Masculinity and Male Angst in American Cinema

James Stewart as Ransom Stoddard in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962) directed by John Ford

Very little published work has specifically addressed the relationship between masculinity and film performance. Two key book length studies include Steven Cohan’s "Masked Men: Masculinity and the Movies in the Fifties" and Dennis Bingham’s "Acting Male: Masculinities in the Films of James Stewart, Jack Nicholson and Clint Eastwood".

Bingham’s "Acting Male" is closer to a ‘star study’ of three actor case studies - Robert Sklar’s "City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield" is similar in this regard.

John Garfield as Tony Fenner in "We Were Strangers" (1949) directed by John Houston

Robert Sklar takes smoldering Method-actor Garfield's later roles in "Force of Evil" and "We Were Strangers" and finds them wanting in "psychological dimension -the sense that what was being communicated through repression was a complex inner life" which at that time was forcefully communicated by up-and-coming Method actors Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando.

Humphrey Bogart as Paul Fabrini in "They drive by night" (1940) directed by Raoul Walsh

Following Bogart's acting style from juvenile to heavy to his restrained humors as romantic hero, then to comic actor ("The African Queen") and to later tries at widening his image, Sklar skillfully contrasts the star's two portraits of paranoid characters, Fred C. Dobbs in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and Captain Queeg in "The Caine Mutiny", and finds the much- praised Queeg far less complex or convincing than Dobbs, and in fact excruciating.

And Cagney "does not merely inhabit or present [the figure of Tom Bowers in The Public Enemy]...he creates it...His short, quick movements, his clipped diction, his mobile eyes and mouth, are counterpointed with...an almost sultry languor". -Kirkus Reviews.

Robert Bly’s "Iron John: A Book About Men" is noteworthy for its engagement with the idea of masculinity as a collective and communal practice. Bly admires the stoicism of the ‘fifties male’, bemoans the feminine ‘soft male’ of the 1970s and calls for men to uncover the ‘deep’ masculinity inherent in all men than has been hidden as a result of social and cultural changes of the past few decades, articularly feminism. In this way, Bly’s work appears to conform to a wider pattern in film and masculinity studies in seeing masculinity as either ‘hard’ or ‘soft’.

Social historians such as Michael Kimmel have attempted to locate crises of masculinity historically, quantifying them schematically according to dominant social positions such as ‘profeminist, antifeminist, and promale’. Kimmel defines crises of masculinity as cultural and historical ‘moments of gender confusion that assume a prominent position in the public consciousness’, offering examples in Restoration England (1688–1714) and the US in the years 1880 to 1914.

Harrison Ford as Henry Turner in "Regarding Henry" (1991) directed by Mike Nichols

Similarly, Fred Pfeil suggests the 1990s signalled a shift in masculine subjectivity towards a more sensitive, domesticated male, as performed by Harrison Ford in "Regarding Henry" (1991) or Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Kindergarten Cop" (1990). Pfeil terms 1991 ‘The Year of Living Sensitively’ and suggests such representations offer a direct contrast to the ‘rampagers’ of the "Lethal Weapon" (1987 and 1989) and "Die Hard" (1988) films from the previous decade. Jonathan Rutherford has even gone so far as to categorise supposedly conflicting masculine identities as the ‘New Man’ and ‘Retributive Man’. The New Man is ‘an expression of the repressed body of masculinity. It is a response to the structural changes of the past decade and specifically to the assertiveness and feminism of women’.

Ultimately, these position pieces argue that the masculine tropes described emerge from a critical convergence of events shaping masculine identities during specified periods. Masculinity, as scholars such as R. W. Connell have pointed out, is a fluid identity and constantly in flux. Since what constitutes ‘being a man’ continually changes according to the particular social or cultural moment, adapt, change and, in effect, recycle their male identities. Yet movement too far in either direction is considered to undermine masculinity.

Edward Norton and Brad Pitt as The Narrator and Taylor Durden in "Fight Club" (1999) directed by David Fincher

The excessive, performative nature of the 'Wild Man' has been explored in numerous literary and cinematic examples but arguably most prominently in Chuck Palahniuk’s 1996 novel, "Fight Club", and via the ‘excess and absurdity’ of the 1999 film version starring Brad Pitt as 'Wild Man' Tyler Durden. The novel and film have received an extraordinary amount of critical and academic attention, mostly focusing on the portrayal of destructive, misogynist masculinity.

Although Palahniuk said in interviews that he had not read "Iron John", Tyler and Jack (played by Edward Norton in the film) could have been lifted from its pages, resonating themes of father loss and overdependence on the mother, initiation ceremonies (head shaving), and the supposedly feminising effects of consumer culture.

Jack moves into Tyler’s dilapidated house and they start an underground boxing club to give men the opportunity to release their primal aggression and reclaim their sense of masculinity. When the fight clubs become a national success, Tyler decides to ‘take it up a notch’ and Project Mayhem is born: a full-scale anti-capitalist terrorist organisation with the ultimate aim of overthrowing corporate America and eradicating consumer debt.

However, women are ultimately more threatening to men than consumerism and Tyler’s misogyny culminates in his verbal and emotional response to Marla (Helena Bonham Carter); women are ‘tumours’, ‘scratches on the roof of your mouth’, and ‘predators posing as house pets’.

At the same time, in labelling herself as ‘infectious waste’, Marla corroborates the image of women as dirty and contaminated, further reinforced by Tyler’s donning of rubber gloves during a sexual encounter.

Representations of the 'Wild Man' in "Fight Club" explicitly model themselves in opposition to the figure of the 'Wimp'. Tyler Durden’s 'Wild Man' is repeatedly set against Jack, whose softness is amplified when framed in conjunction with Tyler’s hypermasculinity. "Fight Club" demonstrates a self-conscious awareness of this opposition by playing with the conventions of masculinity and femininity. -"Masculinity and Film Performance: Male Angst in Contemporary American Cinema" by Donna Peberdy (2011)

John Garfield & Lana Turner: struggling to stay afloat in 'The Postman Always Rings Twice'

Frank: That other girl. She don't mean anything to me.
Cora: She told me you were going away with her.
Frank: Why didn't I go away and never come back? Cause we're chained to each other, Cora.
Cora: Don't tell me you love me.
Frank: I do.
Cora: Oh, but love wouldn't mean a thing to me.
Frank: Do you hate me?
Cora: I don't know. But we've got to tell the truth for once in our lives.

Cora: Oh Frank, I couldn't turn you into Sackett. I couldn't have this baby and then have it find out that I'd sent its father into that poison gas chamber for murder.
Frank: Was the baby the only reason?
Cora: No. Oh Frank, please, there's one thing I have to be sure of. No, don't ask me any questions. Just take me down to the beach.

The smutty grit in the novel, with its violent sex between lovers so enflamed with shameful desire that they actually vomit, is replaced in the film version by sparkling white sets and romantic clinches.

"Some elements of 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' sprang from real life, notably the infamous Ruth Snyder murder case, in which the defendant murdered her husband with the help of her lover, who she then tried to poison. Cora was modeled on a girl who pumped Cain's gas at a service station. She was kind of cheap, Cain acknowledged (more like the Cora of the novel than the Cora of the motion picture, who just seemed too classy to be working in a cheap roadside diner), but so sexy that she stuck in his memory". Source: bernardschopen.tripod.com

When they are way out in the deep dark ocean and Cora tiredly struggles to stay afloat, she asks for him to either save her from drowning and pledge to restore their love, or leave her to perish. Frank rescues his exhausted lover.

Cora: What I wanted to be sure of was, whether you trust me, if you don't believe that I can ever turn on you again. I'm too tired. I could never make it alone. Nobody'll ever know.
Frank: Cora, Cora. Don't say another word, darling. Save your strength. I'll take you in. (they reach the shore and the car) Are you sure now?
Cora: I'm sure.

Lana Turner as Cora Smith in 'The Postman Aways Rings Twice'

James M. Cain worked as an insurance salesman, like Walter Neff in 'Double Indemnity', and thus he was familiar with the schemes used by the insured trying to swindle money. Women would often take out accident policies against their husband, without his knowledge —like Phyllis Dietrichson did in 'Double Indemnity'— and would have the postman ring twice when insurance documents arrived, so she could keep this mail unknown to her husband. So the postman ringing twice became a sort of symbol of a wife's duplicity, often linked to a sexual betrayal.

Humphrey Bogart (The Columbia Collection), John Garfield and boxing dramas

Turner Classic Movies and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment present Humphrey Bogart The Columbia Pictures Collection.

This five-disc set includes LOVE AFFAIR (1932), in which the studio was testing his potential as a leading man, to the postwar melodrama TOKYO JOE (1949) to the hard-hitting social drama, KNOCK ON ANY DOOR (1949), SIROCCO (1951), an exotic espionage thriller in the tradition of Casablanca, and THE HARDER THEY FALL (1956), a boxing racket expose that received an Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography, are also highlights.

Humphrey Bogart in his last role as Eddie Willis in "The Harder They Fall" (1956), a boxing drama directed by Mark Robson

Pairing Bogart with such celebrated directors as Nicholas Ray and Curtis Bernhardt as well as acclaimed actors like Sessue Hayakawa, Lee J. Cobb and Rod Steiger, this collection reveals yet another side to the actor whose screen persona became forever identified with the tough guys, loners and anti-heroes he played. Source: shop.tcm.com

John Garfield got his big film break in 1939, when the Warner Brothers Studio, the first great Hollywood studio of action and gangster films, made him one of the replacements for the company’s original stars in this genre, such as the famous James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and Edward. G. Robinson, who had moved on to other diverse roles.

Ann Sheridan and John Garfield in "They Made Me a Criminal" (1939) directed by Busby Berkeley

Career takeoff: John Garfield’s crime films for Warner’s, like ‘THEY MADE ME A CRIMINAL’ and ‘DUST BE MY DESTINY’ of 1939, ‘CASTLE ON THE HUDSON’ of 1940, and ‘OUT OF THE FOG’ of 1941, carry on the exposure of causes and motivations behind waywardness, from a gripping climactic moral perspective.

John Garfield and Ida Lupino in "Out of The Fog" (1941) directed by Anatole Litvak

Garfield admired Franklin D. Roosevelt, responsible of introducing America’s socialistic period, from 1933 to 1945, whose great liberal achievements were curtailed and reversed following the conservative post-war Truman presidency.

Garfield made a handful of classic films about World War II, such as ‘AIR FORCE’ of 1943, directed by Howard Hawks, and scripted by William Faulkner; ‘DESTINATION TOKYO’ of 1944 and 'PRIDE OF THE MARINES’ of 1945 directed by Delmer Daves.

Lana Turner and John Garfield in noir "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946) directed by Tay Garnett

"The story of the drifter who comes to town, causes trouble then leaves has been told a thousand times, but never with this much class and passion. Frank Chambers (John Garfield) is the layabout, with itchy feet, who chances upon a small gas-station/diner run by Nick Smith (Cecil Kellaway).

With brilliant manipulation the DA turns the pair against each other, leaving Cora with an additional charge of attempted murder against Frank. Her attorney manages to get her off (to win a $100 bet with Sackett) but the stage is set for a showdown between Cora and Frank. The extended breakdown in their relationship is stunningly portrayed, right to the fitting finale.

The crux of this movie is the doomed romance between Cora and Frank; believe that and everything falls into place. Well, the chemistry between Turner and Garfield is just perfect: relentless, overpowering and unforgiving. All of the performances ring true as the lovers plunge headlong towards their destiny, when everything could be saved if only one of them could leave.

It's hard to feel sympathy for Frank though since he intentionally aimed to seduce Cora, who is as guilty in their affair. Equally outstanding is the atmosphere of tension which pervades the script, rising to several well-timed climaxes. This truly is an outstanding film". Source: www.film.u-net.com

Barbara Stanwyck and William Holden as Lorna and Joe Bonaparte in boxing drama "Golden Boy" (1939) directed by Rouben Mamoulian

Joe Bonaparte’s epiphany after he kills Chocolate Drop in "Golden Boy" is a milestone in developing this theme. The death of his rival provokes the boxer to face his own vulnerability even at the moment of his triumph.

Another central contribution of "Golden Boy" is the clear articulation of the body and soul conflict in Bonaparte’s choice between boxing and the violin. Clifford Odets wrote the part of Joe Bonaparte with John Garfield in mind, but Harold Clurman, the director of the Group Theatre, passed over Garfield and cast Luther Adler as Joe in the original production. Finally, near the end of his life, Garfield played Joe Bonaparte in a 1952 Broadway revival of "Golden Boy".

"Body & Soul" had been planned on the basis of the life of the champion Jewish boxer and World War II combat hero Barney Ross. On July 11, 1946, the first draft of the screenplay 'The Burning Journey', was submitted to the Production Code Authority (PCA) for approval. In September, Barney Ross held a press conference announcing that he was a drug addict and enrolling himself in a rehabilitation program. Robert Parrish, the Academy Award winning editor of "Body and Soul", describes the scene in his memoir, with director Robert Rossen, arguing against canceling the production: “I say we go ahead. It doesn’t have to be about Barney Ross. Polonsky’s script can be about any bum who comes up the hard way. We’ll just change the title and change the ending. We’ll use the ending from Hemingway’s ‘Fifty Grand.’”

The final shooting script is dated January 13, 1947. So throughout the fall of 1946 and into the winter of 1947, changes were made in the screenplay. The Ross biography is dropped, but elements of his experience are still apparent, now meshed with the elements from "Golden Boy" and “Fifty Grand.” The residue of the Ross story is apparent in "Body and Soul": Ross’s father was murdered in 1923 during a holdup of his grocery store in Chicago’s West Side ghetto, leaving the family destitute. After his father’s death, the teenage Barney turned to boxing, in spite of his mother’s objections. By 1929 Ross had won the national Golden Gloves featherweight crown and became a professional.

Polonsky maintains in his hero the “animal faith that survives moral weakness and defeat”. Howe pushes his style to extremes with his flattened, over lit, jittery newsreel style for the famous boxing finale.

James Cagney as Jimmy Kane in "Winner Take All" (1932) directed by Roy Del Ruth

In the 1930's screen boxers (Kid Galahad, Joe Bonaparte, Danny Kenny, etc.) were frequently threatened by gangsters or compromised by their managers, but the protagonist boxer had never taken a dive. His attraction to the gangster was motivated by impulse or indiscretion, but he resisted dirty deals.

But in "Body & Soul", Charley Davis is morally compromised and the consequences of his wrongs haunt the entire story. The screen boxers who defined the post–World War II pugilist are no longer misguided innocents, but fallen souls whose awareness of their sins invests them with the doomed self-consciousness typical of film noir. Robert Sklar has noted that, “Polonsky, for one, hoped that the film would be understood not as an expose of prizefight corruption... but as an allegory of the actual and spiritual corruption of human values in the American capitalist system” (Sklar, 1992). So the competitive system, rather than simply the immoral behavior of individuals, is criticized.

As Michael Rogin observes, “Made at the apogee of Communist influence in the motion picture business, 'Body and Soul' was a creature of the Popular Front, the Communist/liberal alliance that joined reform politics to popular culture” (Rogin, 1996). 'Body and Soul' intensifies the elements of social criticism latent in the boxing film to produce one of the most politicized films in the boxing genre tradition. Howe is reported to have used eight cameras, three placed on cranes around the ring, three mounted on dollies, and two handheld cameras to provide a newsreel effect.

Dragged to his stool by his two corner men, Charley bleeds from his nose and mouth and just above his left eye. The blood signifies the boxer’s suffering, his penance for having agreed to take the dive. Now Charley sees that he was the victim in this conspiracy. He has reached his turning point. Once in his corner Charley understands the double cross and scowls at Quinn, declaring, “You sold me out, you rat... sold out just like Ben.” Charley has decided that he must win to regain his soul. With the second close-up of Charley’s eyes, the boxer mutters, “I’m gonna kill ’im”, as the bell sounds for the fourteenth round. -"Knockout: The Boxer and Boxing in American Cinema" (2011) by Leger Grindon

Carole Landis ("Tonight in a Dream") video

Carole Landis (angelical actress & pin-up in Golden Age Hollywood)

Carole Landis was known in the 40's as 'The Chest', 'The Ping Girl' and 'The Blonde Bomber'

"I wanted to be a success on the stage, the screen, or the radio. So I saved my money and when I had bus fare and $16.82 over, I told my mother, Clara, I was going to leave home. She was heartbroken, but she believed in me". -Carole Landis


A musical video ("Tonight in a Dream" by Phil Thornton) dedicated to the beautiful and talented actress Carole Landis (1919–1948). She'll always keep entertaining our minds and living in our hearts.

Carole Landis, a tragic life in Hollywood

"Don't make sarcastic and catty remarks. Kindness is the secret to true femininity". -Carole Landis

Some of the Radio Appearances of actor John Garfield were on April 14, 1941 at Lux Radio Theatre (CBS) "Dust Be My Destiny" with Claire Trevor, and on May 10, 1943 at Lady Esther Screen Guild Players, (CBS) "Johnny Eager" with Carole Landis.

Carole who was known as "The Chest" thanks to her 36DD rack, had been earlier been dubbed "The Sweater Girl" and "The Pin-Up Girl" names years later conferred on Lana Turner and Betty Grable.

Carole Landis circa 1943

Overdosed with Seconal, Carole's body was discovered by actor Rex Harrison, with whom she was having an affair and with whom she dined the previous night after a 4th of the July (1948) party. She was buried wearing her favorite blue dress and gold cross pendant. Hundreds of people attended Landis’ funeral service at the Church of the Recessional at Forest Lawn in Glendale, including Rex Harrison and his wife Lilli Palmer. Landis’ family wanted a Catholic burial, but the church refused, insisting her death was a suicide. Carole’s mother and sister never believed that Landis committed suicide and tried for years to connect Harrison with the death. They never succeeded.

Deanna Durbin celebrating the completion of her film "I'll Be Yours", with Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer (1947)

At the time, Harrison was married to actress Lilli Palmer. On the Official Carole Landis website, run by her great-niece, the Landis family is convinced that Rex Harrison murdered her to avoid scandal surrounding the affair they’d been having.

In the spring of 1947, Palmer was working on "Body & Soul" with John Garfield while Harrison shot "The Foxes of Harrow". Harrison was a chronic liar and womanizer widely disliked in Hollywood.

"Pride and sadness, pride in her extraordinary beauty, sadness in knowing that to live on this beauty is to degrade it. Carole Landis' extraordinary efforts for USO during WWII were the product of the generosity and graciousness witnessed by all who knew her. One Hollywood cliché is that Landis was "Marilyn before Marilyn", but the effect of her suicide was rather to avoid becoming "Marilyn", the postwar tease whose self-caricaturing sensuality was cheesecake of the mind. Landis' dignity would have been more consonant with the honestly assertive sexuality of today's post-feminist age". Source: www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu

"Before she was a glamorous actress, before she was a war-time pin-up star, even before she was Carole Landis, she was Frances Lillian Ridste, an insecure young girl from Wisconsin. She was strikingly beautiful, talented, and on her way to becoming a movie star, yet she spent her entire life searching for love. Though she appeared in more than 60 films during her short career, Landis was better known for her extraordinary beauty and many romantic relationships than for her acting or comedic timing in such films as Topper Returns (1940) and My Gal Sal (1942) over the course of her 11-year career. -"Carole Landis: A Tragic Life in Hollywood" (2005) by E.J. Fleming

"Despite appearing in twenty-eight movies in little over a decade, Carole Landis (1919-1948) never quite became the major Hollywood star her onscreen presence should have afforded her. Although she acted in such enduring films as 'A Scandal in Paris' and 'Moon over Miami', she was most often relegated to supporting roles. This biography traces Landis's life, chronicling her beginnings as a dance hall entertainer in San Francisco, her career in Hollywood and abroad, her USO performances.

Betty Grable, Victor Mature and Carole Landis in "I Wake Up Screaming" (1941) directed by H. Bruce Humberstone


A scene from "I Wake Up Screaming" 1941 starring Betty Grable, Victor Mature and Carole Landis directed by H. Bruce Humberstone

Promoter Frankie Christopher, being grilled by police in the murder of model Vicky Lynn, recalls in flashback: First meeting her as a waitress, Frankie decides to parlay her beauty into social acceptance and a lucrative career. He succeeds only too well: she’s on the eve of deserting him for Hollywood…when someone kills her. Now Frankie gets the feeling that Inspector Ed Cornell is determined to pin the killing on him and only him. He’s right. And the only one he can turn to for help is Jill, the victim’s sister.

As a radio actress she reprised her her own performance in "I Wake Up Screaming" on April 10, 1942;
she took over Lana Turner's role in "Johnny Eager" with John Garfield in that of Robert Taylor". -"Carole Landis: A Most Beautiful Girl" (2008) by Eric Lawrence Gans