Celebrate the Golden Age of Film
Arabella
feels that any picture worth a thousand words has to
move and talk even if the
conversation is held in sub-titles!
So
this site is fondly dedicated to moving pictures..... and to the
legendary stars of cinema’s golden age..... their films, their
lives,
their
loves and their exploits on and off the screen..... and to celebrate
the work of all those in front or behind the camera who made these
wonderful moving pictures of yesteryear possible with the fervent
hope that their efforts will be preserved for generations to come.
Actors'
With Character
This is your Page!
Baritone's
Corner
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September 11th, 2001 -
September 11th, 2002 It has been one year..... The rubble has been cleared...... But the memory remains and.......
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Hollywood's First Rebel Hero John Garfield |
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He died never knowing he was the prophet of a new era in films. Before Brando...before Dean...long before Patrick Swayze and his young band of "Outsiders", there was John Garfield. He was the prototype of the screen's rebel hero who angrily pushed back at a society that refused to look him in the eye...the outsider who wanted to be an insider. And he died angry because in life he gave everything he could and it never seemed to be enough.
John Garfield was born Jacob Garfinkle in a three room apartment on New York's Lower East Side to David and Hannah Garfinkle. Julius was added to his name before he was a year old and, from then on, he became Julie to everyone who knew him. So, if you will excuse the informality, it will be Julie we talk about here.
Hannah Garfinkle, always a frail woman, died in 1920 two years after giving birth to Julie's younger brother, Max and David Garfinkle moved the boys to East Brooklyn. In 1923 David remarried and took Julie with them to the Bronx, leaving Max behind with relatives. Julie never bonded with Dinah, his new stepmother, and literally took to the streets and the neighborhood gang. It was there he learned his first 'Golden Rule".."Don't rat on nobody". He never forgot it.
He was expelled from school three times before he got a lucky break. A savvy school official suggested that he be sent to PS 45, Dr. Angelo Patri's school for "special cases". Dr. Patri would have a profound influence on Julie who always recalled his advice. "There are two people in everyone of us", he told the young Garfinkle. "One fights with his fists, the other with his brain...No one does well enough with fists alone". Julie was enrolled in speech class and boxing but he did much better with the speech class winning a citywide debate contest with his speech about Benjamin Franklin. Dr. Patri then sent Julie on to Roosevelt High school (that would last only until his sophomore year), got him a dramatic scholarship to the Hecksher Foundation and introduced him to famed Broadway actor, Jacob Ben-Ami. Ben-Ami, in turn, arranged for an entrance into the American Laboratory Theatre, an experimental group run by actor/director Richard Boleslawski and actress Maria Ouspenskaya. The rebel was on his way!
By November of 1934, Julie has transported himself through the Theatre Guild, Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre and into the Group theatre. He had also married Roberta Seidman, his childhood sweetheart. Julie and his new bride moved to small Greenwich Village flat but Robbie kept her job at Macy's (over the years, the marriage would be strained by Julie's old habit of seeking solace in casual affairs but it never broke) Julie had a part in the Group's first Broadway production "Gold Eagle Guy" and got great reviews.Film offers were coming in but Julie felt committed to the Group. Then he lost a part he had his heart set on, the role of Joe Bonaparte in Odets "Golden Boy". It was given instead to Luther Adler. Julie took a smaller part but, in early 1938, against the advice of his pregnant wife and Clifford Odets, he signed a contract with Warner Bros., bought a used Chevy and headed west.
It was while waiting for his first part in pictures that Julie the actor became Julie the activist. Always interested in liberal causes he joined the Anti-Nazi League and the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee and, in doing so, got his name on the Martin Dies list of possible subversives in Washington (along with Eddie Cantor and ten-year-old Shirley Temple!).
Back at the studio, Julie Garfinkle who became Julian Garfield for the theater was now John Garfield, actor. "Four Daughters" , his first picture (the walk-on in "Footlight Parade"is disputed) began in April, 1938. On the set, Julie met Claude Rains and they became fast friends. Claude helped him with sage advice on the difference between stage and cinematic emoting. It served him well because he performed brilliantly as Mickey Borden, the doomed composer. In fact, John Garfield stole the picture and voila! Julie's contract was revised from feature to star status. In his next picture, his name was above the title! That also meant that a movie he made just after "...Daughters" called "Blackwell's Island" had to be revamped to give him more exposure. So while Jule was re-shooting one film in the morning, he was starring in another by afternnon and reading scripts for the third at night. In the middle of all this, Robbie gave birth to a daughter, Katherine!
By 1940. two years after he came to Hollywood, Julie had made seven pictures. But they were all beginning to look alike, every one a gangster-formula film, and when he was asked to do "Invisible Stripes" with George Raft, Julie rebelled and went on suspension. .It was the first of 11 suspensions Julie would get while under contract at Warner Bros. Harry Cohn reportedly said that the only two contract players ever successfully developed at Columbia, Glenn Ford and William Holden, got their chance when he couldn't get Garfield!
Julie was the first major screen name to go on tour entertaining the troops even before Pearl Harbor. He also had the inspiration that became the Hollywood Canteen and, with the help of Bette Davis, created a place where GIs could go and meet their favorite stars. . But his efforts to join up went awry when doctors found a heart murmur possibly from scarlet fever as a child.. He tried to have the rating changed but in 1942 he had a slight heart attack and the chance was gone. His father died the same year. It was also in 1942 that Julie changed his name legally to John Jules Garfield so that when Katherine went to school, it would be easier.
A second child was born in 1943, a son they named David Patton after Julie's father and General Patton. Julie made four more pictures that year.
| Then, in 1945, tragedy
struck. Katherine who was allergy prone, went to a picnic at a family
friend's ranch. A nurse retained to help with baby David went with
her because the ranch was 100 miles outside Los Angeles. Kathy suffered
an acute allergic attack during the night and, when she seemed worse,
the nurse drove her home the next morning. But by that time Kathy
was in real trouble and she died less than an hour after reaching
the house. She was six years old. Julie was at the studio and blamed
himself for not getting home in time. He was never quite the same.
By 1946, Julie was looking for freedom. After "Pride of the Marines"(Julie's biggest box office hit at Warner Bros.)he had only one more picture to complete on his contract. |
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| With "Nobody lives Forever" already 'in the can', he jumped right into "Humoresque" with Joan Crawford. . The picture became one of the top grossing movies of the 1946-1947 season. To top it off, Robbie gave birth to another daughter, lovingly named Julie Roberta for her mom and dad. | |
When the picture wrapped , Julie and partner Bob Roberts formed Roberts Productions,which in turn became part of a new independent company called Enterprise Studio. Julie's first picture under the Enterprise banner was "Body and Soul" an expose of corruption in the fight game and actually based on the life of Barney Ross. Ironically, in the cast were others who would soon feel the iron hand of the HUAC (House UnAmerican Activities Committee) including Playwright Clifford Odets, Anne Revere and director Robert Rossen. He and Robbie also decided to live on both coasts so the children could go to school in New York and Julie could do some stage work. In 1948 Julie recieved a special Antoinette Perry award for his role in "Skipper Next to God".
But it wasn't long before things began to go wrong. Enterprise Studio folded due to a low turnout for the Bergman/Boyer film "Arch of Triumph". Julie and Bob decided to keep Roberts Productions afloat and took a picture offer from Horizon Productions. The picture was 'We were Strangers" with Jennifer Jones and it failed at the box office. The Garfields decided to make the New York move permanent. Soon after the move, Julie suffered another heart attack after a grueling tennis match.
On March 6th, 1951 two days after his
38th birthday, Julie got his subpoena to appear before the HUAC inApril.
The HUAC hearings of 1947 under J. Parnell Thomas were bad but the new
hearings convened under Chairman John S, Wood (Thomas was now in prison
for income tax evasion) were even more inclusive. Julie's "offenses"
were listed as: a wartime tour of Yugoslavia for Yugoslavian War Relief;
his attendance at a State Department dinner for Russian novelist Konstantin
Simonov; and his membership in liberal organizations such as the Theatre
Arts Committee, the National Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions
and the Hollywood Democratic Committee, all deemed subversive by the
HUAC.
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Julie gave his testimony
on April 23, 1951 accompanied by attorneys Louis Nizer and Sidney
Davis. He was pleasant, cooperative, answered all questions but
named no names. ("Don't rat on nobody").When it was over,
Julie was sure it was really over. But he was wrong. Congressman
Jackson (R., CA) pushed the HUAC to turn Julie's name over to the
FBI for a possible perjury charge and Variety printed his charges.
The golden stairs came tumbling down. "He Ran All the Way" opened to lukewarm box office even though it got enthusiastic reviews. Projects already planned for television were cancelled. Roberts Production finally collapsed for lack of backers. |
| The only bright spot: Julie finally got the chance to do Odet's "Golden Boy" on Broadway.in March, 1952 and it opened to rave reviews. But it closed on April 27 after the HUAC heard testimony from Elia Kazan damaging to the Group Theatre and Clifford Odets. And then things went terribly wrong at home. No reasons were ever given but friends felt it was the whole burden of the HUAC mess and disagreement over how to deal with it. Whatever the reason, Julie left home and checked into a hotel. | |
On the evening of May 20th, Julie called on a friend from the theater, Iris Whitney, and they had dinner at Luchow's restaurant. Julie wasn't feeling well and Iris wanted to get a doctor. They went up to her apartment so Julie could lay down and he fell asleep. Iris didn't try to wake him until 8 a.m. the next morning when she found him unresponsive. The doctor confirmed her worst fears. John Jules Garfield was dead at 39 possibly due to a fatal heart attack. Or was it a broken heart? Whatever you believe, it remains that America lost one of its most talented, sensitive and original actors that night and the loss was irreparable.
Julie's funeral brought mobs of people, the numbers greater than even those at the funeral of Rudolph Valentino. Seven thousand viewed the body on one day alone and ten thousand gathered outside the chapel where services were being conducted. It seemed that the public knew how much he had given and were trying even now to give some of that love back.
Postscript: The HUAC revealed that they
had closed the books on John Garfield just days before his death. Julie
had died never knowing he was in the clear.
For more on John Garfield's films check out Arabella's notes.
Footlight Parade (1933)
Four Daughters (1938)
Swingtime in the Movies (1938)
They Made Me a Criminal (1939)
Blackwell's Island (1939)
Juarez (1939)
Daughters Courageous (1939)
Dust Be My Destiny (1939)
Four Wives (1939)
Castle on the Hudson (1940)
Saturday's Children (1940)
Flowing Gold (1940)
East of the River (1940)
The Sea Wolf (1941)
Out of the Fog (1941)
Dangerously They Live (1942)
Tortilla Flat (1942)
Air Force (1943)
The Fallen Sparrow (1943)
Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943)
Show Business at War (1943)
Destination Tokyo (1943)
Between Two Worlds (1944)
Hollywood Canteen (1944)
The Pride of the Marines (1945)
The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945)
The Postman Always Rings Twice ( 1946)
Nobody Lives Forever (1946)
Humoresque (1946)
Screen Snapshots: The Skolsky Party (1946)
Body and Soul (1947)
Gentleman's Agreement (1947)
Daisy Kenyon (1947)
Force of Evil (1948)
The Difficult Years {Anni difficili} (1948)
We Were Strangers (1949)
Jigsaw (1949)
Under MySkin (1950)
The Breaking Point (1950)
He Ran All the Way (1951)
Star power can get the people to the theater but it
takes a good story and a talented ensemble to keep them in the seats.
It is the character actors and bit players that make up the ensemble.
A character actor is usually a specialist in secondary roles demanding
unique physical or vocal characteristics,ethnic or regional dialects.
They can literally transform themselves into whatever"look"
and "body language" each part requires. Bit players round
out the ensemble in smaller roles and "cement" the package
together.
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She was almost always someone's mother in the 42 films she made but Anne Revere was rewarded for those maternal instincts three times with Best Supporting Actress nominations (1943, 1945, and 1947). She won the gold statuette in 1945 for her portrayal of Elizabeth Taylor's wise mother in "National Velvet". Born in New York on January 25, 1903 Anne was a direct descendant of that famous rough rider, Paul Revere, a plum for anyone's family tree. A graduate of Wellesley College, she honed her exceptional talents at the American Laboratory Theatre before making her debut on the Broadway stage in 1931. She followed her role in "The Great Barrington" with a part in "Lady With a Lamp" in the same year. Then, in 1933, after appearing in "Double Door" she followed the play to Hollywood where she also did the screen version in 1934. It was her first film and her last for the next six years. She went home to Broadway. In 1940, Anne headed West again and stayed to make movies for the next 19 years until the HUAC stopped her. This fine actress did not make a single film or television appearance from 1951 until 1964, 13 years when she couldn't work at her craft. She had just done a stellar job as Montgomery Clift's mother in "A Place in the Sun" when she |
found out that her name was one of the
300 on the infamous Hollywood Blacklist and the doors closed in her
face. The same actress who had recieved acclaim on two coasts and worked
in several Best Pictures of the Year was persona non grata in the industry.
Anne and her husband, director Samuel Rosen, ran an acting school in Los Angeles before moving to New York where Anne finally found work on the stage and she won the Antoinette Perry Award for her performance in Lillian Hellman's play "Toys in the Attic". After Broadway, television finally opened its doors to her where she did primetime dramas and even soap operas well into the 1970's.
In 1970, Anne got her first chance to work again in film with a brief appearnace in "Tell Me That You Love Me, JunieMoon" and then a meatier role in "Birch Interval" in 1976.
Anne Revere died of pneumonia on December 18th, 1990 at the age of 87.
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Some of her excellent films were:
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| The Howards of Virginia (1940) Men of Boys' Town (1941) Flame of New Orleans (1941) Old Acquaintance (1942) The Song of Bernadette (1943) The Keys of the Kingdom (1944) National Velvet (1945) |
Dragonwyck (1946) Gentleman's Agreement (1947) ForeverAmber (1947) Body and Soul (1947) You Are My Everything (1949) Birch Interval (1976) |
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| From Lucille and Doug in Tampa. FL., and also from Barbara in Pittsburgh, PA. ... How do you select the films you review? Since you do not
review all the films listed, I assume it has to do with space
restrictions. |
Dear Group,
I have been asked these questions countless times so here goes. Arabella's Notes are not just strictly reviews but accounts of what the star was doing on or off the set or events that occurred during the shooting of the movie. I try to select those films from a star's body of work that can (1) point to some new developments in the actor's career;(2) some new developments in filmmaking or (3) provide some bits of backlot gossip (that seems to be a favorite)! I also have to be able to obtain movie stills for that particular film and this is the hardest thing I have to do. In this country many of these stills are copywrited and unavailable so I usually go to my UK sources to find them. The Baritone's Corner, on the other hand, has the support of the many devoted fans of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald who eagerly share their wealth of photos, tapes and memorabilia (especially Joan Woolley who supplies the movie stills and candid shots for that segment). I am eternally grateful to them. Arabella |
