Resplendent Talents & Sad Endings: Gloria Grahame, John Garfield

"I dream of her, underneath the ceiling fan spinning in my room, and she becomes even more resplendent than a diamond".

"I remember everything, even the dates. But I don't want others to remember the details, just the image". -Gloria Grahame

Gloria Grahame with director Richard Whorf on the set of "Blonde Fever" (1944), in her first film performance.

In "Blonde Fever" (MGM, 1944), Gloria Grahame's character was introduced with the prophetic line: "You're destined to make wise men foolish". She learned her Shakespeare chapter and verse, but if they wanted ther to swing her hips and bat her vampish eyes, why not?

Gloria settled for the part of a slinky gambling house girl (Margie) in the film "Macao" (RKO, 1952, directed by Josef von Sternberg, Nicholas Ray and Robert Stevenson).

Although she had success with supporting parts in major films such as "The Bad and the Beautiful", "The Greatest Show on Earth" and "Oklahoma!", the breakthrough leading role eluded her. Dark City became her permanent address.

"A Woman's Secret", "In A Lonely Place", "Sudden Fear", "The Big Heat", "Human Desire", "Naked Alibi", "Odds Against Tomorrow": a gallery of screw-loose but seductive women, all aching to break out of the conscripted margins of a man's world, but trapped by their own compulsions and insecurities.

In her personal life Gloria pursued the kind of rugged, self-determined men that she clung to in the movies... She was married and divorced four times, with a list of lovers longer than her film credits. George Englund, a producer and an early suitor of Gloria's, explained her promiscuity as untamed.

Gloria Grahame and Frank Sinatra as Nurse and Danny in "It Happened in Brooklyn" (1947) directed by Richard Whorf

Gloria Grahame as Beulah Baxter on the set of "Merton of the Movies" (1947) directed by Robert Alton

Jane Greer's flashing cunning eyes betray a depthless venality not apparent in her slightly plump, puckish face. Jane Greer was tight with a pair of Dark City's favorite daughters: Gloria Grahame and Audrey Totter -imagine the slumber parties!

Gloria's first starring role, opposite Humphrey Bogart in "In A Lonely Place" (1950), should have made her a front-line star. But in Hollywood, the performance was secondary to the strangeness surrounding its creation.

Her marriage to the film's director, Nicholas Ray, was disintegrating, and to preclude production problems, Grahame had to sign a contract stipulating that she would accede to all of Ray's on-set demands. The finished film was a thinly-veiled portrait of their hopeless union.

Even winning an Oscar (Best Supporting Actress of 1952, for "The Bad and the Beautiful") had its pitfalls. In the ceremony's first-ever national broadcast, Gloria stumbled badly on ther way to the stage. To the rumor-mongering public, her image was confirmed as a lovable drunken whore.

Gloria Grahame as Marianna in "Naked Alibi" (1954) directed by Jerry Hopper

As producers during the Fifties continued to trade on her sex appeal, she became increasingly insecure about her looks. She had numerous plastic surgeries on her upper lip, obsessively trying to enhance the lush pout that she thought was essential to her allure. She lifted weights in the hope of enlarging her breasts, which, unlike her mouth, she refused to have surgically altered.

During her last years she battled cancer in her own holistic, narcissistic way, refusing any treatment that altered her physical appearance. She died in 1981, at the age of 56, from septic shock suffered when a doctor punctured her bowel trying to drain fluid from her cancerous stomach. It was a sad life, but not a tragic one.

In the Dark City district she inhabited, she left a unique legacy, including the most heartbreaking lines in film noir (from "In A Lonely Place"): "I was born when you kissed me, I died when you left me, I lived a few weeks while you loved me". -"Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir" by Eddie Muller (1998)

John Garfield, Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire and Celeste Holm in "Gentleman's Agreement" (1947): Gregory Peck plays a journalist who pretends to be Jewish in order to write a story on anti-Semitism. The film received eight Academy Award nominations and won three Oscars.

In her first role - that of Sally Murfin in "Blonde Fever" (1944) - Gloria's character states: 'Mr. Donay, there are two kinds of girls - good girls and the other kind. I hope you don't think I'm the other kind.' After appearances in such films as "Song of the Thin Man", Gloria found a premium vehicle for exposure as Ginny Tremaine in RKO's "Crossfire" - directed by Edward Dmytryk in 1947. Although not a starring role, it would prove to be the film capable of escalating her to stardom and eventually far more defining performances.

Her excellent work in "Crossfire" was gratifyingly nominated for an Academy Award (eventually losing to Celeste Holm in "Gentleman's Agreement"). Source: www.dvdbeaver.com

Gloria Grahame as Helen in "Odds Against Tomorrow" (1959) directed by Robert Wise

Abraham Polonsky directing John Garfield and Beatrice Pearson in a scene from "Force of Evil" (1947)

Abraham Polonsky remains one of the great creative forces in noir cinema simply on the basis of two works —the definitive boxing film, "Body and Soul", for which he wrote the screenplay, and the brilliant "Force of Evil", perhaps the most passionate and philosophically resonant of all films noirs. Polonsky also wrote the screenplay for Don Siegel’s "Madigan" (1968), and, as was only recently acknowledged, he wrote (uncredited) the screenplay for Robert Wise’s 1959 "Odds against Tomorrow", when he was blacklisted from the industry.

John Garfield, the most biblically angry of all the young men of the screen for whom he must be acknowledged as prototype —James Dean, Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro— has only grown in complexity and stature as the affectations of his successors dim in light of his striking authenticity of manners.

"I went to the various meetings of the Committee for the First Amendment", Abraham Polonsky recalled, "but no one was there by the second meeting. I remember Humphrey Bogart walking around the room saying to everybody ‘You sold me out!’ He said ‘The hell with all of you. If you don’t want to fight, I’ll take care of myself!’ and Bogart stormed out of the room".

Among the artists for whom the blacklist period was indeed a defining “noir” moment in their lives were producer and writer Adrian Scott (Murder, My Sweet; Deadline at Dawn); screenwriters Albert Maltz (This Gun for Hire, The Naked City) and Dalton Trumbo (Gun Crazy [Deadly Is the Female], The Prowler); screenwriter and director Abraham Polonsky (Body and Soul, Force of Evil, Odds against Tomorrow, Madigan); directors Edward Dmytryk (Murder, My Sweet; Cornered; Crossfire; The Hidden Room [Obsession]), Jules Dassin (Brute Force, The Naked City, Thieves’ Highway, Night and the City, Rififi), John Berry (Tension, He Ran All the Way), and Joseph Losey (M, The Prowler, The Big Night); and actors Marsha Hunt (Raw Deal) and John Garfield (Body and Soul, Force of Evil, The Breaking Point, He Ran All The Way). "Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir" by Andrew Dickos (2002)

"Women either want to mother me or fuck me", John Garfield told singer Margaret Whiting. Actor Robert Brown ran into Garfield one day at McSorley's Saloon and asked him what he was doing there. "I'm drying out," Garfield replied. "What are you drying out from?", Brown asked. "Women!", Garfield responded. The FBI asked him about a certain woman he had slept with and who had Communist Party affiliations. Garfield replied that he could recall the name of every woman he had ever had an affair with, and that woman's name was unfamiliar to him.

Nelson Algren did like the idea of John Garfield playing his novel's ("The Man with the Golden Arm") protagonist, Frankie Machine. "He worked very hard at being who he was supposed to be. He knew he wasn't who he was. I mean the screen image. He was trying to be like the screen image." -said Algren of Garfield. When Garfield died he had about $130,000 in the bank. For 1952, that was a substantial sum, but not for a major movie star.

Solace came in the form of a woman. While previewing 'Golden Boy' in Hartford, Garfield met actress/interior designer Iris Whitney. A native of Pasadena, California, Whitney had been a child dancer and actress who had played small roles in several hit plays of the 1930s, including "The Petrified Forest" and "Abe Lincoln" in Illinois. She was blonde, vibrant and well built, a good time girl. "He was uncomfortable in his marriage at the time, and I introduced him to Iris Whitney", Robert Whitehead recalled, "They hit it off right away." Garfield had experienced so many casual affairs over the years that no one felt that he would fall for anyone. With Whitney it may have been something else altogether. "I was surprised when he told me he was going for her," Robert Whitehead said, "He hoped to return to Broadway full time". Garfield was trying to acquire the stage rights to one of his biggest film hits, "The Postman Always Rings Twice". -"He Ran All the Way: The Life of John Garfield" by Robert Nott (2004)

A smiling John Garfield (1939)

John Garfield collapsed at Iris Whitney's Gramercy Park apartment on 21st May 1952. Miss Whitney put him to bed with a glass of orange juice on his night table. When she woke up the next morning, she found the orange juice untouched and Garfield dead.


"Double Indemnity created a tense climate dominated by a perverse eroticism where woman, to be angelic and demonic, recovers under the appearance of voluptuous ecstasy, the devastating attraction of Eros and Thanatos".—Jean Mitry, "Histoire du Cinéma"

"The Postman Always Rings Twice" was first published in 1934, and feature film versions were made in wartime Italy (1942) and then twice in Hollywood (1946 and 1981). Said to be the inspiration for Camus’ existentialist classic "L’Etranger" (The Stranger), "The Postman" paved the way for James M. Cain's later successes "Double Indemnity" (published 1936, filmed 1944) and "Mildred Pierce" (1945).

Hollywood’s first version, when it materialised in 1946, was credited with “nearly destroying the dam” of censorship. Even in the 1980s, pulp fiction devotee Geoffrey O’Brien described its protagonists living “an insectlike life without memory or intellect”. Yet others elevated James M. Cain to the pantheon of great American writers like Ring Lardner, Hemingway and Erskine Caldwell; director Lewis Milestone called him “the American Dostoevsky”.

John Garfield and Lana Turner as Frank Chambers and Cora Smith in "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946) directed by Tay Garnett

The film’s fatalism, as the characters acknowledge their powerlessness to resist their fate, taps a dark undercurrent in 1940s America that finds parallels with the helplessness of the Depression years that spawned the book. But unlike the darkness of the 1940s film noir aesthetic, 1930s writers such as “Cain and Hammett and Horace McCoy deal in a clear unblinking light”. It is not noir’s visual darkness but its fatalism that links the 1930s and 1940s in Postman’s narrative posture.

Also common to narratives from ‘the underbelly of the American Dream’ (such as Nelson Algren, John Fante, etc) was a dread of the ‘system’, a feeling strong in both the book and film. “Aggressor but really victim”, initially it is Frank who is the most powerful… until he wins her. Then Cora ups the ante, citing quality of life as the question, and capitalism as the answer.

Dismissed by US literary critic Edmund Wilson as “the poet of tabloid murder”, Cain’s early work including Postman and Double Indemnity operated an unusual pattern of exchange with actual crime reporting. The homicidal lovers here base their first murder attempt on a newspaper story about the prevalence of ‘death in the home’, while the audacious insurance scam in 'Double Indemnity' was cited in a 1968 California case as being the basis for an actual copycat crime.

Perhaps this interactive quality could be one of the reasons why "The Postman Always Rings Twice" continues to exert a fascination, even into the new century. -Roger Westcombe (2004)

Jake Gyllenhaal ('Man Vs Wild' - Best Scenes)

Jake Gyllenhaal at The Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, California, on 4th December 2011

Jake Gyllenhaal in "Man Vs Wild" (Season 7: Episode 1)


It was a big surprise, Hollywood Star Jake Gyllenhaal (Brookeback Mountain, Prince of Persia) was with Bear Grylls in Iceland. And it was an epic Episode. Here you can see the best scenes.

64th Anniversary "A Streetcar Named Desire" Broadway opening

Rachel Weisz as Blanche DuBois, with Ruth Wilson and Elliot Cowan at Donmar, London (2009)

Yesterday it was the 64th Anniversary of the opening of Tennessee Williams's play "A Streetcar Named Desire" on Broadway (on 3rd December 1947), which later was directed by Elia Kazan in its film version in 1951, with a screenplay by Tennessee Williams and Oscar Saul.

Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, Jessica Tandy and Karl Malden during the 1948 stage production of "A Streetcar Named Desire"

Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh as Stanley Kowalski and Blanche DuBois in "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) directed by Elia Kazan

Ellen Dowling and Nancy Pride suggested that directors should use the ambiguity evident in the play to their advantage: they can alter the performance to match the strengths and weaknesses of their actors, where Blanche and Stanley alternate roles of protagonist and antagonist. John Timpane, also in Schlueter’s 'Feminist Rereadings', posits that reading 'A Streetcar Named Desire' from a feminist perspective actually heightens the ambiguity, deconstructing their responses. As Timpane notes, ambiguity is not necessarily an artistic failure and may even be intentional: “in a way, ambiguity is a hedge against annihilation” [Schlueter] -CRITICISM ON A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, (1947-2003) by JOHN S. BAK

Jessica Tandy was originally slated to play Blanche, after creating the role on Broadway. The role was given to Vivien Leigh (after Olivia de Havilland refused it) because she had more box-office appeal.

John Garfield turned down the role of Stanley Kowalski because he didn't want to be overshadowed by the female lead.

Vivien Leigh, who suffered from bipolar disorder in real life, later had difficulties in distinguishing her real life from that of Blanche DuBois. Although Vivien Leigh initially thought Marlon Brando to be affected, and he thought her to be impossibly stuffy and prim, both soon became friends and the cast worked together smoothly.

Despite giving the definitive portrayal of Stanley Kowalski, Marlon Brando said he privately detested the character. However, it should be added that Brando was an eccentric character who loved misleading people and playing pranks. Source: www.imdb.com

Tennessee Williams's letter to Audrey Wood, mid-June 1947:

"Both Kazan and Williams had John Garfield in mind for the part of Stanley Kowalski. Kazan and Garfield went way back to the 30s, in the days of the Group Theatre, and Garfield was now out in Hollywood, becoming a movie star. He balked at the idea of coming back for an open-ended run which would keep him out of Los Angeles indefinitely. So although the trade papers announced that Garfield had signed on to play Stanley (this in early August), that was not actually the case.

Garfield only wanted to do it for four months, a limited run, and he also wanted to be guaranteed the role in the film, should it be made into a film. Irene Selznick turned Garfield down, and so they had to, again, look for another Stanley".

Tennessee Williams to Audrey Wood, August 25, 1947:

"I am willing to accept the bungling of the Garfield deal and the nerve-wracking battle that was waged to secure the right director, but when arbitrary action is taken interfering with my irreductible rights as an author, I’m not going to take it. It was bad management that announced Garfield in the papers before he was signed and I strongly suspect that good management would have signed him.

George Beban was flown out here from the Coast and read for me this morning. He read one scene on his feet and his body movements were stiff and self-conscious with none of the animal grace and virility, which the part calls for and it made me more bitterly conscious than ever of how good Garfield would have been. That leaves us with Marlon Brando, of the ones that have been mentioned to date. I am very anxious to see and hear him as soon as I can".

A couple of days after Tennessee wrote this letter, Elia Kazan took Marlon Brando up to Provincetown to meet the playwright, and to read for the role of Stanley. Brando was only 23 years old, so Williams had originally rejected even the idea of seeing him for the role at all, since in his mind Stanley was around 30. Brando read the script and was very impressed but also scared out of his mind.

Brando’s feeling that the play was a size too big for him was intensified by the knowledge that John Garfield had been the first choice. He couldn’t get that out of his head, the anxiety that he was second-banana. He would mutter, “They should have gotten John Garfield” in the middle of rehearsals when he was struggling. His insights into the character of Stanley, however, are invaluable.

Here is Robert Whitehead on Brando in Streetcar:

There were no models for Brando. His relationship to the sounds and poetic reality of Williams was particularly embracing; what Tennessee wrote, both in relation to the age and Marlon’s sensibility, it all worked … That particular kind of reality existed in a way that it hadn’t ever before.

Dakin Williams (Tennessee Williams’ brother):

Blanche is Tennessee. If he would tell you something it wouldn’t be necessarily true. And Blanche says in Streetcar, ‘I don’t tell what’s true, I tell what ought to be true.’ And so everything in Blanche was really like Tennessee.

"In April 1952, Kazan testified before HUAC as a friendly witness naming names of colleagues he knew to be involved in leftist activity. Kazan informed, he said, because the American communists he knew as a member of the party in the 1930s, were authoritarians and gangsters (not unlike the character played by Lee J. Cobb in 'On the Waterfront'). Maybe Kazan truly felt that he was doing the right thing. But, by doing so, he betrayed many of his colleagues who suffered persecution for believing that social justice and equality should be an aspect of America's identity.

Dorothy McGuire, John Garfield and Elia Kazan on the set of "Gentleman's Agreement" (1947)

Kazan himself, as his films indicate, wasn't fully satisfied with America and what it represented. "Gentlemen's Agreement" and "Pinky" acknowledge the country's racial intolerance.

"East of Eden" and "Splendor in the Grass" both deal with America's puritanical streak and the latter film, in particular, addresses excessive capitalism, its recklessness and potential to produce destructive consequences. "A Face in the Crowd" questions the American public's gullibility and its fascination with celebrity, fame and power.

Eva Marie Saint and Marlon Brando in "On The Waterfront" (1954) directed by Elia Kazan

"On the Waterfront" (another child-parent themed film) can be read as Kazan's attempt to account for his willingness to comply with HUAC's demands by having his alter ego, Terry Malloy, move from informing to a metaphorical crucifixion and redemption to becoming a hero figure to his peers. Unfortunately, for Kazan, life doesn't imitate art. Source: www.thefreelibrary.com

Jake Gyllenhaal: bearded and with a friend out & about in Beverly Hills

Jake Gyllenhaal (with Laura Dern and Mark Ruffalo) attending the Spirit Silver Lake Film Festival Awards, on 16th April, 2004 in LA

Jake Gyllenhaal, out and about in Beverly Hills, on 3rd December 2011