The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (14 page)

She works comfortably in French or Italian or Spanish:
El Año del Diluvio
(04, Jaime Chávarri); with Bob Hoskins in the “Pigalle” episode of
Paris Je T’Aime
(06, Richard La Gravenese);
L’Ora di Punta
(07, Vincenzo Marra);
Il Divo
(08, Paolo Sorrentino);
Hello Goodbye
(08, Graham Guit);
Visage
(09, Ming-Liang Tsai);
Trésor
(09, Berri and François Dupeyron); and
Cendres et Sang
(09), which she wrote and directed herself.

Eve Arden
(Eunice Quedens) (1912–90), b. Mill Valley, California
“Where’s Eve Arden?” a couple of very good friends wondered about earlier editions. And I can’t stand to leave the question unanswered, no matter that more pressing claims might be mounted for the merits of Binnie Barnes or Gladys Cooper.… Eve Arden
is
here, essential, one of the great deliverers of sour lines, capable of decking Katharine Hepburn or Groucho, a model of disbelieving yet enduring intelligence.

At sixteen she was in traveling theatre in northern California, and by the age of twenty she was in the Ziegfeld Follies. She made a couple of pictures under her real name—
The Song of Love
(29, Earle C. Kenton) and
Dancing Lady
(33, Robert Z. Leonard)—before she came up with her new name (Joan Crawford, briefly, had been Joan Arden). She was several years on Broadway, doing
Very Warm for May
and
Two for the Show
, but by the late thirties her movie identity was established—knowing eyes, sarcastic voice, in roles slightly off to the side which enlivened any picture:
Oh, Doctor
(37, Ray McCarey); handling Hepburn’s loftiness in
Stage Door
(37, Gregory La Cava);
Cocoanut Grove
(38, Alfred Santell);
Letter of Introduction
(38, John M. Stahl);
Having Wonderful Time
(38, Santell);
Woman in the Wind
(39, John Farmer);
Big Town Czar
(39, Arthur Lubin);
The Forgotten Woman
(39, Harold Young);
Eternally Yours
(39, Tay Garnett);
At the Circus
(39, Edward L. Buzzell);
A Child Is Born
(40, Lloyd Bacon);
Slightly Honorable
(40, Garnett);
Comrade X
(40, King Vidor);
No, No Nanette
(40, Herbert Wilcox);
Ziegfeld Girl
(41, Leonard);
That Uncertain Feeling
(41, Ernst Lubitsch);
She Knew All the Answers
(41, Richard Wallace);
San Antonio Rose
(41, Charles Lamont);
Manpower
(41, Raoul Walsh); and
Bedtime Story
(41, Alexander Hall).

She was in
Cover Girl
(44, Charles Vidor); she got a supporting actress nomination as Ida in
Mildred Pierce
(45, Michael Curtiz);
My Reputation
(46, Curtis Bernhardt);
The Kid from Brooklyn
(46, Norman Z. McLeod);
Night and Day
(46, Curtiz);
Song of Scheherazade
(47, Walter Reisch);
The Arnelo Affair
(47, Arch Oboler);
The Unfaithful
(47, Vincent Sherman);
The Voice of the Turtle
(47, Irving Rapper);
One Touch of Venus
(48, William A. Seiter);
My Dream Is Yours
(49, Curtiz);
The Lady Takes a Sailor
(49, Curtiz);
Paid in Full
(50, William Dieterle);
Tea for Two
(50, David Butler);
Goodbye My Fancy
(51, Sherman); and
We’re Not Married
(52, Edmund Goulding).

Branching out, in 1948, she had created the character of the wisecracking teacher, Connie Brooks, on radio in
Our Miss Brooks
. It ran on CBS until 1956, and in 1952 a TV series began—a big hit—that lasted until 1956 and won Arden an Emmy. Finally, there was a movie,
Our Miss Brooks
(56, Al Lewis).

That was her peak, but she was a very droll secretary in
Anatomy of a Murder
(59, Otto Preminger);
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
(60, Delbert Mann);
Sergeant Deadhead
(65, Norman Taurog); nicely cast as the school principal in
Grease
(78, Randal Kleiser) and
Grease II
(82, Patricia Birch).

Alan Arkin
, b. New York, 1934
In the early sixties, Arkin seemed a hugely promising newcomer—a comic, yet a serious actor, who had been part of Chicago’s Second City group and a great success on Broadway in
Enter Laughing
. Then he got an Oscar nomination in his first film as the Russian submariner ashore in the U.S. in
The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!
(66, Norman Jewison). Next he was truly scary as the villain in
Wait Until Dark
(67, Terence Young). But he was maybe too clever, or too easily diverted from being one strong self. As he worked on, his reputation clouded:
Woman Times Seven
(67, Vittorio de Sica); nominated again as the deaf-mute in
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
(68, Robert Ellis Miller); trying to replace Peter Sellers in
Inspector Clouseau
(68, Bud Yorkin); with Second City in
The Monitors
(69, Jack Shea); and
Popi
(69, Arthur Hiller).

He was Yossarian in
Catch-22
(70, Mike Nichols), which might have made him if enough of Heller’s humor had been captured. Decline began early, despite the somber
Little Murders
(71), which he also directed;
Last of the Red Hot Lovers
(72, Gene Saks), a disaster; with James Caan in
Freebie and the Bean
(74, Richard Rush); adrift in
Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins
(75, Dick Richards); very funny as the movie director in
Hearts of the West
(75, Howard Zieff), but clearly now a supporting player.

He played Freud in
The Seven PerCent Solution
(76, Herbert Ross); he acted in and directed
Fire Sale
(77), a serious failure; to Canada for
Improper Channels
(79, Eric Till); good with Peter Falk in
The In-Laws
(79, Hiller);
The Magician
of Lublin
(79, Menahem Golan); good in the black comedy
Simon
(80, Marshall Brickman);
Chu Chu and the Philly Flash
(81, David Lowell Rich); with his son Adam in
Full Moon High
(81, Larry Cohen).

In general, Arkin has been in too many minor films:
Deadhead Miles
(72, Vernon Zimmerman);
The Return of Captain Invincible
(83, Philippe Mora);
Bad Medicine
(85, Harvey Miller);
Big Trouble
(85, John Cassavetes), with Falk again; as the father in
Joshua Then and Now
(85, Ted Kotcheff), his best film in years;
Coupe de Ville
(90, Joe Roth);
Edward Scissorhands
(90, Tim Burton);
Havana
(90, Sydney Pollack);
The Rocketeer
(91, Joe Johnston); and brilliant in one crosstalk scene with Ed Harris in
Glengarry Glen Ross
(92, James Foley).

He was in the baseball story
Cooperstown
(93, Charles Haid);
Taking the Heat
(93, Tom Mankiewicz);
So I Married an Axe Murderer
(93, Thomas Schlamme); he directed a short,
Samuel Beckett Is Coming Soon
(93);
Indian Summer
(93, Mike Binder);
North
(94, Rob Reiner); on TV in
Doomsday Gun
(94, Robert Young);
The Jerky Boys
(95, James Melkonian);
Steal Big, Steal Little
(95, Andrew Davis);
Mother Night
(96, Keith Gordon);
Heck’s Way Home
(96, Michael J. F. Scott);
Grosse Pointe Blank
(97, George Armitage); very good in
Four Days in September
(97, Bruno Barretto);
Gattaca
(97, Andrew Niccol);
Slums of Beverly Hills
(98, Tamara Jenkins);
Jakob the Liar
(99, Peter Kassovitz); on TV in
Blood Money
(99, Aaaron Lipstadt) and
Varian’s War
(00, Lionel Chetwynd) and directing
Arigo
(00).

He appeared on TV in
100 Centre Street
(01, Jerry London and Sidney Lumet);
America’s Sweethearts
(01, Joe Roth);
Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
(01, Jill Sprecher);
Forest Hills Bob
(01, Robert Downey Sr);
Counting Sheep
(02, Neal Miller);
The Pentagon Papers
(03, Rod Holcomb);
And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself
(03, Bruce Beresford).

His understated sourpuss act became increasingly winning—he is our best sour geezer now:
Noel
(04, Chazz Palminteri); a shrink in the “Equilibrium” episode from
Eros
(04, Steven Soderbergh); winning the supporting actor Oscar in
Little Miss Sunshine
(06, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris);
Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause
(06, Michael Lembeck);
Raising Flagg
(07, Miller);
Rendition
(07, Gavin Hood);
Sunshine Cleaning
(08, Christine Jeffs);
Get Smart
(08, Peter Segal); the grudging editor in
Marley & Me
(08, David Frankel);
The Private Life of Pippa Lee
(09, Rebecca Miller).

Samuel Z
. (Zachary)
Arkoff
, (1918–2001), b. Fort Dodge, Iowa
The death of Samuel Arkoff was greeted with genuine regret and fondness. In so many respects—not least his choice of extra-long cigars and scornful talk about the artsy-fartsies—he was a caricature of the movie mogul. Yet few were as consistently modest in their aim, or as successful in their results. Indeed, Arkoff cast shame on those many better-known executives who have sought to make a fortune and great art in pictures. The fortune was all he wanted, or said he wanted. But beneath the cigar haze and the mocking manner, there was a huge love of movies—so long as they stayed vulgar, sensational, and silly.

It should be remembered that for Arkoff, going into the business was a life-or-death matter. He was the son of Russian immigrants who owned a clothing store. But he was a very bright kid who fell in love with pictures. He had nearly graduated from the University of Iowa when Pearl Harbor happened. He entered the services (cheating his way in, for he was overweight already), and he became a cryptographer. After the war, he read law at Loyola and had formed an entertainment law company when he was struck down by a cerebral hemorrhage that put him in a coma for seven days.

When he woke up, he didn’t blame excessive eating or smoking; he reckoned it was the result of denying his great dream—to make movies. Thus, in 1954, with James H. Nicholson, he founded the American Releasing Corporation (it soon became American International Pictures). Their trick was to see that after the anti-monopoly laws of the early fifties there was room for new distributors, as well as a need for B pictures, or the bottom halves of double bills, as the big studios retreated from that form. AIP rode the wave of youth culture and the drive-in theatre, and it pursued several lines: cheap horror and sci-fi; epics purchased from Italy or Spain and dubbed into English; beaches and bikinis; and eventually bikers and drugs. They loved hair-raising titles, kids who would act for next to nothing and ditto directors. AIP would become not just the factory for
I Was a Teenage Werewolf
(57, Gene Fowler Jr.);
Hot Rod Girl
(56, Leslie H. Martinson);
How to Stuff a Wild Bikini
(65, William H. Asher); and
Beach Blanket Bingo
(65, Asher), but a training ground for Roger Corman, Francis Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese, John Milius, Robert Towne, Jack Nicholson, Woody Allen (
What’s Up, Tiger Lily?
), and so many others of that rich and irreverent generation.

At the time, of course, there were those who said that AIP warped young minds—but it also trained some great young talents, and it trusted that in certain hackneyed and fatuous genres there was room for personality and fresh ideas. The story goes that Arkoff always regretted haggling with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper so much that they went off on their own road with
Easy Rider
. But if it had stayed an Arkoff picture it might have been better, and a good deal less pretentious.

It is true that Arkoff reckoned the movie was just a thing to make money on and have fun with—and he may have been right. The mind should be formed by other things—like family, education, and experience. The real warping of movie minds came when some people looked at
Easy Rider
and reckoned it was art, as well as a pile of money. You can have Goldwyn, Selznick, and Zanuck; no one kept to their mission more single-mindedly than Arkoff and Nicholson.

Arletty
(Léonie Bathiat) (1898–1992), b. Courbevoie, France
Long before movies, Arletty had worked in a munitions factory and as a fashion model. She posed for Braque and Matisse; she became a pacifist when her lover was killed in the First World War; and she played a wide range of roles on the stage.

She never made a lot of films, and she had a droll, distant air in many of them. Even her most famous parts, as in
Le Jour Se Lève
(39, Marcel Carné), are actually very slight. And the fact that she is the most sane, least depressed character in
Le Jour Se Lève
sets her farther apart. She is redundant to the plot, there only to explain how wicked Jules Berry is and to afford Gabin some passing solace. She is admirably dry, without ever sacrificing amusement or tenderness. Her enigmatic, fatalistic warmth was better employed as Garance—the spirit of popular theatre—in
Les Enfants du Paradis
(44, Carné). Even there, Arletty was ready to be like a leaf blown on the winds of romance. At forty-five, she seemed like a very wise girl still.