by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology
There's one film that leads the discussion of Famous Last Films, and that's The Misfits (1961). Arthur Miller originally wrote the screenplay as a Valentine's Day present to his then-wife Marilyn Monroe, and in the years since, The Misfits has acquired a misty nostalgic sheen to it; it stands as a kind of talisman that film buffs can point to and say, "Look. Here. This is when the change started."
Whether or not that's accurate, it certainly is a tempting mythology. Starring Monroe, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift, the entire production seems like cinematic kismet, as the film details the efforts of an aging cowboy (Gable) to rustle up mustangs to sell, while befriending an aimless divorced woman (Monroe) and rodeo drifter (Clift). Here, the symbolism starts to work overtime: the horses are sold for dog food, but the cowboy can remember the days (the good old days, in case you were wondering) when these same horses would be sold for children's fairs.
All three of its stars were approaching the end of their careers, though of course none of them knew it: Gable was a lifelong alcoholic and would collapse from a heart attack two days after filming; Clift, whose had only escaped his matinée idol good looks by being uncommonly talented, had been very badly disfigured in a motorcycle accident some years before and had never quite found his footing in Hollywood after that.
And then, of course, there is Marilyn Monroe, whose troubled life have filled a thousand pages of a hundred books far more impressively than I could attempt here; I will mention, however, that she had to attend the film's premiere on a pass from the psychiatric ward she had checked herself into for narcotics abuse.
Gable, who'd begun his career as an extra in silent films, was one of the last leftovers from the studio system, one of the last holdouts of the traditional, stoic masculine screen image that actors like Clift had fought hard to reinvent. Watching him in The Misfits is a little like witnessing the end of an era. And it's not just Gable: in their own ways, both Monroe and Clift were also the last of their kind, both raised in a largely studio-based Hollywood system that would begin to crumble in just a few years.
It's hard to watch The Misfits without all of this in mind; I tend to judge it as a haunting punctuation to three bright and troubled lives. Is this always the case, I wondered? It's a morbid tendency I've always nursed: the minute I hear that a famous Hollywood name has passed on, it's usually my first instinct to check their IMDb page for the last movie they completed.
By 1989, Audrey Hepburn had begun the slow descendant of a successful star on the downswing; after her Oscar-nominated turn in 1967's Wait Until Dark, she worked only occasionally while raising her family or promoting the charities closest to her heart (as a child who'd grown up in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, the plight of impoverished children hit her especially hard). In a career marked by style, charm and gamine grace, this treacly remake of 1943's A Guy Named Joe is an oddity on an otherwise impeccable resume.
Hepburn plays an angel to Richard Dreyfuss' downed airline pilot, and her charming, ever so maternal grace is a comforting distraction. The first clue to the film's general quality is how many genres it straddles: billed as a romantic comedy drama, Always strikes me as a jack of a couple of trades, but master of none. Also, many critics consider it a direct forefather to Ghost, so at least we know who to blame for this:
My dear ol' Blue Eyes was a man of many passions, among them his various charity works, making delicious salad dressings, and pranking Robert Redford. But perhaps his most surprising passion was the love of all things racing: he earned his interest after his role in 1969's Winning, and it only grew from there. He would later sponsor his own racing team and get behind the wheel himself, stating that "...driving was the only time I ever felt any grace."
Newman was, if nothing else, a man who treasured no illusions about the screen idol he had little to do with, and hearing him speak candidly about his lot in life puts him into a context moviegoers usually didn't assign him: just a man, struggling to find a way to express his inner life. That his last film role, in Pixar's Cars, played so intimately to these passions, pitting him as the old, underestimated model facing up to the capricious young buck, has a kind of cosmic certainty to it.
Spencer Tracy plays the father of a privileged, bubbly daughter who brings home her black boyfriend and announces they're going to marry. The main problem? It's 1967.
As one of Tracy's most enduring roles, it's funny to think it almost didn't happen: the studio discovered Tracy was uninsurable, thanks to a history of diabetes and heart trouble worsened by substance abuse, and nearly halted production. It wasn't until both director Stanley Kramer and co-star Katherine Hepburn basically agreed to put their salaries in escrow until the film (and Tracy's scenes) were in the can. It was clear to all who made the film-- and quite frankly, anyone who's seen it--that the frail, sickly Tracy was counting out his last days. Subsequently, the entire crew proceeded more or less certain that this would be Tracy's last film--I can only imagine the dull curtain that must have hung over the set like a funeral shroud.
That tenor is unavoidably evident in the final product: Hepburn, his longtime lover, watches his final speech with a wet-eyed sadness that the camera seems almost ashamed to be intruding upon. It's not a stretch to see Tracy's appearance, and subsequent change of heart, as a stand-in for the generational clash ravaging mainstream 1960s culture-- after the death of many of his contemporaries, Tracy was considered to be the last guard of the Old Hollywood mindset. Tracy's role in this film was like so many of his others - paternal, stubborn but intelligent, the father to a strong-willed daughter intent on ushering in the future.
He died seventeen days after filming wrapped.
Grace Kelly is one of the few Hollywood exits whose story has an undeniably hopeful twist: her career's end came not because of sickness or bad health but because of a wedding ring.
Very few actresses get a send-off as thematically apropos as Grace Kelly: she was groomed to be the Mainline princess of Hollywood, with her crisp white skirt appeal and icy beauty, and High Society, released in 1956 as the musical update of The Philadelphia Story, told the story of a socialite's attempt to remarry even as her very vocal ex-husband decides he wants her back.
Kelly was tapped to play Tracy Lords, a role that had originated with Katherine Hepburn. The part played to her strengths, portraying Tracy as an unattainable, breathless China doll, with costumes peeled from a magazine spread in Vogue. The idea of embodying a high society bride didn't stray far from her comfort zone (after all, she'd been a cool Hitchcock Blonde no less than three times) but it did give her the ideal swan song to a Hollywood experience defined by style and effortless charm.
But she never made another film. High Society would be the last time Kelly would ever appear onscreen, as she chose to devote herself to her new kingdom for the rest of her life.
The idea of Henry Fonda's career, in retrospect, seems carved out of the arcane corners of Americana: he started acting in the bleak days of the Great Depression, later personified the earnest resilience of the American spirit in The Grapes of Wrath, and begat his own Hollywood dynasty with two children in the business--Peter Fonda, whose 1969 effort Easy Rider helped cement the New Wave in Hollywood, and Jane Fonda, outspoken activist and occasionally groundbreaking actress.
The elder Fonda's career seemed to graze every inch of beloved American lore: he played cowboys, war heroes, and father figures...the man even played Lincoln, for crying out loud. Henry Fonda came to be known for the kind of quiet, stoic man he embodied, a serene, fatherly presence throughout decades of turmoil. Fonda's screen presence carried the same kind of unflappable reassurance that only a parent can have for a very young child: when the grownups seem to have an answer to every question and a supernatural ability to protect you from harm.
It's fitting that he plays a father in 1981's On Golden Pond, his last screen appearance. Jane Fonda had purchased the rights to the play, hoping that she and her father could star in it together-- due mostly to political and ideological differences, their relationship had never been smooth. His role here--feeble with age but still firmly himself--puts the cap on his screen history of being a forefather of the American screen.
I'll leave it at this: Marlon Brando finished out an uneven career with the heist film The Score. What makes this last gasp remarkable is for its pedigree, especially in terms of the Method lineage on display here: the one who started it all (Brando), the one who made it a household name (De Niro), and the one who's inheriting the kingdom (arguably, Norton; I guess time will tell). It's just neat.
There's one film that leads the discussion of Famous Last Films, and that's The Misfits (1961). Arthur Miller originally wrote the screenplay as a Valentine's Day present to his then-wife Marilyn Monroe, and in the years since, The Misfits has acquired a misty nostalgic sheen to it; it stands as a kind of talisman that film buffs can point to and say, "Look. Here. This is when the change started."
All three of its stars were approaching the end of their careers, though of course none of them knew it: Gable was a lifelong alcoholic and would collapse from a heart attack two days after filming; Clift, whose had only escaped his matinée idol good looks by being uncommonly talented, had been very badly disfigured in a motorcycle accident some years before and had never quite found his footing in Hollywood after that.
And then, of course, there is Marilyn Monroe, whose troubled life have filled a thousand pages of a hundred books far more impressively than I could attempt here; I will mention, however, that she had to attend the film's premiere on a pass from the psychiatric ward she had checked herself into for narcotics abuse.Gable, who'd begun his career as an extra in silent films, was one of the last leftovers from the studio system, one of the last holdouts of the traditional, stoic masculine screen image that actors like Clift had fought hard to reinvent. Watching him in The Misfits is a little like witnessing the end of an era. And it's not just Gable: in their own ways, both Monroe and Clift were also the last of their kind, both raised in a largely studio-based Hollywood system that would begin to crumble in just a few years.
It's hard to watch The Misfits without all of this in mind; I tend to judge it as a haunting punctuation to three bright and troubled lives. Is this always the case, I wondered? It's a morbid tendency I've always nursed: the minute I hear that a famous Hollywood name has passed on, it's usually my first instinct to check their IMDb page for the last movie they completed.
Why? I'm not entirely sure, though I think it may have more to do with my need for symmetry. It touches me deeply when a star's last film provides some kind of symbolic closure on a life lived in the public eye; it disturbs me greatly when it seems arbitrary, or happenstance.
Discuss!
Audrey Hepburn - Always
By 1989, Audrey Hepburn had begun the slow descendant of a successful star on the downswing; after her Oscar-nominated turn in 1967's Wait Until Dark, she worked only occasionally while raising her family or promoting the charities closest to her heart (as a child who'd grown up in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, the plight of impoverished children hit her especially hard). In a career marked by style, charm and gamine grace, this treacly remake of 1943's A Guy Named Joe is an oddity on an otherwise impeccable resume.
Hepburn plays an angel to Richard Dreyfuss' downed airline pilot, and her charming, ever so maternal grace is a comforting distraction. The first clue to the film's general quality is how many genres it straddles: billed as a romantic comedy drama, Always strikes me as a jack of a couple of trades, but master of none. Also, many critics consider it a direct forefather to Ghost, so at least we know who to blame for this:
Paul Newman, Cars (2006)
My dear ol' Blue Eyes was a man of many passions, among them his various charity works, making delicious salad dressings, and pranking Robert Redford. But perhaps his most surprising passion was the love of all things racing: he earned his interest after his role in 1969's Winning, and it only grew from there. He would later sponsor his own racing team and get behind the wheel himself, stating that "...driving was the only time I ever felt any grace."Newman was, if nothing else, a man who treasured no illusions about the screen idol he had little to do with, and hearing him speak candidly about his lot in life puts him into a context moviegoers usually didn't assign him: just a man, struggling to find a way to express his inner life. That his last film role, in Pixar's Cars, played so intimately to these passions, pitting him as the old, underestimated model facing up to the capricious young buck, has a kind of cosmic certainty to it.
Spencer Tracy, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
Spencer Tracy plays the father of a privileged, bubbly daughter who brings home her black boyfriend and announces they're going to marry. The main problem? It's 1967.
As one of Tracy's most enduring roles, it's funny to think it almost didn't happen: the studio discovered Tracy was uninsurable, thanks to a history of diabetes and heart trouble worsened by substance abuse, and nearly halted production. It wasn't until both director Stanley Kramer and co-star Katherine Hepburn basically agreed to put their salaries in escrow until the film (and Tracy's scenes) were in the can. It was clear to all who made the film-- and quite frankly, anyone who's seen it--that the frail, sickly Tracy was counting out his last days. Subsequently, the entire crew proceeded more or less certain that this would be Tracy's last film--I can only imagine the dull curtain that must have hung over the set like a funeral shroud.
That tenor is unavoidably evident in the final product: Hepburn, his longtime lover, watches his final speech with a wet-eyed sadness that the camera seems almost ashamed to be intruding upon. It's not a stretch to see Tracy's appearance, and subsequent change of heart, as a stand-in for the generational clash ravaging mainstream 1960s culture-- after the death of many of his contemporaries, Tracy was considered to be the last guard of the Old Hollywood mindset. Tracy's role in this film was like so many of his others - paternal, stubborn but intelligent, the father to a strong-willed daughter intent on ushering in the future.He died seventeen days after filming wrapped.
Grace Kelly, High Society (1956)
She'd only made a handful of films (eleven, to be exact) when she cashed in on her image as Hollywood royalty to become a honest-to-God princess: she met and married Prince Ranier of Monaco and remained his Princess until her death in 1987.
Kelly was tapped to play Tracy Lords, a role that had originated with Katherine Hepburn. The part played to her strengths, portraying Tracy as an unattainable, breathless China doll, with costumes peeled from a magazine spread in Vogue. The idea of embodying a high society bride didn't stray far from her comfort zone (after all, she'd been a cool Hitchcock Blonde no less than three times) but it did give her the ideal swan song to a Hollywood experience defined by style and effortless charm.
But she never made another film. High Society would be the last time Kelly would ever appear onscreen, as she chose to devote herself to her new kingdom for the rest of her life.
Henry Fonda, On Golden Pond (1981)
The idea of Henry Fonda's career, in retrospect, seems carved out of the arcane corners of Americana: he started acting in the bleak days of the Great Depression, later personified the earnest resilience of the American spirit in The Grapes of Wrath, and begat his own Hollywood dynasty with two children in the business--Peter Fonda, whose 1969 effort Easy Rider helped cement the New Wave in Hollywood, and Jane Fonda, outspoken activist and occasionally groundbreaking actress.
The elder Fonda's career seemed to graze every inch of beloved American lore: he played cowboys, war heroes, and father figures...the man even played Lincoln, for crying out loud. Henry Fonda came to be known for the kind of quiet, stoic man he embodied, a serene, fatherly presence throughout decades of turmoil. Fonda's screen presence carried the same kind of unflappable reassurance that only a parent can have for a very young child: when the grownups seem to have an answer to every question and a supernatural ability to protect you from harm.
It's fitting that he plays a father in 1981's On Golden Pond, his last screen appearance. Jane Fonda had purchased the rights to the play, hoping that she and her father could star in it together-- due mostly to political and ideological differences, their relationship had never been smooth. His role here--feeble with age but still firmly himself--puts the cap on his screen history of being a forefather of the American screen.
Marlon Brando, The Score (2001)
I'll leave it at this: Marlon Brando finished out an uneven career with the heist film The Score. What makes this last gasp remarkable is for its pedigree, especially in terms of the Method lineage on display here: the one who started it all (Brando), the one who made it a household name (De Niro), and the one who's inheriting the kingdom (arguably, Norton; I guess time will tell). It's just neat.
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2 comments:
dear jillian butler ... this particular post is quite long but it seems evident that i could stand to learn something from it so i'm adding it to my reading list. - kw
KW,
I am honored that you stopped by. You know you flatter me by suggesting I could teach you something. I'm currently trying to find a typewriter. I think you know why.
-JB
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