Monday Minute
No. 167 | September 27, 2010

Late for the Show

It’s an honor just to be nominated, as the saying goes, and some actors wait all their lives for that honor to come.  It’s no doubt a sweet moment to hear the news that the Motion Picture Academy has chosen your work to be among the year’s very best.

For many, including some of the best, the call never comes.  For a rare few, it comes too late.  A handful of times the Academy has nominated actors for Oscars, or presented them awards, after their death.  We’ll look at five of them this week.

Our theme this week
Actors with posthumous nominations for Oscars

James Dean (1931-1955):  East of Eden, Giant

James Dean was a guy who changed everything.  Not single-handedly, of course, but he was part of a small group that did.

In the history of film acting, there have been a few key developments:  the introduction of a naturalistic style, under D.W. Griffith et al. in the early days of silents, the transition to sound in the late 1920s, and method acting, which first became popular in the decade after the war.  Method actors of the ’50s are the dividing line between everything that was before and everything that has been since.

Dean was younger than others in that influential first generation of method actors (Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Marilyn Monroe), but in his short career he was one of its biggest stars.  His iconic status as a film actor rests on just three performances.  For director Elia Kazan, he played Cal Trask, the troubled twin brother in the adaptation of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden.  Dean famously diverged from the script, improvising some scenes, and won great acclaim for the role.  Also in 1955, he starred as Jim Stark, (once again) a troubled teenager, in Rebel Without a Cause.  There was nothing like it before.  “You’re tearing me apart!” was a primal scream for a new generation.  It was a defining role and a defining film, and the age of teenage rebellion was born.  His next and last film was Giant, costarring with Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson.  Dean played Jett Rink, the guy who strikes oil, makes it big, and eventually pays the price for it.  (More on Giant here.)

Dean is best known for his films, but his list of acting credits is considerably longer than those three roles.  Dean performed in dozens of productions for television (for Studio One, Omnibus, Kraft Television Theater, et al.), and he did some notable stage work on and off Broadway.

On September 30, 1955, Dean died in a car accident in central California.  It was a few months after the release of East of Eden, for which he was later nominated for Best Actor, and a few weeks before Rebel Without a Cause. For 1956, he was again nominated for Best Actor, for Giant.

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East of Eden (1955)
Elia Kazan, director
John Steinbeck (novel), Paul Osborn (screenplay); writers
Ted McCord, director of photography
James Dean

 

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Giant (1956)
George Stevens, director
Edna Ferber (novel), Fred Guiol, Ivan Moffatt (screenplay),writers
William C. Mellor, cinematography
James Dean

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Quote of note
“Man has a choice and it’s a choice that makes him a man.”
—Cal Trask (James Dean), East of Eden (1955)

…58…59…60.

Monday Minute
No. 112 | June 7, 2010

Derrick and the Dominoes

“Drill, baby, drill!” is not an argument meant to win a debate.  It’s a slogan mocking the idea that we should even have a debate.  But like it or not, it’s been the de facto energy policy of the country for many decades.  Presidents for as long as anyone can remember have been promising change.  Nothing happens.  Maybe now the time has come.  We shall see.

I generally don’t aim to be topical with weekly themes, but the story that’s dominating the news is not going away.  Oil gushes into the Gulf of Mexico today, and it will again tomorrow, and the day after.  Based on the latest predictions, the gushing will continue until August, if not Christmas.  This isn’t just a news story.  It’s history as it happens.

Before we get to the five films of the week, you may want to look at a clip from the great Robert Flaherty, a filmmaker with a fondness for exotic locations and the people who live in them (Nanook of the North, Man of Aran).  Near the end of his career he filmed Louisiana Story.  A film about life on the bayou, it’s a relatively early depiction of the effects of oil.  When a cajun family finds oil bubbling up in their swamp, they lease the land to an oil company, which erects a derrick to drill 14,000 feet into the earth.  After a blowout, the rig is soon capped, but mostly the film portrays the harmony of industry and nature, and the promise of oil to bring prosperity to the people.  The film won accolades at the time.  It is arfully done, though today it seems somewhat naïve.  There may be a reason for that.  The film was funded by Standard Oil of New Jersey.

The film has value, in any case.  It offers us a glimpse of Louisiana life that doesn’t exist anymore.  There’s no oil derrick in the clip here, just a cajun boy with a lot of courage, and an alligator.

Louisiana Story (1948)
Robert Flaherty, director
Virgil Thomson, composer (the only film score to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music)

Our theme this week
Films about oil, and what it does to people

Giant (1956)

Don’t bother to watch the movie unless you have nothing else to do for three hours and twenty-one minutes.  They don’t call it Giant for nothing.

In the last of his three great film performances, James Dean co-stars as Jett Rink, a worker on a ranch in Texas owned by the Benedict family.  When Luz Benedict (Mercedes McCambridge) dies, she leaves a small plot of land to Jett.  Before long, he strikes oil, and that changes everything.  Tensions run high between Jett and the rest of the Benedicts, including Bick and Leslie (Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor), before Jett heads off to start an oil drilling company.  Jett goes from rich to super-rich.  During the war Jett persuades Bick to get into the oil business, and soon Bick and the Benedict family are wealthier than even before.  They are all rolling in it, though not particularly happy, and feuding.  Jett is worst off, ending up a pathetic drunk.  Ain’t oil grand?

More than just a story about the bad fortunes of getting rich, Giant is also a reminder that poor treatment of Mexican Americans has a long history.  The Benedicts are less than enlightened in their attitudes toward immigrants, but after some time—and children, intermarriage, and grandchildren—Bick, at least, has a change of heart.

Adapted from the Edna Ferber novel, the film garnered ten Oscar nominations, including a posthumous nod for Dean, who died before the film opened.  George Stevens won the Best Director prize.  The film did great box office, setting a record for Warner Bros., its top grosser until Superman in 1978.

One casting note, from the “please check that woman’s ID” department:  Elizabeth Taylor played the mother of the late Dennis Hopper and Caroll Baker.  Yet Taylor was only four years older than Hopper, and is a year younger than Baker.

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Giant (1956)
George Stevens, director
Trailer

 

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Giant (1956)
George Stevens, director
James Dean, Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor

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Quote of Note
Leslie Benedict:  Money isn’t everything, Jett.
Jett Rink:  Not when you’ve got it.
—Leslie Benedict (Elizabeth Taylor), Jett Rink (James Dean), Giant (1956)

…58…59…60.