Hollywood Friends I'll Miss..... - by Rex Reed

[Precious Doll]

Hollywood Friends I'll Miss and A Hollywood Year I Won't

2008 was the year we had to say goodbye to Paul Newman, Heath Ledger, Eartha Kitt, Sydney Pollack, Bettie Page and so many more
BY REX REED

For many disturbing reasons—personal, financial and global—I unequivocally declare 2008 one of the most miserably catastrophic years within memory. With a new government promising a new strategy of reform and change, I join the rest of the world in a new thing called hope. But before we dust off and start fresh in the new year, let’s say a proper goodbye to the folks in the old one who retreated to the doors marked exit. Reams of space have already been devoted to 2008 obituary roundups, all notable for their glaring omissions. Here’s an attempt to get it right. If I’ve left anyone out, you don’t need to know them anyway.
No year in my experience has been filled with so many important departures. They ran the gamut in age and accomplishment. Paul Newman was a blue-eyed hero and an Oscar-winning all-American icon who took acting as far as it could go, a veteran of 65 movies, a liberal political activist and a businessman philanthropist who donated more than $200 million to charity since 1982. Like Sara Lee, nobody didn’t like Paul Newman. We were friends since I was a college sophomore in Baton Rouge; he came to town to star in a Faulkner-based film called The Long, Hot Summer, and talked director Martin Ritt into casting me and my classmate Elizabeth Ann Cole in two tiny parts in the picture. She was so intoxicated by her first brush with show business that she left school, headed for the Broadway lights, and changed her name to Elizabeth Ashley. The rest is history. Paul and Joanne were never conventional film beacons. They hated Hollywood so much when they lived there that when fans clutching star maps started climbing out of tour buses and tramping across their lawn, Paul went out in the middle of the night in his pajamas and nailed down a sign that said, “Please—they have moved—The Pearsons!” When he died, I had just seen him deliver the eulogy at the Connecticut funeral of another veteran film star, Richard Widmark, and then he was gone, too. But Paul was 83, with his best years behind him. Heath Ledger was only 28, with his life and career ahead of him, when he was found dead in a New York apartment on the eve of his big Batman debut as the diabolical Joker. An “inconclusive” autopsy only added to the mystery. Then there was Brad Renfro, the troubled but talented teenager from The Client, his promising career derailed by drugs. He had just turned 25.
Van Johnson! No bigger star lit up the silver screen in Hollywood’s golden years than the wholesome milk-and-Wheaties matinee idol who romanced June Allyson, Gloria DeHaven, Judy Garland, Esther Williams and Elizabeth Taylor in one box office smash after another. He laid the cornerstone of MGM prosperity in the 1940s, when movies were fun, glamorous and a reason to get out of the house. He died at 92, still wearing his trademark red socks. Speaking of MGM glamour, movie musicals will never reach the same dazzling heights of greatness without gorgeous Cyd Charisse, the legendary dancer who channeled ballet technique, ravishing beauty and riveting acting talent into the dreams Technicolor was invented for, in classic musicals like Singin’ in the Rain, The Band Wagon, Brigadoon and Silk Stockings. Other girls danced with Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, but with her grace, elegance, sex appeal and legs for days, Cyd was in a class by herself. It was one last bow for Charlton (Ben-Hur) Heston, who saved the circus, parted the Red Sea, then damaged his career by becoming a passionate spokesman for the National Rifle Association. R.I.P., Chuck. No more standing ovations for Paul Scofield, the reclusive British star who won an Oscar and a Tony for A Man for All Seasons but disliked public life so much that he rejected knighthood in the 1960s. No more close-ups for Evelyn Keyes, one of the last survivors of Gone With the Wind, who married John Huston, Charles Vidor and Artie Shaw, and lived with Mike Todd for years, before becoming an excellent writer, author and newspaper columnist. Her frank 1977 autobiography, Scarlett O’Hara’s Younger Sister, was so hot it sizzled. No more curtain calls for Mel Ferrer, actor (The Sun Also Rises), director (Green Mansions) and ex-husband of Audrey Hepburn; Nina Foch, a great actress, teacher and director who distinguished stage, screen and university lecture halls with her no-nonsense artistry and wisdom; or rugged Roy Scheider, who conquered sharks in Jaws and Bob Fosse in All That Jazz. And no more salty-tongued wisecracks from beautiful, brainy, husky-voiced Suzanne Pleshette, who never lost her wacky sense of humor even while she and third husband Tom Poston were both dying simultaneously. Her Christmas card last year featured a drawing of them in bed surrounded by words like “Cancer!”, “Emphysema!”, “Heart Attacks!” and “Diabetes!” On the first page, they pleaded “Please don’t give us any gifts this year.” Followed, when you opened it up, by “We have everything already”.
Where will movies be without character actors like Beverly Garland (cult favorite in B-movie horrors such as Swamp Women and The Alligator People, and Fred MacMurray’s wife on TV sitcom My Three Sons); Bettie Page, the notorious ’50s nudie pinup and born-again Christian who became the subject of a 2005 art film starring Gretchen Mol; Michael Higgins, best known as the father of the psychotic boy in the original Broadway production of Equus; Eva Dahlbeck, a Swedish favorite in Ingmar Bergman classics like Smiles of a Summer Night; Augusta Dabney, once married to both William Prince and Kevin McCarthy; lurid goth glamour ghoul Vampira, who emerged on late-night TV every Halloween to spoof the living dead; tough-gal Ann Savage, star of the 1945 film noir cult movie Detour; doe-eyed Lois Nettleton, one of the best Blanches I ever saw, in the 1973 Broadway revival of Streetcar; Joy Page, stepdaughter of Warner Brothers mogul Jack Warner, who made her debut in Casablanca, and 98-year-old silent screen star Anita Page; sturdy, reliable Robert Prosky; Last Picture Show alumnus Sam Bottoms; British femme fatale Hazel Court; machine-gun-totin’ soul singer–actor Isaac Hayes, who also wrote the theme music for Shaft; Australia’s favorite outback outlaw Michael Pate; Irene Dailey, sister of dancer Dan Dailey and daughter of the manager of New York’s Roosevelt Hotel, who found stardom late in 1964’s hard-hitting Broadway drama The Subject Was Roses; Eileen Herlie, whose depth and range stretched from Broadway musicals opposite Jackie Gleason, Ray Bolger and Walter Pidgeon to playing Queen Gertrude in both Laurence Olivier’s and Richard Burton’s Hamlets; handsome John Phillip Law, the naked angel who cradled Jane Fonda in his feathers in Barbarella; and Robert Arthur, who played the pleasant teenager in family movies like Cheaper by the Dozen before graduating to meatier roles like ambitious apprentice to sleazy sensation-seeking reporter Kirk Douglas in Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole. After his acting career ended, he became an activist for the rights of gay senior citizens. And let us always remember Edie Adams, vivacious blond-bombshell wife of legendary comic Ernie Kovacs who went from Daisy Mae in Broadway’s Li’l Abner to kidding sex in 19 years of Muriel cigar commercials. Personally, I am already missing my dear friend and Connecticut neighbor Madeline Lee Gilford—political activist, actress-widow of Jack Gilford, feisty survivor of the McCarthy witch hunts, one of our most colorful showbiz seniors, everybody’s Jewish mother and everyone’s Betty Boop kid sister all rolled into one. (Her equally offbeat sister Fran was responsible for the poop-scoop law.)
Who will make us laugh after the passing of cranky Golden Girls crone Estelle Getty, dingbat Dody Goodman, and Estelle Reiner, the lively, opinionated mother of Rob and wife of Carl, who gave the lie to the old adage “You should quit while you’re ahead.” She never really got started, but she was a jazz singer, comedian and energetic senior citizen who was still looking for new projects when she died at 94. Her biggest laugh: the history-making cameo in her son’s 1989 comedy When Harry Met Sally …, when she observed Meg Ryan faking a noisy orgasm in a restaurant and told the waiter, “I’ll have what she’s having.” It was one last guffaw for Dick (“Sock it to me”) Martin, the silly half of Laugh-In team Rowan and Martin; Bernie Mac; outrageous fashion critic Mr. Blackwell, the bitchy, self-proclaimed arbiter of taste whose annual “Worst Dressed List” hurled campy mud at such famous Sloppy Joes as Madonna, Marilyn Monroe and Queen Elizabeth; Harvey Korman, Carol Burnett’s sidekick for 10 years (who could forget them burlesquing Gone With the Wind; oh, what they did to those living room curtains); David Groh, who married Valerie Harper’s character on Rhoda; dyspeptic stand-up George Carlin; and Larry Harmon (a.k.a. Bozo the Clown).

Who can replace these originals? Who will direct them, after the passing of world-class directors Robert Mulligan (To Kill a Mockingbird); Japan’s Kon Ichikawa (Tokyo Olympiad); Broadway’s oddball Scientologist Milton Katselas; my close friend Jules Dassin, who fled the insanity of the HUAC blacklist and found international success in Europe directing films with his wife, Greek icon Melina Mercouri; Joseph Pevney, who directed movies with Cagney and Crawford before retiring on the dough he raked in from Star Trek; France’s Jean Delannoy (Symphonie Pastorale); Italy’s Dino Risi; and Oscar-winning giant Anthony (The English Patient) Minghella, 54, who passed in the freaky aftermath of an operation to remove his tonsils. And nothing can quell the inestimable value of Sydney Pollack, a meticulous craftsman with impeccable taste who proved that mainstream films need not be vulgar, derivative and brainless to appeal to wide audiences and achieve commercial success. Eschewing mindless action epics, animated comic books and pretentious bores, he concentrated instead on turning out timeless classics like Tootsie, Out of Africa, The Way We Were, and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Pollack made intelligent, elegant, solid, emotionally involving films that told a story without depending on computer-generated gimmicks and special effects. He was a real thoroughbred in a stable of nags. Movies won’t look as good, either, without Oscar-winning Out of Africa cinematographer David Watkins, whose diverse eye also enhanced Chariots of Fire, Catch-22 and Yentl.
Who will write the scripts, after a final “The End” from medical thriller expert Michael Crichton; Harold Pinter, whose sparse dialogue and minimal plots created tight-pace tension in 32 plays and 22 films; Tad Mosel, a pioneer of “live” drama from the days before television turned trashy and stupid; playwright William Gibson (The Miracle Worker, Two for the Seesaw); and screenwriters Irving Brecher (Meet Me in St. Louis), Abby Mann (Judgment at Nuremberg), French avant-gardist Alain Robbe-Grillet (Last Year at Marienbad), Dale Wasserman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Man of La Mancha), Luther Davis (Kismet, Grand Hotel), Simon Gray (Butley), and Hitchcock stalwart John Michael Hayes (Rear Window). Publishing lost a whole library of authors, including 90-year-old sci-fi patriarch Arthur C. Clarke; Tony Hillerman; David Foster Wallace; Alexander Solzenitsyn, who taught us what a gulag was; conservative pain with a brain William F. Buckley Jr.; Pulitzer Prize–winning Chicago journalist and social chronicler Studs Terkel; mystery writer Donald Westlake; Eliot Asinof (Eight Men Out); Robin Moore (The French Connection); William Wharton (Birdy); and actor–bon vivant–author George Furth, whose prolific output includes the book for the Stephen Sondheim musical Company.
Music hit a few sour notes. From cotton to caviar, they threw away the key when they made my pal Eartha Kitt. There’s not enough space to cover all the kitschy anecdotes here, but I’m saving the days I spent with that feline warrior in Connecticut for a book. I’m off the downbeat without two favorite band vocalists who became big recording stars—perky Connie Haines and the incomparable Jo Stafford. It was eight bars and out for performer Chris Calloway, daughter of Harlem’s legendary hi-de-ho star, Cab Calloway; Barbara Streisand’s Columbia Records producer Mike Berniker; Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler; Pete Condoli, trumpet wizard with Stan Kenton, Woody Herman and Count Basie, married to both Betty Hutton and Edie Adams, and don’t tell me he had no rhythm in his nursery rhymes; Rosemary Clooney’s longtime drummer Joe Cocuzzo; ace sax man Jimmy Giuffre; songwriter Lew Spence, who penned such classy standards as “Nice and Easy” and “That Face”; Alexander Courage, who orchestrated lush scores for MGM musicals like Gigi and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and wrote the theme music for TV’s Star Trek; author–critic–jazz cornet player Richard Sudhalter, who also wrote an excellent biography of Hoagy Carmichael; Lou Teicher, half of the piano duo Ferrante and Teicher; ace orchestra arrangers Ray Ellis (famous for many things, best of all the great Billie Holiday album with strings, Lady in Satin), Neal Hefti (Sinatra’s producer at Reprise in the ’60s whose songs “Li’l Darlin” and “Girl Talk” have become jazz standards) and Bill Finnegan (are you too young to remember the Sauter-Finnegan orchestra on RCA Victor?); Earle Hagen, who wrote the catchy whistle theme that opened The Andy Griffith Show as well as the jazz classic “Harlem Nocturne”; jazz pianists Page Cavanaugh, Dave McKenna and Gerald Wiggins, who accompanied Zoot Sims, Nat King Cole and Lena Horne and served as a vocal coach for Marilyn Monroe; and Bobby Durham, resourceful drummer for Ella and Oscar Peterson. Another fatality was jazz photographer William Claxton, whose record covers and books of candid photos will continue to keep America’s greatest jazz musicians alive for generations to come. A final nail hit the coffin of movie music with the death of James Dean’s best friend, Oscar-winner Leonard Rosenman, who composed the stirring scores for Dean’s first two films, East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause. Classical music played a reverie for Kirk Browning, who brought culture to the masses directing 185 telecasts of Live From Lincoln Center. No more Rachmaninoff by concert pianist Leonard Pennario. No more arias by Dorothy Sarnoff or antics from flamboyant opera star Giuseppe di Stefano. It was farewell to indescribable Yma Sumac, the exotic Peruvian-born ’50s recording sensation with the five-octave range. On the other side of the street, it was sign-off time for Bo Diddley, whose raucous guitar gave rock ’n’ roll a new beat, and folk singers Miriam Makeba and Odetta shouted their final protest songs. R&B lost its thump with Levi Stubbs, lead singer of the Motown group the Four Tops, and the Grand Ole Opry cheered the final twangs of Hee-Haw star Jim Hager, Kingston Trio founder John Stewart, Grammy-winning Nashville gospel singer Dottie Rambo and the great Eddy Arnold.

Journalism lost editor Clay Felker, a true visionary in the dying magazine business, as well as Hollywood columnist Joe Hyams, and critics Clive Barnes (drama), John Russell (art), Manny Farber (movies) and John Leonard (everything). Gone is the king of the Hollywood publicists, Warren Cowan, and the end of a Hollywood era goes with him. No more Aliens, Terminator or Jurassic Park dinosaur scares from special-effects genius Stan Winston. Artist Robert Rauschenberg hung his last canvas. Paris fashion dictator Yves Saint Laurent sewed his last runway stitch. Sunday morning will never be the same without reliable Meet the Press host Tim Russert. It was the final lotus position for the Beatles’ Hindu guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Revolutionary cardiovascular heart surgeon Michael DeBakey closed the O. R. door. Sorry to see the end of Sir Edmund Hilary, the first explorer to reach the top of Mount Everest; Bobby Fischer, the moody chess champ who spent his later years abroad; Gerald Schoenfeld, powerful chairman of the Shubert Organization who owned Broadway; ABC sportscaster Jim McKay, who made his name when he scooped the slaughter of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics; ballerina Sallie Wilson; Sunny von Bulow, the heiress who spent most of her adult life in a manicured, pedicured coma; and Mark Felt, the retired F.B.I. agent who finally revealed himself as “Deep Throat.” God bless the eccentrics who kept us puzzled and laughing: author David Freedman, who devoted his life to trying everything at least once, from crashing the Oscars to running with the bulls in Pamplona; A&P heir Huntington Hartford, whose ugly museum in Columbus Circle was a New York eyesore for decades; Eugene Ehrlich, who wrote 40 dictionaries, thesauruses and phrase books for the “extraordinarily literate”; Ethel Greenglass, key witness in the atomic spy trial that sent Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (her sister-in-law) to the electric chair; Irvine Robbins, half of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream team who survived 63 years of thrusting flavors like Pink Bubblegum and Daiquiri Ice down endless throats (Ketchup and Bagels and Lox never made it beyond the test lab); Alvin Marks, who patented the 3-D process that never caught on; and 102-year-old Albert Hoffman, who invented LSD and died smiling. Last but never least: durable Margaret Truman, only daughter of President Harry, who accomplished a lot on her own as a concert pianist, mystery novelist and “regular” on Tallulah Bankhead’s NBC radio show, The Big Show. Critics made so much fun of her singing that President Truman fired a missile at a Washington Post columnist on White House stationery, warning, “I have never met you, but if I do, you’ll need a new nose and plenty of beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below.” It made page-one headlines.
Goodbye, 2008, and good riddance.