The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (16 page)

Jack Arnold
(1916–92), b. New Haven, Connecticut
1950:
With These Hands
(d). 1953:
Girls in the Night; It Came from Outer Space; The Glass Web
. 1954:
Creature from the Black Lagoon
. 1955:
Revenge of the Creature; The Man from Bitter Ridge; Tarantula
. 1956:
Red Sundown; Outside the Law
. 1957:
The Incredible Shrinking Man; The Tattered Dress
. 1958:
Man in the Shadow; The Lady Takes a Flyer; High School Confidential; The Space Children; Monster on the Campus
. 1959:
No Name on the Bullet; The Mouse That Roared
. 1961:
Bachelor in Paradise
. 1964:
A Global Affair; The Lively Set
. 1969:
Hello Down There
. 1974:
Black Eye
. 1975:
Boss Nigger; Games Girls Play
. 1977:
The Swiss Conspiracy
.

Jack Arnold seemed to go cheerfully with whatever flow came along—
Bachelor in Paradise
is minor Bob Hope;
Boss Nigger
is better than its awful title, but it’s Fred Williamson in a piece of blaxploitation;
The Mouse That Roared
is a funny Peter Sellers movie (in which the Duchy of Fen-wick declares war on the U.S.);
Man in the Shadow
is a melodrama in which Orson Welles and Jeff Chandler growl at each other;
No Name on the Bullet
is one of the better Audie Murphy Westerns; and
High School Confidential
(with marijuana threatening the young) has to be seen for a cast that includes Russ Tamblyn, John Drew Barrymore, Mamie Van Doren, and Jerry Lee Lewis.

But Arnold is really treasured for still another genre: the fifties sci-fi warning story in which something in nature has gone awry. So
Creature from the Black Lagoon
is famous as the film Marilyn Monroe has been stirred by in
The Seven Year Itch
. But
The Incredible Shrinking Man
(from a Richard Matheson novel) is a genuine classic in homemade special effects that seem to me more frightening than smooth stuff done forty years later. The connoisseur should also note
Tarantula
(what it says is what you get), the very clever
It Came from Outer Space
, and the unusual
The Space Children
.

Françoise Arnoul
(F. Annette Gautsch), b. Constantine, Algeria, 1931
An infrequent appearer in French films, Arnoul in her prime was exceptionally pretty. Two films show how little her range from gaiety to somberness was ever exploited: as the young dancer in
French Can Can
(55, Jean Renoir) and as the brooding female object in the Venetian intrigue of
When the Devil Drives
(57, Roger Vadim). For Renoir she shows how the laundry girl matures in the process of becoming a performer; for Vadim she is one of the first modern girls, pleased when Christian Marquand notices there is no bra under her sweater.

Her other films include
L’Epave
(49, Willy Rozier);
Quai de Grenelle
(50, E. Reinert);
Les Amants de Tolède
(52, Henri Decoin);
Fruit Défendu
(52, Henri Verneuil);
La Rage au Corps
(53, Ralph Habib);
Napoléon
(54, Sacha Guitry);
Le Mouton à Cinq Pattes
(54, Verneuil);
Si Paris Nous Était Conté
(56, Guitry);
Le Pays d’Ou Je Viens
(56, Marcel Carné);
La Chatte
(58, Decoin);
La Morte-Saison des Amours
(61, Pierre Kast);
Vacances Portugaises
(62, Kast);
Le Diable et les Dix Commandements
(63, Julien Duvivier);
Le Dimanche de la Vie
(66, Jean Herman); happily reunited with Renoir in the “Roi d’Yvetot” episode from
Le Petit Théâtre de Jean Renoir
(71).

In recent years, she has made
Les Années Campagne
(92, Philippe Leriche);
Billard à l’Etage
(96, Jean Marboeuf);
Temps de Chien
(96, Marboeuf);
Post-Coïtum, Animal Triste
(97, Brigitte Rouan);
Une Patronne de Charme
(97, Bernard Uzan);
Merci pour le Geste
(00, Claude Faraldo);
Duval: Un Mort de Trop
(01, Daniel Losset).

Darren Aronofsky
, b. Brooklyn, New York, 1969
1991:
Supermarket Sweep
(s). 1993:
Protozoa
(s). 1998:
Pi
. 2000:
Requiem for a Dream
. 2006:
The Fountain
. 2008:
The Wrestler
.

If Darren Aronofsky hadn’t been born (et cetera), then maybe someone would have invented him? Tim Burton? Steven Spielberg? Jim Toback? Like the latter, Aronofsky went to Harvard—though, unlike Toback, he studied film there. Indeed, his first two credits as a director are student films. And
Pi
is what you can expect if you get a neurotic genius coming out of Harvard with a head full of film. Or is it the worst extreme of pretension that might go under the guise of “American independent”? I don’t like
Pi
, and I couldn’t enjoy
Requiem for a Dream
, which is a study in narcotic breakdown that is as exultant with film’s drug as it claims to be disapproving of those that are chemical.

It’s easy to say that only extraordinary talent could make
Requiem for a Dream
. And it’s hard not to be intimidated by the controlled frenzy of the montage. But notice, too, the chronic misanthropy and the barely concealed torture of Ellen Burstyn. Time will tell. Aronofsky helped write the screenplay of the very dull
Below
(02, David Twohy), and eventually made
The Fountain
, a film to divide all groups. It is a love story set in three separate centuries—as ambitious as it is pretentious but with no certainty of tone. By contrast,
The Wrestler
(Mickey Rourke’s comeback) was a very crude, very obvious picture and the work of a man who seemed afraid of being out of work.

Jean Arthur
(Gladys Georgianna Greene) (1900–91), b. New York
While enjoying great success as
Peter Pan
on the New York stage in 1950 (she was fifty, for 1900 has been proved as her birth date), Jean Arthur told an interviewer, “If I can get over the message that we should all try to be ourselves, to be free individuals, then I’m sure I’ll have accomplished what [J. M.] Barrie wanted.”

Such freedom was hardly what Ms. Arthur was known for. She had a turmoil of feelings about Hollywood—she hated all kinds of publicity and the loss of privacy. She had difficulty making up her mind about projects, and she was often indecisive about how to play scenes. None of that shows onscreen, except that she could bring earnest, furious thought to comedy and romance. What her character elected to do was often in the balance because of the actress’s innate, heartfelt fluctuations. From 1935 to 1945 this gave her a rare, querulous charm, ranging from dreamy to inquisitive, always bent on discovering fresh inner truths. Yet her quality might have passed us by but for the way it served the soul-searching whimsy of Capra’s films.

She was the daughter of a photographer, and she was raised in Manhattan. As a teenager, she did modeling work that brought her to the attention of Fox and a leading part in
Cameo Kirby
(23, John Ford). She made over twenty silent films without looking like more than a conventional, timid ingenue. But in 1927, she was taken up by Paramount where she became the protegée (and love interest) of David O. Selznick. (Yet in 1928, she married a photographer, Julian Anker—it lasted one day.) Her films improved:
Warming Up
(28, Fred Newmeyer);
Sins of the Fathers
(28, Ludwig Berger);
The Canary Murder Case
(29, Malcolm St. Clair);
The Greene Murder Case
(29, Frank Tuttle);
The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu
(29, Rowland V. Lee);
The Saturday Night Kid
(29, Edward Sutherland);
Street of Chance
(30, John Cromwell); and
Young Eagles
(30, William Wellman).

By 1931, Paramount had dropped her (Selznick married Irene Mayer), and Arthur went back to the New York stage and summer stock for two years. When she returned, she was married to producer Frank Ross, who may have been her best advisor. She made
Whirlpool
(34, Roy William Neill) and then signed with Columbia. Her first success at the studio was in
The Whole Town’s Talking
(34, Ford), establishing the character of an ordinary but very decent young woman. She did a weepy,
Most Precious Thing in Life
(34, Lambert Hillyer); and
If You Could Only Cook
(35, William Seiter), a lively comedy that Harry Cohn tried to sell overseas as a Frank Capra film (enough to make Capra notice her).

After
The Ex-Mrs. Bradford
(35, Stephen Roberts) and two roles in
Diamond Jim
(35, Sutherland), she was cast by Capra as the newspaper writer in
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
(36). That film made her the honest girlfriend and helper to a troubled good guy—Arthur needed nobility in a man for the screen romance to take. She was with Cooper again, as Calamity Jane, in unexpectedly rich scenes in De Mille’s
The Plainsman
(37). Then she was “Mary Smith” whose life is changed when a fur coat falls on her head in
Easy Living
(37, Mitchell Leisen)—“Golly!” she gasps, on seeing what money can buy. She played opposite Boyer in
History Is Made at Night
(37, Frank Borzage) and then did two more for Capra—in
You Can’t Take It With You
(38) and as the tough pro who is softened by James Stewart’s Perot-like idealism in
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
(39).

In the Capra films, Jean Arthur was the figure who related the strange philosophy of the parables to the audience: she was “one of us,” yet susceptible to the director’s overemotional high-mindedness. (By comparison, in
Meet John Doe
Barbara Stanwyck couldn’t quite give up her natural incredulity. Arthur was gullible, but she could make that weakness seem like mere sincerity.) Arthur was also the stranded entertainer bullied and wooed by Cary Grant in
Only Angels Have Wings
(39, Howard Hawks), where she comes perilously close to tomboy twoshoes and hardly seems tricky enough to interest Grant, or Hawks. (Hawks complained that Arthur wouldn’t try things on the spur of the moment.) She was in
Arizona
(40, Wesley Ruggles);
Too Many Husbands
(40, Ruggles);
The Devil and Miss Jones
(41, Sam Wood);
Talk of the Town
(42, George Stevens);
A Lady Takes a Chance
(43, Seiter); and earned a best actress nomination in
The More the Merrier
(43, Stevens), where she has a stealthy, quite sexy conversation scene with the flawlessly honorable Joel McCrea.

She left Hollywood once more after
The Impatient Years
(44, Irving Cummings) and went back to the stage and a second education.
Born Yesterday
was written for her by Garson Kanin, but she dropped out before the play came to Broadway and was replaced by the young Judy Holliday. She made only two more films:
A Foreign Affair
(48, Billy Wilder) and, reunited with George Stevens, as the wife and mother in
Shane
(53)—was she fifty-three then? was she Brandon De Wilde’s grandmother even? Her subsequent retirement included work in the drama department at Vassar, and then residence in Carmel, California, preferring not to talk about the old days.

Dorothy Arzner
(1900–79), b. San Francisco
1927:
Fashions for Women; Ten Modern Commandments; Get Your Man
. 1928:
Manhattan Cocktail
. 1929:
The Wild Party
. 1930:
Sarah and Son; Anybody’s Woman; Behind the Makeup
(codirected with Robert Milton); an episode from
Paramount on Parade
. 1931:
Honor Among Lovers; Working Girls
. 1932:
Merrily We Go to Hell
. 1933:
Christopher Strong
. 1934:
Nana
. 1936:
Craig’s Wife
. 1937:
The Bride Wore Red
. 1940:
Dance, Girl, Dance
. 1943:
First Comes Courage
.

Dorothy Arzner was a professional director of American movies who worked regularly for over a decade, and was a woman. (Only Lois Weber could have made the same claim.) She was not a great filmmaker, and her pioneering should not inflate her reputation. But she turned out some fascinating pictures and clearly was able to pursue a personal if undoctrinaire interest in the issue of women’s identity. That said, one has to confess that she generally played according to the Hollywood concept of “a woman’s picture.” She did not stretch or threaten the system, as Barbara Loden did with
Wanda;
but that is also a sign of how far the 1930s romance was susceptible to a feminist sensibility. And Dorothy Arzner made more films than ever came from Barbara Loden. Arzner got into pictures through hard work and paying her dues, and she stayed near the top long enough for her retirement to be an act of choice. All of which says very little about why she was unique.

The daughter of a Hollywood restaurateur, she dropped out of the University of Southern California and worked her way up at Paramount from typist to cutter to editor to director’s assistant. As an editor, she worked on
Blood and Sand
(22, Fred Niblo),
The Wild Party
(23, Herbert Blache),
The Covered Wagon
(23, James Cruze), and
Inez from Hollywood
(24, Alfred E. Green). She was writing scripts, for Paramount and Columbia, and when she was on the point of going over to the small studio to direct her own work, Paramount promoted her, first as Esther Ralston’s director.