[Slaps Larry and Curly]
Larry [played
by Larry Fine]: “What's that for?”
Curly [played by Moe
Howard]: “We didn't do nothin'!”
Moe: “That's in case you do
when I'm not around.”— Hoi Polloi
(1935 short starring The Three Stooges), screenplay by Felix Adler, based on a
story by Adler and Helen Howard, directed by Del Lord
Moe Howard: The guy who truly put the "slap" in "slapstick."
Assigning causes of death can be difficult, and in Garfield’s case it was certainly problematic:
*Did he die as a result of the rheumatic fever he had contracted almost 20 years before, maybe worsened by his smoking habit?
*Had the middle-aged star absorbed more punishment than he could stand in an attempt to portray a young boxer in a revival of the Clifford Odets drama Golden Boy?
*Had his coronary incident occurred during a romantic
interlude with the female friend he was visiting at the time of his death, as
some salacious gossips had it?
But there is another factor that underlies all of these
theories: the stress of lingering questions about alleged Communist associations
that, after nine years, had resulted in his blacklisting from Hollywood.
In perhaps his signature movie role, as an ambitious boxer
struggling to win a title and maintain his integrity in Body and Soul,
Garfield received his second Oscar nomination. When he was subpoenaed to testify
before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1951, he found
himself in the uncomfortable position of life imitating art.
Like his character Charlie Davis, Garfield was
reluctant to give up the position in his profession he had worked so intensely
to achieve, including creature comforts. Like Davis, he did his share of bobbing
and weaving when faced with his moral dilemma, including releasing a
ghostwritten article for Look Magazine, “I Was a Sucker for a Left Hook,”
claiming he had been duped by Communist ideology, in a futile try at
compromising with investigators.
But in the end, again like Davis, he found one demand
too many to stomach, in this case violating the moral code of the Lower East
Side and the Bronx of his childhood: Don’t be a snitch. His bottom line was that he
refused to name names.
It may be so hard to assess all that Garfield lost by
making his stand because we have lost a sense of his place in movie history. He opened doors to others (Ben Gazzara cited him, in an interview with Lillian and Helen Ross in The Player: A Profile of an Art, "the first actor I had seen in the movies who felt close enough to my own life to be reachable"), but at the same time his reputation was so Himalayan that it could intimidate those who hoped to follow. (For the same book, Kim Hunter recalled how, in rehearsals for A Streetcar Named Desire, Marlon Brando kept saying, "They should have got John Garfield for Stanley, not me; Garfield was right for the part, not me.")
*He was the first film “Method Actor”. Before
Brando, Clift and James Dean became famous for using this naturalistic style of
portraying characters, Garfield got there first. He learned it originally as a member of the
ensemble Group Theatre in New York, then brought the style to Hollywood. As author Isaac Butler described it in an interview with NPR’s Terry Gross, Garfield
made a crucial adaptation for his first film, Four Daughters in 1938: “He
couldn't just do a stage performance on camera. If you've ever seen someone
just give a stage-size performance on camera, it's really too much because the
camera picks up so much that an audience at the theater will not see. It can
really see you think or people talk about it reading your mind. ... So he
really had to learn how to do much less and much less and much less, and to
strip away and to learn how to perform with a new kind of ease and spontaneity
that the camera would kind of pick up and enjoy.”
*He was "the first Jewish film sex symbol," according to Gil Troy's 2018 "Daily Beast" article. The
actor’s given name was Jacob Julius Garfinkle, but his friends nicknamed him “Julie.”
He was more than handsome; his intensity gave a palpable erotic surge to his
scenes with Lana Turner, for instance, in The Postman Always Rings Twice.
*He was crucial in the development of film noir.
Other actors—Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum come to mind—are more indelibly
associated with the genre. But Garfield not only brought a rebellious persona,
but also what TCM “Noir Alley” host Eddie Muller called, in Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir, “a
fiery desire to Make a Difference,” leading to “a caravan of writers,
directors, and actors from the New York stage.”
*He pioneered the movement of movie stars into
independent production. So chafing at the largely “B” movies to which he
was relegated at Warner Brothers that he was suspended 11 times during his nine
years at the studio, Garfield started his own production company, Enterprise Studios. A
decade later, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas would follow suit with their own
companies.
Ironically, the creative freedom that Garfield won through
this daring move also helped lead to his blacklisting, according to his daughter Julie in this YouTube clip. Hollywood
studios resented the challenge to their ironclad control that his new venture
represented. When HUAC approached them, looking for a liberal Jewish star that
they could make an example of, they had three men in mind: Edward G. Robinson,
Danny Kaye, and Garfield. Now on his own, Garfield had the least protection.
The actor had first appeared on a list of names of
Hollywood actors with suspicious associations in the early 1940s, but within a
few years—especially through the attention of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover—he came
under heightened scrutiny. Garfield was not and had never been a Communist, but
he knew people who were: his associates at the Group Theatre and his wife Roberta
Seidman.
Additionally, Garfield was vulnerable because of his habit of signing petitions and joining organizations without questioning who might be behind them. A self-described "Democratic liberal," he did it all "without giving it a second thought, almost as if he were autographing for a friend," observed Robert Nott, author of a 2003 biography of the actor, He Ran All the Way.
Eventually Garfield’s phone would be tapped and he
would be subjected to surveillance—even when he went to Harlem to visit his
dying friend, blacklisted actor Canada Lee. He told HUAC that he would gladly
testify about himself but not his wife or his friends. Though he thought this
deal had gotten him through his trouble, he learned that HUAC investigators
were poring over his testimony for possible perjury charges.
At this point, he was brought into an FBI office and
told that the agency already had paperwork showing his wife’s membership in the
party, so all he had to do was confirm it and he would be cleared. Instead, he
told them what they could do in unprintable terms and walked out.
Altogether, Garfield went 18 months without work.
Under the strain of the investigation, he drank more heavily and separated from
his wife.
On the day of Garfield’s death, his friend, playwright
Clifford Odets, confirmed, in his own HUAC testimony, what the committee knew already:
that the actor had never been a Communist.
Garfield's penultimate screen appearance was in The Breaking Point, a Warner Brothers adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not. Like a Hemingway hero, Garfield was, in the end, a proud loser, someone willing to experience grievous sacrifice--even the loss of his life--rather than break with the code by which he lived.
You can sense something of this bloodied yet unbowed attitude in this still from Body and Soul. He didn't have a chance to make enough such classics (his early death precluded him from the chance to make On the Waterfront and The Man With the Golden Arm), but he put all of himself into his work, and film watchers discovering his less-famous films for the first time are in for a treat.
“Those who have been torpedoed and rescued ship right
out again as soon as they can get out of the hospital. That takes plenty of nerve, but the merchant
seamen have it. They don't get much publicity, and you seldom hear anyone
making speeches about them. They don't get free passes to the theater or the
movies, and no one gives dances for them, with pretty young actresses and
debutantes to entertain them. No one ever thinks much about their
"morale" or how to keep it up.
It was only recently that a bill was passed to give them medals. And because they wear no uniforms they don't
even have the satisfaction of having people in the streets and subways look at
them with respect when they go by.”— American editor, writer
and socialite Helen Lawrenson (1907-1982), “ ‘Damn the Torpedoes!’”, originally
published in Harper’s Magazine, July 1942, reprinted in Reporting World War II: Part One: American Journalism, 1938-1944 (Library of
America anthology, 1994)
Perhaps because of husband Jack Lawrenson, the
charismatic co-founder and leader of the National Maritime Union, Helen
Lawrenson—previously known for her writing about New York society in the
1930s—wrote with marvelous empathy for the sacrifices and heroism of the
American merchant marine in WWII.
At the time Lawrenson reported on these sailors for Harper’s
in May 1942, U.S. merchant vessels had, through the first four months of
the year, endured more than 100 attacks by German U-boats off American coasts. Nearly
1,000 seamen were killed during this time. Even after precautions were finally
taken, an average of five or six of these boats were sunk in April alone.
The image accompanying this post—a recruitment poster
from 1944—illustrates these men’s grim determination in the face of all
hazards.
Much has been written over the years about the “The
Greatest Generation” who served in the armed forces during WWII, and I hope to
blog more about them myself in the future.
But the merchant seamen in the war faced their own
perils in hauling vital cargo in the conflict, and for years their bravery went
comparatively unrecognized (the likes of Lawrenson excepted).
Estimates for the number of these men who lost their
lives in the war ranged from 6,000 to 9,000, and the survivors of these attacks
would not soon forget the fire, explosions, runs for their lives, circling
sharks, and floating in open water after their boats were hit.
They couldn’t forget all that—and neither should we.
While Lawrenson’s article gives an excellent contemporary account of their
dangers and courage, William Geroux’s May 2016 piece for Smithsonian
Magazine offers a longer-term perspective on what we owe them.
Jay Pritchett
[played by Ed O'Neill]: “You took a three-hour nap yesterday!”
Manny: “I was tired
from the marathon.”
Jay: “The Downton Abbey
marathon?” — Modern Family, Season 6,
Episode 13, “Rash Decisions,” original air date Feb. 4, 2015, teleplay
by Daisy Gardner, directed by James Alan Hensz
Off and on for the first half-century of its
existence, I have been something of an aficionado of Masterpiece
(or, as it known earlier in its younger days, Masterpiece Theatre). By
my count, I’ve taken in about 30 different mini-series under the umbrella of
the British import—not just acclaimed entries like The Jewel in the Crown,
Prime Suspect, and The Forsyte Saga, but even the likes of Strangers
and Brothers, The First Churchills and The Last of the Mohicans.
But Downton Abbey? I’ve seen only about
three episodes from its first season. It wasn’t that I hated it, mind
you. But it was never really “appointment TV” for me.
And so, while the Crawleys became something of a cash
cow for the PBS system, tried out almost as much as those musical specials for
nostalgic baby boomers during those fundraising marathons, I’ve been largely
content to sit on the sidelines.
That’s been nothing like the case for a pair of male
relatives of mine. While I, comparatively speaking, have watched everything on Masterpiece
but Downton Abbey, they have watched nothing but that show. The
wonder of it is that these guys normally are neither Anglophiles nor culture
vultures, but more than happy to spend several hours a night watching one
sports event or other.
It was a sad day indeed in those two households when
those relatives and their wives watched the last of the original 52 episodes of
the show after six seasons. Then came the movie version in 2019,
and—wouldn’t you know it?—they were among its troop of fans out for opening
weekend.
This weekend, when each of these relatives will be
otherwise engaged, that won’t be quite the case with the premiere of Downtown Abbey: A New Era. But you can take it to the bank that the first chance
they get, they’re going to catch up to the latest adventures of the Earl of Grantham,
Lady Cora and Crew.
And, beyond that, the next time there’s a PBS Downton
Abbey marathon, they’ll be taking it very seriously indeed, unlike Modern
Family’s Jay.
(For those of my readers who can’t get enough of the
show, you’ll want to check out the Downtown Abbey Online blog.)
(Picture of Derek Walcott taken at his honorary
dinner, Amsterdam, May 20, 2008; permission is granted by Michiel van Kempen,
secretary and treasurer of the Werkgroep Caraibische Letteren, The Netherlands;
by courtesy of the photographer Bert Nienhuis.)
