Janice Rule

She never made it to the top ranks of the acting profession and I suspect it annoyed the hell out of her.  It's not difficult to figure out where she went wrong.  I always sensed she had a lot of anger and bitterness which undoubtedly escalated as her film career lackadaisically progressed.  It's also not a stretch to see why she was so often cast as bitter, neurotic socialites.

I was very attracted to her.  I loved her looks, thought she could be quite seductive, admired her forthrightness.  She had some beautifully measured moments, often giving performances that could sting.  She was utterly watchable...  one may not have so much questioned what she was up to but how she was going to pull it off.  Studios and execs didn't seem to find the right fit for her while at the same time finding her difficult.    

Born in 1931, Rule was one of five children from an Irish family from Norwood, Ohio.  Her father was a dealer of industrial diamonds.  As a young child she dreamed of dancing on Broadway.  She studied ballet and began dancing in Chicago's Chez Paree nightclub at age 15.  In 1949 she made it to Broadway as a chorine in Miss Liberty.

She joined the cast of Fourteen Hours (1951) about a man on a ledge of a skyscraper who is threatening suicide.  She was an uncredited extra as were John Cassavetes, Brian Keith, Richard Beymer, Ossie Davis, Leif Erickson and Brad Dexter.  It was also Grace Kelly's first film although her role was marginally larger.  

In 1951 Warner Bros. signed her to a contract and she appeared on the cover of Life Magazine touted as a young newcomer worthy of attention.  The studio assigned her the role of Robert Young's daughter in Goodbye My Fancy (1951).  Joan Crawford plays a Congresswoman who returns to her alma mater in the hopes a rekindling a romance with Young, now the college president.

Crawford, frequently not kind to her younger female costars, belittled Rule every chance she got, even embarrassing her in front of the company.  Rule said making the film was grueling.  Years later Crawford wrote her a letter of apology.

In Starlift the same year, an allstar extravaganza about movie stars entertaining Air Force cadets prior to leaving for combat, Rule is at the center of the story.  Then the bottom fell out.

She was troubled about the studios' attitudes about women's beauty.  As a result perhaps, she was careless about the way she dressed.  She was defiant about studio dictates to always look glamorous when out in public.  She felt Warners made too many superfluous demands.  She wanted to be treated as a serious actress, not a starlet or sex symbol.  She felt she was losing her individuality.  As a result she put the makeup and hair folks and the publicity department through hell.  The studio cancelled her contract and sent her on her way.

In 1953 she was back on Broadway appearing as the innocent Kansas beauty Madge in William Inge's popular Picnic, starring opposite Ralph Meeker.  The play and both stars were sensations.  Paul Newman made his Broadway debut in the production.  It was likely the best work she ever did and she became a name.  The play ran for 477 performances and won Inge a Pulitzer Prize.  She was quoted as saying the theater expects more of one as an actress than the movies do and they don't have all those silly rules about how you look and dress.

In mid-1955 she married movie, stage and TV writer N. Richard Nash but they were divorced before year's end.  She had a busy personal life in 1956.  She had a brief engagement to Farley Granger with whom she was costarring in a play.  She then returned to films to make A Woman's Devotion with Meeker with whom she had an affair.  Finally, in October, admitting she had a thing for writers, she married another one, Robert Thom.

A Woman's Devotion is a film I much enjoyed.  She and Meeker were hired because of the raves they got on Broadway.  The movie, directed by and costarring Paul Henreid, concerns a couple vacationing in Acapulco when Meeker is accused of killing a young woman.  The story becomes a cat and mouse game between Rule's devoted spouse and Henreid's corrupt cop.

She has a few scenes in Bell, Book and Candle (1958), clearly the most popular of her early movies.  Playing James Stewart's fiance who gets jilted when he falls for a witch, Kim Novak, she had the most serious role in the comedy. 

In 1958 she met Ben Gazzara when they costarred on Broadway in Night Circus.  The production closed after a week but the relationship with Gazzara turned sexual during rehearsals, despite her still living with her husband.  In his autobiography, Gazzara said the longer their affair went on, the more their selfishness, deception and betrayal tore at them but they were not able to stop.  Rule started therapy sessions.

With Ben Gazzara

Later in the year Rule discovered she was pregnant.  Despite having had a daughter with Thom, she said there was no doubt whatsoever that her unborn child was Gazzara's.  However, she remained married to Thom and allowed him to think the new baby, a girl born in 1959, was his.

Thom wrote a role for her in The Subterraneans (1960), from a work by the Beat Generation's Jack Kerouac, about a beatnik-coffeehouse, bongo-playing crowd in San Francisco.  Leslie Caron and George Peppard play the lovers although that was hardly the case off screen. One wonders if Rule asked her husband why he couldn't use his influence to get her the lead. 

With Roddy McDowall & Scott Marlowe in The Subterraneans

In 1961 Rule told Thom that Gazzara, not he, was the father of the nearly 2-year old girl.  Her husband apparently fell to his knees and clasped his hands over his ears as if to blot out the horror of the words he was hearing.  Later in the year Rule and Gazzara were married.  They had a few good years together-- both shared a strong love for the two girls-- but neither was faithful, their frequent battles were occasionally public and after five or so years they decided to get a divorce.  Then, just as quickly they opted to try to make the best of it.  Ultimately they were divorced in 1982 and a month later he was remarried.  Rule never married again.

She had long been a television performer.  In 1964 she returned to the big screen in an ill-conceived and rather confusing western, Invitation to a Gunfighter with Yul Brynner and George Segal.  It was not a happy experience.  In The Chase (1966), about a country-bumpkin town out of control over the return of an escaped convict, Rule has a small role as a rich shrew who drunkenly swallows a string of valuable pearls.

Two more westerns were on their way.  Though not a great western, Alvarez Kelly (1966) struck my fancy because it starred two of my favorite actors, William Holden and Richard Widmark.  It concerns a rancher from Mexico (Holden) who sells cattle to the north during the Civil War... that is until confederate Richard Widmark earmarks them for another use.  Rule plays Widmark's unhappy fianée and has little to do with the main story.

She plays a feisty saloon prostitute in Welcome to Hard Times (1967) where Aldo Ray is a psychopath out to destroy the hardscrabble town.  She was arguably the best thing about the movie but the film fell short of its promise.

Rule is wonderfully funny in Dean Martin's Matt Helm flick, The Ambushers (1967).  Most notable was a magnetic gun pulling off all her clothes.  She said it was the worst movie she ever made.

Really?  Perhaps she missed watching The Swimmer where she plays Burt Lancaster's vitriolic ex-wife.  He swims from pool to pool in his neighborhood pontificating about whatever nonsense enters his water-logged brain.  I hated this preposterous waste of time so much that I could get in a snarky mood just writing this paragraph.

Gumshoe (1971) is a delightful comedy homage to Dashiell Hammett, Bogart and film noir.  Albert Finney plays a brand new private eye whose first case appears to overwhelm him.  Billie Whitelaw has the female lead... Rule's part is small.

Rule said she most liked offbeat movies.  Well, welcome to the world of Robert Altman, one of the most unusual filmmakers I've ever encountered.  I have admired a handful of his movies but I usually disliked them.  Whether I liked or disliked them, one thing they had in common was their strangeness.  Three Women (1977) may head the list on the not liking side.  Rule, Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek turned in some fine acting but the film's weird symbolism pissed me off.

Missing  (1982) is based on a true story of an idealistic American writer who disappears during the bloody, U.S.-backed Chilean coup in 1973.  Costa Gravas directs an intense, documentary-like story that plays out like a great detective story.  Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek are dynamite.  Rule plays a small role as a reporter.

American Flyers (1985) is about the training for a bike race involving two brothers and those in their orbit.  Kevin Costner and David Marshall Grant star with Rule in a good role as their mother.  It is perhaps a run-of-the-mill sports movie but I found it fun.

In the mid-60s, likely as a result of her own therapy and the fact that her movie career had remained rather lackluster, Rule became a therapist.  In 1973 she completed her formal studies and specialized in treating her fellow actors.  Ten years later she received her Ph.D. from Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute.  She had a practice in Los Angeles and later in New York. Ah, finally, a job where she could dress as she wanted.

She was a very good actress and played strong roles.  I think it's a shame she didn't become a top star.

Rule was 72 when she died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 2003 in Manhattan.


Next posting:
A killer of a film from the 60s