Tag Archives: billy wilder

Quote of the Week

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Timothy Carey, the name has a certain aura to it. Some cinephiles know this feeling, those who go out on a limb and watch what little role he has. Carey, a character actor who zigzagged through the latter half of American cinema’s history, from A to Z pictures and everything in between, had a special talent. He could make a thin role into something memorable. He threw his 6’ 4’’ body around and spoke with a voice that sounded more like a cement mixer. He stole scenes, evaporating the memory of those that came before and after it.

Only Stanley Kubrick and John Cassavetes managed to integrate Carey into their films seamlessly. For both filmmakers, he appeared twice in their work. For Kubrick: The Killing (1956) and Paths of Glory (1957). For Cassavetes: Minnie and Moskowitz (1971) and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976). They were able to rein in Carey, controlling his high-strung acting for maximum effect. In Paths of Glory, in fact, Carey gives a career-performance. An interlude from the psychotics he often played, as Private Ferol, Carey is a smooth man, someone who would fit in with Jack Kerouac and co., not WWI France. By film’s end, he becomes unraveled. Along with Ralph Meeker and Joe Turkel, he’s one of the soldiers court-martialed and executed. “I don’t want to die,” he repeats, sniveling, whimpering, and crying as he faces the firing squad.

For every friend, Carey had three or four enemies, people who couldn’t tolerate his brand of free-wheeling, combusting improvisation. Fact and legend often blur in Hollywood history. In Carey’s case, there seems to be more legend than fact. His bouts with actors and directors are tabloid-worthy and tailor-made to his outsider persona. Billy Wilder and James B. Harris fired him. Elia Kazan dubbed his guttural lines. Richard Widmark and Karl Malden beat him. Marlon Brando stabbed him with a pen. Always cheeky, Carey proclaimed that he was fired more than any other actor in Hollywood.

Paths of Glory

Quote of the Week

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“The World’s Greatest Sinner” and the Big Timothy Carey Question

Timothy Who? Timothy Agoglia Carey, sometimes Tim Carey, most of the time Timothy Carey. 1929-94. This character actor (dis)graced American screens for five decades, playing vile, despicable and loathsome scum of the earth, void of any redeeming quality.

What has he been in? You might be familiar with The Wild One (1953), East of Eden (1955), The Killing (1956), Paths of Glory (1957), One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Minnie and Moskowitz (1971) and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) to mention a few out of 50 something screen appearances – not counting television, which credits for about 50 more. Despite this sizable curriculum, he was quite possibly fired more often than any other actor in Hollywood, for example by Billy Wilder and Arthur Penn, and also quite willfully turned down parts in movies such as the first two Godfather films as well as Kubrick‘s Spartacus.

Why so vile, despicable etc? Well, he throws a beer in Brando‘s face, beats up James Dean, crushes a cockroach, pushes a girl into a bowl of chili, shoots a horse and verbally abuses a black man, all this in the most unspeakable of ways. And all this during the first ten years of his career…

If so vile etc – why is he worth watching? This 193 cm/6′ 4″ male specimen sported a pair of heavy-lidded eyes that matched Robert Mitchum’s, a set of clenched teeth that beat out Burt Lancaster’s, a dance routine that would have frightened James Brown and tantrums that outdid Harvey Keitel’s. This is partly why.

The World’s Greatest Sinner? A film he wrote, directed, produced and starred in, shot between 1958 and 1961, and released in 1963. He plays Clarence Hilliard, an insurance salesman who quits his job, changes his name from Clarence to God (he keeps Hilliard) and starts his own political/religious movement, promising to turn everyone into “millionaires, gods, super human beings!” He dons a silver lamé suit [NB: It was actually gold] and becomes a (very unlikely) rock ‘n’ roll idol, then runs for president of the United States as the candidate of The Eternal Man Party. The film is narrated by a snake and was promoted as “The most condemned and praised American movie of its Time”, but soon disappeared from the public eye. Among the few people who saw it were Frank Zappa, who wrote the film’s songs and called it the world’s worst film, and John Cassavetes, who said it had the emotional brilliance of Eisenstein. Among the people who didn’t see it was an indifferent Ingmar Bergman, despite the fact that Carey sent a friend to Sweden with a print earmarked for the director’s viewing pleasure, as well as a most enthusiastic Elvis Presley, on whom Carey did not want to waste a precious print, as he only had four left.

Carey and Vienna? Some almost five decades late, in November 1st, 2009, The World’s Greatest Sinner finally had its Austrian premiere. A packed audience at the legendary Gartenbaukino cinema in Vienna savoured the treat with awe. A tribute section devoted to selected Carey gems included Head (featuring pop group The Monkees and written by Jack Nicholson), Minnie and Moskowitz, Paths of Glory, Poor White Trash (a sordid exploitation story in which scary Carey is again seen doing a crazy dance), and another Carey directorial effort, Tweet’s Ladies of Pasadena, in which he plays a kind (!) member of a ladies knitting club who constantly roller-skates and wants to clothe naked animals. Along for the ride was Romeo Carey, one of four [NB: Actually six] of the actor’s children, providing insightful information on his father’s career (as well as being living proof of the fact that Carey, apart from being vile, despicable and loathsome, also was a family man) and guiding us through a highly unusual career (which also include a one-man stage performance on the topic of flatulence).

So is he just a cult guy? True, if Carey is in a film, even if it’s Francis the Talking Mule in the Haunted House, it’s worth seeing. Even in the smallest of parts, he manages to steal from the greatest of greats – some of them feeling surprisingly outdated these days, whereas Carey himself remains utterly watchable. In this respect, he comes across as a forerunner of sorts to actors like Vincent Gallo, Harvey Keitel and even Michael Richards, whose Kramer character in Seinfeld arguably owes a moment or two to Carey. In other words, this is an actor with a resonating presence. The idea of giving Carey a well-deserved tribute is thus highly appropriate, as well as being film festival retrospective programming at its finest.

Why has no one come up with this idea before? That’s The Big Timothy Carey Question. Quite simply.

"He's the World's Greatest Sinner" by eyeodyssey on Deviantart

“He’s the World’s Greatest Sinner” by Aaron Dylan Kearns (eyeodyssey) on DeviantArt

Pic of the Day: “Across the Wide Missouri” revisited

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Our “Timothy in color” theme this week continues with another look at his first verifiable film role (the jury is still out regarding his supposed appearance in Billy Wilder‘s Ace in the Hole, aka The Big Carnival), that of a corpse in William Wellman‘s Across the Wide Missouri (1951). Even though Wellman undoubtedly could have gotten anyone for the part, nobody could lay in freezing cold water with two arrows in his back like Tim.

Across the Wide Missouri

“I’ll never forget the director [William Wellman],” Tim recounted in the Psychotronic Video interview, “he was a great director, a tough director. I had two arrows in my back laying in the water. I couldn’t hold still, it was so cold and my teeth were chattering. The director said, ‘Keep that jerk still, he’s supposed to be dead!’ I had just come from dramatic school in New York. I thought I was a great actor, I’m the only one who did.”

Quote of the Week

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The Early Days
It is ironic that a man, whose name is so widely unrecognized, could make such an impression on so many people. You don’t forget Timothy Carey. The infancy of Carey’s career consisted of small roles, often playing “the heavy” or a sideline thug. Yet, Carey’s presence could not be overlooked.

Carey’s film career started small and didn’t really get to grow much more as time went on. His first film role came in 1951, with an uncredited role in Billy Wilder’s noir film The Big Carnival [Marisa’s note: AKA Ace in the Hole. Timothy may have been edited out of the finished film, however.] From there he played another small, uncredited part in the William A. Wellman‘s rustic western Across the Wide Missouri. After working in some forgettable films and playing small, miniscule parts, Carey got his first chance to really shine.

In André De Toth’s gritty noir drama, Crime Wave (1954), Carey’s appearance comes late in the film where he oozes malevolence as Johnny Haslett. He then spends a good deal of time off-camera babysitting the protagonist’s wife. A testament to Carey’s creepiness on screen, the brief glimpse of him as Haslett is enough to keep audiences on the edge of their seats. Moving up from the number four thug to the crime boss’s right-hand man, Carey played Lou Terpe in Harold D. Schuster’s Finger Man (1955). Faithful to a fault, Carey makes the most of his small role, seething with pent-up penitentiary anger at the film’s wimpy hero.

Between his work in Crime Wave and Finger Man, Carey had a small part in the Marlon Brando vehicle, The Wild One. Carey was uncredited in the film, but even with the limited screen time and lack of respect he was given, he managed to turn in the most memorable performance in the film. With his spraying of the soda pop into Marlon Brando’s face, Carey carved his imprint into the minds of many, making his miniscule Chino Boy #1 credit much more than expected. And from there, his small but loud presence in many films to come, like East of Eden, Rumble on the Docks, and Revolt in the Big House, created the enigmatically fascinating actor that one can only call Timothy Carey.

– Sam McAbee, “Timothy Carey: Saint of the Underground”; Cashiers du Cinemart #12 (2001)

The Wild One

Timothy Carey, 65, A Character Actor

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On this date twenty years ago, Timothy passed away. It’s hard to believe it’s been twenty years already. However, though his corporeal form has left us, his spirit remains, as vital and larger-than-life as ever. For someone I never actually met, he certainly has essentially taken over my life. And I’m perfectly fine with that. Here is his obituary, as it appeared in the New York Times on May 17, 1994.

Timothy Carey, 65, A Character Actor

Timothy Carey, a character actor whose films ranged from Paths of Glory and One-Eyed Jacks to 1960’s beach movies, died on Wednesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He was 65.

His son Romeo announced the death on Sunday and said the cause was a stroke.

Timothy Carey’s acting career began with a part in Billy Wilder‘s 1951 movie The Big Carnival [aka Ace in the Hole] and included more than 50 feature films and many television roles.

He often played a villain. Two of his most recognized roles were in Stanley Kubrick films, The Killing (1956) and Paths of Glory (1957). He acted in One-Eyed Jacks (1961) with Marlon Brando and in John Cassavetes‘ Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976).

He also appeared in Bikini Beach (1964) and Beach Blanket Bingo (1965).

Mr. Carey wrote and directed himself in The World’s Greatest Sinner, in 1962.

In addition to his son Romeo, he is survived by his wife, Doris, and five other children, Mario, Velencia, Silvana, Dagmar and Germain.

Visiting Tim.

Me visiting Tim, 2011.

Timothy and his mother, Ida Agoglia Carey

And since it’s Mother’s Day, here’s Tim and his mom.

Celebrating Two Major Birthday Anniversaries.

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Today brings the birthday anniversaries of two of Timothy’s most important colleagues. Firstly we offer warmest 97th (!) birthday greetings to the legendary Kirk Douglas. Tim attempted to steal the spotlight from him in his uncredited (and we believe largely excised from the film) role as one of the workers attempting to rescue Douglas’ Ace in the Hole (1951) (aka The Big Carnival), directed by Billy Wilder. “First show I worked on, first show I got fired from,” said Tim. Douglas encountered him again six years later in Stanley Kubrick‘s Paths of Glory (1957). Some believe that Tim may have been paying sly homage to Douglas’ famous clenched-teeth delivery in his first outing with Kubrick, The Killing (1956). True or not, Tim may have annoyed the hell out of Douglas, but we still think he’s great. Happy birthday, Kirk!

Paths of Glory

Today also is the 84th anniversary of the late great John Cassavetes‘ birth. Tim found in him a kindred spirit, a true visionary who would not let the powers-that-be put limitations on his creativity. “I forget exactly how we met,” said Tim. “But I grabbed myself on his compassion about [The World’s Greatest] Sinner and he seemed like he just couldn’t do enough for me.” Cassavetes directed him twice: in Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), in which Tim gave us Morgan Morgan, the vagabond poet; and in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), where we first met Flo, the gangster with a heart of gold. Tim took Cassavetes’ death in 1989 very hard; he had lost a true friend and mentor. We can only ponder the visions that have gone unfilmed, by Cassavetes and Timothy as well.With John Cassavetes

Quote of the Week

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GL: You got fired from your first job, didn’t you?

TC: That’s right. Billy Wilder fired me from Ace in the Hole [51]. I’d just gotten out of drama school in New York, and I’d gone to California, where they threw me out of Columbia Studios. So on my way back, I stopped to look up Wilder in New Mexico, where he was shooting. I said, “Mr. Wilder, I’m here, I’m Timothy Carey, I studied the Stanislawski method.” He said, “Ja, okay, you go sign up, tell them I sent you.” So I was in the show, playing one of the workers trying to dig the fellow out of the hole. And I’m watching the camera, angling to get myself in a full shot. I wanted to be in that scene so much I stood in front of Kirk Douglas. I wanted to be seen by the guys back in Brooklyn, you know. But all of a sudden someone taps me on the shoulder. “The director doesn’t want you anymore.” He gave me five vouchers, each worth $7.50. First show I worked on, first show I got fired from.

– Grover Lewis, “Cracked Actor”, Film Comment Jan/Feb 2004; interview conducted in 1992

Ace in the Hole

Is that Timothy back there??

 

Quote of the Week

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Whether looming over the strangely invertebrate James Dean as the muscle of the local brothel in East of Eden or buying the farm in a whisker-quick saloon shoot-out with Marlon Brando in One-Eyed Jacks, the disheveled, vertiginous Timothy Carey performed, through much of his career, as the kind of thespian rarity whose flickering presence, even when bereft of a fleshed-out “character,” struck a loud, long-resonating note in the frequently seam-riddled “seamless narratives” it embellished. Like a portal into a reality hidden from view by scopophobic hysteria, Carey materialized from an alternate universe devoid of heroes and legible story lines.

Available accounts and filmographies of Carey’s early career typify his roles in exploitation pictures as “oozing malevolence,” citing creepy gangster turns in Andre de Toth‘s Crime Wave and Harold D. Schuster‘s Finger Man, as well as uncredited parts in Billy Wilder’s The Big Carnival [aka Ace in the Hole – ed.] and William A. Wellman‘s Across the Wide Missouri. In 1953’s The Wild One, he got to spray Brando in the face with a shaken-up carbonated beverage – some say beer, others soda pop. He was physically attacked by Richard Widmark during the filming of The Last Wagon in 1956, and pummeled by Karl Malden on the set of One-Eyed Jacks, or so the legends go; according to some of Carey’s enthusiasts, his parts got progressively bigger in B-circuit pictures for a time, then shrank as his uninhibited behavior off-camera, and scene-swiping on, earned him the poisonous sobriquet of being “difficult.”

Only the sharpest and restive of “great” directors, and the most cynically astute hacks, recognized Carey’s innate ability to enlarge a piece of cinema into something beyond cinema. Anecdotal evidence reflects how often even those who perceived Carey’s ungovernable grandeur were either prevented from casting him, or themselves provoked by his antics into tossing him out of a picture.

He was, in effect, too much of what he was, too formidably present to evaporate into a peripheral presence; both his imposing physicality and his avid wish to smuggle something living into something simulated got him scotched from films like Bonnie and Clyde and The Grifters; the insecurity of Harvey Keitel purportedly scrapped a  major role in Reservoir Dogs; Carey, by his own account, sabotaged his own way out of The Godfather and Godfather II.

– Gary Indiana, “Timothy Carey: The Refusal of the Repressed,” from Dead Flowers (Participant Press/VoxPopuli, 2011)

East of Eden (1955)

 

Quote of the Week

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Our quote for this week comes from John Baxter‘s biography of Stanley Kubrick. It may generate some discussion. Obviously, I don’t share his low opinion of Timothy’s acting skills. I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts on this one.

On Spartacus, Kubrick’s next film, stills cameraman William Read Woodfield asked him why he cast people like Timothy Carey, “who couldn’t act at all.”

Kubrick replied, “They bring a texture to the picture that a better actor wouldn’t.”

“Are you sure, Stanley?” Woodfield pressed. “Or is it that you don’t really like good actors?”

“That may be, ” Kubrick conceded.

What could Kubrick have against good actors? It’s Woodfield’s theory, borne out by Kubrick’s later work, that he prefers performances which remove the film from reality. Given capable actors like George C. Scott or Jack Nicholson, Kubrick forced them by repeated takes to abandon naturalism for mannerism and hysteria. A protean actor like Peter Sellers, who stuffed half a dozen characters into a single film, and an abysmal one like Carey, who always played himself, gave the same distancing effect.

Kubrick had a soft spot for Carey, a New York contemporary of his, though from Brooklyn, not the Bronx. The gangling Carey bluffed his way into the Marines at fifteen and, after demobilisation, joined the thousands of dissatisfied young men milling around New York in search of artistic fulfilment. He took advantage of the GI Bill to study drama, and agent Walter Kohner got him bit parts in Billy Wilder‘s The Big Carnival [aka Ace in the Hole] and Laslo Benedek‘s The Wild One. These led to a role for Carey as the brothel bouncer Joe in Elia Kazan‘s version of East of Eden opposite James Dean.

None of this experience refined Carey’s technique, which always hovered somewhere between Elvis Presley and Lon Chaney Jr. On Paths of Glory, he could never remember to tear into his last meal of roast duck the same way twice. “Every take required an untouched duck,” says Kubrick. “I think we used up sixty-eight or so ducks before we got it right.” Kirk Douglas despised such unprofessionalism, which may have been why Kubrick insisted on flying Carey to Germany for the film. During the court-martial scene, when Douglas was making his disgust at Carey’s bad acting obvious, Kubrick whispered, “Make this a good one, ’cause Kirk doesn’t like it.”

– from Stanley Kubrick: A Biography by John Baxter (Carroll and Graf, 1997)

Quote of the Week

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This week’s quote is actually a newspaper article about Tim that deserves to be reproduced in its entirety. It’s one of Mel Heimer’s My New York columns, from the Simpson’s Leader-Times of January 18, 1958.

MY NEW YORK

by Mel Heimer

I don’t want anyone out there to question my bravery ever again. I’ve just finished meeting Tim Carey and I’m still on my feet, still punching, still snarling all right, you guys, who’s next?

Timothy is this year’s Jayne Mansfield, male division. Ol’ Plain Jayne has slowed down a little now and no longer does anything short of murder to get her name in the publick printes. However, Timothy – “Hollywood’s wild man” – has taken up the slack.

He’s a big, black-haired Brooklynite of 24 [sic; he was actually pushing 29 at the time] who is, I am told, an actor. At least, he’s made pictures and currently is in Paths of Glory. Stanley Kubrick, its director, says of the wild man that he may be a clown offstage but he’s “an artistic giant” when you point the camera lens his way. Kubrick, of course, doesn’t have a detached viewpoint, so you’d better go see the picture and make up your own mind. I’ll go when I get my breath back.

“I’m in this other picture Bayou, see,” Timothy plunged in, smoothing out his Italian silk suit carefully, “and I do such a sensuous dance that it had to be censored. How about that? I got the inspiration for it from Lilli Christine, the burlesque ‘Cat Girl,’ who I saw dance in the 500 Club in New Orleans. It’s supposed to be an artistic dance. Hah, hah. It’s pure burlesque. Bayou‘s a good picture but you can’t understand most of the actors. Now Paths of Glory is a different kind of picture. It’s bold. You might say it’s brazen. Women get a spiritual cry out of it.”

Tim fingered his thick gold wristwatch.

“I’ve seen Paths of Glory 10 or 15 times. I think I’m very good in it. I was oh, kind of subdued in it. I liked the scene where I killed the cockroach.

“We were playing French soldiers and Ralph Meeker saw a cockroach on the table and said bitterly ‘Look at that cockroach; tomorrow we’ll be dead and he’ll be alive.’ So I slammed my hand on the cockroach and said ‘Now you got the edge on him.’

“I’m very good with snakes. I’ve got two, a 10-foot python named Zsa Zsa and an eight-foot boa constrictor called Emily. I hope they’re females. You can’t tell with snakes, you know.

“This friend of mine has a snake farm in Maryland and the first time he showed me some of his pets, I was enticed, you might say. I did a bit with a snake in the Oasis Club on Western Avenue, Los Angeles, and 30 people ran out of the joint. Snakes are all right. Once a snake is civilized, he’s no harm at all.

“I did a snake scene at a personal appearance in Hartford, Conn., and had trouble getting a girl to help. I mean, I didn’t want to get my mother for it. Got one, though. My snake-farm friend flew in from California to help out. He brought me a big python. Smuggled it on the plane by wrapping it around him.

“We registered the python at the Statler in Hartford as ‘Pete Cajun’ but it was disappointing; the hotel people didn’t bat an eye. Later I rode through the town with the python around my neck. I guess I might say I threw dignity to the winds.”

There was a lot more of this but maybe you should know some of Timothy’s background. He was expelled from five schools and joined the Marines at 15.

Billy Wilder, the director, who had had some unsettling experiences with Tim when the wild man was trying to break into films (Tim came into Billy’s bathroom at 4:30 a.m. when the director was getting ready for an early day’s work – and promptly asked him for a job, enraging Wilder so he slashed his chin), ran off the set when Tim turned up to act in East of Eden.

“I beat up James Dean in that picture,” Tim said thoughtfully. “It was a wonderful experience. In The Killing, I shot a racehorse. My mother wants me to be a priest.”

Tim’s the man who lasted a week with a Columbia, S.C., ballclub (he’s never played ball) by telling the manager he was a good pitcher but had a sore arm. There’s a studio in Hollywood that put up a sign reading “Let’s Make the Best Pictures Here But Let’s Make Them Without Timothy Carey.”

Tim is working on three projects: (1) to out-dance Elvis Presley in Macy’s window, (2) to kidnap Marilyn Monroe (“with her permission, of course”), and (3) to steal an Oscar.

“However, I’m pretty conservative now,” Tim concluded pensively. “I’m writing screenplays and I want to direct. Then I want to retire. Maybe I’ll go back to 79th Street in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, to live. I’ve always been very proud of Bay Ridge.”

Tim's interview with Mel Heimer, 1958