The Hepcat and the Man: Biographies of Robert Mitchum and Henry Fonda

Talk about two different hombres!  Within the last couple weeks, I read the biographies of Henry Fonda and Robert Mitchum simultaneously (Fonda:  My Life, "as told to" Howard Teichmann and Robert Mitchum: Baby I Don't Care by Lee Server).  Fonda's biography has as its focal point Fonda's stage performance in Mister Roberts, a Second World War yarn with an all-male cast symbolizing the virtues of one generation of American males.

Lee Server's book is clearly the superior literary product; its words leap off the page in a playful way and contains a mind-boggling number of interviews including one that was prefaced with, "well who cares, everyone is dead now" (juicy, juicy stuff)!  Server depicts Mitchum fondly but doesn't let him off the hook --  hey, his colleagues either loved or hated him, and even his wife described him as a bachelor at heart.  What do you make of a guy whose ultimate pet projects end up as Thunder Road, a Southern trash movie about moonshine and muscle cars that "would foster a rabid underground following." Or what about the idea of becoming Calypso's "white hope" by cutting an LP titled Calypso - is like so... ?

Is like so... freaking hilarious

And then we have Henry, who upon returning from naval duty in the war showed his son Peter the medal he had earned.  Within twenty minutes Peter had lost it forever somewhere in the long grass in the backyard.  I can just picture the look on Fonda's face, which is usually also the best look in all his movies:  a combination of contempt, moral superiority and silent rage.  Henry Fonda can clear a saloon with one dirty look but I am glad he wasn't my dad.  While seemingly polar opposites this might be the thread that connects these two dudes:  rage.  Cape Fear and Night of the Hunter: Mitchum's uncontrollable rage make both unforgettable.  If Mitchum had been nothing but a lazy doobie-loving cat and if Henry Fonda had been just a starchy authority figure we probably would have forgotten both by now.

Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir (2000) Arthur Lyons.

Arthur Lyons' book Death on the Cheap is a handy reference to the elusive noir genre.  Lyons recognizes the B roots of noir and rightly identifies the B-units of mainstream studios as the starting point for noir, but also dredges through Poverty Row output identifying significant contributions to the genre.   As Gerald Petievich points out in his introductory essay, "thankfully, the terms mise-en-scene, aesthetic reversals and rhetorical form do not appear in his text"; likely because Lyons is writing more of a straight history and not an aesthetic analysis.  Lyons situates these products within an economic context with roots in pulp novels and comics.  He defines a noir as a crime picture, where the characters live in an "unforgiving universe" and all players, even the good guys, are "uniformly corrupt."  The book, which is essentially a listing of key films that came to be associated with the genre, benefits greatly from Lyon's clear-headed description of the beginnings, peak and aftermath (including the re-interpretation) of film noir.

Rubin and Ed (1991), Trent Harris.

Do you have a Litmus Test movie?  This is a film you show a prospective boyfriend or girlfriend, to test their reaction: if they love it, you know it was meant to be.  If they wrinkle their nose in disgust and don't get it, time to dump 'em and keep looking.  Well, Rubin and Ed was my Litmus Test movie.

In Rubin and Ed, Crispin Glover wanders through the desert toting a dead cat in a beer cooler, trying to find the perfect burial spot (see below for said animal).  He is accompanied by Howard Hesseman, a pyramid scheme rube that needs to find a new guy to bring to his next meeting.  Can I just say that so many things can be explained by knowing this was a major top renter in the little town where I grew up.  What was even more awesome was that a couple years after this movie became part of my own lore, I met Howard Hesseman.  He was purchasing aboriginal artwork in a gallery shop and had a gorgeous red-headed woman with him.  They were both sporting large southwest silver and turquoise pieces and looked pretty mellow.  I blurted out, "You're in Rubin and Ed, that's my mom and my favourite movie ever!" (You know, not: "Hey, you're Johnny Fever!" or even: "Weren't you in Head of the Class?").  He looked shocked, and probably not just because that sentence made no sense grammatically but because who the hell ever saw Rubin and Ed, let alone chose it their favourite film (or dragged their mom into these kinds of things)?  He quickly recovered and described what an odd experience it was to have made that movie, filming in very cold weather in Utah, with a director on his first ever full-length project.  Mr Hesseman, wherever you are, you are a gentleman and your significant other was gorgeous.  As a little shop clerk, I looked in awe at the true winner in the entertainment industry -- the character actor!

Well, my prospective boyfriend didn't find the insole-sucking scene quite as hilarious as I did, and I think if I asked him today he wouldn't be able to identify Mahler's kindertotenlieder as the accompaniment to the chirping of a mournful squeaky-mouse.  But I married him anyway.  Hey!  I am an incredibly powerful salesperson climbing higher and higher up the ladder of success! SUCCESS!  SUCCESSSSSSSS!

My cat can eat a whole watermelon!