The Classics Shelf: Anthony Perkins, Part Four

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THE SEVENTIES: CHARACTER ACTOR

Spending a decade in Europe was likely good for Anthony Perkins’ soul, but it wasn’t good for his star rating. His return to Hollywood was accompanied by a reputation that no longer associated him with box-office power. He felt his turn in the adaptation of Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays his best performance, and he and Tuesday Weld got Oscar buzz that didn’t pan out. However, for the most part, he was moving into supporting roles in bigger films like Murder on the Orient Express and Disney’s The Black Hole. He appeared with former partner Tab Hunter (although not in the same scenes) for the only time in his career in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, his second outing with Paul Newman. His lasting friendship with Stephen Sondheim resulted in a collaboration for the screenplay of The Last of Sheila, a murder mystery based on games they played at their parties featuring disguised versions of people they knew. (It has recently been unearthed as a cult classic, and formed the basis of Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion.)

Perkins and Sondheim announced a further collaboration on a film set in the world of Broadway chorus girls, but it never materialized, nor did a seven-part crime puzzle called Crime and Variations, but Perkins did take over for Anthony Hopkins on Broadway in Equus to great acclaim. A fun highlight in this era was his hosting Saturday Night Live, including a skit about the “Norman Bates School for Motel Management.”

The seventies were a tumultuous time for Perkins’ personal life, as he reached a crisis about his sexuality that saw him being treated by psychologist Mildred Newman, who, according to Hunter, was doing her best to convince him that being gay was the source of his personal demons and he needed to try electroshock therapy. Perkins believed his mother’s sexual abuse was responsible for his orientation, which, sadly, he was only open about discussing once he was in therapy to cure it. Early in the decade, he met photographer Berinthia “Berry” Berenson (sister of Barry Lyndon and Cabaret star Marisa), who was engaged to artist Richard Bernstein, and the two fell in love despite her being warned that her new lover wasn’t necessarily a ladies’ man. Berenson insisted that the therapy was working and they married in 1973, pregnant at the time with their son, future Longlegs director Oz Perkins, who would be followed by Elvis two years later. Perkins and Berenson appeared together in the film Remember My Name and remained married until his death. In 2001, Berenson was aboard the plane that crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. She was 53 years old.

Catch-22

Mike Nichols, 1970

Following the success of The Graduate, Mike Nichols was in a blank-cheque position to pursue any project he wanted. His choice was the daunting task of adapting Joseph Heller’s highly conceptual black comedy novel to the screen despite the fact that nothing about the book suggested that this would be possible. The result has often been seen as a disappointing bomb, although it was actually in the year’s top ten box office hits. More accurate is that it was easily overshadowed by that other insouciant dark comedy about war, Robert Altman’s MASH. Heller himself approved of the film adaptation despite numerous changes made to its tone and narrative. The book’s actual level of dark humour is something that could only be made by a daring independent filmmaker today, but what results is an impressively large production that holds on to its satirical flavour from beginning to end and allows its impressive cast to shine. Perkins has a small role in what would have been a great project for him so soon after his return from Europe, as the concerned chaplain attending the men who are seeing their friends get blown up while serving in the Mediterranean. Alan Arkin has the lead role as a bombardier desperate to be sent home, who keeps trying to convince his superiors that he is too mentally feeble to fly another mission but, with every attempt to do so, keeps seeing the number of required missions being raised. The large set pieces are eye-popping when you remember that computer-generated effects were not available, and while some viewers might not get a lot out of a movie that spends its entire time smirking at you, there are enough pleasures to make it well worth watching. A television miniseries adaptation that remained more faithful to the original novel was produced by George Clooney (whose ex-father-in-law, Martin Balsam, appears in this film) in 2019.
National Society of Film Critics Nomination: Best Supporting Actor (also for WUSA)

WUSA

Stuart Rosenberg, 1970

Made in anticipation of the harsh political reality of the coming Nixon years, this film could easily be relevant to Trump-era America today. Unfortunately, there’s not much else to recommend it, a messy and confusing adaptation by Robert Stone of his novel A Hall of Mirrors. Paul Newman plays a disc jockey who comes to New Orleans and falls in love with a down-on-her-luck sex worker (Joanne Woodward) before getting a job at a conservative radio station, whose messages of white supremacy he reads over the air while thinking he can get away with simply not believing in them. Perkins is also in the city, naively taking surveys of the living conditions of welfare recipients without realizing that his data will be used by his greedy bosses to take advantage of them. It often feels like scenes have been cut out, given how little sense there is in the progression of one plot point to the next, and the climax, a shooting at a mass rally that could easily be seen as a lampooning of more recent Republican conventions, does not feel earned. Made by Newman with director Rosenberg in the wake of their success with Cool Hand Luke, it’s a testament to his chemistry with Woodward in their few scenes together (there aren’t a lot of real-life couples who also generate heat on screen) but otherwise is a deservedly forgotten moment in the careers of everyone involved, which also includes a powerful, brief performance by Cloris Leachman.
National Society Film Critics Nomination: Best Supporting Actor (also for Catch-22)

How Awful About Allan

Curtis Harrington, 1970

Aaron Spelling produced this flimsy but enjoyable television movie in his second decade as a small-screen powerhouse, a classic example of Perkins’ post-Psycho persona being used for irony. In a role that he shot in fifteen days for a hefty $30,000 fee, he comes home from a long stay in the hospital after a fire that killed his father and left him blind, though his doctors have told him that he is only suffering a psychological response to his trauma and has nothing physically wrong with his sight. His guilt over causing the fire is compounded by the sight of his sister (Julie Harris), who takes care of him while sporting a plastic cover on her face where she was burned. Worse, she has been renting out a bedroom in their house to local university students to help cover expenses, and it seems that the new boarder arouses suspicion in our paranoid hero. I’m not boasting when I tell you that I guessed the final plot twist within the first ten minutes of the film, I don’t expect a seventy-minute television movie from this era to be L.A. Confidential, but there’s no denying that casting Norman Bates in the lead role is a dead giveaway to the manner in which the narrative plans to manipulate your expectations. No matter, however, as it’s a pleasure to watch this cast, which includes the late, great Joan Hackett as a neighbour and Perkins’ love interest.

Someone Behind the Door

Nicolas Gessner, 1971

Charles Bronson starred in a number of films in Europe before a late life stardom brought him back to the United States in the seventies, and this is one of the last films he made before that happened. It’s also one of the many projects he made with his wife, Jill Ireland, in which he plays an amnesiac who is found wandering on an English beach with no memory of who he is or what happened, and with no understanding of why there is the body of a murdered woman near him. A fisherman brings him to the hospital where a neurosurgeon (Perkins) examines him, then takes him home to let him rest, but we soon find out he has his own devious reasons for doing so. The doctor is married to a beautiful young wife (Ireland), but his obsession with his work and neglect of her has driven her into the arms of another lover. Wanting to get his revenge, Perkins convinces Bronson that the woman on the beach was his own wife in the hopes of getting him to commit a crime that he himself can get away with. It’s a wonderful concept but this is as dry and uneventful a script as Perkins ever had to work with. It’s based on a short story (by Jacques Robert) but it actually feels like a leaden adaptation of a stage play, almost all of it taking place in one location, completely lacking in tension or intrigue.

The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean

John Huston, 1972

The upcoming bicentennial celebrations had a lot of artists questioning the origins of America and the wisdom of how its current nation state had formed. In the movies, most of these ironic examinations of patriotic pride took the form of westerns, and Huston’s marvelous film had the disadvantage of following Robert Altman’s tighter treatise on the same thing, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, a year before. The screenplay by John Milius openly acknowledges its fictionalizing of the myth of Roy Bean, a fugitive who heads to the lawless side of the Pecos River and sets up shop after killing a group of men who try to hang him for the change in his pockets. Declaring himself the law in these here parts, Bean (played by Paul Newman, in one of his favourite roles) oversees the growth of a tiny Texas town before competing interests, in the form of a bespectacled businessman played by Roddy McDowall, set their sights on taking over all that is his. Huston seeks to humorously poke the bubble of Greatest Nation in the World rhetoric by presenting a land that has been shaped entirely by short-sighted greed, unchecked violence and soulless opportunism. What he sells short, however, is the vicious nature of his lead character, who is made much more likeable by its being played by a sexy star and not the less generous, near-psychopathic portrayal of him by Walter Brennan in his Oscar-winning performance in William Wyler’s The Westerner. Altman had already pointed out that the west was settled by booze and sex workers and not by the bravery of gun-toting cowboys, but the familiarity of this film’s themes are easily forgiven thanks to what it has going for it. A sterling supporting cast of famous cameos, including Perkins as a fancy-talking preacher with an adorable mop of hair, a terrifying Stacy Keach as the psychopathic “Bad Bob” and Ava Gardner as Bean’s beloved Lillie Langtry, are boons to the experience, as is the stunning cinematography by Richard Moore that never distracts from the action but gives the eye plenty to feast upon.

The Last of Sheila

Herbert Ross, 1973

A Hollywood producer invites his closest industry friends to play an elaborate scavenger hunt while vacationing on his yacht in the south of France, but he is murdered on the second day, and looking into his death reveals his having had something much darker in mind than just parlour games. Stephen Sondheim and Perkins wrote the screenplay based on the murder mystery parties they used to throw for their friends (including Ross) and come up with a slow-burn, glamorous collection of twists that keep you guessing until the end.
Edgar Allan Poe Award: Best Motion Picture

Murder on the Orient Express

Sidney Lumet, 1974

The seventies saw a number of Agatha Christie murder mysteries made into films thanks to the success of this adaptation of her popular novel. While riding a train through Europe after solving yet another confounding case, Hercule Poirot (a slyly hilarious Albert Finney) finds that a gruff American millionaire (Richard Widmark) was murdered during the night when the vehicle stopped due to heavy snow conditions. When it is discovered that every passenger on board, played by an assortment of famous names, has some involvement to a recent kidnapping case in which the victim was also implicated, all aboard are immediately suspects and our investigator must interview them all to find out who actually did the deed. Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar for her gem-like performance as a shy Swedish missionary, although personally if I was going to single one of them out for awards attention, I’d go for Wendy Hiller as the ghoulish Russian princess or Lauren Bacall as the overly chatty American dowager. Lumet, however, doesn’t waste the potential of any member of the cast, eliciting terrific moments from the likes of Sean Connery, Jacqueline Bisset, and Jean-Pierre Cassel and, of course, Perkins himself. As the secretary to Widmark’s boorish art collector, Perkins is once again playing to Norman Bates expectations, a character described by someone as a “sensitive, motherless boy” who is the first to be interrogated and the first to be cleared. After all, how could a sweet, effete man do something as terrible as stab someone to death? Christie was reportedly more satisfied with this film adaptation of her novel than any other made in her lifetime (and thankfully she never lived to see Appointment with Death).

Mahogany

Berry Gordy, 1975

Diana Ross plays the secretary to the manager of a fancy Chicago department store, who goes home every night to her rough southside neighbourhood where an ambitious local politician seeks to win her heart. An opportunity as a model with an eccentric photographer (Perkins) sees her achieve her goal of becoming a celebrated fashion designer, which she decides to focus on instead. It’s the stuff of many a melodrama, it’s the seventies version of something Hope Lange would have made in the late fifties, and Ross gives it everything she’s got, even designing the fabulous gowns that her character sells, but it plays entirely on the surface and its predictability is that much more numbing as a result.

Remember My Name

Alan Rudolph, 1978

Robert Altman produced most of the films made by his protege Alan Rudolph, one of them this attempt at giving a natural treatment to a plot with the potential for high dramatic stakes. Geraldine Chaplin is excellent as a New York ex-convict who shows up in California, gets a job at the store run by her former cellmate’s son (Jeff Goldblum) and immediately begins stalking a married couple (Perkins, Berry Berenson) whose connection to her is soon revealed: Perkins is Chaplin’s ex-husband and she might be interested in getting him back. Unfortunately, the survival skills Chaplin has developed in prison also get her into a lot of trouble with co-worker Alfre Woodard and a pesky cowboy who keeps hitting on, which leads to the possibility that she might not last in this new setting for long. Chaplin’s slight frame and delicate appearance actually contribute to the constant threat of violence that she gives off rather than take away from it, and for Perkins fans it’s an interesting opportunity to see him away from genre filmmaking and play a rare role as an average, cool guy. Despite the fact that this movie features a killer, it’s not him, and this is not used as an opportunity for irony, plus it’s a unique chance to see him on screen with his real-life wife (though her never developing a full-bodied career as an actor isn’t necessarily a bad thing, she seems uncomfortable in every scene). Rudolph took from Altman the desire to put characters into situations and observe their behaviour rather than focus on turns of plot, but he doesn’t quite have the knack for capturing their quirkiest, funniest moments that his mentor did, and this is one of his experiments that sinks into dullness.

Les Miserables

Glenn Jordan, 1978

Victor Hugo’s novel is one of the finest examples of social commentary combined with interpersonal drama outside of the work of Charles Dickens, so it’s no surprise that it has been adapted numerous times in many ways since its publication, on stages musical and non, and on screens big and small. Of course the most notable version of the last century is the perennial stage musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel (translated by Herbert Kretzmer and Siobhan Bracke), but straight film adaptations have been made before and since that production as well, among them this television movie produced by Lew Grade and featuring Perkins in the role of the villainous, obsessive Javert. Eschewing a great deal of the layered plot and relegating the majority of its characters to cameos, this version focuses on Jean Valjean (Richard Jordan) escaping prison and dogging recapture from Javert, who puts aside all professional considerations to get the man back behind bars and uphold his passionate, inhuman need to live by the letter of the law. No film adaptation can really capture this novel in two hours (the best version is still Raymond Bernard’s five hour 1934 version starring Harry Baur), but even with that consideration in mind, this is still among the least affecting versions out there, essentially something closer to The Count of Monte Cristo than Hugo’s novel. The performances, however, are terrific, and Perkins gives one of his finest turns in portraying the emotional fragility of a man who can’t let go of his obsession but can’t understand it either, and it’s worth watching to see his exceptional work.

First You Cry

George Schaefer, 1978

NBC News correspondent Betty Rollin was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1975 and later published a memoir detailing her experience of survival, including her undergoing a mastectomy. Mary Tyler Moore’s production company decided to turn it into a television movie with fictionalized additions to her private life, with Moore herself playing Rollins and Perkins her successful author husband Arthur Heroz (a character not related to Rollins’ real-life mathematician husband Harold Edwards). Their marriage is already fraught with miscommunication and differing goals before Betty’s diagnosis highlights the flaws of their relationship and threatens to destroy it. As Arthur becomes resentful of his reliable tough gal becoming vulnerable, Betty finds herself falling into the arms of an ex-lover who still wants her in his life, a Philadelphia millionaire named David Towers played by Richard Crenna. Her treatment proves successful in getting rid of the illness, but her insecurities over her now compromised body make Betty constantly afraid of the cancer coming back, and before long she is forced to face the fact that she is using her affair with Towers to compensate for her feelings of vulnerability. It’s a TV movie of its time both in style and presentation, every image features clothing and furniture in a shade of tan and Perkins smokes in her hospital room as she’s getting ready for life-changing surgery. More disappointing is that Schaefer’s direction is behind the times even for network movies of the week of the era, with a lot of stilted performances that feel more like sitcom television than prestige TV, and even the always reliable Moore and Perkins himself come across as awkward and ill-prepared. The plot takes as its centre the desperation that Betty has to remain a good enough wife despite what she’s been through, a narrative that would not fly today, but even with all these considerations, the film’s core intention is admirable and its heart is always in the right place. Looking to raise awareness among American women about a disease that was taking, and continues to take, many lives, the film acknowledges the fears of its character, the natural instinct to not want to face hard truths about our mortality and includes a lot of practical information about early detection and screenings.

Winter Kills

William Richert, 1979

This fictionalized expose of the JFK assassination and the cover-up that followed would be more palatable if it were either more credible or, conversely, more self-aware of its ridiculous nature. Jeff Bridges plays the Bobby-esque son of a Joe Kennedy stand-in (played with unapologetic zeal by a wonderful John Huston) who, while serving in the military on a naval ship, hears a dying man’s confession that he was the gunman who assassinated his brother. Bridges arrives on dry land and begins to investigate this man’s confession, at first incredulous until he finds himself dodging killers at every turn and causing collateral damage that results in other people dying. Mob bosses, sexy female journalists, an odd Perkins supervising it all from a space-age control centre, an insane Sterling Hayden threatening to run over him with his armored tank and a cameo by Elizabeth Taylor, so much comes Bridges’ way that it is no wonder he spends the whole time with a stupefied look on his face. Bridges is wonderful in the lead, perfectly keeping pace with all the aspects of his character that are necessary: his sympathetic need for the truth, his obnoxious sense of entitlement and his slowly eroding naivete (not to mention that he’s young and gorgeous here). Unfortunately, director Reichert doesn’t know that he is making a tabloid-style piece of fluff bordering on farce and fails to find the very fine line between satire and terror that John Frankenheimer landed on so beautifully in his adaptation of a Richard Condon novel, The Manchurian Candidate. Many of the plot twists are hard to follow here, and the details are more obscure than complicated, the whole thing so preposterous that it cannot work without the shot of humour it so desperately needs. Huston, whose scenes are the only time the film blends its elements effectively, was to film the next major adaptation of a Condon novel, Prizzi’s Honor.

The Black Hole

Gary Nelson, 1979

Disney enters the space race after the success of Star Wars sees studios scrambling to get their own intergalactic projects into theatres. A crew aboard a spaceship have an encounter with a craft long thought lost, finding it parked somewhere near a massive black hole. When they go aboard they find a mad scientist (Maximilian Schell) who has every intention of entering the eye of the dark storm in order to discover its secrets. The crew is skeptical about the safety of this operation, but when they also discover the dark secret of the many robots staffing the ship, they become even more worried about their own well-being. The Mouse House puts a great deal of effort into pulling off the technical wizardry of this admittedly very beautiful film: the cinematography and production design are gorgeous, including effects that still look great, while John Barry contributes a rich and effective musical score. The script couldn’t possibly be paler, though, an impressive cast (including Perkins, Ernest Borgnine and Yvette Mimieux) wasted on washed-out characters put through dull situations that have no bite thanks to the filmmakers wanting to make sure not to alienate their youngest audience members. It has some appeal as seventies kitsch, and that’s about the most you can get out of it.

Twice a Woman

George Sluizer, 1979

Sluizer is best known today for his superb, subtle 1988 horror film The Vanishing, but among his earlier efforts was this attempt to treat what would have been, at the time, an explosive plot with the elevated prestige of a good character-driven dramas. Bibi Andersson is excellent as Laura, a museum curator who is at peace with her life as a divorcee before she randomly meets and falls, unexpectedly, in love with a young woman (and because it’s the seventies, the fact that she’s only 16 isn’t the explosive part of the plot). The girl, named Sylvia (played, in her only film role, by former model Sandra Dumas), accompanies her on long drives to Nice to visit her mother’s nursing home and to the opera, their unconventional relationship causing a mild stir in their society for how unapologetic they are about it. It causes much more upset with Laura’s ex-husband, Alfred (Perkins), who decides to prove his manhood by interfering in their domestic bliss. Throughout the film I was prepared to say that this is a rare case of Perkins playing a role post-Norman Bates that doesn’t capitalize on that persona but, alas, the final act proved me wrong, for why on earth would you even bring in someone as famous as Anthony Perkins to play this small role unless it was to have him ruin everyone else’s fun? It’s a dull drama and its having been completely forgotten is not an injustice, but it is also another example of how good Perkins is on camera, a magnificent practitioner of the art of film acting who can’t come off as plastic or awkward despite unsure direction and a script that never comes to life. Imagine an Iris Murdoch novel without the detailed observation or energy and you have an idea of what’s happening here, a film that means well and tries hard but just isn’t that interesting.