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Day of the DeadBy Chris HydeNovember 1, 2003
It’s El Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday devoted to honoring and celebrating the now dearly departed. Please join us today in remembering some fantastic figures of film that have left this mortal coil since last November 2nd. As with last year’s piece that was devoted to the Day of the Dead here at BOP, the persons detailed below are for the most part those who are somewhat lesser known than the big Hollywood stars that we’ve lost this past year. This is in no way intended to slight the Donald O’Connors and Katherine Hepburns of the world, who should also command your respectful remembrance on this solemn occasion. But these figures are so high-profile that you can find their obituaries in any old newspaper; we’d rather use this space to recall a few other luminaries who may not have gotten the attention that the bigger names have merited upon their departure from the living. With that said, let’s take a look at some of the film personalities who have sadly left the earth in the calendar year that has passed since the Day of the Dead 2002.
Gordon MitchellBorn Charles Pendleton, this bodybuilder-turned-actor worked his way up in the entertainment world after apprenticing in the Mae West Revue. Once he broke into film, he would go on to appear in an amazing number of movies -- many of which were in the once popular sword and sandal genre that had a recent comeback with Gladiator. Beyond these, however, he also turns up in films such as the Django spaghetti western series, a Laura Gemser Emmanuelle outing, Fellini Satyricon and ‘50s Hollywood projects The Ten Commandments and The Man With the Golden Arm.
Jack SmightA 40-year veteran of directing on both the big and the small screen, Jack Smight brought his touch to a wealth of projects in both mediums. For television he helmed episodes of series such as Columbo, McCloud, Route 66, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and The Twilight Zone (in this latter series he was responsible for such efforts as “Night of the Meek” with Art Carney as Santa Claus, and “Twenty Two”, wherein a young woman has a nightmarish hospital stay). On the silver screen, Smight directed such stars as Paul Newman (Harper, Secret War of Harry Frigg), Warren Beatty (Kaleidoscope) and Rod Steiger (The Illustrated Man, No Way To Treat a Lady) in the 1960s and later would hit the disaster movie circuit with Karen Black and Charlton Heston in Airport 1975. He was also responsible for being the man behind the camera on the 1977 post-apocalyptic piece Damnation Alley, which for female star Dominique Sanda represented a bit of a step down from her work with Robert Bresson, Vittorio de Sica and Bernardo Bertolucci.
Mark HannaActor and writer Hanna had a fairly brief career in the movies, but in his capacity as scriptwriter somehow managed to pen some of the most popular and memorable of the horror movies of the fifties. His B-movie screenplays for Not of This Earth, The Amazing Colossal Man, The Undead and The Attack of the Fifty Foot Women likely won’t be remembered for their towering contribution to the history of cinema -- but along with being successful in their heyday, something about his work remains resonant even recently. Fifty Foot Woman was remade in the ‘90s as a TV movie, and surprisingly Not of This Earth has been filmed twice more, the 1988 version starring the notoriously once-underage porn star Traci Lords in her bid for a non-adult line of work.
Brianne MurphyA true movie pioneer, Brianne Murphy was the first woman to join the American Society for Cinematographers, and for 15 years was the only female member of the group in a profession that to this day remains mostly a male-dominated craft. She was additionally the first female to be the principal DP on a unionized, major studio Hollywood film (1980s Fatso with Dom Deluise), and she counted multiple Emmy nominations -- with one win -- among her achievements, as well as a shared technical Academy Award for helping to develop a means of safely shooting scenes involving moving cars. Along with that stellar work, it’s also worth noting that Murphy was married to B-movie producer Jerry Warren and got her film start working as a production manager and dialogue coach on some of Warren’s early productions like The Incredible Petrified World, Man Beast and Teenage Zombies. And if you think all of the above would be enough accomplishments for a lifetime, let’s not forget that she also directed two films her own self -- one of which (Blood Sabbath) was a tale of black magic that featured Dyanne Thorne (most famous as Ilsa in Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS) and the lusciously endowed Uschi Digart.
Leslie Cheung Kwok-wingPerhaps the most tragic of the deaths remembered today belongs to this huge Hong Kong film and pop star, who killed himself by leaping from the top of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel last April -- a happenstance that eerily echoed the final scene in the film (Inner Senses) that would be his last role. Cheung initially appeared in a number of Hong Kong films in the early 1980s, but would ultimately catch his big break with his appearance as Kit in John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow. From this point he went on to become one of Hong Kong’s most famous personalities, achieving spectacular success in both music and film. In addition to continuing his association with Woo, Cheung would go on to work with directors as high profile as Stanley Kwan, Chen Kaige, Tsui Hark, and Wong Kar-Wai. Some of his most lasting film performances would be for this latter director, with his work in the 1997 Happy Together being especially well respected. Unfortunately, in recent years Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing found his star to be somewhat in decline as age crept up on him and his career stumbled a bit. Still, it was a great shock to filmgoers the world over this last spring to hear that this vibrant and skilled actor had sadly chosen to end his own life on a lonely Hong Kong morning. He will be missed.
Anne GwynneStarting out in show biz as a beauty pageant contestant and swimsuit model, actress Anne Gwynne would eventually move on to films during the 1930s. First starting out in cheapie B-level oaters, she’d later become a staple in the Flash Gordon serials with Buster Crabbe. But her most prominent work would be done on Universal’s 1940s horror circuit, where she would co-star with genre greats Bela Lugosi, Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney, Jr. and Boris Karloff. In films such as Weird Woman, House of Frankenstein and The Black Cat, Gwynne brought a added bit of homespun all-American sensibility that helped round out the era’s creepfests. After she got married in 1945, Gwynne reduced her acting workload, though she would continue to appear at times on television or in films right up until 1970.
Philip YordanScreenwriter and producer Yordan is justly remembered for his own work, scripting films such as Dillinger, The Man From Laramie and The Big Combo. As a producer, he helped make films mostly in the Westerns and sci-fi space -- most notably the excellent John Wyndham adapation Day of the Triffids. But perhaps Yordan’s most lasting career achievement was that he often served as a front for blacklisted writers during the McCarthy era, going so far as to have a number of said writers living with him in the cellar of his Paris townhouse. His motives were said to be fairly apolitical, and in latter years there would be squabbles with the people whose work he had been credited -- like writer Ben Maddow, who would claim that he had actually written much of Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar. Yordan denied the charge in this instance and was certainly a solid writer in his own right, but there’s no doubt that his name went on the screen frequently for the work of others throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
Anthony CarusoGreat Italian tough guy Caruso is probably most recognizable for his part as a safe cracker in the John Huston caper picture The Asphalt Jungle, but given his appearances in over a hundred films as well as plenty of television work, it wouldn’t be any surprise if you’d seen him somewhere else, either. The quintessential hood, Caruso’s roles usually involved playing a brutish type of varying Latinate ancestry given to pushing people around. Though he did also, at one point, play the Native American “Red Cloud” on an episode of the ‘60s spy spoof Get Smart.
Ivan RassimovAn Italian born son of Croatian parents, Rassimov became an actor during the early 1960s and would appear in a number of genre films through that decade and the next. He had a small part in Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires, following which he was renamed “Sean Todd” by an erstwhile producer and used in a number of spaghetti westerns, including Cowards Don’t Pay and Don’t Wait Django…Shoot! He worked in a set of giallos for Sergio Martino along with Edwige Fenech, and then was ultimately cast as a British cameraman in Umberto Lenzi’s notorious cannibal picture Deep River Savages. This wouldn’t be his last cannibal picture either, as he would also eventually appear both in Cannibal! and Lenzi’s 1980 Eaten Alive. While all of those would be enough spectacular credits to make any actor’s career, Rassimov had the additional pleasure of playing opposite Ilona Staller (the renowned Italian sexpot/politician better known as La Cicciolina) in Inhibition, Laura Gemser in a couple of late Emmanuelle pictures and even turns up in the Dyanne Thorne/Uschi Digart vehicle Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks. Now that’s a career.
Classy Freddie BlassieMainly known for his career as a pro wrestler, this self-described “Hollywood fashion plate” also had a small career in film, most visibly in a 1983 My Dinner With Andre takeoff with the late Andy Kaufman. I actually saw Mr. Blassie introduce this film (entitled My Breakfast With Blassie) at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts years ago, and at the appearance the gruff Blassie regaled the audience with hilarious anecdotes about Haystack Calhoun and Gorilla Monsoon, as well as mentioning that it was the first time in his life that he had ever been in a museum. He was additionally quite effusive in his praise about what a sweet guy Kaufman had been, though he made sure to point out that he was a really lousy wrestler. In any case, now that the two have gone on to that great Sambo’s in the sky, perhaps it’s time that their classic movie meeting should finally be released to DVD. It’d sure be a fitting tribute to these two fallen greats.
Stan BrakhageWidely considered one of the world’s premier avant-garde filmmakers, when Stan Brakhage died recently he left a amazing body of work that comprises some 400 films. After dropping out of Dartmouth College during the 1950s, the director began to experiment with what he would later term “poetic film,” a non-narrative and intensely visual form of cinema that often eschewed the use of sound due to its distractive properties. Over the course of his 50 year career, Brakhage would create some works that are now among the best-known works of outsider film ever made, such as his seminal Window Water Baby Moving and Mothlight. One notable aspect of Brakhage’s output is how influential they were on mainstream film and advertising, their force being so pervasive that his name even turns up in the credits of David Fincher’s Se7en. While it’s unfortunate that this celluloid giant passed away just as his films were making their first appearance in the relatively new medium of DVD, today’s audiences can at least take solace in the 2003 Criterion two-disc set that preserves for posterity some of the director’s best work.
Ren YamamotoActor Yamamoto had nearly a 30 year career in film, and is most recognizable stateside for his work in a wide selection of the Toho monster movies that became popular here during the 1960s. In the decade between 1956 and 1966 he appeared in many of the most high profile of these rubber-suited epics, including the original Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra, as well as Frankenstein Conquers the World and War of the Gargantuas. He also had small parts in some war movies and samurai films for Toho in this era, quite often working with renowned director Hiroshi Inagaki in his sword fighting motion pictures.
Karen MorleyUnlike another recently deceased figure of film that died this past year, when called by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1947 to testify, this woman refused to answer questions or name names and thereby effectively ended her career. Prior to this ignominious end, the blond starlet had made a name for herself during the thirties in movies like Arsene Lupin and Dinner at Eight. Her initial big break had earlier come when Howard Hughes chose her to play the gun moll in the gangster classic Scarface, which subsequently led to a contract with MGM that she honored until her association with the studio fell apart over the parts she was being given to play as well as her marriage to director Charles Vidor. The actress then continued to work as a free agent performer right up until the point at which she was essentially blacklisted, turning up in such fare as Michael Curtiz’s coalmining picture Black Fury and the 1940 Hollywood version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Never renouncing her left-wing political bent, this principled actress would later go so far as to attempt a run at the Lieutenant Governorship of New York in 1954 under the auspices of the American Labor Party.
Bert LuxfordSpecial effects man Luxford worked on over a hundred films in the British film industry, though for the most part his work was completely uncredited. Known as “The Gimmick Man”, his specialty was creating inventive devices for movies in the 1960s and 1970s. Though he participated in films such as Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels and the Hammer horror pictures Countess Dracula and Twins of Evil, it’s his association with the James Bond films that is his most lasting legacy. With regards to that series, Luxford was responsible for devising the famous trick-filled Aston Martin that Sean Connery would drive in Goldfinger, as well as many of the other gadgets that Q got onscreen credit for.
Max PecasOne of the real pioneers of European softcore cinema, Frenchman Pecas specialized in sexy, low-budget comedies that are filled with much skin and even more silliness. He started in on this sort of material in the 1960s, co-directing a film with legendary adult filmmaker Radley Metzger as early as 1963 (The Erotic Touch of Soft Skin). From there, he would continue along in much this same vein for the remainder of his career, directing such classics as Sweet Taste of Honey, I Am a Nymphomaniac and 1001 Perversions of Felicia.
Alex GordonThough much of this man’s professional life was devoted to working as a publicist and executive for Gene Autry’s outfit, Alex Gordon also had a brief career in the ‘50s and ‘60s as a low budget producer of Westerns, monster movies and rock-and-roll pictures. Among his credits are Dragstrip Girl, She Creature, and Shake, Rattle and Rock, and he additionally co-wrote stories with Ed Wood, Jr. that would become Jail Bait and Bride of the Monster. An avid film buff (by the tender age of 36 Gordon would claim to have seen over 20,000 movies and serials), as a producer Gordon also delighted in giving work to the actors whom he had loved to see perform on screen in his youth: two 1965 Westerns he produced feature such luminaries as Fuzzy Knight, Johnny Mack Brown and Buster Crabbe, and one (The Bounty Killer) even includes a brief appearance by Bronco Billy Anderson -- a cowboy who had made his film debut in the 1903 landmark film The Great Train Robbery.
Jack ElamA recognizable icon of the Western genre, Elam’s trademark grin and crazy eyes led him to a lengthy career in movies and television. He was often cast as a ruthless cowhand, a town drunk or a grizzled old man and over the years became known as a common character in the oaters still being continually churned out by Hollywood in the ‘50s and ‘60s. One feature that added to Elam’s style was his cockeyed look, the result of having been stabbed in one eye with a pencil by a fellow boy scout when he was a child. While Elam is certainly best known for his ubiquitous presence in westerns (the actor shows up in Once Upon a Time in the West, High Noon, Hannie Caulder, The Far Country, The Man From Laramie and many others), he also had a presence in a couple of classic film noirs and gangster pictures, appearing in Phil Karlson’s Kansas City Confidential, Don Siegel’s Baby Face Nelson and Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly.
Ian McNaughtonEarly in his life Ian McNaughton was an actor both on the stage and in film, specializing in the main on characters that were of a Scottish bent. He even went so far as to play a character oddly named Haggis in the ‘50s Hammer sci-fi film X the Unknown. Switching to direction in the early 1960s, McNaughton would make his lasting mark as the man who helmed nearly every episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, helping to ground the comedy troupe enough so that they could get the madcap antics into a final form. McNaughton is said to have quite truly appreciated the anarchic zeal of the Python crew, but he is widely credited with reining them in just enough so that they could wrap each week’s shootings and move on to the next.
Kinji FukasakuA prolific director of films in many genres, this director left a body of work that comprises over 60 films. Some of his yakuza gangster tales are considered true classics, notable among them being Graveyard of Honor (recently remade by Takashi Miike) and Battles Without Honor and Humanity. But the director wasn’t limited to this sort of project, as he also directed comedy (Black Lizard) and sci-fi (Green Slime, Virus, Message from Space). Controversial to the very end, in recent years Fukasaku shook up the Japanese film world with his apocalyptic set piece Battle Royale -- a movie set in a bleak future where on an isolated island 42 high school students are forced to battle each other to the death. A towering figure in Japanese film, in 1997 Fukasaku was awarded the prestigious Medal with Purple Ribbon from the government of his home nation.
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