Back in the states he enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserve, and over the next three years served in many capacities before finding his way to the Pacific theater, where he met John Bulkeley and became his executive officer. Montgomery commanded a PT boat in many battles, and eventually headed up to Normandy as an operations officer for a destroyer squadron. While preparing for D-Day, he remembered later, “I saw Bulkeley on his PT Boat and waved to him. There was another man on the bridge with him. I had no idea then it was Jack Ford.”

Soon after D-Day, Montgomery was felled by a serious bout of tropical fever and was sent back stateside. In four years of war he had earned, among other decorations, the Bronze Star and a Chevalier ranking in the French Legion of Honor. All in all, Ford’s kind of guy. When it came time to cast the Bulkeley part in Expendable, the choice was obvious.

Montgomery arrived in Florida not having acted in four years, and the prospect of stepping in front of the camera again terrified him and triggered debilitating panic attacks. But Ford — capable of immense kindness when least expected — treated his problems with understanding, and over a period of several days gently coaxed him back into the acting groove. Ultimately, They Were Expendable would become one of the actor’s best performances, quietly understated but richly nuanced. Montgomery later said that

Ford had a great crew; they all knew him and they were all fiercely loyal. They’d have defended him to the death. They gave me as good . . .

So little of what I did in Hollywood gives me any pride of achievement. Three or four pictures out of sixty-odd. It’s not very much. Ford was the best I’d ever worked with: the only one I’d call creative. After Expendable I’d cheerfully have signed a contract to work with him exclusively. I don’t know that the idea would have appealed to him, of course. But I’d have been happy. He was a genius.

The respect was mutual. Near the end of filming, Ford took a nasty fall off of a studio scaffold and fractured his leg (“Jesus Christ, you clumsy bastard!” Wayne yelled when he and Montgomery found Ford writhing on the ground). When M-G-M called him frantically in the hospital, wondering who could possibly step in on short notice to finish the picture, Ford christened Bob Montgomery as the man who would direct the few remaining scenes.

After Expendable, Montgomery went on to a fruitful later career, first as a director of several well-regarded noir films, then as a popular television personality. His then-twelve-year-old daughter Elizabeth would later grow up to be a star, too — most famous for playing the madcap enchantress Samantha in the 1964 television series Bewitched.

Donna Reed (1921–1986), was just coming into her own as a young actress in 1944, and like so many others before her she was putty in Ford’s hand. In the beginning Ford deliberately didn’t speak to her for weeks, and his rudeness served to build up the hardened exterior she would need for playing her opening scenes in the hospital, stoically assisting meatball surgeons. Later on in the production, however, the wily director changed tactics.

Right before the scene where she is treated by Wayne and his unit to a charmingly improvised candlelight dinner, Ford suddenly softened her up with a string of lovely pearls, ostentatiously presenting them to her in front of the whole crew as a sort of tribute to the nurses of Bataan. This gift from the fearsome, crotchety director was so unexpected that her face lit up with a radiant glow which carried over into the scene, lending genuine conviction to her reactions throughout the dinner, the serenade, and all the way up to her tearful final line, “They’re just such nice guys!”

Film critic Bosley Crowther, the Roger Ebert of his era and no fan of stridently patriotic movies, would write in the New York Times that, “Donna Reed is extraordinarily touching in the role of an Army nurse who figures into the story in a brief romance which is most tastefully and credibly handled.” This was the start of Reed’s career as a true star, and the very next year she would appear in her most immortal film role, that of Jimmy Stewart’s devoted wife in It’s a Wonderful Life.

Incredibly, after They Were Expendable was released, the real-life counterparts of the Wayne and Reed characters both sued for damages, claiming that — even though the names in the movie are all fictitious — the film insinuates that they had a romantic relationship in real life. How anyone could complain about being portrayed by the likes of John Wayne and Donna Reed is beyond me, but in the end they both won damages in court (a few thousand for the man, several hundred thousand for the woman). And so it was this film that prompted the widespread use of the disclaimer we have seen on countless movies ever since, about all characters being fictitious and any resemblance to real people “living or dead” being coincidental.

Throughout the decades in which he worked, John Ford collected about himself a motley assortment of character actors, stuntmen, ex-soldiers, and personal friends, people he particularly enjoyed working with. Together they became informally known as the John Ford Stock Company, and over the course of thirty years they matured into an experienced acting troupe much greater than the sum of their parts, to the point where you can usually judge the merit of a Ford film based on how many members of his Stock Company are listed in the credits. Astoundingly versatile, they were by turns raucously hilarious or deeply affecting, depending on Ford’s whims. For fans of the director’s films, the sight of one of their weathered, well-loved faces on screen is always a cause for rejoicing.

Along with John Wayne, the Company’s most prominent member was Ward Bond (1903–1960). Both Wayne and Bond came to Ford in the late 1920s as a pair of frat-boy college football players from USC looking for summer studio work as grips, stuntmen, whatever they could get. A hardworking character actor, Bond had a different kind of appeal than the Duke, but one no less important to Ford’s films.

Bond was a human bulldog — pug-nosed, round-bellied, big-assed. He looked like someone’s father or brother, eminently blue-collar and dependable, with no guile in his face whatsoever. This allowed him to stand in front of a camera and bring lines to life that in other mouths would have sounded shamelessly corny:

“It means service — tough and good.”

No fancy wordplay, no flowery prose. Just honest sentiments, presented with all the simplicity you would expect from a rugged sailor searching for a manly way to express himself to his buddies. In Ford’s oeuvre, Bond continually grounds scenes in reality that might otherwise become too saccharine, as when in They Were Expendable he serenades Donna Reed (a scene that both Bond and Reed would repeat the very next year in Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life, with Bond playing Bert the Cop).

Like Wayne, Bond also didn’t serve during the war — rejected due to his epilepsy — and so instead became an air-raid warden in Los Angeles. In July 1944, he suffered a horrible accident while riding his motorcycle on Hollywood Boulevard. According to fellow John Ford Stock Company member Harry Carey Jr.:

He was hit by a car, and his left leg was torn to shreds. The story is that one doctor wanted to amputate it because it was evidently hanging by a thread of flesh, but Duke Wayne threatened to annihilate the doc if he did that. Somehow, after months and months of treatment and skin grafts, the leg was saved. Ward wore a huge brace on it much of the time, but covered it so well you could hardly tell. One part of his leg never did heal. He always had to wear some kind of dressing on it.

With Expendable filming at the end of that year, Bond was in no condition to play such a physically demanding role. Yet like with Robert Montgomery’s panic attacks, Ford reacted to the news with kindness. He kept his friend in the cast and worked around the injury, blocking his scenes so he wouldn’t have to walk more than a step or two in any one shot, and later having his character injured in the script so he could hobble around on a crutch.

It was a good choice — Bond is one of the highlights of They Were Expendable, providing generous helpings of pathos and comic relief in equal measure. One indication of the respect Ford had for his abilities is that Bond was paid more than any other actor on the picture aside from Montgomery and Wayne — $37,000 all told, compared to Montgomery’s $170,000 and Wayne’s $80,000. (For the record, Jack Holt made $30,000, many of the other second-tier actors brought in $15,000 or so, and Donna Reed got $5000 for her few days of studio work.)

In addition to Wayne and Bond, the two giants of the Stock Company, They Were Expendable relies on the talents of other longtime members. Russell Simpson (1880–1959) is “Dad” Knowland, the aged mechanic who refuses to abandon his forty-year home in the Philippines, and is last seen sitting laconically on his doorstep, totally alone in the jungle, cradling his shotgun and a jug of whiskey, waiting for death at the hands of the soon-to-arrive Japanese vanguard. And Harry Tenbrook (1887–1960) portrays the lovable lug “Squarehead” Larsen, the unit’s cook, who ever pines for “the Arizona to come steaming up the bay with her fourteen-inch guns blazing, and the best cook stoves in the Navy.” Neither of these actors were household names, but Ford gave them small, key moments to hold up in the picture, and as always they shine.

(Stuntman Frank McGrath (1903–1967) — a Ford favorite who over a decade later would become a star in the hit television show Wagon Train with Ward Bond — can also be spied as an unnamed sailor in a late scene. He’s the one who tells John Wayne “Glad to see ya back, Mr. Ryan” after Wayne’s character finds Brickley and his men once again.)

Special mention must be made, however, of Stock Company regular Ronald J. “Jack” Pennick (1895–1964). In They Were Expendable he plays Doc, the old weeping sailor being put out to pasture in the clip we saw earlier, but who ultimately stays behind to fight alongside the doomed Army on Bataan. His is a name few people remember today, but anyone who professes admiration for the movies of John Ford needs to know it. Jack Pennick meant a great deal to the director, so much in fact that he holds the honor of appearing in more Ford pictures than any other actor.

Pennick was a two-bit Hollywood trouper when he first met Ford in the late silent era, and he appeared in several of the then-youthful director’s pictures in the late 1920s and early 1930s. A particularly kind and gentle man under his rough, hangdog exterior, it impressed Ford greatly to later discover that Pennick was also a lifelong soldier — a tough-as-nails former Marine drillmaster who had fought in both World War I and the “Banana Wars” of the 1920s. As if that wasn’t enough, over the years he also educated himself into becoming one of the foremost experts on soldiery and military history that Ford or anyone else had ever met.

The two men got on famously, and soon Ford adopted Pennick as his all-around, ever-present aide-de-camp. He did virtually everything for the director, from waking him up each morning on location and hand-delivering his first cup of coffee, to tucking him into bed unconscious after a long night of drinking and poker. The man Ford affectionately called “the big six-foot-four-and-a-half mick” also served with him during World War II, devotedly following him around the world and supposedly (according to professional bullshitter Ford, so take it with a huge grain of salt) even winning the Silver Star. “Wild Bill” Donovan, the founder of the OSS, once reverently said of Pennick, “There is the most perfect soldier I have ever met.” To the end of his days, whenever John Ford would exit a car or enter a room, Jack Pennick would jump up and snap off a perfect salute to his benefactor.

All of this appealed greatly to Ford’s boundless sense of drama and history and duty, and he reciprocated Pennick’s loyalty many times over in the post-war years. In all the director’s greatest movies you can see the winningly ugly ex-soldier appear in some minor role, usually as a sergeant or barman. He was much more useful behind the scenes, mercilessly drilling pampered actors and teaching them how to comport themselves as real servicemen. Anyone wondering how it must have felt for John Wayne and the rest of the John Ford Stock Company to be worked over by ol’ Jack Pennick need only check out this little clip from Ford’s Fort Apache (1948), which has a funny scene of him whipping some green cavalry troops into shape:

My guess is that, given his druthers and some recalcitrant recruits, he could have given R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket a run for his money.

Pennick was also kept on hand to ensure that all the military costumes and lingo were as accurate as possible. It was he who famously walked into West Point during Ford’s filming of The Long Grey Line (1955), took one glance at an old coat-of-arms on the wall, and nonchalantly proclaimed it inaccurate — the swords hanging in the display, he assured the docents, were upside down. When they checked their manuals they discovered to their astonishment that he was right — the display had been hanging wrong for decades until Pennick tipped them off.

When today’s filmmakers, flush with the power of CGI and modern camera techniques, declare their gloomy anti-war films more realistic and thus superior to the hokey military movies of yore, I can only think of guys like Jack Pennick, men who infused old movies with their patriotism, optimism, loyalty, and expertise. One of John Ford’s greatest gifts to posterity is his immortalization of such people on screen, reminding future generations of their caliber.

Next Saturday in For Conservative Movie Lovers, we conclude our coverage of They Were Expendable with a look at John Ford’s postwar legacy, and his place in film history as a champion of the American spirit.

Previous posts in the series “John Ford, John Wayne, and They Were Expendable”:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

FURTHER READING AND VIEWING

Company of Heroes: My Life as An Actor in the John Ford Stock Company by Harry Carey, Jr. For those wishing to learn more about the group of Fordian actors mentioned above, there is no better source than this volume of delightful stories by Mr. Carey (who as of this writing is 88 years old and still hale and hearty). There are many laugh-out-loud (and some cringe-worthy) moments featuring John Ford, John Wayne, Ward Bond, Jack Pennick, and all the rest. A must read if you watch the films of John Ford — it will add layers of meaning to each picture, and make them that much more satisfying.

The Earl of Hollywood: a nice website dedicated to the life and career of Robert Montgomery. Lots of rare pictures, including ones of Montgomery as an ambulance driver in France, and in uniform on the cover of various magazines. Well worth perusing.

MOVIE TRIVIA ANSWER: Looks like no one came close to getting the answer to our trivia question last week. Future film director Blake Edwards, in his early acting days, played an unnamed sailor in They Were Expendable, appearing in two main scenes. First, he shows up as a wet-behind-the-ears seaman in the bar during Doc’s farewell party (he’s the one who gets a “very small beer” from actor and former wrestler Sammy Stein).

Much later his character is seen again, this time as a bearded, now-veteran member of John Wayne’s dejected crew, attending an impromptu funeral for two comrades and then listening gravely as the radio in the bar heralds the fall of Bataan.

If you think about it, Ford here creates a shattered mirror image of the first bar scene. Some of the same kids who cheerfully toasted Doc’s health with beer, sarsaparilla, and ginger ale are now at a much different tavern, this time drinking hard liquor, having in the interim become seasoned, war-hardened sailors fully aware of the meaning of “service — tough and good.”

All of these scenes were shot on Hollywood sound stages as opposed to on location in Key Biscayne, Florida, which explains why Edwards doesn’t appear in any outdoor shots.

Other movies the young Blake Edwards can be seen in include The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), where he plays a corporal at the ATC (Air Transport Command) counter in the beginning of the film (”Guess I’m goin’ to Cleveland,” he tells Andrews). He also played the lead in several schlocky B films, including the immortal Strangler of the Swamp (also 1946).

In 1924 while shooting a film in New York, actress Patsy Ruth Miller (1904-1995) developed a close friendship with author F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. Frequently, Fitzgerald and Patsy Ruth would go out for dinner while Zelda remained home pleading fatigue. Patsy Ruth eventually realized that Zelda’s fatigue was acute alcoholism.

Observes Patsy Ruth:

It didn’t seem to me that Scott drank more than most of the men I knew. He seemed intoxicated on words, and sometimes we would sit, our after-dinner coffee growing cold, while Scott tried to make me see some fine point of writing, or understand why an emotion had been ill or well portrayed. But often I had the feeling that he was unsure of himself as a writer, that he was afraid of that one day he’d have nothing left to say, and I also had the impression that Zelda did little to build his confidence, even sometimes, in a perverse way, seemed to enjoy his battle with self-doubt.

Fitzgerald’s agonies of self-doubt are common among writers. The fear of having nothing left to say will, inevitably, be paralyzing. And a non-supportive spouse can act as a fatal poison to a vulnerable writer. Most witnesses observe that Fitzgerald was an alcoholic by the time he attended Princeton. There is no doubt that by the time he landed in Hollywood he was a hopeless drunk. It’s a measure of how common was alcoholism in early Hollywood that Patsy Ruth didn’t think Fitzgerald’s intake was all that unusual.

A future O’Henry Award winning writer, Patsy Ruth Miller, in her juicy memoir, My Hollywood: When Both of Us Were Young, narrates a fascinating anecdote that took place a few years later when a shaky Fitzgerald was under contract at MGM.

At the time, Patsy Ruth Miller was married to the great screenwriter John Lee Mahin, director Victor Fleming’s frequent collaborator.

John often saw Scott at MGM, where they were both working, and told me that Scott seemed very despondent. I said that was only natural, with Zelda in a sanatorium, but John said, No, that wasn’t it. He was writing a screenplay based on someone else’s story and hated his assignment. Then why does he do it? I asked. Money, I suppose, said John, but it’s a damn shame.

In truth, Fitzgerald never mastered the craft of the screenwriting, and in the tense, sink or swim factory atmosphere in which studio screenwriters labored, the master novelist’s confidence level was further undermined. Most authors idealize themselves as romantic artists. But the best, most productive screenwriters—then as now—understand that they are well-paid craftsmen working in collaboration with scores of highly talented people. Sadly, Fitzgerald never came to grips with the rigid studio system, established by Irving G. Thalberg, in which the producer was the final authority.

Remarks Patsy Ruth on Fitzgerald’s bleak state of mind:

I finally ran into Scott one day at the studio where I had gone to pick up John. It was true, he did seem to have less sparkle, less animation, than he had in New York. I remember John saying to him, “Come on, kid. It’s all grist to your mill. Some day you’re going to write something about Hollywood as good as The Great Gatsby.”

Scott reacted as though he’d been accused of raping his twin sister. He said that he had never written anything worthwhile, that Gatsby was already dead and best forgotten, that nothing he had ever done would live, and not to give him any of that crap about great literature.

Bit by bit, F. Scott Fitzgerald unravels in Hollywood. Certainly, Fitzgerald’s unhappiness with his Hollywood career is a prime factor, and with Zelda quite mad—possibly a schizophrenic—and locked away, an all consuming anger and bitterness envelopes the great novelist.

Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

But John Lee Mahin has a different take on Fitzgerald’s broken spirit:

On the way home John said this was all because of the people Scott was surrounded by, all the writers who had suddenly become politically oriented, social consciousness was the cry, and anyone who merely wrote about people and their everyday problems and emotions, was at least a Facist or maybe worse. Poor Scott had been tossed into this whirlpool of Liberalism, and without a political credo to cling to, was drowning in it. He had never espoused causes, nor been very interested in politics; as a writer, Humanity had meant little to him, the Individual everything…

Of course, Patsy Ruth is describing the emerging cells of Hollywood Reds. The love of humanity at the expense of the individual is at the core of Communist ideology. Too often Communist purges, where thousands if not millions are murdered, are justified by the charming dictum: “You have to break a few eggs in order to make an omelette.”

Patsy Ruth observes:

His work was condemned, they said, and he believed them. He denounced himself even more harshly than his judges, accusing his work of being trivial and superficial.

“He actually told me he’s ashamed of The Great Gatsby,” John fairly snarled. “Those cursed Do-gooders… they’ve got him believing his work isn’t worth a tinkers damn just because he wasn’t waving a banner or marching in a picket line. They’ve destroyed him, as sure as God made little apples.”

That shouldn’t keep him from writing,” I protested.

The Hell it doesn’t,” John said. “Who can write when you’ve been told, when you’ve been convinced that anything you have to say is a bunch of crap. He can write rings around every one of those bastards who’ve done this to him, but he doesn’t believe it any more, and if you don’t believe it, you can’t do it.”

Is Mahin’s theory correct? Did Fitzgerald fail in Hollywood because he felt diminished by an onslaught of politically correct thought?

I doubt that this was the prime reason for Fitzgerald’s Hollywood decline.

Common sense argues that the break-up of his marriage, ill-health, alcoholism, chronic money problems, and a loss of confidence were the prime motivators in F. Scott’s downfall. And let’s not forget that Fitzgerald did write The Last Tycoon, unfinished yes, but still a masterful portrait of Hollywood with Irving Thalberg as Monroe Stahr, the central character.

Nevertheless, Mahin’s denunciations of Fitzgerald as the victim of a politically correct Hollywood ring true as a contributing factor to Fitzgerald’s emotional and professional disintegration.

Drawing from personal experience, I can attest to the wounds that can be inflicted by an almost monolithic political Hollywood sensibility.

Turner Classic Movie Alert

My friend Self Styled Siren, one of the best movie bloggers in the known universe—I think Ms. Siren has read even more Hollywood memoirs than yours truly—is, with the The New York Post’s Lou Lumenick, programming a series of films, in January, for Turner Classic Movies titled: Shadows of Russia

The festival will air Wednesdays in primetime throughout January.

From the TCM press release:

The selections focusing on the many views of Russia and communism to be found in American movies. Some films are masterpieces that the Siren and her readers know almost by heart (Ninotchka, The Manchurian Candidate, The Scarlet Empress), others the Siren loved on viewing but needs to get re-acquainted with (Reds, The Way We Were), still others are oddities deserving of a more focused look (Rasputin and the Empress, Red Danube, Conspirator, Comrade X). And there are some rare films being shown, including Leo McCarey’s film maudit My Son John, with poor doomed Robert Walker in the lead; The North Star, of which I am told TCM has located a good print that should show off James Wong Howe’s cinematography; and I Was a Communist for the FBI.

John Nolte, Editor-in-Chief of Big Hollywood, has given your movie-mad scribe the enviable task of watching and reporting on this series. The films, many of which I have not seen, should prove enlightening, fascinating, amusing, nauseating and positively baffling.  And hey, I really should get combat pay for being forced to endure The Way We Were and Reds.

Congratulations to Siren. Her exemplary work, along with many others in the lively and informative movie blogosphere demonstrates that the Internet is exerting a profound influence on the world of films.

Memo to TCM: If you’d like to program a series exploring the image of Jews in American movies, give me a call.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

Oscar season approaches, which means that once again it’s time for the annual cry of … There-Are-No-Good-Roles-For-Women! Maybe “cry” isn’t the best word. ”Whine” is more suitable — from a self-inflicted wound. Here’s a taste of this year’s first-whine from a Hollywood Reporter story titled: Shallow Pool for Oscar’s Actress Contenders:

How shallow is the pool? Some are talking about performances such as Sandra Bullock’s in the feel-good film “The Blind Side

The lack of depth has led to a slew of awards-season chatter, from the expected downplaying — all categories are cyclical — to blanket explanations about studios making fewer awards movies in general. …

But it also highlights that, for all the strides made by the women behind the camera, the women in front of them can still be subject to the old prejudices. Indeed, the more cynical in town — including at least one actress awards-contender — say that the director and actress trends are hardly a coincidence. Many female directors, they argue, can feel pressure to cast a preponderance of strong male leads to negate the perception that theirs is a female-oriented film.

The article is simply wrong on one very important point. These aren’t “old prejudices,” these are new prejudices.

Back in the bad old studio days when a handful of Republican men ran everything, women ruled. Well, maybe not “ruled,” but they were a steady force at the box office because those Republican men spent millions grooming girls into movie stars and building A-pictures around them. (And for a while, Rita Hayworth did rule Columbia.)

At one time or another, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Olivia De Havilland, Jean Harlow, Mae West, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Janet Gaynor, Mae West, Claudette Colbert, Ginger Rogers, Myrna Loy, Alice Faye, Judy Garland, Ingrid Bergman, Bette Grable, Esther Williams, Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly and many, many others worked as regularly and earned nearly as much success (and sometimes more) as their male counterparts in all kinds of films, including big-budget prestige pictures that put many butts in many seats. At one time or another, each was was a stand-alone movie star and many enjoyed long legendary careers.

Did a paternalistic and sometimes sexist system force these women to fight for decent roles in-between casting couch wrestling sessions? Of course, but anyone who wants to argue something’s changed should drop me an email inquiring about a bridge for sale.

But the real story is just how many of those fights were won allowing these immortals to leave behind a wealth of films loaded with strong, dignified, feminine performances that will live for as long as there’s civilization. And what won those sometimes historic battles wasn’t some sense of entitlement over ”fairness.” These women were as tough as they were talented. 

So what changed?

Well, you tell me.

Forty years ago the left started their takeover of the film industry. Now that they own it fully there are more women in executive positions than ever before, and yet most every year you can hear the scrape of a barrel bottom when Oscar nominations are announced.

Sounds to me like some sensitivity training is in order.

But it’s really about the free market. Women don’t draw like they once did and you can trace the reason for that to the roles and the actresses themselves. Somewhere along the line, ”acting like men” became confused with strength, and nudity and sex with romance. Other than a natural charisma and a dab of talent, the secret to stardom is retaining enough sense of mystery to allow audiences to project what they want on you, and nothing breaks that spell quicker than the literal and figurative baring of the ass. 

On the big screen, as in real life, it’s hard to respect someone you’ve just seen tramp around cussing like R. Lee Ermey in “Full Metal Jacket.” For the men in the audience, the illusion is shattered (lust fades, love lasts forever) … for the women, they can no longer relate. Offscreen, no one likes a loudmouth trashing who you are and what you believe in. You can sum the whole problem up in a word … ”class.”

But in the true spirit of socialism, present-day Hollywood’s solution is not an attempt to rebuild the female movie star but to foster equality through the dragging down of the male star.

The death of the movie star is no longer just a “woman’s problem.” Narcissism is an equal-opportunity affliction and without those sexist, paternalistic conservative studio bosses to look out for their shared interests, both male and female stars have worked overtime to deconstruct themselves in the eyes of the public. And so…

…today the chickens and roosters are coming home to roost.

Woodward was best known for portraying stolid, highly principled characters who stood up for the defenseless and needy. His most prominent role for U.S. viewers was certainly that of former CIA agent Robert McCall in The Equalizer.

Living a simple and seemingly joyless life in New York City, McCall helped people in trouble who answered his ambiguous newspaper classified ads offering assistance. Every week the middle-aged former CIA agent would confront powerful, villainous individuals and gangs who were menacing and exploiting people unable to defend themselves. McCall’s shadowy past and evident contempt for corrupt authorities put him in continual jeopardy from his former government masters, yet his immense personal integrity and moral rectitude always saw him through–aided greatly, of course, by his CIA training and natural ingenuity.

McCall dressed impeccably, spoke clearly, stood straight and looked people in the eye when talking to them, and displayed exemplary manners. And then he overcame the most formidable criminals.

A memorable part of the show’s formula was the employment of a personal confrontation, at the episode’s climax, between McCall and the main villain or villains. McCall would stand firmly and tell the enemy precisely what was morally wrong with what they had been doing, and tell them what the consequences were going to be, and that McCall was going to make sure they paid the price. It was always a stirring moment, as McCall’s personal integrity matched his moral standards and his stolidity and skills were there to support them.

That connection was both morally satisfying and realistic. Criminals, after all, essentially take to crime because they want a short cut to the wealth regular people accumulate over time through hard work. Thus, instead of working at things, a criminal’s habit is to use force or stealth to take what they want. And since it’s easier to prey upon the weak than on the strong, the criminal life doesn’t encourage excellence in pursuit of one’s goals.

The bourgeois mentality, on the other hand, involves working at things to earn what one wants. Hence a hero such as McCall is much more likely to be well-trained and in top form than someone who expects to prey upon weaker people. Thus the dramatic convention of the hero typically overcoming the villain accords with both reality and common sense.

Woodward’s roles in films such as The Wicker Man and Breaker Morant added nuances to the type of character he played as the protagonist of the late 1960s UK TV spy drama series Callan. In addition, he was acknowledged as a master at acting in more explicitly serious dramatic roles, and his skills as as a singer were admired by Lawrence Olivier and Noel Coward, among others, and made him a sought-after performer in stage musicals. His final movie role was in the superb comedy Hot Fuzz.

Woodward was a brilliant, talented performer who consistently chose to invest his talents in service of worthy projects. He will be remembered fondly for The Equalizer, The Wicker Man, Breaker Morant, and the rest of his admirable body of work.

“I was just the paint for the palettes of Ford and Hawks.”

– John Wayne –

John Wayne was still young in 1944, only thirty-eight years old. And yet the major elements of his inimitable style were hardening into place. Perhaps no other actor in history has been so cognizant of using his body to express grand themes and timeless mythological underpinnings. Under Ford’s direction Wayne never just stands there, he poses, in ways and with effects that conjure up famous paintings and sculpture. When he fills the frame as Lieutenant Junior Grade Rusty Ryan in They Were Expendable, he becomes every man who ever fought a losing action in a war, who faced defeat with stoicism, who sacrificed for a greater good. In the history of film, John Wayne remains nonpareil in his use of presence to project subtext.

Little of that came naturally to the Duke — in his early films he’s tall and rangy and handsome, but with little of the gravity, focus, and dramatic weight that would come to typify his prime acting years. Those skills, and they were skills, were consciously learned over fifteen years of working with Ford and his old troupe of veteran actors. He watched the way they walked and carried themselves, studied the way they were directed, and began to divine the level of nuance Ford demanded. There’s a funny story from the making of Stagecoach (1939, John Wayne’s big coming-out party as an actor), where Wayne’s character was supposed to be washing his face after a hard day, and Ford started smacking him around screaming, “Christ Duke, wash you face like a man! You’re daubing it! You’re daubing it!” He was trying to teach Wayne that, when you are an actor in front of a camera, your every movement can and should mean something deeper than what is on the surface. The act of washing one’s face can be pedestrian, or it can be a sweeping gesture that evokes strength of character, or a relaxed demeanor, or a gentleness of heart. And those deft movements will unconsciously fire off all sorts of neurons in the brain of an audience.

When you watch They Were Expendable, pay close attention to John Wayne. Look how he stands in each shot compared to others in the frame, how he inevitably comes across as more interesting than everyone else, more classically posed. Notice the way his hands are often planted on his hips, his elbows flared wide. The way his chest is thrust out like a peacock. The way he keeps his face turned down and glares out at people from under dark eyebrows. The way he wrinkles his forehead with weariness and, without blinking, gazes out into space with a thousand-yard stare that looks as if he has all the pain of the war bottled within. Other, supposedly more accomplished actors would go toe-to-toe with Duke in a scene, and he would often just mop the floor with them, blowing them off the screen with a look or a gesture.

To this day, leftists regularly embarrass themselves with the argument that the Duke’s lack of a war record disqualifies him from being an on-screen exemplar of cherished American values. The notion that an actor must actually be in real life whatever he’s portraying on screen is idiotic. Wayne was never a real-life war hero, granted. But neither was he the draft-dodging hypocrite of liberal fever-swamp fantasies. A May 1942 letter exists of Wayne almost begging John Ford to pull strings to get him into his Field Photo unit:

Have you any suggestions on how I should get in? Can I get assigned to your outfit, and if I could, would you want me? How about the Marines? You have Army and Navy men under you. Have you any Marines or how about a Seabee or what would you suggest or would you? No, I’m not drunk. I just hate to ask favors, but for Christ sake you can suggest, can’t you?. . .No kidding, coach, who’ll I see?

Meanwhile Herbert Yates, the head of Republic Pictures, continually requested deferments for Wayne in a desperate effort to keep his main action star on the lot. Studios like M-G-M could let a dozen headliners go off to fight and still have a vast stable of bankable names to draw on. A tiny second-rate outfit like Republic, on the other hand, had none to spare. Yates’ biggest moneymaker, Gene Autry, had already abandoned his contract to enlist, meaning that in 1942 and 1943 the only Republic films to become Top Twenty box-office hits starred John Wayne.

One review from the period noted, “John Wayne is a rudimentary actor, but he has the look and bearing, unusual for his trade, of a capable human male. . . he is able to make his habitual inarticulateness suggest the uncommunicative competence that men expect in their leaders.” At a time when President Roosevelt was making patriotic films a top priority (wartime theater attendance had skyrocketed from fifty million people a week to more than ninety million), Wayne was one of the only guys left in Hollywood able to pull them off and make them hits (Humphrey Bogart being another).

“You should have thought about all that before you signed a new contract!” Yates said when Wayne asked to be allowed to enlist. “If you don’t live up to it, I’ll sue you for every penny you’ve got! I’ll sue you for every penny you hope to make in the future!” For the Duke — who grew up poor and ever worried about returning to those circumstances — it was a terrifying threat. He was not yet a star on the level of a Gable or Stewart or Fonda (or even a Robert Montgomery, who in 1945 got paid $170,000 for They Were Expendable compared to Wayne’s $80.000). John Ford’s grandson Dan, a veteran in his own right, later mused that

It must have weighed heavily on him which way to go. But here was his chance and he knew it. He was an action leading man, and there were a lot of roles for him to play. There was a lot of work in A movies, and this was a guy who had made eighty B movies. He had finally moved up to the first rank. He was in the right spot at the right time with the right qualities and willing to work hard. Would I have done any different? The answer is hell no.

Soon, Yates was making money with Wayne not only by starring him in Republic films, but by loaning him out to other studios, all of whom were suffering from their own leading man shortages. Wayne worked relentlessly, averaging four movies a year. At the behest of Mary Ford, he would come to the Hollywood Canteen after hours and wash dishes, bus tables, and carve turkeys. Between films in late 1943, he embarked on a three-month, two-shows-a-day USO tour across the South Pacific. The experience made a deep impression on him. “They’ll build stages out of old crates,” he reverently noted after one trip, “then sit in mud and rain for three hours waiting for someone like me to say ‘Hello, Joe’.”

The war ending without his having enlisted would haunt Wayne’s conscience for the rest of his life. In hindsight, a large part of his later career can be seen as a sincere effort to make amends by doing our troops proud via the art of filmmaking.

John Ford’s disgust with Wayne’s lack of military experience has been grossly over-exaggerated, but he did add it to his tool chest of things used to get a rise out of his protégé or, in extreme cases, bring him to tears. During the filming of They Were Expendable, after several takes of Robert Montgomery and Wayne saluting a departing general, Ford broke out with, “Duke — can’t you manage a salute that at least looks as though you’ve been in the service?” Crestfallen and shattered, Wayne walked off of a set for the only time in his life. Montgomery, who served with distinction throughout the war, walked up to Ford, put his hands on the arms of the director’s chair, and with steel in his voice said, “Don’t you ever speak to anyone like that again.” When he further insisted that Ford find Wayne and apologize, Montgomery remembers that, “[Ford] blustered at first — ‘I’m not going to apologize to that son of a bitch. . .’; then he came out with a lot of phony excuses — ‘What did I say? I didn’t mean to hurt his feelings.’ He ended up crying.”

But if the grizzled director sometimes drove the Duke to fits of despair, he far more often elevated him to the heights of cinema legend. Few anecdotes illustrate this more profoundly than the tale behind the nostalgic tune featured so memorably in They Were Expendable, “Marchéta.” Pronounced Mar-KEE-ta, it’s a 1913 “love song of Old Mexico” written by the American composer Victor Schertzinger when he was but 25 years old. Some thirty years after the song became a well-loved standard, Ford made “Marchéta” one of the emotional linchpins of his 1945 film.

All the versions of “Marchéta” to be found on modern CDs are either overwrought ballads by male vocalists like Al Jolson and Mario Lanza, or else corny “cha-cha” dance instrumentals. However, when played in sleepy waltz-time it becomes an achingly beautiful theme. It is first played (and the lyrics quietly sung by the assembled crowd) when Rusty Ryan (John Wayne) attends a hospital dance on Corregidor, in the Philippines, and falls in love with a nurse there. Much later in the movie Bataan falls, and Corregidor (where his lover is stationed) is being bombed and starved into submission by the Japanese. As Wayne gets drunk in an island bar, a poignant reprise of the melody appears on the radio. Without a single word of dialogue or explanation, Wayne gazes off into space, and as the music plays we recognize it from before, and realize he is remembering that wonderful evening spent dancing in the darkness with a doomed woman he’ll never see again:

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The song is utilized expertly in Expendable, and would stick with John Wayne for the rest of his life. Ford, you see, had an accordionist friend named Danny Borzage, who would often play mood music to help the actors find the right emotional timbre for a scene. (In fact, Borzage can be seen on-screen in many of Ford’s films — in They Were Expendable, look for him under the floorboards of a hut providing musical accompaniment to Ward Bond’s serenade of Donna Reed.) Whenever John Ford or a member of his stock company appeared on-set for the day’s work, Borzage would also play favored themes — different for each person — to announce their arrival. Over time, his presence and these songs became a grand and well-loved tradition on Ford’s sets, creating a palpable sense of family amongst the cast and crew.

After They Were Expendable, “Marchéta” became John Wayne’s aural signature, lovingly warbled on Danny Borzage’s accordion each morning to herald the arrival of the Duke. It’s a beautiful melody, laden with nostalgia, and deserves to be remembered far better than it has been.

Next Saturday in For Conservative Movie Lovers, we focus on some of the other members of the John Ford Stock Company who appeared in They Were Expendable, along with a pair of prominent non-Fordian actors who helped greatly to make the movie special.

PAST POSTS IN THIS SERIES

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

FURTHER READING AND VIEWING

Here’s a great review/essay on They Were Expendable by an anonymous writer at eOpinions, one that adds more arguments and behind-the-scenes stories to my defense of John Wayne’s actions during the war.

The National Archives has some scans online of pages from John Wayne’s 1943 application for a commission with the OSS (scroll to bottom of page).

A kindly pianist saw fit to post a nice, full version of “Marchéta” on the Internet for all to enjoy, one that hews pretty closely to the way it sounds in They Were Expendable. I find most of the other versions lacking (Al Jolson does the best lyrical interpretation, in my opinion), but there’s a lot more examples out there on YouTube if you want to explore them.

MOVIE TRIVIA TIME: It’s a little-known fact that film director Blake Edwards (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Pink Panther series, et al.) started out in Hollywood as a young actor, with one of his earliest roles being an uncredited sailor in They Were Expendable. If you look carefully, he can be seen in both the “Marchéta” video above and in the Introductory video to Part 1 of this series. Care to guess which sailor is Edwards?  Put your choices in the Comments section below, and I’ll reveal the answer in next week’s installment.

It’s my guess that a majority of those involved with the NEA — even those few who are talented — are always eager to roll over for left-wing politicians.  Partly it’s because they are so hungry for attention and partly because they lack anything resembling a moral compass. 

Allow me to give you a few notable examples of the way that people who earn their living in the areas of art and entertainment can voluntarily blind themselves to those matters that have moral implications.  Just recently, we got to watch a swarm of Hollywood retards climbing all over themselves in a rush to defend Roman Polanski, a piece of Euro-trash who confessed to having sex with a 13-year-old child.  All sorts of big name, small brain, celebrities lined up to sign petitions on his behalf.  By attesting to his character, they merely confirmed that they lacked any themselves. 

Hollywood is the place where the members of the Motion Picture Academy were once so angry at producer Jack Warner for casting Audrey Hepburn, instead of Julie Andrews, in “My Fair Lady,” that they refused to even nominate Ms. Hepburn for her terrific performance as Eliza Doolittle.  However, proving, as usual, that they shouldn’t be allowed to vote even when politics aren’t involved, these lunkheads then gave the 1964 Oscar for Best Picture to “My Fair Lady,” which enabled the very same Jack Warner to stride onstage to thunderous applause. 

Then there was the matter of Cliff Robertson and David Begelman.  When Robertson, an Oscar-winning actor, discovered that Begelman, the head of Columbia Pictures, had forged his signature on a $10,000 check, he blew the whistle.  After a police investigation, it turned out that Begelman had been financing his gambling habit with a lot of other people’s money, including Judy Garland, whom he had blackmailed.  The upshot was that Robertson had his acting career short-circuited, whereas Begelman, who was only sentenced to community service, was then hired to run MGM. 

Shortly after the scandal occurred, I happened to be having lunch with my agent in a restaurant loaded with Hollywood types.  When Begelman entered, there was such a flurry of people competing for his attention, you could have mistaken them for a covey of Cardinals vying to smooch the Pope’s ring. 

It’s not just actors, directors and producers, who act like dopes.  Consider writer Norman Mailer.  Perhaps because he was the fellow who once tried to settle a domestic dispute by stabbing the second of his six wives, Jack Abbott, who was serving time for bank robbery and murder, decided he’d be the ideal pen pal.  Mailer became so enamored of Abbott’s writing, he not only used his considerable influence to get Abbott’s book, “In the Belly of the Beast,” published, but got this career criminal paroled.  In New York, quite naturally, Abbott became the toast of the literati crowd, but only for a little while because six weeks after his release, Abbott stabbed 22-year-old Richard Adan to death. 

Saving the best for last brings us to Leni Riefenstahl.  In Berlin, in the 30s, as in Hollywood at any time, it wasn’t what you knew but who you knew, and Leni was a chum of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda.  Think of him as the head of Germany’s NEA.  It was Herr Goebbels who helped get her the opportunity to make “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia,” a couple of over-wrought “documentaries” dedicated to hyping the Third Reich. 

After the end of World War II and for the remaining half of her 101 years, American and European cineastes — the same twerps who do cartwheels over Michael Moore’s propaganda flicks — showered her with honors and acclaim.  This in spite of the fact that although she claimed she wasn’t a Nazi and would barely have recognized Hitler if she’d tripped over him, had said, “To me, Hitler is the greatest man who ever lived.  He truly is without fault, so simple and at the same time possessed of masculine strength.”  Sort of sounds like Chris Matthews going on about Obama or Oliver Stone mooning over Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro, doesn’t it? 

In 1993, Riefenstahl had the gall to deny that she deliberately attempted to create pro-Nazi propaganda.  For good measure, she claimed she was disgusted that “Triumph of the Will” was used in such a way.  It was reminiscent of Captain Renault’s shock upon discovering that gambling was taking place in the backroom at Rick’s, all the while pocketing his winnings. 

Having seen her most famous films, I can assure you that unless you cut the movies up into a million little slivers of celluloid and used them for toothpicks, there was no other conceivable use for them except as Nazi propaganda. 

Moreover, in 1934, Riefenstahl said that “Mein Kampf” had made a tremendous impression on her. “I became a confirmed National Socialist after reading the very first page.  I felt a man who could write such a book should undoubtedly lead Germany.  I felt very happy that such a man had come.” 

She was so impressed with the book that she wrote the author a fan letter.  The letter led to a meeting.  The meeting led to her directing “Victory of Faith,” a movie about the fifth Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg.  So much for her claim that she really only knew Hitler from his photos. 

In fact, for someone who spent so many years churning out propaganda films, she was rather inept when it came to lying.  For instance, on one occasion she claimed that she was totally unaware that concentration camps even existed, while another time she swore that she only worked for the Nazis because Goebbels had threatened to send her to a concentration camp if she didn’t cooperate. 

Frankly, what confounds me is why she wasted even a single second lying about her past.  I mean, even if she had been good at it, why bother?  After all, sensible and moral people never believed her self-serving malarkey; and, as for the celebrity crowd, they simply didn’t care.  They never do.

My beloved United States Army is a blunt instrument, a magnificent club that has pummels our nation’s enemies into submission.  But the Marines are America’s rapier, a razor sharp weapon of war that has never been bested and never will be.  For over two centuries, the United States Marine Corps has been fighting our country’s battles in the air, on land and sea.  They don’t give up.  They don’t quit.  There’s no word for retreat in a Marine’s vocabulary.  And they are making history even today in the mountains of Afghanistan and elsewhere.

November 10th is the Corps’ 234th birthday.  With the indulgence of my Devil Dog brethren, here is this Army veteran’s countdown of the Top Ten Marine Corp movies:

10.  55 Days at Peking:  The Boxer Rebellion in China provides the backdrop for this epic true-life tale of Marines (with help from a few others) protecting civilians from rampaging Chinese peasants.  Charlton Heston is the head Marine; Ava Gardner and David Niven show up as well. 

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9.  Jarhead:  This film of Anthony Swofford’s book about Marines in Operation Desert Storm is a mixed bag.  Perhaps director Sam Mendes was trying to make up for his slander of military men in American Beauty by making an attempt to understand how men function in wartime.  He effectively captures the unreality of that war, but his depiction of the desert environment itself is somehow off (though not as inaccurate as the awful Three Kings).  The clouds of oily smoke after the Iraqis set off the wells did bring back some memories.   Look for Jamie Foxx as a tough Marine sergeant.

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8.  Gung Ho:  This World War Two story recounts the real-life story of the Marine’s raid on the Japanese position on Makin Island early in the war.  Watch for Robert Mitchum as a Devil Dog named “Pig Iron.” 

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7.  A Few Good Men:  This is problematic film for several reasons.  First, it promotes the idea that lawyers as attractive, interesting people, which is demonstrably untrue.  Second, it is positively schizophrenic in its attitude toward the Corps.  Noted Hollywood liberal Aaron Sorkin penned the script, which features Jack Nicholson’s legendary “You can’t handle the truth!”speech.  Many look on that speech as an inspiration, not an indictment.  Regardless, the issue of a society that demands protection yet questions the manner those who protect it do so resonates even more powerfully today than when Sorkin wrote it.

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6.  Aliens:  Okay, so James Cameron’s classic sci-fi flick is not technically about the United States Marine Corps, but ditch the space ships and hi-tech weapons and this band of Colonial Marines would be at home in today’s USMC.  The interplay between the Marines is priceless.  Their gunnery sergeant, played by Al Mathews, is calm, capable and scary.  And as Private Hudson, Bill Paxton plays the most amusing military screw-up in film history.  “Game over, man!  Game over!”

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5.  Generation Kill:  This a miniseries is a tough call because there is a lot good and a lot bad about it, but it honors the Marines who have been fighting for us since 9/11 and so deserves a spot here.  The bad first – there’s too much talking and pondering of the bigger issues going on.  Those portions feel forced into the script to fit the filmmakers’ pre-existing anti-war narrative.  What is accurate is the look and feel of the film.  This light recon battalion is quite similar to an Army cavalry recon squadron, and the way the men lived in and around their vehicle feels true.  One particularly good scene involves a young Marine asking to medevac a wounded civilian.  You expect a typical movie conflict between the sensitive young officer and his uncaring superior, but instead the filmmakers have the battalion commander explain his perspective and the consequences he has to consider when deciding whether to divert evac resources away from his own wounded.  It’s a powerful scene that demonstrates how high ranking officers, often portrayed on film as self-absorbed, obtuse and insensitive, bear enormous responsibilities for making difficult decisions that their subordinates sometimes do not fully appreciate.

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4.  Pride of the Marines:  This is the story of Marine Al Schmid, blinded fighting the Japanese in the Pacific, and his return home.  It is a moving testament to the human cost of war and it demonstrates the price paid by many Marines over the years – and a price many continue to pay today.  It is also the story about how once you become a Marine, you remain a Marine, and how that pride will stay with you throughout your life.

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3. Heartbreak Ridge:  The great Clint Eastwood does a tour of duty here as Tom Highway, a Marine gunnery sergeant his obnoxious new commander labels a “dinosaur.”  When all hell breaks loose on a tropical paradise called Grenada, Clint and his platoon smack around Castro’s minions.  It’s very cool.  One theme of the film is how a great sergeant grows his lieutenants into real leaders, and anyone who has been a platoon leader will smile as the nerdy LT learns to take charge and finally seizes the initiative to win the fight.  Look for Mario Van Peebles as the world’s least likely Marine.

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2.  Full Metal Jacket:  Don’t see this a week before you ship to basic training.  Take it from personal experience that this is a poor idea.  R. Lee Ermey’s hilarious and horrifying turn as a Marine drill instructor is a legend, and properly so.  His four minute verbal assault on his recruits is appalling, and yet one cannot turn away.  The second half of the film, which covers the retaking of the Vietnamese city of Hue during the Tet offensive, is a solid depiction of the terrors of urban combat.  Watch Big Hollywood’s own Adam Baldwin and the rest of the cast as they demonstrate the awesome firepower of a Marine infantry squad:

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1.  Sands of Iwo Jima:  A classic Hollywood story told against the backdrop of the greatest battle in Corps history, it features the Duke in his legendary role as Sergeant Stryker.  As much as we all love R. Lee Ermey, John Wayne remains the gold standard for hardass Marine sergeants.  This is the story of a tough NCO welding a gaggle of recruits into a lethal team of Marines, and this story is being repeated today with a new generation of tough NCOs and recruits.  Only the battlefields, uniforms and weapons are different.  The fighting spirit is the same. 

I bleed Army green, but even I have to admit that the Marines are something special.   But they don’t need validation from me or from anyone else.  They are Marines.  That says it all.

Semper Fi.

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What is the enduring fascination with a 55-year old flick that stars a fake Japanese reptile stomping Toyko into matchsticks?  The first thing is that Godzilla is a truly entertaining movie.  Actually, it’s two movies.  The version most Americans have seen on TV is the 1956 re-cut version of the 98-minute original Japanese movie, Gojira.  Some American producers decided it could make them a bundle, but it needed a bit of familiarization before the American audience would accept it.  They hired a pre-Perry Mason Raymond Burr to film some awkward footage as American reporter “Steve Martin,” cut out a lot of draggy filler, and shipped the slimmed down 80-minute final product to drive-ins all over the fruited plain.

Gojira is pretty cool on its own and is available in an awesome DVD collector’s edition (which also includes Godzilla, King of the Monsters).  Gojira is very dark, both literally and figuratively.  Black and white is really the only way to see Godzilla in action, and most of the monster attacks conveniently take place at night.  In the shadows and the flickering flames of the shattered city, you almost forget that it’s a dude in a dinosaur suit.

Under the capable, steady direction of Ishirô Honda, Gojira forgoes subtlety and is a pretty straightforward nuclear weapons allegory.  Godzilla represents the Japanese perception of what they saw as an uncaring, unstoppable and undeserved alien force of remorseless destruction wreaking havoc on their homeland, sort of like the rain of fire that descended upon Japan from American B-29s less than a decade before.

Accordingly, the central visual theme of the film is flame.  It surrounds Godzilla as he smashes through the city, it frames him on the horizon and it literally comes from within him, evoking both the pika don of the A-bomb detonations but also the even more destructive night fire bombing campaign of General Curtis LeMay.  There’s more going on here than just a monster movie – and post-WW2 Americans could not have cared less.

Of course, you don’t need to let this self-pitying revisionism get in the way of your enjoyment of the film.  I had two grandfathers bobbing out in the Pacific waiting to go in with the invasion the A-bombs ensured never happened.  I also served for nearly two decades in the 40^th Infantry Division, which was scheduled to be the first to hit the beaches and probably would have been wiped out on the sand.  Accordingly, my sympathy for the just consequences the Japanese suffered as a result of treacherously starting their brutal, savage war of conquest is distinctly limited.

But the film does provide an interesting insight into the attitude of willful indifference to the facts regarding the war that persists in Japan to this day.  For example, visiting the A-bomb museum in Nagasaki, one must search through the myriad, elaborate displays of destruction and suffering to find the most important thing any such museum might provide to its visitors – context.

Literally squirreled away near the back of the museum, I stumbled upon a small display of pictures.  They were not clearly labeled but it seemed that some were of Japanese-occupied China and one was particularly recognizable to an American – the burning hulk of the USS Arizona.  That was 2002; perhaps things have changed.  But walking out of that museum – or out of Gojira – one might be forgiven for thinking that the Japanese were just sitting around, minding their own business, enjoying some teriyaki and bottles of Asahi Super Dry, when all of a sudden these terrible things happened to them for no conceivable reason.

Sorry, Ishirô – you can try peddling that to somebody else cuz I’m not buying.

And the American producers were wise to cut that silliness out and American-ize Godzilla into something an audience that consisted of many people who had literally been shot at by the Japanese just a few years prior might want to watch.  They removed most of the allegory and, as the trailer shows, they gave Godzilla the full P.T. Barnum treatment, promising – and delivering – “dynamic violence” and “savage action.”

But they left the essential story elements in – Raymond Burr’s crudely inserted scenes simply frame the action and clarify the story so the movie can get right to the landscape-wrecking fun.  The movie starts off with some mysterious events going on out in the Pacific.  You don’t see the big guy at first – you just see shadows, bubbles, flashes, and huge footprints and you hear his legendary roar.  When Godzilla finally shows up in all his glory – the special effects here really are terrific – it’s just awesome.

There are still no laughs – well, no intentional ones – in Godzilla.  The people of Tokyo look and act terrified, and the movie plays the threat of the creature straight.  You see the injured and the dying – it’s not graphic, but the movie does show the figurative fallout of the monster’s rampage.  In the end, one character makes a noble sacrifice that will put a lump in your throat.  And, as with all the best monsters, you sympathize with Godzilla as he meets his fate.  It’s actually quite moving.

Sadly, after Gojira, the Godzilla series followed a regrettable pattern common to great genre flicks.  The first movie is a serious, uncompromising film made by serious people for serious people (but sometimes, as with Godzilla, fully appropriate for and beloved by kids too).  Then the series starts heading south.  Pretty soon your terrifying, mysterious, darkness-swathed wraith becomes a fat guy in a lizard suit wrestling King Kong for laughs in broad daylight.

It happens all the time.  The 1931 classic Frankenstein was a disturbing meditation on man and the limits of science.  By 1948, Dr. Frankenstein’s monster was chasing Abbott & Costello around while Dracula and the Wolf Man looked on.  The original A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) is a very tough, very creepy little horror flick.  I think Freddy Krueger fights Jason in the last sequel.  Or maybe Chucky.  Or Optimus Primus the Transformerzoid.  Who knows?  Who cares?

I haven’t seen any other Godzilla films in years, and it appears I have not missed much.  The movies reached their nadir after 1969’s Godzilla’s Revenge, where the big guy stopped stomping cities and started helping out lonely latch-key children.  Yawn.  From its very loud, very explodey trailer, 2004’s Godzilla: Final Wars looks more like Godzilla v. The Matrix.

And don’t even mention the awful 1998 re-boot.  The new Godzilla featured a redesigned, doofy-looking monster plus some transplanted pseudo-raptors ripped-off from Jurassic Park chasing Matthew Broderick all over Manhattan.  This only reinforced one of the five key principles that guide my life – never see a movie starring Matthew Broderick that does not also feature Ben Stein.  Well, to be fair, Glory is pretty badass too – and itself no doubt a future “Movie We Like.”

Now, that is not to say that the later Godzilla films do not provide their guilty pleasures.  Godzilla v. The Thing (1964) is a lot of fun.  For some reason, a few years ago they insisted on re-titling it Godzilla v. Mothra, but to those of us who, in the 70’s, waited up late for Creature Features to see it, it will always be known by its original TV moniker.  And, as a bonus, it features the miniature Mothra twins’ ear-melting Mothra song.  And some of Godzilla’s later antics have a kind of goofy charm:

Another delightful Godzilla-related musical interlude is provided by the mind-boggling tune Save the Earth from 1971’s terrible, terrible Godzilla v. The Smog Monster. This is the one where Godzilla battles what appears to be a sentient, flying cow pie.  The song is the true lowlight.  It’s this combination of over-earnest 70’s enviro-nonsense and 60’s Japanopop that is mistranslated into English and served up for your listening pleasure.  You can almost see Al Gore sitting alone in his mansion, nodding his head, grinning, and snapping his fingers to its big beat as he gazes upon his Oscar and Nobel Prize.

Forget the rest of the series.  Stick with the original – okay, the second original.  Godzilla, King of the Monsters is a terrific 80-minute thrill ride mercifully free of the kind of clichéd movie industry nonsense that ruins so many movies today.  There’s no nauseating shaky-cam, the shots last longer than 0.35 seconds, and the whole thing is just plain cool.  The kids dug it big time.  Plus there’s a guy in a rubber dinosaur costume smashing up Tokyo who represents the awesome, righteous wrath of the American people – what’s not to like?

“Close-ups, affectionate or noble, are held at leisure; long shots are sustained long after their narrative role has been performed. A marginal figure is suddenly dwelt on, lovingly enlarged to fill the center of the screen. Informed with heightened emotion, a single shot, unexpectedly interposed — a ragged line of men marching into nowhere, one of them playing a bugle-call on his harmonica — assumes a deeper significance than is given by its function in the story. This is one of the properties of poetry. They Were Expendable is a heroic poem.” – Lindsay Anderson

The wondrous shots about which Mr. Anderson writes were masterminded by John Ford, but they were brought to life on film by Joseph H. August (1890-1947), one of the great cinematographers of the age. It was August who memorably crafted the hauntingly beautiful images of night-fog and shadows for Ford’s The Informer (1935), which won Oscars for both Best Picture and Best Director. He also lensed now-classic movies like Gunga Din and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (both 1939), and during the war served as a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserves.

Joe August was a twenty-one-year-old wayward cowpuncher from Colorado when he migrated west to work as a ranch hand at Inceville, the vast silent-era movie studio created by film pioneer Thomas Ince on what is now modern-day Santa Monica. But it wasn’t long before he drifted away from horses and lariats and lost himself in the shiny, futuristic world of cameras, lenses, and light. August’s cinematographic mentor was the director Ray Smallwood (1887-1964), who not only taught him the intricacies of camerawork but impressed upon him the need to become an instinctive artist, one capable of using light and chemicals and film emulsion to emotionally transform a film composition the same way a symphonic conductor can transform a well-known piece of music with different orchestrations and the wave of a baton.

Even something as innocuous and seemingly necessary as a light meter (a handheld instrument that allows you to measure the intensity of light at various points in a composition, so that you can be sure you are not over- or under-exposing — and hence potentially ruining — a shot) was verboten on a Smallwood set. Decades later, and now a veteran cinematographer in his own right, Joe August had not forgotten the hard lessons of his apprenticeship. “I am not against meters by any means,” he said in a 1939 interview. “They just don’t fit into my plan of taking pictures. The meters I lean on are my eyes. When I first started in this business twenty-eight years ago, I had a preceptor I then thought sort of tough because he was insistent on my learning what could be accomplished by a pair of eyes, and a man with scant patience for any devices that aimed to make those organs secondary to any human intervention.”

This sort of approach to cinematography often results in images that are, by strict measurable standards, too dark, too light, too grainy, too blurry — in a word, not perfect in the way we’ve come to expect from Hollywood fare. But in August’s determination, rigid standards of slick perfection were beside the point. He felt that the emotional spectrum of a cinematographer’s image counted as much as the physical, just as a painter hardly feels the need to portray everything with strict photographic realism. “Frequently,” he said, “I choose to make an exposure that — well, we will call it an unorthodox exposure, one aimed to produce a certain effect that may be desirable. For instance, the negative might be overexposed and underdeveloped — or the procedure might be reversed.”

The video I posted above is filled with examples of these “unorthodox exposures”: haggard faces swathed in shadow and smoke, men and planes reduced to silhouettes against dim panoramas of swaying palms and setting suns, two figures dancing together in an almost total darkness which serves to enhance the intimacy of the moment. There were no video screens back then to give guys like August instant feedback on their lighting setups. With every shot they guessed, they experimented, they checked the camera’s film gate for stray hairs. And if they were very skilled and a bit lucky, a few days later the film would come back from the lab with something magical burned into it.

There are two recurring visual motifs in They Were Expendable: the long-shot goodbye and the luminous close-up. Throughout the film we see faces swathed in shadow, almost lovingly, with only their eyes aglow in the gloom, like feral ghosts. The quality of light mirrors the content of their souls, flickering and guttering like fragile candles amidst the harsh winds of war. Water, too, is used to great effect. Fearsome waves and bomb-created geysers batter men as they struggle to keep afloat, their tattered battle flag fluttering madly. At one point, the destruction of John Wayne’s beloved boat casts up a mournful veil of artificial rain that falls down upon him like heavenly tears.

August was in his mid-fifties when he shot Expendable, but he frequently pushed himself to the limits of endurance in his efforts to capture the shots Ford wanted:

When Ford and I did They Were Expendable for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the United States Navy, the keynote of the picture was realism. We used regular PT Boats manned by Navy crews off the Florida Coast. Equipped with a handheld 35mm Mitchell camera that weighed fourteen pounds, I reverted to old-time photographic technique, shooting the scenes myself. I was cushioned against a slack service belt attached to a boat by two lines as the craft hit speeds of 42 knots, sometimes taking drops of five feet while speeding across the water. For other action shots, I lay on the bow of a PT Boat shooting backward into the vessel. As in Ford’s The Battle of Midway, the camera often shook while photographing real explosions.

It’s interesting that he stresses realism. M-G-M tried forcing Ford to film a silly ending that would have shown MacArthur’s 1945 invasion force triumphantly returning to the Philippines, topped by Wayne’s character finding Donna Reed in a guerrilla hospital and giving her a glorious Hollywood kiss! To Ford’s everlasting credit, he doggedly fought for his original bittersweet denouement until the studio capitulated. The filmmakers were also hampered by the harsh dictates of the Breen Office, which strictly regulated what could and could not be displayed on screen. “In all of the scenes of wounded men and of men taking machine gun slugs,” one December 1944 letter from Breen warned, “restraint should be exercised to avoid any excessive gruesomeness, which might not be acceptable in the finished picture.” Numerous instances of words like “damn,” “hell,” and even “nuts” were ruthlessly excised from the script again and again, despite Ford’s multiple attempts to sneak them past the censors. We must allow for this artistic meddling before thoughtlessly damning our forefathers for the crime of papering over the true horrors of war.

Today we regularly are treated to heads exploding, blood splattering across the lens, and glistening intestines strewn in full color across the widescreen frame, all accompanied by explosions and screams delivered in ear-splitting surround sound. And yet realism is not the be-all, end-all of art, and oftentimes loses more than it gains. Contrary to popular belief, modern audiences needn’t be subjected to raw butchery and carnage for a war movie to have an impact, any more than they demand pornographic portrayals of sex scenes in romantic films. The relatively sanitary images created by Golden Age Hollywood are no different than a Shakespearean stage actor gamely taking a sword-thrust under the armpit and stiffening up in over-dramatic death-throes capable of being seen by the schlubs in the cheap seats. It’s a simplistic, unimaginative mind that routinely sanctifies realism at the expense of poetic impressionism. The next time you are watching an old movie and find yourself snickering at men reacting painfully to non-existent bullets, consider the possibility that it’s a blessing that your nervous system isn’t being overwhelmed with gore, that you are left with enough emotional distance to think and feel, not just recoil.

Like all of Ford’s best films, Expendable is filled to the brim not with visual horror but with what he called his “grace notes” — shots of spare simplicity and honest emotion that, while not absolutely necessary to the plot, served to powerfully convey his deepest feelings and themes. The cutaway we saw in the opening clip of this series — of a boy toasting his elder with a glass of milk — is a Fordian grace note. In the video above, the shot of the two young seamen praying at their friends’ graves is one, too. I would suggest to you that such images, then and now, are far more important to a movie than seeing yet another man’s guts spilling out.

If I had to pick a favorite grace note among the embarrassment of riches to be found in Expendable, I would chose the one that appears toward the very end. It ranks as perhaps the most subtle in Ford’s entire canon, one that comes and goes so fast you sense it more than see it. Throughout the film, Wayne’s impulsive character has been openly seething at having to retreat rather than take the fight to the enemy. Only now, at the end, does he realize that this brashness and anger has been a luxury denied to his commander, who is ever forced to stoically suppress his own agony so that others can draw strength from his leadership. In most modern films (and, to be sure, many older ones as well), Wayne would have had a good cry and made a pretentious speech about how he’s “changed” and “grown” as a human being. Ford, by contrast, has the Duke convey an entire universe of feeling with a single gesture, one so quiet and understated that most viewers miss it entirely:

One look, one touch. Says It All. Pure visual poetry. That was the genius of men like John Ford and Joseph August. Modern-day Hollywood could learn a lot from their legacy.

Next Saturday in For Conservative Movie Lovers, we delve into the controversial war years of John Wayne, examine the foundations of his irreplaceable acting talent, and learn of the history and significance of a special song featured in They Were Expendable.

Previous posts in the series “John Ford, John Wayne, and They Were Expendable”:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

FURTHER READING AND VIEWING

“The Founding Fathers” by Robert S. Birchard: A fine article on the fifteen cameramen who started the American Society of Cinematographers, including They Were Expendable’s Joe August. Includes a picture of August taken during the very early years of Hollywood silents.

Big Hollywood’s own Schizoid Man wrote a great post a few months back about another movie lensed by cinematographer Joe August, Gunga Din (1939). If you missed it the first time, click here to check it out.

About John Ford by Lindsay Anderson: In an earlier post I mentioned that Joseph McBride’s Searching for John Ford is the bible among Ford fans. Well, About John Ford is the bible for Ford critics — simply the best book about Ford’s artistry ever written, or likely to be written. Anderson was a British magazine critic in the 1950s when he first met Ford, and later became a revered director in his own right (it was he who jump-started the career of actor Malcolm McDowell, who credits Anderson with much of his growth as an actor). But I feel Anderson deserves to be primarily remembered for this wonderful volume, wherein he absolutely nails the essentials of John Ford’s genius, his patriotism, and his love of family and country. In the key chapter, “Ford and His Critics: Auteur or Poet?”, he thoroughly dismantles the gaggle of clueless academics and pretentious critics that ever hover around Fordian cinema missing the forest for the trees. In the process, the ostensibly liberal Anderson also mounts the most convincing defense of classical (read: conservative) cinematic styles against post-modernism that I’ve ever read. Anderson’s sole blind spot was The Searchers (he found it a stylistically forced and emotionally bitter film, one at odds with Ford at his best), but even there his arguments are fascinating to ponder.

Illustrated with dozens of rare photographs and screenshots, and including interviews and correspondence with key people who worked with Ford (including They Were Expendable’s Robert Montgomery), About John Ford is all tied together with a relaxed erudition that is sheer poetry to read, an emotionally evocative mirroring of Ford’s films themselves. The praise he heaps on the great director — “such smiles, such tears, such restorative energy” — could just as easily apply to his own marvelous book. I can’t recommend it highly enough to conservatives — a masterwork.

To read Part I of this series, please click here.

To read Part II, please click here.

Broke, with her second marriage in shambles and blacklisted by studio boss L.B. Mayer—Esther wouldn’t trade amorous favors for movie roles—Esther Ralston flees to New York in 1939 to find work and rebuild her shattered career.

Esther, in her slim but resonant 1985 memoir, Some Day We’ll Laugh, tells us that she was forced to leave her daughter Mary behind in California with her mother.

Working in Summer Stock and radio, Esther meets a young entertainment columnist named Ted Lloyd.  Everywhere she plays, Ted is in the audience. With characteristic understatement Esther notes that Lloyd “seemed to follow me.”

Clearly, Esther has an admirer. Not surprising in that Esther Ralston, dubbed The American Venus, was a famous Hollywood beauty. One would hope that coming on the heels of two ex-husbands who were not only unreliable, but also somewhat homicidal, Esther would steer clear of another hasty romantic entanglement, but —

— Alas, soon enough Lloyd is escorting Esther around town. They appear arm in arm in the fashionable Stork Club, Toot Shorr’s, Jack Dempsey’s and Lindy’s.

Esther writes:

During these weeks, Ted kept telling me how much he loved me and pleading with me to marry him. I explained that I was trying to recover from a sad divorce and was not interested in ever marrying again.

Okay. Good for Esther. She’s using her common sense under the juggernaut of her latest suitor’s attentions.

Esther and Scary Husband #3

But Lloyd is not just aggressive, he’s coldly manipulative and he zeroes in on Esther’s vulnerable core—her eight-year old daughter Mary.

Ted took a trip to California and got in touch with my family. He took them all to dinner, bought Mary a doll, and tried to talk her into persuading me to marry him so she could come and be with her mother.

This is seriously creepy, and it should have unmasked Lloyd as morally deficient. Esther, once discovering this ethical breach, should have reacted with fury. But Mary’s pathetic letters—“I miss you, Mommy. Please can’t I come to you?”—breaks Esther’s will and she surrenders to Lloyd.

In a final and serious talk with Ted Lloyd, I told him I wasn’t in love with him, I’d been too hurt and disillusioned by my previous marriages, but if he still wanted me, I would marry him and do my best to make him happy. We were married at the Pickwick Arms in Greenwich, Connecticut, on August 6^th 1939.

Homicidal husband #3, Ted Lloyd.

Esther, Ted and Mary move into a modest house in Little Neck. Esther’s dream—the American Dream—of a life of simple domesticity seems to be falling into place. But finances are something of a problem. Lloyd, a lowly columnist and sometimes PR guy, is not pulling in that much money.

And so, in September of 1939, on Esther’s thirty-eighth birthday, when Darryl F. Zanuck calls to offer Esther a role in the prestigious Alice Faye vehicle, Tin Pan Alley, Esther immediately agrees to play the famous singer Nora Bayes.

In Hollywood a week later, Esther is working with a solid cast including Alice Faye, Betty Grable, Jack Oakie, and John Payne.

A few years earlier, Esther notes, she met Nora Bayes on the Paramount lot and Bayes offered some words—deeply prophetic—that Esther never forgot:

“You’re young now, Esther. What I say may not mean much to you now, but someday you’ll remember what I tell you. Someday, everything you think, everything you do, will be in your face. Remember that.”

As she’s wrapping up work in Tin Pan Alley, Esther is offered a supporting role in Universal’s San Francisco Docks.

Acutely aware of her role as mother and wife, Esther calls Ted to ask his permission to stay another few weeks in California. Reluctantly, Ted agrees, but makes Esther promise that this will be her last motion picture.

Esther abides by her agreement.

Alice Faye, left, and Esther Ralston on the set of Tin Pan Alley, 1939.

In 1942 Ted loses his job as a columnist. Esther, always the optimist, encourages Ted to produce his own radio shows. He moves ahead with her suggestion and proves successful, saving money by hiring Esther to play multiple roles on his radio plays.

Two more children are born, Judy in 1942, and Ted Jr., in 1943. At last, Esther seems to be, enjoying her life as mother and wife. They buy a bigger house in Great Neck and Esther wears a mink coat when they go sailing on their new ship.

Esther Meets Dorian Gray

But the routine of cooking, house cleaning and laundering leaves Esther exhausted by nightfall.  Ted frequently calls from New York urging Esther to get dressed and join him for an important cocktail party or theater event. But, pleads Esther, she can’t leave the kids.

Inevitably, Ted starts coming home late. He becomes cold and inattentive. Finally, Esther discovers that Ted is having an affair with, yup, his secretary.

Let’s review:

Husband #1, George Webb, gambler.

Husband #2, Bill Morgan, alcoholic.

Husband #3, Ted Lloyd, adulterer.

But something else gnaws at Esther. Something even more disturbing and elemental than the awful cliché of her husband’s infidelity. She looks in the mirror and sees signs of encroaching middle age. But Ted—like Dorian Gray—seems eternally young.

Esther confronts him:

Ted was so quiet, I became alarmed. “You did tell the truth about your age when you wrote on our marriage license that you were the same age as I, didn’t you?” Ted never answered me.

A cold chill ran through me, and then I said quietly, “Teddy, tell me the truth. How old are you?” Then Ted told me he was twelve years younger than I.

“Why? Why did you lie to me?” I gasped, choking back the tears.

“Because I knew you wouldn’t have married me if you had known,” he said.

Nora Bayes prophetic advice kicks in with ferocity:

In the months to follow, I found myself studying my face, my figure, looking for lines, grey hairs, and so on. I became so conscious of the difference in our ages that I became depressed and miserably unhappy. Ted’s frequent sarcasm and slighting remarks that had never bothered me before became red flags to my ego.

An emotional scorched earth policy seems to envelope the marriage. In 1950, while Esther visits her mother in California, Mary, now a lively teenager, urgently writes: “Daddy has a woman sleeping with him in your bed!”

Esther immediately returns to New York. In a scene we have viewed in countless movies, Ted packs his bags and walks out on his wife and children.  He withholds all financial support. Once again, Esther alone is responsible for her children.

I tried to carry on without my husband, but soon found that we were not only running short of food but the telephone and lights were about to be turned off because of non-payment of bills. I was frantic. I called the Welfare Department and told them my husband had abandoned my children and me and what my plight was. They contacted Ted at his office and he was furious that I had called Welfare, but he came by the next day with a bag of groceries.

A week later, Ted calls and invites Esther out to dinner. Hopeful, Esther imagines an attempt at reconciliation. But Ted is strangely silent and Esther, confused and sad, asks Ted to drive her home:

We were both silent as we neared our house, but when he drove right by it and turned down a dark, little-traveled road, I was suddenly frightened. His face was set and ugly-looking and I said to him, “Ted, take me home at once! I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, but if you don’t take me back at once, I’m getting out of this car!”

When he didn’t answer me, but kept driving, I opened the car door and jumped out, and began walking back down the road. I heard him drive a bit further, then turning his car around, he gunned the motor and, with headlights blazing, drove straight at me. I screamed and jumped into the ditch, then stood staring in shock as Ted stopped the car and, putting his head down on the steering wheel, began to sob.

Esther ponders the strange trajectory of her life:

What was there about me, I grieved, that made me fail in three marriages? Why had each of my three husbands wanted to kill me?

Esther, American Patriot

Sadly, Esther’s memoir breaks off at this point in her life, 1950.

What did this resilient woman do next?

Esther continued with her radio work. She managed the boy’s department at B. Altman’s in Manhasset, Long Island. She was lured to television for a role in The Verdict is Yours, and then a steady role as Helen Lee in the 1962 soap opera Our Five Daughters.  Esther was a consultant and decorator for The Lighting Studio, in Glen Falls, and then in 1978 she returned to Los Angeles where she found work in numerous television commercials.

Her son Ted, a 1970 article in The Troy Record informs us, was a captain in the U.S. Air Force.

In 1992, film historian and biographer Eve Golden interviewed Esther and etched a vivid portrait of a lively and generous woman with not an ounce of bitterness or self-pity.

“I have fifteen grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. They’re all over the world, so I can’t see them now, but I write to them and talk to them… I have had a very long and brilliant life. I’ve been very, very grateful…”

It’s hard to evaluate Esther Ralston’s Hollywood career. So many of her films have been lost. But what we do have reveals a luminous presence whose understated and subtle performances are among the most skillful of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Esther Ralston in Old Ironsides, 1926.

In almost every interview I’ve read with Esther, she cites Old Ironsides, 1926 as her favorite movie. It’s an adventure film, and also the story of the U.S.S. Constitution, known as Old Ironsides. Said Esther to silent film historian Anthony Slide, who maintained a friendship with Esther and edited her memoir:

“My favorite is Old Ironsides… My people came over on the Mayflower, and they fought in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War and the World War and Vietnam. I think because Old Ironsides is history—American history—that meant more to me than any of the other pictures.”

Esther’s pride in her American roots, her unabashed patriotism seems a fitting tribute for this Hollywood star.

Esther Ralston never again married.

The American Venus passed away on January 14, 1994, in her 92^nd year.

Esther Ralston’s filmography.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech