Peter Bogdanovich, known primarily as a director, film
historian and critic, has been working with professional actors all
his life. He started out as an actor he debuted on the stage in
his sixth-grade production of Finian’s Rainbow; he watched actors
work he went to the theater every week from the age of thirteen
and saw every important show on, or off, Broadway for the next
decade; he studied acting, starting at sixteen, with Stella Adler
his work with her became the foundation for all he would ever do
as an actor and a director.
Now, in his new book, Who the Hell’s in It, Bogdanovich draws
upon a lifetime of experience, observation and understanding of the
art to write about the actors he came to know along the way; actors
he admired from afar; actors he worked with, directed, befriended.
Among them: Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, John
Cassavetes, Charlie Chaplin, Montgomery Clift, Marlene Dietrich,
Henry Fonda, Ben Gazzara, Audrey Hepburn, Boris Karloff, Dean
Martin, Marilyn Monroe, River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier, Frank
Sinatra, and James Stewart.
Bogdanovich captures—in their words and his—their work, their
individual styles, what made them who they were, what gave them
their appeal and why they’ve continued to be America’s iconic
actors.
On Lillian Gish: “the first virgin hearth goddess of the screen .
. . a valiant and courageous symbol of fortitude and love through
all distress.”
On Marlon Brando: “He challenged himself never to be the same
from picture to picture, refusing to become the kind of film star
the studio system had invented and thrived upon—the recognizable
human commodity each new film was built around . . . The funny
thing is that Brando’s charismatic screen persona was vividly
apparent despite the multiplicity of his guises . . . Brando always
remains recognizable, a star-actor in spite of himself. ”
Jerry Lewis to Bogdanovich on the first laugh Lewis ever got
onstage: “I was five years old. My mom and dad had a tux made—I
worked in the borscht circuit with them—and I came out and I sang,
‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?’ the big hit at the time . . . It
was 1931, and I stopped the show—naturally—a five-year-old in a
tuxedo is not going to stop the show? And I took a bow and my foot
slipped and hit one of the floodlights and it exploded and the
smoke and the sound scared me so I started to cry. The audience
laughed—they were hysterical . . . So I knew I had to get the rest
of my laughs the rest of my life, breaking, sitting, falling,
spinning.”
John Wayne to Bogdanovich, on the early years of Wayne’s career
when he was working as a prop man: “Well, I’ve naturally studied
John Ford professionally as well as loving the man. Ever since the
first time I walked down his set as a goose-herder in 1927. They
needed somebody from the prop department to keep the geese from
getting under a fake hill they had for Mother Machree at Fox. I’d
been hired because Tom Mix wanted a box seat for the USC football
games, and so they promised jobs to Don Williams and myself and a
couple of the players. They buried us over in the properties
department, and Mr. Ford’s need for a goose-herder just seemed to
fit my pistol.”
These twenty-six portraits and conversations are unsurpassed in
their evocation of a certain kind of great movie star that has
vanished. Bogdanovich’s book is a celebration and a farewell.
From the Hardcover edition.
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