arts•meme » alan ladd

Rarely viewed version of “The Great Gatsby” starring Alan Ladd opens film noir festival

debra — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 08:43:01 +0000

An unusual choice for the opening act of the Noir City film festival — The Great Gatsby (1949, Paramount) in a new 35 mm print. The festival, now on at the Egyptian Theatre, is co-produced by the Film Noir Foundation and the American Cinematheque.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great masterwork from 1925 is far from pulp fiction. But it taps themes of the American underbelly — the tug between money, social power, and love. Perfect fodder for dark cinematic treatment.

Director Elliott Nugent’s Gatsby, shot in b/w, has undeniable noir characteristics. It charts Gatsby’s downward trajectory — a key noir theme. Naturally, it’s a woman who brings our hero down. But the well-born Daisy Buchanan (Betty Field) is a good girl, not a femme fatale. When at the end of the film she sacrifices Gatsby, contributing to his death, her gangsta stripes surface. Another of the novel’s elements that meld well with film noir is the pulpy portrayal of Myrtle Wilson, Tom Buchanan’s tootsie girlfriend. She’s played by Shelly Winters — born to play this role. Her aggrieved husband (Howard da Silva), seeking justice, shoots Ladd in the back in a swimming pool murder scene worthy of “Sunset Boulevard.”

Film noir experts Eddie Muller and Alan Rode, festival organizers, spoke prior to the screening. Said Rode: “Ten months ago, no one knew there was an Alan Ladd version of Gatsby. Some good people at Universal Pictures struck a new print in 35 mm, saying ‘Damn the rights!’”

Added Muller, “Alan Ladd is the perfect Jay Gatsby. This is a revelatory performance. Alan Ladd was instrumental in getting Gatsby made.”

In 1949, when the film was released, the great American novelist was not yet dead ten years (he perished in West Hollywood in 1941). Censorship issues hampered the film’s development process — not sex per se, but there was a general aversion to the novel’s morally loose jazz-age values. This seems ludicrous today. So many people working in Hollywood in 1949 must have known Scott. So it’s interesting and sad (so much related to Fitzgerald is sad) that the film had such a tough time getting made.

Calling Ladd “somewhat of a forgotten actor,” Muller noted that, “Every fourth movie at Paramount in the 1940s starred Alan Ladd. He was a huge star.

“There are not many blonde actors from this era.”

Ladd indeed gives off a fine air of elegance, desire, Fitzgeraldean romanticism, and criminality as the bootlegger Gatsby.

Fun to see this in anticipation of Australian director Baz Luhrmann’s “Gatsby” starring Leonardo diCaprio to be released at year end. I find diCaprio such uninspired casting for this role. Ugh, I last saw him flopping around like a beached whale as J. Edgar Hoover. Jay Gatsby is such a beautiful role for a man, although Fitzgerald sketches him so minimally in the book. I’d like to see him as hounded, edgy, and messed up, like Robert Downey Jr. can be. Downey’s too old now, as is Christian Bale who could be a great Gatsby. Clooney could also be good, but he too is too old. Redford wasn’t right either. I did enjoy Alan Ladd’s portrayal, but he played against an ill-cast Daisy. Why can’t Hollywood get Fitzgerald right? It’s like a curse.

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Noir City: Hollywood, 14th annual festival of film noir opens soon @ Egyptian Theatre

debra — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 02:23:03 +0000

Fourteen years ago, the American Cinematheque launched its inaugural festival of film noir. Back in 1999 it was called “Side Streets and Back Alleys: A Festival of Film Noir,” and it featured dozens of forgotten films, retrieved from critical exile, that have since been recognized as unjustly neglected genre gems, with many returned to circulation via DVD.

This year the the festival returns to the Egyptian Theatre, where it all began, with a super lineup of films ranging from pre-Code proto-noir (OKAY, AMERICA and AFRAID TO TALK) to perennial festival favorites (T-MEN, THE WINDOW, CAGED) to rediscovered rarities (NAKED ALIBI, SHIELD FOR MURDER, JOHNNY ALLEGRO, MANHANDLED, THREE STRANGERS, Alan Ladd’s 1949 THE GREAT GATSBY).

I’m all for F. Scott Fitzgerald, so I’ll go to the opening night Alan Ladd double-bill,

THE GREAT GATSBY (1949)

Universal, 91 min, USA, Dir: Elliott Nugent

Resurrected at last is this Golden Age version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, unseen for decades. Thanks to our friends at Universal Pictures, Alan Ladd’s noir-tinged take on the timeless tale of shady success and lost love can be seen again, in a brand-new print made exclusively for Noir City! Screenplay by Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum, based on the novel and a play by Owen Davis. Directed by Elliott Nugent. An intriguing take on an American classic. NOT ON DVD
THIS GUN FOR HIRE (1942)
Universal, 81 min, USA, Dir: Frank Tuttle

Alan Ladd skyrocketed to stardom playing vengeful assassin Philip Raven in this stylish adaptation of Graham Greene’s classic novel of espionage, transposed to the California coast. Veronica Lake sizzles in her first of seven onscreen pairings with Ladd, and noir favorites Laird Cregar and Marc Lawrence lend memorable support. Directed by Frank Tuttle, from a screenplay by W.R. Burnett (THE ASPHALT JUNGLE) and Albert Maltz (NAKED CITY)

_{Thank you, American Cinematheque, for text.}
_{Photo, Alan Ladd in “Gatsby”}

Noir City: Hollywood | Egyptian Theatre | opens Friday April 20 | full sked here

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As a dad, Alan Ladd walked tall

debra — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:03:18 +0000

Read this story on The Huffington Post.

size-medium wp-image-14915" style="margin: 0px 8px 8px 0px; float: left; width: 225px; height: 168px;" title="alan ladd, the blue dahlia" src="http://artsmeme.images-istarnet.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/a-the-blue-dahlia-THE_BLUE_DAHLIA-5-300x225.jpg" alt="a the blue dahlia THE_BLUE_DAHLIA-5" />“He got pegged as being short, 5’2″. But he was actually 5’6″ or 5’7″,” said actor/producer David Ladd, himself a very tall man and one of actor Alan Ladd‘s four offspring to work in the film industry.

Ladd spoke about his father following the absolutely fantastic screening of “The Blue Dahlia” at the Academy’s summer film noir series curated by Randy Haberkamp.

The George Marshall-directed Los wp-image-14911" style="margin: 8px 0px 8px 8px; float: right; width: 258px; height: 208px;" title="title blue dahlia" src="http://artsmeme.images-istarnet.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/title-blue-dahlia-300x238.jpg" alt="title blue dahlia" />Angeles crime whodunit, dating from 1946, has at its gritty core a tough-guy screenplay by crime writer Raymond Chandler. It was Chandler’s only original screenplay, his follow-up to a successful collaboration with Billy Wilder on “Double Indemnity.” There’s urban legend about Chandler finishing the script at home on a bruising, round-the-clock bender, dispatching pages to the studio by courier.

Watching “Dahlia’s” close-knit ensemble of character actors hurl Chandler’s hard-boiled lines at each other gives tingling pleasure. The director burns time and space around the words so you can take them in.

“Dahlia” is one of seven films Ladd made with co-star Veronica Lake. Ladd, junior, noted: “My parents loved each other. Veronica and my Dad did not have a real relationship outside their films,” adding, “One of his dearest friends, a life long friend, was [actor] William Bendix [who plays Buzz, a key role in "Dahlia."].”

“”Shane,” of course, was my father’s favorite film. But “The Great Gatsby,” he was most proud of. It was not successful. They [Paramount] knew they would re-do it and so they held it back [from distribution.] Howard DeSilva [also in "The Blue Dahlia"] was in it. It was set in the 1940s.”

“My father came from humble beginnings. His family came to California during the Depression; they were in Oklahoma for awhile. It was like “The Grapes of Wrath.” They lived in a tent city in Pasadena. He was malnourished. [Initially] he failed as an actor; they told him he was too short and too blond. Then he worked as a grip. So when he finally became a star, it was hard for him to believe. In Hollywood, the dreams are hard to hold onto. It’s hard to sustain.”

“When he eventually left Paramount, it was for financial gain, but it was like leaving his family.”

Alan Ladd died young, at age 51. Booze and pills were involved: “He was a tremendous athlete, he was a great diver and swimmer. But he didn’t take care of himself like people do today. He had depression problems. He had a tough time,” said his son David, with compassion.