Tag Archives: elia kazan

Quote of the Week

Posted by Marisa on

(WOW it’s been over a year since I’ve posted! I’m so sorry. Trying to get my life back on track; I promise to post more often!)

Standing at 6’4 with a tornado of jet black hair, piercing blue eyes and more swagger and verve than every founding father and mother of rock & roll combined, Carey started to make his mark in cinema in the 1950’s, with turns in such classics like Elia Kazan‘s East of Eden (1955) and in Stanley Kubrick‘s twin masterpieces, The Killing (1956) and Paths of Glory (1957). Standing out in the Kazan film despite being both dubbed and on screen for a hot second, Carey blew the lid OFF with the latter two. In particular, his turn as the doomed Private Maurice Ferol in Paths of Glory is unshakable once you’ve seen it. Carey’s ability to not only innately steal every scene he graced but also bring the entire rainbow of the human condition to any film made him a presence to look out for.

bizarro

Quote of the Week

Posted by Marisa on

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

Pic of the Day: “Waterhole #3” promotional still

Posted by Marisa on

Today’s pic is my latest eBay find! It’s a publicity still for Waterhole #3 (1967), the rollicking Western comedy directed by William A. Graham. Paramount Pictures is more than happy to tell us that it features Roy Jenson, Harry Davis and Timothy, digging a tunnel in search of gold.

Waterhole #3

Davis was a familiar character actor who appeared mostly on television throughout the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, with the occasional film role coming his way. One of the most memorable of these was in Elia Kazan‘s America America (1963). His wife, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, was one of the best of a handful of women writing and publishing hard-boiled crime fiction in the 1940s and ’50s (and beyond).

Quote of the Week

Posted by Marisa on

The Brooklyn-born Carey was physically imposing—a strapping 6’4”—making him ideal for roles as brutish heavies, and he resembled a love child of Nicolas Cage and John Turturro. His penchant for improvisation—bizarre dancing, unscripted outbursts, mumbled nonsense—often got him into trouble with directors and other actors, but made lifelong fans of Jack Nicholson (who wrote Head and likely borrowed elements of Carey’s persona for his performance in The Shining [1980]); [John] Cassavetes (who claimed Carey had the “brilliance of Eisenstein”); and Quentin Tarantino, who considered Carey for the role of crime boss Joe Cabot in Reservoir Dogs (1992).

For mondo video devotees, Carey sealed his immortality with the self-written/produced/directed oddity The World’s Greatest Sinner (1962), which can be characterized as [Elia] Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd (1957) as directed by Ed Wood Jr. The film, which has some of the same proto–John Waters tackiness of The Honeymoon Killers (1970), tells the tale of a bored insurance salesman who becomes an early Elvis-style rockabilly sensation. Noting the frenzy he inspires in his audiences, he begins calling himself “God,” founds a religious cult, and runs for President. Carey and his singularly untalented “band” played their own detuned rock ‘n’ roll in the concert scenes, but the film was scored by a young, pre–Mothers of Invention Frank Zappa. Narrated by the devil and featuring the real God at the climax, Sinner was admired by Elvis himself (who asked Carey for a print) and remains one of Martin Scorsese’s favorite rock ‘n’ roll films.

– Andrew Hultkrans, “Carey On”; Art Forum, October 12, 2010

The World's Greatest Sinner

Quote of the Week

Posted by Marisa on

In Elia Kazan’s classic John Steinbeck adaptation East of Eden (1955) Carey is a pimp/bodyguard for Jo Van Fleet’s character in a brothel she runs and is ordered to throw her son Cal (played by James Dean) out the door when he comes to see her. Right away you notice a spark of brutality and weirdness from Carey’s arrival onscreen. As preparation for his role as “Joe” the pimp, Carey tried mumbling all his lines because he thought it was “how pimps talked”. At a certain point Kazan got so angry at his annoying interpretation, he stabbed Carey with a pen in the shoulder. He and Dean actually became friends during the production. One day they went on a car ride through Salinas after which Carey stated he would never get in a car with him again due to his reckless driving habits. Dean would later die in what is now an infamous car crash.

– Peter (just Peter), “Mad As Hell Heroes: TIMOTHY CAREY… What a Character!”; Furious Cinema, November 11, 2013

on the set with James Dean

Video of the Week: “East of Eden” (1981)

Posted by Marisa on

Our video for this week is another one culled from the archives. John Steinbeck‘s great American novel East of Eden has been filmed twice: first as a feature film in 1955, directed by Elia Kazan, and then as an ABC television miniseries in 1981 with Harvey Hart at the helm. (Apparently there is a new version in the works with Jennifer Lawrence.) Timothy has the distinction of appearing in both of them. Here he is in the 1981 miniseries as a fiery circuit-riding preacher, starting at about the 1:15:28 mark.

Unfortunately, this is the only time he appears in the program. I can’t be the only one who thinks this character deserved his own spin-off series. Enjoy!

Pic of the Day: “East of Eden” (1955) revisited

Posted by Marisa on

Eighty-four years ago yesterday, James Byron Dean was born in Marion, Indiana. The blue-eyed heart-breaker from the heartland scored his first starring role in Elia Kazan‘s East of Eden (1955), based on the epic novel by John Steinbeck. Timothy and Dean hit it off during shooting, and together they shook up the little seaside town of Mendocino, California.

East of Eden (1955)

Tim told the story of his friendship with Dean in an article for Movie Stars Parade magazine in 1957. This September we will observe the sixtieth anniversary of Dean’s death. We can only imagine the elder statesmen of cinema these two would be now, if we had not been deprived of their presence far too soon.

Pic of the Day: “Bloodhounds of Broadway” revisited

Posted by Marisa on

Kicking off the week a day late is Harmon Jones‘ Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952), the musical extravaganza starring Mitzi Gaynor and Scott Brady. It provided Timothy with one of his earliest (if uncredited) speaking roles as Crockett Pace, the hot-tempered mountain-folk (“hillbilly” is so gauche) suitor of future Broadway star Emily Ann Stackerlee (Gaynor). He is seen here getting his hat knocked off by equally hot-tempered Numbers Foster (Brady).

Bloodhounds of Broadway

Jones, a native of Canada, began his Hollywood career as a film editor at 20th Century-Fox in the mid-1940s. He received an Academy Award nomination for his work on Elia Kazan‘s Gentleman’s Agreement (1947). He turned to directing in the early 1950s, and kept himself well occupied with both film and television projects until the late 1960s. His son, Robert C. Jones, also became an editor, getting his impressive resume off to a fine start with John Cassavetes‘ A Child Is Waiting (1963).

Pic of the Day: “Rio Conchos” revisited

Posted by Marisa on

Let’s kick off the week with another look at Chico, the seedy cantina proprietor/pimp of Gordon Douglas‘ Rio Conchos (1964). Mexican bandit Juan Luis (Anthony Franciosa) is hoping that a shiny trinket will pay for some time with one of Chico’s girls. He is correct.

Rio Conchos

Franciosa was always a joy to watch, wherever he turned up – in films, on television (he worked with Timothy again in “Fear of High Places,” the premiere episode of The Name of the Game in 1968) or on the stage. Like Tim, he developed a “difficult to work with” reputation. He utters one of my favorite lines of all time in one of his first films, Elia Kazan‘s A Face in the Crowd (1957): “I’m gonna tell you something that will move you and shake you!” He was quite unforgettable in Dario Argento‘s Tenebre (1982). He died in 2006 at age 77, the result of a massive stroke.

Quote of the Week

Posted by Marisa on

Carey’s career as a character actor began with the role of a dead man in Across the Wide Missouri, directed by William Wellman, who, Carey recalled, “was a great director and a tough director. I had two arrows in my back laying in the water. I couldn’t hold still, it was so cold 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.”

The pattern for Carey’s acting career was set. Director and player wrestled for control of a scene. Directors who afforded Carey room to operate, those who were able to understand his capabilities, worked well with him. Carey played the absolute heavy to the relative heavy in a string of hard-boiled dramas of the early ‘50s including Hellgate, The Big Carnival [aka Ace in the Hole] and Finger Man. […]

By the mid-50’s, Carey’s work had attracted the attention of a number of directors. Elia Kazan cast him in East of Eden, playing the bouncer at a brothel owned by James Dean’s mother. This experience would produce the only serious regret of Carey’s professional life. Kazan decided that the actor’s Brooklynese was not to his liking, and had Carey’s voice dubbed over, significantly marginalizing his presence in the film. He and Dean bonded during the production. This culminated in one of Dean’s infamous reckless Sunday drives through Salinas. After they returned to the set Carey said, prophetically, “I’m never getting in a car with him again.”

– Alex de Laszlo, “The Wonderful Horrible Life of Timothy Carey”, Uno Mas magazine, 1996

Across the Wide Missouri