The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (99 page)

After the war, Dalio did make more films in France, but he seems to have been emotionally based in America. He never quite matched the panache of his wartime films, but he often enlivened otherwise dull projects:
Les Maudits
(47, René Clément);
Temptation Harbour
(47, Lance Comfort);
Dédée d’Anvers
(48, Yves Allégret);
Les Amants de Vérone
(48, André Cayatte);
Black Jack
(49, Duvivier);
On the Riviera
(51, Walter Lang);
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
(52, King);
The Happy Time
(52, Richard Fleischer);
Flight to Tangier
(53, Charles Marquis Warren); as the judge in
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
(53, Hawks);
Razzia sur la Chnouf
(54, Henri Decoin);
Sabrina
(54, Billy Wilder);
Lucky Me
(55, Jack Donohue);
Les Amants du Tage
(55, Henri Verneuil);
Miracle in the Rain
(56, Rudolph Maté);
The Sun Also Rises
(57, King);
China Gate
(57, Samuel Fuller);
Pillow Talk
(59, Michael Gordon);
Lafayette Escadrille
(59, William Wellman);
Classe Tous Risques
(59, Claude Sautet);
The Man Who Understood Women
(59, Nunnally Johnson);
Can-Can
(60, Lang);
Cartouche
(62, Philippe de Broca);
Wild and Wonderful
(63, Michael Anderson);
Donovan’s Reef
(63, John Ford);
Le Monocle Rit Jaune
(64, Georges Lautner);
Un Monsieur de Compagnie
(64, de Broca);
Lady L
(65, Peter Ustinov);
La Vingt-Cinquième Heure
(66, Verneuil);
Made in Paris
(66, Boris Sagal);
How to Steal a Million
(66, William Wyler); in the “Aujourd’hui” episode from
Le Plus Vieux Métier du Monde
(67, Claude Autant-Lara);
Justine
(69, George Cukor);
Catch-22
(70, Mike Nichols);
The Great White Hope
(70, Martin Ritt);
Aussi Loin que l’Amour
(71, Frederic Rossif);
The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob
(73, Gérard Oury);
The Beast
(75, Walerian Borowczyk);
Un Page d’Amour
(77, Maurice Rabinowicz);
Chausette Surprise
(78, Jean-François Davy); and
L’Honorable Société
(78, Anielle Weinberger).

Matt
(Matthew Paige)
Damon
, b. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1970
In the previous edition, I expressed the hope that Matt Damon would not be too deterred by the neglect of his work in
The Talented Mr. Ripley
(99, Anthony Minghella)—I should add thanks to Minghella for urging me to see that Damon was maybe more interesting than Jude Law in the same film. So it has proved, and so we lament the sudden departure of Ant, Mr. Minghella. Damon got neither a nomination nor much thanks for his sly, furtive underclassed Ripley on the rise. In hindsight, the film might have given him more scope for daring and comic impersonation. Still, it was a fine performance, streets ahead of the unruly puppy stuff that got recognized in the deplorable and inflated
Good Will Hunting
(97, Gus Van Sant), for which Damon the actor was nominated while Damon and his pal Ben Affleck walked off with the original screenplay Oscar—they should have been given a car or a frisbee.

What’s most interesting about Damon is the very lack of Affleckian good looks, and the feeling of a squashed and rebuilt face, the uneasiness. Ripley, I’m sure, was the best forecast of his future and some promise of an intelligent sourness not seen since the best of William Holden. But there’s more there, a playfulness, an urge to pretend that might be more insinuating and dangerous.

He is the son of a stockbroker and a professor of education. He was highly educated—he read English at Harvard but dropped out just before his degree to pursue acting:
The Good Mother
(88, Leonard Nimoy);
Mystic Pizza
(88, Donald Petrie);
Rising Son
(90, John David Coles);
School Ties
(92, Rober Mandel):
Geronimo: An American Legend
(93, Walter Hill);
The Good Old Boys
(95, Tommy Lee Jones); very good as a jittery soldier in
Courage Under Fire
(96, Edward Zwick); carrying the load in
The Rainmaker
(97, Francis Coppola);
Chasing Amy
(97, Kevin Smith);
Saving Private Ryan
(98, Steven Spielberg);
Rounders
(98, John Dahl);
Dogma
(99, Smith); a voice in
Titan A.E
. (00, Don Bluth and Gary Goldman).

In the next few years, it was not clear where he was going. He could make little out of
The Legend of Bagger Vance
(00, Robert Redford) or
All the Pretty Horses
(00, Billy Bob Thornton). He had a bit part as himself in
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
(01, Smith);
The Third Wheel
(02, Jordan Bray) seemed like a lark. The TV series
Project Greenlight
(01) seemed more personal and far more rewarding than being lost in the crowd of
Ocean’s Eleven
(01, Steven Soderbergh) or
The Bourne Identity
(02, Doug Liman). He and Affleck’s brother Casey wrote
Gerry
(02, Van Sant). Damon appeared in
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
(02, George Clooney);
Stuck on You
(03, Peter and Bobby Farrelly):
Jersey Girl
(04, Smith);
The Brothers Grimm
(05, Terry Gilliam).

But now something started to coalesce: Damon’s restraint, his furtiveness, began to expand in moods of graver disquiet and mystery. He was becoming unknowable (and knowability in actors can be a drag). He grasped the abrupt secrecy of
The Bourne Supremacy
(04, Paul Greengrass) and the infinite imprecision of
Syriana
(05, Stephen Gaghan), and then he laid down the shape of a great withdrawal from life as the master spy in
The Good Shepherd
(06, Robert DeNiro)—a key performance. He was a closed book again in
The Departed
(06, Martin Scorsese), a film where the interchangeability of characters was the chief interest.
Ocean’s Thirteen
(07, Soderbergh) was a waste of time, but in
The Bourne Ultimatum
(07, Greengrass), the man without memory seemed to fit into Damon’s scheme.

He took cameo roles in
Youth Without Youth
(07, Coppola) and
Che: Part Two
(08, Soderbergh), and he did a voice in
Ponyo
(08, Hayao Miyazaki), but then he did perhaps his best work in
The Informant
(09, Soderbergh). Next to that, his rugby-player in
Invictus
(09, Clint Eastwood) was very stale. But he had
Margaret
(09, Kenneth Lonergan) and
Green Zone
(10, Greengrass)—both long delayed—upcoming.

Dorothy Dandridge
(1923–65), b. Cleveland, Ohio
In 1999, Halle Berry—also from Cleveland—brought
Introducing Dorothy Dandridge
(Martha Coolidge) to the television screen. The biopic was closer to the facts than is usual in these things: the failed marriage to Harold Nicholas, and the retarded daughter; the affair with Otto Preminger; and the awful second marriage to a restaurateur—all were there. Moreover, Halle Berry looked a lot like Dandridge, though she was prettier, newer, fresher, less abused. There was the point. I looked at
Carmen Jones
(54, Preminger) a day later and all that Dandridge had on her side was that shadow of all the pain and oppression. That is not to say that Ms. Berry has gone through life free, but the thing about Dandridge is when she did it, and how warm, real, wicked, and hurt she seemed. It’s the same difference as exists between Lena Horne and Whitney Houston.

Dandridge had been in show business since childhood, for she was the daughter of an actress. She had a double act with her sister, Vivian, and by, say, 1939, she was a sixteen-year-old sexpot who could sing and dance—in the age of Butterfly McQueen and Hattie McDaniel. And so her real youth was wasted away in black nightclubs and in movies like
A Day at the Races
(37, Sam Wood);
Going Places
(38, Ray Enright);
Lady from Louisiana
(41, Bernard Vorhaus);
Sundown
(41, Henry Hathaway); with the Nicholas Brothers, doing “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” in
Sun Valley Serenade
(41, H. Bruce Humberstone);
Bahama Passage
(41, Edward Griffith);
Lucky Jordan
(42, Frank Tuttle);
Hit Parade of 1943
(43, Albert S. Rogell);
Since You Went Away
(44, John Cromwell);
Atlantic City
(44, Ray McCarey);
Tarzan’s Peril
(51, Byron Haskin);
The Harlem Globetrotters
(51, Phil Brown).

Then she got a real part, opposite Harry Belafonte, in
Bright Road
(53, Gerald Mayer), and after
Remains to Be Seen
(53, Don Weis) she got
Carmen Jones
. She was nominated for that: the first time a black player had been proposed for the Oscar in a lead role—her rivals were Judy Garland in
A Star Is Born
, Audrey Hepburn in
Sabrina
, Jane Wyman in
Magnificent Obsession
, and, the winner, Grace Kelly in
The Country Girl
.

Of course, life only got harder after that breakthrough. Preminger liked to keep their affair secret (what a subject for a Preminger movie). No one could find a lead role for her. So she could not even kiss John Justin three years later in
Island in the Sun
(57, Robert Rossen). She is very good in
The Decks Ran Red
(58, Andrew L. Stone), and then Preminger cast her again, opposite Sidney Poitier, in
Porgy and Bess
(59). In fact, her best role was as Curt Jurgens’s mistress (a part she played in life, too) in
Tamango
(57, John Berry). Her last film was
Malaga
(60, Laslo Benedek).

Then she lost her money in a swindle and went back to minor nightclub work. It is likely that she took her own life.

Bebe Daniels
(Virginia Daniels) (1901–71), b. Dallas, Texas
As a child, she acted with her parents on the stage and in 1914 she signed with Hal Roach at Pathé. In the next few years, she was the ingenue in many shorts, principally as the dewy-eyed girlfriend of Harold Lloyd. She then joined Cecil B. De Mille and was thrust into his gossip’s world of would-be sexual sophistication:
Male and Female
(19) and the other woman in
Why Change Your Wife?
(20)—Gloria Swanson was the wife. It indicates public gullibility and De Mille’s shortsighted prurience that a wholesome teenager could fill such roles. Although playing “Satan Synne” in
The Affairs of Anatol
(21, De Mille), Bebe Daniels was far more comfortable as a Paramount comedienne—light, girlish, and genuinely vivacious:
The Dancin’ Fool
(20, Sam Wood);
Ducks and Drakes
(21, Maurice Campbell);
One Wild Week
(21, Campbell);
The Speed Girl
(21, Campbell), a reference to Bebe’s brief spell in prison for reckless driving;
Nancy from Nowhere
(22, Chester M. Franklin);
Nice People
(22, William De Mille);
The World’s Applause
(23, W. De Mille);
The Glimpses of the Moon
(23, Allan Dwan);
Daring Youth
(24, William Beaudine); with Valentino in
Monsieur Beaucaire
(24, Sidney Olcott);
Dangerous Money
(24, Frank Tuttle);
Argentine Love
(24, Dwan);
Miss Bluebeard
(25, Tuttle);
The Manicure Girl
(25, Tuttle);
Wild, Wild Susan
(25, Edward Sutherland);
Lovers in Quarantine
(25, Tuttle);
The Palm Beach Girl
(26, Erle Kenton);
Stranded in Paris
(26, Arthur Rossen);
Feel My Pulse
(28, Gregory La Cava);
Take Me Home
(28, Marshall Neilan); and
What a Night!
(28, Sutherland). She was at her best in a string of carefree comedies directed by Clarence Badger:
Miss Brewster’s Millions
(26);
The Campus Flirt
(26);
A Kiss in a Taxi
(27);
Senorita
(27);
Swim, Girl, Swim
(27);
She’s a Sheik
(27), in which Bebe, in Arab costume, abducts a European husband for herself;
The Fifty-Fifty Girl
(28); and
Hot News
(28).

When sound arrived, Paramount neglected her and she went eventually to RKO for a great personal success in
Rio Rita
(29, Luther Reed), in which she sang. She stayed there for
Love Comes Along
(30, Rupert Julian) and
Alias French Gertie
(30, George Archainbaud). Her costar in that film was Ben Lyon, and in the same year they married. After
Dixiana
(30, Reed) and
Lawful Larceny
(30, Lowell Sherman), she went to United Artists for
Reaching for the Moon
(31, Edmund Goulding) and to Warners for
My Past
(31, Roy del Ruth). She remained there for a few years, but her reputation was declining:
The Maltese Falcon
(31, del Ruth);
Silver Dollar
(32, Alfred E. Green); the temperamental star in
42nd Street
(33, Lloyd Bacon) who loses the part to Ruby Keeler; and
Registered Nurse
(34, Robert Florey). She went to Columbia for
Cocktail Hour
(33, Victor Schertzinger), to Universal for
Counsellor at Law
(33, William Wyler); and then to Britain for
The Song You Gave Me
(33, Paul L. Stein) and
A Southern Maid
(33, Harry Hughes)—two disasters.