Quote of the Week

Posted by Marisa on May 17, 2015

How did Paths of Glory come together?

Once Kirk Douglas agreed to do the film, he was very helpful in influencing United Artists to finance it. He was scheduled to do another film for UA called The Vikings, and I think he suggested that if they didn’t do Paths of Glory, he would take The Vikings elsewhere. Do you know the story about how I fired Tim Carey on the set of Paths of Glory?

I don’t!

Well, I got a call at six in the morning from the Munich police, saying Tim had been found abandoned on the highway, bound hand and foot, claiming he’d been kidnapped. They thought production was responsible, looking for publicity, that it was a staged act. I said I knew nothing about it, but we needed him to work—they were holding him down at the police station. I told them that Tim was making up this story because he wanted the publicity, not us. So they said they would accommodate us by bringing him to the film studio—they were gonna interview him there. But Tim wouldn’t agree to the statement he was supposed to sign, he kept changing things about it. So I went up to Tim and said: “We’re all waiting for you. Sign the paper and get to work.” And he wouldn’t sign the paper, so I fired him right there. You’ll notice in the battle scene, you never see the three men put on trial for cowardice. That’s because the battle was the last thing we filmed, and we couldn’t show the two other actors without showing Tim, too.

– James B. Harris, “Interview: James B. Harris” by Nick Pinkerton; Film Comment, April 3, 2015

Quote of the Week

Posted by Marisa on April 12, 2015

The crazy actor who was in Paths of Glory with the big bug eyes was Timothy Carey. He was a method actor. Huge overactor. Carey, who was nuts, doesn’t show up one day. They’re shooting on a tight schedule because they don’t have a lot of money to do it. [Stanley] Kubrick and [producer James B.] Harris are going crazy. They get a call from the police. Carey has been found bound and gagged in the woods behind a house in the outskirts of Munich. He says, “Oh, Jesus, thank God they found me. I got kidnapped and they robbed me.” Jimmy thought, this is really weird. He’s a huge guy. Who’s going to kidnap and rob him? Carey’s back working. Jimmy goes over to the house where he was found, and the residents finally confess that Carey gave them a hundred bucks to call the police and bind and gag him themselves. He’d been on a toot for two days, and he knew he’d get fired. That’s why you love to work. That stuff doesn’t happen in offices. It only happens on a set. That’s why I love it so much.

– Tom Mankiewicz, My Life as a Mankiewicz: An Insider’s Journey Through Hollywood (The University Press of Kentucky, 2012)

Quote of the Week

Posted by Marisa on April 6, 2014

TWGS [The World’s Greatest Sinner] has been difficult, but not impossible to see, until recently. Much rarer is Tweet’s Ladies of Pasadena, a collection of footage, shot between 1969 and 1974, that was slated for a TV pilot in the 70s. This train wreck makes TWGS look like Citizen Kane; my first reaction was that it was unwatchable, but as it went on and I laughed hard at one and then another ridiculous scene, I couldn’t look away, always wondering what the hell he might do next. Carey stars as the roller-skating, bib-overall wearing Tweet Twig, caretaker of a menagerie of animals including goats, chickens, ducks, dogs and kittens (all of which belonged to the Carey family). Who talk. Yes, Timothy Carey made a talking animal picture, and naturally, the German Shepherd has a German accent.

After the four hours of films were over, Romeo Carey, who expressed surprised that more people didn’t walk out on Tweet’s (several in the audience did), took questions from the audience. I asked if he knew about this newspaper item:

New York Times, May 8, 1957
Missing US Actor is Found

MUNICH, Germany, May 7 (Reuters)–Timothy Carey, 31-year old Hollywood actor who disappeared from his hotel here Sunday night, was found gagged and handcuffed on a lonely road outside Munich this morning, the police said here today. They said the actor had hitched a ride in a car driven by two English-speaking men, who held him at gunpoint, robbed him of $40 and finally dumped him by the roadside.

Romeo Carey did know about it. After shooting for Paths of Glory had wrapped, Timothy Carey had been frustrated with the publicity around Kirk Douglas and his other co-stars. So he faked his own kidnapping. In another incident around that time, the crew had gone to a burlesque show one evening in which one performer ended her act in a bubble bath on stage. Timothy Carey walked right up to the stage and got into the bubble bath with her.

Carey’s son painted a picture of life with father that was funny and uncomfortable. Romeo admitted that he used to be tremendously embarrassed by the Tweet’s footage. Toward the end of his life Carey became obsessed with the artistic possibilities of the fart. His last, unfinished project was a play called The Insect Trainer, about a man convicted of murder by farting. Carey liked to fart in church, just before reaching out to greet his neighbor in a sign of peace.

– Pat Padua, “Timothy Carey’s 57 Varieties”, the bloggy, bloggy dew (April 16, 2010)

Quote of the Week

Posted by Marisa on November 24, 2013

Nicolas Cage ate a roach to stay in character. Carey only smashed a roach, also in Paths of Glory, but his most brilliant performance may have come off-screen. On May 8, 1957, the New York Times reported that the 6′ 4″ actor was found handcuffed and gagged on a desolate road outside Munich. Police said the actor had been picked up hitchhiking and was robbed by two English-speaking men. Now, if you know what Carey looks like, you might well ask what kind of idiot would jump him?

None is what kind. Carey staged his own kidnapping. At a screening of Carey’s work as a director, his son Romeo explained that his father was frustrated with the publicity that Kirk Douglas and his other Paths of Glory co-stars were getting, so he rolled his own.

– Pat Padua, “Criminally Underrated: Timothy Carey”; Spectrum Culture, November 13, 2013