The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (274 page)

His best film was
D.O.A.
, a waking nightmare, wickedly clever in its plot (by Russell Rouse and Clarence Greene), and with several assets that testify to the director’s eye—the rise of Edmond O’Brien’s panic, the jazz club, the headlong run down Market Street, Neville Brand’s leer, and that supreme noir shot where poison glows in the dark.

Action, landscape, and atmosphere always appealed to Maté more than content or character, but he was a reliable source of pictorial adventure throughout the 1950s, unhappy in anything more or less than swift action. Nonetheless, he remains a proficient director and an outstanding photographer, witness to the gulf between the two roles. Nothing in his own films is as gorgeous as Rita Hayworth’s dance in
Gilda
, as foreboding as the images of
Foreign Correspondent
, or as creative as the veiled grayness of
Vampyr
and the devotional close-ups of
Jeanne d’Arc
. But
D.O.A
. is a picture Dreyer would have liked.

Walter Matthau
(1920–2000), b. New York
Matthau was the son of a Russian Orthodox priest who came to America. Deserted by the father, while his mother worked, Matthau was brought up by the Daughters of Israel Day Nursery and must have absorbed timing with his vitamin C. He served in the air force during the war and afterwards studied at the New School for Social Research Dramatic Workshop. He made his Broadway debut in 1948 and has been a leading comedy actor ever since, favoring the theatre and clearly liking “East Coast” projects.

He made his film debut in
The Kentuckian
(55, Burt Lancaster), and for a few years he was cast as a villain or a pipe-smoking friend (in
Strangers When We Meet
, the one turned into the other):
The Indian Fighter
(55, André de Toth);
Slaughter on Tenth Avenue
(57, Arnold Laven);
A Face in the Crowd
(57, Elia Kazan);
King Creole
(58, Michael Curtiz);
Strangers When We Meet
(60, Richard Quine);
Lonely Are the Brave
(62, David Miller);
Charade
(63, Stanley Donen);
Fail-Safe
(63, Sidney Lumet); and
Mirage
(65, Edward Dmytryk). He was always watchable, but there was no doubt that he was being wasted.

It was a great Broadway success in Neil Simon’s
The Odd Couple
that pushed him into major film parts. As a preliminary, he was excellent as a Korda-type mogul in
Goodbye Charlie
(64, Vincente Minnelli). But his most characteristic work is in
The Odd Couple
(67, Gene Saks);
The Fortune Cookie
(66, Billy Wilder);
The Secret Life of an American Wife
(68, George Axelrod);
Cactus Flower
(69, Saks);
Plaza Suite
(70, Arthur Hiller);
A New Leaf
(70, Elaine May);
Kotch
(71, Jack Lemmon);
Pete ’n’ Tillie
(72, Martin Ritt);
The Laughing Policeman
(73, Stuart Rosenberg);
The Front Page
(74, Wilder); and
The Taking of Pelham 123
(74, Joseph Sargent).

He is a great technician, in terms of movement, response, wisecrack, and exaggerated alarm, even though his sourness usually derides phoniness and self-deception. As a result, it is not easy to gauge Matthau’s own nature, for he is fixed in the idiom of smart self-derision and always offers the brilliant spectacle of disguise mocking the need for disguise. The skill of his playing sometimes tends to dispel his assumed misanthropy. And if none of his films is without flaw, that may be because of a final reluctance on Matthau’s part to reveal himself. So schooled to the wisecrack, he may be unable to talk straight. His immense facility, like that of Jack Lemmon, too often seems mannered and wearisome. And when the two are together the film is a hothouse of cold-blooded comic neurosis. His humor seemed closer to character when drafted into the thriller genre of
Charley Varrick
(73, Don Siegel), but in 1974, he mugged dreadfully under the name “Matuschanskayasky” as a drunk in
Earthquake
(Mark Robson).

In 1961, he acted in and directed
Gangster Story
but seems never to have been tempted that way again.

He played with George Burns in
The Sunshine Boys
(75, Herbert Ross); with Tatum O’Neal in
The Bad News Bears
(76, Michael Ritchie); with horses in
Casey’s Shadow
(78, Martin Ritt); with Glenda Jackson in
House Calls
(78, Howard Zieff); with Elaine May in
California Suite
(78, Ross).

There’s something sad in that Matthau’s occasional appearances on talk shows—poker-faced, piss-eloquent, a collection of anecdotes and disguises—were invariably more interesting than his pictures:
Hopscotch
(80, Ronald Neame);
Little Miss Marker
(80, Walter Bernstein);
Buddy Buddy
(81, Wilder);
First Monday in October
(81, Neame)—as a Supreme Court justice;
I Ought to Be in Pictures
(82, Ross);
The Survivors
(83, Ritchie);
Movers and Shakers
(85, William Asher);
Pirates
(86, Roman Polanski), in a role once meant for Jack Nicholson;
The Couch Trip
(88, Ritchie); making his TV movie debut as a lawyer in
The Incident
(90, Joseph Sargent) who defends a German prisoner of war on a murder charge; as Senator Russell Long in
JFK
(91, Oliver Stone); and
Grumpy Old Men
(93, Daniel Petrie).

In his final years, Matthau was pretty shameless, and very broad, with the grumpy old guy:
Dennis the Menace
(93, Nick Castle);
Incident in a Small Town
(94, Delbert Mann); as Einstein in
I.Q
. (94, Fred Schepisi);
The Grass Harp
(95, Charles Matthau—his son);
Grumpier Old Men
(95, Howard Deutch);
I’m Not Rappaport
(96, Herb Gardner);
Out to Sea
(97, Martha Coolidge);
The Odd Couple II
(98, Deutch);
The Marriage Fool
(98, Matthau); and father to the girls in
Hanging Up
(00, Diane Keaton).

Victor Mature
(1913–99), b. Louisville, Kentucky
Mature is an uninhibited creature of the naïve. Simple, crude, and heady—like ketchup or treacle—he is a diet scorned by the knowing, but obsessive if succumbed to in error. It is too easy to dismiss Mature, for he surpasses badness. He is a strong man in a land of hundred-pound weaklings, an incredible concoction of beefsteak, husky voice, and brilliantine—a barely concealed sexual advertisement for soiled goods. Remarkably, he is as much himself in the cheerfully meretricious and the pretentiously serious. Such a career has no more pattern than a large ham; it slices consistently forever. The more lurid or distasteful the part, the better Mature comes across.

He made his debut in
The Housekeeper’s Daughter
(39, Hal Roach) and is treasured for his Tarzan-like progenitor in
One Million B.C
. (40, Roach, and wintrily surveyed by D. W. Griffith); with Anna Neagle in
No, No, Nanette
(40, Herbert Wilcox); a reptilian womanizer in
The Shanghai Gesture
(41, Josef von Sternberg);
My Gal Sal
(42, Irving Cummings);
Hot Spot
(42, Bruce Humberstone); a consumptive Doc Holliday hidden under a huge white handkerchief in
My Darling Clementine
(46, John Ford);
Moss Rose
(47, Gregory Ratoff); haunted by Widmark’s giggle in
Kiss of Death
(47, Henry Hathaway);
Cry of the City
(48, Robert Siodmak);
Easy Living
(49, Jacques Tourneur);
Red Hot and Blue
(49, John Farrow); hairy and grandiloquent in
Samson and Delilah
(49, Cecil B. De Mille);
Wabash Avenue
(50, Henry Koster);
Gambling House
(51, Ted Tetzlaff);
Million Dollar Mermaid
(52, Mervyn Le Roy);
Affair with a Stranger
(53, Roy Rowland);
Veils of Bagdad
(53, George Sherman);
The Robe
(53, Koster);
Demetrius and the Gladiators
(54, Delmer Daves);
The Egyptian
(54, Michael Curtiz);
Violent Saturday
(55, Richard Fleischer); as
Chief Crazy Horse
(55, Sherman); as the scout in
The Last Frontier
(56, Anthony Mann); a lunatic period with Warwick and Terence Young
—Safari
(56, Young),
Zarak
(56, Young),
Interpol
(56, John Gilling),
No Time to Die
(58, Young), and
The Bandit of Zhobe
(58, Gilling);
China Doll
(58, Frank Borzage);
Timbuktu
(58, Tourneur);
The Big Circus
(58, Joseph H. Newman);
Hannibal
(59, Edgar G. Ulmer and Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia);
After the Fox
(66, Vittorio de Sica); wickedly well used in
Head
(68, Bob Rafelson);
Every Little Crook and Nanny
(72, Cy Howard);
Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood
(76, Michael Winner);
Firepower
(79, Winner); and playing Samson’s father in a TV
Samson and Delilah
(84, Lee Philips).

Elaine May
(Berlin), b. Philadelphia, 1932
1971:
A New Leaf
. 1972:
The Heartbreak Kid
. 1976:
Mikey and Nicky
. 1987:
Ishtar
.
Four films qualify anyone as a director, and one of those four,
Mikey and Nicky
, has a vital cult following, while
Ishtar
is nearly proverbial for disappointment. Me, I think
The Heartbreak Kid
—about a marriage that sees collapse and a fresh mate during the honeymoon—is the best, as well as the clearest indication of a startling satiric vision. Whereas
Mikey and Nicky
is a very different kind of film, far less coherent or shapely, but dedicated to a Cassavetes-like untidiness of personality. It’s a remarkable film, full of pain, yet I’m not sure it’s the sort of thing Elaine May was cut out to do.

Say that, however, and you have to concede that she has never been more comfortable than she was in her dialogues with Mike Nichols—live in clubs, on record, and on Broadway. That partnership ended in 1961, but it has influenced so much of American comedy, not least the self-deprecating humor of the modern woman. It’s not clear why they broke up, or even what they meant to each other personally. But whereas Nichols went on to a very successful (and organized) career as a director on stage and screen, May didn’t.

She has acted—in
Luv
(67, Clive Donner);
Enter Laughing
(67, Carl Reiner);
A New Leaf; California Suite
(78, Herbert Ross);
In the Spirit
(90, Sandra Seacat), where she does a double act with Marlo Thomas. (Note: May’s father was a Yiddish actor and comic, Jack Berlin, and the air of Jewish fatalism is always there in her work, tugging at the surreal flights—and holding them down?) She has also worked as a screenwriter, probably on more films than we know, for she has seemed to enjoy the anonymity of being a script doctor:
Such Good Friends
(71, Otto Preminger), under the name “Esther Dale”;
Heaven Can Wait
(78, Warren Beatty), cowritten with Beatty; as a writer on
Tootsie
(83, Sydney Pollack) and rewriter for
The Birdcage
(96, Nichols)—by far the most obvious things she has done; and on
Primary Colors
(98, Nichols).

What conclusions are there? That all the external problems in filmmaking may pale beside indecisions that no one else in life can fathom. All stories of Elaine May describe a brilliant woman and artist, yet her record is that of someone who can hardly see in her own dark. She is seventy now, and it is unlikely that time will clarify or resolve her puzzle. Her role in
Small Time Crooks
(00, Woody Allen) only revived the old questions. What one would give for a good book on what it has meant trying to be Elaine May.

Joe May
(Julius Otto Mandl) (1880–1954), b. Vienna
1912:
In der Tiefe des Schachtes; Vorgluten des Balkanbrandes
. 1913:
Ein Ausgestossener; Heimat und Fremde; Verschleierte Bild von Gross Kleindorf; Die Unheilbringende Perle; Entsagungen
. 1914:
Die Geheimnisse Villa; Der Mann im Keller; Die Pagode; Der Spuk im Hause des Professors; Das Panzergewolbe
. 1915:
Das Gesetz der Mine; Charly, der Wunderaffe; Sein Schwierigster Fall; Der Geheimskretar
. 1916:
Die Gespensteruhr; Die Sunde der Helga Arndt; Nebel und Sonne; Ein Blatt Papier; Die Tat der Grafin Worms
(codirected with Karl Gerhardt);
Wie Ich Detektiv Wurde; Das Ratselhafte Inserat
(codirected with Gerhardt). 1917:
Das Geheimnis der Leeren Wasserflasche; Des Vaters Letzer Wille; Die Silhouette des Teufels; Der Onyxknopf; Hilde Warren und der Tod; Der Schwarze Chauffeur; Krahen Fliegen um den Turm; Die Hochzeit im Excentric-club; Die Liebe der Hetty Raymond; Ein Lichstrahl im Dunkel; Das Klima von Van-court
. 1918:
Sein Bester Freund; Wogen des Schicksals; Opfer; Die Kaukasierin
(codirected with Jens W. Krafft);
Die Bettelgrafin
(codirected with Bruno Ziener);
Ihr Grosses Geheimnis
. 1919:
Veritas Vincit; Fraulein Zahnarzt; Die Herrin der Welt
. 1920:
Die Schuld der Lavinia Morland; Legende von der Heiligen Simplicia
. 1921:
Das Indische Grabmal
. 1923:
Tragodie der Liebe
. 1925:
Der Farmer aus Texas
. 1926:
Dagfin
. 1928:
Heimkehr
. 1929:
Asphalt
. 1931:
Ihre Majestat, die Liebe; Und Das ist die Hauptsache; Paris-Mediterranée
. 1932:
Le Chemin de Bonheur
. 1933:
Voyages de Noces; Tout pour l’Amour; Le Dactylo se Marie; Ein Lied fur Dich
. 1934:
Music in the Air
. 1937:
Confession
. 1939:
Society Smugglers; The House of Fear
. 1940:
The Invisible Man Returns; The House of the Seven Gables; You’re Not so Tough
. 1941:
Hit the Road
. 1944:
Johnny Doesn’t Live Here Any More
.