It's not fair to blame Thomas Pynchon and Inherent Vice but ever since discovering how Pynchon's P.I. Doc imagined himself as John Garfield, I've been on a bit of nostalgic Garfield trip that's led me into the fascinating world of theatre in New York in the years between the world wars. A Garfield biography led me to Howard Clurman's The Fervent Years. From there I found Cheryl Crawford's memoir, and onto A Life on the Stage by Jacob Adler, and a few other books about the fascinating world of theatre in New York from the late 19th century up to the early 1950's. Some of these I've written about on this blog, others I've just recommended to friends and family but maybe I'll make a few notes eventually.
Back to the subject at hand -- Howard Gelman's The Films of John Garfield (Seacaucus, NJ : Citadel Press, c.1975) is worth tracking down just for the superlative photos of Garfield that it contains. It starts off with a 3-page introduction by Abraham Polonsky in which Polonsky explains how he met Garfield and his partner, Bob Roberts, at their independent film company, Enterprise Productions, and convinces them to produce Body and Soul, scripted by Polonsky. The resultant film, directed by Robert Rossen is considered one of Garfield's finest.
Don't be misled by the title. Yes, each film receives 1 or more pages of still photographs and production details, background information on the film, a 1970's assessment of its effectiveness, a plot synopsis and excerpts from period review(s) of the film focusing on Garfield's performance). In addition, though, there's a 27-page chapter of biographical information, a chapter on Garfield's major theatrical performances, and one on the HUAC investigation with excerpts from John Garfield's testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Back to Pynchon and Doc -- why would a youngish man of Italian (?) ancestry born in California identify so closely with John Garfield? How often does a person get to don a raincoat in sunny, Southern California? Is there something about being outsiders? Pynchon doesn't describe Doc's appearance so as I read the book, it was his attitude and p.o.v. that called to mind several people but none of these friends looked remotely like John Garfied.
Arguably, John Garfield was one of the first "ethnic" types to achieve leading man status in Hollywood motion pictures as well as a forerunner of those famous rebellious youthful heroes of the 1950's and 60's -- from James Dean through that trio of easy riders. He was an ambitious, self-driven young man who removed himself from the poverty of the Bronx, plunged headlong into the theatre (after dreams of a professional boxing career faded) and landed in The Group (the brainchild of Clurman, Crawford and Lee Strasberg). Eventually he got himself out to Hollywood, reportedly because Clurman gave the lead in Clifford Odets' Golden Boy to Luther Adler, rather than Jules Garfield, for whom Odet had written the part.
Becoming John Garfield and starring in a series of gritty Warner Brothers' films designed to appeal to the Everyman (and woman), JG had a meteoric career. Eventually, frustration with Warners typecasting, less-than-reasonable loans to other studios and a number of suspensions led Garfield to go the independent route. Sadly, the blacklisting badly hurt his studio as well as his opportunities to get important roles and JG returned to NY, the theatre, the HUAC appearances and a life that had spiraled out of control. His May 1952 funeral in NYC was reportedly the biggest celebrity-funeral since that of Rudolf Valentino's in 1926 (http://themave.com/Garfield/artc/nytimes.htm).
Being a bit literal-minded and because I'd seen Garfield wearing lots of trench coats in noir-ish settings over my movie-watching years, I read Inherent Vice thinking John Garfield had played at least one P.I. for Doc to want to channel. Mr. Gelman's book provided a good way to determine if John Garfield ever portrayed a private investigator. So, for the record, here are the occupations of the characters portrayed by John Garfield in each of his films (minus a few appearances as himself):
Footlight Parade (1933) - sailor, U.S. Navy
Four Daughters (1938) - pianist and drifter
Made Me a Criminal (1939) - boxer and ranch hand
Blackwell's Island (1939) - investigative journalist
Juarez (1939) - general fighting to overthrow Mexico's foreign rule
Daughters Courageous (1939) - con man and vagabond
Dust Be My Destiny (1939) - fugitive from the law
Saturday's Children (1940) - an inventor
Castle on the Hudson (1940) - gangster
Flowing Gold (1940) - oil-field worker on the run from the law
East of the River (1940) - small-time hoodlum
The Sea Wolf (1941) - seaman on a fishing vessel
Out of the Fog (1941) - gangster
Dangerously They Live (1941) - intern at a NY hospital who runs afoul of Nazi spies
Tortilla Flat (1942) - workingman in a small fishing village in Mexico
Air Force (1943) - Army Air Corps sergeant aboard a fighter bomber
Destination Tokyo (1943) - sailor aboard U.S. Navy submarine attacking Tokyo
The Fallen Sparrow (1943) - Spanish Civil War veteran
Between Two Worlds (1944) - Newspaper reporter
Pride of the Marines (1945) - WW2 U.S. Marine Corps machine gunner blinded in action
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) - drifter
Nobody Lives Forever (1946) -WW2 veteran and con man
Humoresque (1946) - violinist
Body and Soul (1947) - prizefighter
Gentleman's Agreement (1947) WW2 veteran experiencing anti-Semitism
Force of Evil (1948) - lawyer working for the mob
We Were Strangers (1949) - revolutionary and leader of a guerilla band in Cuba
Under My Skin (1950) -jockey barred from horse-racing
The Breaking Point (1950) -owner/captain of a sport-fishing boat
He Ran All the Way (1951) - small-time thief and murderer
Quite a range of occupations, quite a few films for such a short career, but nary a P.I. in the lot. But, thanks to The Films of John Garfield, I've a better handle on the film titles and characters so it's time to reread Inherent Vice.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Friday, October 2, 2009
Cheryl Crawford, "One naked individual"
In her 1977 autobiography, producer Cheryl Crawford (1902-1986) recounts her love of the theatre and overwhelming desire to become and stay part of this of world. Theatre represented an environment where she could express herself in ways that the Akron, Ohio of her childhood prohibited and the restrictive code of behavior imposed upon Smith College students. One Naked Individual : My Fifty Years in the Theatre traces Miss Crawford's triumphs, flops and failures (she defines the latter two conditions differently) as she assailed the barriers that existed against women as theatrical producers. Over the course of her career she moved back and forth between relative security of group work (but with limits imposed by others and frequent personality conflicts) and and the freedom enjoyed by the independent producer (along with sky-high financial risk.)
As Crawford explains, this autobiography is an exploration of her life by way of a mix of chronological and thematic strands. For readers who prefer a more chronological approach, the appendix comes in handy. Most readers, if they are familiar with Crawford's work, will recognize her from the musicals she produced. These are largely described in 2 chapters: "One Touch of Venus" and "Musical Adventures." The story of how of One Touch of Venus came to be such a smash hit is one of the most delightful in the book as she traces the production from its initial inception to its London premiere. A near siege aimed at getting Marlene Dietrich to play the goddess having failed, the stage is set for Crawford's initial meeting with Mary Martin, and an important lifelong friendship. From a disastrous opening in Boston Venus went on to win accolades, awards and audiences galore.
Since 1936 Crawford and Kurt Weill had nourished a hope of collaborating on a second work. Their first resulted in Johnny Johnson, a production that had been beset by difficulties raising money (a near constant strand in the book) and personality conflicts galore. Amidst these problems and distractions Crawford and Weill found themselves in agreement about the role and prospects for musical theatre, an interest that was secondary to her fellow Group Theatre directors. Crawford along with was a member of the triumvirate that ran the Group Theater. Impressed by the work of Stanislavsky and Mayerhoff and the theater scene in the Soviet Union, Crawford, Howard Clurman and Lee Strasberg led a strong company of actors wishing to expand their acting skills by presenting plays by young and little-known American dramatists. Thematically, the Group Theater wanted to put on plays that were relevant to to situation of American audiences during the Great Depression, a striking contrast to most of the Broadway productions, not to mention Hollywood films, of this period.
Miss Crawford writes that she had the "good fortune to be identified with many of the major theatrical enterprises of my time." In addition to the The Maplewood Theater, a stock company she ran for 3 seasons until WW2 gas restrictions impeded attendance, the list is a veritable What's What of New York Theatre: the Theatre Guild, the Group Theatre (aka The Group), the American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA), the American Repertory Theatre (ART), and the Actors Studio
Famous individuals fly across these pages with actresses figuring larger than actors. (In Body and Soul: The Story of John Garfield biographer Larry Swindell describes J.G.'s prolonged siege of Cheryl Crawford; here the effort gets a sentence.) Besides Mary Martin, Judith Anderson and Marilyn Monroe stand out from the crowd of names. But it's the playwrights who get the most attention with three dominating the later chapters of the book: "Gadg" as Elia Kazan was known (his college nickname of Gadget being shortened), Clifford Odets (whom Crawford first hired as an actor and sent out with road companies) and most movingly, Tennessee Williams or "Tenn" (whose photographic portrait suggests he was far and away the handsomest of the group.)
Speaking of photographs, there are 34 black-and-white ones reproduced with varying degrees of success on 16 glossy pages. Alas there were not more but these were carefully chosen and cover the time-frame of the autobiography from beginning to end. There's also a poem by Walt Whitman that begins "I know I am solid and sound...' quoted; Crawford describes this as her bulwark against uncertainty and attacks of the "blues."
Wistfully she explains "I had no private life to speak of, just occasional evenings with colleagues. A social life, not to mention a love life, takes time, and I had none to spare. It was a high price to pay." (p.112). Published in 1977 by Bobbs-Merrill, this 275-page autobiography is a fascinating page-turner. Chances are you'll have to look for copies at the library or o.p. dealers. I gather from a tag on a library book annotation site, Crawford is known in the lgbt community but there's no hint of serious personal attachments to anybody in One Naked Individual : My Fifty Years in the Theatre.
For researchers interested in looking at Cheryl Crawford's papers, the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has the following inventory online: http://www.nypl.org/research/manuscripts/the/thecrawford.xml
As Crawford explains, this autobiography is an exploration of her life by way of a mix of chronological and thematic strands. For readers who prefer a more chronological approach, the appendix comes in handy. Most readers, if they are familiar with Crawford's work, will recognize her from the musicals she produced. These are largely described in 2 chapters: "One Touch of Venus" and "Musical Adventures." The story of how of One Touch of Venus came to be such a smash hit is one of the most delightful in the book as she traces the production from its initial inception to its London premiere. A near siege aimed at getting Marlene Dietrich to play the goddess having failed, the stage is set for Crawford's initial meeting with Mary Martin, and an important lifelong friendship. From a disastrous opening in Boston Venus went on to win accolades, awards and audiences galore.
Since 1936 Crawford and Kurt Weill had nourished a hope of collaborating on a second work. Their first resulted in Johnny Johnson, a production that had been beset by difficulties raising money (a near constant strand in the book) and personality conflicts galore. Amidst these problems and distractions Crawford and Weill found themselves in agreement about the role and prospects for musical theatre, an interest that was secondary to her fellow Group Theatre directors. Crawford along with was a member of the triumvirate that ran the Group Theater. Impressed by the work of Stanislavsky and Mayerhoff and the theater scene in the Soviet Union, Crawford, Howard Clurman and Lee Strasberg led a strong company of actors wishing to expand their acting skills by presenting plays by young and little-known American dramatists. Thematically, the Group Theater wanted to put on plays that were relevant to to situation of American audiences during the Great Depression, a striking contrast to most of the Broadway productions, not to mention Hollywood films, of this period.
Miss Crawford writes that she had the "good fortune to be identified with many of the major theatrical enterprises of my time." In addition to the The Maplewood Theater, a stock company she ran for 3 seasons until WW2 gas restrictions impeded attendance, the list is a veritable What's What of New York Theatre: the Theatre Guild, the Group Theatre (aka The Group), the American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA), the American Repertory Theatre (ART), and the Actors Studio
Famous individuals fly across these pages with actresses figuring larger than actors. (In Body and Soul: The Story of John Garfield biographer Larry Swindell describes J.G.'s prolonged siege of Cheryl Crawford; here the effort gets a sentence.) Besides Mary Martin, Judith Anderson and Marilyn Monroe stand out from the crowd of names. But it's the playwrights who get the most attention with three dominating the later chapters of the book: "Gadg" as Elia Kazan was known (his college nickname of Gadget being shortened), Clifford Odets (whom Crawford first hired as an actor and sent out with road companies) and most movingly, Tennessee Williams or "Tenn" (whose photographic portrait suggests he was far and away the handsomest of the group.)
Speaking of photographs, there are 34 black-and-white ones reproduced with varying degrees of success on 16 glossy pages. Alas there were not more but these were carefully chosen and cover the time-frame of the autobiography from beginning to end. There's also a poem by Walt Whitman that begins "I know I am solid and sound...' quoted; Crawford describes this as her bulwark against uncertainty and attacks of the "blues."
Wistfully she explains "I had no private life to speak of, just occasional evenings with colleagues. A social life, not to mention a love life, takes time, and I had none to spare. It was a high price to pay." (p.112). Published in 1977 by Bobbs-Merrill, this 275-page autobiography is a fascinating page-turner. Chances are you'll have to look for copies at the library or o.p. dealers. I gather from a tag on a library book annotation site, Crawford is known in the lgbt community but there's no hint of serious personal attachments to anybody in One Naked Individual : My Fifty Years in the Theatre.
For researchers interested in looking at Cheryl Crawford's papers, the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has the following inventory online: http://www.nypl.org/research/manuscripts/the/thecrawford.xml
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