The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (393 page)

He has slipped back to being a producer in recent years:
Enchanted
(07, Kevin Lima);
Space Chimps
(08, Kirk DeMicco).

Ann Sothern
(Harriette Lake) (1909–2001), b. Valley City, North Dakota
Several months after the release of Tay Garnett’s
Trade Winds
(1939), he tells us in his memoirs,

I was working at my desk when a blonde blur burst through the open door, body-surfed across my desk, and landed in my lap, wiping out the two of us onto the floor. I had my arms full of glorious girl, but she was giggling, which unnerved me. “What the hell goes on?” I managed to say. Kiss on the forehead. Kiss on the cheek. Kiss on the chin. “Oh, Tay! You’ll never guess! You’ve done it this time—you’ve really done it. MGM has stolen your Jeanie character right out of
Trade Winds
and they’re going to build a series around her for ME. They’re going to call her Maizie,” chortled Miss Sothern.

When you watch
Trade Winds
today, you can see why. The main point of the movie seems to be the endless process shots, all made by Garnett and friends as they wandered around the Far East in his boat, the
Athene
. This cuckoo movie starts as film noir, swerves into romantic drama, flirts with screwball. Fredric March is pallid and irritating as the hero, Joan Bennett has a defining moment when exigencies of the crackpot plot demand that her hair be changed from its lifetime blonde to black—the look that carried her into her great noir period; Ralph Bellamy as a Klutzy Kop is unbearable—and Sothern, as March’s secretary, steals the show, strutting up and down, gnawing gum, cracking wise, and letting her heart of gold twinkle through her tough exterior. No wonder MGM grabbed her.

There were to be ten Maisie (not Maizie) films, including
Maisie
itself (39),
Congo Maisie
and
Gold Rush Maisie
(40),
Maisie Was a Lady
and
Ringside Maisie
(41),
Maisie Gets Her Man
(42),
Swing Shift Maisie
(43),
Maisie Goes to Reno
(44),
Up Goes Maisie
(46)—its tag line was “It’s Maisie flying … fighting … falling—for a guy. You’ll have a helicopter of a time!”—and closure at last with
Undercover Maisie
(47). Sothern as Maisie had nine different leading men (George Murphy was volunteered twice), including Robert Young in the original, Lew Ayres, Lee Bowman (poor Maisie), and Red Skelton. The Maisies were probably, after the Andy Hardys, the most successful B-picture series of their day, so they were certainly a triumph for Ann Sothern. But they were a burden, too: she
was
Maisie, so how could she be anything else?

Sothern had worked her way up along the Betty Grable/Lucille Ball route—chorus girls and bit parts in early-thirties musicals—until in 1934 she was the first-cast girl, ahead of Ethel Merman, in
Kid Millions
(Roy del Ruth), one of Eddie Cantor’s Goldwyn vehicles. But she was only a conventional thirties romantic comedienne, trapped in a romance with George Murphy (it was his first movie) and, in one musical number, in a hoop skirt larger than Australia. For the next few years, she was a second-string Joan Blondell—the same adorable oval face, the same sassy charm, just not as individual. (When Blondell was asked by John Kobal, years later, what had brought her back to the screen, she grinned and said, “My friends told me Ann Sothern had forgotten how to do me.”) Sothern was queen of the B’s and programmers; if you need proof, she was given Gene Raymond half a dozen times as her costar—and she didn’t even like him. Then came
Trade Winds
.

Finally, she got some classier material: the musical
Lady Be Good
(41, Norman Z. McLeod), in which she upstages Eleanor Powell;
Panama Hattie
(42, McLeod); a nurse on Bataan in
Cry Havoc
(43, Richard Thorpe)—ironically, cast above Blondell though below Margaret Sullavan; best of all,
Letter to Three Wives
(49), Joe Mankiewicz’s Oscar winner, where she more than holds her own against Linda Darnell and Jeanne Crain. It went downhill from there, despite interesting roles in
Blue Gardenia
(53, Fritz Lang) and
The Best Man
(Franklin J. Schaffner) and
Lady in a Cage
(Walter Grauman), both 1964. A few scattered appearances ending in 1980, a gap of more than half a dozen years, and then an amazing comeback: nominated for best supporting actress to Bette Davis and Lillian Gish in the 1987
Whales of August
(Lindsay Anderson). What a grand finale—and in what company—for Congo Maisie!

Sissy
(Mary Elizabeth)
Spacek
, b. Quitman, Texas, 1949
I cannot begin to explain why Sissy Spacek has not been in this book before. She should never have slipped through any rudimentary clerical search—after all, she is an Oscar-winner (
Coal Miner’s Daughter
) as well as the recipient of five other nominations. Add to that the fact that she was not nominated for her greatest performance—that in
Badlands
(73, Terrence Malick)—and clearly we are faced with a major actress, with an authentic sense of rural life and uneducated ways. For years, she had a genius for roles much younger than her real age and a sense of that rare challenge, beyond so many actors: that of playing a simpler, more naïve or limited person than the actor may be in life. Just as important, at the age of fifty, she gave a startling and beautiful performance as the afflicted daughter in
The Straight Story
(99, David Lynch)—it deserved another nomination. But she merits her place for
Badlands
alone, for her flat-voiced narration, her artless dancing in the headlights, and her complete absorption in the life of escape (and the escape from life).

She studied at the Actors Studio and made her screen debut in
Prime Cut
(72, Michael Ritchie) and followed it with
Ginger in the Morning
(73, Gordon Willis), in which she played a hitchhiker.
Badlands
came next, and then her tour de force of menstrual hysteria and psychic dynamism in
Carrie
(76, Brian De Palma)—surely a very difficult part to carry off without seeming comic. She then did
Welcome to L.A
. (76, Alan Rudolph); the endlessly mysterious
Three Women
(76, Robert Altman), which could easily have won another nomination;
Heartbeat
(80, John Byrum), where she was Carolyn Cassady; as Loretta Lynn in
Coal Miner’s Daughter
(80, Michael Apted);
Raggedy Man
(81, Jack Fisk, her husband);
Missing
(82, Costa-Gavras);
The River
(84, Mark Rydell);
Marie
(85, Roger Donaldson);
Violets Are Blue
(86, Fisk);
’Night, Mother
(86, Tom Moore), with Anne Bancroft;
Crimes of the Heart
(86, Robert Benton).

She took a few years off then and came back as someone happy to play supporting parts: as the Southern woman who is taught reality by her housekeeper in
The Long Walk Home
(90, Richard Pearce);
Hard Promises
(92, Martin Davidson); doing her best as Mrs. Garrison in
JFK
(91, Oliver Stone);
Trading Mom
(94, Tia Brelis);
The Good Old Boys
(95, Tommy Lee Jones);
Beyond the Call
(96, Tony Bill);
The Grass Harp
(96, Charles Matthau);
If These Walls Could Talk
(96, Nancy Savoca);
Affliction
(97, Paul Schrader);
Blast from the Past
(99, Hugh Wilson).

She was in the TV movie
Songs in Ordinary Time
(00, Rod Holcomb); delivering another outstanding and quiet performance in
In the Bedroom
(01, Todd Field); and
Midwives
(01, Glen Jordan) for TV. She also appeared as Zelda Fitzgerald with Jeremy Irons in
Last Call
(02, Henry Bromell);
Tuck Everlasting
(02, Jay Russell);
A Home at the End of the World
(04, Michael Mayer);
Gray Matters
(04, Sue Kramer);
Nine Lives
(05, Rodrigo García);
The Ring Two
(05, Hideo Nakata);
North Country
(05, Niki Caro);
An American Haunting
(06, Courtney Solomon);
Hot Rod
(07, Akiva Schaffer);
Pictures of Hollis Woods
(07, Bill);
Lake City
(08, Perry Moore).

Kevin Spacey
(Fowler), b. South Orange, New Jersey, 1959
In interviews nowadays, and on camera at the awards shows he gets invited to, Kevin Spacey is slowly accumulating his most intriguing performance. It is of a man fifty years old who has a twenty-year-old’s gravity. He is a disciple of acting, the theatre, and good work. He cannot abandon his terrific smarts, but he is patient (as if that could pass for slow and sincere), and he is unerringly of the mainstream. This could easily turn him into Our Greatest Actor, and it is self-sufficiently delicious. But do not be fooled: Kevin Fowler is and always was a chronic pretender, a naughty boy, a wicked mimic, and a scathing mind. Keyser Soze indeed! He can be our best actor, but only if we accept that acting is a bag of tricks that leaves scant room for being a real and considerate human being. So you can see his Lester Burnham in
American Beauty
(99, Sam Mendes), if you like, as the salt of the earth gone sour, a Mr. America saddened to death. Me, I think he’s just one of Kevin’s nasty jokers. But it won him the Oscar.

He attended Juilliard and had notable stage successes in
Henry IV, Part I; Ghosts; Long Day’s Journey Into Night;
and
Lost in Yonkers
. In addition to that, he had a great hit, in London and then New York, in 1998–99, as Hickey in O’Neill’s
The Iceman Cometh
.

His movie debut was in
Heartburn
(86, Mike Nichols);
Rocket Gibraltar
(88, Daniel Petrie);
Working Girl
(88, Nichols); his remarkable, and neurotic, Mel Profitt in the TV series
Wiseguy
(88)—the first unmistakable evidence of genius;
Dad
(89, Gary David Goldberg);
See No Evil, Hear No Evil
(89, Arthur Hiller);
Henry & June
(90, Philip Kaufman);
A Show of Force
(90, Bruno Barreto);
Glengarry Glen Ross
(92, James Foley); the murderer in
Consenting Adults
(92, Alan J. Pakula);
The Ref
(94, Ted Demme);
Outbreak
(95, Wolfgang Petersen); as the brilliant, scholarly killer in
Se7en
(95, David Fincher).

There was hilarious nastiness in his Hollywood executive in
Swimming with Sharks
(94, George Huang), which he also coproduced. Then he won a supporting actor Oscar as Verbal Kint in
The Usual Suspects
(95, Bryan Singer). He was the prosecuting attorney in
A Time to Kill
(96, Joel Schumacher); Buckingham in
Looking for Richard
(96, Al Pacino); and he then directed his first film,
Albino Alligator
(97).

He was very adroit as the TV cop in
L.A. Confidential
(97, Curtis Hanson), since when he has been swanning through the nonsense of
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
(97, Clint Eastwood); as
The Negotiator
(98, F. Gary Gray);
Hurlyburly
(98, Anthony Drazan). He did the bad-guy voice in
A Bug’s Life
(98, John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton); and he was in
The Big Kahuna
(99, John Swanbeck);
Ordinary Decent Criminal
(00, Thaddeus O’Sullivan);
Pay It Forward
(00, Mimi Leder);
K-PAX
(01, Iain Softley);
The Shipping News
(01, Lasse Hallström).

His resolve to be mainstream, a nice guy or a romantic lead, is by now as obstinate as it is fatuous. It’s like asking Lassie to be treacherous, and it may lead to films worse even than
The Life of David Gale
(03, Alan Parker).

In 2003, Spacey’s life changed considerably when he took on the artistic directorship of the Old Vic in London. There have been ups and downs, but the job has lasted, and it has allowed St. Kevin to pick up a new, nearly Wellesian voice, the heartfelt defender of daring theatrical enterprise. Yet in truth, I think Kevin himself is the biggest experiment, and to substantiate that one has only to call to the stand
Beyond the Sea
, written, produced and directed by Kev and with himself as Bobby Darin. The result is intoxicating, one of the really great dreadful films ever made, worthy of an annual “Beyond the Sea” award (why not give it on Oscar night?), as well as clinching evidence that this man is mad. Anything could happen.

No one can say he doesn’t work, and in the years since we have also had
The United States of Leland
(04, Matthew Ray Hoge), which Spacey produced;
Edison
(06, David J. Burke); Lex Luthor in
Superman Returns
(06, Singer);
Fred Claus
(07, David Dobkin);
21
(08, Robert Luketic), in which Kev takes the class to Las Vegas to clean up;
Recount
(08, Jay Roach), an entertaining account of the Florida election of 2000, which Spacey produced;
Shrink
(09, Jonas Pate), in which he plays a shrink to the Hollywood stars;
Telstar
(09, Nick Moran);
The Men Who Stare at Goats
(09, Grant Heslov).

Sam Spiegel
(1904–85), b. Jaroslau, Austria
Spiegel’s films won more Oscars than there have been films. Enough to stock a bowling alley with skittles and the rewards for slow preparation, the tarting up of ostensibly solemn subjects with melodrama, soporific production values, and a personality that comes on radical but is always cautious. Oscars in such profusion show how far a man has fulfilled Hollywood’s view of itself. His films were assembled with the tedious care that went into those weapons that once trundled across Red Square on May Day. They take as long to go past and they are greeted with dutiful applause.