Recent Departures: a Deceased Artiste round-up

Many, many folks of note whose work I’ve loved have been kicking off lately. I hope to offer lengthier looks at three of them in the week(s) to come, but wanted to first offer a round-up of four who most certainly deserve a farewell salute (including the guy to the right).

For instance… the character actor best known for his appearances in the three Beatles live-action fiction films. Victor Spinetti was a Welshman who appeared in numerous stage productions and films that played internationally, including a trio starring his countryman Richard Burton (Becket, The Taming of the Shrew, and Under Milk Wood).

I remember him fondly as a stammering critic who “blames Fellini!!!” in Anthony Newley’s startling ego-fest Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? (1969), as well as (yeah) his three turns with the Beatles.

The oft-repeated story is that Lennon and Harrison visited him backstage when he was starring in the London production of Oh, What a Lovely War. They wanted him for “every one" of their films, because, George claimed, his mother wouldn’t go to see their films without Spinetti (whom “she fancied”).

Whatever the reason was, Spinetti was a seasoned character actor who incarnated nervous bureaucrats and nasty authority figures, as in his wonderfully oddball turn in Magical Mystery Tour:

Spinetti was a “guest” voice on one of the Beatles’ most ambitious Xmas singles (the ’67 one), “Christmas Time Is Here Again,” and also continued his Beatle connection into the music-video era, providing a cameo appearance with the great Roy Kinnear (another Beatle-connected actor) in the Mike and the Mechanics video for “All I Need is a Miracle.”

Beatlemaniacs are extremely good about sharing, and so it’s possible to watch Spinetti speaking about the Fabs on YouTube:

But the single best, rarest piece of footage I discovered on that hub site is a 1968 interview with Lennon and Spinetti when the play version of In His Own Write opened at the Old Vic. Spinetti wrote and directed the play and is quite eloquent about what made John’s writing special. For his part, Lennon talks about the influences on his writing (Lewis Carroll and Ronald Searle) and who he was compared to, but hadn’t read (James Joyce):

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Moving to another character actor who made a great impression — in this case by being a sane person in the land of the insane — sitcom fixture Frank Cady died at the age of 96 two weeks back. Cady was of course “Sam Drucker,” the owner of the general store that served as the linchpin for the Paul Henning “universe” — it served as a backdrop for action on both Green Acres and Petticoat Junction, and was the place the Beverly Hillbillies came back to when they made visits “home.”

Cady had a hell of a resume as a bit actor, showing up in various noirs (DOA, The Asphalt Jungle, Ace in the Hole) and other Fifties classics (Rear Window, The Bad Seed), but he will forever be remembered as being the mellow and uncommonly sensible Drucker character. Here’s an interview he did where he discusses how he failed the audition for the role of “Otis the Town Drunk” on The Andy Griffith Show, but was lucky enough to lose that part and get the Petticoat Junction role a few years later.

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Moving on to music — and yes, a LOT of memorable folk in the world of music have been dying lately — I salute Bob Welch, who was a member for four years in the “interim” version of Fleetwood Mac. FM did have at least one minor hit, “Hypnotized” during his time (1971-74) in the band, but it was when he left and was replaced by the “Buckingham Nicks” duo that they went through the ceiling.

Obits reported that Welch had had spinal surgery and was depressed about the fact that it did not go well; he died of a “self-inflicted gunshot wound.” Another, lesser, depressing fact in his obits was that Welch was one of the only important members of Fleetwood Mac who was not honored when the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — he had sued the band for royalties from the albums that he had participated in, so that was most likely the cause for him being left out.

His contribution to keeping the outfit afloat was seminal, in that they were between their British-blues-band and hot-singles-act personas when he was the lead guitarist. Reportedly he did make amends with Mick Fleetwood after the lawsuit (and R’n’RHOF snub). Fleetwood and Christine McVie had indeed worked on Welch’s most memorable effort (in my view), his first solo LP French Kiss, which had both his biggest hit, "Sentimental Lady" (a reworked song from his FM years), and this super-catchy number on it. What a blissfully cheesy “publicity film”!

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One of the most notable TV-related deaths in recent weeks was that of Richard Dawson. Best known as a gameshow host, he also proved himself a capable comedian on both British and American series (including Laugh-In) and brought a note of class to whatever show he appeared on. Dawson first came on the show-biz radar as the comedian husband of sex kitten Diana Dors. The two even hosted a TV show together in England (she was always the main draw):

His first notable appearance on U.S. TV was on the terrific Dick Van Dyke Show. This clip is out of synch, but it shows Dawson doing what must’ve been his act at the time:

He did indeed come over to America as a representative of “swinging London,” but made a name for himself as the character Newkirk on Hogan’s Heroes. The film Autofocus suggests that Bob Crane was jealous of Dawson (perhaps for being effortlessly classy?). Dawson also appeared in a few movies (most notable the Ah-nold-starring Stephen King adaptation The Running Man). Here he is in a goofy 1966 picture called Out of Sight:

Further cementing his cool Sixties image is this Dating Game appearance, where he was “Bachelor No. 1.” Bachelor No. 3 is none other than Bill Bixby, and both gents are dressed to the nines in swinging-guy Sixties wear:

I’ve written and talked on the Funhouse TV show about the celebrities who didn’t care about playing the game shows they were on (my faves being Henry Morgan, his hero Fred Allen, and Ernie Kovacs). Dawson really cared about the games, but mostly so that he wouldn’t be “robbing” the contestants in going for a joke answer. Here he is debating over an answer on the show he lent a major dose of class (and the stray W.C. Fields impersonation) to, Match Game:

Dawson’s longest-running stint in show biz was as the host of Family Feud. Much has been made of his kissing the female contestants — he often defended himself by saying he did it “to wish them luck” as his mother had done with him as a kid (this begs the question of why he did it when the contestants were *leaving* the show, too — if you can get away with it, do it!). He rarely if ever cracked, but occasionally the insanely stupid answers a contestant gave would make him laugh:

 

One of the reasons I think Dawson was so perfect as a gameshow host was that, affectations to the side, he did come across as a genuinely decent guy who really liked the schlubs who were playing these games. This is reflected in two speeches he made on Family Feud. Firstly his goodbye speech for the original run of FF was a nicely delivered salute to those who’d helped keep the show on the air.

The most genuinely wonderful moment of Dawson’s TV career, though, never aired on the show. There was an additional speech he made to the studio answers of FF on the final show that was thankfully taped (but, again, was not included in the broadcast version of the show — they had to leave in more dumb answers!).

Part of Dawson’s personal mythology (that he never personally promoted) was how he was “dumped’ by the screen goddess Diana Dors, and was left alone to raise their two sons. I know nothing of the real Dawson, but this bit of video indicates that he was a genuinely warm guy; the fact that he came back out and delivered this speech knowing it wouldn’t get on the air separates it from all of the “telethon moments” in which someone broke down crying over a handicapped child. His urging people to do what they call in the theology biz “good works” seems positively real and not “for the camera”:

When Dawson retired from TV, he really retired. He did, however, consent to do a long interview for the “Archive of American Television” people, in which he discussed his television career. Here he talks about the infamous “kissing controversy” on FF:

In closing I’ll turn once again to a musical oddity (I do so love novelty tunes). I had no idea that Dawson released records in the Sixties (but was not surprised upon finding it out). He spoke-sang a tune (in the Burton-Harrison mold) for a “Hogan Heroes sing” album, but also released a single in 1967. The A-side, “Children’s Parade,” is pretty awful, but the piece de resistance is the extremely odd B-side. Titled “Apples and Oranges” (having nothing to do with the Syd Barrett/Pink Floyd tune of the same name), it is a another oddly maudlin piece that has an amazing last line. And I do mean amazing:

The 30th anniversary of Fassbinder’s death

30 years ago yesterday Rainer Werner Fassbinder was found dead at the age of 37 — he had died overnight, and the film 20,000 Years in Sing Sing was in the VCR near the mattress he slept on. In the three decades since his departure, film buffs the world over still haven’t caught up with his singularly brilliant and eternally vibrant body of work. I’ve documented on the Funhouse TV show my fascination with the work of RWF, and I wanted to commemorate this anniversary with a little “survey” post offering the best Fassbinder video links on YT.

I will present these in three batches: the first are interviews, the second are film clips, and the third are film clips involving music. In the first category I would of course first refer readers to two clips from my second interview with Juliane Lorenz, the head of the Fassbinder Foundation.

There has been some controversy over the years about Ms. Lorenz’s leadership of the FF from disgruntled individuals who knew RWF, but there can be no argument that she has done an exemplary job in getting Fassbinder’s works back into circulation in perfect prints and in keeping his memory alive.

In my first interview with her, we spoke about her personal relationship with him, but in the second interview, I focused much more on his work. She worked hand-in-glove with him as the editor on all of the later features he made (including the titanic Berlin Alexanderplatz), and so I asked her about his habit of only shooting single takes of scenes:

Since he was a master of “distancing” techniques, Fassbinder was often accused of being “cold” to his character’s difficulties. I asked Ms. Lorenz about this:

Fassbinder did several interviews on TV in Germany, but almost none of them have been subtitled in English. Thus I will point you to his appearance in Wim Wenders’ short Room 666 (1982), in which Wenders asked his colleagues to comment on the “future of film” (since even back in 1982, video was destined to usurp the cinema). Here is Fassbinder’s response to this question:

The longest and best interview with RWF to be subtitled is a 1978 chat with Peter W. Jansen that was conducted in his Paris apartment. The chat almost works like a therapy session, as the interviewer probes Fassbinder’s emotions and relationship with his work:

For those hardcore devotees like myself, there is nothing finer than discovering a truly rare piece of footage, even if it is not subtitled. Here is a documentary on Fassbinder and Sirk that shows the two men shooting the never-seen-in-America (except for one unsubtitled showing at MOMA in NYC) Sirk short Bourbon Street Blues (1979).

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Now onto the films. I would recommend that anyone who is not familiar with Fassbinder’s work check it out in a movie theater, since he was a master of moving the viewer “in” and “out” of the action visually, and that just ain’t gonna register if you watch his films on anything smaller than a normal-sized TV set. In case you really do want to become acquainted with his work, the collector who put up a number of great Chabrol films, some great Truffaut and Rohmer films, and an equal amount of Bergman pics has also been putting up a lot of Fassbinder films.

Of the titles this gent put up (I’m going to take the plunge and assume such frenzied fan behavior came from a male):

— the single best intro to Fassbinder’s work is Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)

— the most famous and “normal” title is The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979)

— the *rarest* is Lili Marleen (1981) (which has never been out on US VHS or DVD)

— Beware of a Holy Whore (1971) is recommended for diehards who’ve seen the other films. OOP on DVD.

— Fox and his Friends (1975) is one of his greatest German humiliation™ films ever — yes, some day I’ll trademark that term, which I’ve been using on the show for over 15 years now. OOP on DVD.

— Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven (1975) is a slight film, but entertaining nonetheless. OOP on DVD.

— Satan’s Brew (1976) is a title I’d warn every one but the most diehard fan away from.

To close out the films-online section, I must reference his masterpiece, Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980). The film contains the full range of emotion and is not only the finest thing Fassbinder made, but one of the finest things ever made for television (right up there with the works of Dennis Potter, Rod Serling, and other TV innovators). Here our hero, Franz Biberkopf, has a little discussion with his drinks:

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And now the music. Fassbinder’s third short, The Little Chaos (1966) is a gorgeous little number that combines his Godard influence and his dark sense of humor, with a nice closer that beautifully uses a song by the Troggs:

Rainer rocks out with his greatest female star (although I do love all the others), Hanna Schygulla. This little bit of dancin’ is from Rio Das Mortes (1971):

Fassbinder absolutely loved Kraftwerk, and specifically the group’s song “Radioactivity.” He used it in Berlin Alexanderplatz, but here is its first appearance in an RWF film, in Chinese Roulette (1976):

And because one of the cornerstones of Fassbinder’s work was the absolutely beautiful scores of Peer Raben, I once again link to my montage of favorite musical moments from Raben in Fassbinder’s films:

Ustinov, Vallee, Tony Perkins, Dors, Dagmar, and Dali: The Mike Wallace Interview (Part Two)

To pick up where I left off — with Wallace positioning himself as the moral arbiter of middle-brow America — I should mention that the sponsor of The Mike Wallace Interviews was Philip Morris, touted proudly by Mike as having “a man’s kind of mildness.”

Wallace liked to play indignant in his interviews, and nowhere was that clearer than with people he didn’t think should be taken seriously. That could be a crazy Klan leader, or a starlet (Jean Seberg), or a young male star like Tony Perkins. Wallace’s interview with Perkins is an amazing program, since Wallace appears to want to do with Tony what he did with Jean — make him admit he’s young and untalented, that his belief systems are all wrong, and Americans should not be paying to see his films.

It’s easy to link Tony to the interviews with women that Wallace conducted, not because he was gay but because he played “sensitive” characters, and this could hardly be tolerated by the Man’s Man that was Mike Wallace. Thus, the questions run along the lines of asking Tony if he really believes he could be “the next Clark Gable or Gary Cooper,” whether his reputation as a “brooding misfit” is accurate, what he thinks of the Beat Generation, and (again, Wallace playing moral arbiter) what his religious beliefs are.

Tony of course made a career out of playing nervous characters, so here as himself he seems on-edge and uncertain whether Wallace is being complimentary or insulting (Mike’s hardline interviewer act was a role that he stumbled into in the mid-Fifties, as I noted in the last blog entry).

The strangest moments come when Wallace repeats anecdotes from a Newsweek article that paints Tony as a pain-in-the-ass prone to egomaniacal outbursts, and when Wallace wants to know what Perkins is doing when he has been spotted driving around Manhattan in the early morning hours. The later sleazy bios of Perkins provide the real answer to that question, but Tony says he just likes seeing the city when it’s empty and quiet.

What’s most startling about Wallace’s getting strident with Jean Seberg and Tony Perkins is that he absolutely fawns over Rudy Vallee, the old “vagabond lover,” who was completely irrelevant by the late Fifties. One must assume that Mike’s mom loved Rudy (or he himself had very fond memories of Vallee’s radio work), because much of the interview consists of Wallace breaking his “hard man” act to bow and scrape before Rudy — who is by turns self-deprecating and egomaniacal.

The best moment in this chat? The discussion of whether Rudy’s reputation as a cheapskate is real or made-up. Rudy pretty much confirms it’s all true, but also defends saving his shekels all the time.

Interestingly, Wallace does not fawn much over Kirk Douglas, who was of course a major show business name in the late Fifties. He asks Kirk the usual softball questions about being famous and how American movies help forge the American image overseas, but the oddest portion of the show is when Mike “gets tough” with him.

Douglas had made two movies in Germany (Paths of Glory and The Vikings), and Wallace says his “team” has found out that Kirk had an ex-Nazi on his payroll. Wallace cleverly asks Douglas how he feels “as a Jew” to know this (somehow Mike never i.d.’ed himself as Jewish in these hard-edged chats; in the one with Reinhold Neibhur he asks coyly about “our Jewish brothers”).

From that “hard” question, Wallace moves to interrogating Douglas on whether he’d ever employ a Communist. Kirk says no, but then Mike asks what about a former Communist…? This is two years before Douglas did indeed employ Dalton Trumbo on Spartacus, so maybe Mike had heard a story somewhere (man, he really could’ve worked for Fox News….).

A show business figure that Mike is by turns rude and respectful to is Britain’s “answer to Marilyn Monroe,” Diana Dors (the one-time wife of recent Deceased Artiste Richard Dawson). In his interview with her, Mike asks her to evaluate herself as a person and on a physical level, but also tries to sow some discord by asking her what she’s “ashamed” of, and if she is worried about getting old and losing her looks — Dors was of course famous for having gained weight within a decade of being a sexpot, so Wallace’s hard-edged questions again have a weird foreshadowing quality to them.

Wallace’s tut-tting seems particularly odd from the current historical vantage point when he’s trying to the put the screws to publisher Bennett Cerf. He goes on the premise that “book publishers expose children to obscene trash,” asking Cerf to deny that notion.

At one point he hands Cerf an “objectionable” novel and asks him if he’d publish it (Cerf says no), and whether it should be censored (Cerf says no again). Providing the obvious answer, Cerf (who was a delight in his weird wordplay on What’s My Line?) says that if you deny publications that to teenagers, they will only become more desirable.

Certain episodes of the series have been lost (or simply not donated to the U of T library — see below). One of the MW interviews that only exists in transcript form is his talk with writer Ben Hecht, who proved to be one bitter and sharply intelligent older gent. He states outright that “Americans can’t think for themselves, speak for themselves…. they’re terrified at making any crack against anything successful or popular."

Add to that the fact that he calls religion “part of an odd mythomania,” and you just know that old moralizin’ Mike must’ve been “disturbed” (it’s a “work,” kids, as they say in wrestling) by Hecht’s words. To further Hecht’s dismissal of the chipper side of the Fifties, he notes that Nixon is “the most well-dressed boy Washington has seen in a long time” and says that Ike is “trying to save the world by boring it to the point of inanity.” That sounds a lot more misfit-like than anything Seberg or Perkins came out with.

In fact, older men were generally the ones who didn’t let Mike get away with his brusque questioning (and one blonde — but we’ll get to her in a minute). The series’ only two-part interview, with master-architect Frank Lloyd Wright, finds Mike’s requests for quick answers being thwarted by Wright, who refers to his interlocutor as “my dear Mike.” Wright argues against organized religion (in favor of nature, which he calls his religion) and argues for the intelligence and vitality of the day’s youth, two things Wallace-as-moral-arbiter has to get a tad uppity about.

The most interesting part of the Wright interview happens when Wallace quizzes the architect on “the audience watching tonight that doesn’t understand or care about modern art.” Quite wisely, Wright says that their opinions are “worthless” (hey, Frank Lloyd, I’ll have you know that that same audience now watches American Idol and America’s Got Talent and… oh wait, you’re right….). He also grabs at a copy of his latest book, which somehow Wallace has gotten a copy of from the publisher (he remarks that he doesn’t have a copy yet — and you just know that Mike never got that book back…)

Since Wallace represented the average urban-American Joe, he obviously had to be startled and a bit peeved at the odd behavior of the original Warhol, master surrealist and relentless self-promoter Salvador Dali. In his interview with Dali, he asks him the besides-the-point question “Why do you behave the way you do?” and refers to his “clowning and showmanship.”

Dali controls the show from the beginning (his eccentricities were his stock in trade, and he wasn’t going to let any radio announcer turned hardboiled “newsman” spoil his shtick). He articulates some very spot-on things about the “atomic age” and the psychoanalytic aspect of his paintings and, according to Wallace, was all for camping the thing up because he asked him to “ask embarrassing questions” before the cameras started rolling.

Finally I turn to the other essential (for me) interview, with an individual who I greatly admire, Peter Ustinov (a clip from my friendlier, shorter interview with Sir Peter can be found here). Mike's interview with Ustinov begins with Wallace acknowledging the immense talent of Ustinov, but by the end he’s still gotten his barb in, with a question about Peter being able to do so many things, but not being “great” at any one of them (this from the radio announcer who failed and became a newsman by mistake). Ustinov was 36 at the time of the chat, and he was truly a self-effacing renaissance man — able to speak knowledgably about a great variety of topics, he still acknowledged the importance of humor to what he did (it was, he states, his “safety valve”).

Ustinov was the real deal, the kind of an entertainer and artist (and thinker) who had confidence in his own ability, but knew that he existed in a completely commercial industry (his response to Wallace’s bringing up “money” is to merely reply “surival,” and then speak about how he existed in “the century of the middleman”).

Not a fan of the military (he discusses how badly he faired as a soldier during WWII), he also rebuffs Mike’s attempt to compare him to Orson Welles, noting that Welles is a great dramatist, while he worked from a humorous perspective (not true for several of his finest works, including the film Billy Budd).

I should close out this survey of the Wallace shows online with Ustinov, given my great admiration for him, but I have to instead spotlight Dagmar, the comedienne (there’s a word not used after 1970) from the first late-night network show Broadway Open House, who is the one guest who quickly snaps back at Wallace (with humor) and who seems to keep him off-center throughout their chat.

Wallace’s questions to her are still rude as hell — again, this is the man who was bending over backward to praise Rudy Vallee, but he is okay with asking a woman who was a major star just a few years before “What do you miss now that you’re not as big-time as you used to be?” The answer to his query “why aren’t you on TV more?” is obvious: she wasn’t being asked, she had fallen out of fashion. She proves, however, to be a delight in his half-hour, because she continually tweaks Wallace’s hardboiled demeanor, to the extent that he winds up calling her “ma’am” by the end of the talk.

There are a number of other interesting interviews on the Harry Ransom Center page for the Wallace Interviews. Among them are Gloria Swanson, Lili St. Cyr, a festively attired head of the KKK, Oscar Hammerstein II (who discusses his liberalism while Mike posits that the media is intolerant of conservatism — Fox News!), George Jessel, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Lillian Roth.

According to Wikipedia and other writings about the series, Wallace also interviewed Rod Serling, guru for the greedy (and selfish) Ayn Rand, and Malcolm X in this series, but those interviews are not included on the HRC page.

At the end of the Rudy Vallee show Wallace touts Tennessee Williams as his next guest, but that show also isn’t online. That certainly could’ve been a lively encounter — imagine all the complaints about morality and abstraction in art that moral arbiter Mike could’ve brought up to him….

Seberg, Steve Allen, Huxley, Margaret Sanger, and Kissinger: The Mike Wallace Interviews (Part One)

The Internet is crammed to capacity with great things that no one knows exist, so I am always very happy to share new discoveries, especially those that shed light on pop culture’s past. As I have noted in two preceding blog entries (about the Speaking of Radio website and the YT channel for Soapbox Productions), interviews do keep the voices of the departed alive, so I hereby put the spotlight on the University of Texas’ Harry Ransom Center online archive of the 1957-58 ABC TV show The Mike Wallace Interview.

Wallace died last month and was given numerous encomiums for being the most hardcore TV journalist around. What was most interesting about the trajectory of his career is that he was NOT a newsman by choice — he sorta fell into it after being an actor and a radio announcer for many, many different programs. Thus, he was not a hardened reporter like the model of a TV journalist, Edward R. Murrow. He was a guy outta work who just sorta drifted into the game of interviewing famous folks and then reporting on a TV news magazine.

That should be kept in mind while watching The Mike Wallace Interviews, which came after Wallace’s stay on the Dumont program Night Beat, where he had developed his much-vaunted “take no prisoners” style of interviewing. That style was in fact a hook (his “brand,” if such a term had existed back then) and was indeed shtick, since the outrage that is heard on some of these shows from Wallace is not because the guest seems evasive in their answers, but rather because what they’ve said is “offensive” to the American mentality.

Of course, I was most interested in some of the entertainment-industry interviewees, but it was with hard-hitting political interviews that Wallace seemed to “make news,” esp. after 60 Minutes began. In absorbing a bunch of the Interviews, however, it became clear to me that Wallace was simply a barometer reflecting what was socially acceptable on network TV at the time.

Thus, he is very hard on the racists he interviews, but oddly, he’s also very tough on the women he talks to (in fact, he’s sometimes openly rude to them). His interviewer persona wanted to know “if you’ll be giving up your career to have a family,” and whether his female guests thought any less of themselves for not doing so. The other really rigid viewpoint he espouses in a number of these shows concerns religion: he affects a major “concern” over those interviewees who are atheists and seems relieved when show-biz types talk about believing in a deity.

But of course the show did air in the Fifties, and perhaps that was the way that intellectual ideas had to be packaged, with the host as a moral arbiter — no, wait, Murrow and Steve Allen never felt the need to diminish a guest to get the “American agenda” across in their interviews. Wallace was a compelling personality on-screen and was a fascinating interviewer to watch, but the interviewing MW was in fact the best role of his life. And if any of his previous jobs before Night Beat had worked out, he never would’ve been an interviewer in the first place….

Onto the episodes. Since I’ve evoked Steve Allen already, let me spotlight the talk with Steverino first. I am a giant fan of Steve’s work, so was pleased to see him in his prime with Wallace. However, the conversation does not range all over the map (as it easily could have, given Steve’s curiosity and knowledge about different issues).

Instead the main topic of conversation is Steve’s “feud” with Ed Sullivan, since he was on directly opposite the Old Stoneface. Sullivan of course “won” the race for ratings in that timeslot, entirely due to his top-notch guest bookings (as charming and smart as Steve was, was as boring and clueless Ed was). In the meantime, we do get to hear Steve deem TV awards as “meaningless” (a comment that never dates) and discuss how his show received bad reviews and hate mail when he had the “adultress” Ingrid Bergman on as a guest. Watch the interview here.

What is interesting about the program is that Wallace makes the pretense that he’s pursuing a heavy news story — the most commonly-uttered phrase on the show was “we’ll go after that story in just a minute.” Whereas, in many cases, he was simply interviewing someone the public was interested in, regardless of whether there was any true newsworthiness to the discussion.

The only time there was newsworthiness on the show was in Wallace’s interview with columnist Drew Pearson, who openly said that Senator John Kennedy hadn’t written his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Profiles in Courage (Pearson stood by his claim, and the suit was dropped — Kennedy assistant Ted Sorensen wrote the majority of the book).

Wallace’s interviews with newsmakers were indeed confrontational. A good example is his grilling of Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus. Faubus had refused to allow integration in a Little Rock High School, and Wallace confronts him here, as (again) a sort of watchdog for the “American” point of view. (This being the Northern, urban point of view.) Faubus wisely refuses to give his own opinion, but says he represents the state’s voters.

Since the show was a prime reflector of Fifties culture, I have to next turn to the show with Philip Wylie. Wylie was an extremely popular genre novelist and social commentator who isn’t spoken of much these days, but his philosophies were fascinating. In this talk he accurately speaks about both the fact that America has become “a nation of exalted ignoramouses” and the emptiness of religion (in which the practitioners have very “un-Christianlike manners”).

Wallace seems particularly pissed off by Wylie’s put-down of religion, but the two don’t cross swords on one of Wylie’s most famous concepts, the notion of “Mom-ism” having taken over America in the mid-20th century (though it sounds like a purely sexist concept, it’s actually a nuanced, extremely Freudian view of the American male). Most interesting are his responses to Wallace’s fast-answer queries: should birth control be allowed (“why not? We control death”); is Israel a valid state (it’s “another religious nation”); can mercy killing be condoned (“it’s okay,” Wylie quickly answers). His loathing of Liberace isn’t explained, but it was most likely in his mind linked to “Mom-ism.”

Wallace’s show was by no means an “intellectual” outing (in fact, Mike seemed to be a stand-in for the “average” urban American male), but his producers did book some fine minds, having theologian Reinhold Neibuhr on for a full show.

Neibhur proves to be the kind of free-thinking theist that all of us, regardless of our beliefs (or lack thereof), can respect. He states his uncategorical support for the separation of church and state — but because, again, this is the Fifties, he does note that a nuclear war “might be necessary.” He approves of Bertrand Russell and other atheist philosophers by quoting the Bible: “by his works shall you judge a man.”

Perhaps the most famous intellectual who sat in the guest’s chair was Aldous Huxley, with whom Wallace discussed some very important and extremely timeless topics: the loss of personal freedom in modern society; the threat of subliminal advertising; how technological devices are taking over our existence (what a silly idea —where did he get these notions?); and, most fascinatingly, his prediction that drugs wil be marketed that will make man more “happy in his slavery.” The Huxley interview is here.

Wallace’s interview with Malcolm Muggeridge is equally bound up with “big issues” — but in this case the lion’s share of the time is spent discussing a recent article that Muggeridge had written in The Saturday Evening Post, asking “Does England Need a Queen?” (which included the idea that Queen Liz was thought of as “frumpy and dowdy” by the average British woman). Wallace is well pleased with Muggeridge, though, since he’s an intellectual who is religious (god, Mike could be tiresome).

I guess the most interesting “egghead” guest that Wallace had on, especially for folks like myself who grew up in the Seventies, was that wacky old war criminal himself, Mr. Henry Kissinger. The whole episode is an experiment in Strangelove-speak, as Mike and Henry discuss the possibility of a “limited nuclear war” and “war as a usable instrument of policy” (for some lighter fare, they chat about “the collapse of the free world”). As always Kissinger’s notions are chillingly cold and calculating. The man was/is brilliant, but it’s terrifying to think he ran American international policy for a number of years.

I haven’t watched all of the Wallace episodes available on the UT site, but perhaps the single most interesting example of Wallace busting the chops of someone who doesn’t need their chops busted is his interview with Margaret Sanger, the legendary (and blessed) advocate of birth control in America and around the world. Wallace lays into a Sanger, starting off with the notion that he will tackle the big issues in his interview with her – like whether birth control is “murder” (or, alternately, a “sin”).

Wallace reacts to Sanger as if she was the female equivalent of the KKK chief he interviewed early on in the series (who was dumb and racist, whereas Sanger legitimately seemed to want help people out). Wallace interrogates her about whether her advocacy of birth control was just “a way to fight the church” (since she had an Atheist father). She responds very calmly at one point that sex isn’t just for having children — which is indeed a wild concept to be espoused on network TV in the uptight Fifties.

Wallace’s “pursuit” of Sanger as if she was a snake-oil salesman foisting a phony belief on the American public is underscored by his middle-of-the-road attitude — perhaps the most interesting question he asks is “if women have become too indepdendent" as of late. It’s interesting to note that Sanger’s calmly spoken views have been proven right by history, while Mike’s take on the issues is still in mainstream broadcasting — but it’s moved over to Fox News, where Mike’s son Chris now works.

Continuing with the notion of Mike leaning on a female guest, there is the talk with Diana Barrymore, whose infamous tell-all biography had come out before she guested on his show. He accuses her of being too revelatory, of tarring her father’s reputation (is there anyone who knows of John Barrymore who didn't know that he was a complete alcoholic?).

Wallace is a moral arbiter here, interrogating Diana with a disapproving tone. The interview is fascinating but depressing to watch — and much more depressing when you find out DB was only 36 years old here, and that she only lived three more years, at which time she committed suicide with alcohol and sleeping pills.

Completing the troika of women interview subjects that Wallace was a general dick to is one of my all-time favorites, actress Jean Seberg. Wallace speaks to her at the moment when her second feature Bonjour Tristesse is about to open. She is very willing to discuss the horrible critical drubbing she got for her acting in Preminger’s St. Joan, but Wallace really rides her, wanting to know why the public would idolize a person like her.

Wallace tells Jean that she’s a “synthetic star” and “not the prettiest girl in the world.” Clearly he was keying into the average American’s love/hate relationships with celebrities, but it seems particularly harsh to go after a young starlet, telling her, in essence, she is “not needed.”

He does hook her up to Brando and Dean, whom she says she likes (“they fight conformity”), but clearly Old Man Mike has a problem with the youth culture of the Fifties (I’m sure he absolutely loathed what followed in the Sixties). Perhaps the most telling question he asks Seberg is to inquire of her what is “wrong with the average life,” as if she committed a crime forsaking the life of a wife and mother to be an actress.

More about the profound and ridiculous moments in part two of this blog post, coming up — above!

“The Bavarian Negro”: Deceased Artiste Günther Kaufmann

June 10th of next month will mark the 30th anniversary of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s death. While it seems that Fassbinder’s immense artistic achievement (over a short period of 13 years) will forever remain "a Mount Everest of modern cinema" (to quote Sarris' comment about Berlin Alexanderplatz), any regular viewer of his work feels as if they “know” his ensemble of actors, each of whom portrayed a few dozen different characters. Gunther Kaufmann, who died last week at 64, was one of the few actors whom Fassbinder envisioned primarily as two sorts of characters — friendly American soldiers and gangsters’ henchmen.

Kaufmann had an amazingly active and complicated life. He was born in Munich of a German mother and an African-American soldier father, and grew up in the Munich suburb of Hasenberg — he was nicknamed “the Bavarian Negro” during his career, and called his autobiography The White Negro from Hasenberg! (above). He served in the Navy and then supported himself doing small jobs, until he was cast in Volker Schlondorff’s Baal (1970), which starred Fassbinder.

Although Kaufmann was a married man, he had a relationship with Fassbinder while the young tyro director was making his first features. He first appeared in RWF’s Gods of the Plague (1969) and went on to be in 13 more of Fassbinder’s film and TV projects. He was a burly gentleman who did “look American,” thus his being cast as henchmen and American soldiers — although Fassbinder did give him a wild starring role in Whity (1970) and wrote a terrific supporting role for him as a confused terrorist in The Third Generation (1979).

Like a few of Fassbinder’s actors, he had a bit of trouble finding roles after the director’s sudden death and journeyed to Portugal for a time. He did eventually get back into the German film and TV industry, and worked regularly for decades until he was involved in a real-life situation that was indeed worthy of a melodrama by his old friend.

In 2002, he confessed to the murder of his accountant, whom he claimed he had fallen on while the two were having a physical altercation (as noted, Kaufmann was a big guy). It turned out that Kaufmann’s confession was false, intended to shield his wife, who was dying of cancer and was also a likely suspect for the murder (it is reported on the Net that they had been defrauding the accountant in order to pay for Mrs. Kaufmann’s cancer treatment).

The murder was declared an accident, and Kaufmann was sentenced to over a year of prison time for blackmail and robbery. In 2005, it came to light that his wife had indeed been involved in the murder — she had hired three men who were the actual killers of the accountant, unbeknownst to Kaufmann (which does indeed add to the melodramatic circumstances). Kaufman received a fine and a probation sentence for his phony confession and was released from prison in 2005.

His comeback in show business was very strong, as he again was able to play supporting parts in all kinds of movie and TV productions, including this all-too-cute kids movie about a girl adventurer, titled “Vicky the Viking” in English (not that it ever really came out here):

Kaufman died unexpectedly of heart failure at the point where he was preparing to act in a film based on his autobiography, to be called “God’s Second League” (thanks to the obit on the Fassbinder Foundation site for that tidbit)

He will forever be remembered by filmgoers around the world (including Americans, for whom he represented an unusual sort of “surrogate”) for his acting in the films of Fassbinder. As noted above, one of his best parts came in the very “busy” and incredibly prophetic satire of terrorism The Third Generation, in which he donned both blackface for the “caper” and “aged” makeup for a later sequence.

This is the film that contained ALL of Fassbinder’s players (well, nearly all) and although this trailer isn’t subtitled you’ll be able to understand it. The key point the film makes is that terrorists are a necessary element for capitalist society — capitalists in fact *need* their behavior to justify cracking down on human rights. That message will never be dated.

The best way to close out an obit for for Kaufmann, however, is to spotlight his singing, which was showcased in three of RWF’s films. He sang the opening theme song for Whity, in which his servant character summarizes the plot of the film (he will kill the family he works for, member by member).

His “best” song is, no question, “So Much Tenderness” (written by the inimitable Peer Raben and Fassbinder), which closes out The American Soldier in a grand and bizarre fashion — as a slow-motion scene plays on and on, making audience members laugh then squirm, then laugh and squirm again. Both songs are included in this tribute to the music of Peer Raben, which I created and uploaded to YT upon Raben’s death (the Whity theme is right at the beginning, and “So Much Tenderness” starts around the 2:00 mark):

 

He also sang a song for the soundtrack of Fassbinder’s last film, Querelle (1982), “Young and Joyful Bandit”: