Tag Archives: lee marvin

Quote of the Week

Posted by Marisa on

“A bad actor is rich, unique, idiosyncratic, revealing of himself,” Jack Smith once wrote. Timothy Agoglia Carey (1929–1994), subject of a 10-day retrospective at Anthology Film Archives, was surely all of those things, but he was not exactly a bad actor—this Brooklyn-born, apparently self-taught Method man was more like a way of life.

A scary presence onscreen, Carey was an imposing palooka prone to upstaging fellow cast members by artfully flinging his body around the set. He had a shambling, sleepy-eyed stance and the grinning volatility of a barroom brawler, playing tough guys, lunatics, and chortling combinations of the two—although his career role was as a whimpering coward. As a performer, Carey was unafraid to make a spectacle of himself. His earliest claim to fame was as a member of Lee Marvin’s motorcycle gang in The Wild One (1953), spontaneously opening a beer bottle and surprising Marlon Brando, the grand master of on-camera improvisation, with a shower of suds.

However pissed, Brando did employ Carey again in his sole directorial effort, One-Eyed Jacks (1961)—or maybe it was Stanley Kubrick, the project’s original director. Kubrick had used Carey twice before to tremendous effect—as the racetrack hit man in The Killing (1956), enthusiastically primed to assassinate a horse and, even more memorably, as one of the condemned soldiers in Paths of Glory (1957). Unfairly sentenced to death, Carey steals the movie with his smirky drawl, inappropriate giggles, cud-chewing line reading, and sobbing cri de coeur: “I don’t wanna die!!!!!!” This embodiment of pure, hysterical fear made Carey an underground hero and, seven years later, inspired Esquire to run his picture opposite John Wayne’s as a paradigm of the so-called New Sentimentality: “A minor character actor who manages to excite us in a personal way is a real celebrity.”

Carey’s subsequent movie career was spotty but choice—a sadistic Union sergeant in Phil Karlson’s A Time for Killing (1967), a version of himself in Bob Rafelson’s Monkees musical Head (1968), and a fastidious, Marx-quoting mobster in John Cassavetes’s The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976). Anthology is showing these, as well as Carey’s two most alarming vehicles, the indie cheapster Bayou (1957), re-released five years later as Poor White Trash with an added rape scene (starring guess-who), and The World’s Greatest Sinner (1962), a movie that Carey wrote, directed, and produced over a three-year period—while appearing in nearly every shot.

The high point of Poor White Trash is Carey’s Cajun love dance, knees knocking and mouth agape. This agonized mambo is reprised in The World’s Greatest Sinner, in which Carey’s bored insurance salesman becomes first a leather-lunged, immortality-promising street preacher, then a frantic rock-’n’-roller who bills himself as God, and, finally, dignified with a paste-on goatee and campaigning against death, the presidential candidate of the Eternal Man Party. Blasphemy aside, his sins include sex with female followers from 14 to 83, gratuitously smacking his little daughter and stabbing a sacramental wafer to see if it bleeds.

Fabulously scored by then unknown 20-year-old Frank Zappa, The World’s Greatest Sinner is far from incompetent filmmaking—it’s as idiotic, crafty, and unpredictable as Carey’s performance. Placing his satire at the intersection of politics, celebrity, and the media, Sinner is thematically the missing link between A Face in the Crowd and Wild in the Streets. It’s also a skid-row psychodrama to double-bill with Ed Wood’s plea for transvestite acceptance Glen or Glenda or Spencer Williams’s stark morality play The Blood of Jesus. Perhaps someday, someone will do Clint Eastwood a favor and show Sinner with Hereafter.

Quote of the Week

Posted by Marisa on

Timothy Carey had one of the most unusual careers of all Hollywood character actors, obtaining full cult status for his portrayals of the doomed, the psychotic and the plain crazy. Carey’s career was an “Only in America” type of story, and he retains his status as a Great American Original a decade after his death.

As a 22-year-old acting school graduate, he made his film debut in 1951 as a corpse in a Clark Gable western [Across the Wide Missouri (1951)], but it was his brief, uncredited part as Chino, a member of Lee Marvin‘s motorcycle gang The Beetles [actually, Marvin played Chino, not Tim] in The Wild One (1953) that made an impression and was a harbinger of the unsavory things to come. Prone to improvising, it was the fearless Carey who came up with the idea of squirting beer in Marlon Brando‘s face, even though the Great Method Actor himself had expressed reservations about what Carey was up to. He also registered that year [1955, actually] as the bordello bouncer who threatens James Dean in East of Eden (1955), making his face, if not his name (he was uncredited in both parts), known to the mass audience.

Carey followed this up with superb acting jobs in two Stanley Kubrick films, The Killing (1956) and Paths of Glory (1957). In the former he played the sociopath Nikki Arane [last name is actually Arano], who is contracted to shoot a race horse, which he does with great glee. In Paths of Glory Carey had an atypically sympathetic role as French soldier Pvt. Ferol, unjustly condemned to be shot to atone for the stupidities of his generals during World War I. However, it was in Bayou (1957) that Carey reached his apotheosis as an actor: as the psychotic Cajun Ulysses, he crafted an indelible performance that went beyond the acceptable limits of cinema scenery-chewing. He became Ulysses, on-screen, the mad Cajun who epitomized evil, his insanity perfectly encapsulated in the psychotic jig Carey danced to more fully limn his character’s madness. This classic exploitation film was re-cut and re-released as Poor White Trash (1961), and became a grindhouse Gone with the Wind (1939), playing to crowds until the 1970s (and becoming, retrospectively, one of the top-grossing films of 1957).

– Jon C. Hopwood, Timothy Carey on IMDb

The Killing

Video of the Week: “The Wild One”

Posted by Marisa on

In honor of the legendary Lee Marvin‘s 90th birthday anniversary, we present the famous fight scene from The Wild One (1953), directed by Laslo Benedek. Timothy, uncredited as an enthusiastic member of Chino’s gang, sits on his motorcycle observing Chino as he eggs on Johnny (Marlon Brando). Later on during the fight, he splashes the contents of a bottle of beer over Chino while urging him to get up and finish Johnny off. This has been referred to in some quarters as the “throwing beer on Brando” incident.

Actually, as you can see, Marvin is the only one who actually gets beer thrown on him. Tim gestures a little too wildly with bottle in hand, and Brando gets a few drops on him. As Timothy mentioned in the James Dean article, “I played the scene with enthusiasm, but Brando didn’t seem to appreciate it. He finally turned to director Laslo Benedek and said, ‘Get that guy off the set. He makes me nervous.’” When Brando directed Tim years later in One-Eyed Jacks (1961), he told him, “Just don’t throw beer on me again, OK?” Tim replied, “If I do, Marlon, it’ll be good beer; it’ll be German beer.”

Video of the Week: “The Wild One”

Posted by Marisa on

This week’s video is the once-controversial early biker epic The Wild One (1953) in its entirety. Timothy is uncredited but memorable as the perhaps overly enthusiastic member of Chino’s gang who splashes beer on Marlon Brando and terrorizes poor switchboard operator Dorothy (Eve March, also uncredited).

“Maybe you remember Marlon Brando in The Wild One,” Tim told Bill Tusher in Movie Stars Parade magazine. “Well, in that picture Lee Marvin was the number one heavy, and I was his sidekick. When he and Brando got into a brawl in the big mob scene, I was supposed to push Marvin onto Marlon. I did it like the picture said I was supposed to – like I hated Brando’s guts and I wanted Marvin to claw him apart. As I said, I played the scene with enthusiasm, but Brando didn’t seem to appreciate it. He finally turned to director Laslo Benedek and said, ‘Get that guy off the set. He makes me nervous.'”

Repost: The Highways of Heaven

Posted by Marisa on

Fifty-eight years ago today, James Dean was driving his Porsche 550 Spyder, nicknamed “Little Bastard,” when he died in a head-on collision with another car. I thought instead of just another pic of he and Timothy from East of Eden (1955), I would share again this article from Movie Stars Parade magazine, which I originally posted on December 26, 2011. Enjoy.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This Christmas my wonderful husband gave me one of the best presents I’ve ever received. It’s a copy of the September 1957 issue of Movie Stars Parade magazine. It contains an article entitled “The Highways of Heaven.” “As told to Bill Tusher,” it is Timothy’s account of his friendship with James Dean, but it’s really just as much about himself as it is about Dean. It is presented here in its entirety. This is vintage Timothy at his very best. Enjoy!

THE HIGHWAYS OF HEAVEN

Did Jimmy Dean find the road of his dreams? I pray so, for I was his friend. To me he opened his heart – about life, about love, about death.

By TIMOTHY CAREY as told to Bill Tusher

First crack out of the box, I’ve gotta tell you something about myself. I’m the guy who had the assignment of beating Jimmy Dean to a pulp in East of Eden. But you couldn’t begin to dig why Jimmy Dean and I hit it off the way we did unless you were zeroed in on me. I’m a big sort of lummox with a head of black hair, a wild gleam in my eyes, an innate scorn for convention, an innate appreciation for women, an ambition to be a great actor that burns my insides, contempt for clothes and contempt for what other people think. In other words, if you mark me down for an extrovert, an odd-ball, you’re in the right neighborhood.

The main difference between me and Jimmy – outside of the fact that I’m living and he’s not; he’ll be remembered and I probably won’t – is that he had a boyish, defensive air about him, and people wanted to mother him. No one ever took me for a pretty boy. When they get an eyeful of me, they want to run in the other direction. Jimmy they wanted to mother, and me they wanted to smother. The big thing Jimmy and I had in common was that neither of us ever could run with the pack. As one lost sheep to another, I guess Jimmy and I felt an instant affinity.

I never walk through a scene. Whatever I do I do with enthusiasm – and it didn’t take me long to find out that the more enthusiastic I got about my work the less enthusiastic some of my fellow players got about me. Maybe you remember Marlon Brando in The Wild One. Well, in that picture Lee Marvin was the number one heavy, and I was his sidekick. When he and Brando got into a brawl in the big mob scene, I was supposed to push Marvin onto Marlon. I did it like the picture said I was supposed to – like I hated Brando’s guts and I wanted Marvin to claw him apart. As I said, I played the scene with enthusiasm, but Brando didn’t seem to appreciate it. He finally turned to director Laslo Benedek and said, “Get that guy off the set. He makes me nervous.”

This kind of thing kept happening to me all the time. I played a heavy again in a picture called Crime Wave, with Sterling Hayden and Phyllis Kirk, and in one scene I was holding Phyllis prisoner in a dingy waterfront room. There was low key lighting and the boom was down low. I affected a twitch like a narcotics addict, I turned on a low, sensual, half-crazy laugh, gritted my teeth and dug my hands into her shoulders – just like the creep I was portraying would have done in real life. But Phyllis wasn’t impressed with my realism. She found me too convincing. She broke and got hysterical. I had to go apologize to her, although I don’t know what I was apologizing for.

When I was up for the part in East of Eden, Jack Warner was warned, “If you use that guy, he’ll destroy the whole movie.”

I’d heard, of course, that Elia Kazan was a nut for realism, so I suppose he wasn’t intimidated by my reputation as a wild man. Anyhow, I got the part.

But I had no reason to expect a more cordial reception from Jimmy Dean that I’d received from Marlon Brando.

However, as I was soon to learn, Jimmy Dean wasn’t like the other actors. I didn’t scare Jimmy. I amused him.

When a scene was over, Jimmy wasn’t like the others. He didn’t have that air of now that the scene is over, get lost. We’d go into his dressing room. He’d sit on his chair, and I’d sprawl on his cot, and we’d talk. One thing you found out right away about Jimmy – it didn’t matter how long you knew him. You knew him in one day or you didn’t know him at all. In spite of the fact that I came with such lousy references, I developed a friendship with Jimmy as strong as anyone who ever knew him. To give you an idea of the kind of easy, screwball relationship we had, anytime we’d see each other – whether it was in Elia Kazan’s office or the commissary – I’d flip spitballs at him, and he’d take a straw, wad it into spitballs, and flip them back at me.

The first time I saw Jimmy Dean was when I boarded the chartered plane at Burbank Airport for Mendocino, where we were headed to do location scenes. I noticed this kid in blue jeans and a cowboy hat; he looked like a hick to me, a stunt man. He even sounded a little like a cowboy when he talked, but I had no idea of who he was.

I gave it no more thought until we landed in Mendocino, a postage stamp of an airport. They didn’t have facilities for lowering the passengers from the DC7. They couldn’t even scare up a ladder that would reach the plane.

After some delay, we were informed that the local fire department had been called to the rescue. In a few minutes, a big red hook and ladder truck came screaming onto the airstrip, sirens wide open.

I kept looking at the kid in the cowboy hat who was sitting in front of me with Lennie Rosenman, who composed the music for East of Eden. His face lighted up with excitement and he tilted his wide brimmed hat to the back of his head, and looked out the window like a little kid getting a view from the top of a skyscraper.

“Hey,” he said to Lennie, “listen to that siren! Listen to that siren, man! This is something!”

He laughed like a baby.

They raised the ladder to let the passengers down, and the 350 pound woman who played a maid in the picture almost fell on Dean. He laughed again, as if he’d gotten a big charge out of all the excitement.

I still didn’t know who he was, but I liked the way he was not ashamed to enjoy the snafu at the airport. I remember thinking, “He’s a regular guy, whoever he is.”

The next time I saw him, he was driving this MG in Mendocino. I waved to him and he stopped.

“Hey,” I said, “how the hell do you rate this? Who do you know?”

He laughed and tilted his head back, his eyes squinting in the sun.

“Well,” he said softly, “the studio sent it up. I drove it all the way from New York.”

“Then you must be this Jimmy Dean who’s starring in this picture.”

He grinned and looked at me. “Yeah.”

We shot the breeze for quite a while then. He told me how he’d studied at Actors Studio, and I mentioned that I’d had the same kind of training from Anthony Pirello, who used to be in the Group Theatre. He talked about the way he liked to drive fast in his car, how he was planning to drive it back to New York when the picture was over, and I mentioned that the first thing I ever owned was a 1938 Harley Davidson.

But we didn’t talk all shop. I observed that there were a lot of pretty Indians around Mendocino, and Jimmy laughed softly and said, “Gee, I dig chicks.”

That was when they were talking about him being in love with Pier Angeli, and I asked him, “Are you gonna marry that girl?”

“Nah,” he said. “I’m not going to marry her. We’re just having a good time.”

I told him where I lived in L.A. (by choice in the real skid row area) and how I spent so much time at the 5-4 Ballroom, dancing, doing snake hips and really going with that tribal beat.

“You have to go there some time with me,” I said. “It’s a gasser. They have real rhythm and blues music there.”

“It sounds crazy,” he replied. “We’ll do that. We really will. You know, it’s the same way in Greenwich Village. You can let yourself go there. You can have a ball.”

The conversation gave us a good, friendly feeling, and we knew we dug each other. I told him how I’d been kicked off all those pictures, and how I’d made a lot of big shot actors nervous, and he just laughed.

As he drove off, he looked around and shook his head.

“What a hick town,” he drawled. “I’m going to play it cool. See you soon, Tim.”

One statement Jimmy made stuck with me as he gunned his MG, covering his get-away in a blanket of dust. We were airing our slants on life when he said it:

“What people like, I don’t like.”

I had to laugh.

“Maybe,” I said, “that’s why you like me.”

But that statement – “What people like, I don’t like” – was, I think, the key to Jimmy Dean, if anything was. We saw a great deal of each other while we were in Mendocino. We were really buddy-buddy, and we palled around almost all the time Jimmy wasn’t working.

East of Eden (1955)

He really didn’t like what other people liked. Ordinary things and ordinary places bugged him. He liked to walk down dimly lit streets, to get the real feeling of the town. When we went out at night, he picked the worst bar in the whole town. There were a lot of good gin mills, but he picked the seediest place.

He’d say, “Let’s have some fun. Let’s see if there are any girls in town. Let’s listen to some crazy music.”

He would have beer and smoke cigarettes, and he would get a great kick out of me ordering 7-Up.

“How do you like that?” he laughed the first time I did it. “You look like you can do anything – like you’d drink rubbing alcohol.”

“I don’t need any synthetics for my kicks, Jimmy,” I told him.

“You have something there,” he nodded.

At this one joint, there were a couple of dolls on the make, and I said, “Look, why don’t we con those two gals?” But Jimmy only laughed, did nothing.

He was shy, if you want to know the truth. More than once I’d get the feeling that he wanted to, but he didn’t do anything.

I’d say to him, “Let’s try to get a couple of chicks,” and he’d grin, “All right, I’m all for it.”

But when there was a showdown, he’d always back off. When I’d press him, he’d laugh, “Let’s wait till we get back to Greenwich Village, where we can really move.”

In that way, he was a moody guy. One minute he wanted to date the girls, the next he didn’t care about them. He was the same way about  music. One minute he was gone on rhythm and blues, the next he was gassed by hillbilly music.

Although I liked him thoroughly, I had the feeling that for a guy who’s supposed to be a big actor, he didn’t seem to have any bearings on what he wanted to do. He’d get steamed up on an idea, then it would go stale before he could carry it out.

The only time he really got interested in a gal in Mendocino was the time I tried to pick up a waitress at the Greek restaurant where we ate.

One day, after we’d seen her around for a while, I asked her:

“Why don’t we get together, baby?”

Jimmy turned the other way when I made the pitch.

“I’m sorry,” she said, so low you almost couldn’t hear her. “My husband just died. He was killed fighting a forest fire.”

That was the signal for Jimmy to wheel around. He suddenly took an interest.

“That’s really something,” he said with deep sympathy.

He started to talk to her, to ask her questions about her husband’s work. And she knew he wasn’t on the make, just interested, and it seemed to make her feel a lot better.

Jimmy was always restless.

“I hate to be in just one environment,” he told me one day. “It’s like the tourists. They come to town, they see only one side of it. That’s why I want to see the other side of it.”

I guess we saw as many sides of Mendocino as there were. One day we went fishing in a canoe, but Jimmy didn’t want to fish. He wanted to do all the paddling. He wanted to put distance behind him and take in the sights. Along the way, we spotted three wild sheep on the top of a hill in the heart of the redwood country. They saw us and took off like a shot. Jimmy got a real charge out of that. He liked anything out of the ordinary. Maybe that’s why he liked me – because I was out of the ordinary.

One night we’d go to the grubbiest dive in town. The next day, we’d drive along the countryside, and Jimmy would stop and talk to the farmers.

Of course, it was one thing for Jimmy to put up with me in a little, lonely town off the beaten path. But would he really be different from the others when I started roughing him up in the picture?

I had to beat him up twice – first, when he ran out of his mother’s home and started tossing stones at it, and second in the hallway of his mother’s shady joint. I wanted to get on the better side of Jimmy, and I’d made up my mind to pull my punches a little. But when Jimmy and I discussed the scene where I grabbed him, he said, “When you do it, Tim, do it as real as you can.”

I still didn’t think he’d like it very much if I really let go. So when I grabbed hold of him, I was still holding back. I was plenty rough, you understand, but not as rough as I could be.

But Jimmy wasn’t happy.

“Hold it,” he said. “Tim, you’re going too easy. I don’t feel the motivation.”

So I decided maybe he really meant what he said. The next take, I came out like a bull, a roaring beast.

“Whaddya doing, throwing them stones for?” I growled.

I squeezed him with a bear hug until he almost suffocated, and in the process of the mauling I gave him, my long fingernails left marks all over him. We did the take over and over until Jimmy was satisfied that it was realistic enough. I ripped off six or seven of his sweaters.

Jimmy was panting and bleeding. His arms were streaked with blood, and his chest was scratched and smeared with crimson. But Jimmy had no complaints.

Elia Kazan, the master realist, began to get nervous, though. He yelled, “Cut,” and called me over.

“Now take it easy, Carey,” he told me. “We won’t have this actor very long if you keep this up.”

So I took it easy in the next few takes. Then we had a short break and went over to Kazan. Jimmy put his arm around Kazan, and said, “I don’t know, Gadge. I don’t get the feeling. Why doesn’t Tim really open up on me?”

with Kazan and Dean

Again, I cut loose. I was flabbergasted. Jimmy seemed like he wanted to be tortured. Me, I was bewildered. I was afraid I’d get thrown out of the picture.

Later, Solly Baiano, the Warner casting director, gave me a tip.

“You’d better take it easy, Tim,” he said. “I know you’re a good actor, but don’t over-do it. Kazan is sensitive.”

There were 20 takes of me beating Jimmy before they called a halt. After it was over, Dean was friendlier than before, if anything. He was the first star who didn’t hold my enthusiasm against me.

In our next fight sequence, I was supposed to pummel Jimmy as he ran through the hallway after leaving his mother’s office. I grabbed hold of his hair; we got into a struggle, I hit him and almost caved in the side of his face. He never said anything. I couldn’t understand the guy. Any other actor would have called the cops. But not Jimmy. That’s the way he wanted it – real.

Then I lifted my fist to hit him again, missed, hit a pipe and broke my knuckles. Some blood began to trickle, but I wanted to continue with the scene. Only Jimmy wouldn’t let me. He didn’t care when his own blood was oozing, but at the sight of my blood he became compassionate.

“It’s all right, Jimmy,” I insisted. “Let’s go.”

“No,” Jimmy was firm. “Let’s get the  nurse.”

This guy was a human being. He really cared about my knuckles bleeding. I could drop dead on the set, and most people would say, “Lower the crumb right down.” Not Jimmy. He valued me.

One of the most interesting – and prophetic things – I did with Jimmy was ride with him in his MG. I had no idea of what was in store for me the first time Jimmy asked me.

“Crazy, man,” I took him up on his invitation. It turned out a lot crazier than I’d bargained for.

You can go and go on the roads in Mendocino. I thought we’d take a nice drive along the countryside, and maybe see a few chicks, but he said, “You don’t want to drive along those country roads. Let’s take those hills.”

So he went up, up and up. The higher he drove, the more of a charge he seemed to get out of it. I sat there with my legs hanging over the side of the car. We started chewing the fat, and I noticed that the more we talked the harder he stepped on the gas. Once he felt the speed, he couldn’t let up. There was a wild gleam in his eyes.

I began to feel uncomfortable.

“Whaddya want to go so fast for?” I demanded.

“I get my charges out of it,” Jimmy shot back.

He wasn’t lying. He did get his kicks from going over those bumpy, twisting roads at breakneck speed. I kept thinking to myself, “This guy likes to jump out of windows every once in a while – just to show the world he has guts.”

Pretty soon I turned chicken, and didn’t care if Jimmy knew it.

“You want to wrap this car around the pole!” I yelled. “But do it while I’m not in it.”

I was trying to be cool, but Jimmy wasn’t scared. He didn’t care what he did with his car. He didn’t care what chances he was taking with his life.

On one ride, we came so close to ramming into a pole, I almost turned green from the scare.

“We all could have died in that car,” I chewed him out when the ride was over. “You’re a fool, kid.”

“What’s the difference?” he countered. “You don’t want to live forever.”

Then he fell silent a minute, and said a strange thing.

“Well,” he observed flatly, “my mother’s dead.”

“Good,” I deliberately needled him, “that’s a great way to see your mother.”

We rode other times and had other narrow escapes. Jimmy always drove the same way, except once when I spotted a State Trooper and warned he’d get a ticket. He waited until the cop was gone, and then he was off like a shot. To me, these were like roller coaster rides. Not only the speed had a kind of fascination, but watching Jimmy’s characteristics when he’d pour it on. He told me once he would like to take a jeep and ride it on the sand. He really believed he was going into a strange jungle, that maybe something would happen to him, but he didn’t seem to care.

“I never did like highways,” he said. “I like to take the back alleys and the rough roads.”

I reminded him this was a great way to get dead in a hurry, but he only seemed pleased at my apprehension.

“So what,” he scoffed. “There are roads in heaven. I’ll keep on riding.”

He put his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders, and blinked at the sun.

“When I die,” he said with a sense of exhilaration, “I want to die with excitement. I don’t want to die in bed.”

I guess he got his wish.

I also hope he got another wish – that he found those highways in heaven.

(Tim Carey had the feature role of the thug who shot the racehorse in The Killing, is currently starred in Bayou, and will next be seen with Kirk Douglas in Paths of Glory.)

on the set with James Dean

Pic of the Day: “The Wild One” revisited

Posted by Marisa on

Today we revisit The Wild One (1953), directed by Laslo Benedek and starring Marlon Brando. Here we see “Chino’s Boy #1” getting the brilliant idea of pouring a bottle of beer on Chino (Lee Marvin) to spur him on during the big fight with Brando.

The Wild One

If I’m not mistaken, that is X Brands on the far right. He and Timothy co-starred in several episodes of Cowboy G-Men at around the same time this was filmed. They also appeared together in Naked Gun (1956) and Revolt in the Big House (1958). He very often portrayed American Indians on television and in film, even though he was of German heritage.

Pic of the Day: “The Blue Angels” revisited

Posted by Marisa on

We continue this week’s death scene theme with “The Blue Angels,” the episode of Charlie’s Angels that first aired on May 4, 1977. I posted this one a few months ago, but how could I not include it in an examination of Timothy’s death scenes? He shows up at the beginning of the episode, Ed Lauter shoots him, he dies quite memorably (as you can see), and the episode goes downhill from there.

The Blue Angels - 1977

Lauter has certainly carved a niche for himself in the Character Actor Hall of Fame, right alongside Tim. He’s been an unmistakable presence in many a film and television show since the early 1970s and is still going strong today. He enjoys playing bad guys. “I like those roles. Lee Marvin once told me, ‘When you play a heavy, every once in a while make the audience like you a little bit.  Then they’ll think, ‘Wait a minute, he’s not such a bad guy. Did you see the way he petted that dog?'” Sounds like someone else we know…

Quote of the Week

Posted by Marisa on

This week’s “quote” is actually a short essay/story by Chris Tsakis. It appears in the book O.K. You Mugs: Writers on Movie Actors (Vintage Books, 1999). It’s in the form of an interior monologue that might have gone on in Timothy’s head during the filming of Paths of Glory (1957). It doesn’t sound at all like the Timothy I’ve come to know, but hey – creative license and all. There’s some salty language herein, so look out.

TIMOTHY CAREY

My head is too fucking large. My eyes. . . Jesus. The lids droop. I look sleepy all the time. My nose is okay, a little big but not all that out of proportion. I can’t breathe with it too well so my mouth hangs open most of the time. Gives me the look of an idiot or a criminal. Or an idiot criminal.

When I smile my thin lips pull taut against my gums and I end up grimacing. I always end up grimacing. Like a creep.

I don’t like looking at myself too much but this beard and mustache is a new thing for me. I can’t decide if I like it or not. I think I’ll shave it as soon as this fucking picture is wrapped. If it’s ever wrapped.

I like my hair alright. It’s thick and seems to be staying where it belongs. I ain’t going bald, anyway. I got my grandfather’s hair and it pisses my old man off something fierce. Fuck him, too.

Even with the full head of hair this is not what you’d call an attractive face. Mean. Bony. Like a horse’s. Not a leading man’s face. I’ll never be a leading man. Not the romantic hero, the best friend, the standup guy. If they want a scumbag, they call me. I can give them the best fucking scumbag you ever saw.

Need a bouncer to chase James Dean away from the bordello where his mother works? Call me. Need a nasty biker? Call me. Need a guy to shoot a horse? Need a coward? Call me.

That’s enough of this staring at myself shit. Fuck, I can’t stand vain men. Guys who study themselves in the mirror, guys who worry about every damn wrinkle. Guys in this business.

Kirk is almost like that. He’s almost too concerned with his appearance. The tyranny of the face is known only to the leading man. And Kirk is a leading man if ever there was one. He’s not as bad as some I’ve known. Brando – now there was a prima donna – couldn’t walk past a mirror without admiring himself. Worse than Dean. Half a fag, if you ask me. Marvin wanted to actually kick the shit out of him, not just pretend for the camera. He comes to me one day with a bottle of bourbon, still in his Chino getup, and says, “Howsabout when the cameras start rolling I actually clean Marlon’s fucking clock?” I said, “Go ahead, Lee – they’ll throw you off the picture and I’ll angle for your part.” That shut him up pretty fast.

Christ, I have to call Marvin. We’re supposed to get together and play some poker one of these nights. But he’s a hell of a lot busier than I am these days. Even if he’s almost as ugly as me. We were bitching to each other about the parts we get because of our faces. I was much more pissed off about it than he was. “I ain’t ugly . . .” he said, in that booming voice, “. . . I got character.” We laughed. I laughed harder. I’ve adopted that line for myself. “I ain’t ugly . . .”

Fucking yes I am.

And Hollywood knows it. A bunch of one-dimensional shits. Every movie is a silent movie, a fucking cartoon. Guy on the screen supposed to be capable, good-hearted, and virtuous? Get some tall pretty boy with a strong chin. Guy supposed to be a thief, a louse, a filthy piece of shit? Call Carey!

They cast me when they want the ugliness to show through, the ugliness they think I have in my heart. They don’t know what’s in my heart. They don’t give a shit. “Get that ugly fuck Carey!” they probably shout. “We got a stupid scumbag we want him to play.”

In my experience – stupid scumbag that I am – most beautiful people have the ugliest souls. They never have to do anything but stand around being admired, catered to, ass-kissed. As long as their looks hold they’ll always have work, always have someone telling ’em just how great they are.

But I’m not beautiful. I’m a “character” actor. Which is a polite term for an ugly guy or gal who’s gonna die or kill someone or otherwise provide some “color.”

Like on this film. I’m a prisoner. A coward. A pawn. I’m going up in front of a firing squad for being yellow. But this movie’s not about me, even though I get shot through the fucking heart. It’s about Kirk, about Colonel Dax and his moral goddamn dilemma. You can tell he’s good – just look at his face! Meanwhile, me and two other guys are being put to death ’cause we’re ugly bastards. Because we look like cowards, mostly.

Fucking hot in here. Even sitting in front of the fan it’s hot. Up at six this morning, on the set at seven and now it’s ten and I still haven’t done a fucking thing. Just sitting around smoking cigarettes. Hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait.

I hate this costume they got me in – it itches like hell. Where’s my cigarettes? There’s no pockets in this goddamn thing. I wish they’d hurry up and get this damn shot set up. I can’t stand the goddamn waiting while Kubrick makes everything just so. The man is a motherfucking perfectionist. I’ve been in plenty of fucking movies and no one works like this guy. He takes hours just to set lights, for Christ’s sake. What’s the big deal? Just some ugly guys getting shot.

Christ, I have to fart. Fart proudly, Benjamin Franklin said. Me too. A fart never killed anyone, unless you keep it in. Just let it go. Even so, I don’t want to fart in front of Kubrick. He doesn’t seem like a guy who appreciates a good fart. I bet he goes into his trailer when he has to break wind. So proper. Weird fucking guy.

He hasn’t said much to me. Just told me that this guy I’m playing is a little slow, maybe a coward, maybe not. When we were shooting The Killing he sat down with me and told me the guy I was going to play was – guess what? – a coward. “He’ll do anything to get by,” he said. Well, not anything. The guy wouldn’t work a legitimate job. He’d steal, he’d murder . . . cut whatever corners he has to. Why? Just look at his face. Ugly fuck.

I was so ugly I had to call that poor parking lot attendant a nigger when all the kid wanted to do is be friends. I didn’t want to call him a nigger, but I had to get rid of the kid before that horse came into the open. I was supposed to shoot the horse from my car – shit, you’ve seen the picture – as a diversion from the robbery and the kid won’t leave me alone so I snap at him and call him “nigger.” I got such shit for that part. I got a guy who wanted to punch my lights out ’cause he confused me with the guy in the movie. And the guy in the movie got shot. Shot dead.

What am I doing in this business? Feeding the fucking stereotype, I suppose.

I stuck my ugly, stereotypical face in front of Stanley’s just this morning. I said, “Stanley, they got me dying quietly in this script. I want to make some noise, for Christ’s sake. I don’t want to die quietly.” He said he’d think about it. What the hell is there to think about? Put me in front of a firing squad on a trumped-up charge and I’d have plenty to say about it, ugly face or no ugly face.

Christ, I’m bored. I’m bored to tears. And my head is pounding. I’m trying to imagine what it would be like to be shot to death and all I can muster is this damn headache. My neck is completely stiff, too. I wish we could get this thing over with already. I want to be shot now.

Just got the call to the set. This is it. Final makeup adjustment, final costume adjustment, Stanley comes over, tells me to react however I’d like when it’s time for the close-up. How would I react if there were a bunch of guys with guns pointed at me, ready to fire? I wouldn’t stand there with my big ugly mouth shut. I would plead for my life. I would blubber. I would break down.

I like life too much to have it taken away like this. I’ll go kicking and screaming. They’ll see the fear in my eyes, the terror on my face, they’ll know they’re doing the wrong thing. I’ll make them know. It’ll be all over  my face – my ugly face.

Oh yeah. I ain’t ugly – I got character.

Now to die.

May 11, 1994 – Timothy Carey, 65, a heavy-eyed character actor who often played villains and whose films ranged from Paths of Glory and One-Eyed Jacks to 1960s beach movies, died today at a hospital in Los Angeles after a stroke.

Paths of Glory

Quote of the Week

Posted by Marisa on

I never walk through a scene. Whatever I do I do with enthusiasm – and it didn’t take me long to find out that the more enthusiastic I got about my work the less enthusiastic some of my fellow players got about me. Maybe you remember Marlon Brando in The Wild One. Well, in that picture Lee Marvin was the number one heavy, and I was his sidekick. When he and Brando got into a brawl in the big mob scene, I was supposed to push Marvin onto Marlon. I did it like the picture said I was supposed to – like I hated Brando’s guts and I wanted Marvin to claw him apart. As I said, I played the scene with enthusiasm, but Brando didn’t seem to appreciate it. He finally turned to director Laslo Benedek and said, “Get that guy off the set. He makes me nervous.”

– Timothy Carey, “The Highways of Heaven,” Movie Stars Parade magazine, September 1957 (as told to Bill Tusher)

The Wild One

The Highways of Heaven

Posted by Marisa on

This Christmas my wonderful husband gave me one of the best presents I’ve ever received. It’s a copy of the September 1957 issue of Movie Stars Parade magazine. It contains an article entitled “The Highways of Heaven.” “As told to Bill Tusher,” it is Timothy’s account of his friendship with James Dean, but it’s really just as much about himself as it is about Dean. It is presented here in its entirety. This is vintage Timothy at his very best. Enjoy!

THE HIGHWAYS OF HEAVEN

Did Jimmy Dean find the road of his dreams? I pray so, for I was his friend. To me he opened his heart – about life, about love, about death.

By TIMOTHY CAREY as told to Bill Tusher

First crack out of the box, I’ve gotta tell you something about myself. I’m the guy who had the assignment of beating Jimmy Dean to a pulp in East of Eden. But you couldn’t begin to dig why Jimmy Dean and I hit it off the way we did unless you were zeroed in on me. I’m a big sort of lummox with a head of black hair, a wild gleam in my eyes, an innate scorn for convention, an innate appreciation for women, an ambition to be a great actor that burns my insides, contempt for clothes and contempt for what other people think. In other words, if you mark me down for an extrovert, an odd-ball, you’re in the right neighborhood.

The main difference between me and Jimmy – outside of the fact that I’m living and he’s not; he’ll be remembered and I probably won’t – is that he had a boyish, defensive air about him, and people wanted to mother him. No one ever took me for a pretty boy. When they get an eyeful of me, they want to run in the other direction. Jimmy they wanted to mother, and me they wanted to smother. The big thing Jimmy and I had in common was that neither of us ever could run with the pack. As one lost sheep to another, I guess Jimmy and I felt an instant affinity.

I never walk through a scene. Whatever I do I do with enthusiasm – and it didn’t take me long to find out that the more enthusiastic I got about my work the less enthusiastic some of my fellow players got about me. Maybe you remember Marlon Brando in The Wild One. Well, in that picture Lee Marvin was the number one heavy, and I was his sidekick. When he and Brando got into a brawl in the big mob scene, I was supposed to push Marvin onto Marlon. I did it like the picture said I was supposed to – like I hated Brando’s guts and I wanted Marvin to claw him apart. As I said, I played the scene with enthusiasm, but Brando didn’t seem to appreciate it. He finally turned to director Laslo Benedek and said, “Get that guy off the set. He makes me nervous.”

This kind of thing kept happening to me all the time. I played a heavy again in a picture called Crime Wave, with Sterling Hayden and Phyllis Kirk, and in one scene I was holding Phyllis prisoner in a dingy waterfront room. There was low key lighting and the boom was down low. I affected a twitch like a narcotics addict, I turned on a low, sensual, half-crazy laugh, gritted my teeth and dug my hands into her shoulders – just like the creep I was portraying would have done in real life. But Phyllis wasn’t impressed with my realism. She found me too convincing. She broke and got hysterical. I had to go apologize to her, although I don’t know what I was apologizing for.

When I was up for the part in East of Eden, Jack Warner was warned, “If you use that guy, he’ll destroy the whole movie.”

I’d heard, of course, that Elia Kazan was a nut for realism, so I suppose he wasn’t intimidated by my reputation as a wild man. Anyhow, I got the part.

But I had no reason to expect a more cordial reception from Jimmy Dean that I’d received from Marlon Brando.

However, as I was soon to learn, Jimmy Dean wasn’t like the other actors. I didn’t scare Jimmy. I amused him.

When a scene was over, Jimmy wasn’t like the others. He didn’t have that air of now that the scene is over, get lost. We’d go into his dressing room. He’d sit on his chair, and I’d sprawl on his cot, and we’d talk. One thing you found out right away about Jimmy – it didn’t matter how long you knew him. You knew him in one day or you didn’t know him at all. In spite of the fact that I came with such lousy references, I developed a friendship with Jimmy as strong as anyone who ever knew him. To give you an idea of the kind of easy, screwball relationship we had, anytime we’d see each other – whether it was in Elia Kazan’s office or the commissary – I’d flip spitballs at him, and he’d take a straw, wad it into spitballs, and flip them back at me.

The first time I saw Jimmy Dean was when I boarded the chartered plane at Burbank Airport for Mendocino, where we were headed to do location scenes. I noticed this kid in blue jeans and a cowboy hat; he looked like a hick to me, a stunt man. He even sounded a little like a cowboy when he talked, but I had no idea of who he was.

I gave it no more thought until we landed in Mendocino, a postage stamp of an airport. They didn’t have facilities for lowering the passengers from the DC7. They couldn’t even scare up a ladder that would reach the plane.

After some delay, we were informed that the local fire department had been called to the rescue. In a few minutes, a big red hook and ladder truck came screaming onto the airstrip, sirens wide open.

I kept looking at the kid in the cowboy hat who was sitting in front of me with Lennie Rosenman, who composed the music for East of Eden. His face lighted up with excitement and he tilted his wide brimmed hat to the back of his head, and looked out the window like a little kid getting a view from the top of a skyscraper.

“Hey,” he said to Lennie, “listen to that siren! Listen to that siren, man! This is something!”

He laughed like a baby.

They raised the ladder to let the passengers down, and the 350 pound woman who played a maid in the picture almost fell on Dean. He laughed again, as if he’d gotten a big charge out of all the excitement.

I still didn’t know who he was, but I liked the way he was not ashamed to enjoy the snafu at the airport. I remember thinking, “He’s a regular guy, whoever he is.”

The next time I saw him, he was driving this MG in Mendocino. I waved to him and he stopped.

“Hey,” I said, “how the hell do you rate this? Who do you know?”

He laughed and tilted his head back, his eyes squinting in the sun.

“Well,” he said softly, “the studio sent it up. I drove it all the way from New York.”

“Then you must be this Jimmy Dean who’s starring in this picture.”

He grinned and looked at me. “Yeah.”

We shot the breeze for quite a while then. He told me how he’d studied at Actors Studio, and I mentioned that I’d had the same kind of training from Anthony Pirello, who used to be in the Group Theatre. He talked about the way he liked to drive fast in his car, how he was planning to drive it back to New York when the picture was over, and I mentioned that the first thing I ever owned was a 1938 Harley Davidson.

But we didn’t talk all shop. I observed that there were a lot of pretty Indians around Mendocino, and Jimmy laughed softly and said, “Gee, I dig chicks.”

That was when they were talking about him being in love with Pier Angeli, and I asked him, “Are you gonna marry that girl?”

“Nah,” he said. “I’m not going to marry her. We’re just having a good time.”

I told him where I lived in L.A. (by choice in the real skid row area) and how I spent so much time at the 5-4 Ballroom, dancing, doing snake hips and really going with that tribal beat.

“You have to go there some time with me,” I said. “It’s a gasser. They have real rhythm and blues music there.”

“It sounds crazy,” he replied. “We’ll do that. We really will. You know, it’s the same way in Greenwich Village. You can let yourself go there. You can have a ball.”

The conversation gave us a good, friendly feeling, and we knew we dug each other. I told him how I’d been kicked off all those pictures, and how I’d made a lot of big shot actors nervous, and he just laughed.

As he drove off, he looked around and shook his head.

“What a hick town,” he drawled. “I’m going to play it cool. See you soon, Tim.”

One statement Jimmy made stuck with me as he gunned his MG, covering his get-away in a blanket of dust. We were airing our slants on life when he said it:

“What people like, I don’t like.”

I had to laugh.

“Maybe,” I said, “that’s why you like me.”

But that statement – “What people like, I don’t like” – was, I think, the key to Jimmy Dean, if anything was. We saw a great deal of each other while we were in Mendocino. We were really buddy-buddy, and we palled around almost all the time Jimmy wasn’t working.

East of Eden (1955)

He really didn’t like what other people liked. Ordinary things and ordinary places bugged him. He liked to walk down dimly lit streets, to get the real feeling of the town. When we went out at night, he picked the worst bar in the whole town. There were a lot of good gin mills, but he picked the seediest place.

He’d say, “Let’s have some fun. Let’s see if there are any girls in town. Let’s listen to some crazy music.”

He would have beer and smoke cigarettes, and he would get a great kick out of me ordering 7-Up.

“How do you like that?” he laughed the first time I did it. “You look like you can do anything – like you’d drink rubbing alcohol.”

“I don’t need any synthetics for my kicks, Jimmy,” I told him.

“You have something there,” he nodded.

At this one joint, there were a couple of dolls on the make, and I said, “Look, why don’t we con those two gals?” But Jimmy only laughed, did nothing.

He was shy, if you want to know the truth. More than once I’d get the feeling that he wanted to, but he didn’t do anything.

I’d say to him, “Let’s try to get a couple of chicks,” and he’d grin, “All right, I’m all for it.”

But when there was a showdown, he’d always back off. When I’d press him, he’d laugh, “Let’s wait till we get back to Greenwich Village, where we can really move.”

In that way, he was a moody guy. One minute he wanted to date the girls, the next he didn’t care about them. He was the same way about  music. One minute he was gone on rhythm and blues, the next he was gassed by hillbilly music.

Although I liked him thoroughly, I had the feeling that for a guy who’s supposed to be a big actor, he didn’t seem to have any bearings on what he wanted to do. He’d get steamed up on an idea, then it would go stale before he could carry it out.

The only time he really got interested in a gal in Mendocino was the time I tried to pick up a waitress at the Greek restaurant where we ate.

One day, after we’d seen her around for a while, I asked her:

“Why don’t we get together, baby?”

Jimmy turned the other way when I made the pitch.

“I’m sorry,” she said, so low you almost couldn’t hear her. “My husband just died. He was killed fighting a forest fire.”

That was the signal for Jimmy to wheel around. He suddenly took an interest.

“That’s really something,” he said with deep sympathy.

He started to talk to her, to ask her questions about her husband’s work. And she knew he wasn’t on the make, just interested, and it seemed to make her feel a lot better.

Jimmy was always restless.

“I hate to be in just one environment,” he told me one day. “It’s like the tourists. They come to town, they see only one side of it. That’s why I want to see the other side of it.”

I guess we saw as many sides of Mendocino as there were. One day we went fishing in a canoe, but Jimmy didn’t want to fish. He wanted to do all the paddling. He wanted to put distance behind him and take in the sights. Along the way, we spotted three wild sheep on the top of a hill in the heart of the redwood country. They saw us and took off like a shot. Jimmy got a real charge out of that. He liked anything out of the ordinary. Maybe that’s why he liked me – because I was out of the ordinary.

One night we’d go to the grubbiest dive in town. The next day, we’d drive along the countryside, and Jimmy would stop and talk to the farmers.

Of course, it was one thing for Jimmy to put up with me in a little, lonely town off the beaten path. But would he really be different from the others when I started roughing him up in the picture?

I had to beat him up twice – first, when he ran out of his mother’s home and started tossing stones at it, and second in the hallway of his mother’s shady joint. I wanted to get on the better side of Jimmy, and I’d made up my mind to pull my punches a little. But when Jimmy and I discussed the scene where I grabbed him, he said, “When you do it, Tim, do it as real as you can.”

I still didn’t think he’d like it very much if I really let go. So when I grabbed hold of him, I was still holding back. I was plenty rough, you understand, but not as rough as I could be.

But Jimmy wasn’t happy.

“Hold it,” he said. “Tim, you’re going too easy. I don’t feel the motivation.”

So I decided maybe he really meant what he said. The next take, I came out like a bull, a roaring beast.

“Whaddya doing, throwing them stones for?” I growled.

I squeezed him with a bear hug until he almost suffocated, and in the process of the mauling I gave him, my long fingernails left marks all over him. We did the take over and over until Jimmy was satisfied that it was realistic enough. I ripped off six or seven of his sweaters.

Jimmy was panting and bleeding. His arms were streaked with blood, and his chest was scratched and smeared with crimson. But Jimmy had no complaints.

Elia Kazan, the master realist, began to get nervous, though. He yelled, “Cut,” and called me over.

“Now take it easy, Carey,” he told me. “We won’t have this actor very long if you keep this up.”

So I took it easy in the next few takes. Then we had a short break and went over to Kazan. Jimmy put his arm around Kazan, and said, “I don’t know, Gadge. I don’t get the feeling. Why doesn’t Tim really open up on me?”

with Kazan and Dean

Again, I cut loose. I was flabbergasted. Jimmy seemed like he wanted to be tortured. Me, I was bewildered. I was afraid I’d get thrown out of the picture.

Later, Solly Baiano, the Warner casting director, gave me a tip.

“You’d better take it easy, Tim,” he said. “I know you’re a good actor, but don’t over-do it. Kazan is sensitive.”

There were 20 takes of me beating Jimmy before they called a halt. After it was over, Dean was friendlier than before, if anything. He was the first star who didn’t hold my enthusiasm against me.

In our next fight sequence, I was supposed to pummel Jimmy as he ran through the hallway after leaving his mother’s office. I grabbed hold of his hair; we got into a struggle, I hit him and almost caved in the side of his face. He never said anything. I couldn’t understand the guy. Any other actor would have called the cops. But not Jimmy. That’s the way he wanted it – real.

Then I lifted my fist to hit him again, missed, hit a pipe and broke my knuckles. Some blood began to trickle, but I wanted to continue with the scene. Only Jimmy wouldn’t let me. He didn’t care when his own blood was oozing, but at the sight of my blood he became compassionate.

“It’s all right, Jimmy,” I insisted. “Let’s go.”

“No,” Jimmy was firm. “Let’s get the  nurse.”

This guy was a human being. He really cared about my knuckles bleeding. I could drop dead on the set, and most people would say, “Lower the crumb right down.” Not Jimmy. He valued me.

One of the most interesting – and prophetic things – I did with Jimmy was ride with him in his MG. I had no idea of what was in store for me the first time Jimmy asked me.

“Crazy, man,” I took him up on his invitation. It turned out a lot crazier than I’d bargained for.

You can go and go on the roads in Mendocino. I thought we’d take a nice drive along the countryside, and maybe see a few chicks, but he said, “You don’t want to drive along those country roads. Let’s take those hills.”

So he went up, up and up. The higher he drove, the more of a charge he seemed to get out of it. I sat there with my legs hanging over the side of the car. We started chewing the fat, and I noticed that the more we talked the harder he stepped on the gas. Once he felt the speed, he couldn’t let up. There was a wild gleam in his eyes.

I began to feel uncomfortable.

“Whaddya want to go so fast for?” I demanded.

“I get my charges out of it,” Jimmy shot back.

He wasn’t lying. He did get his kicks from going over those bumpy, twisting roads at breakneck speed. I kept thinking to myself, “This guy likes to jump out of windows every once in a while – just to show the world he has guts.”

Pretty soon I turned chicken, and didn’t care if Jimmy knew it.

“You want to wrap this car around the pole!” I yelled. “But do it while I’m not in it.”

I was trying to be cool, but Jimmy wasn’t scared. He didn’t care what he did with his car. He didn’t care what chances he was taking with his life.

On one ride, we came so close to ramming into a pole, I almost turned green from the scare.

“We all could have died in that car,” I chewed him out when the ride was over. “You’re a fool, kid.”

“What’s the difference?” he countered. “You don’t want to live forever.”

Then he fell silent a minute, and said a strange thing.

“Well,” he observed flatly, “my mother’s dead.”

“Good,” I deliberately needled him, “that’s a great way to see your mother.”

We rode other times and had other narrow escapes. Jimmy always drove the same way, except once when I spotted a State Trooper and warned he’d get a ticket. He waited until the cop was gone, and then he was off like a shot. To me, these were like roller coaster rides. Not only the speed had a kind of fascination, but watching Jimmy’s characteristics when he’d pour it on. He told me once he would like to take a jeep and ride it on the sand. He really believed he was going into a strange jungle, that maybe something would happen to him, but he didn’t seem to care.

“I never did like highways,” he said. “I like to take the back alleys and the rough roads.”

I reminded him this was a great way to get dead in a hurry, but he only seemed pleased at my apprehension.

“So what,” he scoffed. “There are roads in heaven. I’ll keep on riding.”

He put his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders, and blinked at the sun.

“When I die,” he said with a sense of exhilaration, “I want to die with excitement. I don’t want to die in bed.”

I guess he got his wish.

I also hope he got another wish – that he found those highways in heaven.

(Tim Carey had the feature role of the thug who shot the racehorse in The Killing, is currently starred in Bayou, and will next be seen with Kirk Douglas in Paths of Glory.)

on the set with James Dean