The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (285 page)

After his first hint of vulnerability as the man freed from an asylum and plunged into intrigue in Fritz Lang’s
The Ministry of Fear
(44),
Till We Meet Again
(44, Frank Borzage), and
The Uninvited
(44, Lewis Allen), Wilder cast Milland as the drunk in
The Lost Weekend
(45). That Oscar-winning performance is far too self-destructive, too dreamily trapped in the dire romance of booze, to be saved by the happy ending appended to the film. Milland suddenly revealed himself as an actor capable of showing all the flaws in attractiveness. But that promise was not taken up by his employer, largely because the bleakness of
Lost Weekend
was so far ahead of its time.

Milland was able to exploit the decline in his romantic appeal by pursuing more interesting parts in less successful films: thus
Kitty
(45) and
Golden Earrings
(47) for Leisen were throwbacks; but
California
(46),
The Big Clock
(48),
Alias Nick Beal
(49), and
Copper Canyon
(50), all for John Farrow, extended his range. In 1948, he returned to Britain to act in
So Evil, My Love
(Allen), and again in 1951 when he acted in and produced Jacques Tourneur’s dismal
Circle of Danger
. In America, his contract with Paramount was running out. After
A Life of Her Own
(50, George Cukor), he made two more films that tried to renew the theme of alcoholism:
Night into Morning
(51, Fletcher Markle) and George Stevens’s
Something to Live For
(52), with Joan Fontaine, before making
Jamaica Run
(53, Lewis R. Foster), his last Paramount contract film.

He now embarked on a series of offbeat films. In 1952, he had appeared in Russell Rouse’s
The Thief
, an interesting thriller with very little dialogue. In 1954, he played a charming conspirer toward Grace Kelly’s death in
Dial M for Murder
, scathingly attuned to Hitchcock’s black comedy; he also directed his own Western,
A Man Alone
. The next year he had the right rich man’s languor as Stanford White in Fleischer’s
The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing
. After that, he directed
Lisbon
(56), the brilliant
The Safecracker
(58),
Panic in Year Zero
(62), and less notably
Hostile Witness
(68). He also acted in
Three Brave Men
(57, Philip Dunne),
The River’s Edge
(57, Allan Dwan), and in two Roger Corman films:
The Premature Burial
(61) and
The Man with the X-Ray Eyes
(63).

It was sad that this low-budget excellence should pass unnoticed and that the world should rediscover him as the father in the sickly
Love Story
(70, Arthur Hiller). However, he seemed conscious of that inadequate offering for new audiences and once more demonstrated his range and enterprise: acting in
Company of Killers
(70, Jerry Thorpe);
Embassy
(72, Gordon Hessler); renewing his taste for science fiction, in the remarkable
Frogs
(72, George McCowan); with Frankie Howerd in
The House in Nightmare Park
(73, Peter Sykes);
Terror in the Wax Museum
(73, George Fenady);
Gold
(74, Peter Hunt);
The Swiss Conspiracy
(75, Jack Arnold);
Aces High
(76, Jack Gold);
The Last Tycoon
(76, Elia Kazan);
Mayday at 40,000 Feet!
(76, Robert Butler); and
Oliver’s Story
(78, John L. Korty).

In his last years, he was to be seen in many different kinds of rubbish, his aplomb still plummy:
Battlestar Galactica
(79, Richard A. Colla);
The Darker Side of Terror
(79, Gus Trikonis);
Game for Vultures
(79, James Fargo);
The Attic
(79, George Edwards);
The Dream Merchants
(80, Vincent Sherman);
Survival Run
(80, Larry Spiegel);
Our Family Business
(81, Robert Collins), playing a Mafia boss;
The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana
(82, Peter Levin);
Starflight: The Plane That Couldn’t Land
(83, Jerry Jameson);
Cave-in!
(83, Fenady);
Sherlock Holmes and the Masks of Death
(84, Roy Ward Baker); and
The Sea Serpent
(86, Gregory Greens).

David Miller
(1909–92), b. Paterson, New Jersey
1941:
Billy the Kid
. 1942:
Sunday Punch; Flying Tigers
. 1949:
Top o’ the Morning
. 1950:
Love Happy; Our Very Own
. 1951:
Saturday’s Hero
. 1952:
Sudden Fear
. 1954:
The Beautiful Stranger/ Twist of Fate
. 1955:
Diane
. 1956:
The Opposite Sex
. 1957:
The Story of Esther Costello
. 1959:
Happy Anniversary
. 1960:
Midnight Lace
. 1961:
Back Street
. 1962:
Lonely Are the Brave; Captain Newman M.D
. 1968:
Hammerhead
. 1969:
Hail, Hero!
. 1973:
Executive Action
. 1979:
The Best Place to Be
(TV);
Love for Rent
(TV);
Goldie and the Boxer
(TV). 1981:
Goldie and the Boxer Go to Hollywood
(TV).

Miller began as an editor with Columbia in 1940 and moved on to MGM where he made a number of shorts. His work as a director was very inconsistent: thus an initial, stolid Western that neglects every opportunity evident to a director like Arthur Penn and that was made by MGM to thwart Howard Hughes’s
The Outlaw;
a second,
Lonely Are the Brave
, that is one of the most original accounts of the modernization of the West. Nor is it easy to equate the benevolence of
Captain Newman M.D
. with the romance of
Back Street
, the rampant melodrama of
Esther Costello
, much less the Republic period
Flying Tigers
, which has John Wayne aiding Chiang Kai-shek against the Japanese, or
Love Happy
, the last of the true Marx Brothers movies, with Groucho homing in on Marilyn Monroe.

But Miller has two very effective suspense films to his credit—
Sudden Fear
and
Midnight Lace
. Both involve a woman increasingly aware of her peril, with a sure sense of shadowy interiors and editing, an ability to build tension, and better-than-average threatened performances from Joan Crawford and Doris Day. Miller was a lightweight, but he had enough good moments to excuse
The Opposite Sex
, a declawed remake of Cukor’s
The Women
.

George Miller
, b. Brisbane, Australia, 1945
1979:
Mad Max
. 1981:
The Road Warrior
. 1983: an episode from
Twilight Zone—The Movie
. 1985:
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
. 1987:
The Witches of Eastwick
. 1992:
Lorenzo’s Oil
. 1995:
Babe
. 1998:
Babe: Pig in the City
. 2006:
Happy Feet
.

It’s a great stretch to go from the very stylish, utterly cheerful mayhem of
Mad Max
to the harrowingly small world of
Lorenzo’s Oil
. Has there ever been another qualified M.D. who became a movie director? And then recall the beautiful, playful, and very idiosyncratic view of New England, Updike, and modern sexuality in
The Witches of Eastwick
. The range is so great that no one may have an adequate sense of Miller yet from his work. But this is spectacular versatility with a true eye for action, whether on the large or very small scale. Added to which, Miller did the best episode from
Twilight Zone
, with John Lithgow as a desperate passenger on a plane.

The vision of a bizarre, postapocalyptic art and heroism in the outback had the smack of comic books. But in
The Witches of Eastwick
, Miller’s dynamic camera style went from comedy to horror with such ease that it was easy to miss the affectionate gaze on the women and a Satanic Nicholson who never stopped being dead attractive or lethally funny.
Lorenzo’s Oil
revealed the doctor, as well as an unshakable dedication to the detailed facts of its story.

Then, out of the blue, he made two films about a sweet pig—one warm, and a hit; the next darker and alarming.

Sir John Mills
(Lewis Ernest Watts Mills) (1908–2005), b. North Elmham, England
The Mills family has so crowded us out with insipid, tennis-club talent it is easy to forget that Mills is a reasonable actor. He has made more trite or bad films than good ones, and suffered from the way British cinema has used him as officer material under stress. Nevertheless, his long career is sprinkled with worthwhile things, and if the supporting actor Oscar for his village idiot in
Ryan’s Daughter
(70, David Lean) was more a tribute to the makeup artist and to English admiration of impersonation, he might have had the same award for his peasant caught up in the retreat from Moscow in
War and Peace
(56, King Vidor). For Mills is a small man, with an East Anglian complexion and a sense of the ordinary that suits him better to the ranks than to the mess. He was trained in song-and-dance, and one suspects he should have been encouraged in comedy.

But Britain forced responsibility on him:
In Which We Serve
(42, David Lean and Noel Coward);
We Dive at Dawn
(43, Anthony Asquith);
This Happy Breed
(44, Lean);
Scott of the Antarctic
(48, Charles Frend);
Morning Departure
(50, Roy Baker);
The Colditz Story
(54, Guy Hamilton);
Above Us the Waves
(54, Ralph Thomas);
Ice Cold in Alex
(58, J. Lee Thompson); and
I Was Monty’s Double
(58, John Guillermin). He was a private soldier in
Dunkirk
(58, Leslie Norman), but the strain of so many stiff upper lips was finally released in the crackup of
Tunes of Glory
(60, Ronald Neame).

Mills had been in British films since the early 1930s:
The Midshipmaid
(32, Albert de Courville);
Those Were the Days
(34, Thomas Bentley);
Britannia of Billingsgate
(35, Sinclair Hill);
Forever England
(35, Walter Forde), a version of C. S. Forester’s
Brown on Resolution; Tudor Rose
(36, Robert Stevenson);
O.H.M.S
. (37, Raoul Walsh);
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
(39, Sam Wood);
The Green Cockatoo
(40, William Cameron Menzies);
Old Bill and Son
(40, Ian Dalrymple);
Cottage to Let
(41, Asquith);
The Black Sheep of Whitehall
(42, Basil Dean and Will Hay);
The Big Blockade
(42, Frend); and
The Young Mr. Pitt
(42, Carol Reed).

Invalided out of the forces, Mills was inevitably drawn into the celluloid war effort, but in 1946 he was excellent (if too old) as Pip in
Great Expectations
(46, Lean). And as the years went by he took the few serious opportunities that came his way amid pompous or jolly nonsense:
The October Man
(47, Baker);
So Well Remembered
(47, Edward Dmytryk);
The History of Mr. Polly
(49, Anthony Pelissier);
The Rocking Horse Winner
(49, Pelissier);
Mr. Denning Drives North
(51, Anthony Kimmins);
The Long Memory
(52, Robert Hamer);
The Gentle Gunman
(52, Basil Dearden);
Hobson’s Choice
(54, Lean);
The End of the Affair
(54, Dmytryk);
Escapade
(55, Philip Leacock);
It’s Great to Be Young
(56, Cyril Frankel);
The Baby and the Battleship
(56, Jay Lewis); and
Town on Trial
(57, Guillermin).

In 1959, for the first time on screen, he appeared, tactfully upstaged, with daughter Hayley in
Tiger Bay
(Thompson). That signaled a decline and some direly cheerful adventures:
Summer of the 17th Doll
(59, Norman);
Swiss Family Robinson
(60, Ken Annakin);
The Singer Not the Song
(61, Baker);
Flame in the Streets
(61, Baker);
Tiara Tahiti
(62, William T. Kotcheff);
The Chalk Garden
(64, Neame);
The Truth About Spring
(65, Richard Thorpe);
Operation Crossbow
(64, Michael Anderson);
King Rat
(66, Bryan Forbes);
Sky West and Crooked
(66, which he directed himself);
The Wrong Box
(66, Forbes);
The Family Way
(66, Roy Boulting);
Africa, Texas Style
(67, Andrew Marton);
Chuka
(67, Gordon Douglas);
Lady Hamilton
(68, Christian-Jaque);
Oh! What a Lovely War
(69, Richard Attenborough);
Run Wild, Run Free
(69, Richard C. Sarafian);
Adam’s Woman
(70, Leacock);
Lady Caroline Lamb
(72, Robert Bolt);
Oklahoma Crude
(73, Stanley Kramer);
The “Human” Factor
(75, Edward Dmytryk);
A Choice of Weapons
(76, Kevin Conner);
The Devil’s Advocate
(78, Guy Green);
The Big Sleep
(78, Michael Winner); and
The Thirty-Nine Steps
(78, Don Sharp).

He was in
Young at Heart
(80, Stuart Allen);
The Umbrella Man
(80, Claude Whatham);
Operation Safecrack
(81, Alan Gibson); as the Viceroy in
Gandhi
(82, Attenborough);
Sahara
(83, Andrew V. McLaglen);
A Woman of Substance
(84, Sharp); as Dr. Watson in
Sherlock Holmes and the Masks of Death
(84, Roy Ward Baker);
Edge of the Wind
(85, Kenneth Ives);
Murder with Mirrors
(85, Dick Lowry);
Hold That Dream
(86, Sharp);
The True Story of Spit MacPhee
(88, Marcus Cole);
A Tale of Two Cities
(89, Philippe Monnier);
The Lady and the Highwayman
(89, John Hough);
Around the World in 80 Days
(89, Buzz Kulik); and
Ending Up
(89, Peter Sasdy).