Barbara Kent: “I really didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but being an actress was not it.”

—The Sound of Silence, by Michael Ankerich.

Barbara Kent, b. Barbara Cloutman, who passed away a few weeks ago, was one of the last surviving movie stars—Mickey Rooney, ailing and frail, might be the last—who worked in the golden era of silent movies and then made the transition to sound.

She was a reluctant actress, a star whose light shined quite briefly, and then with exquisite sanity, she stepped out of the limelight and into the embrace of private life and marriage.

In 1925 Kent won the Miss Hollywood beauty pageant. Apparently, her parents pushed her to enter the contest. Thus, from the very beginning, Barbara was playing a role she neither sought nor desired. Though she had no acting experience, Universal offered the tiny—she was under five feet tall—baby-faced, 17 year-old beauty queen a contract.

In 1926, Kent was cast in ”Flesh and the Devil” (1926) as a young woman in love with the dashing John Gilbert who has eyes only for the heartless vamp Greta Garbo. Garbo gets all the loving close-ups, but I’ve always felt that Kent was far more attractive and desirable than the remote and narcissistic Garbo.

Kent starred opposite Oliver Hardy in “No Man’s Law” (1927). In this film, she’s seen swimming in the nude, but in fact she was wearing a flesh-colored body stocking. This was something of a minor scandal, but a little scandal has never hurt the career of a Hollywood ingenue.

My very favorite Kent film is “Lonesome” (1928), a near-masterpiece set in Coney Island, directed by Paul Fejos. Kent plays Mary, a switchboard operator who meets Jim (Glenn Tryon), a factory worker, in Coney Island. They spend the day together, fall in love, and then get separated in the bustling crowd. It’s a simple urban tale, a slice of poetry that’s distinguished by the heart-breaking sincerity of the performances and the director’s keen eye for location and expressive camera movement. Sadly, Universal added three stiff talking scenes to the film in order to show off the new technology. This bone-head move—the studios were in a panic about talkies—nearly ruins the magic of a wonderful if obscure movie.

Barbara Kent and Harold Lloyd in “Welcome Danger” 1929, her first movie of the sound era.

After taking voice lessons, Kent made the switch to talkies. She starred opposite the great Harold Lloyd—he first laid eyes on her at Hearst’s San Simeon castle—in his first sound film, “Welcome Danger” (1929). Kent plays Lloyd’s love interest, though she’s dressed as a man when they first meet.

In “Feet First,” (1930) Lloyd plays a shoe salesman who believes that Kent is the boss’s daughter and goes to lunatic lengths to impress her. Lloyd was a great spotter of talent. That he used Barbara in two pictures back to back is evidence of Kent’s promise as a star.

In both films Kent is charming, feisty and adorably mischievous. She’s the all-American girl every American boy aspires to marry.

Kent married MGM executive-turned-agent Harry Edington in 1932 and, except for a few more film roles, she retired to private life. The two remained together until Edington’s death in 1949. Kent married Jack Monroe, an engineer, in 1954. Monroe died in 1998. Towards the end of her life, Kent lived in Palm Desert, Calif.

Kent granted few interviews and frequently denied that she was ever a movie star. Make no mistake about it, Kent is a Hollywood success story. She survived the grinding wheels of stardom. Later in life Kent observed:

“It saddened me when I watched the likes of Bette Davis and Anita Page crawling across the screen looking like a cross between Baby Jane Hudson and a tired, chipped old porcelain dolly. I am a firm believer in the Mary Pickford school, where one should quit whilst still good-looking and on top.”

An active woman, Kent piloted light aircraft until her 85th birthday and played golf well into her mid-90s.

It is odd, but I suddenly realize how deeply attached I am to the stars of the silent screen. Their images have nourished me, their films taught and continue to teach me my craft as a screenwriter. I have internalized their dramatic emotional lives, and in some cases I have come to understand—however imperfectly—their real lives which were, quite frequently, even more tumultuous than their fictional lives.

Now, I am witness to the final heart beats of that remarkable generation. Movies are ribbons of dreams–and this dream, the age of silent movies, when the visual language of movies was invented and perfected–is coming to an end.

RIP, Barbara Kent.

The cover that launched BB.

In a trance, Vadim gazed at the cover of Elle magazine. The model looked schoolgirlish and chaste but Vadim detected something more; he saw a smoldering girl-woman whose face and body was created for the movies.

BB, age 18, in her demure wedding gown. Years later, Bardot auctioned her dress and the proceeds went to her animal rights foundation.

At the time, Vadim was working as an assistant to the respected director Marc Allégret. Vadim showed Allégret the photo and urged his boss to set up a screen test for the unknown model. Allégret, known as a spotter of new talent—he discovered Jean-Paul Belmando—gave his young protege the go-ahead.

Vadim tracked down Bardot. At first, her parents rejected Vadim’s proposal. Their daughter was studying ballet, a serious art. Movies were, well, not quite respectable. Vadim persisted and finally Bardot’s parents submitted to their daughter’s tearful fits and Vadim’s respectful if relentless offensive.

The screen test was a disaster. Under the hot lights Bardot’s chronic eczema flared. She was stiff, awkward, lacking in all charisma. But Vadim was not dissuaded. He believed in Brigitte, even if she had no idea what he saw in her. At the same time, Brigitte’s parents sensed, quite correctly, that Vadim was interested in more than their daughter’s career. They considered Vadim a disreputable bohemian and forbade Brigitte from seeing Vadim until she was of age, eighteen years old.

Brigitte, a typical, hormone-driven teenager, had a full-scale melt down.  There were tears and hysterical fits. Her father threatened to send her to boarding school in—horror of horrors—England.

In a desperate move, Brigitte’s parents arranged a date for their rebellious daughter with a local young man from a good Catholic family. Surely, Brigitte would give up bad boy Vadim for a more proper match.

Curfew, her father sternly cautioned, was midnight. On the date, Brigitte was bored out of her mind. No wonder, for the past few months Brigitte was cutting school and meeting with Vadim in his little apartment where they made love and dreamed of a future together.

Brigitte came home from her date ten minutes past midnight.

Papa Bardot was livid. He took Brigitte over his knee, hiked up her skirt and spanked her bottom. And this was the very first night that his daughter was wearing adult stockings and garter belt. Adding to the humiliation was that her date—he must have been shocked out of his little mind—was standing right there to witness the punishment.

Needless to say, Brigitte continued meeting with Vadim in secret. And three years later, when she turned 18, Brigitte and Vadim were married. Mrs. Vadim was on her way to becoming BB, the modern eras most potent movie sex symbol.

Kirk Douglas as a high school senior.

In the beginning of his legendary career, Kirk Douglas (1916 – ) b. Issur Danielovitch, was almost typecast as a well-meaning but ineffectual husband as in, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, 1946, and A Letter to Three Wives, 1949.  But his career exploded into mega-stardom when he played bitter, cynical heroes motivated by rage: Champion, 1949, Ace in the Hole, 1951, The Bad and the Beautiful, 1952, Paths of Glory, 1957, Spartacus, 1960, and his favorite film Lonely Are the Brave, 1962,

Douglas was never a conventional leading man. Though handsome as a fairy tale prince he wielded his masculine beauty like a weapon. There was none of the gruff charm that made Gable the King of Hollywood, nor was Douglas an elegant, urbane gentleman like William Powell.

He excelled at playing, in his own words, “sons of bitches.”

Douglas always felt like an outsider. And his fine memoir, The Ragman’s Son, touchingly reveals a chronically damaged self-image. The only son—he had six sisters—of illiterate Jewish Russian immigrants, Douglas was terrified of Herschel, his distant, hard-drinking father. But, like so many Hollywood stars, Douglas was deeply attached to his gentle, long-suffering mother Bryna. In fact, Douglas named his film company Bryna Productions.

Young Kirk Douglas with his beloved mother Bryna.

Raised in Amsterdam, New York, twenty-eight miles northwest of Albany, Douglas describes the city as “WASP town.” For traditional Jews from the Ukraine this new world was blessedly free, however polite anti-Semitism was widespread. And the rage that is at the heart of actor Kirk Douglas has its genesis in his difficult childhood.

In his senior year of high school, young Issur was looking forward to attending the school prom:

Kirk Douglas in “Ace in the Hole,” 1951. In this Billy Wilder classic Douglas plays reporter Chuck Tatum, perhaps the most cynical, self-centered son of a bitch in film history.

… I had never been to a school dance in the evening because I didn’t have the clothes or the money. I was a pretty good dancer, especially with a step called the glide and dip. But senior year, I decided to save up and go to the Senior Prom. It was a big event to me, my first prom.

There was a girl, Ann Brown. She was pretty and always wore nice clean dresses. She lived on Market Hill, the rich part of town. I danced with her sometimes during lunch hour. I felt she liked me. I invited her to go with me. She said yes! I was ecstatic, counted my pennies to make sure I had enough for the ticket and a nice corsage. I was going to press my suit carefully.

The next day I came to school very happy. I saw her, my date for the prom, and waved. She didn’t wave back. That’s strange, I thought. I guess she didn’t see me. During lunch hour when people were dancing, I couldn’t quite seem to get her attention. I didn’t understand. I ran up to her and she turned away. Finally, I trapped her in the corridor.

“What’s wrong?”

She started to stutter, then finally said, “I can’t go to the prom with you.”

My heart sank. I was bewildered. She had seemed so happy about it the day before. “Why?”

She wouldn’t answer. I insisted.“Why? Have I done something?”

“No.” Long pause. “My father won’t let me.”

I said, “I’m sure the prom won’t be very late. I’ll get you home whenever he’d like.”

“No, no,” she said. “It’s not that.”

“Well what is it?”

“Because you’re a Jew and your father’s a ragman!” She ran away.

I just stood there with my mouth open. Certainly it was not new to me to be persecuted for being a Jew. But somehow I didn’t associate it with this nice, freshly scrubbed American girl with her well-pressed dresses. I couldn’t believe it. I knew that she came from a wealthy family and her father was a college graduate. I had always thought that people who hated Jews were like my immigrant neighbors who had come from a touch background with no education.

The night of the prom arrived. I had already told many people that I was going, and I was expected to go, because I was on the dance committee. But I didn’t go.

To deal with the pain and rejection young Issur, already fascinated by the make-believe world of theater, escaped reality by retreating into a protective shell, into comforting dreams and pleasant fantasies. Thus was born the actor Kirk Douglas.

Here's a perfect illustration of the iconography of freedom. Marilyn Monroe displays a picture of Abraham Lincoln, The Great Emancipator, in a sleek convertible with the open road beckoning.

Automobiles represent freedom.

Try and remember when you were a teenager yearning for your driver’s license so you could hop into daddy’s car and go, go, go. It didn’t matter where, you just wanted to burn rubber and escape into the far horizon.

The brilliant, exhilirating and touching American Grafitti, 1973, is the ultimate expression of American car culture. Almost every single scene takes place in a car.

Los Angeles was the first America city built to accomodate the automobile. And the movie stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, most born dirt-poor, expressed delight in their sudden prosperity and fame by purchasing and posing with their dream machines.

Contrast cars with trains.

Trains and subways are an expression of the collective. Individual identity is erased. You are at the mercy of a state run system that turns  the citizen into a small cog manipulated by unmotivated, inefficient government bureaucrats.

That’s why Progressives-Liberals-Leftists are obsessed with high-speeed rail. The freedom of the road is repellent to statists who want to regulate/control diet, education, light bulbs, health care, your very geography.

Need I mention that Nazis just adored trains AKA cattle cars. And hey, the Italians boasted that Mussolini made the trains run on time.

At a certain point, one must acknowledge the convergence of philosophy between post-modern liberalism and iron-fist facism. Both ideologies assert the power of the state as the final arbiter of human affairs. Hence, the government replaces G-d and family as the center of man’s universe. It’s no surprise that the Nazi party’s formal title was The National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

Anyhoo.

Hollywood produced great stars who proudly posed with their autos, symbols of glamour, affluence, and freedom.

Silent film comedienne Mabel Normand shows off her custom built Mercer Runabout 22-72, equipped with fold-a-way makeup kit and vanity table. The car was a gift from Mabel's boyfriend, producer Mack Sennett, 1920. The night before their wedding Mabel discovered Mack in bed with actress Mae Busch. The wedding was cancelled. Mabel boozed, became addicted to cocaine and was involved in several high-profile Hollywood scandals. Her brilliant career tanked and she died at the age of 37.

Rudolph Valentino loved cars and spent hours tinkering with engines. He owned several very expensive custom built vehicles. Rudy proudly displays his Isotta-Franschini limousine, built to his exacting specifications, 1923. I'm reading Evelyn Zumaya's new, groundbreaking biography, “Affairs Valentino.” Along with details of Rudy's love of the automobile—and his horrendous driving—I'm gaining a whole new perspective on this remarkable figure of motion picture history.

Rita Hayworth, b. Margarita Carmen Cansino, presents a distinctly unglamorous but fetching vision of the girl next door as she poses with her 1941 Lincoln Continental. When Hayworth first came to Hollywood she was painfully shy, could not look strangers in the eye and barely spoke above a whisper. Gossip columnist Louella Parsons confidently predicted that Hayworth would never make it in the movies.

Tasmanian-born Errol Flynn was expelled from school for fighting and seducing a school laundress. Flynn loved America, became a citizen and attempted to enlist at the start of World War II. An enlarged heart, malaria, reliance on morphine for chronic back pain, and venereal disease firmly classified him as 4-F. Known for his swashbuckler image and party-hard lifestyle, Flynn looks ready to cruise Sunset Strip in his seriously cool Auburn Speedster.

Robert Montgomery was born to privilege, but his father committed suicide by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge leaving the family penniless. Montgomery was, no doubt, relieved to be able to afford this Cadillac Sport-Phaeton. An active Republican Montgomery was outspoken against Communist influence in Hollywood.

Jimmy Stewart was best when playing the everyman American. His 1938 Plymouth reflects this unpretentious personae. Stewart flew as a command pilot in a B-24 on numerous missions deep into Nazi-occupied Europe. Back in civilian life, he refused to publicize his heroic war record in order to garner publicity.

Director Josef von Sternberg, b. Jonas Sternberg, gave Marlene Dietrich this 1931 forest green Rolls Royce as a gift. Her chauffer, Briggs—perfect name—carried a set of revolvers to protect his famous employer. When Dietrich traveled to Europe, she sent her Rolls and Briggs in advance. David Niven notes in his excellent autobiography, “The Moon's a Balloon” that Dietrich supplied Briggs with a mink trimmed uniform, which, I suppose, qualifies Briggs as Hollywood's first metrosexual chauffer-bodyguard.

MGM’s roster of female stars constituted the greatest collection of beautiful and talented women the world has ever known.

One of the greatest was Ava Gardner.

Ava Gardner in “The Killers,” her breakthrough role, 1946.

As an emerging starlet in the early 1940’s, before she made a single movie the breathtaking Southern beauty was the talk of the town.

Mickey Rooney was MGM’s golden boy, a versatile star equally adept at musicals, comedy and drama. His signature role as the small-town youngster Andy Hardy made him something of a cash cow for the studio. The Hardy movies were cheap to produce and earned enormous profits.

In his compulsively readable autobiography, Life is Too Short, Rooney claims that his mother worked as a prostitute in order to put food on the table during the depths of the Depression. Thus, it’s not surprising that Rooney pursued women with an obsessive compulsion, seeking affection and love in all the wrong places: call girls, ambitious actresses and mature women—including Irving Thalberg’s widow Norma Shearer—smitten by Rooney’s brash boyish charm.

The first time Rooney laid eyes on Ava Gardner was when she visited the set of “Babes on Broadway,” in 1941. She was wearing a wispy summer dress and high heels. Rooney was also wearing a dress and high heels—a Carmen Miranda costume.

Rooney recalls the gauzy moment:

“Hello,” said Ava. That’s all. Just hello. And without a smile. But she said it in the soft drawl of her native rural North Carolina, and I was a goner. I had known many beautiful women in my lifetime, but this little lady topped them all. She was five feet one, but she invariably wore high heels, so she was about my height when I was wearing five-inch wedgies.

Ava was eighteen years old, Rooney, twenty-one, and his technique with women, he admits, was a combination of early Neanderthal and late Freud. He pursued the gorgeous young starlet with ferocious determination. After turning down five dates Ava finally succumbed, no doubt out of sheer exhaustion and because as one of MGM’s most powerful and bankable stars Rooney could, Ava understood, help advance her career.

After a night of drinking, dancing and table-hopping at Chasen’s, Rooney was smitten. Ava was exhausted by Rooney’s non-stop patter. He was, she realized, always performing. When Rooney saw Ava to her door at two in the morning he impulsively proposed marriage.

Ava, playing a cool customer but in truth a tongue-tied country girl, gave a little hoot, smiled enigmatically, and ducked into her apartment.

For the next few weeks Rooney kept asking and Ava kept evading. Ava was told by everyone in the Hollywood colony that Rooney never took no for an answer.

Soon after December 7, 1941, Rooney presented Ava with a huge diamond ring and once again popped the question.

There is nothing like war to concentrate the mind on love and romance.

Ava finally surrendered.

They kissed and Rooney started to grope the inexperienced young woman from Grabtown, North Carolina.

But Ava Gardner would not sleep with Rooney before accepting the sacraments of marriage. She was a virgin, and she insisted, that was the way she was going to keep it until the wedding night.

Rooney was out of his mind with desire.

Ava Gardner before her MGM glamour make-over.

Informed of the engagement, L.B. Mayer hit the ceiling. He accused Rooney of trying to destroy MGM. There was an image to preserve and marriage to an unknown hillbilly starlet did not fit the carefully crafted studio profile of Andy Hardy, the clean-cut all-American boy.

Terrified of Mayer’s incandescent temper Ava was ready to postpone the marriage. But Rooney stood up to the most powerful studio chief in Hollywood and threatened to break his contract if Mayer did not give his blessing to the union.

L.B. Mayer realized he was no match for Ava Gardner’s smoldering sensuality and wisely backed down. The wily mogul even hosted a bachelor party for Rooney. The guest list included: Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Robert Taylor, Lewis Stone, Bill Holden, Robert Montgomery, Lionel Barrymore, William Powell, and Frederic March.

Ava and Mickey were married on January 10, 1942.

The wedding night should have been an MGM soft-focus dream of deep kisses, moonlight and unquenchable passion.

Ava Gardner and Mickey Rooney on their wedding day.

Mickey Rooney confesses the awful truth:

After the ceremony, we kissed our families good-bye and headed for our honeymoon in Carmel, at the Del Monte Inn…

We didn’t have a normal, sexy wedding night. I was a nervous wreck. Getting there had been more than half the fun. Now I didn’t quite know how to savor my victory. To quiet my nerves I drank too much champagne at dinner and barely made it back to our room before I took off my pants and sank into the bed. By the time Ava emerged from the bathroom, all dressed in white satin and lace, I was snoring heavily—dreaming, no doubt about how nice it was, being married to the most beautiful woman in the world.

The marriage was a predictable disaster. Rooney was interested in booze, betting, and babes—not necessarily in that order. Ava reports in her autobiography, Ava: My Story, that she spent her days posing for MGM publicity photos—her career had yet to ignite—then cooked, cleaned, and decorated the house. She was trying to be a good wife.

But Rooney was a serial adulterer who spent all his time at the studio, the track, and a brothel stocked with prostitutes who were dead-ringers for Hollywood movie stars.

Go figure.

Finally Ava walked out on him. One year and five days after he slipped a ring on her finger bearing the engraving: “Love Forever,” they were divorced.

Years later, Ava somewhat wickedly characterized their union as Love Finds Andy Hardy.

Ava’s career soared after appearing as the femme fatale opposite Burt Lancaster in “The Killers,” 1946. But her love life was tumultuous, a blizzard of booze, wrenching love affairs and failed marriages to Frank Sinatra and Artie Shaw, volcanic and abusive men.

Rooney racked up an astonishing seven additional marriages after Ava.

Neither ever found true contentment in love or marriage.

Hollywood was and still is a dream factory that all too frequently weaves nightmares.

“How can I ever repay you?”

Replied Rabbi Myers: “I have a daughter who would like to get into pictures.”

Rudolph Valentino at the height of his fame.

True to his word, Griffith extended a helping hand to Carmel, Rabbi Myer’s striking and talented daughter. Carmel Myers (1899 – 1980) appears fleetingly as a dancing girl in Intolerance and after production wrapped, she was signed as a contract Griffith player. A few months later, the future star Colleen Moore arrived in Hollywood, also under exclusive contract to Griffith.

Myers and Moore became close friends. In her excellent memoir Silent Star, Colleen Moore remembers that a club for young actresses—Our Club—was organized as a means of mutual support. The young actresses would lunch on Sunday, discuss movies, books, “boys” and generously feed one another tips on what roles were available at which studios. Myers was an active member.

A typical meeting included: Anita Stewart, Patsy Ruth Miller, Helen Ferguson, Billie Dove, Virginia Zanuck, Gertrud Olmsted, Julanne Johnston, Clara Horton, Ruby Keeler, Loretta Young, Aline MacMahon, Ruth Roland, Carmelita Geraghty, Pauline Garan and Ann Harding. Mary Pickford was godmother to this extraordinary gathering of up and coming stars.

Carmel’s biggest break came when she was chosen to play the wicked Iras in the huge and deeply troubled MGM production of Ben Hur,1925.

The rabbi’s beautiful daughter was frequently cast as the sexy vamp in silent films. She starred and worked with some of the best known stars of the time: John Barrymore, Mary Astor, Rudolph Valentino, Norma Shearer, Adolph Menjou, Eleanor Boardman, Lon Chaney, and Joan Crawford. Carmel made the transition to sound quite nicely, and as she grew older eased gracefully into character parts. But when the roles got too small she shifted into real estate—always a smart bet in Los Angeles—and launched her own perfume company. In 1951 Carmel starred in her own TV show for one season.

But let’s rewind to 1918, when Myers was an emerging Hollywood star. In the comprehensive Valentino biography, Dark Lover, author Emily W. Leider reports that the young, incredibly handsome dancer and aspiring actor Rudolph Valentino—real name, Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguolla—was struggling for a foothold in Hollywood. Back in Italy, Valentino’s beloved mother had just died and Valentino was mired in a black depression.

He sat in his small apartment and wept. His financial situation was precarious. Never smart about money, Valentino’s Mercer car had been repossessed because the future star could not afford the monthly payments. Rudy was forced to walk and take streetcars to the endless rounds of casting sessions. Valentino (1895 – 1926) who, in The Shiek, 1921 was transformed into the world’s greatest lover, was lonely, isolated and yearning for love.

Carmel Myers, the rabbis beautiful daughter.

Leider narrates Valentino’s brave but naive attempt to court the Jewish beauty:

Carmel Myers, a teenaged star who picked him to play her boyfriend in two romantic comedies, says he tried to date her but was stymied by her overprotective mother, a rabbi’s wife. When informed by her mother that Carmel was too young to go out with men, he said, ‘Madame Myers, when I want something I never let anyone stand in my way.’ And Mama asked him, ‘Even if the person standing in your way weighs two-hundred and fifty pounds.’

Deadpans Carmel, “I never did have dinner with him.”

Of course, the rebbetzin (Yiddish: rabbi’s wife) did not block Rudy’s path because of Carmel’s tender age. Carmel was 19-years old in 1918, an appropriate age for dating. The truth is that Mama Myers would not allow her daughter to date a non-Jew. American Jews were assimilating at a frightening rate, especially in Hollywood, and Mama was determined that her daughter choose a Jewish husband and raise a Jewish family. Mama got her wish. Carmel Myers was married three times—all Jewish men.

In 1919 Rudy impulsively married actress Jean Acker—a lesbian—who, on their wedding night, locked him out of her bedroom. The marriage was never consummated. They divorced in 1921. Next, Valentino married Natacha Rambova—real name: Winifred Kimball Shaughnessy—the flamboyant costume designer. Rambova was domineering, artistically uncompromising, and she seriously damaged Valentino’s career. They divorced in 1925. A year later, in August, while in New York, Valentino, the most popular male star in the world, was hospitalized with appendicitis and gastric ulcers. Peritonitis set in and the 31-year old star star died.

Over 100,000 people lined the streets of New York for Rudolph Valentino’s funeral. Agatha Hearn, a New York woman and mother, shot herself while clutching a batch of Valentino photos. In London, a young actress named Peggy Scott, surrounded by photos of Valentino, ingested poison and left a note saying: “With his death my last bit of courage has flown.”

A second funeral was held in Los Angeles. Among the numerous mourners weeping at Valentino’s grave was Carmel Myers.

© Robert J. Avrech

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.

It’s a truism among fans of classic movies that 1939 was the Hollywood cinema’s greatest year. But if it has become something of a cliche to say so, it’s only because it’s so undeniably true.

It’s really rather amazing to consider how many classic or transcendentally classic films were released during that annus mirabilis. Among the most highly praised then and in the ensuring years were the following:

• Gone with the Wind
• The Wizard of Oz
• Stagecoach
• Beau Geste
• Goodbye, Mr. Chips
• Gunga Din
• The Women
• Wuthering Heights
• The Roaring Twenties
• Love Affair

Those would be enough for a great year in itself, but there was so much more–such as Ninotchka, Only Angels Have Wings, Drums Along the Mohawk, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Allegheny Uprising, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Stanley and Livingston, The Man in the Iron Mask, Dark Victory, Of Mice and Men,Young Mr. Lincoln, The Rains Came, Midnight, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Union Pacific, Babes in Arms, The Little Princess, Another Thin Man, The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, The Hardys Ride High, Golden Boy, Dodge City, Gulliver’s Travels, The Light That Failed, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Old Maid, Son of Frankenstein, Destry Rides Again, and many, many others of like quality.

And from overseas: The Rules of the Game, The Four Feathers, The Stars Look Down, The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums, and others.

And perhaps even more impressive is the high quality of even the year’s lower-budget films, such as Code of the Secret Service and Secret Service of the Air, both starring Ronald Reagan. What all the Hollywood films mentioned here shared was the industry’s ability at the time to alternate scenes of grandeur and intimacy with consummate skill and confidence.

The Hollywood movie factories had been perfected by the mid-1930s, and the studios were amazingly adept at turning out greatly entertaining movies that reflected and reinforced the values of their audience. Although the stars and other filmmaking principals were paid amazing sums of money then as they are now, the industry did not then reflect the elitism now rampant in Hollywood.

The studio moguls, who were largely self-made and from humble origins, enthusiastically accepted the nation’s founding values and made sure that their product reflected those notions.They did so both for patriotic reasons and because they knew that was the best way for them to make money.

Thus while MGM head Louis B. Mayer was a staunch Republican and the Warner Bros. were supporters of FDR, all shared a strong patriotic love for their nation and shared their audience’s values.

Also important was the more conservative social values that arose during the Depression 1930s after the social excesses of the Roaring Twenties. Audiences preferred movies to reflect values such as personal responsibility, long-term thinking, the value of hard work, personal sacrifice for the good of others, modesty, and the like. Hollywood was voluntarily under the authority of the Production Code, which set moral standards for the industry and protected the studios from a race to the moral bottom and an unbridled pursuit of sensationalism.

The Production Code was clearly not a straitjacket on creativity, given the impressive films made while it was in place during the 1930s through the 1950s. Contrary to the claims of many critics (and the Wikipedia entry cited here), the Production Code Administration was willing and in fact eager to work with producers to ensure that films could be as creative as possible without undermining the nation’s morals.

Refraining from undermining people’s morals may seem rather a quaint notion to many people today, but it indicates a sense of honor, decency, and humility that is sorely lacking among all to many purveyors of cultural products today.

Of course, there’s no sense in hoping for a return of the Production Code, but a greater sense of responsibility on filmmakers’ part would certainly be welcome. It would benefit the movies both morally and esthetically.

The film had a rather surprisingly strong opening weekend at the U.S. box office, finishing on top of the heap with a take of $34.1 million in North American ticket sales.

It’s the first film starring Sandra Bullock in a decade to reach number one. Men accounted for a healthy 37 percent of the audience, according to Reuters. The film’s trailers and commercials strongly established the film as a by-the-books romantic comedy centered on a distinctly meager and unoriginal comic premise: female executive fakes engagement to her assistant in order to escape deportation (she’s from Canada). When she takes him to meet her family, hilarity ensues.

Obviously that’s recycled from Green Card and numerous recent romcoms such as Meet the Parents, but the routine nature of the film’s concept may actually be a very good sign. In Hollywood’s Golden Age of the 1930s and ’40s, plots were routinely recycled and varied in amazingly minute ways, yet the wit of the writing, the appeal of the performers, and the understated competence of the direction made the resulting films quite appealing and still enjoyable today.

The Proposal is a clear throwback to that approach, though in a more vulgar contemporary cultural context. Unfortunately, the latter works greatly against the film, though first-weekend audiences wouldn’t have known that, as the trailers and commercials for the film presented it as a charmer. But in the actual film, Bullock’s character is decidedly unlikeable, and only Bullock’s inherent sweetness rescues the character from being a horror.

Bullock’s appeal has always been far from glamor or sensuality; instead she has typically projected in her performances a sense of kindness, intelligence, and fundamental decency. In addition, costar Ryan Reynolds fits well in this film as a clean-cut romantic lead for the likable Bullock. Reynolds’ evident personal charisma keeps his character from appearing to be an awful wimp in the early sequences.
Thus it seems evident that the producers realized that mean-spiritedness would not be a good selling point for the movie, and they took steps to mitigate it in the casting and public relations. Hence it’s interesting that The Proposal and the brilliant, positive Pixar film Up finished first and third while the very successful raunchy comedy The Hangover and the newly released raunchy comedy Year One finished second and fourth.

If the initial success of The Proposal holds up for a solid theatrical run–it won’t be number one this weekend with the release of the second Transformers film, but can still do well if Bullock and Reynolds have sufficiently overcome the meanness and cliches of the screenplay and thus audience word of mouth is positive–perhaps it can help establish a trend toward greater charm, wit, and decency in romantic comedies.

More of that in Hollywood’s output would be quite welcome.