In Passing: 2009, Part II

By Stephanie Star Smith

Each year at the Academy Awards, Hollywood takes a few moments to honor those who have joined the Choir Invisible during the previous year. Each year sees a number of people barely recognized even by their industry peers, much less the viewing audience, along with a smaller percentage of more widely-renowned names (and the inevitable few "I didn't know he/she died"). As the calendar year begins anew, we here at BOP would like to acknowledge some of Hollywood's brightest luminaries who shuffled off their mortal coils in 2009 with a look back at the reasons why though they may be gone, they will certainly not be soon forgotten.

Karl Malden

It's amazing what one can learn about a celebrity, even one who has been in the public arena for...well, almost ever, once that person's obituary is published.

Karl Malden is an excellent example of this. Those of us of, as it is often so delicately phrased, "a certain age", are familiar with the basics: an actor who appeared in many of the most lauded of films from Hollywood's putative Golden Age; Michael Douglas' co-star in The Streets of San Francisco; "Don't leave home without it" pitchman for American Express; son of working-class immigrants who escaped a life of manual labor by going into the performing arts.

Except for that last part, actually. Though the man born Mladen George Sekulovich was born to immigrant working-class parents, their jobs were not menial and an entrée into the working class not the only thing they gave their son. Malden's father worked in the steel mill and as a milkman; he also had a passion for music and taught acting; he organized the choir at the local Serbian church (in which Malden sang as a boy) and produced plays about Serbian culture and heritage. His Czech mother was a seamstress, but she was also an actress. Besides being steeped in his heritage, Malden didn't learn to speak English until he went to kindergarten.

So coming from such an arts-centric background, it's no wonder Malden wanted to go into acting. He was in drama in high school, in addition to playing basketball (he had his nose broken twice, which led to his trademark schnozz); after working in the steel mills, like his father, for three years to help save money, Malden then went to the Goodman School, associated with the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, for formal training, eventually winning a full scholarship to the school, and finding work in the Goodman Children's Theatre. From there, he went to the Chicago Art Institute, from which he graduated in 1937; after graduation, he went to New York and began working as an actor in earnest. He had small parts in both off- and Broadway shows, did some radio, and made his film debut with a small part in They Knew What They Wanted. Eventually, he became associated with the Group Theatre, a precious organization where many young actors at the time received experience and exposure. Whilst there, he met future director Elia Kazan, with whom he would work a great deal in the future, both on Broadway and in films. It was with the Group Theatre that Malden was forced to change his name. When the initial request was made, on the quite reasonable grounds that the name needed to be shortened to fit on the marquee, Malden thought the request was being made because the theatre wanted to let him go and so was using the name thing as an excuse; in an effort to forestall this happening, Malden agreed to change his name, Anglicizing his first name and making it his last, then taking his grandfather's first name in its place. As it would later turn out, the Group Theatre hadn't intended to fire him; it had truly wanted to save space on its marquee. Malden always regretted changing his name, however, and made certain to include a character in each of his projects, whether as an actual part or a throwaway line, using his real last name. His family was delighted by this choice for the most part, although his father was distressed when Malden, playing the warden in Birdman of Alcatraz, slotted the family name in during a scene where he was ticking off a list of the prisoners under his care; in his autobiography, Malden relates that his father told him, "Mladen, no Sekulovich has ever been in prison!".

Like many a young man in the early ‘40s, Malden's life and career were interrupted when the US entered World War II; Malden served in the US Army Air Forces (the Air Force didn't become a separate branch of the service until after WWII); during his service, he was given a small role in the US Army Air Forces play and film Winged Victory. After the end of the war, Malden returned to acting, He rejoined the Group Theatre and was directed by Elia Kazan in such plays as Arthur Miller's All My Sons and Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. Following these success on the stage, Malden moved on to Hollywood, and took up residence in the film and television industry, never looking back to the stage; beginning with The Gunfighter in 1950, Malden worked steadily, with at least one film or TV project a year, up until advancing age began to take its toll in the early ‘90s.

Malden appeared in some of what are arguably amongst the best films of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, including the film version of Streetcar, for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar; On the Waterfront, which reunited him with Elia Kazan and Marlon Brando; The Birdman of Alcatraz; Fear Strikes Out; Gypsy; How the West Was Won; John Ford's final film; Cheyenne Autumn; and Patton; amongst many, many others not so recognizable or stellar.

In 1972, Malden was approached by legendary television producer Quinn Martin to play what would become his signature role, Lt Mike Stone in The Streets of San Francisco. Originally intended as a TV movie, ABC made it clear that, if ratings were good, it would be turned into a series. Michael Douglas was signed to play Malden's partner on the series, Inspector Steve Keller. The chemistry between Malden as the experienced Stone showing his fresh-out-of-college Keller - roles that mirrored their positions in the acting field - was wonderful, as was the writing and the production values, and Streets of San Francisco was a ratings bonanza. The series ran for five seasons, and ended when the ratings nosedived once Douglas left to pursue his film career; his replacement wasn't, really, not in any real sense of the word, and so the series was canceled.

Malden continued to work, in films and television, after Streets, but his film roles weren't in projects with quite the same cache as his earlier films, though some are recognizable, including the disaster pic Meteor; the sequels Beyond the Poseidon Adventure and The Sting II; and Nuts. One film of note during this period, however, is Twilight Time, in which Malden was finally able to play a character with his family name, Sekulovich; in the film, he plays a widower returning to his home of Yugoslavia to work the family farm and raise his two grandchildren, deserted by their mother in her quest for money and love.

His quality projects during this latter part of his career TV movies. Amongst the latter were a television adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling classic Captains Courageous; Fatal Vision, based on the book by Joe McGinnis about the MacDonald murders, and Fred Kassab's quest to prove that his son-in-law, a former Green Beret and a doctor, killed his pregnant daughter and his two grandchildren, for which Malden won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series; Miracle on Ice, about the 1982 US Olympic hockey team; The Hijacking of the Achille Lauro, based on the real-life takeover of an Italian cruise liner; and My Father, My Son, based on the book by the same name regarding the service seen by Elmo Zumwalt, Jr, and his son, Elmo Zumwalt III in the Swift boat brigades in Viet Nam, and the tragic aftermath when the it comes to light that the use of herbicides, particularly the power Agent Orange, to save lives by removing Viet Cong ambush cover ultimately took lives, when the after-effects being exposed to Agent Orange caused numerous health issues for the soldiers and sailors, resulting in many, many premature deaths. The Zumwalts story in this case is fairly representative, save for one fact: it was the elder Zumwalt, as commander of the US Navy's operations in the region, who ordered greater usage of Agent Orange in the hopes of stopping the Viet Cong from attacking the easily-ambushed Swift boats and, by so doing, saving lives. Malden's last film project was an appearance during the first season of West Wing, playing a Catholic priest; he used the same Bible he had used in On the Waterfront in one of the scenes.

One glaring blemish on Malden's sterling reputation was his campaign to present Elia Kazan with an honorary award at the 1999 Academy Awards ceremony. Kazan was reviled in many quarters for his willingness to sacrifice friends and associates to save himself when called before Senator Joe McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee. Unlike many who were the subject of HUAC scrutiny, Kazan actually had been a member of the America Communist Party in the early ‘30s; when called before the committee, he gladly complied with Tailgunner Joe's infamous request to "name names". Many of those Kazan named were former friends and colleagues; once they had been added to the blacklist, they were unable to work for years or, in some cases, ever again under their own names. There were many protests over Malden's pushing for the honor, from those who had suffered from Kazan's actions and those who believed his actions had been despicable beyond reason. But Malden felt that Kazan's achievements outweighed his HUAC actions and, in the end, he prevailed; Kazan received his award, but not to the thunderous applause that usually accompanies such honors. Many actors simply left the ceremony during the presentation and Kazan's acceptance speech; others pointedly sat on the hands or crossed their arms during the polite applause that greeted Kazan's entrance. Former friend and colleague Marlon Brando refused outright to give Kazan the statuette; the dubious honor eventually fell to Robert De Niro. Though Malden didn't suffer any lasting damage to his reputation or the esteem in which he was held by his fellow actors, many were upset with him for some time afterwards.

Malden had mostly retired from the public eye, except for his appearances at the Academy Awards ceremonies each year, when his time came to join the Choir Invisible on July 1st at the ripe old age of 96.

John Hughes

Somehow, one always thinks of John Hughes as a teenager.

Which is odd, considering he was well past his teen years when he wrote his first scripts, for the execrable TV series based on Animal House. Hughes wasn't even a teenager when he started writing for National Lampoon Magazine, the folks who brought the world Animal House and who hadn't yet got it through their heads that because the loopy, anarchic and slightly-sweet film was a unique entity and couldn't be continuously mined for comedy gold, the lode having been completely exhausted in the first film.

But I digress.

The reason John Hughes probably exists as a perennial teenager in one's mind is, more than almost any writer before him, Hughes had an understanding that teenagers exist in a world that is hyper-real and hyperbolic; there is a certain rhythm to their daily lives that adults often tend to forget once they grow beyond their teen years. It didn't hurt that a lot of what passed for "teen" movies in the ‘80s, when Hughes began his successful run of films, were just excuses for partial nudity and crude sex jokes masquerading as stories about "real" teens in "high school". The high school of a pubescent male, perhaps, or what all the adults thought teens wanted or did or saw or, in the case of the men, was happening to everyone but them when they were in high school. But Hughes actually created three-dimensional characters that had feelings and dreams and insecurities and were very, very vulnerable, and it was apparent Hughes cared about his characters, and about getting all these things as right as he could. He was once quoted as saying he didn't think of kids as "a lower form of the human species", and it showed in his films.

Hughes started his career as an ad copywriter in Chicago, not your average training ground for film writer/directors, but then Hughes didn't have any ambition towards that at first; his main goal was to make all living writing, which he did as a copywriter. In fact, Hughes was the creator of the famous Edge shaving gel "Credit Card Shaving Test" ad campaign, which was very successful for Edge. When he decided to try his hand at writing comedy, it was writing jokes for established performers such as Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers; these comics tending to draw somewhat from their lives, Hughes wrote a story about the vacations his family took as a kid. Titled Vacation '58, the story didn't get offered to Dangerfield or Rivers; Hughes instead took it to National Lampoon Magazine, gaining him entrée to the magazine's writing staff, and providing the basis for the next big film for publication, National Lampoon's Vacation.
And fortunately this time around, the franchise-making possibilities were endless. Just as the films have been.

But NL's Vacation was a couple of years off yet. And I digress.

Hughes' first film script for National Lampoon, Class Reunion, managed to be a pretty decent little spoof of the slasher and high-school reunion nostalgia genres; no mean trick that, but audiences were underwhelmed. Hughes next script was much, much more successful, the Michael Keaton (remember him? Wonder whatever happened to that guy? He was pretty talented) vehicle, Mr. Mom. A smart comedy about gender roles, what really constitutes work and what happens in a relationship when suddenly everything the couple thought they knew about each other and themselves gets turned on its ear, Mr Mom was Keaton's first flick after the wildly-successful Night Shift, and his star had just begun its ascendancy. Mr. Mom was one of the top-grossing films of 1983 - seventh-highest, in fact - and shot Michael Keaton even further into the celebrity stratosphere.

Which brings us to National Lampoon's Vacation, the second film Hughes wrote in 1983. Starring Chevy Chase - and interesting juxtaposition here regarding where Chase was on his career trajectory compared with Keaton - as hapless family patriarch Clark Griswold, who takes his family on vacation every year so they can see the sights of some portion of America and spend quality time together. His vacations are never quite the wonderful, family-bonding trips he envisions, but they aren't generally disasters. Until the year of the trip to Wally World, that is...

The success of the script for Vacation shows Hughes' range in the comedy genre; to go from the verbal, finely-tuned social commentary comedy of Mr Mom to the slapstick, sight gag-based comedy of Vacation one year is a testament to Hughes' writing talent, as is the fact that Vacation comes in as the tenth highest-grossing film of 1983. And as if that weren't enough work for one - one! - year, Hughes threw in a pirate script, Nate and Hayes, which made a respectable, if not spectacular showing.

The following year saw the beginning of John Hughes' remarkable run of well-written, well-directed, well-acted teen films, Sixteen Candles. Starring Molly Ringwald as the turning-16-year-old whose family forgets her birthday in the midst of all the other things they've got going on the same day, and the series of mid-boggling ups-and-downs she experiences. Anyone who's ever turned 16, or had his/her birthday forgotten, or not had the right boy pay you any attention but had the wrong boy pay you attention knows just how poor Samantha Baker feels; the revelation about John Hughes as a filmmaker, though, that he knows how she feels, too, and conveys all the various catastrophes, embarrassments and heartbreaks of her anything-but "sweet 16" birthday with a tenderness and sweetness that gentle draws the audience into the film, rather than bashing them over the head with whatever lame jokes someone who apparently managed to skip turning 16 thinks sounds like a "teenager". The humor - and there are laughs a-plenty - comes from out of the three-dimensional characters and believable situations; it isn't grafted onto cardboard cutouts propped up in stock settings. Every laugh, every tear, and every joy is organic to the film, and feels earned and right.

It was an auspicious debut, and Hughes followed this up in 1985 with an equally fantastic teen flick, The Breakfast Club. The great thing about Hughes' treatment of the characters brought together for detention on a Saturday morning is that he starts with your teen-flick staples: the pretty and popular one, the stoner, the geek, the jock, and the oddball, and then allows them to reveal themselves as more than just their labels, forming a bond of friendship that wouldn't otherwise be possible in the tightly-stratified social caste system that is high school. Sixteen Candles lead Molly Ringwald joins the ensemble cast of The Breakfast Club, as does fellow cast-mate Anthony Michael Hall, forming the basis of what became a loose repertory company on which Hughes drew for his writer/director outings. The Breakfast Club, also like Sixteen Candles before it, wasn't one of the highest-grossing movies of the year, but it, too, was in upper portion of that list.

Hughes wrote and directed a second film in 1985, Weird Science, a quirky take on the teen sex comedy that understood what few boys do at that age: brains are always sexy, and if they come in a killer body, so much the better. Anthony Michael Hall makes it a trifecta of appearances in Hughes' writer/director projects, joined by as his fellow nerdy

This was another year where Hughes was a busy, busy boy, writing the follow-up to National Lampoon's Vacation, National Lampoon's European Vacation.

Sigh.

Given the fact that National Lampoon's Vacation was the tenth-highest grossing film of 1983 - no, incredibly, not tenth-highest grossing comedy; tenth-highest grossing film. I know! - the titular magazine would have expected a follow-up, so I suppose National Lampoon's European Vacation was an inevitability. I suppose it could even be true that that Hughes found it an interesting writing job, perhaps even a welcome respite from the labors of creating his lovely little masterpieces of teen comedies And to be fair, I wasn't all that enthused about National Lampoon's Vacation, so my complete apathy and lack of interest in National Lampoon's European Vacation isn't all that surprising. I may well also be one of the few people on the planet in 1985 who didn't rush out to see the Griswolds being inflicted upon the Europeans thanks to the cosmic joke of the Accident-Waiting-to-Happen Tourists winning an all-expenses paid vacation to the Continent, since the film made as much as The Breakfast Club and Weird Science combined. So for those of you scoring at home - or even if you're alone - National Lampoon 3; John Hughes 2; your humble authoress, zip.

By the mid-‘80s, John Hughes had firmly established himself as a writer/director with immense talent and a keen understanding of and appreciation for teenagers and their problems. In 1986, Hughes made a departure, of sorts, from his projects as writer/director with a film that focused less on the pains of growing up and more on the problems of one young man just trying to take a mental health day from school. I'm referring, of course, to the wonderfully giddy, incredibly smart, star-making Matthew Broderick vehicle Ferris Buehler's Day Off. Chockfull of every stunt, every fantasy, everything you probably which you'd done when you ditched school if you'd only thought of it, Ferris Buehler tapped into that rebellious streak in all of us, and watching Buehler get away with the antics he just broke the fourth wall to tell us he would get away with was pure joy. With what has to be one of the most exuberant, fitting climactic scenes of all time, Ferris Buehler grabbed the ninth spot on the top-grossing films of 1986, and in a year that saw such blockbusters as Top Gun and Aliens and The Voyage Home, that's quite an accomplishment.. The year also saw him add another feather to his scriptwriter cap with Pretty in Pink, starring his favorite Every-Teengirl Molly Ringwald as Andie Walsh, a poor-but-fashion-conscious girl from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks who falls for the rich-but-not-a-jerk new guy at school, Blane, much to the chagrin of her childhood friend, Duckie, who has secretly loved Andie for years. When Blane indicates he has feelings for Andie, both meet resistance and criticism from their respective circles. Will Blane and Andie be able to make a go of their against-the-laws-of-high school-society romance? Will Duckie get up the courage to tell Andie how he really feels about her? And will Andie have a date for her senior prom? All these questions are, of course, answered with Hughes' trademark sensitivity and ear for the way teens really speak, but Pretty in Pink departs from his earlier teen-centric scripts in a couple of ways, not least of which is that it is not really a comedy but more of a romantic drama, one that avoids the pitfall of devolving into teen melodrama. It also addresses somewhat more adult themes, with a secondary storyline involving Andie's relationship with her father in the wake of a family calamity that both are struggling to put behind them. The more serious tone of the flick didn't seem to put off movie-goers, as the film did well at the box office. Pretty in Pink also pointed toward the path that Hughes would take with future movies, as he started to move away from the possibility of being pigeonholed as a teen-pic filmmaker and towards more adult fare.

Hughes continued down this path in 1987, also scripting one film and serving as writer/director on another. The first, Some Kind of Wonderful, follows the Pretty in Pink story arc almost exactly, except Duckie's and Andie's genders are switched, with Mary Stuart Masterson as the working-class tomboy Watts, secretly in love with her childhood friend, Keith, played by Eric Stoltz; Lea Thompson as Amanda, the popular rich girl that inspires Keith to try and date above his station; and Craig Sheffer as Hardy Jenns, Amanda's rich former boyfriend who is a composite of all of Blane's rich friends in Pretty in Pink who tormented Andie and Duckie and gave him grief for dating below his station. Some Kind of Wonderful was generally well-received by critics, it didn't achieve the same financial success as Pretty in Pink. But it is Hughes' writing/directing project that marks the greatest departure from his earlier films: the Steve Martin/John Candy film Planes, Trains & Automobiles. The story of a man trying to get home to Chicago from a business trip to New York in time for Thanksgiving, and the almost incomprehensible number of obstacles that arise that seem destined to prevent him from accomplishing this, the film is by turns hysterical, heartrending, thought-provoking and, ultimately - this is, after all, a holiday flick - uplifting and heartwarming. The film surprised just about every critic, since it seemed such a restrained, adult comedy couldn't' possibly have come from these three men; nearly-universally praised by critics, a big hit with audiences, and in the top 25 grossing films of the year, it has since attained classic status, both as a comedy film and a perennial Thanksgiving holiday pic.

As the decade drew towards its close, there came a shift in John Hughes' career path. Starting with his next film as writer/director, 1988's She's Having a Baby, Hughes' films became more adult-oriented in their themes...and less successful films, both in terms of their reception by critics and audiences, and in monetary terms. The film, a tale of a pair of newlyweds trying to figure out just how to make this whole adulthood/marriage thing work, stars Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern, along with a large, talented ensemble cast and a number of big-name celebrity cameos. But the film never entirely works, and audiences stayed away in the proverbial droves. Things didn't improve much with Hughes' next two writer/director outings, the 1988 John Candy/Dan Aykroyd vehicle The Great Outdoors; and 1989's Uncle Buck, another John Candy-starrer about a relative you'd least want to have baby-sit your kids, especially if one was a smart-aleck teen (a rare stereotype from the man who had long eschewed stock cutouts in favor of realistic teens). No wonder, then, that by 1989, Hughes skipped the directing end of the bargain and wrote something close to a sure thing: a third installment for the National Lampoon's Vacation franchise, Christmas Vacation.

In 1990, Hughes had another go at writing and directing a vehicle, and this time, he struck gold - literally and comedically - by going in the opposite direction in terms of his main character's age; casting the child actor who'd portrayed one of the baby-sittees from Uncle Buck, Macaulay Caulkin, in Home Alone, the story of a boy accidentally left behind when his family goes on vacation for Christmas, having to fend for himself and protect the family homestead from a couple of burglars.

Hughes struck gold. Home Alone became the top-grossing film of 1990, launched Caulkin's career, and burnished Hughes' tarnished reputation. It would, however, be a brief bright spot for the filmmaker, as it marked the last time he had such huge success - or more than the most modest success - working on his own original material again. Hughes' next three films - Career Opportunities, Dutch and Curly Sue - were box office disasters; Curly Sue also marked the final time Hughes served as writer/director on a film.

John Hughes continued to write films for the remainder of the ‘90s, mostly for remakes of films, such as Flubber, Miracle on 34th Street and the live-action 101 Dalmatians; and adaptations of works from other media, such as Dennis the Menace. His only modest success during this period, 1992's Beethoven, he wrote under his nom de plume Edmond Dantès, and with a collaborator. Hughes final solo screenplay credit is for 1998's Reach the Rock, which very few people saw; his final screenplay credit is 2001's Just Visiting, which he wrote with the screenwriting pair who wrote the original French-language film; and the last thing he contributed to feature film is the story for the 2002 Jennifer Lopez vehicle Maid in Manhattan, as Edmond Dantès.

It would seem that by 2002, John Hughes had pretty come to the realization that his career writing and directing feature films was over; still, his next move was an unusual one: he quit. Whilst most Hollywood creative types keep flagellating that defunct equine until they had no more strength left, Hughes decided that he'd had his run and he might as well go find something else to do that would bring him a modicum of satisfaction and success. He bought a farm in Illinois and became a farmer, and remained one until he proverbially did same due to a heart attack on August 1st.

Budd Schulberg

Sometimes it's not the number of scripts you write, it's the quality. Such is certainly the case with Budd Schulberg.

Born Seymour Wilson Schulberg to B P Schulberg, head of Paramount Pictures and Adeline Jaffe Schulberg, who founded a talent agency, Schulberg attended the exclusive Deerfield Academy, a college-prep boarding school before entering Dartmouth College, where he began writing for the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern humor magazine. Whilst still at Dartmouth, Schulberg did uncredited script work - along with such contemporary Hollywood writing luminaries as
Ben Hecht, Ring Lardner Jr and David O. Selznick - in support of Dorothy Parker's screenplay for the 1937 Janet Gaynor/Fredric March version of A Star is Born; he also did uncredited scriptwork - along with Ring Lardner - in support of the Ben Hecht screenplay for Nothing Sacred, starring Carole Lombard and Fredric March. He was given a chance in 1939 to write a screenplay for a movie set at Dartmouth, Winter Carnival, working with F Scott Fitzgerald; sadly, Fitzgerald, well into his alcoholism and with his writing talent declining as a result, was fired from the project, leaving a disillusioned Schulberg to complete the project alone. Schulberg would later go on to write a novel titled The Disenchanted; it told the story of a young screenwriter who collaborates on a screenplay about a college winter festival with his idol, a famous novelist at the nadir of his career. Said novelist is portrayed as a tragic and flawed figure, with whom the young screenwriter becomes disillusioned; the novel was seen as a thinly-veiled account of Schulberg's experiences trying to work with Fitzgerald on Winter Carnival. The Disenchanted was later adapted as a Broadway play Jason Robards, Jr, who took home a Tony Award for his performance as the doomed novelist.

After World War II, having seen service in John Ford's documentary unit, Schulberg returned to Hollywood, writing the stories and screenplays for a number of Hollywood films and Golden Age of Television anthology theatres. In 1954, he turned the series of articles that Malcolm Johnson did on corruption at the Port of New York into On the Waterfront, the Elia Kazan-directed classic starring Marlon Brando and Karl Malden; Schulberg rightly won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay, and the Writers' Guild of America award for Best Written American Drama (Screen). On the Waterfront currently sits at #19 on the AFI 100 Years...100 Movies list.

In addition to writing novels and screenplays, Schulberg worked as a sportswriter, and served as chief boxing correspondent for Sports Illustrated. He wrote a novel set in the boxing and sportswriting worlds, The Harder They Fall. The tale of a down-on-his-luck sportswriter who parlays his reputation for integrity in the boxing arena into a series of fixed fights to turn an untalented pugilist managed by a corrupt boxing promoter into the number-one fighter in the field, the best-selling novel was adapted into a motion picture, with Humphrey Bogart starring as the sportswriter. Though not showered with awards, it was showered with accolades, and stands as one of Bogart's best.

Schulberg's next screenplay was A Face in the Crowd, based on his own short story Your Arkansas Traveler. Starring Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal and Walter Matthau, it tells the tale of a small-market radio manager's discovery of a talented but unpolished country singer with a folksy charm and winning personality, whom she gives a shot at a new start in life and his own radio show, turning the man first into a local and then national radio personality who eventually becomes a powerful television-show host with the power to make or break politicians with the size and lohyalty of his audience. The film explores how someone in a medium where he is removed from his audience, can create a pleasing persona that masks his vile, corrupt nature and his contempt for those around him; a cautionary tale on becoming too taken with the mask you've created and too drunk on power to realize you're showing the seeds of your own destruction by the way you mistreat those around you, who know what you're really like and can make certain others see the real you as well. Powerful performances and a topnotch script combined to make this fascinating character study one of Schulberg's most well-known film scripts'

Another of Schulberg's most famous works, What Makes Sammy Run?, gathered a great deal of controversy as well as acclaim. The story of the rise of a poor Jewish boy from the Lower East Side of Manhattan to the pinnacle of Hollywood power, What Makes Sammy Run? was twice adapted for television: first in 1949 by the legendary screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, then again in 1959 by Budd Schulberg and his brother, Stuart. The Schulberg brothers also wrote the book for the 1964 Broadway musical version.

The novel was considered controversial because of Schulberg's depiction of the protagonist; many Jewish commentators felt it played into the anti-Semitic stereotype of Jews as venal. Schulberg, who was Jewish, defended this depiction by adding an explanation of his thought processes to the 1990 reissue of the novel. But there was an additional controversy to What Makes Sammy Run? that had nothing to do with ethnicity and everything to do with that shameful period of American history, the "Red" scare, and Tailgunner Joe McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee. Having been named as a former member of the Communist Party when fellow screenwriter Richard Collins testified before the committee, Schulberg decided to appear as a so-called "friendly witness", admitting that Party activists had tried to influence the content of What Makes Sammy Run?; he then provided himself cover from the charge of being a "Commie" by "naming names", the despicable practice of giving the committee a list to others in Hollywood you believe to be "Communist sympathizers". Those who cooperated never suffered any career consequences for being accused; they also never seemed to care what happened to the careers of those they accused in turn.

But Budd Schulberg was unique in balancing out, however unintentionally, his deleterious behavior at the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings with acts of moral rectitude. He was among the first American servicemen to liberate the Concentration camps, and he worked to gather evidence of the atrocities carried out by the Nazis in the camps. He wrote The Nazi Plan, which was compiled from footage shot of the liberation of Dachau and presented as evidence at the Nuremberg trials; he also wrote, with his brother, the documentary Nuremberg, consisting almost entirely of captured Nazi film footage, which was also used against the Nazis at Nuremberg. And after the 1965 Watts riots, Schulberg, along with actor Yaphet Kotto, the Watts Writers Workshop, a creative organization designed to help develop writing talent in the impoverished area.

Budd Schulberg departed the vale of tears after 95 years on August 9th, subsequent to being rushed to a local hospital with an undisclosed illness.

Larry Gelbart

M*A*S*H.

Had Larry Gelbart not written another thing for film or television, he would be deserving of lasting Hollywood fame as the creator of the television version of Robert Altman's subversive 1968 film, itself an adaptation of the Richard Hooker novel. His expert comedic hand helped to guide the series in its early seasons, when Gelbart wrote or co-wrote a good many of the scripts, and, working with executive producers Bert Metcalfe and Gene Reynolds, helped turn what could have been your standard-issue "war situation comedy" - à la Hogan's Heroes - into a thoughtful-yet-funny black comedy that never forgot either of its contradictory themes: comedy, and war. Amongst the departures, both in front of and behind the camera, that harmed M*A*S*H the most over the years, Gelbart's at the end of the show's fourth season was one of the most damaging, as the slow-but-steady loss of the show's comedic sensibility that had begun with the start of that season became a torrent when Gelbart left.

But Larry Gelbart wrote so, so much more for both film and television, working on some of the most legendary shows in the putative Golden Age of Television, and a number of the iconic films of the last half of the 20th century.

Larry Simon Gelbart was born in Chicago to Jewish immigrants; he began his career in show business when he was 16 years old and started writing for Danny Thomas' radio show; he also wrote for Jack Paar and Bob Hope. When the new medium of television began its gradual infiltration into America's living rooms, Gelbart followed, and scored what would become the premiere gig for a comedy writer in the early ‘50s when he joined Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Neil Simon writing for Sid Caesar's legendary Your Show of Shows; Gelbart also wrote for Caesar's follow-up to Your Show of Shows, Caesar's Hour, and other top-drawer TV talent at the time, including Danny Kaye, Dinah Shore, and Judy Garland.

Gelbart began his feature film-writing career by teaming with Blake Edwards to pen the comedy/mystery The Notorious Landlady, starring Jack Lemmon, Kim Novak and Fred Astaire; he followed that with the Doris Day/James Garner advertising spoof The Thrill of It All; the Victorian-era farce The Wrong Box, "suggested" by a Robert Louis Stevenson novel and concerning a tontine inheritance set-up; and Not With My Wife, You Don't, a comedy about two Korean War veterans who continue to vie for the affections of a beautiful Italian former Army nurse who one of the men won through underhanded means and the consequences that result. Gelbart also wrote the book for the Broadway musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which was adapted as a feature film in 1966; though Gelbart didn't contribute to the film, he is listed in the credits in his capacity as writer of the musical.

Whilst M*A*S*H was on the air, it was Gelbart's primary focus, although he did create a short-lived comedy set in World War II, Roll Out!, CBS having decided that if one social-commentary sit-com set in a war was a big hit, then a second would be a big hit, too. Because that's how the suits think, if one can call it that. The network naturally turned to its crack in-house war-comedy-with-a-conscience creator, and Gelbart obliged. The show was "loosely" - another one of those words that strike fear into the hearts of moviegoers and TV viewers when they see it on-screen - based on the 1952 film The Red Ball Express, about the Third US Army's transportation unit bearing that name. The Red Ball Express was the transport division supplying the forward combat units, and the convoys were run under intense German bombing. The Red Ball Express consisted of more than 75% African-American personnel; due to the Army's segregation policies, black soldiers weren't allowed to serve on the front lines; ultimately, they played an equally important role in the liberation of Europe. Given the unit's history and the series being set in the past, Gelbart thought Roll Out! could be used as a means for commenting on race relations, just as M*A*S*H was being used to comment on the Viet Nam war; given the series' poor ratings, however, it was canceled after one season.

After Gelbart departed M*A*S*H, he returned to feature film writing, creating one of his signature films, the religious comedy Oh God!. Starring George Burns and John Denver, and directed by Carl Reiner, the gentle tale of a non-believer who is chosen by God to spread His message to the modern world became a surprise hit in the year of Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Saturday Night Fever, and Gelbart was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. He followed this with Movie Movie, billed as an "old-fashioned double-feature", and employing the gimmick of having both parts of the double-feature in the same film. Directed by Stanley Donen, the films-within-a-film starred George C Scott as the main protagonist; the first, a boxing pic called Dynamite Hands, is the clichéd plot of a poor young man who wants a career as a professional - in this case, a lawyer - who is instead pulled into becoming a pugilist because money is desperately needed to help a sick/debt-ridden family member (a sister going blind here). A surprise natural, the young man becomes successful and rich beyond his wildest dreams of avarice, and corrupted by the fame and money, turns away from his ideals and his family - and usually a childhood sweetheart who is the quintessence of innocence and purity, in stark contrast to the women currently surrounding him - before suffering some sort of tragedy or setback or becomes the victim of the corrupt in sport; here it's the latter. Then in the last reel, the bad things go away, all good things happen (sister regains sight), and the young man realizes his dream of becoming a professional (lawyer) and marries his good and pure childhood sweetheart (although we've always been willing to bet that he had carnal knowledge of a few of those more experienced ladies before settling down with Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes). The second film in the double feature, Baxter's Beauties, is a ‘30s-style musical wherein the down-on-his-luck producer wants one last hit musical revue, the ingénue chorus girl wants - and gets - her big break and realizes her dream of becoming a star, the established witch of a star has something bad happen to her, usually because of her dissolute ways and/or jealousy of our heroine, and she finds love with the show's shy songwriter, who wrote all the songs for her and can finally reveal his love for her once both their dreams of Broadway success have come true.

The end.

The 1980 romantic/caper comedy Rough Cut, based on the novel by the same name, departed a bit from Gelbart's usual fare. Starring Burt Reynolds as a master jewel thief about to retire; David Niven as the Scotland Yard detective, also about to retire, who wants to catch the one criminal who eluded him to cap off a sterling career; and Lesley-Anne Down as the young lady caught between them, falling in love with the jewel thief that she is being forced to inform on to avoid prosecution for a crime of her own; it was heavier on the planning and execution of the crime and the conflict between the two life-long rivals and the young woman caught in the middle than either the comedy or the romance, and suffered a bit, compared to other Gelbart films. This was followed by Neighbors, one of the last films starring John Belushi as a man whose peaceful suburban existence is shattered by the raucous couple who just moved in next door. Neighbors was extremely not-well-received.

Fortunately for all concerned, Gelbart's next film project was Tootsie. An unlikely hit on the face of it, the tale of a perfectionist actor whose reputation for being difficult makes him so unemployable he's forced to don drag and audition for a woman's role in hope of getting something just to pay the bills, only to become more popular and in-demand as a woman than he ever was as a man, garnered praise from just about every corner of the movie industry, and awards and nominations from just about every society and guild that gives them. Amongst the most coveted of those coming Gelbart's way were nominations for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar; the Best Screenplay BAFTA; and the Best Screenplay, Motion Picture/Comedy Golden Globe; and won the Los Angeles Film Critics' Association Award for Best Screenplay; the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Screenplay; the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay; and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen. In addition, Tootsie was chosen by the Library of Congress in 1998 as being "culturally significant" and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. It was the second-highest-grossing film of 1982, and the 133rd-highest-grossing film of all time, and came at #69 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list. Tootsie is a cultural touchstone, one of those films that just about everyone has either seen or knows its plot; so much so that someone who professes never to have seen it or have any idea what it's about will invariably be greeted with the incredulous, "What?! You've never seen Tootsie?! How could you not have seen Tootsie?", followed by a litany of all the reasons the benighted one is a Grade A loser for not having seen the film.

Gelbart's next film, Blame it on Rio, didn't receive quite as much approbation. Truth be told, it was about as universally reviled as Tootsie was revered. The English-language version of a French film, Blame it on Rio starred Michael Caine, Joseph Bologna and Demi Moore in a romantic comedy-cum-morality tale about two middle-aged men, best friends who work for the same company in São Paolo, Brazil, facing problems in their marriages and mid-life crises. Along with their teen daughters, who are also best friends, they decide to forget the problems in their home lives and take a vacation in Rio de Janeiro, where there're lots of nubile young women frolicking nude on the beaches, lots of booze to lower middle-age inhibitions, and lots of trouble when the two collide. Affairs are had, secrets are revealed, and pain is caused, but in the end, everyone is a little older, a little wiser, and the men have repaired their marriages, the better for everyone to live happily every after. Blame it on Rio has the lamentable distinction of being Gelbart's last original theatrical screenplay; in 2000, he co-wrote, with Harold Ramis, the remake of Bedazzled.

Gelbart remained active writing for the Broadway stage and television, however. His 1993 adaptation of Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, for HBO was well received by both audiences and critics, and brought him an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing in a Miniseries or a Special, and a WGA Adapted Long From/TV award; he also wrote 1997's Weapons of Mass Distraction, about the war between two media moguls over the purchase of a football team, which garnered him an Emmy nomination ; and 2003's And Starring Pancho Villa As Himself, the true story of how the famed Mexican revolutionary hero raised money for his war effort by signing a contract with DW Griffith to film Villa's battles during the Mexican Revolution.

As the 20th century waned and the 21st got underway, Gelbart kept busy with writing that was outside the enthronement industry. He wrote his memoirs in 1997, entitled Laughing Matters: On Writing M*A*S*H, Tootsie, Oh God!, and A Few Other Funny Things; he was also a contributing blogger on The Huffington Post, the liberal-leaning news Web site and aggregated blog, and was a regular participant on the alt.tv.mash Usenet group.

But all stories must eventually have their end, and so, too, it was with Larry Gelbart. Having been diagnosed with cancer in June of 2009, Gelbart went to meet the Ferryman on September 11th.

Patrick Swayze

Patrick Swayze was born to be a dancer.

His mother, Patsy, was a dancer, choreographer and dance-school instructor who ran a studio in Houston, Texas, where Swayze was born. He grew up in the dance school, learning classical ballet as well as ballroom; he also studied ice-skating - almost a natural offshoot of dancing - played football, and acted in the occasional school play. Swayze had hoped to win a college scholarship through football, but that road was blocked when a knee injury ended his football career whilst he was still in high school.

Instead of heading off to college straight out of high school, Swayze remained in Houston into his early 20s, continuing to pursue his dance studies and helping out at his mother's dance school. It was at the dance studio that Swayze first his future wife, Lisa Niemi; she was a student of his mother's. Once Swayze felt he'd gotten all the training he could in his home town, he moved to New York to complete his formal ballet training at the Harkness Ballet and the Joffrey Ballet.

In New York, he pursued his dancing career; his first big break came when he was cast to dance the role of Prince Charming in Disney on Parade; his next part was stepping into the role of Danny Zuko in the hit musical Grease. This led him to pursue acting, and he won his first role in a major motion picture in 1979, the roller-disco/'70s comedy series stars vehicle Skatetown USA, allowing him to utilize his ice-skating and dancing skills in one role. Roles in TV movies followed, until he was cast in Francis Ford Coppola's film adaptation of the S E Kline book, The Outsiders. Considered one of the earliest film incarnations of that ‘80s repertory film company the Brat Pack, it was also a breakout film for many if its young stars, including Swayze, Matt Dillon, C Thomas Howell, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, and Diane Lane. Set in early ‘60s Oklahoma, it focused on two rival gangs, the poor-kid Greasers and the rich-kid Socials, and the family at the heart of the Greasers, Darrel, Sodapop and Ponyboy Curtis. The tale of class and gang tensions, family turmoil and how loss affects the mind as well as the heart, was well-received by critics and the moviegoing audience.

Swayze followed up The Outsiders with Red Dawn, the USSR-invades-the-USA war movie that fed into conservative fears of just such a scenario after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan; in fact, many of the tactics used by the American resistance were based on the strategies employed by the mujahideen. Red Dawn also boasted an impressive young adult cast; in addition to Swayze, the movie starred Charlie sheen, C Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, and Jennifer Grey. The alternate-history tale was and still is a very big hit with political conservatives; a fair number of moviegoers enjoyed it, too.

After acclaimed appearances in both North and South mini-series, Swayze got the dance to display his dancing talents when he was offered the role of Johnny Castle, the dance instructor and head of the entertainment staff at a Catskills resort. The role seemed as if it had been tailor-made for him, and yet he almost didn't even get a chance to audition. The role of Johnny as originally written had him of Italian ancestry, with dark, exotic looks, and Billy Zane, another hot young actor of the time, was initially cast; however, his dancing screen tests with Jennifer Grey, who had already been cast as Baby Houseman, were terrible, displaying no chemistry with Grey whatsoever. But possibly giving the part to Swayze, who had come to the attention of the filmmakers thanks to The Outsiders and Red Dawn, carried its own problems; when Swayze and Grey had filmed Red Dawn, they had not gotten always along well, and producers feared they wouldn't be able to work well together on Dirty Dancing. So the actors, both consummate professionals, met to work things out, and when they did their dancing screen test, the chemistry fair leapt off the screen.

Dirty Dancing opened to mixed critical reviews, but audiences embraced it In a surprise to the filmmakers, the expected audience of teenagers didn't show up; instead the movie skewed to adults, who so enjoyed it some would turn right around and go back into the theatre and watch it again. Word-of-mouth made Dirty Dancing a monster hit; it has been named as having the "most romantic movie quotes ever"; termed "Star Wars for girls"; and appeared on several British-compiled lists of women's favorite movies. Dirty Dancing remains one oft he top films ever released to this day.

What with all the publicity and approbation Swayze received after Dirty Dancing, one would tend to believe that the actor/dancer was set for life, with nothing but scads of quality films offered in such rapid succession he would face the delightful dilemma of having too many good roles from which to choose.. Unfortunately, that was not the case; filmmakers seemed to seize on Swayze's two roles prior to Dirty Dancing and proceed to cast him in roles in the same mold as the ones he played in The Outsiders and Red Dawn, only not as three-dimensional or as well -written. As a result, Swayze did a series of films memorable more for their violence and blood than for complex situations and compelling characters. It was during the unfortunate string of films Steel Dawn, Tiger Warsaw and Next of Kin that Swayze began to fear being typecast as a low-life thug who knew only violence as the answer to every one of life's questions; the actor reached the nadir of his career with Road House, a particularly violent and mean-spirited film that was nearly as unpleasant an experience for the actors making it as it was for the audience members watching it. Road House earned Swayze his second Razzie nomination for Worst Actor; the first being for Next of Kin.

Had Swayze continued to have been stuck making such soul-sucking films, he may well not have warranted but the briefest mention in entertainment news circles, nor be remembered as fondly or by as many people, but fortunately for all concerned, Swayze got his next big break when he starred as the sensitive banker, Sam, whose innocent, unknowing interference in a money-laundering scheme brings about his murder in Ghost. Also starring Demi Moore as Sam's girlfriend, Molly, and Whoopi Goldberg as the huckster "medium" show discovers she really has the power to hear earthbound sprits, the supernatural romance/thriller became a blockbuster success; its many iconic scenes, particularly the pottery scene, have become the stuff of pop-culture literacy and comedic parody, just as Sam's inability to reply to Molly's proclamations of love with anything but "ditto" resonates with any woman who's ever been in a similar situation. So basically, all of us.

Ghost led to Swayze's next legendary film, Point Break. The story of a gang of bank-robbing competitive surfers and the FBI agent who goes undercover to catch them, only to come to admire their philosophies and lifestyle and lose himself in his cover, with dire consequences. Swayze played the charismatic Bodhi, leader of a surfer gang whose adrenaline-saturated life is born not out of an addiction to physical peril, but from metaphysical tenets arrived at after much contemplation, with Keanu Reeves portraying Johnny Utah, the G-man and former football star who is drawn into Bodhi's circle and eventually discovers he has more in common with the daredevil surfer's worldview than with the Bureau's. Their complex relationship, and what it leads both men to come to understand about each other and themselves, drives the film, as does the action sequences; the surfing sequences, and the sky-diving scenes that enhanced and propel the plot forward. Both Reeves and Swayze did all their own surfing and sky-diving, with Swayze suffering four cracked ribs as a result. The film received mixed critical reaction, but the moviegoing public didn't care much; the film did respectable box office in the US and better than that internationally; by raising the profile of its star, it led to Swayze being named People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive in 1991.

But as often happened in Swayze's career, a successful film, more often than not, begat a string of lesser cinematic lights. During this somewhat dry spell, however, there was not an attempt by casting directors to try and return Swayze into a bloodthirsty protagonist; instead, Swayze was cast in a variety of films, from the charming foreign human drama City of Joy; to his personification of an America folk hero, Pecos Bill, in Tall Tale; and his role as a petty thief stuck with custody of the two children from his ruined marriage and no way to support them in Father Hood.

And then along came To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar. Part road-trip comedy, part social commentary, part buddy film, To Wong Foo (as it's known colloquially) is one of those rare Hollywood films that is unique in both concept and execution. The heartwarming story of a trio of drag queens who drive cross-country from New York to Los Angeles to compete for the Drag Queen of the Year crown. Along the way, they are greeted with prejudice (but not for the reason you'd think), domestic violence, vintage fashion, and a homophobic sheriff who's made them his very own Jean Val Jeans; after their car breaks down in a small town, the resultant wait for the proper part to repair it provides the trio a chance to interact with the backwards townsfolk, treating them with kindness and dignity and doing what they can to make the townspeople's lives better, for no other reason than they have the opportunity and are glad to help others. In the end, they teach those who wish to learn confidence, tolerance, and how to accessorize, but most of all, the townsfolk learn the truth behind the famous aphorism about assessing a tome by its binding. Though the film wasn't well-received by critics, it was by audiences, ranking 48th overall at the box office for 1985.

After To Wong Foo, Swayze's career took one of its customary dips; his next two films, the fantasy Three Wishes, and the action crime thriller, Black Dog, whose title derives from a British demon whose appearance on the road portends death, made little impact at the box office or with critics; his career suffered further with the 1998 HBO film Letters From a Killer, but not in the usual way. During filming, Swayze was seriously injured when he falls off a horse and into a tree, breaking both legs and detaching four tendons in his shoulder. Filming was delayed for two months but ultimately finished; Swayze, however, would not be able to return to acting until 2000, and though he recovered, his career never truly did.

Beginning in the final year of the 20th century and continuing for the rest of his career, Swayze starred in a series of films that garnered neither critical praise nor much public interest; in fact, the one film that varied from this pattern, 2001's Donnie Darko, featured Swayze in a minor role, and though Donnie Darko is a critical darling, the public never warmed to the odd mental illness/time-travel tale. The Southern-themed road-trip comedy Waking Up in Reno was drubbed critically and at the box office; Green Dragon, which tells the story of South Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon and their tribulations after they immigrate to the US, received some critical praise but was ignored by audiences; 11:14, an ensemble drama à la Crash, where several people's lives intersect at the titular time through a series of events, and which was straight-to-video; Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, a prequel to Dirty Dancing in which Swayze played a minor role and which was universally critically reviled and studiously avoided by moviegoers; the foreign films Jump and Keeping Mum, both of which were limited releases in the US; Christmas in Wonderland, a Canadian-made holiday film that had a limited, one-week engagement in the US before heading off to DVD land; and Last Dance, a film written and directed by Swayze's wife Lisa Niemi, about three dancers who reunite to try and save their teacher/mentor's acclaimed dance company after his death, and the complications that arise from the old wounds that were never healed, and the conflicts that were never resolved. Swayze also appeared in several television movies in the 21st century, including George and the Dragon, Icon, and King Solomon's Mines, playing Allan Quartermain in the latter.

Cancer is an insidious disease. Secretive, it grows in the darkness, undetected, for years before it makes its presence known. Those with access to them can undergo the routine screening tests that exist for some cancers, to guard against these varieties growing to critical or fatal proportions before the first symptom is felt. But there are a (thankfully very few) cancers that are so difficult to detect that by the time you're diagnosed, it's already too late. And of the two main forms of the disease that fall into this category, one is gender-specific and the second seems to be. For a woman, it's ovarian cancer; and for men, it has increasingly become pancreatic cancer.

Such was the case with Patrick Swayze. As with Michael Landon, who, after a rather public diagnosis in May of 1991 and defiant, transcendent struggle, ultimately rendezvoused with Azrael in July of that same year, at the far-too-early age of 55, Swayze received a rather public diagnosis, in his case late January 2008. As did Landon, Swayze vowed to fight the cancer with everything he had; unlike Landon, quite a few more chemotherapy drugs and combination radiation/chemo treatments had been discovered and were in use, and Swayze initially responded, making enough of a recovery to return to acting.

Swayze's first post-diagnosis theatrical film was Powder Blue. Another lives-intersecting-in-LA Crash-type film, it received an extremely limited - as in, about two days - theatrical release in May of 2009, before showing up on DVD, literally two-and-a-half weeks later. His final acting project was a series on A&E, Beast, in which Swayze played a veteran FBI undercover agent whose techniques are unorthodox at best, borderline-illegal at worst. Though the series was well-received, by the time it premiered in January 2009, Swayze's health had begun to fail precipitously; with a star unable to promote the show, the ratings quickly tumbled, and the series was canceled in June.

In April 2009, Swayze's doctors informed him the pancreatic cancer had metastasized to his liver. After a resolute, tenacious fight, Swayze rang down the curtain and went to join the Choir Invisible on September 14th, at the far-too-early age of 57.

Joseph Wiseman

Dr No.

Had Joseph Wiseman only ever played the eponymous villain in the first James Bond film, that alone would have been enough to include him in our fond remembrance of those Hollywood luminaries who have rung down the curtain and gone to join the Choir Invisible. Though his film resumé is short - Wiseman had a much more extensive stage and television career - the films in which he did star are amongst the most memorable and beloved of the 20th century, films which, perhaps ironically, did a great deal for the film careers of his main co-stars than they ever did for his.

Wiseman was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada; like many before him, he came to the Land of Opportunity for work, in his case, theatre work. He started in summer stock as a teenager, and made his Broadway in 1938 in a bit part in Abe Lincoln in Illinois; other memorable plays include King Lear, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, Clifford Odets' Golden Boy, and two productions about the life of Jeanne d'Arc: the Maxwell Anderson play Joan of Lorraine, which was ultimately filmed with a title change to Joan of Arc; and Jean Anouilh's The Lark. He continued to perform on Broadway throughout his career, with his last appearance being in a revival of Judgment at Nuremberg in 2001.

His first film role was in the Kirk Douglas noir vehicle, Detective Story. In the film, he plays burglar Charley Gennini, one of the many suspects brought into the precinct where Douglas' Detective McLeod works; Gennini plays a pivotal role in the fate of McLeod and sets in motion the film's climax. His next role was opposite Marlon Brando in Viva Zapata!; roles in Les Miserables, The Silver Chalice, and The Garment Jungle, along with a slew of guest-starring roles on television, followed.

Then came Dr No.

It is said that his work in Detective Story is what brought Wiseman to the attention of Harry Saltzman, and led to him being cast as Dr Julius No in the first film about everyone's favorite MI6 agent with a license to kill, James Bond. Wiseman's eponymous medical man helped to establish many conventions for Bond villains that would continue throughout the series and to the present day, including being a member of SPECTRE; possessing a highly-sophisticated, highly-destructive weapon he plans to use to carry out his heinous plan; and being incredibly forthcoming as to what that plan is, how it's going to work and when the job is planned, giving Bond plenty of opportunities to screw the plan up something fierce. It was also widely rumored that Wiseman provided the voice for Blofeld in Thunderball; however, the role is uncredited, and there is no evidence for Wiseman's participation.

Wiseman then returned to Broadway and the small screen, working steadily in both well into his latter years. Among the most memorable are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, which starred Richard Dreyfuss in one of his first major film roles; The Valachi Papers, the true story of Joseph Valachi, the first Mafia informant, which starred Charles Bronson as Valachi and Wiseman as Mob boss Salvatore Maranzano; and The Night They Raided Minskey's, another true story about the beginning of the striptease in burlesque and how the Minskey Brothers made their theatres famous and very lucrative by pushing the boundaries of how much skin women could show onstage and in what ways, and getting themselves raided on a regular basis; Wiseman played Louis Minskey, the elder of the brothers; The Besty, based on the Harold Robbins novel by the same name and starring Sir Laurence Olivier in one of his lesser parts; and, believe it or not, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, as the series' pilot had a brief theatrical release prior to its television premiere. His final film was the Robin Williams vehicle Seize the Day, about which the less said, the better.

After he stopped making theatrical films, he returned to the stage and, primarily, to television, where he had been performing since the dawn of the medium and would continue until his death; amongst his better-known TV movies and mini-series were QB VII, the miniseries adaptation of the Leon Uris book; and Crime Story, the TV movie that served as the pilot for the series of the same name. He also appeared in a slew of TV series, amongst them Night Gallery, The Twilight Zone, The A-Team, The Streets of San Francisco, MacGyver, The Equalizer, and Magnum, PI; Wiseman's final television appearance was in an episode of Law & Order: Original Recipe.

In declining health as he neared the end of his ninth decade, Joseph Wiseman departed for the River Styx on October 19th, due to natural causes.

Jennifer Jones

For anyone who has ever seen the film Song of Bernadette, it's easy to understand why Jennifer Jones became a huge star.

Born Phylis Isley in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Jones' parents owned and operated a traveling tent show, which is likely what gave her the desire to become a movie actress. After graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, she returned to Tulsa to do a radio program her father had arranged, then moved to Hollywood to begin her film career. She had small parts in the John Wayne Western New Frontier and a serial, Dick Tracy's G-Men. But after she failed a screen-test at Paramount, she decided to go to New York.

Once there, she began modeling for John Robert Powers Agency and looking for acting jobs. Upon learning of an audition at Selznick Studio, she went to read; afterwards, she was convinced it had been a horrible audition and fled the studio in tears. However, David O Selznick had overheard her audition and was sufficiently impressed to offer her a seven-year contract, and he proceeded to groom her for stardom.

First thing to go was her name; Selznick changed it to the more sophisticated-sounding Jennifer Jones, in order to match her striking, patrician looks. Her next screen test, for the role of Bernadette Soubirous in The Song of Bernadette, was a success, and she got the part. The story of the pious French country girl who sees a vision of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes and then decides to devote her life to the Holy Mother by becoming a nun, was a breakout role, and it garnered Jones the Academy Award for Best Actress. Over the next 20 years, Jones continued to build a sterling resumé in parts selected for her by Selznick. Some of her better-known films are Love Letters, a film about a wartime Cyrano and the dire consequences that can arise from romance built on a lie, with Jones playing the beautiful amnesiac Singleton; Duel in the Sun, about the doomed half-breed Pearl Chavez, too sexual for her own good, who came between two brothers and who died herself when the one she simply lusted after killed the one she truly loved; Portrait of Jennie, about an artist's obsession with a strange girl he meets in Central Park and how she indirectly helps his career; a film adaptation of the Flaubert novel Madame Bovary, with Jones as the eponymous adulterous wife who destroys the lives of those who love her; Carrie, a filmed adaptation of the Theodore Dreiser novel Sister Carrie, with Jones portraying the beautiful young girl who leaves her rural town to make a better life for herself only to encounter a variety of tragedies and travails; Beat the Devil, John Huston's noir spoof, with Jones co-starring alongside Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre; Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, the film adaptation of the novel of the same name about the love between and American reporter and Eurasian doctor in Hong Kong and the prejudice they must face; The Barretts of Wimpole Street, in which Jones starred as disabled poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Good Morning Miss Dove, a character study of a much-beloved schoolteacher remember her many students whilst hospitalized; and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, the film adaptation of the novel, with Jones playing the wife of the titular character, a man who tries to make a good life for his family by joining the corporate rat-race and his struggle to maintain their lifestyle without sacrificing them, or himself.

There are also four films on Jones' resumé that are unique to her, and reflective of the interest Selznick took in her career. The first is the British film Gone to Earth, the story Hazel Woodus, a young English girl who is able to commune with the wild animals in the forests surrounding her home and who helps solve problems and resolve questions in her life through the use of spells and potions that her Gypsy grandmother bequeathed to her. Selznick, famous for his multi-page memos to directors of the films he produced, giving them detailed instructions as to how a film should and shouldn't be handled, was constantly sending Gone to Earth's British directing team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger such memos, which Powell and Pressburger promptly ignored. Upon seeing the final product, Selznick hated it so much he used Powell and Pressburger to have the film changed. Selznick lost the case, but discovered he had the right to change the film for its American release. Which he did, cutting about 35 minutes of original material from the film's 110 minutes, then adding some extra scenes he had shot in America. Selznick released the revamped film in America under the title Wild at Heart.

The same sort of thing occurred on the film Terminal Station. A joint Italian/American project, the film concerned the disastrous affair between an Italian man and an American woman. Selznick again sent his detailed memos to the Italian director, Vittorio De Sica; not speaking English, De Sica, too, ignored Selznick and made the film his way. Montgomery Cliff, Jones' co-star in the film, felt Selznick was trying to make a slick little love story out of script instead of the complicated tale of a ruinous relationship that De Sica was making, sided with the director, which influenced Selznick...not at all. Once again, Selznick hated the final product, and re-cut the film to his liking; he excised 25 minutes from the original film's 89 and changing the title to Indiscretion of an American Wife for its US release. Montgomery Cliff hated the new version, declaring it a "big, fat failure". Critics agreed, and audiences stayed away in the proverbial droves.

After David O Selznick died in 1965, Jennifer Jones pretty much stopped acting; she did only two films, the last of which was the 1974 Irwin Allen disaster flick, The Towering Inferno. Part of an all-star cast that included Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, William Holden, Fred Astaire, OJ Simpson and Faye Dunaway, Jones played Lisolette Mueller, a painter being romanced by Astaire's Harlee Clairborne - in what was surely a bonus for Jones, she got to share a dance with Astaire - who risks her life once the fire breaks out to save a deaf woman and her two children, whom she knows live in the building and fears will be trapped. One of the more sympathetic characters in the cast, she also came to one of the more sympathetic ends as well. Coincidentally, the Norton Simon Museum lent several paintings to the production; Norton Simon as Jennifer Jones' husband at the time. After Simon's death in 1993, Jones became Trustee-Emeritus for the museum.

Always an intensely-private person, Jennifer Jones was never much on the Hollywood scene, remaining out of the spotlight save for her film roles, and thus avoided some of the drama that seems to surround many actors off-set as well as on. She continued this path after her retirement from films; she didn't grant interviews, nor did she attend any Hollywood events. Thus she was largely forgotten by the moviegoing public until she was summoned to meet the Ferryman on December 17th.

Dan O'Bannon

In space, no one can hear you scream.

The tagline instantly tells you what film. What you may not know is Dan O'Bannon one of three men responsible for bringing it to the screen.

Dan O'Bannon was born in St Louis, Missouri, and was a horror/science fiction fan from an early age. His love of the classic horror films he watched growing up fired his imagination, and the EC horror comics, such as Tales from the Crypt, and the science-fiction/fantasy magazine Heavy Metal that were his favorite reading materials inspired him to write; he even tried his hand at writing a few stories for Heavy Metal, though none ever appeared in the magazine. Undaunted, he decided to make writing his occupation.

When it came time to enroll in college and select a major, the choice seemed almost pre-ordained: the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, then known as the School of Cinema-Television. The oldest and largest film school in the country, it boasts as alums George Lucas, Judd Apatow, Robert Zemeckis, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Brian Singer, John Singleton, and many, many, many others. Whilst at USC, he met a fellow undergrad who would also go on to become a distinguished alumnus, John Carpenter. Finding they shared a love of horror and science fiction films and filmmaking, in 1970 they collaborated on a 45-minute short titled Dark Star. Its reception round campus was so great that they decided to show it round some film festivals and see what happened. What happened is people went nuts for the film, and Carpenter and O'Bannon picked up a producer who bankrolled the film's expansion to feature length so it could have a theatrical release; the expansion was completed in 1974 for a total cost of $60,000. No, you read that right; 60 thousand, not million.

With Carpenter directing, and O'Bannon writing, doing the special effects work and handling one of the lead roles, Dark Star became a cult science fiction classic, and helped both men get their foot in the movie industry door. O'Bannon's next film work was in the computer animation, miniature and optical effects units for fellow USC alum George Lucas' Star Wars in 1977, but he found himself unhappy at not being involved in the creative side of films, and so abandoned tech work afterwards.

O'Bannon's first writing project after he decided to leave F/X work behind harkened back to his days at USC. One of the most memorable creatures in Dark Star was the alien that Pinback keeps as a pet: a beachball with feet. O'Bannon had long been considering writing a script that was essentially Dark Star as a horror film instead of a comedy, with a realistic-looking alien that would scare the bejesus out of people. rather than making them laugh hysterically at the very idea of a alien beach ball. With feet.

O'Bannon began writing a script entitled Memory, about a crew of astronauts on a sleeper ship who are awakened by a strange signal from a seemingly-uninhabited planet; they go to investigate the signal and their ship is damaged, leaving them stuck on the planet for a time. Memory essentially formed the opening sequence of what would become Alien, but O'Bannon hadn't yet decided the exact nature of the alien the crew would encounter. Around this same time, Ronald Shusett started working on a script based on Philip K Dick's We Can Remember It for You Wholesale. Having seen and admired Dark Star, Shusett contacted O'Bannon; during their discussions, they decided to collaborate on their projects, choosing O'Bannon's because they felt it would be the less costly one to produce. The partners' work was interrupted when O'Bannon was offered a six-month gig in Paris, working on a film adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic science-fiction novel Dune, with noted surrealist Alejandro Jodorowsky. Ultimately, the project fell apart, but O'Bannon met several artists who afforded him ideas for his pet project, including Chris Foss, whose cover art for science fiction novels impressed him.

But perhaps his most important contact during this period was with H R Giger. O'Bannon found his paintings disturbing; horrible yet strangely beautiful, and they had a profound and lasting effect on him. Years later, O'Bannon would credit Giger in an interview for giving him focus for the alien in his Dark Star-as-horror film script; he was quoted as saying he wrote "a story about a Giger monster".

When O'Bannon returned from Europe he started living with Shusett, and they revived his screenplay for the film with the tagline referencing the inability of a vacuum to transmit sound waves. The collaborators had a first half, but not a second; Shusett suggested they adapt another of O'Bannon's stories, about gremlins who get inside a World War II B-17 sabotage it, changing the setting to the spaceship. It was also Shusett who came up with the idea of having one of the crewmembers be implanted with an alien embryo that would later burst out of him; he thought it an interesting plot device for getting the alien on the ship. O'Bannon had come to dislike the script's current working title, Star Beast; he changed it to Alien after realizing that's what the thing was called every time it's referenced in the script. Both collaborators like the new title's simplicity and double meaning. After shopping the script to many studios, the scripters nearly made a deal with the legendary Roger Corman's production company, but a friend got them a better deal at the last minute with a production company called Brandywine, which was affiliated with 20th Century Fox; the company's founders were director Walter Hill, and producers David Giler and Gordon Carroll. The partnership with Brandywine turned out to be a crucial one for Alien; it was the top brass that stood up to 20th Century Fox on many occasions when the studio tried to interfere with the production. Ridley Scott joined the production shortly thereafter as its director; his detailed storyboards convinced 20th Century Fox to double the original budget they'd set for the film.

Even so, Alien's budget was appallingly small for an effects-heavy film, and despite the fact that all on the creative team agreed they didn't want to make a film that was a series of F/X shots strung together, there was still going to have to be a lot of models, a lot of mattes, miniatures, special make-up, space paraphernalia, the list goes on and on and on, and even if one is thrifty in one's shopping, F/X cost money. A lot of money. Fortunately for the audience, Scott, O'Bannon and their F/X crew knew how to create amazing sets and F/X that look like they cost a lot of money, but that kept the film under budget.

O'Bannon brought Ron Cobb, from his Dark Star days, and Chris Foss, whom he'd worked with on the abortive Dune project, on board to work out the spaceship and spacesuit designs. Cobb made a large number of detailed sketches of the interiors and exteriors of the ships and spacesuits before the production began; he wanted to make sure he had accurate designs that would look right to the audience, but not detract from the actors or the action. Chris Foss handled the conceptual art for the production design.

But again, the most critical element was the selection of H R Giger to create the Alien. O'Bannon showed Scott Giger's painting Necronom IV; the piece had long seemed to O'Bannon to capture the essence of the Alien, and Scott agreed.

Twentieth-Century Fox didn't.

The studio felt Giger's work was too dark, and that audiences would be turned off by such ghastly images. But this is the point where Brandywine - and the clout its top executives had - proved most vital to the film;; the production company stood its ground, and Giger was hired to design the Alien, its planet, and every stage of its lifecycle. Giger's attention to detail, to every aspect of the Alien and its environment - he even went to far as to airbrush the entire space jockey set -enhanced the sense of foreboding and the atmosphere of dread that became a large part of why audiences were so unsettled by the film.

One of the interesting things to note about Alien is that, when it was released, it was not universally loved by the critics. Whilst many saw the visionary aspects of the film, not all felt those visionary aspects were successfully achieved, and more than a few thought it was complete and utter crap. Moviegoers know good and different when they see it, though, and they expressed how very good and different Alien was by going to see it, scads of them, over and over and over again, and over time, it gained in stature until Alien is now seen as one of the most influential films of the 20th century.

The success of Alien brought O'Bannon and Shusett entrée to steady careers in screenwriting, and they would continue to joint and solo projects for the remainder of the 20th century. Their next collaboration was another horror film, albeit one closer to Terra, 1981's Dead & Buried. This tale of a quaint, peaceful little town where nothing bad could ever possibly happen -, you know; the kind that you only find in the movies - and the series of violent, gruesome murders of strangers in the quaint, peaceful little town where nothing bad could ever possibly happen. Of course, there's a sheriff who's gobsmacked at the idea that a series of violent, gruesome murders could have occurred in his quaint, peaceful little town where nothing bad ever happens, and said sheriff has to solve the mystery behind the serial killings. Dead & Buried sounds a tad clichéd by its synopsis, but it actually plays a bit with the conventions of the quaint, peaceful little town where nothing bad could ever possibly happen but does film, and there's a twist that...well, given who wrote the screen play, makes sense, and provides a fitting solution to the mystery.

O'Bannon and Shusett work on solo projects for the next several years. O'Bannon's next project was the animated film Heavy Metal, an anthology of science-fiction and fantasy stories adapted from, and original stories in the style of, the long-running magazine of the same name; then the helicopter police thriller Blue Thunder, about a souped-up military-cum-LAPD chopper and the fight to keep it from being used for the wrong reasons; and Lifeforce, the Tobe Hooper-directed space vampire film. No, really; the screenplay is based on a book called Space Vampires.

After believing he was going to direct Alien, only to be turned down by Brandywine because 20th Century Fox was requiring the film stay under budget and on-schedule and that wasn't something either believed a novice could do, O'Bannon finally got his chance to helm his own film, the magnificent Return of the Living Dead. Part parody, part homage to Night of the Living Dead, part straight-up zombie film, Return of the Living Dead followed the conventions of Romero's Living Dead franchise - it is based on the same novel. Well, the basic premise, anyway. - and then added a few extra bits of its own. The film's premise: the original Night of the Living Dead movie was based on a true incident, involving a military toxin in gaseous from that was accidentally released in the morgue of a VA hospital, and that some of those original Living Dead are still being stored in 55-gallon drums, suspended in the toxin. The events depicted in the film are also reported to be a true story, according to a frame-card shown at the beginning of the film, and they illustrate the dangers involved in using civilian contractors to do jobs that were once the purview of the US Armed Services; in this case, using a medical-supply warehouse to store some of those 55-gallon drums. An accident occurs, the toxin is released into the HVAC system in the warehouse...which just happens to store medical cadavers. And chaos and hilarity ensue. The film's memorable script and sprightly direction assured it a place in the pantheon of great little horror flicks, and O'Bannon once again helped to create a film that, in its own way, is as influential as Alien.

O'Bannon next wrote the script for the remake of Invaders from Mars, then reunited with Ronald Shusett to assist the former in finishing the other project on the burner when Alien was being written, the script of a Philip K Dick short story that became Total Recall Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, the big-budget summer blockbuster that resulted showed the qualities that were becoming hallmarks of O'Bannon's work, whether he was collaborating with Shusett, another scripter, or working solo; an intelligent script that is capable of holding its own against the F/X, witty dialogue, and an examination of how humans beings take the problems of the present into the future and that not a whole lot changes. Total Recall was another rousing success, and has become one of Schwarzenegger's signature roles.

For The Resurrected, O'Bannon returned to the director's chair, but this time directed a script he didn't write, an adaptation of the H P Lovecraft novella, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. The tale of a man obsessed with his ancestor's reported ability to raise the dead, the film was generally considered to be long on gore and short on reason. The film is not remembered by many today, the preferred adaptation being the Roger Corman-produced The Haunted Palace, starring Vincent Price (yes, I know, a Poe title; blame AI's desire to graft it onto Corman's successful films of Poe stories). Screamers, which was the next film to be released chronologically, was actually written by O'Bannon and Shusett many years earlier; it, too, was based on a Philip K Dick short story, Second Variety. The story of a future war fought by killer robots was also not very well received. The final film on which Dan O'Bannon completed work is a collaboration with Shusett; their script, Hemoglobin, had been written in the early ‘80s; it was renamed Bleeders and filmed in 1997. Based on an H P Lovecraft story about a strange blood-borne illness and rampant in-breeding, it, too, was not well received. At the time of his death, he had two films in development, Silvaticus 3015 and They Bite.

When O'Bannon wasn't writing films, he was talking about films. He did an extensive number of documentary and DVD feature projects, covering everything from his own films to the horror and science fiction genres in general, the life and work of the artist Moebius, and two projects considering the film 2001: A Space Odyssey in light of what the world and space travel were actually like come that magical year.

Dan O'Bannon suffered from the debilitating gastrointestinal disorder Crohn's disease throughout his life, and it is this chronic illness that led him to shuffle off this mortal coil on December 17th at the still-middle age of 63.

Brittany Murphy

As I mentioned earlier, as far as the human race is concerned, the Angel of Death never arrives on time. In the case of Brittany Murphy, the rush of his wings was heard much too early.

Born Brittany Anne Murphy-Monjack in Atlanta, Georgia, Murphy's parents were divorced when she was two years old, and her mother moved with her to New Jersey, then later to Los Angeles so Murphy could pursue an acting career; Murphy credited her mother's unwavering support for helping her to achieve success at a relatively early age, citing her mother's willingness to sell all their possessions and move to a city where they knew no one and there was no job waiting because she believed in Murphy's talent and ambition.

Momma's believe was warranted, as Murphy started finding work from the time she was 14. She had guest-starring roles on Murphy Brown and Kids, Incorporated, then landed a role as a regular on the short-lived comedy series Drexell's Class. After its cancellation, Murphy continued to get regular television work, guest-starring on many popular series and landing another role as a regular on another short-lived comedy series, The Torkelsons: Almost Home.

But her big break came in 1995, when she won a role in Amy Heckerling's Clueless, an update of the Jane Austen novel Emma; Murphy played Tai, the ugly duckling-turned-swan by Alicia Silverstone's Cher. Introduced to the joys of being gorgeous and one of the popular crowd by Cher, the leader of the crowd, Tai becomes so confident that she eclipses Cher's popularity, particularly after a supposed "near-death" experience at the local mall. As Tai becomes more like Cher, Cher begins to realize just how shallow and self-important she'd become; this realization crystallizes when Tai asks Cher's help to "get" her step-brother, Josh, Tai's unwillingness to listen to advice given from real affection, and her thinly-veiled insults to Cher just for trying to be a true friend, are pivotal to Cher's transformation from a self-centered, shallow shopaholic to a more socially-conscious, down-to-earth young woman, worthy of Josh. Murphy's portrayal of Tai was nuanced, as were the performances of the rest of the cast; all the actors helped save Heckerling's modernization of Jane Austen from being the train-wreck many expected.

Post-Clueless, Murphy was able to get more work in films on a regular basis, being cast in roles of varying size and importance to the story, but always making her performances memorable; the films Murphy appeared in during this time include the straight-to-DVD Mark "Iron Chef America" Dacascos vehicle Drive; the straight-to-DVD second film in the angel-wars-in-Heaven franchise, Prophecy II; Bongwater, based on the book by the same name about a day in the life of a stoner, with music by Tenacious D; and Drop Dead Gorgeous, a teen beauty pageant mockumentary with a sub-plot based on the real-life case of the Texas mother who murdered her daughter's main rival for a spot on the cheerleading squad.

Murphy's next important film role was Daisy Randone, in the film adaptation of Susanna Kaysen. Starring Winona Ryder as the author, and Angelina Jolie in her breakout role as the sarcastic troublemaker Lisa. Murphy's portrayal of the sexually-abused young woman whose coping mechanisms are an eating disorder and being a cutter brought out the fragility of an incest victim. Lisa's relentless harassment of Daisy, constantly reminding her of the incestuous relationship with her father, even taunting the poor child by claiming she enjoyed her father's advances - a societal towards victims of incest that was just beginning to change the ‘70s, when the film is set - sets in motion a series of tragic events that changes Susanna's attitude towards treating her own mental health problems and changes her life and her relationship with the other patients she had befriended.

In 2000, Murphy secured her first lead role in an independent film titled Cherry Falls; a horror/thriller, Cherry Falls was intricately-plotted, very dark in tone but with an overlay of sharp wit, beginning with the wordplay between the titular town and the driving force of the plot. For you see, Cherry Falls is being stalked by a serial killer, a serial killer that only murders virgins. So, as one of the taglines for the film put it, if you haven't had it...you've had it. Due to a mass-orgy scene with teenagers, the film had a lot of trouble getting passed by the MPAA; as a result, it never received a theatrical release, instead going the straight-to-DVD route. This didn't prevent Murphy from receiving praise for her performance, as critics who'd screened it were overwhelmingly positive. The film also became something of a cult hit, a fact that likely also contributed to its productive effect on Murphy's career.

Her next film role was in the Edward Burns-directed ensemble film The Sidewalks of New York, a series of vignettes showing the six-degrees-of-separation interconnectedness of six young people in the Big Apple; followed by Summer Catch, the Freddie Prinze Jr romantic comedy about the local boy from a summer-resort island who falls in love with a girl whose family summers there; and Riding in Cars with Boys, starring Drew Barrymore as Beverly Donofrio and based on Donofrio's biography of the same name.

Murphy's next major starring role was in the 2001 Michael Douglas vehicle Don't Say a Word. As the long-institutionalized Elisabeth Burrows, a character that easily could have devolved into a histrionic, film-torpedoing black hole instead becomes a fragile, cagey and surprisingly tough damaged young woman who holds the key to a fortune and the return of her psychiatrist's kidnapped daughter. While the film itself was knocked by the majority of critics - and some moviegoers as well - for being too formulaic by half, with far too many moments where believability doesn't just walk out the door, it runs, jumps into the nearest taxi and takes the next flight out of town, it still did fairly well at the box office, and it gave Murphy the next step up the career ladder. And that next step came in the form of 8 Mile, Eminem's semi-autobiographical film about growing up poor white trash in Detroit. As Alex, the inspiration for Jimmy - the Eminem stand-in in the film - to get his offstage life together and build a better foundation from which to pursue his true love, rap music, Murphy received good notices in a role that could have been completely overshadowed by Eminem's performance as...well, Eminem, and Kim Bassinger's bravura performance as Jimmy's slatternly, alcoholic mother.

In 2002, Murphy took on her first role that was a departure from type. Spun, about a group of meth addicts and dealers and their interactions with each other and the cops, had Murphy playing a character that could not have been farther from the bright, focused social climbers and career women Murphy usually played, both before and since (and yes, I know Elisabeth Burrows hardly qualifies as a "social climber", but she is, in her own odd way, focused and determined, and she's not nearly as screwed up as Murphy's character here). Murphy's Nikki is a tweaker who thinks nothing of being traded for meth, or of trading her body for meth, or...well, she pretty much thinks of nothing but meth. Whilst the film is a complete downer that is over-run with unpleasant characters and enough double-crossing, back-stabbing and tangled relationships to make a soap story editor say, "Enough!", Spun wasn't well-received by critics, and its limited release kept it from being seen by many viewers, but by taking such a risky role, Murphy signaled she wasn't afraid to take chances.

Returning to type in the busy year of 2003, Murphy seemed to stumble, finding herself stuck in three comedies that committed the greatest sin comedies can: they weren't funny. Starting with Just Married, which co-starred Ashton Kutcher. A romantic "comedy" about a young couple who have just gotten married but are already keeping big secretes from each other, the jarring juxtaposition of ugly-American-tourists-exasperate-Europeans slapstick, moments of witty dialogue and character-development scenes made the film painful to watch, particularly given there was far too much of the repetitive, humorless slapstick and far too little of the witty dialogue and character-development scenes.

Next up on the unfunny-comedy train was Good Boy!, the talking-dog film that could have been called All Dogs Are Aliens, since it's premise is that what we think are animals that evolved on Earth from wolves are actually extraterrestrials from the planet Sirius 7. See, that's the Dog Star. Get it? You now have an idea of the level of the "comedy" on display in this little gem. At least Good Boy! has the excuse of being a children's' film, something Just Married couldn't claim. At any rate, turns out dogs can talk, too, which one young boy discovers when his newly-adopted pet starts asking him questions about why the clearly-inferior human race are the masters instead of the canines, then informs the boy that all Earth's dogs are going to be whisked away for "re-education" - nice thing to introduce into a kids' flick, that - if dogs aren't in charge of Earth by the time the home planet's ruler arrives. And much hilarity ensues. Murphy voices one of the dogs, and at least has the decided advantage that she doesn't have to be seen trying to make the "jokes" work, a luxury Kevin Nealon and Molly Shannon don't have. Then again, considering it's Kevin Nealon and Molly Shannon, it's not like they'd know any different anyway, so hey; maybe the casting directors knew what they were doing with that one.

The trifecta of suck was topped off by Uptown Girls, a formulaic "too-old child teaches a too-young adult how to be an adult whilst too-young adult teaches too-old child how to be a child" chick flick that tried hard to be giddy and whimsical and wistful but made so many mistakes along the way that they can best be summed up by pointing out that they tried hard. In a comedy. Which is number two, I think, on the list of Things Never to Do When Making a Comedy.

And yet the strange thing is, all three films did relatively well at the box office, at least in part because, for all that she wasn't given much to work with, Murphy managed to provide at least some high points in each film, occasionally the only high points, even when playing characters that weren't all that appealing. It was a testament to the talent of an up-and-coming actress and a portent of great things to come.

Yet 2004's Little Black Book not only didn't fare any better, in some ways, it fared worse, since it couldn't' decide if it was a dark satire or a breezy romantic comedy. The fact that the tone of the second half of the movie so wildly diverged from that of the first half that one might have been forgiven for thinking someone at the studio decided to splice two unfinished scripts together didn't help, nor did Murphy's unlikable character, who not only stoops so far as to snoop through her boyfriend's Palm Pilot, but then uses her position as a production assistant on a cable talk show to interrogate the women whose names she finds there. A film in search of itself, it did little to enhance Murphy's career, and her innate talent didn't go quite as far in rescuing the film at the box office, either.

It suddenly seemed as if, through an underdeveloped ability to pick good projects, instances of something that looked good on paper being so tinkered with at some point - or several points - that what ended up on screen was stripped of all viability, bad luck, or some combination thereof, what had been a promising career just two years before seemed on the verge of crashing and burning. Perhaps recognizing this, Murphy's next few films were either limited releases or films in which she took supporting roles, or often both.

In the highly-anticipated 2005 film Sin City, Murphy took the small role of Shellie, a barmaid, in the third vignette, The Big Fat Kill. The Frank Miller/Robert Rodriguez film, based on Frank Miller's series of graphic novels of the same name, was well received by both critics and audiences; she also appeared in a minor role in the straight-to-DVD release Neverwas. The following year saw Murphy appearing in Edward Burns' The Groomsmen, his second New York-centric ensemble film, in which she played a minor role in the not-very-well-received limited release; The Dead Girl, a series of five vignettes about people whose only connection is to the titular corpse, played by Murphy, was another limited release that was a critical success; Love and Other Disasters, a straight-to-DVD romantic comedy with strong gay and lesbian themes, in which Murphy's character was the catalyst for everyone else in the film to get their love lives moving in the right direction; and in her one wide-release film that year, Murphy took on the voice role of Gloria, the object of affection of the Emperor penguin who can't sing and thus stands little chance of winning a mate, in the animated hit Happy Feet.

Murphy then seemed to take 2007 off, or at least she had no films released that year, and only one film the following year, the joint US/Japanese feature The Ramen Girl, although it's better for everyone involved that one is forgotten, proof of which is its straight-to-DVD release in the US more than a year after filming was completed. She did, however, continue to voice the role of Luanne Platter, one of the regular characters on the animated Fox series King of the Hill; it was a role she played from the series premiere in 1997 through its season finale in 2009.

But one can get away with a lot of things when one isn't seen on-camera, and doesn't have to spend long hours on a set for days at a time, having to recite memorized lines on cue, get from one mark to another without running into walls or furniture or other actors. The rumors had been around for a number of years; dark whispers of drug use, dating all the way back to her strange behavior during a press junket for the UK premiere of Uptown Girls. Just a coincidence, really, that the whispers began around the time Murphy had just completed a string of films adjudged by critics as ranging from not-very-good to outright, horrifically awful; not at all related to her next film being not only being lambasted by the critics, but avoided by audiences; couldn't possibly have anything to do with how thin and haggard she began to look, especially when she wasn't being lit exactly right and with hair and make-up touched up just seconds before the cameras rolled, or the photo was taken. There was never any proof, of course, and denials were always swiftly and strongly issued whenever the occasional question was asked. But then the whispers would return, and became louder than before. And the longer Murphy remained wandering the wilderness of minor roles in limited release films, the more often those types of roles and projects were filmed overseas, the worse she began to look, even in publicity stills. the more often the question was asked and by a greater number of reporters, and the more often the cycle was repeated; the more often the cycle was repeated, the larger the crowd of reporters, still minuscule when compared to the flock of reporters and gossip columnists and paparazzi who followed her around, but a growing minority, who asked the questions, and the more often - and consequently, more forcefully and confidently - the rumors were denied. By the time 2009 rolled around, what had once been whispers had grown to a low but audible rumble, and the collection of journalists and, increasingly, fans, who were aware of the rumors and were beginning to take a closer look at what might and might not be true. Such is the nature of whispers that persist, that become louder, that percolate from the smallest circle of insiders into the edges of the public at large: after a time, when there are more and more indications something is amiss, and the repeated almost-by-rote denials are made with greater vehemence but no concrete answers for the incidents that fuel the rumors that engender the queries, the more likely there is perhaps a concrete basis for the scuttlebutt.

Murphy's physical appearance in the films released in 2009 did little to quell suspicions, beginning with the film that saw the earliest release here, the Lifetime Channel movie Tribute, based on Nora Roberts' romance novel of the same name. The story of a former child star-turned-home renovator whose plans to remodel her famous movie-star grandmother's Shenandoah Valley farmhouse are hampered by a sexy neighbor, a packet of her grandmother's love letters discovered in an attack, and a series of threats and menacing occurrences, provided Murphy with a role that should have been right in her wheelhouse, but critics noted she seemed detached from the on-screen proceedings, and markedly think and pale. The SyFy Channel Original Pictures film MegaFault, which first aired October 10th, also didn't help matters, and not entirely because it was considered, in all quarters, an execrable piece of schlock that was long on cheesy special effects and outlandish schemes and hilariously short on science; once again, Murphy looked haggard and gaunt. Across the Hall, which received a limited theatrical run in the US beginning October 30th, an expansion of a short film by Alex Merkin about a jealous young man who, upon learning his fiancée has checked into a hotel with another man, resolves to shoot her lover and checks into the room opposite theirs, then calls his best friend to inform him of the plan and to get moral support; it then becomes the best friend's mission to prevent the man from carrying out his plot and ruining the lives of all involved. Though Murphy wasn't quite as noticeably fragile and wan, she also seemed to have been purposely filmed so that something prevents the viewer from seeing the actress in a full-length shot, using sweaters and contorted posture to break up Murphy's bodyline.

But when Murphy departed the supernatural horror film The Caller in November 2009, the grapevine exploded with supposition over the "real" reason; it didn't help matters that there were two answers given as to why Murphy was released from filming. The producers said she was fired because she was being difficult on-set and her husband was getting into fights with the locals and being a general pain-in-the-ass. Murphy's camp maintained that the actress had left due to the long-time cover-up defense "creative differences"; in keeping with tradition, said "differences" were never enumerated. Shortly on the heels of this incident came reports of her behavior on the set of the recently-wrapped horror film Something Wicked; she was reportedly "barely there" during shooting; she seemed to lose focus in the middle of a sentence, and was even said to go in and out of consciousness during takes. Her behavior was so erratic that it actually hurt the production, as she had been cast as a therapist and, under the circumstances, the audience would hardly have believed her portrayal. As a result, her role was rewritten so the character matched her demeanor. Murphy also saw her part as the girlfriend of Mickey Rourke's character in Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables cut in a script rewrite; and she was dropped from the film Shrinking Charlotte, wherein the titular woman falls in love with her psychiatrist, after the producer received inside reports of her behavior on the set of The Caller.

Given the trend of events as 2009 drew to a close, there would almost certainly have been some kind of blow-up/breakdown/showdown/intervention in 2010, but Azrael saw to it there was no need. In the early-morning hours on the Sunday before Christmas, a frantic 911 call was placed by Brittany Murphy's mother, Sharon, stating she had found her daughter unconscious in the shower and pleading for help. Paramedics rushed to the home Murphy shared with her mother and husband and began administering CPR on-scene and en route to the hospital; and doctors worked frantically to revive Murphy once she arrived at Cedars-Sinai, but to no avail; the Angel of Death ultimately stilled her heart, for reasons that are not yet clear and will not be known for some weeks to come, on December 20th.

In Passing: 2009, Part I

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