Dead Folks 2005, Cinema part 1A look back at the notable names and personalities who called it quits last year. |
Janet Leigh
The shower scene in Psycho must be one of the top five most recognized moments in cinema history. For the uninitiated, it is certainly one of the most disturbing. Leigh herself was not troubled by the scene during its production, which called for some 50 setups. Yet after seeing the final result on screen, the actress chose never to take a shower again (apparently a bath makes the bather less vulnerable). Leigh (77) had some excellent turns in Orson Welles’ quirky thriller Touch of Evil (another film in which she is menaced in a hotel room) and opposite Frank Sinatra in The Manchurian Candidate. Daughter Jamie Lee Curtis enjoyed status as a scream queen during the 1970s and early ’80s, most famously in Halloween, in which Jamie was basically following in Mom’s footsteps. An older generation of film fans remember Janet Leigh as one of the dolls in MGM’s mid-1950s stable of buxom gals, as well as her much publicized marriage to screen idol Tony Curtis. Their short-lived domestic bliss was detailed, ad nauseam, in brilliant Kodachrome for all the screen tabloids. —D.P. |
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Carlo DiPalma
There is an immediately recognizable visual style in Woody Allen’s films made after the mid-1980s, most notably in Hannah and Her Sisters, Shadows and Fog, Radio Days, Alice, and Deconstructing Harry. Several characters may be in a living room, a hotel lobby, or on a Manhattan sidewalk while a scene continues with almost imperceptible zooms, few if any edits, cuts, close-ups, or shifts in camera angle. Because Allen is uniquely adept at staging entire scenes for such “master shots,” and because Carlo DiPalma (79) understood how to capture those scenes without rendering dull, static images, DiPalma’s colleagues often referred to him as the “master of the master shot.” The pair collaborated on 12 films, most of which also boast a trademark honeyed glow that DiPalma achieved without filters, making him a master of lighting in the bargain.
The cinematographer acquired these skills during the Italian neo-realist heyday of the 1940s and early 1950s, but refined his craft, to much acclaim, during the 1960s with Michelangelo Antonioni and Bernardo Bertolucci. In fact, DiPalma was behind the camera for Blowup, Antonioni’s stylized, enigmatic mystery that became an internationally recognized symbol of the swinging ’60s. —D.P.
Rodney Dangerfield
“When I started in show business, I played one club that was so far out that my act was reviewed in Field and Stream,” went one Rodney Dangerfield (82) joke about his life without respect. It took him until age 42—his second attempt at making a living as a comic—to parlay his many years of failure into a staple of pop culture. “I get no respect” was a mantra that would be his ticket to stardom. No comic has ever been more successful mining the same concept over and over. With one hand constantly loosening his necktie as if it were a noose, Rodney Dangerfield’s bulging eyes, sweat-drenched face, and natural delivery of one-liners landed him on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” more than 70 times. He starred in the films Caddyshack, Easy Money, and Back to School, among others. In 1995, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rejected Dangerfield’s application for membership. Outcry from fans forced the Academy to change its mind, but Dangerfield declined the offer. —E.R.
Fay Wray
Fans of Femme Fatale or Fangoria magazine appreciate the type of actress (phenomenal babe) who spends her career in B-to-Z horror films and thrillers, most of which go directly to video or the cable movie channels. Occasionally one of these dolls breaks into the mainstream, but most of them enjoy being almost famous strictly for their killer bodies and their screams. Now that she’s passed on, perhaps Fay Wray (96) will become the patron saint of these gals, considering that she started the whole thing more than 70 years ago.
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Yes, that’s Wray, circa 1933, in the hands of a giant gorilla named Kong as he makes his way through Manhattan and up the side of the Empire State building. During the long production of that epic thriller, Wray was loaned out to other studios for such obscure movies as Doctor X, The Vampire Bat, and a mean little action-adventure film with Joel McCrea called The Most Dangerous Game. By the time she was perched with the big guy atop the world’s tallest skyscraper, Wray was known as “the scream queen.” One might argue that she helped make the building famous. Someone thinks so, because the lights on the building were dimmed for 15 minutes last summer to honor Wray’s passing. The actress (actually an extremely fetching brunette in her other roles) maintained a sense of humor about her association with the New York landmark, remarking in 1993, “Every time I’m in New York I say a little prayer when passing the Empire State Building. A good friend of mine died up there.” —D.P.
John Randolph
The balding character actor with a beaming smile and thoughtful eyes seems to have been middle-aged his entire screen career, but that’s because his work was stalled in the 1950s after he was blacklisted. An original member of the Actors Studio, Randolph (88) distinguished himself on stage before making his motion picture debut in 1955 in The Naked City. A decade later John Frankenheimer cast him in the science fiction film Seconds, and Randolph’s career as a character player on television and in motion pictures took off. He was outstanding as Jack Nicholson’s mobster father in Prizzi’s Honor and as the bookstore tycoon in You’ve Got Mail. Randolph also made brief appearances in almost every television series ever made, but he may be remembered for his recurring role as the dad on “Roseanne.” An unrepentant socialist, Randolph was active in leftist causes most of his life, eventually chairing the Council of Soviet-American Friendship, which arguably casts the blacklisting matter in an entirely different light. —D.P.
Russ Meyer
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Only Western civilization could produce savages like Russ Meyer, who truly understood the course of conflict in the wild. As the world’s greatest director of (human) nature films—including Supervixens and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Meyer (82) spent the ’60s and ’70s making fantastic soap operas in which large-breasted women romance, fornicate, and engage in mortal combat with white-trash men. His instincts as an outdoor filmmaker were guided by far more than inexpensive sets; granted a big Hollywood budget with Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Meyer simply had his warring tribes fighting in the arenas of Beverly Hills mansions. Like any auteur towards the end of his career, Meyer recognized the fulfillment of his vision, working towards a complete overview of his lifelong obsession with the female animal: a multimedia project entitled The Breast of Russ Meyer. When you’re the Marlin Perkins of mammaries, being witty is a secondary concern.
And on a personal note: The above was written in the present tense for a 1994 series of trading cards entitled Crackpots & Visionaries. The cartoonist assigned to illustrate the card was a friend of Meyer’s, and was concerned that my bio was disrespectful. He sent it off to Meyer who gave his approval. I met Meyer the next year, and we talked so much about his military years and Alabama—where he kept a fishing cabin—that his films barely got mentioned. A truly great guy, and what a shame to lose him to Alzheimer’s this past year. —J.R.T.
Ron O’Neal
Go and watch Superfly again—it’s pretty impressive how Curtis Mayfield’s score actually says more than any dialogue in the actual movie. Ron O’Neal (66) really saved film in his amazing turn as the titular drug dealer. Too bad that he was facing the same studio system as Pam Grier. There was no place for a black leading man with that kind of charisma, so O’Neal was stuck in the lousy sequel Superfly T.N.T. His complex villainy also couldn’t save The Master Gunfighter, which was heavily hyped as Tom Laughlin’s bid to expand his empire beyond the Billy Jack franchise. O’Neal survived the ’70s, though, and would go on to steal plenty of scenes as a dashing character actor in films such as Red Dawn and The Final Countdown. —J.R.T.
Paul Winfield
As another sign of Hollywood cluelessness in the ’70s, Paul Winfield (62) was regularly cast as a salt-o’-the-earth black man in rural films such as Sounder. In truth, Winfield was more like a black Christopher Walken than a male Cicely Tyson. His rich, fruity voice was put to its best use as the gloating narrator providing sordid details about various nice towns on the A&E Channel’s “City Confidential” crime documentary series. Winfield’s weird presence had also been put to better use in the ’70s with Trouble Man and Conrack, while the ’80s provided him with a turn as a cunning record executive in a Wiseguy story arc. He never quite got the defining role that he deserved, but Winfield made a lot of mediocre films suddenly seem dangerous just by his mere presence. —J.R.T.
Mercedes McCambridge
The old National Lampoon gag went basically like this: how to tell Mercedes McCambridge from Barbara Stanwyck? Barbara carries a whip; Mercedes is named after a car. The joke is a mild allusion to Stanwyck’s rather butch role in the television western series “The Big Valley,” as well as to McCambridge’s minor cult status as, well, a screen dyke. To understand how McCambridge (85) might have established herself as an icon of the celluloid closet, simply witness her roles in Giant and Johnny Guitar. Those turns as the toughest old broads in the west can make Charles Bronson look swishy. If those roles fail to convince, then her leather-clad villainess in Touch of Evil should remove any doubts.
McCambridge was one of the original members of Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater, justifiably so because the actress was a phenomenal voice talent. She was familiar to listeners tuning into “Inner Sanctum Ford Theater,” “I Love a Mystery,” and other programs from the radio era. Her most unique job in that capacity came many years later when McCambridge provided the voice of demon-possessed Linda Blair in The Exorcist. —David Pelfrey
