Actor Spotlight: Edward Arnold

(Note: This is my entry in the What a Character! Blogathon, hosted by Outspoken & Freckled, Paula's Cinema Club, and Once Upon A Screen.)

Nowadays, the Hollywood rule for greedy businessmen in movies is that be you tall or short, slim or round, redeemable or diabolic, you must be shouting into a cellphone. Hence will the moviegoers know you as the face of cold-hearted capitalism. But back in the ‘30s and ‘40s, Hollywood had a different shorthand for businessmen. You had to be fat.

To struggling audiences during the Depression, nothing said money like middle-aged men who seemed to be eating too well. Bankers, politicians, newspaper owners, and factory owners. They were all “fat cats” in the eyes of the public, men gorging themselves on the labor of others. In Hollywood, the portrayal of these men wasn’t always negative. On the contrary, the screwball comedies were full of bumbling, well-meaning businessmen, who could be rescued from their selfish existence. Generally, redemption would come in the blonde, husky-voiced form of Jean Arthur, who would arrive to provide daughterly support and some no-nonsense lecturing (Easy Living, The Devil and Miss Jones, The More the Merrier). Other times though, these men were surface-level sharks, insatiable villains out to grab everything in sight. Whether he leaned good or evil, the businessman archetype was ridiculously popular during those lean years, enough so that a whole class of talented character actors could make a living just from playing him. And of those character actors, for me, the most interesting and varied of the lot is Edward Arnold.

Within the ranks of Hollywood’s fat men, Walter Connolly was the cuddliest, Eugene Pallette was the grumpiest, and Charles Coburn the wiliest, but Edward Arnold always came off as the smartest. Many character actors gain success by having the biggest reactions, the most outsize expressions. And there’s nothing wrong with that, as any fan of Edward Everett Horton, Marie Dressler, Una O’Connor or Eric Blore will tell you. But Arnold’s special talent came from holding just a little back. When an Edward Arnold character gets bad news, he goes very still, with only his eyes giving away his despair. When the news is good, he responds with a boisterous laugh, but it never takes him long to get serious again. Arnold excelled in playing cool-headed businessmen and politicians, men who were cautious, controlled, and ambitious. A Coburn character could get away with playing dumb but Arnold couldn’t.

Even in the part of the bumbling millionaire in Easy Living, he’s sharp and snappy. Watching him spar with Jean Arthur over compound interest is like watching two trains collide at top speed and then miraculously keep right on going. “I pay eight dollars a month, there are four weeks in a month,” Arthur tells him. “I beg your pardon, madam, there are four and one third weeks in a month!” Arnold counters. “Otherwise we’d only have forty-eight weeks in a year!” “Oh,” Arthur says, her face brightening, “You mean leap year?” Arnold’s face instantly collapses like a sinking sponge cake. “No, NO, I don’t mean leap year!” he shouts, turning a howl of frustration into something that’s almost a sob.

But while Arnold could do comedy, his talents were more often put to use in drama. For Frank Capra, he was the face of ruthless opportunism and in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Meet John Doe, he plays essentially interchangeable villains. Capra could never muster up as much interest for his bad guys as his heroes so Arnold gets little to do. Still, he manages to convey the coiled-up cruelty of these men by keeping his body still and his movements subtle, with a predatory gaze from behind his glasses. It’s a rule in Edward Arnold movies that, unlike Clark Kent, Edward Arnold always gets ten times more dangerous whenever he has glasses on. 

Capra would also use Arnold as the greedy but ultimately goodhearted businessman in You Can’t Take It With You. This is a movie I find hard to stomach. It’s one of those leaden confections where obnoxious free spirits run around following their dreams and turning up their noses at people who try to do dull things like paying bills. But Arnold, who is the closest thing the movie has to a real person, managed to sneak one genuine laugh out of me. During a chaotic dinner party, Arnold’s wife gets jabbed over her spiritualism by a clueless Spring Byington. “Everyone knows spiritualism’s a fake!” Byington says. “Now, Penny, you’ve got hobbies of your own,” Lionel Barrymore reminds her. “Yes, but not silly ones!” Byington answers innocently. Arnold’s been looking like grim death the whole evening, but at this remark he lifts his eyes up and suddenly beams like a blissful baby. 

In repose, Edward Arnold’s face was ordinary, but watch him smile and the features turn into a sharply angled geometry problem. The nose is a positive beak; you could imagine Arnold elbowing aside Burgess Meredith to play the Penguin. The eyes squint into specks while the mouth curls up until it almost disappears under the nose. If he’d wanted, no doubt Arnold could have parlayed that expression into a character actor’s trademark, but his overall demeanor was too serious to caricature. 

The image of Arnold that’s been passed down to us is the stern businessman, but take a look at Edward Arnold when he was young. You could imagine that man playing Lorenzo in Merchant of Venice, which was actually Arnold’s debut role. The part must have made a great impression on him, because he titled his autobiography Lorenzo Goes to Hollywood. I’ve always loved that little detail, which gives you some insight into Arnold’s mind. No matter how many greedy fat cats he played, he still saw himself as the young man under the stars, whispering poetry into the ears of his beloved.

By far my favorite Edward Arnold role is his turn in The Devil and Daniel Webster, playing the courageous and eloquent Webster to Walter Huston’s Devil. Originally Thomas Mitchell was going to play Daniel Webster and while Mitchell was a superb performer, I can’t help but think his take on the part would have been much warmer and more approachable than Arnold’s. Arnold is certainly boisterous and fun-loving as the beer-swigging orator, but there’s a calculating glint in the eye that never goes away. When he says, “I’d fight ten thousand devils to save a New Hampshire man,” there’s nothing folksy about it. It’s cold and quiet and utterly resolute. Our first glimpse of Arnold is of a tired man scratching away with his quill in the dark, while the Devil’s voice whispers in his ear. Arnold’s face betrays how tempted he is to abandon principle for power. It’s a moment that adds a measure of depth to every scene afterwards. No matter how hail-fellow-well-met Webster acts, he is still fundamentally alone, trying to help people more inclined to worship him than treat him as an equal. 

Arnold had a gift for tackling long, weighty speeches and making it seem easy. The Devil and Daniel Webster shows him at the top of his form, but if you want to watch him in a game of serve-and-volley dialogue, look no further than Von Sternberg’s 1935 adaptation of Crime and Punishment. Next to a prickly, tormented Raskolnikov (played by Peter Lorre), Arnold is a smoothly confident Inspector Porfiry. Lorre speaks slowly, his eyes haunted, while Arnold plays the detective with an air of boundless good cheer, as if he’s genuinely enjoying his quarry’s company. The movie was disowned by Von Sternberg for being a routine assignment with little feel for the source material, but Lorre and Arnold are still a pleasure to watch.

In a long and prolific career, Arnold did get some interesting lead roles, although they were rarely in top-flight films. In Come and Get It, Edward Arnold plays the part of yet another greedy businessman, except this time we get to see his character develop. He goes from being a boisterous lumber man to a dissatisfied tycoon, hopelessly trying to recapture his youth. In the first half of the film (by far the better half) Arnold is overshadowed by Frances Farmer’s throaty, wistful bar singer. But an odd thing happens. When the movie gets duller and the pacing begins to lag, Arnold actually gets better. As his character tries vainly to recreate his lost love in the form of Frances Farmer’s identical daughter, Arnold manages to make a creepy, unpleasant man seem genuinely tragic. 

While Arnold could carry a film, I feel like his particular brand of underplayed scene-stealing is most interesting when it comes as a surprise. Take a run-of-the-mill assignment like 1941’s Johnny Eager. In Johnny Eager, Arnold nearly gets sidelined by all the compulsively watchable antics of his costars. When you’re in a movie with Lana Turner as a sociology student falling into madness, Van Heflin tossing out drunk Shakespeare quotes, and Robert Taylor telling all the ladies in the audience that he’s bad, oh yes, he’s never known love and no woman will ever find a way into his heart, you could be turning cartwheels in the background and still not get noticed. 

Arnold gets the unenviable role of the good-guy D.A., who tries to keep his stepdaughter Turner from falling into the clutches of Taylor’s womanizing gangster, only to end up blackmailed and broken. But he still manages to add a few interesting touches. In a scene with Taylor, Arnold snaps, “Remember what I told you, thief!” Arnold lingers on the word “thief” as if it’s the worst sobriquet known to man. “You mean ex-thief,” Taylor counters. “Get out, thief!” Arnold barks, more like a cashier brandishing a baseball bat than a dignified D.A. When he orders Taylor to stoop down and pick up a dollar bill, it’s no surprise that Taylor does it, after getting a glimpse of such primal hatred. The D.A. actually becomes more dignified when he becomes powerless and his final scene with the gangster is a flash of pure heartbreak. “My daughter always trusted me,” he says and Arnold pauses to swallow down his inconvenient emotions. “But she doesn’t anymore.” Taylor tersely tells him not to cry. “You’ll not have that pleasure,” Arnold responds, looking back with resigned misery.

If there’s one way to sum up an Edward Arnold character, it’s that he always has total conviction that what he’s doing is the only right thing to do, whether it’s arguing a man’s soul away from Hell or blasting boy scouts with hoses or trying to explain compound interest. I like to think that it was Arnold’s own conviction and determination that shone through in his roles, the conviction of a man who gave his best years to Hollywood and never lost that look of bright, watchful intelligence.

Actress Spotlight: Veronica Lake

Actress Spotlight: Veronica Lake

So I was watching I Married a Witch last weekend and trying unsuccessfully for the past few days to write a review before I realized that what I really wanted to do was talk about Veronica Lake. 

I have a fondness for Veronica Lake that goes well beyond her merits as an actress.  It's always a pleasure to see her. Even when you know that offscreen her costars were gnashing their teeth over working with "Moronica Lake," as Raymond Chandler called her, Lake always seems to be having a lot of fun, playing hide-and-seek behind her famous hair, smiling knowingly, and pouting when things don't go her way.

In my Hollywood alternate universe, Howard Hawks takes Lake on as he did that other husky-voiced blonde Lauren Bacall and injects a little more wit and maturity into the Veronica Lake persona. The difference between Bacall and Lake is that Bacall, given the right role, seemed like someone who'd been round the block and had the smarts to prove it. Lake didn't; there was always something a little unreal about her vamping. 

In Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, in a role that was purportedly intended for Barbara Stanwyck, Veronica Lake's pose of being the street-smart girl, far more experienced than Joel McCrea's pretentious director, is obviously just that, a pose. In Stanwyck's case, we would have believed it. It doesn't hurt the film, though; it just shifts the dimensions. Sturges seems to take a mischievous pleasure in pitting the 4'11'' Lake against the 6'3" McCrea; she's perpetually clambering into his lap or leaning into him or pushing him into pools. McCrea's grumpiness is in fine contrast to her girlishness. His attraction to her is played like a guy falling for a friend's annoying kid sister.

Veronica Lake's pairing with Alan Ladd was famously because she was the only actress on the Paramount lot that could make him look tall. But their personas matched well too. Ladd, the gruff and rough guy with the face of an "aging choirboy," was like a teenage boy playing at being the tough guy and the sulky Lake was a teenage girl's idea of the femme fatale. She strikes the poses, she looks and talks like a bad girl, but she never feels truly dangerous.

Veronica Lake has earned a legacy as a style icon, but her popularity as an actress burned itself out at an amazing rate. Lake couldn't even last out her decade; she was truly "in" by 1941, skidding by 1944 (after a disastrous turn as a Nazi spy in The Hour Before the Dawn), and completely totaled by 1949, at the ripe old age of 27.  Time is rarely kind to "It Girls" and Lake's particular brand of pouty, girlish charm probably wouldn't have aged very well even if her career had been better handled and her personal problems not gotten in the way. 

The last fifteen years of her life were one slow decline into alcoholism, mental illness, and poverty and she died at age fifty, looking (based on her appearance in the 1970 exploitation film Flesh Feast) twenty years older. Lake was self-deprecating in interviews ("You could put all the talent I had into your left eye and still not suffer from impaired vision"), but she still had her pride. During Lake's latter-day stint as a cocktail waitress, her former lover Marlon Brando sent her a check for one thousand dollars. Lake had it framed.

 

Part of my fascination with Veronica Lake comes from hearing story after story by her frustrated costars; she seemed to have an incredible ability to spark the dislike of even the most easygoing costars. After Sullivan's Travels, McCrea refused to work with her again, saying that "Life is too short for two films with Veronica Lake." During the filming of I Married a Witch, she and March openly despised each other. March on Lake: "a brainless little blonde sexpot." Lake on March: "a pompous poseur." Lake would play pranks against her costar like hiding a weight under her dress for a scene where March had to carry her. She would also take revenge on Brian Donlevy, another disparager of her talent, in The Glass Key. When it came time for her to punch him in one scene, she almost knocked him out. In her autobiography, Lake would attribute this burst of pugilism to growing up in Brooklyn.  Eddie Bracken, her costar for Star-Spangled Rhythm, said once that "She was known as 'The Bitch' and she deserved the title." Even her screen partner Ladd reportedly never warmed up to her, though I can't find any quotes from him on the subject. 

It's hard not to feel some sympathy for someone so miserably unpopular. Marilyn Monroe drove her costars up the wall too, but they forgave her because well, she was Marilyn Monroe. Maybe Lake was as bitchy as her costars gave her credit for; it's difficult to tell where bitchiness left off and real mental illness began. Unlike other stars who died the slow, painful death of the addict, like Montgomery Clift and Judy Garland, Veronica Lake didn't seem to inspire the same feelings of protectiveness and affection. It's a fair bet to say that she made others as miserable as she made herself. However, she did not deserve her eventual fate: alcoholic, forgotten, estranged from her children and loved only by her nurses. 

Whatever she was offscreen, onscreen she radiated warmth and charm. There was an iciness to her beauty and to the world-weariness her characters often affected, but Lake herself didn't play it cold. Some femme fatales could maneuver men via lust or manipulation. Lake melted them. One of the pleasures of her movies with Alan Ladd is waiting for the moment when the grim Ladd suddenly breaks out in a boyish smile, dropping his cool persona under the influence of Lake. Fredric March may have hated Lake on the set of I Married a Witch, but it sure doesn't show in the film. The more his character, the stuffy Wallace Wooley, tries to tell Lake's witch that he doesn't love her, the more he finds himself stroking her hair and gazing into her eyes. In the aforementioned Sullivan's Travels, McCrea learns affection for her as he learns tolerance for other people. The image of McCrea's arm stealing around Lake is as tender as anything ever directed by Preston Sturges.

Back in 1998, Kim Basinger won her only Oscar for her supporting turn as Lynn Bracken, the Veronica Lake look-alike prostitute in Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential. I saw that film for the first time only a few months ago and I liked it, but not nearly as much as others liked it. Some parts were great, some parts felt silly to me. Basinger's role was one of the lesser parts to me. Her entrance is great, an extended tease of the mysterious woman under the hood, like a true homage to old-style Hollywood glamor. But the character disappoints. In spite of Basinger's attempts to give Lynn Bracken some depth, she doesn't really rise beyond the hooker with the heart of gold type."You're better than Veronica Lake," her lover Bud White tells her at one point, trying to assure of her own worth. She is a real woman, not fantasy, not Hollywood.

In retrospect though, it's Basinger and Bracken that feel fake to me and Veronica Lake, stealing aboard a train, casting spells over Fredric March, kissing Alan Ladd before he goes off to risk death, the same Veronica Lake that would die young and alone, that haunts me.