John Grant

During his long and interesting career, director Blake Edwards made about 3 dozen films.  Although well known for his comedies such as “The Pink Panther (1963),” “The Great Race (1965),” and “10 (1979),” Edwards occasionally directed dramas such as “Days of Wine and Roses (1962)” and “The Tamarind Seed (1974).”  He also directed an excellent western in 1971 called “Wild Rovers” which stars William Holden, Ryan O’Neal, and Karl Maldon.

Wild Rovers

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Holden and O’Neal dream of getting their own ranch, and convince themselves to rob the bank.  On the run, they start off with one horse, add a mule and then Holden captures and breaks a wild horse.  It really looks like Holden on the horse, although the film probably used a stuntman.  A 70 mm version of the film exists, with tremendous views of the filming locations, including Arches National Park in Moab, Utah.

“Libeled Lady,” a 1936 film from MGM, features an all-star cast of Jean Harlow, Merna Loy, William Powell and Spencer Tracy.  The terrific script gives each character rich and comedic dialogue.  The story concerns a newspaper managing editor, played by Tracy, who accidentally prints a false story involving the character played by Merna Loy.  Loy, as the libeled lady, threatens a $5 million lawsuit.  Tracy hires con man Powell to marry his fiancee Harlow, and then set off on a cruise to woo Loy.

Instead of luring Loy into an easy scandal, Powell falls in love with her and then protects her from Tracy and his prying photographers.  Loy suspects a rat at first but then falls for the charming Powell, and although the marriage with Harlow is a sham, she falls for Powell too.  Along the way, the movie treats the audience to many interesting venues, including a newspaper office, a cruise ship, a hotel suite, a horse farm, and a trout stream.  The personalities and acting styles of the four stars blend so well in this beautifully crafted script that the story flows smoothly after a complicated setup.
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Powell and Loy’s strong screen chemistry works as well as it usually does, and Harlow convincingly goes from loathing Powell to falling in love with him.  I love the forceful way Harlow delivers her lines, which gives her the power of integrity in every role she plays.  But despite plenty of motivation for finally dumping Tracy, she continually hopes the hard-bitten editor will finally marry her.  We can assume everyone lives happily ever after in this movie, but the filmmakers do not spell that out for us.

One of the principal screenwriters for Libeled Lady, Maurine Dallas Watkins, also wrote the stories for “Chicago” and the screenplay for “I Love You Again,” a funny 1940 film that also starred William Powell and Merna Loy.  In that film, Powell also plays a con man who falls for Loy.

I watched “The Stunt Man” the other day, a 1980 film directed by Richard Rush and starring Peter O’Toole, Barbara Hershey, Steve Railsback and a lot of character actors.  O’Toole plays Eli Cross, a despotic director of a World War I movie, whose filming interrupts the escape of a violent criminal, Railsback.  Railsback’s character, Cameron, believes he’s being menaced by a Duesenberg sedan intent on running him down, so he throws a wrench at it.  This sends the car off a bridge and kills the stunt man driving it.

Cross, eager to avoid giving an explanation to the police, hires Cameron as his new stunt man.  Cameron learns the ropes from the movie’s stunt coordinator, and manages to deliver every one of the director’s harrowing stunts.  Barbara Hershey plays the lead actress in the film as a free-spirited but professional woman, and an obvious admirer of Cross and his peculiar methods.  The film plays with illusion and reality, but thankfully does not attempt to trick the audience.  The viewer stays behind the scenes when the camera rolls, and then goes backstage to sense the romance and drudgery of film production.  In addition, every stunt is treated as craft; we get to see how the crew sets up the stunts — which explains why this film lives up to its cult status.

Peter O'Toole is Eli Cross.

The film the crew produces goes unnamed in the movie, although it seems to be made up on the spot.  Perhaps the fictional studio planned to name it after finishing it.  I would like to know what name they choose, since it’s an epic film with aerial battles, vintage cars and costumes, and hundreds of extras.  In another film-within-a-film movie, “Sullivan’s Travels” from 1941, which is directed by the great Preston Sturges, a successful director sets off to make a message film called “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?”  The director rides the rails with Veronica Lake and returns with the script to his bewildered Hollywood cronies.  It would have been a nice touch to know the name of the Eli Cross film.