Who's Jack Elam?

Well-cast character actors can strengthen the performance of the star in the leading role, and they can enrich a formulaic storyline by infusing their secondary characters with color and personality. These are the type of actors whose faces are familiar to movie-goers but whose names are seldom remembered. In previous eras, veteran character actors often enjoyed careers that were five or six decades long, and they were revered by stars, directors, and producers who recognized their contributions to the films—even entire genres. The Hollywood industry has changed a great deal in the last two decades, altering the cinematic landscape for actors. For many reasons, there are far fewer character actors than ever before. And, certain genres, particularly those with formulaic story patterns, are the lesser for it.

This Saturday, Facets Night School presents Hannie Caulder, a revisionist western starring Raquel Welch as a gun-toting woman who seeks revenge on those men who did her wrong. Her romantic lead is television actor Robert Culp, who gives one of his best performances as the gunslinger who teaches her to shoot. A sex symbol with a pleasing personality, Welch was a limited actress who carefully selected her roles. Hannie Caulder includes several highly respected character actors whose faces were familiar to audiences in 1971 when the film was released. The addition of veteran character actors Ernest Borgnine, Strother Martin, and Jack Elam as the Clemens Brothers elevated Welch’s performance, especially in scenes in which the dialogue is depicted in shot/reverse shot.

Young cinephiles may recognize Jack Elam as one of three gunslingers who menace Charles Bronson in the opening sequence of Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. Though Elam appeared in a variety of genres as the heavy, he excelled at western movies and television series, and his bit in Once Upon a Time in the West made him immortal as a western outlaw.

In Praise of Geena

The Long Kiss Goodnight, playing at Facets this Saturday at midnight, is an excellent addition to this session of Night School, which is devoted to female protagonists. Not only is The Long Kiss Goodnight a genre-busting action film in which the protagonist is a CIA agent-turned housewife-turned rogue agent, it also stars Geena Davis, who has dedicated her time and money to addressing the issue of women in Hollywood. Davis belongs to Mensa, a social organization whose members are in the top 2% of intelligence as measured by the IQ test, but it doesn’t take someone that smart to see that today’s Hollywood films lack interesting roles for women—let alone empowering ones.

For the Love of Lucy

This Saturday, Professor Michael Smith presents Dance, Girl, Dance at Facets Night School, our unique midnight movie series. Beginning at midnight, Michael will introduce this 1940 movie musical and reveal what makes the movie special.  His remarks will be followed by the film and then a Q&A with the audience. I am particularly excited to see Dance, Girl, Dance because it costars Lucille Ball before she became “Lucy,” star of the series that invented the sit-com format for network television. 

Hollywood Hellraisers

Charlie Sheen’s recent meltdown has created more headlines than it deserves, with every word of his hyperbolic ranting chronicled for posterity. However, this recent celebrity scandal is but one incident in a long-line of dreadful behavior and outrageous antics that have been part of the Hollywood scene since the 1920s. Today’s hellraisers are pursued by a barrage of media, including television commentators, Internet bloggers, and the less-than-professional social media scribes whose collective memories go back about 10 minutes—to their last Tweet. Though today’s level of coverage of scandals is far more relentless and uncontrolled than in previous eras, Sheen’s life and career are clearly within a darker Hollywood tradition that involves the downside of fame—the pressures of public scrutiny, the demands of an all-consuming industry, the way celebrity can turn to notoriety in a few tappings of a columnist’s keyboard, the fickleness of fans, and the deterioration of personal identity until the star can’t remember where image leaves off and reality begins.

With that in mind, I thought revisting a few hellraisers from Hollywood’s past might put a different perspective on the whole Sheen affair. After all, those of us who write about Sheen (or any celebrity in the hot seat) and those of you who read, text, or tweet about him are all rolling around in the same mud hole, so we might as well drag the coverage down a different path. You didn’t think you were above it all, did you?