Happy Birthday, Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was born this day in 1926. In commemoration, here's a partial look at the impressive roster of actors and directors she worked with in her 15-year career.

With Louis Calhern in The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950)

With Dick Powell in Right Cross (John Sturges, 1950)

With Mickey Rooney in The Fireball (Tay Garnett, 1950)

With Gregory Ratoff, Anne Baxter, Gary Merrill, Celeste Holm, and
George Sanders in All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)

With Albert Dekker in As Young as You Feel (Harmon Jones, 1951)

With Jack Paar in Love Nest (Joseph M. Newman, 1951)

With Macdonald Carey, Zachary Scott, and Claudette Colbert
in Let's Make It Legal (Richard Sale, 1951)

With Robert Ryan and Barbara Stanwyck in Clash By Night
(Fritz Lang, 1952)

In We're Not Married! (Edmund Goulding, 1952)

With Anne Bancroft and Richard Widmark in
Don't Bother to Knock (Roy Ward Baker, 1952)

With Charles Laughton in O. Henry's Full House
(Henry Koster segment, 1952)

With Charles Coburn and Cary Grant in Monkey Business
(Howard Hawks, 1952)

With Joseph Cotten in Niagara (Henry Hathaway, 1953)

With Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953)

With Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall in How to Marry a Millionaire
(Jean Negulesco, 1953)

With Robert Mitchum in River of No Return (Otto Preminger, 1954)

With Johnnie Ray, Mitzi Gaynor, Dan Dailey, Ethel Merman, and
Donald O'Connor in There's No Business Like Show Business
(Walter Lang, 1954)

With Tom Ewell in The Seven Year Itch (Billy Wilder, 1955)

With Don Murray in Bus Stop (Joshua Logan, 1956)

With Laurence Olivier in The Prince and the Showgirl
(Laurence Olivier, 1957)

With Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959)

With Yves Montand and Wilfrid Hyde-White in Let's Make Love
(George Cukor, 1960)

With Eli Wallach, Montgomery Clift, and Clark Gable in The Misfits
(John Huston, 1961)

Happy Birthday, HAL

Good afternoon, Gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the HAL plant in Urbana, Illinois on the twelfth of January, 1992.

Happy Birthday, Robert Ryan

Robert Ryan

I first became aware of Robert Ryan in my early twenties when I saw him in On Dangerous Ground, which rocked my naive assumption that the cop-on-the-edge had been invented by Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. The scene where Ryan's Jim Wilson beats information from a belligerent perp showed a man frazzled from a life patrolling the underbelly of society, worn out as much by his own violent tendencies as by the criminals he unleashed them on. Jim Wilson was the type of part I would later discover Ryan excelled at: the tough guy with a bit more going on inside.

As I watched more of Ryan's films (there are many), I found this to hold true. His character in The Wild Bunch has an outlaw past, but the man we see is a forlorn turncoat hunting down his former gang and silently wrestling with what that means. His Cotton Ryan from Lawman is a sellout sheriff who eventually has to confront his own complacency. In The Professionals, he's one of four men assembled to rescue a woman kidnapped by a Mexican bandit. Each of these men has a specialty — weapons, explosives, tracking. Ryan's Hans Ehrengard's skill is horse wrangling, and Ryan plays him with a sensitivity that could mislead one into thinking he's soft — until he KO's a man over the mistreatment of a horse.

At other times, Ryan was just fun to watch. I forget where I read this, but someone said that the trick to his Ben Vandergroat in The Naked Spur was that Ryan just laughed when delivering each line, making his character not only sinister, but unexpectedly likable.

This is why, in his Western roles especially, Ryan stands out among other leading men of the genre. While I certainly consider John Wayne one of the great Western stars, Ryan displayed in his supporting parts a much greater range. (So much has been said about Wayne's inability to act that this may not be the most effective comparison, though I've always felt such criticisms of John Wayne were overdone.)

And I would be lying by denying that the little I know of Ryan's personal life contributes to my affection for his work. His tough guy credentials included being a former Marine and boxing champ, but he was also a civil rights advocate and Democrat who supposedly clashed with John Wayne over HUAC on the set of Flying Leathernecks, living for real the complexity he played on screen.

Happy Birthday, Charlton Heston

Charlton Heston in Hamlet (1996)

Charlton Heston is an axiom. He constitutes a tragedy in himself, his presence in any film being enough to instill beauty. The pent-up violence expressed by the somber phosphorescence of his eyes, his eagle's profile, the imperious arch of his eyebrows, the hard, bitter curve of his lips, the stupendous strength of his torso — this is what he has been given, and what not even the worst of directors can debase. It is in this sense that one can say that Charlton Heston, by his very existence and regardless of the film he is in, provides a more accurate definition of the cinema than films like Hiroshima mon amour or Citizen Kane, films whose aesthetic either ignores or repudiates Charlton Heston. Through him, mise-en-scène can confront the most intense of conflicts and settle them with the contempt of a god imprisoned, quivering with muted rage.

— From In Defense of Violence, by Michel Mourlet, 1960

While I'm not sure I entirely agree with Mourlet (or even fully understand him), I certainly enjoy Heston's acting and films enough to acknowledge a glint of truth under the inflated praise. His "presence in any film" certainly makes the movie more entertaining, and he seemed to emerge from most of them unscathed by any of their failings. Jonathan Rosenbaum has suggested the same about Arnold Schwarzenegger, which is fitting. Before Tim Burton re-made (sorry, "re-imagined") Planet of the Apes, I had heard a rumor (or perhaps I had merely made a wish) that James Cameron was planning a remake with Schwarzenegger in Heston's role, which seemed entirely appropriate. In fact, Schwarzenegger is perhaps the only star who could survive such a film and the expectations placed upon it, regardless of its success or failure (see: Batman and Robin).

Similarly, Heston was seldom bested by the often-fantastic grandeur of his films. Chariot races, talking apes, nocturnal mutants, hijacked planes, walls of fire: I don't know if he elevated such things or simply remained above them, but he certainly committed to the at-times over-the-top machismo of the characters who confronted them. This added greatly to the effectiveness of Heston's relatively understated roles. Mike Vargas in Touch of Evil, despite the makeup and mustache, is one example (certainly it was difficult for even Heston to overpower Orson Welles), and his turn as the Player King in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet is perhaps my favorite, though it probably wouldn't have been if it hadn't been preceded by the gusto of "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!" or "Soylent Green is people!"

The quality identified by Mourlet is perhaps what made Heston the ideal spokesperson for controversial conservative causes later in life: The theatricality of "From my cold dead hands" is a line I would have cheered in one of his films, regardless of my feelings about this sentiment in the real world.

Happy Birthday, Ray Harryhausen

The legendary stop-motion animator turns 92 today. To commemorate the occasion, Second Reel presents some of the aliens, monsters, dinosaurs, and fantastical creatures from the master animator's incredible filmography.

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

One Million Years B.C. (1966)

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

Clash of the Titans (1981)

It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955)

The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956)

Happy birthday, Thomas Edison

Happy birthday, Bernard Hill

Today is the 66th birthday of Bernard Hill, an actor I always enjoy watching and whose Hollywood career has been noticeably punctuated by a recurring role: A person of authority who reacts stubbornly to news about his grim chances of survival, only to be killed a short time after.

The Ghost and the Darkness

Hill's Dr. Hawthorne, the sole medic for a turn-of-the-century construction crew building a bridge over Africa’s Tsavo River, is told by game hunter Remington that the man-eating lions that have been terrorizing the camp will most likely target his hospital. When Hawthorne questions Remington’s demand that a new hospital be built immediately, Remington insists that a deadly attack will follow otherwise. Despite following Remington's orders, Hawthorne is killed by the lions the following night.

Titanic

As the captain of the world's largest passenger ship, Hill remains undaunted when warned of dangerous icebergs along his travel route. Instead of using caution, he orders the ship to move faster. Moving too quickly to avoid a deceptively massive block of ice, the ship is torn apart, and the captain perishes in the pilot house as Titanic goes under.

Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Hill plays King Theoden, the aging ruler of a land besieged by evil forces in The Two Towers. Warned by allies Aragorn and Gimli of his likely defeat by the approaching hoard of Uruk-hai warriors, an indignant Theoden insists his fortress is well-defended. His stronghold is soon overrun, however, and while he narrowly escapes thanks to the last-minute intervention of the wizard Gandalf, Theoden is killed while battling under similar odds in the following film, The Return of the King.

Valkyrie

Playing a German general in North Africa during World War II, Hill gets word from Tom Cruise's Colonel von Stauffenberg of impending defeat by Allied forces. Hill's general stubbornly agrees to withdraw, only to be gunned down moments later in a raid by American fighter planes.