4. IRISH EYES WERE SMILING Ireland had always been notorious for the vigilance of its censors. Surprisingly, though, Roman Polanski’s 1962 debut feature, Knife in the Water, a film with strong homosexual overtones, passed unscathed. It was argued that homosexuality was quite unknown to the Irish and what they did not understand could not harm them. An earlier generation of censors had been less tolerant. In 1932 the Marx Brothers’ slapstick comedy Monkey Business was banned lest it provoke the Irish to anarchy.
5. MARRIED TO THE MOB
One of the most notorious examples of oppressive censorship occurred not at the hands of a censorship board but what might be loosely described as a ‘pressure group’. The picture was The Godfather; those who were affronted were the Mafia, and the pressure group was the Italian-American Civil Rights League, headed by Joseph Colombo. When the League attempted to halt production of the film, producer Albert S. Ruddy decided it would be in the interests of his personal wellbeing and prospects of longevity to meet Mr Colombo and others of its representatives for a full and frank exchange of views. After protracted negotiations, during which the League asserted that the Mafia did not exist and was a figment of collective hysteria, they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. The film could go ahead with no fear of retribution from a non-existent underworld brotherhood provided the word ‘Mafia’ was wholly excised from the script. Ruddy declared that he had no wish to cast a slur on the blameless lives led by New York’s Italian-American community and agreed to the League’s suggestion. As it happened, Joseph Colombo was slain before the picture started, by persons alleged to belong to an organised crime syndicate comprised of citizens of the same national origin as himself. The Godfather (US 1972) was a sensation and became the top-grossing film of 1972 even without mention of the Mafia. But those who decried what they believed was a craven compromise with the mob were mistaken in their criticism. Mario Puzo, author of the original novel and scriptwriter of the film, wryly observed: ‘I must say that Ruddy proved himself a hard bargainer, because the word “Mafia” was never in the script in the first place.’
6. PAY RISE Maybe you can’t measure talent in dollars, but the moolah does say something about box office appeal. While the second half of the 1990s saw a stable of male leads (Jim Carrey, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone) crashing the $20 million barrier, on the distaff side the upfront fees for A-list leading ladies seemed pegged at a miserly $10 million. (What other profession is allowed to pay women half the rate of men in this day and age?) Then Demi ‘Gimme’ Moore pushed the envelope with a $12.5 million pay-check for Striptease, but the picture bombed. Hard on her heels was Julia Roberts, who then established herself as the undisputed Number 1 female star with her hugely popular successes Notting Hill and The Runaway Bride. For her next picture, the even bigger Erin Brockovich, the flame-haired beauty with the letter-box mouth became the first actress to join the $20 million-up front club. It had taken her 14 years since her debut in a long forgotten 1986 flick called Blood Red and she now commanded a fee precisely 20,000 times the $1,000 she was paid on that one.
7. SEABISCUIT PICKED A WINNER The 7,000 extras needed for the racetrack scenes in Universal’s Seabiscuit (2003) would have put the movie into a severe budget bust at the standard fee of $50-$60 per day. Saviour of the movie was one Joe Biggins, the assistant to the unit production manager – not a role that normally wins plaudits from anyone other than the incumbent’s mom. Biggins’ inspiration was lifesize inflatable dolls. Cheap to make and transport, they could be inflated three at a time with a portable pump in 12 seconds. Mixed in with a few live performers, the dolls could be computer activated in post-production to simulate crowd movement. With Seabiscuit in the can and on budget, a triumphant Biggins set up the Inflatable Crowd Co., offering 15,500 roll-up plastic ‘people’ at $15 per week compared with a $300 per week tab for humans.
8. SERGEANT VOSS’S PRIVATE ARMY
Between 1923 and 1940 ex-Sergeant Carl Voss commanded a private army. With a strength of 2,112 former World War I servicemen, when it first appeared in the field of opposing American and German troops in The Big Parade (1925), the Voss Brigade took up arms again as Riff warriors, Hessians, Senegalese, Revolutionary Americans, Chinese, Romans, Maoris and Crusaders in the years that followed. They would not only fight on both sides, but were equally adept as foot soldiers and cavalry, and as artillerymen it was said that there was no piece of ordnance they could not handle from the Roman catapult to Big Bertha. Following a stint as Fascist troops in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940), their last battle was fought in Four Sons (1940), some ending as they had begun as German soldiery, others as Czechs. On the eve of America’s entry into World War II, the band of veterans was finally routed by the forces of bureaucracy. The Screen Actors Guild decreed that no agent could accept commission from an extra and their commander Sergeant Voss was decreed to be acting as such. After 232 engagements without a serious casualty, the old soldiers faded away.
9. THE LAST STAR OF THE SILENTS
Two actors who had starred in silent movies – and only two – were still performing in the twenty-first century. But with the death of Sir John Gielgud, who made his debut in Who is the Man (1924) and his last screen appearance in David Mamet’s Catastrophe (2000), there is only one surviving. He is Mickey Rooney, who appeared at the age of five in Not to be Trusted (1926) as a cigar-smoking midget, giving rise to an ongoing belief that he was a vertically-challenged adult who played child roles. Starring as a teenaged, albeit diminutive, Andy Hardy with Judy Garland as his squeeze helped to lay the myth to rest, but MGM could not resist casting the 5ft 3in. Rooney opposite 6ft 6in. Dorothy Ford in Love Laughs at Andy Hardy (1947). These roles and the hundred or so that followed may not have had quite the gravitas of Sir John’s, but Mickey outlived him to become not only the silent screen’s last active survivor but one of twenty-first-century Hollywood’s few actors of such unremitting energy that he puts in as many as four performances a year.
10. MOST MARRIED
The most married of many-times wedded Hollywood stars was B-movie luminary Al ‘Lash’ La Rue (1917–96), who went to the altar and the divorce court on 10 occasions, finally ending a turbulent life – in which he had been charged with vagrancy, drunkenness, possession of marijuana (while practising as an evangelist) and stealing candy from a baby in Florida, besides scripting porno movies – unmarried.
Anthony Bourdain’s 10 Grittiest, Most Uncompromising Crime Films
‘Extreme chef’ Anthony Bourdain, born in New York in 1956, rose from dishwasher to executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles in New York City via a stint with the CIA (Culinary Institute of America). He is the author of two novels, Gone Bamboo (1995) and Bone in the Throat (1997), as well as Kitchen Confidential (2000), ‘part autobiography, part restaurant-goer’s survival manual’.
‘Is it good? Is it realistic? (That leaves out The Godfather). Is it a timeless ‘how-to’? Those are the criteria here. No good guys or bad guys – just a moral quagmire of betrayal, lust, greed and crushing, grim inevitability. That’s my recipe for a good time at the movies!’
1 THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE (1973, dir. Peter Yates) You can smell the beer on Robert Mitchum as aging hood/ part-time informer Eddie, running out one last scam in a swamp of atmospheric betrayal.
2 GET CARTER (1971, dir. Mike Hodges) Maybe the most vicious, hardcore – and magnificent – revenge melodrama ever filmed. Accept no substitutes. (The Stallone remake was a sin against God.)
3 BOB LE FLAMBEUR (1955, dir. Jean-Pierre Melville) Elegant, beautiful, sad and wise caper movie. And the hero gets away!
4 RIFIFI (1956, dir. Jules Dassin) The Citizen Kane of caper flicks.
5 THE KILLING (1956, dir.