The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (123 page)

There followed an eleven-year gap between
Vampyr
and
Day of Wrath
, not fully explained. As he returned to features in 1943, so at the same time he began to make documentaries: on art and architecture and, with special impact, on road safety.
Day of Wrath
and
Ordet
are both religious subjects conditioned by the puritan harshness of Scandinavia.
Day of Wrath
is about the trial of a witch in which a dying witch curses the pastor. The pastor’s wife loves a younger man, the discovery of which kills the pastor so that the wife is now regarded as a witch. The passion here is malign and destructive and it is hard not to see the film as being influenced by war. At the same time, it concentrates on the human loneliness that in the past Dreyer had usually managed to redeem.
Ordet
is an allegory, from a play by Kaj Munk, filmed in the village where Munk had been the pastor. The film reaffirms Dreyer’s vision of human and religious love as being inseparable.

Another ten years passed before
Gertrud
, the story of a forty-year-old woman, unhappy with her husband, who loves a younger man but is loved insufficiently in return, and who decides to go to Paris and live alone. The conclusion of insistent independence is kept within a frame of calm beauty. And yet beneath the order of the film there is, stronger than ever, the exultant sense of passion. When it was made, the reserve and slowness of
Gertrud
were so out of fashion that its emotion was missed. But it awaits the world’s discovery as Dreyer’s finest film and vindication of his method:

What interests me—and this comes before technique—is reproducing the feelings of the characters in my films … The important thing … is not only to catch hold of the words they say, but also the thoughts behind the words. What I seek in my films, what I want to obtain, is a penetration to my actors’ profound thoughts by means of their most subtle expressions. For these are the expressions … that lie in the depths of his soul. This is what interests me above all, not the technique of the cinema.
Gertrud
is a film that I made with my heart.

Richard Dreyfuss
, b. Brooklyn, New York, 1947
By the late 1970s, Richard Dreyfuss had reason to feel cock of the new walk. He had won the Oscar for his showy performance as a flashy, failed actor in
The Goodbye Girl
(77, Herbert Ross). He had been the central figure in the parade of
American Graffiti
(73, George Lucas), and the most appealing hero in
Jaws
(75, Steven Spielberg). He had given his best performance as a Muncie man who refuses to deny that he has seen wonders in
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
(77, Spielberg). Then something happened, something made of vanity, drug involvement, overassertiveness, fickle public taste … and maybe the fact that Dreyfuss is happier as a character actor than as a great star.

When he was a child, his family moved to Los Angeles and Dreyfuss was educated at San Fernando Valley State College. He had tiny parts in
The Graduate
(67, Mike Nichols) and
Valley of the Dolls
(67, Mark Robson), but he showed a first sign of spirited arrogance in
The Young Runaways
(68, Arthur Dreifuss). After
Hello Down There
(69, Jack Arnold), he played Baby Face Nelson in
Dillinger
(73, John Milius).

In his rich years, he also appeared in
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
(74, Ted Kotcheff);
Inserts
(76, John Byrum);
Victory at Entebbe
(76, Marvin J. Chomsky) for TV;
The Big Fix
(78, Jeremy Paul Kagan), which he also produced;
The Competition
(80, Joel Oliansky); and paralyzed from the neck down, but hyperactive above, in
Whose Life Is It Anyway?
(81, John Badham).

He was away for a few years and when he returned he seemed older and more drawn:
The Buddy System
(84, Glenn Jordan) and
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
(86, Paul Mazursky). He was the narrator in
Stand By Me
(86, Rob Reiner) and at his best in the desperate comedy of
Tin Men
(87, Barry Levinson) and
Stakeout
(87, Badham), which also drew upon his exceptional speed and precision. He was Streisand’s lawyer in
Nuts
(87, Martin Ritt) and a very broad actor-cum-dictator in
Moon Over Parador
(88, Mazursky).

He was a gambler in
Let It Ride
(89, Joe Pytka) and a rather cheerless version of Spencer Tracy in
Always
(89, Spielberg). Then he did
Postcards From the Edge
(90, Nichols);
Once Around
(91, Lasse Hallstrom); the Player King in
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
(91, Tom Stoppard);
What About Bob?
(91, Frank Oz); and the officer who supported Alfred Dreyfuss (a distant relative) in
Prisoner of Honor
(91, Ken Russell) for cable TV. He also appeared in
Lost in Yonkers
(93, Martha Coolidge).

He keeps his status:
Another Stakeout
(93, Badham);
Silent Fall
(94, Bruce Beresford);
The Last Word
(94, Tony Spiridakis); the bad guy in
The American President
(95, Reiner); as the teacher in
Mr. Holland’s Opus
(95, Stephen Herek); the voice of the centipede in
James and the Giant Peach
(96, Henry Selick);
Mad Dog Time
(96, Larry Bishop);
Night Falls on Manhattan
(97, Sidney Lumet); as Fagin in a TV
Oliver Twist
(97, Tony Bill);
Krippendorf’s Tribe
(98, Todd Holland); as
Lansky
(99, John McNaughton) for TV; the president in
Fail Safe
(00, Stephen Frears);
The Crew
(00, Michael Dinner);
The Old Man Who Read Love Stories
(00, Rolf de Heer);
Who Is Cletis Tout?
(01, Chris Ver Wiel); in the TV series
The Education of Max Bickford
(01, Rod Holcomb); as Alexander Haig in
The Day Reagan Was Shot
(01, Ken Welsh Baker and Cyrus Nowrasteh);
Silver City
(04, John Sayles);
Coast to Coast
(04, Mazursky).

He had a hit in
Poseidon
(06, Wolfgang Petersen); in a TV miniseries,
Tin Man
(07, Nick Willing); rather flat as Dick Cheney in
W
(08, Oliver Stone);
My Life in Ruins
(09, Donald Petrie);
Leaves of Grass
(09, Tim Blake Nelson).

Joanne Dru
(Joanne Letitia La Cock) (1923–96), b. Logan, West Virginia
It is a sign of the times that this wholesome, very pretty, and assured actress saw fit to change her name. Twenty years later, anyone called Letitia La Cock would have been welcomed rapturously at the Warhol factory and could hardly fail to have been lit up with the Day-Glo camp of the name. Her invented name sounded much more plausible, especially as the dark-eyed tomboy to be found in various wagon trains heading West. She had been a model and—to add spice to the Warhol stew—a “Samba Siren” before she made her movie debut in
Abie’s Irish Rose
(46, Edward Sutherland). But it was as Tess Millay in
Red River
(48, Howard Hawks), barely fazed by the arrow that pins her to a wagon and still able to take pleasure in smacking Montgomery Clift’s face, that she established herself. John Ford then took her up—in uniform in
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
(49) and as “Denver” in
Wagonmaster
(50). She was more serious and less striking in
All the King’s Men
(49, Robert Rossen). That was the extent of her real prominence. She slipped into more modest adventure films in less carefully elaborated parts:
711 Ocean Drive
(50, Joseph M. Newman);
Vengeance Valley
(51, Richard Thorpe);
Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell
(51, Henry Koster);
Return of the Texan
(52, Delmer Daves);
The Pride of St Louis
(52, Harmon Jones);
My Pal Gus
(52, Robert Parrish);
Thunder Bay
(53, Anthony Mann);
Hannah Lee
(53, Lee Garmes and John Ireland—her then husband), a lost 3D movie;
Forbidden
(53, Rudolph Maté);
The Siege at Red River
(54, Maté);
Day of Triumph
(54, Irving Pichel);
Hell on Frisco Bay
(55, Frank Tuttle);
Dark Avenger
(55, Henry Levin);
Sincerely Yours
(55, Gordon Douglas);
Three Ring Circus
(55, Joseph Pevney)—this last as Dean’s girlfriend in a Martin and Lewis comedy, a sure sign of distress. Perhaps that first freshness had gone. Since then, she has worked only rarely:
September Storm
(60, Byron Haskin);
Sylvia
(65, Douglas); and
Super Fuzz
(81, Sergio Corbucci).

Margaret Dumont
(1889–1965), b. Brooklyn, New York
A Night at the Opera
(35, Sam Wood), on an ocean liner, in the dining room, together at last, Groucho’s Otis B. Driftwood and Margaret Dumont’s Mrs. Claypool, a sweet, stately, stupid lady, pearls dipping into décolletage, the face simpering at the silliness of films:

M
RS
. C
LAYPOOL:
Mr. Driftwood, three months ago you promised to put me into society. In all that time you’ve done nothing but draw a very handsome salary.

D
RIFTWOOD:
You think that’s nothing, huh? How many men do you suppose are drawing a handsome salary nowadays? Why, you can count them on the fingers of one hand, my good woman.

M
RS
. C
LAYPOOL:
I’m not your good woman.

D
RIFTWOOD:
Don’t say that, Mrs. Claypool. I don’t care what your past has been. To me, you’ll always be my good woman, because I love you. There, I didn’t mean to tell you, but you, you dragged it out of me. I love you.

M
RS
. C
LAYPOOL:
It’s rather difficult to believe that when I find you dining with another woman.

D
RIFTWOOD:
That woman? Do you know why I sat with her?

M
RS
. C
LAYPOOL:
No.

D
RIFTWOOD:
Because she reminded me of you.

M
RS
. C
LAYPOOL:
Really?

D
RIFTWOOD:
Of course! That’s why I’m sitting here with you, because you remind me of you. Your eyes, your throat, your lips, everything about you reminds me of you, except you.

That is the secret of the lady. She was a collection of external signs, prepared to tolerate every extravagance from Groucho, as flexible and lofty in her love as a mother and as drained of independence. Her tidy hairstyle, her jewelry, her round hips were like the attributes of any bridge-playing lady asked to sit in on a film set. She is especially touching in the Marx Brothers’ films because she looks amateur and domestic; and, of course, the uncontrived often appears hollow in films. She had played a small part in
A Tale of Two Cities
(17, Frank Lloyd), but chiefly worked on the stage. She was Groucho’s punchbag in the stage versions of
The Cocoanuts
and
Animal Crackers
and transferred to films when Paramount signed the brothers. She worked with them seven times:
The Cocoanuts
(29, Robert Florey and Joseph Santley);
Animal Crackers
(30, Victor Heerman);
Duck Soup
(33, Leo McCarey);
A Night at the Opera; A Day at the Races
(37, Sam Wood);
At The Circus
(39, Edward Buzzell); and
The Big Store
(41, Charles Reisner). The wonder is that she made other films: deprived of Groucho’s insults, she would seem like a tent without ropes. But they are, in the main, films that slipped under the door:
Kentucky Kernels
(34, George Stevens);
Rendezvous
(35, William K. Howard);
Anything Goes
(36, Lewis Milestone);
The Song and Dance Man
(36, Allan Dwan);
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
(41, Edward Cline);
Sing Your Worries Away
(42, Edward Sutherland); in the W. C. Fields episode cut from
Tales of Manhattan
(42, Julien Duvivier); with Laurel and Hardy in
The Dancing Masters
(43, Malcolm St. Clair);
Up in Arms
(44, Elliott Nugent);
Bathing Beauty
(44, George Sidney);
The Horn Blows at Midnight
(45, Raoul Walsh);
Susie Steps Out
(46, Reginald le Borg);
Stop, You’re Killing Me
(52, Roy del Ruth);
Shake, Rattle and Rock
(56, Edward L. Cahn);
Auntie Mame
(58, Morton Da Costa); and
What a Way to Go!
(63, J. Lee Thompson).

She died only weeks after playing in a TV sketch with Groucho.

Faye Dunaway
, b. Bascom, Florida, 1941
Educated at the University of Florida and Boston University, she worked on the New York stage and was three years with the Lincoln Center Repertory Company before bursting on the screen in 1967 as Bonnie for Arthur Penn, in Preminger’s
Hurry Sundown
, and in Elliot Silverstein’s
The Happening
. Her Bonnie was a touching confusion of sensuality and innocence, fundamental to Penn’s faith in vitality but a great personal achievement, as quick and vivid as a flame.