Remembering Peter O'Toole, Part III: Elder Statesman

Recognition at last

Parts One and Two

The '90s found Peter O'Toole working apace. He played the snide secretary to John Goodman's King Ralph (1991), chased fairies as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Fairy Tale: A True Story (1997) and battled demonic worms in Phantoms (1998). He continued dabbling in television, being one of about 100 stars in the 1996 Gulliver's Travels miniseries, and adapted his stage triumph Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell. O'Toole always gave value for money, even when the roles were forgettable.

O'Toole established himself as a lovable raconteur. His two-volume memoir, Loitering With Intent, was warmly received. Through the '90s and early 2000s he gave several thoughtful interviews with Charlie Rose, expounding on his life and career. He also became familiar on the late night talk show circuit, where his eccentricity and ever-so-slightly tipsy demeanor dimly recalled the hellraiser of decades past. Who can forget his 1995 entrance on David Letterman atop a beer-drinking camel?

O'Toole never patched things up with Sian Phillips - in fact, the two reportedly never spoke after their divorce - and his relationship with girlfriend Karen Brown (producing a son, Lorcan) dissolved in similar acrimony. But O'Toole remained close to his children; daughter Kate, who followed Peter into acting, called O'Toole "a great dad and the best friend I ever had."

In 2003, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences offered O'Toole a Lifetime Achievement Award. O'Toole, a seven-time nominee, was initially disinclined to accept, saying that he'd "like to win the lovely bugger outright" after so many failures. But his children persuaded him to do so would be ungraciously. O'Toole reconsidered, giving a gracious acceptance speech to the body that finally saw fit to honor him.

O'Toole's 0-8 record as a nominee has drawn much comment. In 1962 he lost to Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird. No shame in this: a newcomer against an established star in an iconic role. In Becket, he split the vote with Richard Burton, allowing Rex Harrison to win for My Fair Lady. Less excusably, O'Toole's losses for The Lion in Winter (to Cliff Robertson in Charley) and Goodbye Mr. Chips (to John Wayne for True Grit) come down to Hollywood's practice of awarding actors "make-up" Oscars for unrecognized past performances.

Later turns were bested by Marlon Brando in The Godfather, Robert De Niro in Raging Bull and Ben Kingsley in Gandhi - heavyweights in arguably their best roles. Besides the competition, consider the films. The Ruling Class and The Stunt Man are off-the-wall cult flicks - it's surprising O'Toole even earned nominations. By contrast, My Favorite Year was a light-hearted comedy, a genre the Academy typically scorns. A mixture of studio politics and bad luck prevented O'Toole's success.

Competitive Oscar or no, O'Toole plugged gamely along. Most of his pictures were undistinguished, like the insipid Troy (2004) and forgettable Stardust (2007). Few except critics saw his amiable performance in 2005's Lassie. In 2006 he reteamed with Omar Sharif in One Night With the King, in which he played the Prophet Samuel - for about 30 seconds. Television gave him meatier roles in Augustus and Casanova.

O'Toole earned his last Oscar nomination for Venus (2006), playing an aged actor obsessed with Jodie Whittaker's callow teenager. Venus earned good reviews, yet I find it dry and slightly perverse - though O'Toole gives provides enough charm to justify watching. "It is not easy to define that special, paradoxical glamor Mr. O’Toole wears like a well-worn, perfectly tailored jacket," wrote A.O. Scott, "but whatever it is, he still has it." Many observers considered O'Toole the sentimental favorite that year, but Forrest Whittaker won for The Last King of Scotland instead.

On another plane, there's Pixar's Ratatouille (2007). O'Toole voices the vulture-like Anton Ego, a snobbish food critic brought down to earth by a simple stew prepared by a rat. He delivers a beautiful monologue contemplating the place of criticism and its need to champion the original, the brave, the unexpected rather than mere snark (Groggy, take note). Many felt O'Toole deserved an Oscar nomination; if there was ever an argument for the Academy awarding voice actors, Anton Ego is it.

In 2008 O'Toole landed a plum role on Showtime's The Tudors, playing Pope Paul III. Larded with sex, violence and historical absurdity, but buttressed by (mostly) good acting and impressive pageantry, Michael Hirst's Henrican soap opera is a textbook guilty pleasure. But there's no guilt enjoying O'Toole's gleefully wicked turn as a Holy Mob boss. As a spidery hypocrite, winkingly aware of his own treachery, Paul makes a mark with little screen time.

O'Toole closed out the decade with Dean Spanley (2009). Based on Lord Dunsany's 1939 novel, it's the whimsical tale of a bored Edwardian Englishman (Jeremy Northam) who becomes enchanted by an eccentric priest (Sam Neill) who envisions his past life as a dog. O'Toole plays Northam's father, eccentric and emotionally constipated, unable to show affection towards. Yet his visits with the priest reawaken O'Toole's dormant emotions, especially towards his older son, lost in the Boer War. O'Toole handles this development with beautiful subtlety, leading to a heartrending denouement.

In 2012 O'Toole retired from acting, shortly after completing work on Katherine of Alexandria. "The heart for it has gone out of me: it won’t come back," he informed fans. "It’s my belief that one should decide for oneself when it is time to end one’s stay." Having suffered a long illness, O'Toole finally met his sad, though not entirely unexpected end last Saturday.
 

Lions in winter: O'Toole with Vanessa Redgrave in Venus

"The common denominator of all my friends is that they're dead," O'Toole once observed. Indeed, O'Toole outlasted most of his contemporaries. Richard Burton is long gone; Oliver Reed, Richard Harris and Alan Bates departed a decade ago. Of O'Toole's generation, only a handful still live, let alone work: Michael Caine, Albert Finney, Vanessa Redgrave, Maggie Smith.

Consider how O'Toole compares to these peers. Richard Burton is typically remembered for squandering his formidable talents on booze, bad movies and Elizabeth Taylor. Mention Oliver Reed and you conjure drunken TV appearances and public nudity, not the gifted star of The Three Musketeers and Women in Love. Bates, Caine, Finney, Harris and Redgrave retain respect, but few would name them all-time greats (Smith perhaps being an exception).

O'Toole, in contrast, receives reverential status. He's known for carousing yes, but it never eclipsed his work. "The remarkable thing," David Thomsen once wrote, "is [O'Toole] has outlived some in this group in ways no one would have predicted. He was picked early on as someone who would destroy himself, not just by drinking but because of his whole attitude and manner." Close as O'Toole came in the '70s, his subsequent recovery cemented his status as a legend.

 How many contemporary stars did O'Toole inspire to pursue acting? Tom Cruise once told USA Today that "I remember seeing Lawrence of Arabia... and I knew I wanted to be an actor." Keanu Reeves said that The Ruling Class and Becket "had a great impact on me...I love [O'Toole's] game and vitality." Tom Hiddleston developed Loki for Thor by watching The Lion in Winter. "What's beautiful about his performance is you see how damaged he is... It's almost as if he's living with a layer of skin peeled away," Hiddleston remarked.

More simply, O'Toole's body of work speaks for itself. "If you wanted to be a proper actor... you have to have versatility," he once observed. T.E. Lawrence, Lord Jim, Jack, Lord Gurney, Henry II, Alan Swann, Reginald Johnson, Eli Cross, Maurice and yes, Anton Ego could attest to that.

Rest in peace, Peter O'Toole. You are missed.

Remembering Peter O'Toole, Part II: Decline and Renewal

Mad, bad and dangerous to know

Part One

The 1970s saw Peter O'Toole's career unraveling. Now one of the world's biggest stars, O'Toole could choose his parts - yet his film roles, at least, were generally forgettable and unrewarding. During this time, he became better known as a raucous hell raiser than an actor.

The decade started, at least, on a high note with Peter Medak's The Ruling Class (1972). Peter Barnes' surreal play ruthlessly satirizes Britain's political establishment. O'Toole plays Jack, 14th Earl of Gurney, who succeeds after his father dies in an embarrassing accident. Jack is a schizophrenic who thinks he's Jesus Christ, and his relatives scheme to either cure or disinherit him. They succeed all too well: Jack goes from a loopy, loving Christ figure to a very proper English aristocrat indeed - Jack the Ripper.

O'Toole had seen Barnes' play during its 1968 stage run and quickly bought the film rights. Director Peter Medak badly wanted to adapt it, but O'Toole needed some persuading. By Medak's account, he won the star over by joining him on an epic pub crawl through London. O'Toole showed his devotion to the project by forfeiting his entire salary, choosing instead an oversized paycheck for Man of La Mancha.

The Ruling Class rivals Lawrence as O'Toole's best performance. Barnes' surreal set pieces force O'Toole to give an exceedingly physical performance: belting out Verdi, dancing a cakewalk, hopping on and off a makeshift crucifix, "levitating" a bench. O'Toole does even better burbling absurd aphorisms, as when he declares his love for Grace Shelley "from the bottom of my soul to the tip of my penis." There's no room for subtlety here; O'Toole devours scenery in a hammy, outsized, almost operatic performance. And it's utterly glorious.

O'Toole flawlessly transitions to psychotic killer in the second half. Defeated by the "Electric Christ" and browbeaten by his peers, he takes their perorations about greed, hunting and sexual licentiousness to their illogical conclusion. Jack's rants about capital punishment and fornication strike listeners as very sound indeed - though to us, he's ranting just as he'd done before, psychoses welling up from an inner pool of madness. O'Toole walks a careful tightrope in these scenes between absurd caricature and bone-chilling psychopath. And sometimes he's both at once.

Sadly, The Ruling Class marks a bright spot in a dismal period. Murphy's War (1971) is another trip to the Lawrence/Lord Jim obsessed hero well, and not a particularly rewarding one. Man of La Mancha (1972) was a colossal flop, proving O'Toole out of his depth in musicals. Even diehard fans are better off forgetting Rosebud (1975) and the notorious Caligula (1979). ("What is a knight of the realm doing in a porno movie?" he asked John Gielgud.) Even a rare worthwhile role, like his fine Lord Chelmsford in Zulu Dawn (1979), drew little attention.

Besides The Ruling Class, O'Toole's best role from this period is Clive Donner's made-for-TV Rogue Male (1976). Based on Geoffrey Householder's 1939 novel (which earlier inspired Fritz Lang's Man Hunt), O'Toole plays an English aristocrat obsessed with assassinating Adolf Hitler - dovetailing nicely with O'Toole's own fascination with the Nazi dictator. Not that many have seen it: Rogue Male spent years languishing in obscurity, remaining hard to see even today.

O'Toole gained more notoriety for uncouth off-screen behavior: marathon benders, showing up drunk on sets, sniping at costars and directors. One notorious incident occurred during the filming of Rosebud. As a prank, Kenneth Tynan sent O'Toole a letter claiming the IRA planned to blow up his hotel. Tynan's joke was in decidedly bad taste, which doesn't excuse his victim's reaction. O'Toole tracked Tynan down and, along with two toughs, beat the critic within an inch of his life.

Such antics brought more than bad publicity. O'Toole discovered that he suffered from diabetes and stomach cancer, losing his pancreas and part of his stomach. In 1979, his marriage to Sian Phillips dissolved in considerable acrimony and mutual infidelity. And an increasing number of producers, viewing O'Toole as an unstable drunk and "box office poison," refused to employ him. Robert Sellers notes that by the late '70s "O'Toole was fast becoming a parody of himself: a caricature faded film star."

Nadir: O'Toole in Caligula

At this point, O'Toole could have followed peers Richard Burton and Oliver Reed into ignominy, accepting roles in awful films for money. But O'Toole successfully reinvented himself. Restricted by health if nothing else, he restricted his drinking to discreet tippling rather than roaring benders. His booze-ravaged voice, once a melodic lilt, settled into a sumptuous velvet growl. Best of all, O'Toole again started receiving roles worthy of his talent.

Richard Rush gave O'Toole his fifth Oscar nomination with the The Stunt Man (1980). Rush lobbied for O'Toole to play director Eli Ross, even when the studio insisted on a more bankable star. "The character of the director was of course one that I immediately projected onto...and I desperately wanted O'Toole to play it," Rush said later. O'Toole needed little convincing; he'd enjoyed Rush's Freebie and the Bean (1974) and was eager to work with him. After reading the script, O'Toole reportedly told Rush "Unless you let me do your film, I will kill you."

O'Toole's Eli Cross amalgamates every obsessed director O'Toole ever worked with, David Lean particularly. He torments Steve Railsback's fugitive-turned-stuntman with megalomaniac rants ("If God could do the things we do, he'd be a happy man!") and murderous stunts. Completely obsessed by his work, Cross views harboring a fugitive as a minor inconvenience if it helps finish his film. He surveys the set from a camera crane, an enigmatic creator comfortable in his absolute power of imagination. And pity the lowly assistant who tampers in his domain...

My Favorite Year (1982) proves an even better showcase. Compared to Stunt Man's acid satire it's a gentle, bathetic work, longing for the magic that only movies can bring. Richard Benjamin's film focuses on a '50s TV show modeled on Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows. O'Toole plays washed-up matinee idol Alan Swann, ostensibly based on Errol Flynn, but drawing heavily on O'Toole himself. It's hard to avoid autobiographical assumptions when Benjamin uses clips from Lord Jim and The Great Catherine as Swann's own vehicles.

Alan Swann became O'Toole's signature role as much as Lawrence or Henry II. Compared to Jack and Eli Cross he's more straightforwardly comic. O'Toole has great fun whether boozing in a hotel room, lashing out at producers or ferrying Mark Linn-Baker's frazzled young producer around New York. He gets big laughs showing off something that's "for ladies only" and his frantic breakdown before the final show. "I'm not an actor - I'm a movie star!" he bellows in the movie's most famous scene.

As in Lawrence, O'Toole matches flamboyance with measured gestures. One beautiful scene has Swann mournfully watching his daughter play; his wordless stare speaks volumes. Regret and self-loathing underpin the silly hijinks. Swann's screen image is a lie he can't escape - he's trapped by an idea of being a hero, even as he makes no pretense as such. Hence his pained reaction to Linn-Baker's last act scorn, or his gallant dance with an aged fan. Hence, also, his decision to go on with the show, routing the goons menacing Joseph Bologna's show boss. Year closes on the perfect image of Swann celebrating his victory: fantasy made flesh, if only for one glorious moment.

O'Toole complemented these cinematic triumphs with stage and small screen roles. He won accolades as a Roman General in ABC's miniseries Masada and voiced Sherlock Holmes in a popular animated series. While his 1980 Macbeth earned negative notices (one critic sniffed "he delivers every line...as if addressing an audience of deaf Eskimos"), O'Toole successfully reprised his role as Tanner in Man and Superman and made a superb Henry Higgins in a 1987 Pygmalion. In 1989 he starred in Keith Waterhouse's Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, playing a famous Spectator columnist. It became O'Toole's best stage role since Shylock: he'd reprise it in 1999 and star in a made-for-TV version.

Another standout role from this period is Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987). O'Toole's role is relatively minor: as Pu Yi's tutor Reginald Johnson, he tries to inject perspective and sanity into the monarch's sheltered life. It marks a graceful transition from star to character actor, able to contribute to films without dominating it. This quiet but powerful performance helped establish O'Toole as an elder statesman of cinema.

O'Toole, once a tyro who often feuded incessantly with fellow actors, had evidently mellowed with age. Richard Rush declared O'Toole "an absolute dream to work with. You couldn't ask for a more perfect working companion." Young actors especially warmed to O'Toole. Vincent Spano, O'Toole's costar in Creator (1985), recounts that O'Toole would spend hours tell[ing him] all these great stories about his childhood, growing up in Ireland."

By the end of the '80s, O'Toole recouped his reputation as one of the greatest working actors. Lawrence of Arabia's 1989 restoration and re-release further cemented his critical standing. Now O'Toole could look forward to his autumn years with hope rather than trepidation.

Continue to Part Three

Remembering Tom Laughlin

Today I returned from my Sunday chores to learn that Peter O'Toole had died. Taken aback, I demurred on an instant reaction, unsure how to address his passing. By the time I put some thoughts together, I learned two others had joined him: Joan Fontaine and Tom Laughlin.

I'll put my usual blogging on hold to profile these recently passed stars. They deserve more than cursory notice, for all made a considerable cultural impact. Even if, in the case of our first subject, a somewhat absurd one.

It's somehow appropriate that on the same day my favorite actor passed away, this blog's bete noir joined him. Tom Laughlin, actor-writer-director behind the Billy Jack films, died Thursday at age 82. An all-star overachiever, Laughlin willed his creation into an improbable success. Unfortunately Laughlin's ambitions greatly exceeded his talent, producing a filmography more laughable than laudable.

A Minneapolis, Minnesota native, Laughlin played football at Wisconsin and Marquette before drifting into acting. After some stage work, he won bit parts in Tea and Sympathy, South Pacific and Gidget. Laughlin scored a starring role in The Delinquents (1957), notable as Robert Altman's directorial debut. But his Method acting style infuriated Altman, who dubbed Laughlin a "pain in the ass." Laughlin directed a few minor films around this time, but his career failed to catch on.

Frustrated by his cinematic failure, Laughlin set up a Montessori school in Santa Monica, California with his wife Dolores Taylor. Their school took in disadvantaged children, orphans and runaways, providing only general guidance while allowing the children to learn at their own pace. Laughlin and Taylor's experiences in this field informed Billy Jack's Freedom School, a pseudo-hippie commune where Taylor's Jean encourages children to explore their creativity.

Laughlin conceived Billy Jack as far back as 1954. His lifelong passion for Indian rights informed the script which he tried and failed to sell to several studios. The character, re-envisioned as an ex-Green Beret hapkido expert, first surfaced in Born Losers (1967). There's little to recommend this show, a chintzy biker film co-starring Jane Russell and Jeremy Slade. But its success enabled Laughlin to make Billy Jack (1971), and the rest was history.

Initially Warner Brothers fumbled the release, editing out controversial content and dumping it on the grindhouse circuit. Laughlin sued the studio before finding a more creative approach. He bought back copies of the film, angling to re-release it himself, and painstakingly negotiated with theaters for screenings. He spent $300,000 on a TV ad campaign, cutting TV spots and buying airtime on networks across the nation. Laughlin's efforts paid off handsomely: Billy Jack went from B-movie flop to massive hit.

Billy Jack played perfectly to the era's burgeoning counterculture. Its most obnoxious features - endless musical numbers at the Freedom School, lengthy guerrilla theater segments - mark it as an artifact of its time, as does the New Age obsession with Indian rituals. But Billy himself remains its most enduring legacy. A prototype for Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal and other action stars, he spouts semi-profound koans while righteously kicking redneck ass. Billy Jack's most famous scene carefully treads the line between ludicrous and awesome:

One respects Laughlin's tenacity, business savvy and defense of principle. His personality, less so. Laughlin boasted that "The youth of this country have only two heroes: Ralph Nader and Billy Jack." He soon claimed that the CIA was working to suppress his films. Hyper-sensitive to criticism, he sponsored an essay contest to rebut critics of The Trial of Billy Jack. "The student should be free to enjoy the inner experience... without the imposition of someone else's opinion," he commented.

Laughlin's thin skin extended to his professional relationships. A Time profile ascribed to Laughlin "a temper... as infamous as Mussolini's." Billy Jack actor David Roya describes Laughlin forcing him to perform dangerous stunts, bilking him out of pay and an acrimonious lawsuit over billing. He frittered his newfound clout by loudly inveighing against Hollywood's studio system. He demanded complete control over his next feature, pushing for a nationwide release rather than a gradual roll out.

The Trial of Billy Jack (1974) ably documents Laughlin's descent into megalomania. It retains the original's enthusiasm for Indian rights, martial arts, spiritualism and unconventional education. But Laughlin insists on dragging in "big issues" like Vietnam and Watergate, putting the System on trial alongside Billy Jack. Laughlin posits himself a debating partner of the establishment: the FBI monitors the Freedom School's "scorching exposes" on local business leaders, before dispatching the National Guard to massacre everyone.

Laughlin's 15 minutes of fame soon ebbed. Trial proved another hit, but garnered toxic critical reviews. Even fans avoided his next film, The Master Gunfighter (1975). The final nail was Billy Jack Goes to Washington (1977), so bad it never saw release. Predictably, Laughlin ascribed its failure to a government conspiracy; it's more likely his exorbitant ego caught up with him. After bit parts in The Big Sleep (1978) and The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981), Laughlin's movie career died.

Banished from Hollywood, Laughlin nonetheless retained delusions of grandeur. He regularly ran for President, using his website to promote a bizarre political-psychological-spiritual philosophy. Laughlin constantly promised a fifth Billy Jack movie that never materialized: he shot only a few scenes of The Return of Billy Jack in the '80s, while another film where he "debated" George W. Bush never got past the idea stage. Laughlin's later activities were curtailed by ill health, suffering several strokes in 2007.

The Billy Jack movies retain a fervent cult following. And to Laughlin's credit, his innovative promotional antics made a genuine impact on the industry. For Groggy's money however, The Trial of Billy Jack is the worst movie ever made. For that achievement, if nothing else, Laughlin earns our recognition. 

John Ford: The Columbia Films Collection

New DVD set being released by TCM: John Ford - The Columbia Films Collection, including several of Ford's more obscure works. The New York Times has a nice write-up here.

Films included are:

The Whole Town's Talking (1935)
The Long Gray Line (1955)
Gideon's Day (1958)
The Last Hurrah (1958)
Two Rode Together (1961)

I'm a champion of Two Rode Together, a more pointed revisiting of The Searchers (though not as artistically accomplished). The Long Gray Line is... okay. As a Jack Hawkins fan, I'm most keen on catching Gideon's Day.

Good news to wake up to on a dreary Sunday.

RIP Hal Needham and Marcia Wallace

A few days late with this... stuntman-turned-director Hal Needham passed away Friday at age 82. After serving in the Korean War as a paratrooper, Needham became one of Hollywood's premiere stuntmen. A close friend of Burt Reynolds, Needham graduated to directing with Smokey and the Bandit, also penning its screenplay. That movie's success led to a prolific, if not especially distinguished career: Hooper, The Cannonball Run, Stroker Ace.

Few of Needham's films are good, and some absolutely terrible. But he'll always get a pass for Smokey and the Bandit, a big part of my childhood, and a not-quite-guilty pleasure even today.

We also lost Marcia Wallace to breast cancer at age 70. Well-known for The Bob Newhart Show and a regular on game shows like Hollywood Squares, for my generation she'll always be the bitter, sarcastic yet strangely likeable Mrs. Krabappel from The Simpsons.

Rest in peace to both.

Groggy On Moviepilot: The Twenty Best Spaghetti Western Titles

Groggy's put his recent Spaghetti Western obsession to good use by publishing this article for Moviepilot: The Twenty Best Spaghetti Western Titles. Relish some of the most ridiculous (or awesome?) titles in movie history, served with cheap sarcasm.

Note that I'm mainly commenting on the titles of the Spaghettis in question, not the movies themselves. I haven't seen several of them. But if you know how to see And They Smelled the Strange, Exciting, Dangerous Scent of Dollars, let's hear it!

RIP Carlo Lizzani

Another major figure in Italian cinema passed away Saturday. Carlo Lizzani, director, screenwriter, and documentary filmmaker, died at age 91. He evidently committed suicide by jumping out a window.

As a screenwriter, Lizzani worked on key titles in the neorealist movement, including Germany: Year Zero and Bitter Rice. He generated a formidable directorial resume, producing historical dramas (The Last Days of Mussolini), Spaghetti Westerns (The Hills Run Red), crime films (Bandits in Milan) and comedies (Roma Bene). He also made several well-regarded documentaries, and in 1996 fictionalized the production of Rossellini's Rome: Open City with his film Celluloide.

If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death

"I am your pallbearer."

Today we meet another Spaghetti Western icon. Described by Len Liu as a cross between James Bond and Mandrake the Magician, Gianni Garko's Sartana has more style and wit than most of his compatriots. Five official movies begot innumerable ripoffs, some teaming Sartana with Django and Trinity! His first adventure, If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death (1968), has everything a Spaghetti fan could want - though it might leave the non-converted cold.

See if we can follow this. Sartana (Gianni Garko) arrives on the scene of a stagecoach robbery, wiping out Morgan's (Klaus Kinski) outlaw gang. Another coach gets robbed by General Mendoza's (Fernando Sancho) Mexican bandits, only for Mendoza to be double-crossed by Lansky (William Berger). Lansky's in cahoots with a small-town Mayor (Sydney Chaplin) and banker (Gianni Rizzo) for the stagecoach payroll, but he can't trust his bosses anymore than Morgan or Mendoza. With everyone betraying each other, Sartana patiently waits to swoop in.

What Sartana lacks in sophistication, it compensates with fast-paced fun. Director Gianfranco Parolini places heavy emphasis on Spaghetti nuts-and-bolts: betrayal, greed, violent action. Scarcely five minutes goes by without a shootout or massacre, Parolini staging the gundowns with childish aplomb. Not satisfied with Sartana gunning down five baddies at once? Let Lasky escalate things to genocide levels with a homemade Gatling gun! Parolini somehow topped himself with Sabata (1969), whose outlandish gadgetry puts James West to shame.

Too bad Sartana leaves little room for originality between gunfights. Parolini takes his familiar double cross plot to extremes, with a few too many antagonists vying for the gold. The town elders and General Mendoza get so little screen time, they barely register. With even minor characters like Evelyn (Heidi Fischer) playing their own game, Sartana becomes a predictable exercise in nihilistic attrition.

Like many Spaghettis, Sartana stands or falls on its hero. Gianni Garko is more appealing than the genre's usual laconic antiheroes. He gives Sartana a dry wit to match his improbable quick draw skills, making him more human than, say, the Man With No Name. Nonetheless, Garko keeps Sartana as crafty and devious as everyone around him. Relying on a four barreled derringer with a nifty card-themed cylinder, he's more than a match for the show's myriad villains.

William Berger plays a scene-stealing wildcard: Lasky is the most interesting character through sheer unpredictability. Berger became a genre icon in his own right, appearing in Face to Face, Sabata and Keoma. Fernando Sancho (A Pistol for Ringo) plays another megalomaniac Mexican bandit. Klaus Kinski's wasted in an inconsequential cameo. Gianni Rizzo and Sydney Chaplin play supporting villains while Heidi Fleischer provides some momentarily feminine allure.

Spaghetti Westerns are typically a hard sell, except to aficionados. If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death is agreeable rough-house entertainment, yet it's so slight and derivative I'm hard-pressed to recommend it to casual viewers. Those with a taste for high body counts and treacherous anti-heroes will be more than satisfied.

Lost Stooges short film!

Any fans of The Three Stooges out there? If so, you may take heart at this bit of news from Australia:

The only missing short film by The Three Stooges has been found in a Manly shed. Film collector Malcolm Smith, 78, was clearing out his old films when he came across Hello, Pop!, an 18-minute backstage musical from 1933 that he bought from another collector in the 1950s.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/three-stooges-film-found-in-australian-garden-shed-20130928-2ukw2.html#ixzz2goJEsmgY

On a sadder note, we'll note the passing of novelist Tom Clancy. I've always been more of a Frederick Forsyth fan, but there's no denying he created an impressive body of work.

Wake in Fright

For years, Wake in Fright (1971) lingered in the pantheon of "lost films." One badly duped copy existed in Dublin; scattered VHS copies, retitled Outback, remained shut away in cinephiles' basements. Then in 2002, editor Anthony Buckley discovered the original materials in Pittsburgh. Years of painstaking restoration and legal wrangling followed, the film getting a limited art house release in 2009.

Wake in Fright helped usher in Australia's New Wave, transforming that country from cinematic also-ran to movie powerhouse. Like the same year's Walkabout, it's directed by a non-Australian: Ted Kotcheff was a Canadian director, later of North Dallas Forty and First Blood. That's not to take away from its Aussiness. This adaptation of Kenneth Cook's novel is palpably raw, finding a razor's edge beneath the Down Under stereotype.

John Grant (Gary Bond) is a vacationing school teacher who makes a one-night stop in Bundanyabba. John initially holds locals like policeman Jock (Chips Rafferty) and Tim Hynes (Al Thomas) in contempt as stupid, overfriendly hicks. When John loses his money in a game of two-up, he's forced to linger in the town, falling in with Tim and eccentric Doc Tydon (Donald Pleasance). A series of increasingly disturbing adventures occur, from a kangaroo hunt to a botched tryst with Tim's wife Jeanette (Sylvia Kay), with John wondering if he'll ever escape.

Wake in Fright's set-up resembles Straw Dogs and Deliverance, with an educated man destroyed by hicks. Yet Fright is more subtle than those shows, couching its story as psychological horror. Bundanyabba's denizens are just living the life they know; bored in a small town, they've little else but drink and sport. The only females about are Jeanette and a hotel clerk (Maggie Dence), both teasing strumpets. John gets little joy from his life or work, posted to a small town; he's all too readily drawn to dissolution.

Essentially, Kotcheff and writer Evan Jones craft a study in macho excess. Everything in Bundanyabba's taken to extremes, from friendship to aggression. Jock's friendly offer of beers becomes an all-night bender. John wins some money gambling, only to blow his entire wad on a return throw. The kangaroo hunt turns into a gory, degrading horror show (made worse by the fact that this is real footage). Challenged by his cohorts, John tries to prove his masculinity frolicking with Jeanette - then promptly vomits. He's ultimately smothered under the barrage of bonhomie; "the Yabba" becomes an inescapable hell.

Kotcheff's direction provides a surreal capper. Early scenes take in the Outback's harsh beauty, matched with John Scott's suitably playful score. But Kotcheff ratchets up the story with increased violence, elliptical flashbacks and terrifying montage work. As John wrestles with a kangaroo, we get terrifying close-ups of his pals' sadistic laughter, a scene recalling the cackling bandits of For a Few Dollars More. John's debauchery mashes memories into a freakish nightmare of sex, booze and gambling coins.

Gary Bond appeared in Zulu and Anne of the Thousand Days but never became a leading man. Resembling a brown-eyed Peter O'Toole, Bond depicts John's unraveling with smoldering intensity. Donald Pleasance gives a subtle edge to Doc's malignant weirdness; you never know just how villainous he is. Chips Rafferty, once Australia's leading film star, gets a fine sendoff. Jack Thompson makes his film debut as a roo hunter. Thompson became ubiquitous in Aussie cinema, from the classic Breaker Morant through Baz Luhrman's The Great Gatsby.

Wake in Fright is definitely strong stuff: the violence, baroque editing and crushing atmosphere will turn away many viewers. Those able to stomach its rougher edges will find a remarkably uncompromising work.

RIP Giuliano Gemma

Italian actor Giuliano Gemma passed away today at age 75, killed in a car accident in Rome.

The boyish Gemma starred in a slew of Spaghetti Westerns, most notably A Pistol for Ringo (1964) and its sequel, Ringo Rides Again (1965). He also starred opposite Lee Van Cleef in the popular Day of Anger (1967), and also appeared in Arizona Colt (1966), A Sky Full of Stars for a Roof (1968) and The Price of Power (1969). He presented a more clean-cut, traditional hero than Spaghetti stars like Van Cleef, Clint Eastwood and Franco Nero.

Other notable films include Luchino Visconti's The Leopard (1963), Valerio Zurlini's The Desert of the Tartars (1976), Dario Argento's Tenebrae (1982) and Woody Allen's To Rome With Love (2012). In recent years he'd focused mainly on television.

RIP Luciano Vincenzoni

Italian screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni passed away Sunday at age 87. He's best-remembered for his contentious collaboration with Sergio Leone, writing or co-writing the scripts for For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Duck, You Sucker! He also penned the scripts for A Professional Gun and Death Rides a Horse, the Oscar-nominated The Great War (1959) and a variety of other films - including that timeless masterpiece Orca.

Leone fans are keenly encouraged to check out Cenk Kiral's old interview with Vincenzoni here. He's very frank about his relationship with Sergio, and just a bit arrogant. Of course, if you co-wrote The Good, the Bad and the Ugly you're entitled to a slight ego.

Inchon

"I can almost hear the ticking of the second hand of destiny."

Terence Young's Inchon (1981) has a notoriety stemming from its scarcity as much as quality. A vanity project for Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church, the movie earned abysmal reviews, tanked financially and never saw video release. Most available bootlegs originate from a screening on the GoodLife TV Network (now Youtoo TV). Never an optimal viewing choice, streaming it on Youtube is the only way to view this turkey.

Every bad movie writer from the Medveds through Michael Sauter trashes Inchon. It's a lousy film all right, mixing incoherent action, risible melodrama and right wing agitprop. Throw in Laurence Olivier's ghoulish portrayal of Douglas MacArthur and you've got a monumental mess.

June 1950. North Korean forces invade South Korea, overrunning most of that country. United Nations forces led by American General Douglas MacArthur (Laurence Olivier) struggle to fight back, being pushed to the Pusan perimeter. Major Frank Hallsworth (Ben Gazzara) and Sergeant Henderson (Richard Roundtree) get caught up in the retreat. Hallsworth's estranged wife Barbara (Jacqueline Bissett) rescues several Korean children while fleeing south. MacArthur conceives a bold counter-stroke - an amphibious landing at Inchon, well behind enemy lines.

Inchon's turbulent production is more interesting than the film. Moon conceived of MacArthur's landing at Inchon as God's handiwork, presumably elevating Dugout Doug to sainthood. Along with Japanese tycoon Mitsu Haru Ishii, Moon invested a staggering $46,000,000 in the movie, $1.25 million on Laurence Olivier alone. Yet filming was sabotaged by typhoons, earthquakes, uncooperative stars and equipment difficulties. At least one extra died filming a battle scene. All this before opening to universal scorn. Not until Battlefield Earth would Hollywood again witness such messianic hubris.

Inchon mixes the worst qualities of '60s epics like The Longest Day and Reagan-era action flicks. The opening hour presents endless scenes of North Koreans machine gunning civilians. Artfully handled this could be powerful; with Young's hamfisted direction it's execrable. Moon himself was South Korean, yet Inchon makes his countrymen faceless supplicants awaiting rescue by the American ubermensch. Along with MacArthur's constant invocation of God Almighty (ending with the Lord's Prayer) and the presence of young Alexander Haig (John Pochna) it's a conservative wet dream.

Inchon's main sin though is complete incoherence. Robin Moore and Laird Koenig's script never forms into a cogent narrative. The first half intercuts atrocities with treacly vignettes, providing no idea of the military situation, or even basic geography. Soldiers march, civilians flee, and we've no clue where they're going or why. Even when the plot starts to settle, things are dulled by windbag speechmaking and continued digressions. We're over halfway through before MacArthur starts planning the Inchon operation; the landing itself takes up less than 15 minutes.

Like a bad disaster movie, Inchon insists on cramming facile "human elements" between explosions. Major Hallsworth carries on with a feisty Korean girl (Karen Khan) when not providing exposition. Sergeant Henderson does little besides drive a jeep and, in one scene, a motorcycle. These bozos are tight with MacArthur, who dragoons them into an 11th hour commando mission. Meanwhile, Barbara's out shopping when the invasion begins. Later she drives five orphans through an air raid, all while whining about traffic. Damn those Reds for inconveniencing her antiquing!

Finally, Inchon fails the most important test: action. Terence Young directed several James Bond flicks, but you wouldn't know it watching Inchon. The big battles mix stock footage with phony special effects and laughable staging. In several scenes, extras go flying from explosions that haven't detonated yet! Some set pieces feature thousands of extras, yet still manage to look cheap. The Medveds report that psychic Jeanne Dixon advised Moon to hire Young, after consultation with MacArthur's ghost. Begging the question: what God was Moon invoking, exactly?

Laurence Olivier invites the easiest criticism. He's not helped by a script that conceives MacArthur as a humble soldier rather than history's charismatic warmonger. But Olivier deserves much of the blame. Physically, his makeup less recalls MacArthur than Boris Karloff's Mummy. Then there's his accent, sounding like W.C. Fields and Gary Cooper's bastard son. When all else fails, Olivier shouts to God, bugs out his eyes and even shares a double-take with a bust of Caesar. Rarely has an actor put so much effort into being terrible.

Larry's co-stars fare little better. Ben Gazara and Richard Roundtree putter aimlessly around Korea, conveniently remaining at the center of events. Jacqueline Bissett's anachronistic low-cut dress provides one of Inchon's few pleasures. Playing a Korean fisherman, Toshiro Mifune is just plain embarrassing. David Janssen plays a grouchy reporter, film critic Rex Reed (!) his whiny sidekick. Gabriele Ferzetti cameos as a Turkish general. One hopes they too were paid well.

Ultimately, Inchon fascinates in the way only a truly bad movie can. Reverend Moon clearly intended this movie to sell his unique religion to the masses. Given the litany of disasters during and after production, it's safe to assume God (or Doug MacArthur's ghost) was laughing at him.

Footage from The Day The Clown Cried

Just a few days ago, someone uploaded this video onto Youtube. It's part of a behind-the-scenes documentary on The Day the Crown Cried (1972), a notorious lost film directed by and starring Jerry Lewis.

Wikipedia summarizes this strange project in same detail. Basically, it's a black comedy featuring Lewis as a German clown in the Nazi era. Lewis's character gets arrested for insulting Adolf Hitler and winds up in a concentration camp, where he entertains Jewish children until they're executed. It sounds laughably terrible. Lewis hated the final product so much he completely buried it. The few who've seen it mostly concur.

With Lewis still blocking its release, it's unlikely we'll see Clown any time soon. Based on available descriptions, it sounds like an unfathomable exercise in bad taste. (Jerry Lewis and bad taste? Say it ain't so!) Then again, Roberto Begnini won Best Foreign Language Film for Life is Beautiful two decades later, so who knows?

In the Loop

With Peter Capaldi recently crowned the next Doctor Who, it's a good time to revisit his most famous role. Armando Iannucci's In the Loop (2009) is a spin-off of his BBC series The Thick of It, a mordant satire mixing The West Wing and Yes, Minister. Capaldi's foulmouthed, piratical spin doctor Malcolm Tucker is one of television's great creations, transferred intact to the big screen.

The US and UK gear up for war in the Middle East while maintaining a vague public stance. Britain's Secretary of State for International Development Simon Forster (Tom Hollander) tells a BBC reporter that war is "unforeseeable," enraging Malcolm Tucker (Capaldi), the Prime Minister's PR point-man. Malcolm sends Simon and his assistant Toby (Chris Addison) to meet with American official Linton Barwick (David Rasche) in DC. The Brits find State Department official Karen Clark (Mimi Kennedy) eager to avert war, though Toby's more interested in hooking up with her assistant Liz (Anna Chlumsky). Tired of Simon's cock-ups, Malcolm and hatchet man Jamie McDonald (Paul Higgins) arrive Stateside to handle things personally.

Many reviewers compare In the Loop to Dr. Strangelove, but it's most obvious progenitor is The Office: the same hand-held camerawork, improvised dialogue and absurd office politics. Inquisitive reporters make mincemeat of the hapless Simon, a dunce unable to help his constituents rebuild a brick wall. The Brits are disturbed by DC's glut of 20-something assistants, with Malcolm denigrating the "master race of toddlers" executing American policy. In politics as with business, we see characters swallowing their beliefs for personal advancement. The difference, of course, is that the cast's eccentricities play on a world stage, with dire consequences.

The depressing thing about In the Loop is that it's scarcely exaggerated. The Iraq War already seems a distant memory, even though sectarian violence continues in that country. But anyone who recalls Donald Rumsfeld's incoherent musings on "known unknowns" will wince at Barwick's ridiculous analogies ("All roads lead to Munich") and Simon's "climbing the mountain of conflict."  Simon seems like a distaff Clare Short, an antiwar Blair official who thought it braver not to resign when war began. Few of the characters actually want war, but lack the guts to oppose it.

Iannucci does a good job selling Thick of It's premise to an international audience. By focusing on foreign policy, he downplays the intricacies of British politics that might throw casual viewers. He downplays the Anglo-American culture clash, though Malcolm takes strong offense when someone calls him "English." Still, the character dynamics, dry wit and semi-improvised profanity arrive intact. It's a textbook satire, gutbustingly funny yet strikingly credible. Iannucci's currently helming Veep for HBO.

Peter Capaldi inevitably dominates. If Malcolm's less complex than his TV incarnation, Loop nails the character's utter lack of scruples and imaginative tirades. It's certainly fun watching him threaten to demolish the BBC and recoil at American bonhomie while dropping more F bombs than Tommy DeVito. Yet for all his bluster, he's merely a pawn of his political masters. Later on he trades barbs with General Miller (James Gandolfini), the pacifist Pentagon official who calls him out as a lapdog. Capaldi makes Malcolm a ruthless bastard you can't help rooting for, even while drawing two countries towards war.

Loop brims with Thick of It regulars, though only Capaldi and Paul Higgins reprise their series roles. James Smith, Alex MacQueen, Olivia Paulet and Joanna Scanlan assay variants on familiar parts. Chris Addison's Toby is a crasser version of Thick's Ollie. He's set up as our hero, but proves more interested in "antiwar shags" than politics. Simon upbraids Toby in a delectably sarcastic rant: "[At least] you didn't whip out your dick, pluck it and shout 'Willy Banjo!'" In contrast, Gina McKee (Atonement) proves level-headed enough to resolve most situations, cheerily shrugging off Malcolm's sexist barbs.

In the Loop adds several stars to the familiar ensemble. Tom Hollander (Land of the Blind) makes a brilliantly frazzled doofus, out of his depth both in diplomacy and politics. He's a master malaproper, from his bizarre public statements to proclaiming intelligence work "lemon difficult." James Gandolfini fits snuggly into the cast: the self-proclaimed "Gore Vidal of the Pentagon," Miller whimsically projects casualties on a children's calculator. He loudly opposes the war but proves as craven as everyone else. David Rasche hits the right note of banal smugness, with Mimi Kennedy and Anna Chlumski as his opponents. Steve Coogan gets a memorable bit as one of Forster's hapless constituents. 

Nothing better points up differences in American and British culture than their reactions to political catastrophe. Hollywood responded to Bush's wars with earnest but dull dramas like Lions for Lambs and Syriana. The Brits meanwhile produced black comedies like In the Loop and Four Lions. Whether or not they made a difference, the latter hold up much better.

RIP Karen Black

Actress Karen Black passed away today after a long bout with ampulary cancer. She was 74.

The Chicago-born Black racked up an incredible resume. She made her breakthrough role in Easy Rider (1969) opposite Dennis Hopper, but it was her impressive turn as Jack Nicholson's long-suffering girlfriend in Five Easy Pieces (1970) that assured her stardom. Black subsequently appeared in a slew of successful films: The Great Gatsby (1974), The Day of the Locust, Nashville (both 1975), Family Plot (1976) and Capricorn One (1978). In later years her stardom faded a bit, appearing mostly in horror flicks like The Devil's Rejects, and like many celebrities dabbled in Scientology.

Black did her best work playing put-upon women eager to break into big things. Rayette in Five Easy Pieces, whose pathetic dreams contrast with the smug sophistication of Bobby Dupea's family, endures her man's condescension and philandering almost beyond belief. I'm extremely fond of her Myrtle Wilson in Gatsby: very little about that film works, but Black plays the character with the perfect mixture of desperation and cunning. Myrtle is Rayette with a spine, a social climber ruthlessly ambitious yet unable to escape intoTom Buchanan's world.

For those interested in learning more about Ms. Black, I commend you to my friend James Tate's interviews here and here. Rest in peace to a remarkable, under-appreciated talent.

Only God Forgives

Two years ago, Nicholas Winding Refn burst into mainstream consciousness with Drive. It's a neatly crafted, absorbing thriller, short on plot, long on violence, oozing style from every frame. The excellent supporting cast and moody score help, but its greatest success comes in reinventing Ryan Gosling as heir to the Eastwood-McQueen throne of laconic cool.

Now Only God Forgives. How? Sadly it's that all-too-common phenomena we recently examined: an ambitious artist letting praise go to his head, thus producing a grandly ambitious disaster. Everything that made Drive enjoyable warps into a black hole of pretension and nauseating violence.

Julian (Ryan Gosling) is a Bangkok boxing impresario/crime boss. When his brother Bobby (Tom Burke) is murdered, Julian seeks vengeance - but finds the culprit acted at the behest of Police Lieutenant Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm). Julian's mother Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas) shows up, hiring goons for her own strike at Chang. Much blood is gruesomely spilled, with Julian debating whether to side with his domineering mother, to stay aloof, or maybe to blink once in awhile.

Arguably, Only God Forgives aspires to be the greatest B Movie ever made. It's got the laconic criminals of Jean-Pierre Melville, the deliberate pacing of Sergio Leone, the setting of a million kung-fu/yakuza flicks, even the gauche colors of Dario Argento. Heck, the title explicitly recalls a Terence Hill-Bud Spencer Spaghetti Western. One's reminded of Quentin Tarantino, but even QT's weakest flicks have a tongue-in-cheek self-awareness. Refn has nothing resembling a sense of humor, trying to will his kaleidoscopic mishmash of homages and gore into high art.

And what art! Refn's aesthetic sense demands that every scene, however banal or trivial, be filtered through a primary color or framed by a doorway. Splice in jump cuts and fantasy scenes, regardless of contextual appropriateness or coherence. Employ the Kuleshov Effect to an absurd degree: characters are constantly shot in close-up, ostensibly staring at each other, even when miles away. Fade out diegetic sound at will. Refn abuses these gimmicks worse than a second year film student, hoping that stealing from some Godard flick might salvage his grade.

Groggy's no shrinking violet, but even I found God's violence obnoxious. From frame one characters sloppily eviscerate each other, like refugees from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, producing only cheap shock. Characters get dismembered, disemboweled, slashed in two, machine gunned and savagely beaten, all lovingly photographed by Refn. It's not offensive so much as egregiously tasteless. Drive closely skirted this line, but at least our investment in the characters gave moments like the elevator scene a jolt. That film's not Shakespeare, but on some level you cared about The Driver and friends.

By contrast, God's protagonists spend so much time elaborately posing they might as well be mannequins: their presence is aesthetic not dramatic. These guys only show emotion when getting pinioned by hair pins. You'd expect Julian might react to his brother dying or thugs beating him to a pulp, but he remains expressionless throughout. After being informed of Bobby's proclivities, Crystal muses that her son "must have had his reasons." With a little push in this direction, God might edge into self-parody.

For all the awfulness - Chang's karaoke scenes, Crystal's nauseatingly Freudian farewell - one set piece stands out. About 70 minutes in, Julian and Chang face off in a martial arts slug fest. Refn choreographs this scene with the elaborate ritualization of a Sergio Leone duel; all that's missing is Ennio Morricone. Yet it's style without effect. Leone spends Once Upon a Time in the West, say, investing his gunslingers with mythic grandeur; they embody a bygone era where even villains observe a certain chivalry. Without such gravitas, God's antagonists are just thugs walking around slowly.

Ryan Gosling takes his Alain Delon impression to its logical extreme, showing no emotion at all. Well, except for one scene where it's hysterically inappropriate. Kristin Scott Thomas spends so much time posturing she's less Lady Macbeth, more chain-smoking lawn flamingo. Combining sadistic violence with bad karaoke, Vithaya Pansringarm chillingly invokes Kahn Souphanousinphone's father-in-law. Rhatha Phongam fingers herself and scowls in a masterful turn.

Ultimately, Only God Forgives disappoints even as a failure. With just a little more tackiness, it could have been the worst movie of 2013. Sadly for Nicholas Winding Refn and Co., that honor still belongs to The Great Gatsby.

The Plays of John Osborne, Part II: Experiments in Individuality

The playwright at rest, 1965. (Heilpern)

Part One here.

By 1959, John Osborne occupied an exalted cultural position. Having demolished notions of respectable theater, he inspired a new generation of writers from Alan Sillitoe to Edward Albee. "Come and help us make history," said Kenneth Tynan, inviting him to the National Theatre. "I've already made history," came Osborne's retort. His notorious "Damn You England" letter and arrest at CND's 9/17/61 demonstration established Osborne as a political pugilist. Then he moved into films, writing Tom Jones (1963) for Tony Richardson. Matched against his professional successes, however, were several failed marriages: Pamela Lane, Mary Ure and Penelope Gilliatt.

This post dissects 1960s Osborne, a playwright experimenting with diffuse dramatic forms. Now comfortable in his talent, Osborne tries several genres: musicals, historical pieces, a surreal character study. Yet the same anguish, penetrating insight and lacerating introspective remains - if anything, it's enhanced within new contexts. Despite a few missteps, it's Osborne's most interesting period as a writer.

The World of Paul Slickey (1959)

"One must be careful at all times not to hurt other people's feelings... Only an extremely vulgar mind pokes fun at such things."

Nothing's so perversely fascinating as an overachieving flop. Sometimes an artist at the height of their power crafts an ambitious, inexplicable failure, so grandiose in conception that it can't possibly work. The World of Paul Slickey has this in spades: a musical satire of the public's appetite for scandal, it's so top heavy with ideas that it bombs spectacularly.

Journalist Jack Oakham moonlights as Paul Slickey, a feared gossip columnist targeting the rich and powerful. His latest assignments include Lesley and Michael, two rich, pea-brained youths; out-of-touch aristocratic families the Mortlakes and Giltedge-Whytes; and pop singer Terry Maroon. But Jack comes to question the value of his work, even as his marriage falls apart.

Slickey was a notorious flop; opening night reportedly climaxed with actress Adrienne Corri flipping off the audience. The show hasn't improved with age. If its attack on media sensationalism remains evergreen, other aspects feel grounded in their time. The title character evokes '50s society writer William Hickey, while the story and music draw laboriously on contemporary events like German rearmament and Timothy Evans. One song even incorporates Anthony Eden's proclamation that Suez was not a war but an "armed conflict" as a lyric!

That contrived awkwardness characterizes Osborne's songs. The inspired ditties from The Entertainer give way to indigestible, inscrutable nonsense. This tortured song from a tour guide discussing an aristocratic family should suffice:

"If you don't want to be an unidentified mess
You must make yourself someone and be a success
You've got to understand the mechanics of success
If you've meaning to express you must spell it like success
If you're going to impress you must pander to the press
They'll want you to asses how much money you possess."

Just scan that verse and wonder what Osborne was thinking. Sour rhymes, indiscernible meter, painfully forced "wit." Not to mention Paul/Jack proclaiming himself "newspaper cold" and rhyming phlegm with apothegm, or Lesley singing about raping the tax man. (Glenn Beck, is that you?) Sure, it's words on a page - but what musical accompaniment could possibly sell it? Given the universal opprobrium leveled against Slickey (even John Heilpern calls it "wincingly off the mark"), I feel safe dismissing it at face value.

As for story... what story? Osborne conceives Slickey as a shotgun blast against modern England: the media, the aristocracy and political establishment, the facile public. He aims for so many targets that he scarcely nicks any. The characters are ludicrous cartoons: Lesley and Michael debate solving bad marriages with sex change operations, a joke that sounds funnier than it plays. More and more characters complicate the narrative, until Slickey collapses in a pointless non-climax.

Osborne's ambitions evaporate long before then, leaving only venom. George Wellwrath calls Slickey "pure spit and vomit thrown directly into the teeth of the audience." He fancies that a complement; I don't. Without focus, Slickey becomes meaningless spew rather than scathing satire.

Luther (1961)

Albert Finney as Luther, 1961 production. (source)

"Some interests are furthered by finding truth, others by destroying it."

Having failed at contemporary satire, Osborne retreated to historical drama. Luther proved a popular success on both the West End and Broadway, featuring Albert Finney in the title role. Superficially the play resembles familiar dramas of conscience like A Man for All Seasons. Yet Luther's no saturnine period piece, casting the founder of Protestantism as a tormented rebel against Catholic dogma - and his personal demons.

The play depicts Martin Luther's emergence as leader of the Protestant Reformation. He defies his father to become a priest, but quickly proves unsuited for monastic life. After a violent, unexplained outburst ("I am not!") Martin grows increasingly skeptical towards Catholic teaching. He attacks the system of indulgences, earning him Rome's ire. Soon Luther's the head of a religious and cultural upheaval, staring down the Diet of Worms and inspiring a peasant uprising against the Holy Roman Empire.

Luther draws on Erik Erikson's Young Man Luther (1958), a psycho-biography framing Luther's theological struggle as an identity crisis writ large. Hence Luther's obsessive fretting over his bowels - he complains of being constipated, flatulent and uses scatological language to describe the Pope. "If I break wind in Wittenberg," he muses, "they might smell it in Rome." His mind's too inquisitive to fit into Church structures; taught to revere scripture, he cannot reconcile God's teachings with Rome's temporal corruption.

Osborne tries to frame the context in which Luther operated. Act II features John Tetzel, a priest happily hawking indulgences and holy relics to gullible believers. Here Osborne most strongly resembles Brecht, stopping the action cold for a digressive vignette. This imaginative sequence says more about Catholic corruption that any of Luther's eloquent disquisitions:

"My friend, the Pope himself has sent me with indulgences for you! Fine, you say, but what are indulgences? They're only the most precious and noble of God's gifts to men, that's all they are! Before God, I tell you I wouldn't swap my privilege at this moment with that of St. Peter... because I've already saved more souls with my indulgences than he ever could have done."

Unfortunately, he's less successful showing Luther's impact. Luther's confrontation with the Diet rings with stark clarity, but the resulting chaos remains ephemeral. His dealings with assorted German princes go unmentioned. Act III features a rushed scene with The Knight, a blood-soaked nobleman describing the Peasant's Revolt within Germany. These scenes are dramatically forced and historically inadequate, providing audiences a patchy understanding of the Reformation.

Osborne being Osborne, however, the personal portrait dominates. The play's most palpable scenes feature Luther butting heads with his father Hans. Hans expected Luther to become a "great man" within the temporal system, a lawyer or politician perhaps. Given subsequent events, he may have been right. Luther assumes its most roundly autobiographical element when the protagonist unleashes a cri de coeur against his father's presumed neglect:

"I loved you the best. It was always you I wanted. I wanted your love more than anyone's, and if anyone was to hold me I wanted it to be you. Funnily enough, my mother disappointed me the most, and I loved her less, much less. She made a gap which no else could have filled, but all she could do was make it bigger, bigger and more unbearable."

This becomes especially pointed if one's read Osborne's A Better Class of Person, or Heilpern's biography. The death of Osborne's father cast a long shadow over his life, while he expressed a venomous contempt towards his low-born mother. Osborne boldly invests his personal demons in an historical figure, remaining deeply felt as anything in Look Back in Anger or Inadmissible Evidence.

And throughout, it's Luther's dilemma that drives the story. He becomes a rebel not of choice or even passivity - it's his nature that drives him to doubt Rome's strictures. Like Redl in A Patriot for Me, he does everything he can to suppress his nonconformist streak, whether cleaning monastery privies or protesting that "I want to be still, in peace, and alone." But the Church won't brook even token criticism, forcing Luther into open defiance. Unlike Redl, Luther's dilemma has a happier personal outcome, but with more far-reaching (and destructive) consequences.

Luther's staging explicitly recalls Brecht's Galileo, the template for most similar dramas. Hence the episodic plot, the elaborate staging (Luther's appearance before the Diet backgrounded by a political cartoon!),  characters breaking fourth wall and the emphasis on tableaux over narrative. But Osborne's no Marxist, downplaying Luther's individual achievements for their effect. Nor is he Robert Bolt, whose Sir Thomas More is deliberately established (via the fourth-wall breaking Common Man) as a Great Man above us mere mortals. Martin Luther remains the play's focus - a living, thinking, suffering human being, who shapes history yet remains identifiable.

Plays for England: The Blood of the Bambergs and Under Plain Cover (1963)

Osborne returned to the Slickey vein with two short plays attacking English society. With weightier works to consume, we'll dispense succinctly with these.

Anyone nauseated by 2011's Royal Wedding might appreciate The Blood of the Bambergs. A loose reworking of The Prisoner of Zenda, it details the marriage of Bamberg's Princess Melanie to Prince Willy, heir to a foreign throne. But Willy dies driving to the wedding, leaving officials in a bind. The solution: swap Willy with Russell, an uncouth Australian who bares a striking resemblance to Willy. Russell's reluctant at first, until exposed to the job's perks - especially the gorgeous Princess.

Bambergs provides rather sophomoric satire of the hysteria surrounding royal pageantry. It's central conceit isn't bad, with all corners of society (from the press to the Socialist Prime Minister) conniving in the coverup. And it must be said that Russell provides some laughs, especially when he admits changing mind due to "the long, thrusting, sexual stimulus of the Crown." But in short form, it's too superficial to make much impact. The play's nothing more than an amusing trifle.

But that makes it superior to Under Plain Cover, little more than a fleeting skirmish against good taste. Osborne shows a reporter investigating a seemingly normal couple, Tim and Jenny, who turn out to be brother and sister. There's nothing more to it, and this V.C. Andrews twist seems an improbable vehicle for social satire. Osborne probes again the press's intrusion into private lives and misguided public morality, but elicits few laughs or shock, only mild surprise. For Osborne completists only.

Inadmissible Evidence (1964)

Douglas Hodge as Bill Maitland in Donmar Warehouse's 2011 revival. (Source)

"I succeeded in inflicting, quite certainly inflicting, more pain than pleasure. I am not equal to any of it."

Osborne returned to vitriolic introspection with Inadmissible Evidence. Heilpern calls it "a dreamplay of grubby futility and self-loathing in the losing battle against irredeemable mediocrity." Long, rambling and bursting with indigestible bile, it makes Look Back in Anger look like Coward's Private Lives. Yet for all its off-kilter structuring, it's more gut-wrenchingly effective than that earlier play.

Bill Maitland experiences a crippling midlife crisis. A mildly successful barrister, he's grown stale in cases of fraud and divorce, which considers a waste of talent. His flagrant womanizing jeopardizes his marriage, his domineering personality isolates friends and colleagues. Indeed, everyone seems eager to leave Maitland: favored secretary Shirley goes on maternity leave, his assistants entertain job offers, his wife Elizabeth finally prepares to leave him. Haunted by delusions and very real abandonment, Maintland's driven over the edge.

From page one, Evidence bleeds existential rot. Consider Maitland's monologue to the Judge in the opening dream sequence, admitting his sins:

"This can't hide the fact from me, and never has done, that I am by nature indecisive...I am almost 40 years old, and I know I have never made a decision which I didn't either regret, or suspect was just plain commonplace or shifty or scamped and indulgent or mildly stupid or undistinguished... I have depended almost entirely on other people's efforts. Anything else would have been impossible for me, and I always knew in my own heart that only that it was that kept me alive and functioning at all..."

This extends beyond self-deprecation to psychosis. It's a cry for a help from someone who's seen his ambition and dreams turn to ash, who's destroyed everything good in his life. He'd be a monster if he weren't so cripplingly self-aware. Even the few moments of hope - assistant Hudson, considering Bill's offer of a partnership; wife Liz trying, against all odds, to patch things up - drive Maitland further into despair. He makes George Dillon and Jimmy Porter look George Bailey.

"There were girls like Maureen, and even with you there were difficulties but not revolting or upsetting. At least, not much, I don't think so. You weren't reluctant, you should be happy, you didn't cling on to it like it was the crown jewels. You were generous, loving, bright, you should have been able to cope. I should have been able to cope."

Osborne vomits his neuroses upon the page. As in Epitaph of George Dillon, the middle-aged fear of accomplishing nothing dominates the story. How palpable are such feelings emanating from a successful writer! Maitland's neuroses about disappointing women drives him to despair - this from a man with five wives, whose prickly personality alienated even close friends. Osborne feared isolation most of all: two years after Evidence, triggered by the loss of loved ones, he experienced a comparable nervous breakdown (of which more later). It's ugly to watch or read, but darkly compelling.

Osborne borrows from Strindberg not only his vulgar nihilism but an air of despairing unreality. Highlighting his paranoid state, Maitland drifts between reality and fantasy. He starts the play asleep, dreaming of prosecution by a universal Judge who finds him lacking. In Act II carries on phone conversations, ostensibly with his various lovers - though Osborne's directions emphasize "a feeling of doubt as to whether there is anyone to speak to at all." This disconnect reaches its extreme form when Bill, meeting with his clients, talks past them, as if the divorcees describe his life. It's The Ghost Sonata reshaped into a character study

Inadmissible Evidence is stifling in a way that neither vulgar innuendo ("You could stick a bus ticket in there!") nor Maitland's ludicrous clientele (selfish hausfrau Mrs. A, shamed homosexual Marples) can alleviate. Few plays match it for depressive, soul-consuming nastiness. The converse of individualism is loneliness - uniqueness can be a blessing or a curse. For Bill Maitland, it's hell on Earth.

A Patriot for Me (1965)

Mark Crook plays Redl in The Actor's Company's 2008 production. (Source)

"We all play parts, are doing so now, will continue to do so...Perspiring gaiety and pointlessness."

Osborne finished destroying traditional theater with A Patriot for Me. This play about Alfred Redl, notorious Austrian traitor, so infuriated the Lord Chamberlain that he refused to license its performance. The Royal Court rebranded itself a private club, hence beyond the government's reach - an act of defiance which destroyed the Lord Chamberlain's censorship power. Critics were divided, while the show (starring Maximilian Schell and Jill Bennett) did lukewarm box office. A 1983 revival with Alan Bates proved more successful.

A Patriot for Me is Groggy's favorite Osborne play. Far more than Luther, it uses the trappings of the historical pageant (familiar names, faraway settings, fancy costumes) to tell a deeply personal story. It's explores the cost of conformity, mixing baroque satire with personal tragedy.

Alfred Redl is a promising officer in the Austrian Army circa 1900. By all outward appearances he's a model soldier: punctilious, disciplined, class conscious, loyal. But Redl hides damaging secrets: his Jewish ancestry, profligate spending - and homosexuality. While Colonel in charge of Austria's military intelligence, he moonlights in Vienna's gay society and gains the attention of Russian spies. Redl's blackmailed into sending Russia military secrets, disastrously confronting the contradictions between his public life and private desires.

A Patriot for Me came after plays like A Taste of Honey and films like Victim punctured holes in censorship. Gay rights became a public issue in England following Lord Montagu and John Gielgud's arrests for sodomy; 1967's Sexual Offences Act effectively demolished existing legal strictures. Yet homosexuality remained identified with crime and subversion, heightened by exposure of the Cambridge Five: queers selling out the Empire. Osborne's provocative Patriot provided the final nail in the Lord Chamberlain's coffin. Yet we must tread warily before proclaiming Osborne a cultural hero.

Like many of his generation, Osborne campaigned for nuclear disarmament, the issue which provoked his "Damn You England" letter. He was arrested during CND's 9/17/61 protest in Trafalgar Square, alongside Robert Bolt, Vanessa Redgrave and others. But Doris Lessing opined "he didn't understand politics at all... he was just a natural rebel." He gradually drifted from anti-establishment posturing to Little England conservatism. More relevant here: Osborne peppered friends Tony Richardson and George Devine with homophobic slurs, while denouncing sodomy laws as "pointless, stupid and vindictive." A cynic wonders whether Osborne held genuine convictions or merely enjoyed playing the contrarian.

Today, Patriot's gay content seems rather tame. In its day however, the outre decadence and language led some crass critics to question if Osborne drew from personal experience. ("You just wonder... where he acquired all this information," James Fenton insinuated.) Consider Redl's sensual snarl to the Countess marrying his past lover, which surely raised the Lord Chamberlain's hackles as much as the infamous drag ball:

"I'll tell you this. You'll never know that body like I know it. The lines beneath his eyes... And the scar behind his ear, and the hairs in his nostrils, which has the most, what color are they in the light? The mole on where?.... You'll never know like I know, you can't... His thick waist, and how long are his thighs, compared to his calves, you've not looked at him, you never will."

Again, one shouldn't focus excessively on Redl's proclivities. Patriot's point isn't championing gay rights but lauding the individual against conformity, Osborne's hobby horse. The Austro-Hungarian Empire exemplifies this: in a polyglot state with dozens of nationalities, a lower peg like the Galician Redl is expected to not only display extraordinary merit, but act with appropriate deference to his Austrian betters. This drives the play less than Istvan Szabo's Colonel Redl, but Redl's ethnicity marks him as an outsider as surely as his sexuality.

Hence the second act drag ball, a mirror society embracing the misfits cast off by bourgeois society. Some characters even joke about forming a "queer empire" to oppose Austria's heterosexual conformity. As The Baron, the formidable transvestite nobleman, observes:

"This is the celebration of the individual against the rest, the uses and the thems, the free and the constricted, the gay and the dreary, the lonely and the mob."

Yet Redl's out of place even here. Tellingly, he arrives at the ball in full uniform, drawing disapproval from his cross-dressing compatriots: "I'm surprised they let you in," the Baron scolds. Unlike others, Redl's uncomfortable with his desires even when he gives in. He knows an improper word, indiscreet liaison or untoward glance could destroy his life's work.

Patriot teaches us the nonconformist never wins. Act I sees Redl seconding a young officer, Siczynski, in a duel where the latter's mortally wounded. The doomed man represents Redl's Id: unabashedly Jewish, openly gay and self-confident. His death imparts a cruel lesson to Redl: quoting biographer Robert Asprey, he learns to "[impart] humility, lofty ambition, duty, loyalty and honor" in everything. His utter obsequiousness marks him for advancement as a "a damned fine officer." No room for gratification or honesty. When confronted by superior officers at a society ball, Redl protests his adherence to class strictures:

"I am proud to be despised by some men, no perhaps most men. Others are to be tolerated and ignored. And if they do the same for me, I am gratified, or at least relieved."

And Osborne repeatedly shows honesty being punished. Act I ends with soldiers finding Redl in bed with another man, then savagely beating him. After giving into his desires, Redl's almost immediately blackmailed by Russian spymasters. (These scenes recall Terence Rattigan's Ross, where Turkish officials plot to expose T.E. Lawrence's latent tendencies.) Redl less resents being blackmailed into treachery than his inability to fit in anywhere. It's a palpable portrait of individualism crushed by social pressure.

Against such richly textured drama, Patriot's flaws are minor. One awkward thread has a Freudian psychologist lecturing on homosexuality, an aside which serves little purpose. The Countess, a foxy villainess working for the Russians, shows again that Osborne's women are either passive simps or malicious whores. And the build-up to Redl's suicide feels perfunctory and rushed. I happily acknowledge these flaws while proclaiming A Patriot for Me John Osborne's greatest achievement.

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For anyone who's read this far, I'm keen on hearing your opinion. Do you find these articles entertaining and informative? Or merely long-winded and boring? Let me know in comment or email!