By Herbert Goldstone
I’m a moviegoer and have been for a long time. Movies are a big part of my life, as they probably are for a great many of you, whether I view them on a large screen in a theater or on a small screen on my television. I know. TV screens aren’t so small any more.
Motion pictures, the great art form that was created and developed by Americans, have taken us back to the past, far into the future and have introduced us to many people we’d love to be and to others we’re very thankful we’re not.
We envy movie stars and think how wonderful it must be to earn a fabulous living playing all those marvelous roles. Talk about having nine lives! They have 90!
Yet, a funny thing happens when I think about my favorite screen actors and the many hours of pleasure they’ve given me and still do thanks to the miracle of video cassettes and DVDs.
Every one of these actors has become, in my mind, a single indelible character. The great stars that have so enriched my leisure hours have all been typed.
Let me give you an example. The great British actor, Charles Laughton, was Henry VIII, the playboy king of many wives, most of whom he beheaded when he tired of them. He was a crusty southern senator with a drawl so thick you could cut it with a knife in “Advise and Consent.” In “Hobson’s Choice” he was a downtrodden English shopkeeper trying to straighten out his daughter’s life.
Forget it! Laughton always will be Capt. Bligh, the tyrannical sea captain who drove his crew to mutiny in the great movie made from my favorite book, “Mutiny on the Bounty.” There never was a more unforgettable role.
I don’t care how many great roles James Stewart played. He always will be the idealistic young senator staging a dramatic filibuster on the Senate floor, trying to stop a crooked land deal in “Mister Smith Goes to Washington.”
The great Bette Davis isn’t the aging Queen Elizabeth I in “Elizabeth the Queen” or the murderous Regina Hubbard in “The Little Foxes” or the love-starved slattern in “Of Human Bondage.” To me, she is forever Margo Channing, the over-the-hill stage star fighting an ambitious young rival in “All About Eve.”
Vivien Leigh, the beautiful English star married to the superstar, Laurence Olivier, isn’t Blanche Dubois in “A Streetcar Named Desire” or Cleopatra in the fine film of Shaw’s “Caesar and Cleopatra.” Who else could she be but Scarlett O’Hara in the film masterpiece, “Gone With the Wind”
Charlton Heston, a bit out of favor these days with gun-control supporters since becoming head of the National Rifle Association, played a score of fine film parts, but to me and I’m sure to thousands of others, he always will be Judah, who drives that team of white horses to victory in that heart-stopping chariot race in “Ben Hur.”
Al Pacino is one of our finest actors today, with many superb roles to his credit, including his Academy Award winner as the blind ex-Army officer who dances that marvelous tango with a woman partner in “Scent of a Woman.” Great stuff, but to me Pacino always will be Michael Corleone, the cold-hearted killer who takes over as head of the Corleone crime family in “The Godfather” series, ordering the death of his rival gang leaders and the murder of his own brother.
Speaking of Lord Laurence Olivier — yes, he attained that rank — his superb acting in such Shakespearean epics as “Hamlet,” “Merchant of Venice” and “Richard III” is overshadowed in my mind by his stirring performance in “Henry V.” I never can see enough on my video tape of his heart-stirring St. Crispen’s Day speech urging his troops into battle against the French at Agincourt. They truly don’t make ‘em like that anymore.
Spencer Tracy was a master actor, whether verbally dueling with Frederic March in the Scopes Monkey Trial in “Inherit the Wind” or rollicking on screen with Katherine Hepburn, but to me Tracy always will be Manuel, the Portuguese cod fisherman who hauls spoiled brat Freddie Bartholomew out of the sea after he falls off a passing ocean liner in “Captains Courageous.”
It goes on and on. Gregory Peck always will be Gen. Savage, the leader who inspires a World War II bombing squadron in “Twelve O’Clock High.” To me, that heartthrob of feminine moviegoers, Errol Flynn, isn’t a swashbuckling sea captain battling pirates, but he’s Capt. Courtney, the doomed World War I fighter pilot in dog fights in the skies against German fighters in “The Dawn Patrol.”
To most film buffs, Mickey Rooney always will be the exuberant young song and dance star who put on all those shows with Judy Garland. To me, Mickey always will be the young fairy imp, Puck, in that old Hollywood version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” when dozens of movie stars such as James Cagney, Olivia DeHaviland and Dick Powell took on Shakespeare with surprising skill.
And as for Judy Garland, who else can she ever be but Dorothy, singing her heart out in “Over the Rainbow” in that great movie landmark, “The Wizard of Oz.”
Tom Hanks, one of today’s superstars, has done many great movies. I was in World War II, so to me Hanks always will be Capt. Miller, leading his boatload of rangers into murderous German machine-gun fire in the June 6, 1944, D-Day invasion of Normandy in “Saving Private Ryan.”
As I said, in my mind the great movie stars are typed forever.
