Saturday, March 6, 2004

Briefly Noted...

Jim Amash, who inks for Archie Comics and conducts splendid interviews for Alter Ego magazine, has written a short but sweet piece on the late Rudy LaPick. It's over here on the Archie website.

I think I also forgot to mention that the current issue of Alter Ego is devoted in large part to the late, great Mike Sekowsky, a wonderful artist who received too much of his acclaim after he left us. The issue contains an interview with Mike's widow, some history on his career, and a round table discussion about him between myself, Dave Stevens, Scott Shaw! and Floyd Norman. If you are interested in Mike, you must pick up this issue. And if you're interested in comics, you're already a subscriber.

• Posted at 9:38 PM · LINK

Up Front Offer

Shelly Goldstein (chanteuse extraordinaire) just e-mailed to tell me that The Front just came out on DVD, and that it would be a dandy thing for me to put up this Amazon link so you can purchase it online. This is not why I brought up the movie but it's a fine idea. And while I'm at it, I'll tell a story I heard once about Zero Mostel and blacklisting. This was during the period when Mostel could not get hired for television or movies. One night, he's having a drink in some bar with an actor friend and the actor says, "I'm so miserable. I don't understand why I'm not working." Mostel replies, "Hey, I'm not working, either." And the actor friend answers him, "I know why you're not working. You're blacklisted. Why the hell am I not working?" That exchange is not in the movie but it should have been.

• Posted at 2:07 PM · LINK

Blacklist Memories

For no better reason than that it was on a movie channel I receive, I found myself re-watching The Front, the 1976 movie about blacklisting written by Walter Bernstein and directed by Martin Ritt. Both gents actually were blacklisted, as were several cast members including Zero Mostel and Herschel Bernardi. When first I saw the film, I suspected that its makers had originally intended that the lead role by filled by another blacklisted actor, Jack Gilford — it was not long after Gilford had been nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Save the Tiger — but that for billing reasons, they wound up with Woody Allen. Later, I read an interview with Ritt or Bernstein (I forget which) and the person said something that suggested Allen had been their first and only choice...but I'm only half-convinced. Allen was fine in the film, of course, but I later heard a top studio executive cite this among films he felt were harmed, not helped, by the presence of a star whose very name defined the film wrongly. In this case, the theory was that people came expecting a Woody Allen film, while others saw the names of Allen and Mostel and expected a zany comedy. Whatever, he said, good movies sometimes flop because the advertising doesn't draw in the kind of people likely to enjoy the film and/or it causes audience to walk in the door expecting the wrong thing.

I thought The Front was a good movie which presented a good, non-hysterical view of that period in entertainment history when actors and writers were being ostracized either for their political beliefs or because someone had claimed they'd done something left-wing which they might or might not have actually done. I once discussed that era with Al and Helen Levitt, who were among the many blacklisted screenwriters, and they both made the point that even if you bought the premise that it was okay to pressure producers to not hire certain folks because of political activities, you should have objected to how inaccurate the process was. Without a trial or any avenue of appeal, people were "convicted" based on rumors, innuendos and things like someone who "thought" he'd seen them at a certain rally. There were cases of Joe Smith getting blacklisted because someone had confused him with John Smith. When radio personality John Henry Faulk brought his successful lawsuit against the company that compiled lists of those to not be hired, one of the key components in his victory was convincing the jury that the blacklisters routinely made whopping errors and never corrected them.

Obviously, the Levitts did not agree that someone could or should be fired because of their politics but they made the point that it was like someone who believed in the death penalty so strongly that they didn't care if the wrong people were being executed. They said this to me some time before DNA testing began proving that a shocking percentage of murder convictions are erroneous. I think of them every time I see some death penalty proponent who views executing the innocent as a minor, acceptable flaw in the system.

Al and Helen wrote for years through fronts or under the names of "Tom and Helen August." Though we hear stories of Walt Disney being a rabid anti-Communist, he routinely employed them and knew full well who he was hiring. The Writers Guild later "corrected" credits on The Monkey's Uncle and The Misadventures of Merlin Jones to put the Levitts' real names in place of their pen names. The couple, both of whom have passed on, felt they should have received credit on several others, including Old Yeller — and they still may, albeit posthumously. Anyway, they both liked The Front and felt it was an accurate portrayal, confirming what I had sensed. They especially liked the end credits which list not only the names of those who worked on the film but the date when some of them were blacklisted, thereby driving home the point that this really happened.

One blacklisted actor who wasn't in The Front was John Randolph, a veteran of stage and film who died February 24 at the age of 88. Randolph was blacklisted in 1955 and like many in that situation, fled to the stage. He got no work in TV or movies until 1966 when John Frankenheimer cast him in the film, Seconds. Thereafter, he turned up on screens rather steadily, though not in The Front. For some reason though, people think he was in that movie. There have been two exhaustive biographies of Zero Mostel — Zero Mostel: A Biography by Jared Brown (out of print) and Zero Dances by Arthur Sainer. Both mention John Randolph being in The Front and both are wrong. Quite a few articles that were written about the film at the time of its release and since have listed Randolph among its cast members and they're all wrong. Maybe he filmed some scenes for it but he's not in the finished picture. Oddly enough, the same year he wasn't in this movie that he keeps being credited for, Randolph got into a public dispute with the producers of All the President's Men for not giving him credit on a movie he was in...or at least, his voice was. He provided the sound of Attorney General John Mitchell in the phone conversation with Dustin Hoffman and was quite distressed to find his name unlisted in the closing crawl. There's some sort of odd irony in there: A blacklisted actor being "named" in the wrong time and place.

• Posted at 11:30 AM · LINK

The Martha Matter

Waiting for a lunch date this afternoon, I couldn't help but overhear a spirited discussion about the Martha Stewart verdict. Some of those participating thought she was guilty and some thought she was innocent, and it struck me that none of these folks had arrived at their views by studying the merits of the case. The "Not Guilty" crowd merely felt that the world of stock trading is full of sleazy dealings and that if Ken Lay can escape indictment for something a zillion times worse, there's something selective about the prosecution of Ms. Stewart. The "Guilty" voters, meanwhile, seemed to just dislike her, period. And of course, if you don't like someone then they must be guilty of all accusations.

I'm always amazed at the depth of loathing some people have for folks they've never met and who've never done them or anyone any harm. Years ago at a party, I heard someone tick off a list of famous individuals who deserved to rot in Hades and the last two named were Timothy McVeigh and Kathie Lee Gifford...to which several around muttered, "Yeah! Kathie Lee!" I'm no particular fan of Ms. Gifford but...well, call me crazy but I think blowing up a building and killing 168 people might be a wee bit worse than being annoying on a talk show. I always got the feeling some people who abhorred Kathie Lee — and I feel this way again with Martha — disliked her because she reminded them of someone they didn't get along with in high school.

If I try to view today's verdict in some sort of positive light...well, I guess it's good to know that rich people can sometimes get convicted in our court system. Still, I'd feel a little better about this if I believed she'd actually broken a law and that it's a law that is applied equally to all.

And I guess I should point out that I don't know that she didn't break a genuine law. I don't know...and neither do a lot of people who are elated at the verdict. They only know how they feel about Martha Stewart, and maybe how they feel about someone "big" getting nailed to the wall.

• Posted at 1:03 AM · LINK

March 5, 2004 • Current • March 7, 2004