The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (293 page)

At once he was a leading man, appearing in four or five movies a year, either opposite a major star (Swanson in the 1923
My American Wife
and Negri the same year in
The Spanish Dancer
) or as the star himself (
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
, also 1923, and the following year in things like
Tiger Love
). By this time, he was an official Latin Lover, just below Valentino and Novarro. Nineteen twenty-six was his miracle year, including his greatest role, the Captain in Rex Ingram’s superb
Mare Nostrum
, revealing a gravity and depth that somehow hadn’t manifested themselves in
Tiger Love
. There was also
Beverly of Graustark
, opposite Marion Davies, and
The Temptress
, opposite Garbo.

And 1927 wasn’t far behind, given
It
, in which he’s a department store heir who falls for Clara Bow (as who wouldn’t). Elinor Glyn, the inventor of “It,” proclaimed that the only ones in Hollywood who had it were Bow, Moreno, the Ambassador Hotel doorman, and Rex, the wild stallion. (Clara supposedly commented, “I was awfully confused about the horse, but if she thought he had ‘it,’ then I figured he must be quite an animal.”) Only cynics would point out that she had previously pinned the “It” medal on Wallace Reid, John Gilbert, and Valentino. In 1927, Moreno also made
Venus of Venice
with Constance Talmadge and, in England,
Madame Pompadour
with Dorothy Gish. Then came sound, and he was back where he began: relegated to ethnic roles because of his accent. But he soldiered on for almost thirty years, with supporting roles in minor movies (
The Spanish Main, Mark of the Renegade, Creature from the Black Lagoon
) and major ones: not only
The Searchers
but
Captain from Castile
.

There had been shady moments in his own life—he was a close friend of the mysteriously murdered William Desmond Taylor, with whom he spent a good deal of time the week of Taylor’s death. And his wife, the oil heiress Daisy Canfield Danziger, went over a Mulholland Drive cliff in a car, sparking all kinds of rumors about Moreno’s possible complicity in her death as well as about his sexuality. Is this what Michael Powell, who was on the set during the filming of
Mare Nostrum
, is implying when he observes in his autobiography that “not a speck of sexual fire passed between honest Tony and statuesque Alice [Terry]. They were ‘just good friends’ ”? We’ll never know. A final claim to fame: apparently Mauritz Stiller was fired from
The Temptress
when he demanded that Moreno shave off his mustache, on the grounds that it made him look like an Italian waiter. The Latin Lover was not amused.

Frank Morgan
(Francis Philip Wupperman) (1890–1949), b. New York City
There are stories that Frank Morgan turned up for work day after day, year after year, on the MGM lot, bringing a small black briefcase containing the modest alcoholic refreshment that he required. Everyone loved him, he did whatever he was told, and as a rule managed it with finesse and invention. His only passing irritability arose when the black case went astray. He followed his brother Ralph (1882–1956) onto the stage and began working in films as early as 1916, at Vitagraph. But it was at Metro, invariably seeming more than his real age, that he established himself as a lovable fusspot, not nearly as competent as he would have liked—and it was that persona that graced Professor Marvel and the Wizard himself in
The Wizard of Oz
(39, Victor Fleming), the movie that ensures Morgan’s survival, just as
The Shop Around the Corner
(40, Ernst Lubitsch) and his Mr. Matuschek are proof of his greatness.

It’s a longer list than this, so marvel at the loyalty as well as the patience: with Gloria Swanson in
Manhandled
(24, Alan Dwan);
Dangerous Nan McGrew
(30, Malcolm St. Clair);
Queen High
(30, Fred Newmayer);
Laughter
(30, Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast);
Fast and Loose
(30, Newmayer);
Secrets of the French Police
(32, Edward Sutherland);
The Half-Naked Truth
(32, Gregory La Cava);
Hallelujah, I’m a Bum
(33, Lewis Milestone);
Reunion in Vienna
(33, Sidney Franklin), his MGM debut;
The Kiss Before the Mirror
(33, James Whale);
The Nuisance
(33, Jack Conway);
When Ladies Meet
(33, Harry Beaumont);
Bombshell
(33, Fleming);
The Cat and the Fiddle
(34, William K. Howard);
The Affairs of Cellini
(34, La Cava);
The Good Fairy
(35, William Wyler);
Enchanted April
(35, Beaumont);
Naughty Marietta
(35, W. S. Van Dyke);
Escapade
(35, Robert Z. Leonard);
I Live My Life
(35, Van Dyke);
The Great Ziegfeld
(36, Leonard);
Trouble for Two
(36, J. Walter Ruben);
Piccadilly Jim
(36, Leonard); father to Shirley Temple in
Dimples
(36, William A. Seiter);
The Last of Mrs. Cheyney
(37, Richard Boleslavsky);
The Emperor’s Candlesticks
(37, George Fitzmaurice); in Jean Harlow’s last film,
Saratoga
(37, Conway);
Rosalie
(37, Van Dyke).

He was an American in Germany in
Paradise for Three
(38, Edward Buzzell); Panisse in an adaptation of Pagnol,
Port of Seven Seas
(38, Whale); Robert Taylor’s father in
The Crowd Roars
(38, Richard Thorpe); the producer in
Sweethearts
(38, Van Dyke);
Broadway Serenade
(39, Leonard);
Balalaika
(39, Reinhold Schünzel); back from the dead in
The Ghost Comes Home
(40, William Thiele);
Broadway Melody of 1940
(40, Norman Taurog);
The Mortal Storm
(40, Frank Borzage);
Boom Town
(40, Conway); pretending to be
The Wild Man of Borneo
(41, Robert B. Sinclair); very good in
Honky Tonk
(41, Conway); a real local hero in
The Vanishing Virginian
(42, Borzage); with a dog in
Tortilla Flat
(42, Fleming), for which he got a supporting actor nomination;
White Cargo
(42, Thorpe);
The Human Comedy
(43, Clarence Brown);
Thousands Cheer
(43, George Sidney);
The White Cliffs of Dover
(44, Brown);
Casanova Brown
(44, Sam Wood);
Yolanda and the Thief
(45, Vincente Minnelli);
Courage of Lassie
(46, Fred M. Wilcox); back from the dead again in
The Cockeyed Miracle
(46, S. Sylvan Simon);
Lady Luck
(46, Edwin L. Marin);
Green Dolphin Street
(47, Victor Saville);
Summer Holiday
(48, Rouben Mamoulian); the king in
The Three Musketeers
(48, Sidney);
The Stratton Story
(49, Wood);
The Great Sinner
(49, Robert Siodmak);
Key to the City
(50, Sidney).

Michèle Morgan
(Simone Roussel), b. Neuilly, France, 1920
Her most memorable appearance was at the age of eighteen in Marcel Carné’s
Quai des Brumes
(38), in which she played the timid, slant-eyed ward of Michel Simon who falls in love with Jean Gabin. Her austere features were accentuated by beret and trench coat and her eyes seemed to foresee the pain and loss in the foggy, fatalistic world that Carné and Prévert created on the brink of war.

She had made her debut for Marc Allégret in 1937 in
Gribouille
and
Orage
(38), and after
Quai des Brumes
she made
La Loi du Nord
(39, Jacques Feyder),
Untel Père et Fils
(40, Julien Duvivier), and
Remorques
(41, Jean Grémillon) before leaving for America. While there, she was the resistance heroine in
Joan of Paris
(42, Robert Stevenson), played opposite Sinatra and sang in
Higher and Higher
(43, Tim Whelan), appeared in
Passage to Marseilles
(44, Michael Curtiz) and
The Chase
(46, Arthur Ripley).

After the war, she returned to France for
La Symphonie Pastorale
(46, Jean Delannoy) and then went to England to play in
The Fallen Idol
(48, Carol Reed). Since then, she has been a faltering but beautiful star of the French cinema, if rarely in good films:
Aux Yeux du Souvenir
(48, Delannoy);
Fabiola
(49, Alessandro Blasetti);
Le Château de Verre
(50, René Clément);
La Minute de Vérité
(52, Delannoy);
Les Orgueilleux
(53, Yves Allégret);
Napoléon
(55, Sacha Guitry); excellent in
Summer Manoeuvres
(55, René Clair);
Marguerite de la Nuit
(55, Claude Autant-Lara);
Si Paris Nous Était Conté
(56, Guitry);
The Vintage
(57, Jeffrey Hayden);
Le Miroir à Deux Faces
(58, André Cayatte);
Fortunat
(60, Alex Joffé);
Le Crime Ne Paie Pas
(61, Gérard Oury);
Landru
(62, Claude Chabrol);
Lost Command
(66, Mark Robson);
Benjamin
(67, Michel Deville); and
Cat and Mouse
(75, Claude Lelouch).

She played herself in
Robert et Robert
(78, Lelouch), and she has appeared in
Un Homme et une Femme: 20 Ans Déjà
(86, Lelouch) and
Stanno Tutti Bene
(90, Giuseppe Tornatore). Then she moved over to TV for
La Veuve de l’Architecte
(95, Philippe Monnier);
Des Gens si Bien Elevés
(97, Alain Nahum);
La Rivale
(99, Nahum).

Masayuki Mori
(1911–73), b. Tokyo
It is appropriate that the two men in the triangle that is
Rashomon
(50) were Toshiro Mifune and Masayuki Mori—Mifune, the essential macho swaggerer, and Mori, the essential refined and sensitive aristocrat. They are the opposite masculine poles of fifties and sixties Japanese film.

Mori, the son of a novelist, attended Kyoto University and became a stage actor. Throughout his career, both onstage and onscreen, his personal elegance was matched by the careful intelligence of his acting. He worked for Naruse eight times, most notably as the uncaring lover in
Floating Clouds
(55) and in
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
(60). He is the unhappy young brother in
The Ball at the House of Anjo
(Kozaburo Yoshimura, 47); the emperor in Mizoguchi’s
Princess Yang Kwei Fei
(55); the leading character in
The Idiot
(51) for Kurosawa; and with Mifune again in
The Bad Sleep Well
(60). Most important of all, he is Genjuro, the enchanted potter, in Mizoguchi’s
Ugetsu Monogatari
(53).

Robert Morley
(1908–92), b. Semley, England
Robert Morley was a stage actor, an occasional playwright, as well as a radio and television personality blessed by impromptu wit and deep good nature. But for more than fifty years he was a supporting actor in films, and a routine lead, of enormous versatility—nearly always funny, often touching, indubitably English, despite the range of notions (and wretched pictures) he lent himself to: as Louis XVI with Norma Shearer in
Marie Antoinette
(38, W. S. Van Dyke), for which he won a supporting actor nomination;
Return to Yesterday
(40, Robert Stevenson); as Andrew Under-shaft in
Major Barbara
(41, Gabriel Pascal);
The Big Blockade
(41, Charles Frend);
The Foreman Went to France
(41, Frend); Charles James Fox in
The Young Mr. Pitt
(42, Carol Reed);
I Live in Grosvenor Square
(45, Herbert Wilcox);
The Small Back Room
(45, Michael Powell); at his best in
Outcast of the Islands
(51, Reed); as the brother in
The African Queen
(51, John Huston); the director in
Curtain Up
(52, Ralph Smart);
Melba
(53, Lewis Milestone); as Gilbert in
The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan
(53, Sidney Gilliat); superb in
Beat the Devil
(53, Huston);
The Good Die Young
(54, Lewis Gilbert); George III in
Beau Brummell
(54, Curtis Bernhardt); another French king in
Quentin Durwood
(55, Richard Thorpe);
Loser Takes All
(56, Ken Annakin);
Law and Disorder
(58, Charles Crichton);
The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw
(58, Raoul Walsh);
The Journey
(59, Anatole Litvak);
The Doctor’s Dilemma
(59, Anthony Asquith);
Libel
(59, Asquith);
The Battle of the Sexes
(60, Crichton); the lead in
Oscar Wilde
(60, Gregory Ratoff), a role he had played onstage in the 1930s;
The Young Ones
(61, Sidney J. Furie);
The Road to Hong Kong
(62, Norman Panama);
Nine Hours to Rama
(63, Mark Robson);
Murder at the Gallop
(63, George Pollack);
The Old Dark House
(63, William Castle);
Take Her, She’s Mine
(63, Henry Koster);
Topkapi
(64, Jules Dassin);
Of Human Bondage
(64, Ken Hughes);
Hot Enough for June
(64, Ralph Thomas);
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines
(65, Ken Annakin);
A Study in Terror
(65, James Hill);
Life at the Top
(65, Ted Kotcheff);
Genghis Khan
(65, Henry Levin);
The Loved One
(65, Tony Richardson);
The Alphabet Murders
(66, Frank Tashlin);
Hotel Paradiso
(66, Peter Glenville);
Tender Scoundrel
(66, Jean Becker);
Way … Way Out
(66, Gordon Douglas);
The Trygon Factor
(67, Cyril Frankel);
Hot Millions
(68, Eric Till);
Sinful Davey
(69, Huston);
Cromwell
(70, Ken Hughes);
Song of Norway
(70, Andrew L. Stone);
When Eight Bells Toll
(71, Etienne Perrier);
Theatre of Blood
(73, Douglas Hickox);
The Blue Bird
(76, George Cukor);
Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?
(78, Kotcheff), as a great gourmet;
The Human Factor
(79, Otto Preminger);
Loophole
(80, John Quested);
High Road to China
(83, Brian G. Hutton);
The Wind
(87, Nico Mastorikis);
Little Dorrit
(87, Christine Edzard);
Istanbul
(90, Mats Arehn).