The confusion between real and reel
David Sylvester
PEOPLE WILL TALK by John Kobal
Aurum Press, £14.95
0 ur ongoing involvement with the figures on the screen in the heyday of Hollywood motion pictures was of a radi- cally different order from what it is under the dominance of the television serial. Nowadays, our preoccupation is with, say, what is going to be JR's next move: our concern is with the behaviour of fictional characters, and the actors are their in- carnation, no more, no less. So actors who quit the family in search of new pastures may well find themselves in the desert while being desperately missed back at the ranch, so that there is nothing for it but a miraculous second coming, as with Patrick Duffy's recent return from the dead. Such total identification between character and actor was acknowledged in the course of a recent appearance by Larry Hagman on the Terry Wogan Show: inevitably, he pretended to a JR-ian appetite for wealth.
When movies truly mattered, we related not so much to the characters played by the stars as to the stars themselves; their parts were only the disguises they tried on. The stars were crystallisations formed by the interplay of their physical attributes, the roles in which they first won fame, the image projected in their publicity. Once the star had taken form, we checked his or her every appearance against it, requiring that each conform broadly to it, lest the spell be broken, yet offer enough variation to demonstrate the star's vitality. Iq those days we went to every appearance of our favourite stars as unfailingly as we now view every instalment of our favourite soap operas, for every appearance was an instal- ment in the serial story of the star's career. The suspense deriving from what the star's next move would be was, of course, a far more interesting kind of suspense than the soaps offer, because it involved the fate, not of fictional characters, but of living beings who were a wonderful hybrid of the fictional and the real. It was a great comfort when a pair of stars appeared together in several successive manifesta- tions: Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hep- burn, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, William Powell and Myrna Loy. Conversely, I remember how phased I was when a sophisticated friend at my prep school informed me that Jean Harlow's demise had been due to her having been lucked to death by William Powell'. That's impossible, I said to myself: William Powell has Myrna Loy; Jean Harlow be- longed to Clark Gable.
John Kobal's deep feeling for the identi- ties and destinies of the stars — and for how their particular studios provided their Elsinore, their Dunsinane, their Thebes can be exemplified by this passage on Ida Lupino:
She was high up on the list of powerful dramatic actresses dominating films in the Forties except that all of them seemed to be working at the same studio at the same time. Let's not even talk about Bette Davis. Miss Davis not only had the pick of all the best roles, she smoked the best cigarettes . . . only with Davis, cigarettes were an affectation; with Ida they were a vice. When Ida smoked, you saw the streets, kids huddling in back alleys, passing a fag around. Geraldine Fitzgerald, who was also at Warner Bros also smoked, but she held her cigarettes close to her face and delicately picked bits of tobacco from her tongue; Ann Sheridan smoked like a man, her cigarette clamped between her
lips, casual-like, both hands at the ready; Crawford never inhaled, hers was movie-star smoke, her cigarettes came in engraved silver cases and were there to give men something to do for her, lighting them, fetching them. Bette Davis made smoking her trademark, waving cigarettes about like a baton conducting invisible emotions.
But the pleasure of reading Kobal him- self is only the icing on the cake of a book of his interviews — 44 of them, recorded betwen 1964 and 1984. Most of them are with stars, female stars, including Swan- son, Brooks, Mae West, Crawford, Hep- burn, Bergman, Stanwyck, Miriam Hop- kins, Tallulah and also Arletty; the other woman interviewed is Anita Loos. The men who talk include one actor, Joel McCrea; the others are directors, notably Hawks, Milestone and Hathaway, a pro- ducer, a clothes designer, choreographers, above all top stills photographers, those artists whose crucial role in the creation of the identities of the stars is a field in which Kobal is, of course, the expert.
Kobal's special combination of knowing- ness, innocence, enthusiasm, and irony make him both an interviewer who stimu- lates talk and a commentator who inter- rupts his transcripts amusingly. These in- terviews are marvellous, and in all sorts of ways — gossipy, illuminating, wittingly or unwittingly funny, wide in their repertoire of forms of eccentricity, egocentricity, bitchiness, generosity, attitudinising, charm, self-deception, self-awareness. I could quote from them for ever; this is one of the best books for dipping into that I have ever come across. As a sample, I'm going to settle for an illuminating bit. The choice of speaker is therefore fairly pre- dictable, I'm afraid: Louise Brooks. (The passage refers back to a mention she has made of Sternberg's autobiography; the transcript of the opening sentence has not been properly edited by Kobal, who tends to be slapdash about that sort of thing.) But to go back to Dietrich, the most marvel- lous things about Sternberg's direction, whether he knew it or not, but in telling about Dietrich he solves the terrific mystery of her mystery! You know, most directors, or at least all directors whom I've worked for, give the choreography, the action and the words, and leave your inner thoughts alone because on the screen, like in life, a person is doing one thing and thinking another. Just as I'm talking to you now. You can also see that in Garbo, who I think is the greatest actress in the world, you can see that along with her actions is this wonderful mysterious thought line moving below. But it's harmonious, she's at one with her thoughts. But Dietrich always used to mystify me because I won- dered what the hell she was thinking about with that long, gorgeous stare. And of course he tells you in one simple line of direction: he said to her, 'Count six, and look at that lamp post as if you couldn't live without it.' So, giving her these strange thoughts which she was able to concentrate on to fill her mind, he also gave her this strange air of mystery, which of course she never had with any other director.
Previous page
