The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (242 page)

Mon Meilleur Ami
—one of Leconte’s best—had Auteuil as an antiques dealer trying to love a person.

Franz/Francis
(Frantisek)
Lederer
(1899–2000), b. Prague
Though he died several months short of 101, Franz Lederer deserves a place here if only for spanning three centuries. And where should a son of old Prague die but in Palm Springs, the Kafkaesque resort where he still taught an acting class until the week of his death. So it’s nice to recall the letter in which Jean Renoir tells a friend that he had to trim and temper Lederer’s sinister performance as Joseph, the murderous valet, in
Diary of a Chambermaid
(46)—at previews, the audience had thought the actor was going too far.

What a career! Having served in the military during the First World War, he was led to the stage by his looks—tall, dark, and handsome, but a touch neurasthenic. For several years he was a star ingénue. So it was that the actress Henny Porten got him a role in her film
Zuflucht
(28, Carl Froelich). That led to
Die Seltsame Nacht der Helga Wangen
(28, Holger-Madsen) and a breakthrough as Alwa Schön, with Louise Brooks, in
Pandora’s Box
(29, G. W. Pabst), where he is her most adoring victim.

Lederer worked steadily in Germany for the next few years: with Brigitte Helm in
The Wonderful Lies of Nina Petrovna
(29, Hanns Schwartz), where he shows real wit;
Meineid
(29, Georg Jacoby);
Maman Colibri
(29, Julien Duvivier);
Atlantik
(29, E. A. Dupont); with Anna May Wong in
Der Weg zur Schande
(30, Richard Eichberg);
Der Detektiv des Kaisers
(30, Carl Boese);
Fundvogel
(30, Wolfgang Hoffmann-Harnisch);
Susanne Macht Ordnung
(30, Eugen Thiele);
Ihre Majestät die Liebe
(31, Joe May);
Das Schicksal der Renate Langen
(31, Rudolf Walther-Fein).

It was then, after a stage success in New York in
Autumn Crocus
, that he was taken up by Hollywood, with particular support from Irving Thalberg, to play dark romantic foreigners who wooed American girls: as an Eskimo who wins Elissa Landi in
Man of Two Worlds
(34, J. Walter Ruben);
The Pursuit of Happiness
(34, Alexander Hall); with Ginger Rogers in
Romance in Manhattan
(35, Stephen Roberts); with Frances Dee in
The Gay Deception
(35, William Wyler); taking another girl to the movies but kissing Ida Lupino in
One Rainy Afternoon
(36, Rowland V. Lee); with Ann Sothern in
My American Wife
(36, Harold Young);
It’s All Yours
(37, Elliott Nugent);
The Lone Wolf in Paris
(38, Albert S. Rogell); and in his second great film—as Jacques Picot in
Midnight
(39, Mitchell Leisen).

By now he was forty, a little heavier in touch than his looks promised, and minus Thalberg. So he slipped over to doing villains as the need for bad Germans arose:
Confessions of a Nazi Spy
(39, Anatole Litvak); with Joan Bennett in
The Man I Married
(40, Irving Pichel). Then he drifted:
Puddin’ Head
(41, Joseph Santley);
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
(44, Lee);
Voice in the Wind
(44, Arthur Ripley);
The Madonna’s Secret
(46, Wilhelm Thiele);
Million Dollar Weekend
(48, Gene Raymond);
Captain Carey, U.S.A
. (50, Leisen);
A Woman of Distinction
(50, Edward Buzzell);
Surrender
(50, Allan Dwan).

In the 1950s, he moved into routine television work and made only a few films:
Adventures in Vienna
(52, Emil E. Reinert);
Stolen Identity
(53, Gunther von Fritsch);
The Ambassador’s Daughter
(56, Norman Krasna);
Lisbon
(56, Ray Milland); the lead in
The Return of Dracula
(58, Paul Landres);
Maracaibo
(58, Cornel Wilde);
Terror Is a Man
(59, Gerardo de León).

But he had another life, that of a real estate owner and developer, and that led to him becoming the honorary mayor of Canoga Park. He helped form the Hollywood Museum and was director of the Academy of Performing Arts. Thus he settled down as a thoroughly distinguished citizen, as well as the most deadly goose-assassin the movies have known.

Ang Lee
, b. Taiwan, 1954
1983:
Dim Lake
(s). 1985:
Fine Line
(s). 1991:
Pushing Hands
. 1993:
The Wedding Banquet
. 1994:
Eat Drink Man Woman
. 1995;
Sense and Sensibility
. 1997:
The Ice Storm
. 1998:
Ride with the Devil
. 2000:
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
. 2003:
The Hulk
. 2005:
Brokeback Mountain
. 2007:
Lust, Caution
. 2009:
Taking Woodstock
.

Yes, Ang Lee is at least as good as “everyone” says. More than that, he is capable of quietly giving the slip to his large, adoring following, and getting back to the vein of what I take for his best work, those two “failures” in his illustrious list,
The Ice Storm
and
Ride with the Devil
.

He came to America only when he was in his early twenties, and did theatre at the University of Illinois and then film at New York University, where he met James Schamus, who has been his producer and/or cowriter on all his projects.

The first thing to be remarked on is the most obvious—how a Taiwanese has moved from family stories in the world he grew up in to the atmospheres of Jane Austen, the swinging society of suburbia in the seventies, the borderlands in the American Civil War, and the coded legend of Asian swordplay films. Nothing now would surprise, whether he pursues the musical, science fiction, or something else entirely. For he seems to possess the ability to translate all periods and styles into fluent movie forms.
The Wedding Banquet
and
Eat Drink Man Woman
are a little like Ozu, but with more energy and spontaneity. They are filled with a respect for older people, and for anyone caught in a trap, that actually meshed perfectly with the worlds of Austen and Rick Moody (who wrote
The Ice Storm
).

No one would deny the plastic lyricism of
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
, or underestimate the special stress it places on women. It is also amused and intelligent enough to amount to a catalogue, not just of Asian films, but of film as a whole. Still, it was fanciful, crowd-pleasing, and spectacular in ways that could lead many people astray—especially granted its great success.

So it would be very sad if Ang Lee forgot the extraordinary complexity of
The Ice Storm
and
Ride with the Devil
, their historical concern, their Renoirlike reluctance to take sides in tricky situations, and their sense of so many somber destinies tangled together.
The Ice Storm
won some critical praise, but was also widely deemed depressing.
Ride with the Devil
was barely noticed. Let those ironies feed the fertility of Ang Lee’s mind, and let him remain someone happy to startle and put off public congratulation. His greatest work is likely to be his biggest “disasters.” Alas,
The Hulk
was too arty and very dull.

Lust, Caution
was rather overlooked by audiences, but it may be his best film.

Bruce Lee
(Lee Yuen Kam) (1940–73), b. San Francisco
In a way, it’s hardly worth including Bruce Lee unless one can speak about him with passion. So, because I can’t find that warmth, I’ll quote Kenneth Turan, who wrote, “He is refreshing, youthful, invigorating, with an ingratiating grin and a totally unexpected, totally winning boyish personality. It is this pixie quality, coupled with his boggling, deadly physical abilities, that makes him, despite the amiable dross of low-grade exploitation films, irresistible.”

It was an extraordinary life. Born in California, he actually spent much of his childhood in Hong Kong, where he made his first film—
The Birth of Mankind
—at the age of six. He studied philosophy at the University of Washington, and then in his mid-twenties he did some American television—in episodes of
Batman
, and playing Kato in
The Green Hornet
(66–67).

Neither of those shows gave a real hint of what was to come: for physical perfection turned into martial arts, and the pixie became, by many accounts, a rather tyrannical figure, the very self-aware manager of his own cult. And just as with James Dean, Lee’s rise was cut off almost as soon as it had begun. The supposed perfect specimen collapsed suddenly with some kind of brain seizure, leaving behind a few pictures—the famous “chop sockies,” mostly made by the Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong, in which Lee the tiny, coiled street fighter took on all comers, and dispatched them (sometimes with grisly violence, sometimes with balletic aplomb):
Marlowe
(69, Paul Bogart), where his impact is comic;
Fists of Fury
(71, Lo Wei);
The Chinese Connection
(72, Lo Wei);
Enter the Dragon
(73, Robert Clouse);
Return of the Dragon
(73, Lee).

Millions loved him, and clearly he is the pioneer figure in the West’s adoption of Jackie Chan and John Woo as “masters.” Moreover, Lee was a purist in that he preferred not to use movie tricks, or extra boosts in his leaping attacks. He did the stunts himself. He had unquestioned charisma. I suppose what troubles me is his lack of character or mind, set in contrast with his delirious physical excellence. He seems to me to celebrate a spur of cinema that separates violence from life, and revels in it. To join with a Bruce Lee film is to forget such things as damage and pain—and I have always felt that that was a dead end for the movies and their society.

Of course, by today, the human image of Bruce Lee (and I can understand claims for its beauty) has turned into not just generations of imitators (including his son, Brandon), but the flickering pixel in video games. I happen to be writing this only a few days after September 11, 2001. I don’t need to blame that on Lee, and I don’t wish to be solemn. I will just say that, having failed to muster the interest to write this entry for months, I do now feel prompted.

Sir Christopher Lee
, b. London, 1922
My paperback copy of Carlos Clarens’s
Horror Movies
has lasted very well over thirty years, but the last time I picked it up I noticed that one of my children had fondly touched up the frontispiece photograph of Lee—in
Dracula
(58, Terence Fisher)—with a scarlet daub on an eyetooth. I will need columns to describe Lee, but maybe that one adornment says it better.

Lee was like a taller, darker Dennis Price, which is to say he could have expected gentleman roles—romancer or bounder. And he was ten years in pictures, to no great effect, before someone realized that the Count fitted both sides better than any other part. Once infected, Lee could never get out of horror, and so he chose to invest the genre with dignity and feeling. If it possessed him, then it was worthy of proper attention and heartfelt acting.

On the way to Transylvania (and Hammer), he did
Corridor of Mirrors
(48, Terence Young);
Hamlet
(48, Laurence Olivier);
One Night with You
(48, Young);
Penny and the Pownall Case
(48, Slim Hand);
Scott of the Antarctic
(48, Charles Frend);
A Song for Tomorrow
(48, Fisher);
Saraband for Dead Lovers
(48, Basil Dearden);
My Brother’s Keeper
(48, Alfred Roome);
Trottie True
(49, Brian Desmond Hurst);
They Were Not Divided
(49, Young);
Prelude to Fame
(50, Fergus McDonnell).

He was in
Captain Horatio Hornblower
(51, Raoul Walsh);
Valley of the Eagles
(51, Young);
Paul Temple Returns
(52, Maclean Rogers);
The Crimson Pirate
(52, Robert Siodmak);
Innocents in Paris
(53, Gordon Parry);
Moulin Rouge
(53, John Huston);
That Lady
(54, Young);
The Dark Avenger
(54, Henry Levin);
Storm over the Nile
(55, Zoltan Korda);
The Cockleshell Heroes
(55, José Ferrer);
Private’s Progress
(55, John and Roy Boulting);
Port Afrique
(56, Rudolph Maté);
Alias John Preston
(56, David MacDonald);
Beyond Mombasa
(56, George Marshall);
Battle of the River Plate
(56, Michael Powell);
Moby Dick
(56, Huston);
Ill Met By Moonlight
(57, Powell);
Fortune Is a Woman
(57, Sidney Gilliat);
The Traitor
(57, Michael McCarthy);
The Truth About Women
(57, Muriel Box);
Bitter Victory
(57, Nicholas Ray); St. Evremonde in
A Tale of Two Cities
(58, Ralph Thomas).

But in 1957 he was cast as the Monster in
The Curse of Frankenstein
(Fisher). Next year he was a sexy Dracula, and his future was set. There have been very few diversions allowed in a litany of films that is like a poem to the horror genre:
The Hound of the Baskervilles
(59, Fisher);
The Man Who Could Cheat Death
(59, Fisher); as
The Mummy
(59, Fisher);
The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll
(60, Fisher);
Beat Girl
(60, Edmond T. Gréville);
Horror Hotel
(60, John Moxey);
Too Hot to Handle
(60, Young);
The Hands of Orlac
(61, Gréville);
Taste of Fear
(61, Seth Holt);
The Terror of the Tongs
(61, Anthony Bushell);
The Pirates of Blood River
(62, John Gilling);
Corridor of Blood
(62, Robert Day)—filmed several years earlier, and costarring Boris Karloff.