 1936:
Klondike Annie; Big Brown Eyes; Spendthrift
. 1937:
O.H.M.S./You’re in the Army Now; When Thief Meets Thief; Artists and Models; Hitting a New High
. 1938:
College Swing
. 1939:
St. Louis Blues; The Roaring Twenties
. 1940:
Dark Command; They Drive by Night
. 1941:
The Strawberry Blonde; Manpower; They Died With Their Boots On; High Sierra
. 1942:
Desperate Journey; Gentleman Jim
. 1943:
Background to Danger; Northern Pursuit
. 1944:
Uncertain Glory
. 1945:
The Horn Blows at Midnight; Salty O’Rourke; Objective Burma
. 1946:
San Antonio
(codirected with David Butler);
The Man I Love
. 1947:
Pursued; Cheyenne
. 1948:
Silver River; Fighter Squadron
. 1949:
One Sunday Afternoon; Colorado Territory; White Heat
. 1950:
Montana
(codirected with Ray Enright). 1951:
Along the Great Divide; Captain Horatio Hornblower; Distant Drums; The Enforcer/Murder Inc
. (codirected with Bretaigne Windust). 1952:
Glory Alley; The World in His Arms; The Lawless Breed; Blackbeard the Pirate
. 1953:
Sea Devils; A Lion Is in the Streets; Gun Fury
. 1954:
Saskatchewan
. 1955:
Battle Cry; The Tall Men
. 1956:
The Revolt of Mamie Stover; The King and Four Queens
. 1957:
Band of Angels
. 1958:
The Naked and the Dead; The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw
. 1959:
A Private’s Affair
. 1960:
Esther and the King
. 1961:
Marines, Let’s Go
. 1963:
A Distant Trumpet
.

On the one hand, Raoul Walsh simply made movies for a very long time. He spanned the medium from Griffith to Troy Donahue, and he probably had his name on a couple of hundred pictures. As long as most people could remember, Walsh had been a veteran, taken for granted. He was never nominated as best director, nor for best picture. Though he lived into the early eighties, when veteran achievement was generally honored by the Academy, he got no special Oscar. Was it just that he was so reliable, so direct and “simple” an entertainer? Or was it a matter of not making the proper “big” pictures? Still, you have to marvel that, in 1949,
Battleground
got a best picture nomination, while Richard Todd was nominated for
The Hasty Heart
. Nineteen forty-nine—the year of James Cagney in Raoul Walsh’s
White Heat
, a picture that got no nod.

They see such things differently in France, and have another way of saying them. Walsh was a hero in France for decades, taken for granted as a pillar of action cinema. But as so much more. Here is Jean Douchet on Walsh: “A force of nature directs the forces of nature and, suddenly, the world lives on—whirlwind and passion. It is time to consider Walsh as rather more than a tough guy, a fellow who likes to laugh, a primitive with rough sentiments. This passionate Shakespearean is a physical filmmaker only because he depicts a world of spiritual turmoil. His characters are projected on the world by their own energy and committed to a space that only exists for their actions, fury, spirit, craft, ambition and unbridled dreams.”

The son of an Irish father and a Spanish mother, he went to Seton Hall, and then had a few vagrant years as a seaman and a cowboy. He was first employed in the theatre as someone who could ride a horse on a treadmill. That led to a job at Pathé, before he got a position (in the saddle) with Griffith. It was when Griffith went to California that Walsh really learned his craft: not just as actor, but as scenarist and director.
The Life of General Villa
was a Griffith assignment that sent Walsh (plus gold) south of the border to meet the general for documentary scenes, and then playing him in dramatized passages. He appeared as John Wilkes Booth in
Birth of a Nation
(15, Griffith), and he was married (from 1916 to 1927) to one of Griffith’s stars, Miriam Cooper. He lost an eye during the shooting of
In Old Arizona
, and his last acting job was as the soldier opposite Gloria Swanson in his own
Sadie Thompson
.

He was always happy filming in wide open spaces.
The Big Trail
(though a flop) was a crucial early Western, with superb cattle-drive scenes and the newcomer John Wayne.
Pursued
and
Colorado Territory
are black-and-white Westerns with a great feeling for desolate canyon country. In addition, the one—from a Niven Busch script—is a pioneering fusion of Western and noir, full of dread, while
Colorado Territory
is a fatalistic reworking of Walsh’s own
High Sierra
. But Walsh loved sunshine and optimism, too:
The Tall Men
and
The King and Four Queens
are blithely heroic.

He could do modern war—
Objective Burma, Battle Cry, The Naked and the Dead
—with such an eye for combat and such unforced sympathy for common soldiers under stress. (From the moment of
What Price Glory?
Walsh was a devotee of privates and sergeants.) He could do costume and swashbuckling adventure
—Captain Horatio Hornblower
(which crams three novels into one picture),
Blackbeard the Pirate
, and
The World in His Arms
. He was Errol Flynn’s best director, and he was terrific with Cagney, Mitchum, McCrea, Aldo Ray, Gable, and Peck. Time and again, he got the best out of undervalued actresses like Virginia Mayo, Jane Russell, Ida Lupino, and Dorothy Malone.

When he came to Warners (from Fox) in 1939, he got into the habit of crime movies. But
High Sierra
has such a special sadness in its desperate need to “crash out,” and
White Heat
is so tender and reflective a portrait of a psychopath. Such movies evade cut-and-dried genre labels. They are so willing to go with the instincts of their wayward loners. Walsh often likes to take doomed heroes or lively demons to extreme places.

There’s a key to Walsh in those films. He was great at action, heroes, and combat—if that’s all that was called for. But there were so many other things he noticed: the forlorn romantic attempt in
High Sierra;
the bond between Cagney and Edmond O’Brien in
White Heat
, and the vibrant strangeness of Margaret Wycherly’s mother. He loved comedy and he had a rare fondness for ordinary people and quiet lives. More or less, those are the virtues of films that distinguish Walsh in his vision of heroes made humble by circumstances
—Me and My Gal
(with Tracy as a cop in love with Joan Bennett’s waitress);
The Bowery
, an exhilarating black comedy with terrific fights and unstoppable energy;
They Drive by Night
, which has Raft and Bogart as trucker pals, with a scary Ida Lupino;
The Strawberry Blonde
, a quite remarkable study of ambition and its absence, with outstanding performances from Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, Rita Hayworth, and Jack Carson;
Manpower
—silly and nearly campy, but very well played by Edward G. Robinson and Dietrich;
Gentleman Jim
, maybe the most humane and romantic film about boxing ever made—a film with an unflawed nobility; and the moody nightclub opening to
The Man I Love
, with Lupino and Robert Alda.

This is just a short list of treasures, omitting so much. Just because Walsh made it look so natural is no reason for us to ignore him. Is it too late for that Oscar—or do we just put his rugged eyepatch face on a stamp and be done with it? Raoul Walsh—a natural.

Nobody now knows how to make movies his way.

Charles Walters
(1911–82), b. Pasadena, California
1947:
Good News
. 1948:
Easter Parade
. 1949:
The Barkleys of Broadway
. 1950:
Summer Stock/You Feel Like Singing
. 1951:
Three Guys Named Mike; Texas Carnival
. 1952:
The Belle of New York
. 1953:
Dangerous When Wet; Lili; Torch Song; Easy to Love
. 1955:
The Glass Slipper; The Tender Trap
. 1956:
High Society
. 1957:
Don’t Go Near the Water
. 1959:
Ask Any Girl
. 1960:
Please Don’t Eat the Daisies
. 1961:
Two Loves/Spinster
. 1962:
Billy Rose’s Jumbo
. 1964:
The Unsinkable Molly Brown
. 1966:
Walk, Don’t Run
.

Educated at the University of Southern California, Walters was himself a dancer before becoming a director of stage musicals:
Let’s Face It
and
Banjo Eyes
in 1941. Next year, he joined MGM as a choreographer and worked on
Seven Days’ Leave
(42, Tim Whelan);
Presenting Lily Mars
(43, Norman Taurog);
Du Barry Was a Lady
(43, Roy del Ruth) (in the stage version of which he had danced);
Girl Crazy
(43, Taurog);
Best Foot Forward
(43, Edward Buzzell);
Broadway Rhythm
(44, del Ruth);
Meet Me in St. Louis
(44, Vincente Minnelli);
The Harvey Girls
(45, George Sidney);
Ziegfeld Follies
(46, Minnelli); and
Summer Holiday
(47, Rouben Mamoulian), before making his debut as a director. His choreography credits stand up rather better than his own films. Whatever the overall view of the directors concerned, Walters deserves some credit for the cakewalk in
St. Louis
, the swirling movements of “The Atcheson, Topeka” in
Harvey Girls
, and the Fourth of July sequence in
Summer Holiday
.

Walters made tuneful, smart, and colorful movies, and if his musicals are essentially innocuous, that serves to underline the greater artistic character in Donen and Minnelli.
Easter Parade
is an uneasy alliance of Astaire and Garland, while
The Barkleys of Broadway
and
Summer Stock
are not always successful concealments of the age or anxiety of their leading players. In the 1950s, his range gradually widened.
Lili
was a curiously melancholy film with songs, while
Torch Song
was a key film in making Joan Crawford’s camp fire manifest. Walters then developed his comic talent with
The Tender Trap; High Society; Don’t Go Near the Water;
and
Ask Any Girl. Two Loves
was another unexpected venture into romantic drama;
Billy Rose’s Jumbo
was as exuberant as ever; and
Walk, Don’t Run
a very funny last bow from Cary Grant.

Wayne Wang
, b. Hong Kong, 1949
1975:
Man, a Woman and a Killer
. 1981:
Chan Is Missing
. 1985:
Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart
. 1987:
Slam Dance
. 1989:
Eat a Bowl of Tea; Life Is Cheap … But Toilet Paper Is Expensive
. 1993:
The Joy Luck Club
. 1995:
Smoke; Blue in the Face
(codirected with Paul Auster). 1997:
Chinese Box
. 1999:
Anywhere but Here
. 2001:
The Center of the World
. 2002:
Maid in Manhattan
. 2005:
Because of Winn-Dixie
. 2006:
Last Holiday
. 2007:
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
. 2008:
The Princess of Nebraska
.

At the end of 1993, no serious moviegoer could be in doubt about where new things were happening. It was Asia, and more particularly China and Hong Kong, countries that may enjoy a uniquely momentary relationship that could also form a vital hinge for our futures. Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, John Woo, and Hou Hsiao-hsien are in this book. And one of the best films I’ve seen in recent years is Stanley Kwan’s
Actress
. Then there is Wayne Wang, a Mandarin Chinese named after John Wayne.

Wang was born in Hong Kong as his upper-middle-class parents fled by way of Tsingtao and Shanghai. He was raised in the British colony, and educated at Catholic schools. He came to America to go to college: Foothill College and the California College of Arts and Crafts. Once graduated, he went back to Hong Kong and was able to work as a director on the TV series, a soap opera,
Below the Lion Rock
.