Our Man in Vienna

-Harry`s Film Impressions (10)

von Herbert Kuhner am 4. Dezember 2018 um 14:51

Veröffentlicht in: Film, Text

Film Oldies

Remember those film oldies! They were handsome and delightful men who were old in the best possible sense. They had gained age with humor, charm and a total lack of bitterness.

There was roly-poly Monty Woolley (the name fit) with his white woolly beard and prickly tweed suit. He was the Man Who Came to Dinner and he straightened out the lives of film characters gently, making them see their errors kindly with a twinkle in his eye.

Then there was square-jawed C. Aubrey Smith who was very British down to his skivvies. Harrumphing English aristocrat with a glint in his eye. But he was versatile; sometimes he showed up as a Scot. He represented the British Empire moral rectitude and kindness. There was nothing superior in the way the moral overtones were presented. He was great at helping to solve mysteries and generally provided the right kind of guiding.

The there was Lewis Stone, senior, figure of authority paternal friend to Greta Garbo and, of course, Judge Hardy, Andy’s father. He was a bit more on the serious side, but you know when his name was on the billboard as a supporting player, the film he was in had to have class and was worth seeing. Like C. Aubrey, he exuded a very positive and unprejudiced form of moral rectitude.

Then there was Edmund Gwenn, the Scotsman. He was a kindly guiding angel. He was in a good mood and he often had a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. And that’s Edmund guiding Roddy McDowell in Lassie Come Home and little Natalie Wood in Miracle on 34th St.

Edmund Gwenn

These handsome men were of course the epitome of the father or grandfather.

I was a kid when I saw them on screen. I knew that I would grow up, grow old and I knew what was at the end of the road. But I expected that in Hollywood films, children like Mickey Ronny and Judy Garland would continue to play kids, that the adult actors I liked like tough guy Alan Ladd and good old Bogey would continue to play adults. And I thought that oldies like Monty, C. Aubrey, Lewis and Edmund would continue to be around to round out the cast.

Hollywood is a place on the map of the world but “Hollywood” is also the world of fantasy.

Of course there came a time, when they could no longer be called upon to take on roles in films. That is one of the facts of life that became a reality to me.

But there is the consolation. They can still be seen in their consoling roles on the late late show.

The Art Theaters of Yore

I must have been born a film buff, and at an early age I developed into a foreign film buff.
In Princeton my haunts were the Garden Theater and the Princeton Playhouse. When we moved to Locust Valley the Cove Theater in Glen Cove filled the bill – but not quite. I wanted more than Hollywood.

I was pious in those days, but in spite of my religiosity, I used the Catholic Legion of Decency List of Condemned Films as a guide. This was the section of The Tablet that fascinated me. Since the films were condemned, I thought that there must be something to them. It was my list of films to see.

On trips to New York my mother would take me to the art theaters of yore to see the films that the Legion had banned – but not knowingly. She had no idea where I found out about the films and was pleased that her young son had such sophisticated tastes.

Most of the films were French, and I came to love the musical sound of the language. Those black-and-white masterpieces had some lascivious scenes, and here and there, the briefest flash of a female anatomy zipped across the screen.

I sensed then that these flashes were an integral part of art.

There may have been a flash now and then, but for the most part the condemnation came from a straitlaced rejection of frivolity.

Today, the Legion must be putting together lists ten miles long. Frivolity is a thing of the past; it has been replaced by downright baseness.

In those days, there were Theaters like the Times Theater on 42nd St with its double-feature bills with provocative titles like Bed and Broad and Bottoms Up, but as far as brass tacks were concerned, there wasn’t even a flash. You were better off trying get a bit of nudity with your culture.

I continued to frequent “art” theaters long after reading the Legion list. The black-and-white foreign films of the time were as tasty as a French bread and vin ordinaire.

But with the advent of the Permissive Society and legalized pornography, everything changed. Somehow foreign films lost some of their appeal. Many of the “art” houses of yore were transformed into porno film theaters. You could get more than a glimpse in full color, and nothing, absolutely nothing, was left to the imagination.

Isn’t that befitting? Art and nudity have always been associated with each another. Now nudity is filling the bill.

The art houses cum porno theaters have also gone the way of all flesh. Who needs a theater when you have DVDs?

Gangland Mother and Son

In Stephen Frear’s masterpiece The Grifters, John Cusak aka Ray Dillon suffers internal injuries in a trick gone wrong. His mother, Anjelica Huston aka Lily Dillon resolutely gets him to a hospital and sees to it that he is treated.

Annette Benning aka Myra Langtry is Ray’s girlfriend. She’s a grifter too. Her rent is due, but instead of paying, she serves herself up to the greasy landlord and reads a magazine while he tops her.

Lilly has to scram and asks for her son’s savings, which he has on the premises. When he refuses,
there’s a scuffle during which Lily accidentally kills him. Sobbing, she takes the money and runs.

to be continued . . .

– Herbert Kuhner

-Harry`s Film Impressions (9)

von Herbert Kuhner am 29. November 2018 um 8:32

Veröffentlicht in: Film, Text

The Horses of Stagecoach

Stagecoach is the classic western based the de Maupassant story, Boule de suif, which is the classic doxy story.

The great Indian chase of the hurtling stagecoach is the most classic scene of this classic film.
The Indians try to pick of the stagecoach driver, his companion rifleman and the passengers in the coach.

The question has always been asked: why don’t the Indians just shoot the horses pulling the stagecoach? The Indians have burned down ranches in the area and done settlers in, but they have a good side: they love horses. They are certainly more humane than the stuntmen riding those poor beasts, who cause them to falter and fall at full speed.

Second Fiddles

There were a handful of stars in the Thirties and Forties who were not quite stars in their own right. They were stars who could not carry a film on their own. Their names usually appeared under the name of a top woman star. It seems that second billing was their fate. George Brent, Zachary Scott, Macdonald Carey, Paul Henried, Turhan Bey and Walter Pidgeon were the second fiddles to stars like Bette Davis Joan Crawford. Although these women could carry a film, they could not have been considered to be beautiful. They were the type of women that the woman on the street could identify with. “Woman on the street” is not a good expression for the middle class ladies who frequented dark palatial theaters with hankies at the ready. Woman in the kitchen or woman in the living room would be more suited. Woman in the bedroom would be all-wrong. They needed stars like Bette and Joan to identify with. And it was marvelous for these filmgoers to view women who had made it to the top who were not exquisite beauties. These ordinary-looking stars needed handsome foils, and the male stars who supported them filled the bill.

Walter Pidgeon

Bette Davis had a froggy look, but like many plain women who have charisma, she could, at times, make herself seem attractive. Both Bette and Joan were tough cookies, on and off screen. Joan like Bette, was anything but a beauty. She was mostly photographed face-on in her publicity shots. Like her rival Bette, her eyes were a bit too big, and they were neither luminous nor humorous. Her face, however, was perfectly symmetrical, and the photographers who photographed her brought the quality to the fore.

Bette and Joan were rivals in real life. Robert Aldrich used that reality for his fiction in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. In that film the two didn’t have to act. As hating oldies, they go for each other’s throats with verve and gusto.

George is the doctor who consoles the moribund Bette in Dark Victory, and he’s there with of ornate the empathy and platitudes, as she exits and hankies galore emerge from handbags in the darkened ornate temples.

Zachary is the all-right guy who waits for mercenary and venal Joan to soften up and come around in Mildred Pierce. Mildred changes her ways and Zachary scoops her up in his arms before the fade out.

In Let’s Make It Legal, Macdonald forgets marital intentions toward Claudette Colbert when Marilyn Monroe flutters her eyelids and mesmerizes him with the rippling of her delicious bottom. But as Hollywood would have it, Claudette flutters her saucer eyes and turns on the charm, which she had plenty of and achieves the impossible. She manages to win MacDonald back. He, who was not made of clay, pops the question, while continuing to view Marilyn’s curvaceous masterpiece out of the corner of his eye. Being the good Hollywood soldier that he was, he ties the knot with Claudette, a fate on or off screen that one can only envy him for. But while doing so, he steals a last glance at the curvaceous tuberosties that served as the mainspring of ninety minutes of frothy entertainment.

Paul, with his Viennese charm, his aesthetic facial scar and elegant white suite does get Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, but cynical, tough-guy Bogey wins her heart. Paul was the dashing star of The Spanish Main, an exciting pirate film as well as a couple of others, but his stardom was nipped in the bud by the Senator from Wisconsin, the good old commie chaser, Joe McCarthy. When Paul was able to film again he was too old to pick up where he had left off as a Lothario.

Turhan was another suave supporting star. Like Paul, he came from the best breeding ground for elegant Lotharios, namely Vienna. His genre was the Arabian Nights and he had a gorgeous star to support. Turhan and Jon Hall defended and fought amongst themselves to win the lovely Maria Montez in the East, where there were turbans galore. When Johnny came marching home, that is when the male stars returned from Europe and Japan to Hollywood, the Arabian series came to an end and roles became scarce for Turhan. He then threw in the turban, and then headed back home to Vienna.

Walter Pigeon was the stodgy fuddy-duddy who was hubby to Greer Garson as Madame Curie and Mrs. Miniver. He gave his “Madame” the moral support she needed to research radium and his “Mrs.” to persevere in wartime London.

After the Forties second fiddles went out of fashion. For some reason, which I can’t put my finger on, unbeautiful female stars now carry films on their own. Apparently they no longer need the support of a handsome foil. Now they do their thing without the second-string star who supports them and takes second billing.

The Egghead as Heavy

Film villains who played gangsters could make it big like Cagney, Bogey and Edward G. Ditto for villains who played monsters like Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff. Then there was the Erich von Stroheim who was the man you loved to hate. After his career as a director went on the skids, with a little help from himself, the war came as a windfall. He cashed in on propaganda films, along with the newly-arrived emigrés, since Europeans with nasty accents were needed to play Nazi officers.

Erich von Stroheim

The suave upper-crust scion who had a cultural background was the man you couldn’t trust. He invariably had bad intentions, was corrupt to the core, and was the most elegant of villains. The actor who played the role had to resign himself to a rating of supporting player. That was the fate of John Sutton, foil of Tyrone Power in Captain from Castile. Louis Calhern, a boulvardier from Brooklyn, was the big boss and Marilyn Monroe’s sugar daddy in The Asphalt Jungle. John Emery, with his haughty mien and velvety nasal voice, was the heavy having it off with Alan Ladd’s wife in The Blue Dahlia. Another Emery facet was playing turncoat pals, a role that he played to the hilt in The Spanish Main, opposite Paul Henreid. George Macready, was a master in hauteur, who even lent class to his facial scar. He was slinky as Rita Hayworth’s husband in Gilda, and of course, was fated to be bested by Glenn Ford. Henry Wilcoxon, whose name sounds like a jockstrap, was the square with the powdered wig in The Last of the Mohicans. God was he a prig! He just had to be edged out by Randolph Scott. The jocks were, however, the heroes who eventually got the better of these heavies. They were regular guys like Glenn Ford, William Holden and John Payne who showed that good intentions went with a simple homespun American background. Let’s admit it, eggheads are suspicious and the egghead quality doesn’t sell. When an egghead shows up, he’s up to no good and has to be bested by a non-egghead. In the films of the past, there were paltry rewards for those eggheads who played the eggheads.

to be continued . . .

– Herbert Kuhner

-Harry`s Film Impressions (8)

von Herbert Kuhner am 25. November 2018 um 18:05

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein, Film, Text

Alan and the Key

The Princeton Playhouse was the home of the Technicolor A-films. The Garden Theater was the home of B-films. There were matinees of Frankenstein, Sherlock Homes, Tarzan and western films in the Garden Theater.

The Garden is still there, but the beautiful colonial-style Playhouse has gone the way of many stately Hollywood temples. It is now a parking lot.

It was at the Garden that I saw The Glass Key with Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Brian Donlevy and William Bendix

The Glass Key fit into the ambiance of the Garden. It was grey gloomy film noir with men in the customary trench coats and fedoras and sexy women blowing smoke in cocktail dresses or evening gowns.

The Princeton Playhouse

Alan Ladd with the Hollywood pompadour and low voice was Brian Donlevy’s gunsel. Ladd spoke little and his silences were as effective as his sparse words.

His nemesis was wide-eyed, lantern-jawed William Bendix, the best hood ever to hit the screen. He was a Brooklyn boy gone wrong with a dazed nutty quality. There’s a scene in which he announces “I’m gonna spank baby,” and he works Alan over. That was humiliating for Alan and also for me as a viewer who’d had his share of humiliations at the hands of bullies.

But waiting for the end of the film paid off. In the denouement, Alan comes back like a beaten champion to give the usurper his just desserts, and as a prize, Alan gets slinky, peek-a-boo blonde Veronica Lake. Who could ask for anything more?

Alan_Ladd

Ladd was discovered in This Gun for Hire. That was followed by The Glass Key and The Blue Dahlia. In the first he was the perfect gangster in his quiet, threatening manner. And in the second two he was a tough guy, who was not on the wrong side of the law. In Dahlia he played a vet who comes home from the war and is falsely accused of being a murderer. Ladd’s best roles were in the noir films. Ladd left gangster-dom behind to make star vehicles for Paramount. The vehicles were not very noteworthy, with the exception of Shane, which was a critical success. But Shane was not followed up and his career went on a downswing.

When I saw Key, I was a seven-year old pipsqueak. I had my William Bendix at St. Paul’s Parochial School. I wanted to come back to best him like Ladd does at the denouement. But that never happened.

I recently rented Key at a videothèque. It brought back memories of Nassau Street, St. Paul’s and the Garden. There were scenes that I remembered clearly. They had stayed with me for decades. I didn’t get stuck on something trite. The film isn’t bad at all.

I see films on TV that I’ve seen not too long ago and completely forgotten. Viewing them is like seeing a film for the first time. Only when there’re almost over, do you sort of vaguely remember that you’ve already seen them.

Let me end with Bill Bendix. In the early days, his specialty was playing sadistic killers, and he sometimes varied by doing dazed World War II vets. But Bill the bad guy got his comeuppance. He went on to do TV sitcom. What a comedown for the man who menaced so well – ending up as a buffoon who vies for canned laughs. That fate was worse than being beaten up by Ladd.

Yankee-Doodle and the Hepcats

I saw Yankee Doodle-Dandy at the Princeton Playhouse in 1942 at the age of seven. At that age, you get just a sketch of the plot. The main thing is the images – and of course in a musical, the music sinks in. I never forgot the film, nor could I never forget the colonial style Playhouse. It was the classiest and most beautiful movie theater I have ever come upon, and it has gone the way of most of the old-fashioned movie theaters. Its ghost hovers over a parking lot.

If it had not been feasible for the Playhouse to continue as a movie theater, it would have made wonderful cultural center, art gallery or museum, but that’s all water under the bridge now, and the water keeps flowing and flowing.

Barbarians brought down the Twin Towers in New York, but Robert Moses, the city planner, and his band of cultural spoilers whisked away Penn Station. The Playhouse too, in spite of all the intellectual power gathered at Princeton University, could not be saved.

Man loves to build, but his love for destruction is greater.

Yankee Doodle-Dandy

Recently I saw Yankee-Doodle on TV. I remembered it well. How could I ever forget it or the Princeton Playhouse?

Yankee-Doodle is the life of George M. Cohan in the Hollywood manner. Jimmie Cagney was Cohan, a decent guy, who had a terrific career as a composer of popular songs and musicals.

The music and the spirit of the film is real American hoopla in the good old flag-waving manner. Flag waving was in order since the United States was freshly engaged in World War II. Cagney deservedly got the Oscar for his acting and singing and dancing. God was he a great bundle of energy!

He proved that in addition to playing smart-talking gangsters and determined G-men, he could excel as a good citizen. Prior to Dandy, he had s done The Strawberry Blonde with Rita Haworth. She was the blonde referred to and she’d dumbstruck him. But then who wouldn’t have been dumbstruck with Rita at the time. The enamored Cagney finds out that he’d been taken in by the character she’d been playing and that the strawberries weren’t worth the eating. So he drops his spoon and rebounds with Olivia de Havilland, who was no Rita but wasn’t that bad when she wasn’t playing sappy roles like Melanie in Gone with the Wind.

I should add that I was six when I saw Strawberry and the title song was one humdinger. It became my favorite of the time.

Anyway, back to Yankee-Doodle! Cagney razzles and dazzles as a song and dance man. Did you notice that he tap dances mostly on his toes? And he could make you reach for a hankie as well!

I described Michael Curtiz as a director who could get good juice out of bad oranges. But Yankee-Doodle was a good orange, and Curtiz served it up with just the right bit of sentimentality.

There’s a scene when Cohan, who is getting on and greying at the temples, has his days of musical hits behind him. And what happens! A convertible jalopy of hepcats breaks down near his residence and the hepcats come to ask to use his phone.

They want to know who Cohan is, and when he tells them, they don’t have an inkling of what he was about.

The hepcats give him a display of the music of the time by doing a rendition of Jeepers Creepers, which is so horrible that it is blood-curdling. The hepcats are depicted as dopes who like dopey music.

Jeepers, in my humble opinion, is a great swing novelty tune, but it is supposed to represent the crappy music of the day in the Doodle film.

George M.’s songs are of the pre-jazz or non-jazz variety and have the turn-of-the century touch. Some of them are razzmatazz, which isn’t jazz, and I can’t imagine any of them being jazzed up.

These hepcats of early Forties vintage would soon have to give way to beboppers. And if they couldn’t adjust to bop, which would soon displace swing, they’d be out of the picture

The songs and ballads of the swing era would soon give way to original bebop numbers.

Musical tastes and trends change. That’s the way it goes. The latest “in thing” is tomorrow’s old hat. There have been many old hats since James played George in 1942, but Yankee Doodle is worth remembering, no matter what the trends are. And the Princeton Playhouse is worth remembering too.

to be continued . . .

– Herbert Kuhner

-Harry`s Film Impressions (7)

von Herbert Kuhner am 21. November 2018 um 14:00

Veröffentlicht in: Film, Text

The Bogart Butt

When I was a kid, I saw Bogart as a private eye, reporter, sea captain or gangster on the lam. He had something that the other tough guys, Edward G., Cagney and Ladd didn’t have – the Bogart butt. The cigarette was indispensable. The other toughies also smoked, but their smoking was incidental and not part of their savoir-faire. Bogey’s butt was as much a part of him as the fedora and the trench coat. No one smoked the way he did. When he inhaled, his eyes slit and the oval wrinkles on his forehead furled, you knew that something was up, and something like a fist fight, shoot-out or sea battle would ensue. He seduced most of us into smoking. We wanted to look like him and be as tough as he was. Drawing the smoke in the way he did was the first step. The men were soon separated from the boys. I was among the boys. No matter how I slit my eyes and furled, when I drew in the smoke, the only thing that happened was that I gagged and retched. I guess I just wasn’t cut out to be a tough guy.

Bogart

As a non-tough-guy and a non-smoker, I still enjoyed watching Bogey’’s celluloid smoking, but then he didn’t blow smoke into my face and I couldn’t smell his cigarettes.

In 1955, when turned twenty, I was first disillusioned about Bogey. He and Spencer Tracy, who were friends, were scheduled to do The Desperate Hours for MGM, but Tracy opted out since neither of them would accept second billing. The film was made with Bogart as star supported by Fredric March.

In 1957 at the age of 57 Bogart died of throat cancer. He was skin and bones, weighing 96 lbs.

The Tough Guy and the Priest

Tough Guys were always half pints. Bogey, Cagney and Edward G. were on the short side. Alan Ladd had to stand on a soapbox while sparring with hoods and while kissing his leading ladies.

The quintessential tough guy was of course Jimmie C. He was the fresh-faced kid, the smart aleck, the wiseacre the young upstart, the guy with a chip on his shoulder, the slum kid who went wrong. The Cagney qualities came to the fore best when his foil was Father Pat. When Cagney played opposite O’Brien, you knew that Jimmie would have the best lines, but that in the end conversion was in the cards.

James Cagney

In Angels with Dirty Faces, directed by Michael Curtiz in ‘38, Jimmie and Pat are boyhood pals. Pat gives up stealing apples for the priesthood, but Jimmie takes the crooked path, which means dough and dames. Jimmie has a ball as a hood until he shoots another gangland member, who just happens to be his turncoat pal, Bogey. Unfortunately, for Jimmie, the fuzz is on to him and he finds himself in the dock, and then he’s sent up the river on a murder rap. Jimmie’s fans in the film are the Dead End Kids, who came on the scene in Dead End and then turned up in a lot of gangster films, until they had their own B-film series and became the Bowery Boys. Anyway, back to Angels! Father Pat gives his good old Irish religious spiel to Jimmie, whose taking his sequester on death row in his hard-boiled way. Father Pat tells his erstwhile boyhood pal, to soften up, so that he doesn’t continue to be the wrong kind of role model for his Dead-End fans, lest they follow his example and end up where he now is. Of course our swaggering Jimmie tells Pat to shove it and to shove off. But when it comes to walking that last mile, he obliges his old friend by whimpering on his way to the chair. Fade out with a glowing Father Pat. If you think this is corny, you’re right, but Mike Curtiz was an expert in packaging corn, but like his other packages of corn, it’s got momentum all the way.

Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)

Ditto for William Keighly for The Fightng 69th in 1940. In this one cocky Cagney is a cynic as far as religion is concerned. But when it comes down to brass tacks on the battlefield in the Great War, he caves in and cowers in a foxhole, instead of going gung-ho for the enemy. After a pep talk and a religious workout by the chaplain, good old father Pat of the square dimpled chin, Jimmie sees the light and accepts Christ. The lines of the born-again Jimmie aren’t nearly as good as when he was putting “all that Holy Joe stuff” down, however he becomes a model for the Saturday-matinee youngsters and naturally dies as a hero in action. When I saw the film, I was religious, and I should have approved the change in attitude, but somehow I liked the swaggering Jimmie better that the “Holy Joe” one. The film augured my future. I had a reverse conversion. I dropped the “Holy Joe” stuff and became the celestial cynic I am.

to be continued . . .

– Herbert Kuhner

-Harry`s Film Impressions (6)

von Herbert Kuhner am 17. November 2018 um 23:28

Veröffentlicht in: Film, Text

Too Much Cotton

Orson Weles reaped great praise for Touch of Evil, a sloppy job compared with Kane, but nevertheless with moments of greatness like all post-Kane films. A corpulent Welles plays a, dishevelled cop, but he felt needed a bit of padding for the jowls, so cotton was the answer. The padding is too much of a bad thing. Guess the Kane make-up man was not available.

Touch-of-Evil

Ditto for Brando’s elderly Mafioso in Godfather. His comeback got him an Oscar but you know that the cotton is there, and knowing it as well as having it, makes chills run up and down your spine. It must have affected the acting in one way or another. Guess the Oscar jury ignored it.

Master-actor Larry Olivier would have said: “Why don’t you try acting, dear boy?!”
And he might have added: “Fire the makeup man!”

Christian Dies before His Time

One-eyed Jacks is the only directorial effort by Marlon Brando, a vengeance western, in which Karl Malden plays the turncoat pal that Brando has to hunt down. Plebeian is the word that best describes this cliché-ridden formula film. Jack can be classified as “entertainment.”

But while the entertainment is delivered you can sort of enjoy it with more than a bit of squirming in your seat, but any enjoyment ends after you leave the theater and think about what you’ve seen.

The same can be said for Mutiny of the Bounty, in which Lewis Milstone does Brando’s bidding, after the great Carol Reed threw in the towel. Mutiny cannot compare with the Frank Lloyd film in which Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian outshines Charles Laughten as a bushy-eyed Captain Bligh. It’s reverse outshining with Trevor Howard as Bligh. Brando does not play the pouting, brooding Fletcher any better than he played the pouting, brooding Wehrmacht officer in The Young Lions.

I should interject that Brando has achieved excellence as an actor, but when he is aware that he is in a mediocre vehicle, he lets self-indulgence get the better of him. Erratic is the word for him. When he’s up, he’s up high, but when he takes a downward plunge, only the ground can stop him. Sensing that he was sinking with the Bounty, he felt that he had to do something drastic in order to retrieve the film. And what did he does he do? He dies playing the role. The real Fletcher Christian settled on Pitcairn Island with his fellow mutineers, where they settled down with native girls, had families and eventually died in deadly disputes. However, Brando wrenched history from its hinges and had Christian die while torching the Bounty. This drastic deed, which defied reality, just provided another set of histrionic gestures that helped sink both boat and film.

Anthony Hopkins as Bligh

Twenty-two years later Roger Donaldson made The Bounty, trying to set things aright, with Mel Gibson as Christian and Anthony Hopkins as Bligh. This time Christian dies on Pitcairn Island, as he did in real life. Gibson, to be sure, toned down the role of Christian. Later, however, he carried on in Brando fashion, matching Brando’s flamboyance as director of The Passion of the Christ.

That’s how we get from Christian to Christ.

Stephan Boyd and the Blades

Remember the chariot race in Ben-Hur?! This is touted to be the greatest cinematic races in film history. Now if this were a fair race, Charlton Heston aka reston Ben Hur would simply have out-charioted Stephen Boyd aka Messala Simple as that! But in order to make it interesting, Boyd, who was Heston’s turncoat pal, has blades attached to his chariot wheels. So Boyd has the advantage. And he uses the blades to chop up the wheels of some of the chariot competition and send it to Kingdom Come.

But in spite of being handicapped by having to race and fight at a disadvantage, a bloodied Heston hurtles over the finish line to win.

Thrilling race to be sure! William Wyler, dealt with the pedestrian and equestrian spectacle-fare handily since he was master director. He certainly knew how to pull the cinema wool over the eyes of critical viewers – but not quite.

I’ve always wondered why one of the charioteers didn’t bring Boyd’s blades to the attention of the judges. The answer must have been that Boyd either bribed the judges, or that his “family” was running the show. At any rate, the background of Boyd’s blades was not considered important enough to convey to the viewer. Important was that Heston raced at a disadvantage and won in spite of it, with Boyd biting the dust.