Click images for desktop size: "The Operation" by J3 Concepts I started today thinking about John Garfield.
I'm not sure why.
It was beastly hot here and I had to hang around and wait for the cable internet guy. Everything is installed and tomorrow I'll get to See Florida-LSU and even some NFL games on Sunday.
The internet is better. Much better.
But still I kept thinking about John Garfield.
On Wednesday my friend and I watched "A Thousand Clowns". A great play hammered into a decent movie with incredible acting. Its never been released on DVD. I don't know why.
The finale of the movie is rough. It presents a moral dilemma about compromise. The lead, Jason Robards, has to decide whether to sacrifice his self esteem and his deep sense of correctness in order to save the people he loves.
The choice he has to make is between heartbreak and a life of humiliation.
Its not made easy and there's no right or wrong.
Its what movies and plays used to be good at.
Maybe that's what tripped me into thinking about John Garfield.
Garfield was an odd icon as an actor. Poems have deservedly been written about him. Some of those poems were pretty good and nearly did justice to the man.
He was unabashedly proud of being Jewish. Not comedically Jewish or caricatured but the real thing that you dealt with everyday. In an era where it was routine for Jews to change their names in order to fit in and survive and coming from a studio era that was controlled by Jews he was unique. Its easy to imagine studio heads worrying about putting one of their own on the screen while secretly rejoicing when he became a huge star in "The Postman Always Rings Twice".
Garfield on screen was a walking moral dilemma. He only wanted what he wanted and would plow through life ignoring his morals and values until he got it until he would finally have to make the final and ultimate choice.
With Abraham Polonsky, one of the Hollywood 10, the writer who lead the lists of blacklisted Hollywood, he created two masterpieces of cinema that played to his strengths.
"Force Of Evil" was a tour de force. A slum kid put through law school by his bookie brother and his own hard work he starts his career by helping the "mob" run the numbers racket in New York. Along the way the mob crushes his brother.
The money is so good that Garfield lets it shut off his vision, his morals and his scruples, justifying everything as the money pours in.

Click images for desktop size: Dying Dolphin" by Jim Headly Until his brother stands up to the mob and is killed, not easily and not just to shut him up but also to serve as a lesson to Garfield, to keep him in line.
It ends excitingly and unpredictably.
What's most interesting is that the entire film was composed in blank verse.
I can't find any other film in history that can make that claim, certainly no other film in Hollywood. It makes the standard pot boiler lyrical and moving, a song of decadence and descent.
And the film was a monster hit. Its message of rightness and the duty of men to each other so entrenched and moving and resolute that its easy to see how it influenced the way Americans and humanity would view themselves.
The film did so well that Garfield didn't resign his studio contract. On his own he set up his own production company. He wanted to do the life story of Bernie Rosen, A Jew who held 3 weight class boxing titles before he died in 1938, a heroin addict.
The mind boggles at the way this story could have played out. Unfortunately with the Hays code and the impending McCarthy era there were no theaters that would be willing to screen a movie about drug addicts. Garfield wasn't a fool and turned to Polonsky to help him make his boxing film.
And Polonsky came out with "Body And Soul".
The story of a Jewish kid from the slums who grew into a champion boxer, who screwed up his life, abandoned his friends, family and the people he loved in his desire to be rich, to be the champ. And after he accomplished his goal he had to live with what he had created. He responds by becoming a dissipated drunk. He hates his life but he accepts it was the price he had to pay to gain his dreams.
(Interestingly it was okay to be a drunk but not a drug addict.)
Finally he so burned out that his managers (the mob) figure its time to get out. They figure to put their new boy in as champ. Garfield is promised a world of money to take a dive. They don't really think he has a chance but its insurance for them and the payoff to Garfield is a mobsters way of paying him off for the money he made for them.
The final fight scene is one of the most stunning ever filmed. It remained so until Rocky stole some of its tricks and "Raging Bull" extended, but could not improve, the poetry of it.

Click images for desktop size: "Exopolis" by Anonymous James Wong Howe, a young Chinese American cinematographer created his own steady cam. He braced himself and put on roller skates so he could glide around the boxers toting the 35 pound camera.
In the silvery monochrome Howe was helpful in creating the vision, the fire, the genius of Polonsky and Garfield.
One of the things was that Polonsky wrote the script with the understanding that no one but him would alter a line or a scene.
Robert Rossen was hired to direct. A week into production Garfield saw Rossen writing new lines for a scene and handing them out to the cast, He fired him on the spot. A few days later Rossen apologized and agreed to abide to the terms.
Rossen still fought for a different ending. They even filmed it. But when they screened the two he agreed that Garfield's and Polonsky's vision was the accurate one.
See Garfield somehow pulls himself off the canvas and wins the fight. Its brutal and ugly and he does it, foolishly, because one of the old neighborhood girls is in the crowd. He leaves the ring fully aware that he's most likely soon going to die.
Rossen's version called for a fade and then the next morning we'd find Garfield dead and stuffed into a garbage can.
Polonsky's version made screen history. Garfield sees the girl and walks and stumbles supported by her to his dressing room.
He's confronted there by the mobster who starts to let Garfield know what his future will be.
Garfield cuts him off repeating a line he'd earlier said in jest but now Garfield gives it an ominous power, the power of a man: "What are you going to do? Kill me? Everybody dies."

Things are settling in. My puppy is protecting me. I don't know why. She's happy and adjusting well.
Tomorrow she is scheduled for a bath.
She'll still love me after just the same.

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