Harry´s Blog

Herbert Kuhner

There’s a Hollywood myth about Lawrence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman, Hofmann is reputed to have gone without sleep for a whole weekend in order to be convincing in a scene in Marathon Man. Olivier is alleged to have suggested to the dishevelled Hofmann: “Why don’t you try acting, dear boy?!”

Robert Di Niro, Silvester Stallone, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jared Leto, Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger, Charlize Theron, Meryl Streep and Megan Fox have something in common. They all put on weight for film roles.

This is sheer and utter madness. Putting on and losing weight drastically a can result in quick or slow death.

Giving your all for a role should be limited to creating an illusion. It should not entail risking your health and life.

Take a look at the stars of black-and-white yesteryear! How about the great toupées and dental work!

Of course an illusion of extra poundage is not so easy to create. But how about letting the make-up man have a go!

An actor can act fat and camera angles can help him along.

“Why don’t you try acting, dear boys and girls?!

I started at the top and worked my way down.
- Orson Welles

Orson Welles often pulled the chestnuts out of the fire,
but he threw them in just as often.

I saw Citizen Kane in 1955 at the 55th St Playhouse, which is off Seventh Ave. At the time it was still an “art house.” Years later it was transformed into a porn theater, like so many art houses. Perhaps there is a connection, since the old art houses showed European films in which there was sometimes a glimpse of nudity, the only glimpses in those puritanical days. Now those venues show the blow-by-blow blow-ups of the real McCoy.

No doubt about it, Orson was a bit of a mountebank and a conjurer, not to say impostor. In young years, he learned the tricks of a magician. That’s how he won Rita Hayworth. He put on a magic show and she was the decoration. Orson sawed her in half, and when he put her together again, she was so dazzled that she married him. A Hollywood star married a Hollywood man. He may have been a maverick, but he started out as a Broadway maverick and became a Hollywood maverick. Yes, you can’t imagine Welles without Hollywood, nor can you imagine Hollywood without Welles.

Orson was a wheeler-dealer who could talk people into doing things for him. He sold Harry Cohn of Columbia the idea of buying a book that he had spotted in a pocket book rack in a drugstore while on the phone. Harry bought the book and forked over forty grand to Orson, which was a lot of dough in the Forties. When read, the unread Lady turned out to be so lousy that Orson had to write the script form scratch. The only part of the book that survived in the film was the title.

Welles had put Harry Cohn on, and Harry would get even with him. The question is: Did Orson Welles the magician, at times, put the public on?

Orson, prior to Citizen Kane, was the greatest juggler of the performing arts that the world had ever seen, but after Kane he dropped balls all over the place. Before the age twenty-five, you may be able to bat around from radio shows to the theater and to the film studio, but after that, juggling becomes more difficult, and you have to hang around to complete a job until it’s finished to your satisfaction. But juggling well or badly wasn’t the whole story. Lady Luck had been Orson’s constant companion up to Kane, but afterwards she abandoned him and the magic went with her.

Biting off more than you can chew invariably means ending up with a stomach ache.

In Kane, Welles went about “inventing” cinema. Here’s what Gregg Toland, the great cameraman, had to say: “I want to work with someone who’s never made a movie. That’s the only way to learn anything - from someone who doesn’t know anything.” In other words, being new at the game, Welles was bound to do things that you shouldn’t do.

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Herbert Kuhner

He could speak Shakespeare’s lines as naturally as if he were actually thinking them.
- Charles Bennett, English playwright

Larry was the greatest of them all - and the most handsome. He was the prince and his princess was Vivien. She wasn’t bad at acting, and she was the most beautiful of them all.

Laurence Olivier directed and acted in The Prince and the Showgirl in 1957, co-starring Marilyn Monroe, who was also beautiful in a ditsy way. She was the epitome of showgirls, starlets, pinups and party girls. It is not the elegant beauty of Vivien Leigh, but it was a kind of beauty too. Actually it was the kind of beauty that was more in demand. There was nothing subtle about it. The appeal was immediate. There was no aura to it, and it did not increase with observation. I wouldn’t use the word superficial, but I would say that it was anything but classic.

Marilyn had a reputation for showing up late and for being difficult to work with. Here’s how other directors put it to Larry: “Billy Wilder said that that it had been like working with Hitler. He and Josh Logan commiserated with me and said it was hell, but that I would be getting a pleasant surprise when it was over.”

Marilyn arrived in London with new hubby Arthur Miller, as well as Lee and Paula Strasberg to Larry’s dismay. Marilyn’s devil was aided and abetted by these other two devils.

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Manny, Moe and Jack are not the Three Stooges; they’re the Pep Boys. The Pep Boys used their first names after Moe saw a dress shop called Minnie, Maude and Mabel’s, way back in the Twenties. The Pep Boys didn’t have an act. They were the owners of the Pep chain stores for auto parts.

The Ritz brothers, Hal, Jimmy, and Harry did have an act. They took the name “Ritz” after seeing the name on the side of a laundry truck. There was, however, nothing ritzy about them. They were a sort of B-film ersatz for the Marx Brothers. But they never approached the popularity of the Marx Brothers, who were the intellectual elite of all threesomes.

The three Stooges: Moe, Larry and Curley, had absolutely no intellectual pretensions. Their films were pure slapstick, with Moe giving - and Curley’s bald pate - getting most of the blows. Bonk was the sound most-heard between lines.

Although the Stooges provided comic relief in such prestigious celluloid ventures as Dancing Lady, a Joan Crawford vehicle, their own films were not even the B-part of a double-feature bill. They mostly starred in short subjects, which were sandwiched between the A-film and the B-film.

The Stooges are my favorite threesome. I first saw a Stooge film in 1940 in New York at the age of five, and they never wore off. To me, they’re in the wacky category of Spike Jones, only minus the instruments.

My sophisticated friends are aghast when I tell them that the Marx Brothers put me to sleep, but the Stooges keep me awake. Their films are not weighed down by a silly plot, and there’s no sappy romance to slow things down.

I can’t help it, I’m a Stooges fan. And I’ll be one to the end.

Speaking of an end, the Grim Reaper broke up the act by removing Moe from the scene. And with Moe gone, who would deal out those blows? No, without Moe, it was just no go!

In 1975, the Ritz brothers were called upon to fill in for the Stooges in Blazing Stewardesses. But soon after the release of that cinematic masterpiece, the Reaper broke up the Ritz’s act too.

Bonk!

-Herbert Kuhner

Herbert Kuhner

De box looks at vun fellow, and de box says
“Yes, dot vun is for me!”
It looks at annoder, and it says, “Nawww!”
- Akim Tamiroff, as related by Orson Wells

Larry, Marilyn, Vivien and Noblesse Oblige

He could speak Shakespeare’s lines as naturally as if he were actually thinking them.
- Charles Bennett, English playwright

Larry was the greatest of them all - and the most handsome. He was the prince and his princess was Vivien. She wasn’t bad at acting, and she was the most beautiful of them all.

Laurence Olivier directed and acted in The Prince and the Showgirl in 1957, co-starring Marilyn Monroe, who was also beautiful in a ditsy way. She was the epitome of showgirls, starlets, pinups and party girls. It is not the elegant beauty of Vivien Leigh, but it was a kind of beauty too. Actually it was the kind of beauty that was more in demand. There was nothing subtle about it. The appeal was immediate. There was no aura to it, and it did not increase with observation. I wouldn’t use the word superficial, but I would say that it was anything but classic.

Marilyn had a reputation for showing up late and for being difficult to work with. Here’s how other directors put it to Larry: “Billy Wilder said that that it had been like working with Hitler. He and Josh Logan commiserated with me and said it was hell, but that I would be getting a pleasant surprise when it was over.”

Marilyn arrived in London with new hubby Arthur Miller, as well as Lee and Paula Strasberg to Larry’s dismay. Marilyn’s devil was aided and abetted by these other two devils.

Here’s Larry on Lee: “My opinion of his school is that it did more harm than good to his students and that his influence on the American theater was harmfully misplaced.”

Seven years later Lee would cross the Atlantic with Studio actors to assay Chekhov’s Three Sisters on the West End in one of his very few stints as a director. He got his comeuppance for whatever transgressions he had committed. The production was described as the turkey of all turkeys and the bomb of all bombs in the British press.

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Herbert Kuhner

The two love scenes in films that are indelible to me are between Laurence Olivier and Renée Asherson in Henry V and Gary Cooper and Doris Davenport in The Westerner. In Henry, Larry playing Harry proposes to Princess Kate after subjugating her country. He tells her that he is a man of action, not words and uses the most charming language imaginable to win her. He is, after all, the man who conquered France. His motivation for the invasion was having been slighted by her brother. The dauphin had sent Harry tennis balls to mock his playboy past. That’s the best reason for waging war that I ever heard of. And what revenge Harry took!

Renée was born to play the role. Larry’s first choice was Vivian Leigh. She was under contract to David O. Selznick at the time, who refused to let her do a guest appearance in Henry. Fortunately for the film and for Renée, Vivian, delicate beauty and a marvelous actress that she was, could never have brought the to the whimsical charm of Renée to the role. She’s a real sweetie-pie with a cherubic smile that has a hint of Gallic skepticism. She may have been playing the daughter of the daunted king of a subjugated country, but then how can she resist Larry as Harry the Conqueror, the handsomest and most elegant of men, whose lines were written by the Bard. His French is as bad as her English and there’s a bit of double-entendre-fun when he uses the word baiser, which is French for kiss but means more than a simple peck when used the wrong - or right way. The whole scene in which conqueror conquers conquered is so magical that you forget the unethical aspect. After all, Renée decides to hitch up with the man who defeated her father’s armies and displaced him as king.

In The Westerner, Gary, who’s playing a drifter, needs a lock of Doris’ hair for Walter Brennan, who’s playing Roy Bean, a sly but likable hanging judge. He’s told Roy that he knew Lillie Langtry and has a lock of her hair, both lies, and now he needs a lock for Roy, who’s just crazy about Lillie. He has to get it from Doris, who’s falling for him, as he is for her. So there’s a bit of dishonesty involved. The way he takes it from her is a simulacrum of the act. After he’s gone off with it in his pocket, she’s pensive, before she smiles joyously. Only Gary, tall and noble, and Doris with her innocent, homespun charm could have pulled it off. If John Wayne with his savvy and world-wise Claire Trevor had played the roles, they never could have made the situation convincing.

The next scene shows Gary opening small leather pouch, which contains a matchbox with the wrapped lock. As Gary slowly opens the box and then tenderly unwraps the lock from the protective tissue a gleeful Roy waits impatiently for it to emerge.

Roy’s a delightful fellow who’s also an ornery killer who continues to be what he is, and Gary has to go for him in the end. Lillie Langtry, who’s on a tour of the West, is appearing at the Opera House in Fort Davis and Roy buys out the house so he can enjoy the performance alone. But when the curtain goes up, Gary is onstage and there’s a shoot-out. After Gary mortally wounds Roy, he carries him to Lillie’s dressing room where the curmudgeon closes his eyes blissfully in her presence. Then Gary goes back to Doris who’s waiting for him. And that’s it. Fade out!

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