The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (356 page)

In 2009, his long relationship with Susan Sarandon ended.

Julia Roberts
, b. Smyrna, Georgia, 1967
The first thing to say about Julia is that she is a star of the highest force, and I’m not sure she has a female rival.

She is the sister of Eric Roberts (younger by a decade)—their parents ran an actors’ workshop in Atlanta. Brother and sister played together in her first film,
Blood Red
(89, Peter Masterson), which had actually been shot in 1986, and shelved. Thus she first attracted attention in
Mystic Pizza
(88, Donald Petrie) and in
Satisfaction
(88, Joan Freeman). She got a supporting actress nomination for
Steel Magnolias
(89, Herbert Ross), but it was
Pretty Woman
(90, Garry Marshall) that made her a phenomenon. She played the kind of adorable whore whom a respectable man could take to the opera and put through college; she was an Audrey Hepburn who’d give head. The actress was helplessly available for what remains one of the most insidious and comprehensive lifestyle commercials masquerading as a movie. For a year, her nervy laugh—jittery but innocent—and her look (beautiful yet hinting at illness or depravity) were preeminent.

The moment passed; in
Flatliners
(90, Joel Schumacher) she was dull, and in
Sleeping With the Enemy
(91, Joseph Ruben) her haunted eyes were used to conventional effect.
Dying Young
(91, Schumacher) was a flop: even a phenomenon could not carry a title so foreboding to the youth audience. Then, dogged by publicity about romances and difficulty, she played Tinkerbell for no evident reason in
Hook
(91, Steven Spielberg), and in the movie within the movie in
The Player
(92, Robert Altman).

She retreated for a time. Romances with Kiefer Sutherland and Jason Patric preceded marriage to Lyle Lovett. Then she returned as the threatened law student in
The Pelican Brief
(93, Alan J. Pakula), and in
I Love Trouble
(94, Charles Shyer).

At that point, there were those who felt Roberts had shot her bolt, that the messy publicity would crush our interest. That was enforced by
Ready to Wear
(94, Altman) and two more failures
—Something to Talk About
(95, Lasse Hallström) and
Mary Reilly
(96, Stephen Frears). On the other hand, her Reilly was a very brave piece of acting in a film that is far better than its reputation. It’s the moment I became interested in Roberts.

Not that
Michael Collins
(96, Neil Jordan) was an early dividend—she looked pretty, but no more than window dressing. But then she began a run of pictures that understood her screen persona and the way we wanted to like her:
Everyone Says I Love You
(96, Woody Allen);
My Best Friend’s Wedding
(97, P. J. Hogan)—the breakthrough film, for now she was truly funny.
Conspiracy Theory
(97, Richard Donner) was a misstep. But she was securely back on message with the daft
Notting Hill
(99, Roger Michell), where she is close to brilliant;
Runaway Bride
(99, Marshall), where Gere really looked like her father and behaved like her agent; and
Erin Brockovich
(00, Steven Soderbergh), the hittable fast ball she had been practicing for. It’s a nice movie and a knockout performance, and she was an automatic Oscar-winner.

What next? Well, anything she does for a while will sell. But if she’s going to remain a big star in her forties, then the material will have to be better than
The Mexican
(01, Gore Verbinski),
America’s Sweethearts
(01, Joe Roth), or
Ocean’s 11
(01, Soderbergh). She has also made
Full Frontal
(02, Soderbergh) and
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
(02, George Clooney). She was a Wellesley art teacher in
Mona Lisa Smile
(03, Mike Newell); and very touching in
Closer
(04, Mike Nichols).

She took a few years off to have children and returned with a broad comic flourish in
Charlie Wilson’s War
(07, Nichols);
Fireflies in the Garden
(08, Dennis Lee);
Duplicity
(09, Tony Gilroy)—a modest hit, with Clive Owen;
Valentine’s Day
(10, Garry Marshall).

Cliff Robertson
, b. La Jolla, California, 1925
The son of a wealthy rancher, Robertson was in the navy during the Second World War. While at college, he worked in local radio and after graduating he attended the Actors’ Studio. From 1948–50 he played in
Mister Roberts
(directed on stage by Joshua Logan), and in the early 1950s he was regularly on Broadway. He was given his screen debut by Logan in
Picnic
(56).

Columbia signed him up and he was a match for Joan Crawford in
Autumn Leaves
(56, Robert Aldrich). But after
The Girl Most Likely
(57, Mitchell Leisen) and
The Naked and the Dead
(58, Raoul Walsh), he slipped into poorer pictures, supplemented with regular TV work. He made
Gidget
(59) and
Battle of the Coral Sea
(59) with Paul Wendkos, and was then outstanding as Fuller’s hoodlum-turned-crusader in
Underworld USA
(61). His Tolly Devlin in that film has few equals for the accuracy of its self-pitying brutality. He came back to respectability in
The Interns
(62, David Swift), as John Kennedy in
PT-109
(63, Leslie H. Martinson), in
Sunday in New York
(63, Peter Tewkesbury), and as the tamely ruthless candidate in
The Best Man
(64, Franklin Schaffner).

His career has varied wildly: dull action pictures mixed with much more demanding parts—
633 Squadron
(64, Walter Grauman);
Love Has Many Faces
(65, Alexander Singer);
Masquerade
(64, Basil Dearden);
Up from the Beach
(65, Robert Parrish);
The Honey Pot
(67, Joseph L. Mankiewicz);
The Devil’s Brigade
(68, Andrew V. McLaglen);
Charly
(68, Ralph Nelson), for which he won the best actor Oscar as a retarded man who becomes a genius;
Too Late the Hero
(70, Aldrich); and
The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid
(72, Philip Kaufman).

He acted in and directed an appealing but unadventurous rodeo movie,
J. W. Coop
(71), and acted in
Man on a Swing
(73, Frank Perry). He was in
Out of Season
(75, Alan Bridges);
Three Days of the Condor
(75, Sydney Pollack); too stolid for
Obsession
(76, Brian De Palma); and
Midway
(76, Jack Smight). An increasingly unobtrusive screen presence, Robertson raised his greatest stir for years when he sounded the alarm on David Begelman’s checking practices with Columbia.

It is said that this civic-mindedness was regarded in Hollywood as less than team spirit. Equally, Robertson was by then of an age and a dogged calm that did not provoke the imagination. He acted in and directed
The Pilot
(79), about a flyer in trouble with booze. He was also in
Brainstorm
(81, Douglas Trumbull);
Two of a Kind
(82, Roger Young);
Class
(83, Lewis John Carlino); far too decent and cozy for Hugh Hefner in
Star 80
(83, Bob Fosse);
Shaker Run
(85, Bruce Morrison);
Dreams of Gold: The Mel Fisher Story
(85, Mel Goldstone), about a treasure hunter;
Malone
(87, Harley Cokliss);
Dead Reckoning
(90, Robert Lewis);
Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken
(91, Steve Miner); and
Wind
(92, Carroll Ballard).

His marriage to actress Dina Merrill (begun in 1966) had ended after twenty years. In terms of career, Robertson could easily have thought that the fix was in—or did he realize he had always been on the dull side? He was in
Renaissance Man
(94, Penny Marshall);
Pakten
(95, Leidulv Risan);
Dazzle
(95, Richard A. Colla); the president in
Escape from L.A
. (96, John Carpenter);
Melting Pot
(97, Tom Musca);
Assignment Berlin
(98, Tony Randel);
Family Tree
(99, Duane Clark);
Mach 2
(00, Fred Olen Ray);
The 13th Child, Legend of the Jersey Devil
(01, Steven Stockage);
Spider-Man
(02, Sam Raimi).

Paul Robeson
(1898–1976), b. Princeton, New Jersey
Even in an age that has many fine black actors in America, it’s an awkward question as to who could play Paul Robeson in a biopic—if anyone mustered the courage for such a thing. For Robeson was made on a scale—inside and out—that leaves most actors seeming fragile. It’s no discredit to Sidney Poitier to say that that vital actor of the 1950s might have played Robeson at eighteen—but how far beyond that? It’s too easy, and quite useless now, to romanticize Robeson, but he had so many talents he made acting seem narrow (or a marginal concern). He was an athlete. He was academically distinguished. He was singer, actor, and public speaker. He was compelled then to be a public figure. And he was so early in America’s leisurely liberalization that he drew down upon himself all the anger and hostility kept for the “uppity.”

He was drawn, in the 1930s especially, to what he took for the example of the Soviet Union. In that, he was not alone; but he was virtually the only black person attacked for that sympathy, because he was the most prominent black of his time. He was terribly hurt by the attacks, and it is arguable that he began to betray himself (or his potential) with the withdrawal that followed. But it is so cruel to test anyone always against his “potential” instead of his reality. Robeson could sing the works of the masters; he could play O’Neill and Shakespeare; but, in the end, he had no natural repertoire of movie roles, because there were no “ordinary” black parts save for servants or “boys.” It was hard enough trying to be Paul Robeson—and testament enough that hardly anyone now would dare to fill his part.

As in most areas, his movie record is fragmented, bizarre, and shaming to the alleged picture business. A great deal of what he did depended on offers from Britain:
Body and Soul
(25, Oscar Micheaux);
The Emperor Jones
(35, Dudley Murphy)—a poor film;
Sanders of the River
(35, Zoltan Korda); singing “Ol’ Man River” in
Show Boat
(36, James Whale); as a London docker who is actually an African prince in
Song of Freedom
(36, J. Elder Wills), playing with Elisabeth Welch, who is also in
Big Fella
(37, Wills), taken from a Claude McKay novel; as Umbopa in
King Solomon’s Mines
(37, Robert Stevenson); as a soldier who flees to Africa and lives like a king in
Jericho
(37, Thornton Freeland); to Wales for the mining story
Proud Valley
(40, Pen Tennyson)—“the one film I could be proud of having played in”;
Tales of Manhattan
(42, Julien Duvivier); the narration on
Native Land
(42, Leo Hurwitz and Paul Strand); singing in the East German film
Das Lied der Strome
(54).

Edward G. Robinson
(Emmanuel Goldenberg) (1893–1973), b. Bucharest, Romania
His family came to America in 1902, and it was at Columbia University and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts that Goldenberg changed his name (the
G
was simply an initial). He appeared on the New York stage in 1913, and after war service his fame increased and he made his first film as an old man in
The Bright Shawl
(23, John S. Robertson). But it was an isolated debut and he remained in the theatre until the coming of sound when Paramount invited him to play a gangster in Robert Florey’s
The Hole in the Wall
(29).

Within a year, Robinson was installed as Hollywood’s most Latinate gangster. He had an enormous success as Little Rico in Mervyn Le Roy’s
Little Caesar
(30) and played the Cobra in
Outside the Law
(30, Tod Browning). Short and stocky, with a curiously swollen, pale face and a voice that could snarl or whine, Robinson was able to alternate palpable sadism and cowardice. He was a tough editor in
Five Star Final
(31) and a condemned killer in
Two Seconds
(32), both for Le Roy.

But Robinson soon saw the danger in so many hissing psychopaths and it is probably a reflection of his own good humor (and his longing for respect) that he turned to retired gangsters, to decent men mistaken for gangsters, or to rather sentimental immigrants. In 1930, he played an Italian in Victor Sjöström’s
A Lady to Love
, and in 1932 he brought a special zest to the fisherman in Howard Hawks’s
Tiger Shark
. He played more respectable figures—a senator in
Silver Dollar
(33, Alfred E. Green) and a tycoon in
I Loved a Woman
(33, Green). In Roy del Ruth’s
The Little Giant
(33) he was a retired gangster, and in Ford’s
The Whole Town’s Talking
(35) he was both a gangster and a placid bank clerk mistaken for the hoodlum.

He still had a ration of killing and crooks: in Archie Mayo’s
The Man With Two Faces
(34), in Hawks’s
Barbary Coast
(35), and in
The Last Gangster
(38, Edward Ludwig). But in 1936 he was working against the outlaw for the first time in William Keighley’s
Bullets or Ballots
, and in Curtiz’s
Kid Galahad
(37) he was a fight manager. Lloyd Bacon’s
A Slight Case of Murder
(38) was another gangster comedy and in 1939, for Anatole Litvak, Robinson made one of the earliest anti-Nazi movies,
Confessions of a Nazi Spy
.