The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (234 page)

She began as a singer in nightclubs and on radio before Paramount put her in a sarong as
The Jungle Princess
(36, William Thiele). She played in
College Holiday
(36, Frank Tuttle),
Swing High, Swing Low
(37, Mitchell Leisen), and
High, Wide and Handsome
(37, Rouben Mamoulian) before another island part in
The Hurricane
(37, Ford). She worked steadily in musicals, the
Road
pictures, and Pacific pinups:
Her Jungle Love
(38, George Archainbaud);
Tropic Holiday
(38, Theodore Reed);
Spawn of the North
(38, Henry Hathaway);
St. Louis Blues
(39, Raoul Walsh);
Man About Town
(39, Mark Sandrich);
Disputed Passage
(39, Frank Borzage);
Johnny Apollo
(40, Hathaway);
Road to Singapore
(40, Victor Schertzinger);
Typhoon
(40, Louis King);
Moon Over Burma
(40, King);
Chad Hanna
(40, Henry King);
Road to Zanzibar
(41, Schertzinger);
Caught in the Draft
(41, David Butler);
Aloma of the South Seas
(41, Alfred Santell);
The Fleet’s In
(42, Schertzinger);
Beyond the Blue Horizon
(42, Santell);
Road to Morocco
(42, Butler);
They Got Me Covered
(42, Butler);
Dixie
(43, Edward Sutherland);
Riding High
(43, George Marshall);
And the Angels Sing
(44, Marshall);
Rainbow Island
(44, Ralph Murphy);
Road to Utopia
(45, Hal Walker); and
A Medal for Benny
(45, Irving Pichel).

Such a fanciful legend could hardly be sustained in peace, and in the late 1940s her position declined:
Masquerade in Mexico
(45, Leisen);
My Favorite Brunette
(47, Elliott Nugent);
Variety Girl
(47, Marshall);
Wild Harvest
(47, Tay Garnett);
Road to Rio
(47, Norman Z. McLeod);
Lulu Belle
(48, Lesley Fenton); and
Slightly French
(49, Douglas Sirk). She was out of work for some years, returned for
The Greatest Show on Earth
(52, Cecil B. De Mille) and
Road to Bali
(52, Walker), and then retired until the two films of the early 1960s. After that, she appeared in
Pajama Party
(64, Don Weis) and
Creepshow 2
(87, Michael Gornick).

Burt Lancaster
(1913–94), b. New York
Lancaster was educated at New York University. Well into his sixties, he was still a strapping athlete, his smile piercing, his hand outstretched, but with the hint that his grip could crush or galvanize. His vitality was more than cheerfulness or strength; he seemed charged with power. This accounts for his threatening, polite calm as a villain and coincides with Norman Mailer’s comment that he never looked into eyes as chilling as Lancaster’s. He seemed softly spoken and attentive, until one noticed the intensity of the gaze. The Oscar for
Elmer Gantry
(60, Richard Brooks) recognized his aptitude for the self-inflaming hype merchant, but
Gantry
is lightweight next to the monstrous J. J. Hunsecker in
Sweet Smell of Success
(57, Alexander Mackendrick), the first heartless titan of corrupt organization in American films, a foreshadowing of Watergate.

Lancaster was a circus acrobat and then on special military service in North Africa and Italy. He was chosen by Mark Hellinger for his debut in
The Killers
(46, Robert Siodmak) and quickly established himself in underworld movies:
I Walk Alone
(47, Byron Haskin);
Brute Force
(47, Jules Dassin); and
Criss Cross
(48, Siodmak). The first sign of his menace came in
Sorry, Wrong Number
(48, Anatole Litvak). He made a few dull movies
—All My Sons
(48, Irving Reis);
Kiss the Blood Off My Hands
(48, Norman Foster);
Rope of Sand
(49, William Dieterle); and
Mister 880
(50, Edmund Goulding)—but circus habits asserted themselves. When Jacques Tourneur’s fabulous
The Flame and the Arrow
(50) was released, competitions were organized to guess whether and how Lancaster did his own turret-top stunts.

There was the same Fairbanksian zest in Siodmak’s
The Crimson Pirate
(52), and Lancaster never entirely lost his pleasure in physical spectacle: thus, his first direction,
The Kentuckian
(55);
Trapeze
(56, Carol Reed);
The Train
(64, John Frankenheimer);
The Professionals
(66, Brooks); and crawling through suburbia in the bizarre
The Swimmer
(67, Frank Perry). Perhaps because he leaped and tumbled so naturally, it was scarcely noticed that all Lancaster’s movements were beautiful.

The key film in his career may have been
Come Back, Little Sheba
(53, Daniel Mann), in which he made himself a middle-aged, perilously reformed alcoholic with such suppressed tension that he eclipsed all Shirley Booth’s fluttering as his wife. Now taken seriously, Lancaster played Sergeant Warden in
From Here to Eternity
(53, Fred Zinnemann). But his own production company allowed him to revert to horseplay in
Vera Cruz
(54) and one of his best performances as the renegade Indian in
Apache
(54)—both these films for Robert Aldrich.

At about this time, his screen character began to fluctuate, attempts at honest heroes mingling with sober acting:
The Rainmaker
(56, Joseph Anthony), effortlessly refreshing Katharine Hepburn; a staid Wyatt Earp in
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
(57, John Sturges); far from his home territory in the Bournemouth of
Separate Tables
(58, Delbert Mann); trying to swashbuckle Shaw in
The Devil’s Disciple
(59, Guy Hamilton);
The Unforgiven
(60, John Huston);
The Young Savages
(61, Frankenheimer);
Judgement at Nuremberg
(61, Stanley Kramer); aging cleverly and suggesting the austere obsession of
Birdman of Alcatraz
(62, Frankenheimer);
A Child Is Waiting
(62, John Cassavetes); turning very gracious for
The Leopard
(63, Luchino Visconti), and eerily anticipating godfathers to come; dreaming of a coup in
Seven Days In May
(64, Frankenheimer);
The Hallelujah Trail
(65, Sturges);
The Scalphunters
(68, Sydney Pollack); and
The Gypsy Moths
(69, Frankenheimer).

He seems to have oppressed Frankenheimer’s insecure talent, but held together as a major star until a run of shabby pictures:
Airport
(70, George Seaton);
Lawman
(71, Michael Winner);
Valdez Is Coming
(71, Edwin Sherin); and
Scorpio
(72, Winner). However, he came back to form, with Aldrich again, on
Ulzana’s Raid
(72), as a brindle-haired scout tracking down just such an Apache as he had himself played eighteen years before; and as a son of Hunsecker in
Executive Action
(73, David Miller).

In 1974, he acted in, produced, and codirected
The Midnight Man
, and then played another major role for Visconti in
Conversation Piece
(74). He also took the lead role in a TV series,
Moses
(75, Gianfranco de Bosio). His Ned Buntline was a fatalistic observer in
Buffalo Bill and the Indians
(76, Robert Altman). He was Shimon Peres in
Victory at Entebbe
(76, Marvin J. Chomsky);
The Cassandra Crossing
(76, George Pan Cosmatos); the rogue General in
Twilight’s Last Gleaming
(77, Aldrich);
The Island of Dr. Moreau
(77, Don Taylor); and
Go Tell the Spartans
(78, Ted Post).

He played a British colonel in
Zulu Dawn
(79, Douglas Hickox);
Cattle Annie and Little Britches
(80, Lamont Johnson); and then, one of his greatest roles, Lou Pasco in
Atlantic City
(80, Louis Malle)—suave dandy, chronic teacher, persistent romantic, and gentle old man;
La Pelle
(81, Liliana Cavani); helping
Local Hero
(83, Bill Forsyth) get made;
The Osterman Weekend
(83, Sam Peckinpah); the hapless
Little Treasure
(85, Alan Sharp, who had written
Ulzana’s Raid);
as a wicked publisher in
Scandal Sheet
(85, David Lowell Rich) for TV; with Kirk Douglas again in
Tough Guys
(86, Jeff Kanew); as the general rescuing Ross Perot’s men in Iran in
On Wings of Eagles
(86, Andrew V. McLaglen); as a German industrialist in
Sins of the Fathers
(86, Bernhard Sinkel);
Control
(87, Giuliano Montaldo);
Rocket Gibraltar
(88, Daniel Petrie); simply legendary in
Field of Dreams
(89, Phil Alden Robinson); as father to
The Phantom of the Opera
(90, Tony Richardson) for TV;
Voyage of Terror—The Achille Lauro Affair
(90, Alberto Negrin); and
Separate But Equal
(91, George Stevens Jr.).

Brave, vigorous, handsome, and an actor of great range, Lancaster never yielded in his immaculate splendor, proud to be a movie actor. He was one of the great stars. Perhaps the last.

Elsa Lanchester
(Elizabeth Sullivan) (1902–86), b. Lewisham, England
She was the daughter of vegetarian pacifist Socialists, and she would be married to one of the great sacred monsters of acting, a neurotic, a homosexual, yet a child who required her steady care and affection. So Elsa Lanchester was, a lot of the time, “Mrs. Charles Laughton,” attending to him, on and off screen. Sometimes it was reckoned that she came as part of the Laughton package, worth her weight and her fee because she could handle him when he was otherwise outrageous. Her own inner romantic life may have been diverted by such self-sacrifice, or stopped because of Laughton’s innate homosexuality. Not that she disapproved, or really thought of leaving him. But there was something so large and daring in her, something that deserved her own help. Even if it emerged just once, as the hissing, feral, totally sexual
Bride of Frankenstein
(35, James Whale), there was an actress with greatness in her.

As a girl, she studied with Isadora Duncan in Paris, and then opened her own dancing school in London. She attended the Margaret Morris School and started a nightclub, the Cave of Harmony, on Charlotte Street. In short, she was one of the most idiosyncratic and diversely talented performers in London—with spiky red hair, popping eyes, a musical voice, and great intellectual daring. From the start, she was a match for Laughton: they were married in 1927.

Her film debut was in
One of the Best
(27, T. Hayes Hunter);
The Constant Nymph
(28, Adrian Brunel);
Comets
(30, Sasha Geneen);
The Love Habit
(30, Harry Lachman);
The Stronger Sex
(31, Gareth Gundrey);
Potiphar’s Wife
(31, Maurice Elvey);
The Officers’ Mess
(31, H. Manning Haynes); Anne of Cleves in
The Private Life of Henry VIII
(33, Alexander Korda), her first film with Laughton, though they played on stage in
Mr. Prohack
, in
The Tempest
(she was Ariel to his Prospero), and in
Peter Pan
(he was Hook, she was apparently a rather Hitlerian Peter!).

They then went to Hollywood together, and she played Clickett in
David Copperfield
(35, George Cukor);
Naughty Marietta
(35, W. S. Van Dyke II); and the title role in
Bride of Frankenstein
. She went back to England briefly for
The Ghost Goes West
(36, René Clair);
Rembrandt
(36, Korda); the missionary in
The Beachcomber
(38, Erich Pommer).

Thereafter, the couple were based in the United States, and she appeared in
Ladies in Retirement
(41, Charles Vidor);
Son of Fury
(42, John Cromwell);
Tales of Manhattan
(42, Julian Duvivier), and
Forever and a Day
(43, many directors), both with Laughton;
Lassie Come Home
(43, Fred M. Wilcox); trying to beat Hitler in
Passport to Destiny
(44, Ray McCarey);
The Spiral Staircase
(46, Robert Siodmak); very good in
The Razor’s Edge
(46, Edmund Goulding);
Northwest Outpost
(47, Allan Dwan);
The Bishop’s Wife
(47, Henry Koster); a comic eccentric artist in
The Big Clock
(48, John Farrow).

She is the maid in
The Secret Garden
(49, Wilcox); she was nominated as supporting actress in
Come to the Stable
(49, Koster);
The Inspector General
(49, Koster);
Buccaneer’s Girl
(50, Frederick de Cordova); brilliant as a nosy landlady in
Mystery Street
(50, John Sturges); a gem in
The Petty Girl
(50, Henry Levin);
Frenchie
(50, Louis King);
Dreamboat
(52, Claude Binyon);
Les Misérables
(52, Lewis Milestone);
Androcles and the Lion
(52, Chester Erskine);
The Girls of Pleasure Island
(53, F. Hugh Herbert);
Hell’s Half Acre
(54, John H. Auer);
Three Ring Circus
(54, Joseph Pevney);
The Glass Slipper
(55, Charles Walters).

She got a second supporting actress nomination as Miss Plimsoll, with Laughton, in
Witness for the Prosecution
(57, Billy Wilder); funny in
Bell Book and Candle
(58, Richard Quine). Laughton grew ill, and died in 1962, so there was an enforced layoff in Lanchester’s career before she returned with
Honeymoon Hotel
(64, Levin);
Mary Poppins
(64, Robert Stevenson);
Pajama Party
(64, Don Weis);
That Darn Cat!
(65, Stevenson); with Elvis in
Easy Come, Easy Go
(67, John Rich);
Blackbeard’s Ghost
(68, Stevenson);
Rascal
(69, Norman Tokar);
Me, Natalie
(69, Fred Coe);
Willard
(71, Daniel Mann);
Terror in the Wax Museum
(73, Georg Fenady);
Arnold
(73, Fenady);
Murder by Death
(76, Robert Moore);
Die Laughing
(80, Jeff Werner).