Golden Age Actors: My 4 Favorites

It was just an arbitrary thing to come up with four.  If it had been six I might have included Cary Grant or even Paul Newman who came in toward the end of the Golden Age.  Why these particular four when there are so very many to choose from?  No Tracy, Bogie, Cooper, Gable, Stewart?  I guess not.   

One thing is that I was raised on these guys (the ones I've picked).  All made westerns and I used to think I saw every western ever made.  All participated in some noirs but two are among the kings of noirs.  It wasn't long until they all seemed like pals to the young me.  As I grew up I was still seeing their films because I had to come to count on them.  I went to their movies because they were in them... the movie didn't matter.  Some films were better than others, but, alas, they had cast a spell on me.  Frankly, it is that spell that got them listed here.

That spell has nothing to do with physical attraction despite my finding one of them to be among the best looking actors of his time.  Actually the others aren't too shabby either.  If the choices were strictly about acting, I certainly would have picked Tracy.  I think the choices are about a certain screen presence and the value I derive from watching these men act.  When all has been said, I'll haul out an old actorly cliche... they all had it.  Whatever it is, they had it. 

I'll do my best to explain what I like about these guys.  We'll show some things they have in common and some they decidedly do not.  We will not go into all of their films but we will include a few, including my three favorite films of each and the three I cared for the least.  I have done full pieces on all of them early on and there will be links later.  

Some of you will agree with some of these choices and some will not.  Most understandable.  Maybe someone agrees with all four.  Maybe some won't agree with any.  There are no right or wrong answers.  I'd love to hear your opinions on my picks and maybe let us known yours.  Here they are in alphabetical order:

William Holden

This one gets my vote for the most handsome of the group and part of his immense charm was that he seemed so normal, affable and put-together.  It just shows what a good actor he was.  In truth, Holden always denigrated acting, calling it the work of sissies.  As the cameras rolled, he usually had a case of the jitters that he had to work out because he always suffered from excruciating self-doubt.  

Why not quit then, you may ponder.  Well, ol' Bill would be the first to tell you that he loved the perks that came from acting... the money, of course (and as his fame and acclaim soared in the fifties, so did the salaries he commanded), travels, purchases, clothing (he loved to dress), hobnobbing with the rich and powerful and getting out of the house.

Getting out of the house?  Yes.  Holden was married from 1941-71 to Paramount actress Brenda Marshall.  However they only lived together a very few of those 30 years.  He was an incorrigible womanizer, including some long-term relationships with three actresses I loved... Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly and Capucine.  He made two films with each of them and never had a bad word to say about them or any of his many women friends.

The thing is being disloyal to his wife and an absent father forever gnawed at him.  Holden's private hell was unbearable for him without booze to ward off the demons.  

He did some fun comedy films in his youth when he was skinny, blond, adorable and under contract at the same time to both Paramount and Columbia.  When Montgomery Clift passed on Sunset Blvd., Holden moved in and became world-famous.  His films of the fifties are his most famous.

I don't think he particularly deserved his Oscar for Stalag 17 and it was probably a consolation prize for missing out on Sunset Blvd.  I think he did deserve Oscars for Network and The Bridge on the River Kwai and oddly enough, his costar in each film was the winner.  He was a very fine actor but perhaps not a great one.  His millions of fans, I suspect, were drawn to him for his extreme likeability, his sardonic sense of humor, his romantic leading man status (among the best in the business), including a sexual magnetism (he loved to flirt onscreen), his impeccable grooming and looks, including a gorgeous smile and a beautifully modulated voice.  (All four of the actors outlined here had very recognizable voices.)

To go along with what we already know, his performances occasionally revealed a deep sadness, a streak of insecurity and powerful self-loathing that was borrowed from the wreckage of his personal life.  Much of this can be seen in his later performances particularly when things really did get darker.

I would have loved talking to him about Africa and his quest to nail poachers, his unusual marriage, travels, Audrey, Grace, Capucine, making Network, alcoholism, what would make him cry? angry? sad?, making The Towering Inferno, why he didn't get on with Jennifer Jones while making Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, what his favorite films were and costars, who would he have liked to have worked with that he didn't.

My three favorite Holden films:

Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing

Network

The Proud and Profane

My least favorite Holden films:

Casino Royale

Fedora

When Time Ran Out 

Burt Lancaster

He seemed to be having more fun at his craft than the others and he talked more about movies than they did.  He also talked more than they did on most any subject.  I'm guessing he rarely said I don't know.  

He is one of two here who started and ended his career as a star.  From The Killers in 1946 to Field of Dreams in 1989 and through 72 other mostly noteworthy movies he was known for his rich knowledge of his profession, a fierce energy and a determination to do good work in worthy projects.  He was handsome, athletic and had a larger-than-life presence.

I expect he is the first actor of his generation to start up his own production company (with partners).  It was his way to own and star in properties that excited him and to attain some serious leverage over studios, producers and directors.  He needed to be the boss... he had to always be in control.  

He was never particularly well-liked by studio executives and he annoyed many a coworker.  He talked down to people. He could be disrespectful, dismissive, exasperatingly argumentative and had a volcanic temper.  (His Apache costar Jean Peters once said he was the only actor she ever worked with that she truly disliked.)

The first time I ever saw him work was in either The Crimson Pirate or His Majesty O'Keefe.  The young me was mightily impressed with the former circus acrobat's physicality and derring-do.  Of course my attention increased with his presence in not just westerns but good westerns and also film noirs.  He made a number of biographies and scores of dramas.  

Lancaster was always looking toward new horizons for his acting.  He rarely did comedy roles and no musicals but he made his way into other things that seemed surprising.  Most American actors appeared in Italian films because their hometown efforts were less than lustrous.  Lancaster made them at the height of his career because he wanted to work with directors like Visconti and Bertolucci.  If the films weren't a success in America, so be it.

The same could be said when this larger-than-life man took on meek roles in such early 50s films like Come Back, Little Sheba and The Rose Tattoo and opposite actresses who were hardly the apple of American eyes, Shirley Booth and Anna Magnani.  Each won an Oscar but made few American films.  Other meek roles came with The Birdman of Alcatraz and Judgment at Nuremberg.

It seems odd that he only won one Oscar (Elmer Gantry) and I think he should have won one earlier for From Here to Eternity which was snatched from him by Holden.

I would have loved talking to him about his liberal politics, the circus, his sex life, his take on why he was disliked, favorite films and the costars he liked, disliked and slept with and the movies he turned down.

My three favorite Lancaster films:

Elmer Gantry

From Here to Eternity

The Professionals

My three least favorite Lancaster movies:

The Swimmer

The Swimmer

The Swimmer

(It is my second most hated movie of all-time, no matter who's in it.)

Robert Mitchum

He was once asked if he would ever write his autobiography and not unexpectedly he said What for?  Who needs it?  The Los Angeles police station has it all.  Well, not quite although the cops gathered their fair share during his 1948 pot bust.  The comments do show how out there he could be... funny, irreverent and frank.  One was never sure how truth entered the picture.  Listening to several interviews over the years, I am thinking he probably was telling the truth (with embellishments) but he wanted one to think he wasn't.

He is quite the colorful member of this quartet.  He was a Hollywood bad boy before it was fashionable to be one.  He said more than once that he was a B actor (he made a hell of a lot of B flicks, fabulous though most of them were) and his career was just a job with nice bennies.

He got off on playing down his accomplishments and the entire Hollywood scene except, perhaps, for the fact that he loved to gossip.  He balked at makeup and hairdressing and costars with swelled heads and annoying producers and directors.  He hung out with grips and wranglers and stunt people.  He often came to the set shortly before he was needed and with his photographic memory spoke his lines, hit his marks and got the hell out.

Folks always said he was such a natural actor and some said he always played himself.  What we don't know is how many connected the dots in realizing there is a relatedness between the two statements.  He had a powerful presence, a simmering violence, those famous sleepy eyes and a magnificent speaking voice.  He embodied a series of complexities and seeming contradictions.  He was well-read... he loved poetry and current events.  When he spoke of his work, it was totally without pretense.

Some said he was lazy, laconic, difficult to get along with and brutish.  Others countered with his natural charisma, intelligence, sophistication and passion.  Despite being married once, for 37 years, he was a habitual cheater, an alcoholic and drug-user.  

He is the only one of these four men to have not won an Oscar and I think that is shameful.  I found him to be a remarkable actor, one of the best.  Many of his B films were westerns and noirs.  If some of them were less-than-starry, Mitchum always delivered the goods.  If that weren't enough to excite me, he became one of the true kings of noir.  Most every trait this man had was made for the darkness of film noir.  I enjoyed him in countless romantic dramas as well but it was as a villain, particularly in Cape Fear and Night of the Hunter that he was so brilliant.  Aside from all the B work he made a number of iconic movies as well.

I would have loved talking to him about his bizarre childhood years, his various run-ins with the law and those costars he came to know awfully well.  There were others... Katharine Hepburn, Susan Hayward, Sarah Miles, George Peppard, Charles Bronson, director Otto Preminger, among others he didn't get along with and I'd be all ears.  I'd love to get his take on Monroe, Jane Russell, Ava Gardner, Jean Simmons, Eleanor Parker.  I wouldn't mind hearing about why he was fired from 1955's Blood Alley and Rosebud 20 years later. 

My three favorite Mitchum films are:

Cape Fear

Home from the Hill

Out of the Past

My three least favorite Mitchum movies are:

The Friends of Eddie Coyle

Secret Ceremony

What a Way to Go

Gregory Peck

For my money he was the Abe Lincoln of actors.  Early critics found him to be an exceptional actor.  Almost always he played strong, noble, good guys.  He was solid, kind, intelligent, had an attachment to decency, a profound interest in humanitarian causes and was a man of great character.  He was a great student of life who became one of life's best teachers.  

As a young boy I latched onto him at a time that I needed a hero and he came as close to one as I've known.  It started, I suspect, because he was in a few exceptional westerns I liked.  I was completely bewitched with his deep, baritone voice.  

He was the least troubled of the actors we've visited here and the least in trouble.  His rough patches were his first marriage to an unstable woman who caused him much grief.  And there's a son who committed suicide.  He made the gossip columns in 1957-58 as the producer-star of (my favorite western), The Big Country, as he battled with director William Wyler over their different visions for the film.  Wyler, who first worked with the actor in Roman Holiday, said he would never work with Peck again and he didn't.

In 2003 the American Film Institute named Peck's portrayal of Atticus Finch as the greatest film hero of the past 100 years.  That's quite an accolade and I have not a moment of doubt or disagreement.  The film is my second favorite of all time and the man's performance is simply breathtaking as a father, a lawyer and a caring human being.  Author Harper Lee said Atticus Finch gave Gregory Peck a chance to play himself.  What a lovely compliment.

What a great sequeway into naming those things I would liked to have discussed with Peck had I the chance.  I would have sat spellbound while he discussed anything and everything about To Kill a Mockingbird.  His son's suicide fascinated me.  I guess I was surprised that a son of this man would have killed himself but perhaps the comment is insensitive (which I don't mean to be).  I would have been eager to hear anything and everything about making The Big Country. Of course hearing about his friendships with Audrey, Ava, Bacall, Jones, Loren, McGuire and Simmons would have left me weak at the knees.  I agree with his liberal politics, his antiwar, workers' rights and civil rights stances and I could have listened to him speak forever on such important causes.  

He was a great gentleman.

My three favorite Peck films are:

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Big Country

The Guns of Navarone

My three least favorite Peck films are:

Billy Two Hats

Mackenna's Gold

Moby Dick

Here's some extra stuff:

Vital statistics:

Holden:

Born: 4-17-18

Died: 11-12-81

His life was the shortest.

Lancaster:

Born: 11-2-13

Died:  10-20-94

Mitchum:

Born: 8-16-17

Died:  7-1-97

Peck:

Born:  4-5-16

Died:  6-12-03

He lived the longest.

All four actors were Americans.  Lancaster wins the prize for the most marriages at three.  Peck was married twice.  Mitchum and Holden were married once.  Peck was the only one who wasn't a serial cheater.  I'm jus' sayin'.  Three of them won Oscars for best actor.

Mitchum and Holden were life-long pals stemming from their 1948 teaming as longtime pals in Rachel and the Stranger.  On the other hand, Mitchum didn't care for Peck, his costar in Cape Fear (1962).  The former found the latter to be all puffed up and full of himself and not a particularly good actor.  Nonetheless, they were cordial to one another when they were thrown together over the years.  Peck was the producer as well as star but he gave Mitchum the true starring role.

Holden turned down the role that Peck accepted in The Omen (1976)

and then starred in Damien: Omen II (1978) playing the brother of the character Peck had played.  Holden also turned down the lead role in The Guns of Navarone (1961) which ultimately went to Peck.

Mitchum replaced Lancaster in 1984's Maria's Lovers.

Peck replaced an ill and uninsurable Lancaster in Old Gringo (1989).

One of Holden's most acclaimed roles is as the outlaw leader in The Wild Bunch (1969), a part that Lancaster, Mitchum, Peck and a host of others turned down.  

When Holden dropped out of The Rainmaker (1956), Lancaster dropped in.

Mitchum replaced his pal Holden in That Championship Season.(1982) after the actor passed away.

Throughout this writing, I have wondered how many common costars these four have worked with.  Many actresses particularly have costarred with three of them and a few actors fall into the same category.  We are not considering character actors but only top stars.  Oddly enough, I can only think of one actress and one actor who have worked with all four.  They are Deborah Kerr and Richard Widmark.  If any of you can think of another, I'd love to hear from you.

Tallying up Oscar wins/nominations for the quartet, it reads:

Holden... 3 nominations, 1 win

Lancaster... 4 nominations, 1 win

Mitchum... 1 nomination, no wins

Peck... 5 nominations, 1 win

As far as appearing in Oscar-winning best pictures:

Holden appeared in 9 nominated pictures with 1 win.

Lancaster appeared in 8 nominated films with 1 win.

Mitchum appeared in 4 nominated movies with no wins.

Peck appeared 8 nominated films with 1 win.

Next postings:

The rest of the month... one film

for each of these actors