COURAGE AND HYPOCRISY
Why should one look for courage among the movie stars, they’re just human. And, like the rest of us, generally turn peevish before inconvenience, arrogant in success, and cowardly before challenge.
Movie folk love proximity to actual heroism—the Farthest Left opponent of the police (in neighborhoods other than his own) will fawn over the cops and the military advisors on his films.
There are ample opportunities for persistence in moviemaking, but few for courage. But there are a few. The star who refuses to do a pornographic sequence called a “love scene” may have to stand up to The Man; the character actress who does so may get fired.
Diversity is well and good; it is no more foolish than Francis the Talking Mule, and, like that oeuvre, will at some point die of its own absurdity. It is like Modern Art, where the object is not superior to a description of itself. My daughter went to New York and saw, at MoMA, a violin, stuffed with corn. Get it? You wouldn’t get it to a greater degree by seeing it at MoMA.
“Diversity” is presented as “any person can and should be allowed to play any part”; an Asian man playing Ève Curie may be considered foolish or provocative (mealy-mouthed for “foolish”), but a white man playing Dr. King would be objectionable. This being the case, what is diversity? The above example reveals it as the usurpation of power, the newly powerful those who can insist on acceptance of their own definitions.
In an old-style love scene between a man and a woman, gays and straights could choose the object of their fantasy. In the same-team films, one group is debarred from doing so. Further, in old films, the odds were good that one of the stars kissing was actually lesbian or gay, a knowledge (or the rumors) of which were certainly in that gay community. Gays, that is, could fantasize about their like not only in the nonsexual scenes but also in the clinches, for his or her team member’s ability to put it over on the straights.
An overwhelming percentage of actors have always been gay. Film was a community shielded from outside meddling by the power of the studios. They’d protect their investment from the Puritans by co-opting the press and the cops. Unless the investment proved troublesome, in which case it was ratted out and/or framed. See the Roscoe Arbuckle case, where a now failing star was accused of raping a prostitute to death (she actually died of peritonitis); the harassment of Lizabeth Scott, hounded as a “pervert,” that is, lesbian; the magnificent Jean Seberg, who had the FBI sicced on her for consorting with the Black Panthers in Paris; and Robert Mitchum, who did a jolt for being found with a joint at some party. Who sent the cops there?
It’s a rough business indeed, and those seeking justice may find it in the dictionary. Sometimes the rabbit wins, and sometimes the dog wins. And each man, in his time, plays many parts. If O. J. had been a little neater in his entertainment, he’d have been allowed to walk away without the inconvenience of a trial.
My friend Steve, a stuntman, got run over on the set. No one was held accountable. He was “shot dead,” and was to fall by the wheels of the parked getaway car, the film’s star in the driver’s seat. The director yelled “cut,” and the star, for some reason, thought it good to put the car in reverse, and run over Steve. He was extracted after an hour and spent more than a year recovering. The star was whisked away from set, and never even questioned.
My friend Buddy is a stunt coordinator. He’s had to stand up to various directors insisting on hurrying the stunt prep up, disregarding time- or money-consuming safety measures; and, recently, insisting on diversity in casting stuntfolk who, though fitted by genetics and skill, are unfitted for the stunt at hand.
Joi “SJ” Harris, an African American motorcycle rider, was hired to do a stunt, as SAG insisted the stuntperson must duplicate the actor she was doubling. The actor was a Black woman, so the rider must be, too. A search could find no Black female stuntwoman motorcycle rider. There was a Black stuntman, the same size as the actress, but he was unacceptable. There was a white woman stuntrider, but she too was a no-go. The Black stuntman and the white stuntwoman could have done the gag in makeup, but the Union said no, and Joi Harris was found. She’d won many motorcycle races, but she’d never done a stunt. And she didn’t complete the one she was hired for. The director called “action,” and she started riding down the steps, as per the script, lost control, and died. Who would take the blame for the poor woman’s death? The Diversity Committee? Don’t make me laugh.
What of actual courage in films?
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) stars Hurd Hatfield, a very handsome young man. Gray, you remember, stays forever young, all his sins transferred to his portrait, which is hidden in the attic. It is one of Wilde’s masterpieces and quite clearly a comment upon unending sexual profligacy fighting the sad decay of age.
Wilde’s arena was a crypto-depiction of his Gay London, and Hurd’s performance was of an androgynous young beauty. Hatfield wrote that he was so successful in the part that it was difficult for him to be cast otherwise. But he can be seen, in a great performance, as a gay man in Richard Fleischer’s The Boston Strangler. Henry Fonda, playing the investigator, finds a lead suggesting the Strangler might be gay. He goes to a gay nightclub and sees Hatfield there at the bar.
It becomes clear that they knew each other, or knew of each other, in college (we may assume Harvard). Hatfield says, “What brought you here, the Old School Tie…?” He asks why Fonda is harrying the folks in the club, and Fonda responds with a gay slur. Hatfield keeps his composure and says that he is disappointed in Fonda, as he thought better of him. Fonda takes a moment and apologizes sincerely. He says he regrets the remark, and is most sorry. Hatfield replies, “I believe you actually are.”
There’s courage in Hatfield taking the openly gay role in 1968, and there’s courage in Fonda, who delivers both the slur and the subsequent apology without reserve. These uncurated human interactions—on stage and screen—leave a viewer improved. This is not deference to, or a depiction of, courage but an example of it.
As is Dirk Bogarde’s performance in Victim, as the closeted, married, successful barrister who’s being blackmailed for his homosexuality. He finally decides to go to the police, at the cost of his career.
Playing the part was an act of courage on the part of Bogarde, a gay man, and of those playing his friends, many of whom were gay.
Wilde went to prison not for his homosexuality but for a quip. He was interrogated about his supposed (and then illegal) homosexuality and was doing fine on the stand, charming all, until asked if he had kissed a particular bellboy. “Oh, dear, no,” he said. “He was a peculiarly plain boy.”
All of the court, defense and prosecution, and judges, had been to Public Schools and Oxbridge and had participated in or functioned in an atmosphere of gay life. (Cf. the designation LTC, lesbian till commencement, universal currency at the Seven Sisters colleges.)
No one in Wilde’s court, gay or not, was unaware that homosexuality was not only practiced and tolerated but, in some slices of some circles, understood as a superior lifestyle. Wilde spent two years in prison not for sexual practices but for flaunting the taboo requiring hypocrisy.
It’s the function of comedy to mock hypocrisy and that of current drama to celebrate it.
If the motorcycle rider actually must replicate the race and sex of the actress—even at the cost of her life—why not demand certificates of homosexuality from those portraying gays, a diagnosis of tuberculosis from anyone playing Camille, and death certificates from the cast of When We Dead Awaken?
These demands and their outrageous like are the protected committee version of Activism, but where is the committee member who, on his eventual indictment, did not plead ignorance of his group’s depredations or point to his responsibility to Just Follow Orders?
I did a cartoon advertising “Now Playing, Roy Rogers, King of the Cowboys, in”: the rest of the image obscured by a banner posted across (a “snipe”), its message “TRIGGER WARNING!!!” I love the cartoon, but no one younger than sixty gets it. Trigger was, as the old folks know, the name of Roy Rogers’s horse.
Roy’s real name was Leonard Slye, a fellow from Cincinnati. He and his partner and wife, Dale Evans, made the most popular Westerns, and then television shows, of the mid-century. But their fame, as all fame, has vanished ’neath the sands of time that also buried my cartoon.
But I do know of a few trigger warnings.
Bad Seed Youth of today have forsaken panty raids, and illicit smoking, for screaming if someone “hurts their feelings.” Idiot adults go along with the gag, which, naturally, frightens the children, encouraging more screaming.
But there is a use for trigger warnings. They may be used to warn us of drivel. Here are some telltale clues: Any movie having an “overture”; any variation of “based on a True Story”; a list of four or more “Producers” in the Head Titles; and the credit “… and introducing…” No one given that credit ever was seen again. You, my reader, may have counterexamples; I do not.
Here are Nelson Algren’s trigger warnings: “never play cards with a man called Doc, never eat at a place called Mom’s, and never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own,”I to which I’ve added the invaluable “never trust a Jew in a bow tie.”
Algren, also, sacrificed precision for a quip. For how would one know if a woman’s problems were worse than one’s own? How would a woman know if a man’s were? Is the camouflage of these not the essence of courting?
And now businesspeople have ceased wearing “office attire,” and few wear ties either horizontal or vertical. The wider Western world adopts the motto “Never Trust a Jew,” in any case, but exercises a nonprejudiced graciousness in extending their trust, in times of need, to doctors, lawyers, accountants, and so on, of my religion. Thus Hitler may in fact have weakened his influence by identifying the Jews. The yellow star meaning, to the Germans, “Do your own fricking taxes…”
If everything in our modern and connected lives must “do good,” what time and energy have we set aside with which to enjoy ourselves?
The performance of virtue, we have all noted, always is accompanied by a self-satisfied expression never found at a square dance, poker tournament, or demolition derby.
- I. A Walk on the Wild Side (1956).