The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (83 page)

Her family came to New York when she was six, and after secretarial training she went on the stage, playing romantic leads by the late twenties. She made one silent picture,
For the Love of Mike
(27, Capra), but it was her facility with dialogue (she never seemed French—but English) that persuaded Paramount to sign her up in 1929. She began modestly but by 1930 was taking on a wide range of parts:
Manslaughter
(George Abbott);
Honor Among Lovers
(Dorothy Arzner);
His Woman
(31, Edward Sloman); and
The Smiling Lieutenant
(31, Ernst Lubitsch).

De Mille liked her enough to make her his leading lady: as Poppaea, bathing in asses’ milk and the director’s boyish lasciviousness in
The Sign of the Cross
(32); in
Four Frightened People
(34); as a delectable if silly
Cleopatra
(34). But if Roman dress (and undress) left no doubt about her beauty, the mock period language made her mischievous and impatient. Modern costume and smart talk suited her better and after two flat, serious roles—
I Cover the Waterfront
(33, James Cruze) and
Three-Cornered Moon
(33, Elliott Nugent)—she went rather reluctantly to Columbia for
It Happened One Night
(34, Capra). Her classiness made natural flirt with Gable’s view of dames; her darting eyes indicated a lot of the comedy; and her upraised skirt has become part of the American dream of the road. The stars won Oscars, and Colbert’s status at Paramount was strengthened.

For the next decade, she was a top star. She was a leading social figure in Hollywood with her second husband, Dr. Joel Pressman (before that, she had been the wife of director Norman Foster). She made
Imitation of Life
(34, John M. Stahl);
The Gilded Lily
(35, Wesley Ruggles);
Private Worlds
(35, Gregory La Cava), with Charles Boyer;
She Married Her Boss
(35, La Cava); as Cigarette in
Under Two Flags
(36, Frank Lloyd); with Boyer again, as Russians in
Tovarich
(37, Anatole Litvak);
Maid of Salem
(37, Lloyd); worthy of less censorship in
Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife
(38, Lubitsch); delectable in
Zaza
(39, George Cukor) and
Midnight
(39, Mitchell Leisen); defeated by the Colonial wife in
Drums Along the Mohawk
(39, John Ford);
It’s a Wonderful World
(40, W. S. Van Dyke); with Gable and Tracy in
Boom Town
(40, Jack Conway);
Arise My Love
(40, Leisen);
Skylark
(41, Mark Sandrich); and
Remember the Day
(41, Henry King).

The Palm Beach Story
(42, Preston Sturges) only showed how seldom she came to full life. After
No Time for Love
(43, Leisen) and
So Proudly We Hail
(43, Sandrich), she was loaned to Selznick to play the home-front madonna in
Since You Went Away
(44, John Cromwell), in which she quietly outshone Jennifer Jones and proved very touching. This was her best noncomedic role.
Practically Yours
(44) was her fourth film with Leisen, who shared the actress’s feeling that she should be allowed to play somewhat older women.

Her Paramount contract ended, and she could not negotiate the postwar years easily: she was married to George Brent and Orson Welles in
Tomorrow Is Forever
(45, Irving Pichel), but the comic possibilities were defiantly ignored;
Guest Wife
(45, Sam Wood);
Without Reservations
(46, Mervyn Le Roy); with Fred MacMurray in
The Egg and I
(47, Chester Erskine), her last big hit;
Sleep, My Love
(48, Douglas Sirk);
Three Came Home
(50, Jean Negulesco);
The Secret Fury
(50, Mel Ferrer); as a nun in
Thunder on the Hill
(51, Sirk).

Soon after this, she left America, first for Britain, where she made
The Planter’s Wife
(52, Ken Annakin), and to France for
Destinées
(53) and
Si Versailles m’était Conté
(53, Sacha Guitry).
Texas
(55, Tim Whelan) was a forlorn Western. After that, she was in
Parrish
(61, Delmer Daves), played occasionally onstage, lived in magazined splendor in Barbados, and still looked terrific on TV in
The Two Mrs. Grenvilles
(87, John Erman).

Ray Collins
(1889–1965), b. Sacramento, California
In his late seventies, Ray Collins was still turning up every week to be the loyally in-the-dark Lieutenant Tragg on
Perry Mason
. He had been on that show since its start in 1957, as the unfailing demonstration of the incompetence of the Los Angeles Police Department in always going after the wrong suspects. And it’s in the nature of our standard entertainments that someone—for years or forever—has to play the fusspot chump, the authority who is invariably in error. All of which Ray Collins carried off in good humor. So be reminded that for just a few moments in
The Magnificent Ambersons
(42, Orson Welles), he is Uncle Jack, an amiable man, an onlooker, smart enough to see that his family has fallen from grace so that, without training or aptitude, he must try to do something. There is that scene at the rail depot where he hurries off with his packed bag—a mature man—in search of a job, some money. It is one of our great scenes, and it could not be as it is without the exquisite sensibility of Ray Collins.

Well, that was relatively early, you might say. True enough, but then you have to recall his district attorney in
Touch of Evil
(58, Welles), just as foolishly bombastic as Tragg and just as clearly an astonishing actor. Ray Collins served out the years and decades doing a great deal of potboiling, and he seemed to do it without complaint or bitterness. But if you happen to see
The Magnificent Ambersons
then you run the risk of having a preconceived attitude turned to dust: the actor so steadily taken for granted was magnificence himself, waiting for another moment.

Collins joined the Mercury Theatre early on and he found himself there: he did what he was asked to do. He was on radio principally—in
Les Misérables
, as Abbé Faria in
The Count of Monte Cristo
, and in several roles, including the last announcer, in
The War of the Worlds
. He was Pickwick on radio and he was Boss Jim Gettys in
Citizen Kane
(41, Welles). He is forever caught on that staircase, a decent rascal, a politician, rather awed to discover the irrational pain in Kane.

What else? Just decades of work, not very distinguished or even memorable, unless you find yourself asking, where have I heard that gentle, pompous voice before?
The Grapes of Wrath
(40, John Ford);
The Big Street
(42, Irving Reis);
Commandos Strike at Dawn
(42, John Farrow);
The
Human Comedy
(43, Clarence Brown);
Slightly Dangerous
(43, Wesley Ruggles);
Crime Doctor
(43, Michael Gordon);
Salute to the Marines
(43, S. Sylvan Simon);
See Here, Private Hargrove
(43, Ruggles);
The Hitler Gang
(44, Farrow), as a German cardinal;
The Seventh Cross
(44, Fred Zinnemann);
Can’t Help Singing
(44, Frank Ryan);
Leave Her to Heaven
(45, John M. Stahl);
Miss Susie Slagle’s
(46, John Berry);
Badman’s Territory
(46, Tim Whelan);
CrackUp
(46, Reis);
Two Years Before the Mast
(46, Farrow);
The Return of Monte Cristo
(46, Henry Levin);
The Best Years of Our Lives
(46, William Wyler);
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer
(47, Reis);
The Senator Was Indiscreet
(47, George S. Kaufman);
The Swordsman
(48, Joseph H. Lewis);
Homecoming
(48, Mervyn LeRoy);
A Double Life
(48, George Cukor);
Good Sam
(48, Leo McCarey);
The Man from Colorado
(48, Levin);
Command Decision
(48, Sam Wood);
It Happens Every Spring
(49, Lloyd Bacon); as Roger Enright in
The Fountainhead
(49, King Vidor);
The Heiress
(49, Wyler);
Francis
(50, Arthur Lubin);
Paid in Full
(50, William Dieterle);
Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm
(51, Edward Sedgwick);
Vengeance Valley
(51, Richard Thorpe);
I Want You
(51, Mark Robson);
The Racket
(51, John Cromwell);
Young Man with Ideas
(52, Mitchell Leisen);
The Desert Song
(53, H. Bruce Humberstone);
Rose Marie
(54, LeRoy);
The Desperate Hours
(55, Wyler);
Never Say Goodbye
(56, Jerry Hopper);
The Solid Gold Cadillac
(56, Richard Quine).

Ronald Colman
(1891–1958), b. Richmond, England
While working for the British Steamship Company, Colman took part in amateur dramatics; invalided out of the First World War, he went on the stage professionally. He was successful and made a few films in Britain before going to America in 1920. While working there in the theatre, he was seen by Henry King and chosen to play with Lillian Gish in
The White Sister
(23, King).

Goldwyn put him under contract and Colman quickly became a romantic star:
Romola
(24, King);
Tarnish
(24, George Fitzmaurice);
Her Night of Romance
(24, Sidney Franklin);
A Thief in Paradise
(25, Fitzmaurice);
His Supreme Moment
(25, Fitzmaurice);
The Sporting Venus
(25, Marshall Neilan);
Her Sister from Paris
(25, Franklin);
The Dark Angel
(25, Fitzmaurice);
Stella Dallas
(25, King);
Lady Windermere’s Fan
(25, Ernst Lubitsch);
Kiki
(26, Clarence Brown);
Beau Geste
(26, Herbert Brenon);
The Winning of Barbara Worth
(26, King);
The Night of Love
(27, Fitzmaurice);
The Magic Flame
(27, King);
Two Lovers
(28, Fred Niblo); and
The Rescue
(29, Brenon).

As an actor, Colman was not troubled by the coming of sound—indeed, his aura of class gained from it. No more handsome than several silent rivals, when he spoke he revealed himself as urbane and sympathetic. Nearly forty, his mustache, his manners, and his Englishness cast him perfectly as the mature, amused romantic, and as such he won a huge following. He was not a searching actor, but he had learned how attractive consistent underplaying could be, and he took care to preserve his looks. His first great success with sound was
Bulldog Drummond
(29, F. Richard Jones) and he carried on with
Condemned
(29, Wesley Ruggles);
Raffles
(30, Harry d’Arrast and George Fitzmaurice);
The Unholy Garden
(31, Fitzmaurice); and
The Devil to Pay
(31, Fitzmaurice). Colman did not work as often as many other stars: he often pondered over accepting parts, but scarcity added to his gentlemanly distinction. Invariably, his parts were ideally suited to his talent:
Arrowsmith
(31, John Ford);
Cynara
(King Vidor); and
The Masquerader
(33, Richard Wallace).

At this stage, Colman left Goldwyn after his employer suggested that Colman acted better when he had been drinking. Colman now joined Twentieth and made
Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back
(34, Roy del Ruth),
Clive of India
(35, Richard Boleslavsky), and
The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo
(35, Stephen Roberts). He was a very good, alcoholic Sidney Carton at MGM in
A Tale of Two Cities
(35, Jack Conway) and at the same studio in
Under Two Flags
(36, Frank Lloyd). In 1937, he made two of his best remembered movies: at Columbia,
Lost Horizon
(Frank Capra) and, for Selznick,
The Prisoner of Zenda
(John Cromwell). He played François Villon in
If I Were King
(38, Lloyd) and was unusually touching as the painter in
The Light That Failed
(39, William Wellman);
Lucky Partners
(40, Lewis Milestone);
My Life With Caroline
(41, Milestone);
The Talk of the Town
(42, George Stevens); the shrewdly calculated sentiment of
Random Harvest
(43, Mervyn Le Roy), in which Colman was opposite Greer Garson. After
Kismet
(44, William Dieterle) he worked less and less and was more clearly in middle age in
The Late George Apley
(47, Joseph L. Mankiewicz) and
A Double Life
(47, George Cukor), for which he won the best actor Oscar as an actor who gets too far inside “Othello.” He was also very good in
Champagne for Caesar
(49, Richard Whorf) and thereafter retired, returning only for two guest roles:
Around the World in 80 Days
(56, Michael Anderson) and
The Story of Mankind
(57, Irwin Allen).

Jennifer Connelly
, b. Catskill Mountains, New York, 1970
She was the glorious dark-haired child spied on in
Once upon a Time in America
(84, Sergio Leone), a mythic vision enough to last a lifetime, and then nearly a decade later she was everyone’s dream, Allison Pond, in
Mulholland Falls
(96, Lee Tamahori). But the question remained: was she an extraordinary sight to behold—or something more, an actress? I’m not sure that a supporting actress Oscar, for
A Beautiful Mind
(01, Ron Howard), settles the matter, but I do think that her performance in
House of Sand and Fog
(03, Vadim Perelman) is her best yet.