Frank Langella on 'Wrath of God's Troubled Shoot

Actor Frank Langella has just published his memoirs in the new book "Dropped Names: Famous Men and Women as I Knew Them," out later this month. An extended excerpt details the difficult 1972 shoot of The Wrath of God, starring ROBERT MITCHUM and Rita Hayworth. The '40s screen goddess (who was later diagnosed with Alzheimer's) had difficulties remembering her lines. Langella recalls how Mitchum helped get Rita to the set on time.  

She was by then finished in pictures and the word was that Mitch had insisted on her, possibly for old times’ sake, the rumor being they had once had a tumble or two. Mitch would play a runaway priest. I would be the town’s despot, who swears revenge on all priests for murdering my father, and Rita would be my mother, a God-fearing matron who never lets go of a set of rosary beads...

One day [Mitchum] comes to me and says: “Listen, pal, we’re never going to finish this f--king picture if we don’t get your girl to work on time.” Mitch, Rita, and I have our own local drivers, and each of them regards the harrowing ride along narrow, unfenced mountain roads as challenges to be met with daredevil speed. Mitch sleeps through his rides and so do I. But Rita, who is terrified of all moving things, makes her driver go at a snail’s pace and often arrives at work an easy hour or more after everyone else. So Mitch comes up with a plan: “Look,” he says. “Let’s the three of us ride together. You sit up front and we’ll put Rita in the back with me.”

Early mornings become a struggle of manipulating Rita into a broken-down jalopy and laying her down on the floor of the back seat. Mitch tosses a blanket over her as she pulls her floppy sailor hat down past her eyes. I then hop in the front and off we go. These rides become a hilarious routine of Rita laughing and screaming at the top of her lungs, with Mitch stretched out on the back seat outshouting her, singing Gilbert and Sullivan patter songs, exactly as written, in perfect pitch, while a non-English-speaking driver careens close to the narrow road’s edge as wildly as he dares. When we reach the location, I get out and Mitch and I lift Rita from the floor, remove the blanket, pull up her hat, and calm her down. “Cheated the old Grim Reaper again,” he says and saunters off to his trailer.

At the time, very few people understood or recognized Alzheimer's and assumed she was simply an alcoholic. Hayworth died in 1987 at the age of 68.

via The Daily Beast (Newsweek)

New Biography of Director Nicholas Ray

Mitchum and Nicholas Ray on the set of 'The Lusty Men.'

Director Nicholas Ray made several 1950s classics, including Rebel Without a Cause, the Humphrey Bogart film noir In a Lonely Place, and one of Mitchum's finest films, The Lusty Men. But his later career stalled, despite his cooperation with HUAC during the Red Scare.

A new biography, 'Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure of an American Director' by Patrick McGilligan, profiles Ray, who was as known for his Hollywood romances as his movies: He slept with Natalie Wood when she was just 16 during production of Rebel. His other conquests include Marilyn Monroe, Joan Crawford and Judy Holliday.

His most famous marriage was to noir icon Gloria Grahame, who costarred with Mitchum in Macao and Not as a Stranger. The Grahame biography Suicide Blonde details their stormy marriage and her subsequent marriage to Ray's son from his first marriage. (That's right, she married her own stepson!)

Ray would go on to become a mentor to filmmakers Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch (who directed Mitchum's last theatrical film, Dead Man). Wenders gave Ray a cameo in The American Friend and filmed Lightning Over Water, a documentary about Ray's last days.


JSOnline Book review 

'Return to Thunder Road' author appearance

This non-fiction book by Alex Gabbard profiles the real-life story of moonshining in the southern Appalachians, as seen in the 1958 ROBERT MITCHUM film 'Thunder Road.' Gabbard will be speaking at the March 17 Literacy Luncheon in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

From the Amazon profile: "This is a powerful saga of an age gone by ... Alex Gabbard tells the story of moonshining in the mountains where he grew up and how it influenced the rural south and fledgling stock car racing, giving the sport its most colorful and enduring characters."

'Thunder Road' was one of Mitchum's most personal films. He came up with the idea for the film, produced it, chose the director and cast his son, Jim, as his younger brother. He also sang the hit title track, 'The Ballad of Thunder Road.'

Mitchum in New "Match Prints" Photography Book

This looks like a very cool new photography book of classic actors and rock 'n' roll stars:

Jim Marshall and Timothy White made an odd couple. White is a stylish shooter of celebrity portraits. The gruff Marshall ("I only photograph artists I like, where I get the trust") has taken some of the most iconic shots in rock & roll.

"We'd dress differently. We'd look differently. There's 20 years difference in our lives, our careers, everything. But there was this affection. There was this love that we had for each other, that this book came out of."

The book, called "Match Prints" (HarperCollins) is the product of Marshall and White's 24-year friendship.

It was a photograph White had taken of actor ROBERT MITCHUM that started it all: "My image of Robert Mitchum, which Jim just loved. He just really loved this picture a lot," said White. "And then, of course, [he] pulled out this image of Jim Morrison that was just uncanny. Just, you know, it was the exact same position, holding the cigarette the same way."

As they went through each other's work, they noticed more and more similarities.

Rest of the article at CBS News

You must read (and watch) Eddie Coyle

The first thing to know about George V. Higgins' The Friends of Eddie Coyle is that it directly entered the crime-fiction canon upon its 1970 publication. The second thing to know is that it holds up as both a writer's-writer thriller and as popular pulp, with Dennis Lehane introducing Picador's new 40th-anniversary reissue of the novel by heralding it as "the game-changing crime novel of the last fifty years"—a moderate claim compared with that of Elmore Leonard, who hails it as the best crime novel, period. The third thing to know about The Friends of Eddie Coyle is that, as Lehane beat me to quipping, Eddie Coyle doesn't actually have any friends. When "my friend" is said in these pages, it is used with far less affection than in the case of a guy at a bodega or a coffee cart man addressing a patron

Read the rest of the article at Slate.com

George Hamilton recalls working with Mitchum

Story at Daily Mail (UK)

Gorgeous George Hamilton's tantastic tales: The actor recalls Elvis, Marilyn and JFK in his new autobiography.

An excerpt about Mitchum:

I worked with ROBERT MITCHUM on the 1960 film Home From The Hill and I never saw any star care less about being one. Bob could talk your ear off, but the one thing he didn't want to talk about was his lines or the film. He liked to get drunk and then sing songs - sea shanties, cockney ditties, Australian football songs, anything.

What he would usually say to me was: 'Gettin'any?' He was. Bob would send me to buy him liquor. On my first run back to his hotel room, I found him 'entertaining' a lady. He motioned me to open a bottle and hand it over. I was honored to be of service.

When he wasn't having sex, he'd sit in a rocking chair wearing just boxer shorts and alligator cowboy boots while casting for imaginary trout with a fishing rod.

He drank a lot and smoked a lot of dope. He also took a lot of pills, which he kept in his own leather doctor's bag. One night I asked him for something to help me sleep. He handed me a pill he called a 'nighty night' - and I slept straight through my call the next morning and on into a second day.

Bob once said to me: 'They think I don't know my lines. It's not true. I'm just too drunk to say 'em.'

The studio once sent a manager to keep Bob in line, but the minute he walked into the hotel room, Bob punched him, knocking him through the door.

For years, Bob sent me Mother's Day cards. I was never sure why, but he gave me confidence that you could always be a star in Hollywood on your own terms."

New Book on the Making of The Night of the Hunter

The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film, by Jeffrey Couchman (March 2009).

"The only film ever directed by the great character actor Charles Laughton, The Night of the Hunter failed miserably when it opened in 1955. But since then it has come to be recognized as one of American cinema's greatest masterpieces. Shot in glorious black and white, this poetic, highly stylized movie is half-Gothic nightmare, half-morality play, a pastoral film noir set along the banks of the serene Ohio River. Cahiers du Cinéma ranks it as the second most beautiful film of all time (after Citizen Kane and just above The Rules of the Game). In this enthralling 'biography,' Jeffrey Couchman traces how the cinematic classic came to be made."

From the Washington Post Book Review

Order the book at Amazon.com