Logan's Run (1976)

written September 5, 1976

Logan's Run (Michael Anderson, 1976) Logan is a movie I'd like to have been a part of. There are so many steps where someone should have taken Saul David, Michael Anderson, or David Zelag Goodman by the hand with a warm glass of milk and a cookie and explain to them that what they wanted to do wouldn't work, and that the slip-shod way they were planning to realize it wasn't going to help it, either.

Mind you, there are some things I like. The Jerry Goldsmith score (what, I'm going to desert Goldsmith now? Herrmann's dead and Barry's comatose!)* Jenny Agutter is in it, and provides some moments of acting that actually seem natural in this spectacle of the unnatural (unnatural matte shots, etc.) (Why, in God's name has it taken Jenny Agutter five years since her last movie to appear in another one? The insight and wisdom displayed in her performances in The Railway Children, and in (Nicholas) Roeg's Walkabout should have made her much more in demand, since she is undoubtedly the best young actress since Pamela Franklin--and have you seen what's she's been in lately?)** Peter Ustinov comes in and says his lines like he just thought them up, and makes Michael York et al. look like The Reader's Theater.

I was in love with Jenny Agutter and this is an angle from which you should never see Michael York.

The film brightens up a bit once York and Agutter reach outside, not only because we, the audience, are on familiar ground, but also because we're out of those God-awful sets.

Washington D.C. has returned to swamp-land at the time of Logan's Run.

A friend of mine who's read the book says that book and movie have only the title in common. It's too bad that this should be such a turkey. I remember Bruce Dern's plaintive cry in Silent Running--"What happened to the flowers?" Walking out (of Logan's Run), echoed in my mind "What happened to the $8 million?" Sleazy matte shots. Cruddy model shots. And from the company that put 2001 together.***It has been said that we are about to be engulfed by a resurgence of sci-fi movies, their popularity expanding in the fifties, and then dwindling out to be revived when someone came out with a new special effect technique. Now, unfortunately, it looks like Logan predicts a resurgence of '50's technique. What happened to Magicam that was supposed to be so revolutionary? Is everything being used on the Star Trek film?****

The city-scape of Logan's Run looks like it could have been built in somebody's rec-room

But, lest it be mistaken that I am concerned only with special effects, let me say that "Special effects are worthless unless the ideas presented are special, as well!"***** Or else we get things like "Space: 1999" which looks gorgeous, but its scripts have the consistency (and intelligence) of tapioca pudding.******  (I'm writing this in a camper-pickup truck bouncing over Wyoming's dirt roads). We must have intelligent writing! (and I'm not helping!)

Logan (and Jessica) running

Ah, youth. Pretty bad and squirrelly writing here (and I was complaining about intelligent writing—heh), even for the back of a pick-up truck, but my sentiments about Logan's Run haven't changed one jot. The sets are cheesy (although setting the city in a mall was, in retrospect, a particularly good idea--we'll probably all live in hermetically-sealed malls in the future), the effects ARE bad—the city-scape miniatures wouldn't pass Gerry Anderson "Thunderbirds" muster and the matte shots have edges that disappear—and the original story is fairly trashed. Director Michael Anderson's idea of composition is to make an impressive proscenium arch set and put the actors in the middle of it. Not exactly inspired work here.

Reflective of the tawdry set-design of Logan's Run
(and, yes, that's Farrah Fawcett walking in the foreground)

Clearly, he didn't think about improving the screenplay much. The dumbest decision by the movie-makers is to make the central theme of the book, the lottery for "renewal"—that is, the chance for those turning 30, (21 in the book) to be given a few more years of life or "renewed"—a spectator sport. You'd think that after watching weekly events that destroy every participant taking part that one of these young people would come to the conclusion that NOBODY ever got renewed. I don't care how self-absorbed or de-sensitized or drugged-out they are, someone would notice. If they were looking for a war-draft metaphor, it doesn't get past a glancing consideration before it falls apart.

"Renewal" is staged like a sporting event, but nobody's keeping score.

They're working on a remake now, which might be the perfect thing for a youth-dominated movie market of kids barely out of their teens. In the meantime, the film had an unofficial distillation of themes in Michael Bay's The Island.

Some more of the bad set-design...and WHAT are these people wearing?

The latest: I wrote that last bit in 2008—and they are (in 2015) STILL talking about a re-make of Logan's Run—this time with Ryan Reynolds starring (too old, actually) and Simon ("X-Men" series) Kinberg writing and possibly directing (He's a big fan of this movie, so I don't hold out much hope for it). The next time I run this piece it will be probably still be un-made, despite recent press hyping the relatively short novel into a Hunger Games/Divergent/Maze Runner-type movie series. 

And by the way, how's that Fahrenheit 451 remake going?

* I've written about Goldsmith here. Composer Bernard Herrmann had recently died (his last released score--for DePalma's Obsession would be released a scant two weeks later. And John Barry was not comatose--I was being facetious--but he had relaxed his movie composing style to a slow dirge pace orchestrated for a massive number of strings.

** I wrote this when I was 21. All I can say in my defense is I had the "hots" for Jenny Agutter, so I was partial. I think it was because she didn't mind doing nude scenes. And there wasn't five years between movies--I just hadn't seen any of the ones she'd made in that time.  Agutter continues to act occasionally--to show how time passes, she actually played the mother in a remake of The Railway Children, and had a role in the excellent "Mi-5" series (aka "Spooks"). She can currently be seen as a nun on the BBC series "Call the Mid-wife" and she's also one of the shadowy S.H.I.E.L.D. heads in the Marvel Film Universe. 

Pamela Franklin (who I also found attractive) had just appeared in The Legend of Hell House (hence the remark).  I still think both actresses are very talented, now given the objectivity of years (hell, decades), and I see myself whenever I read some inexplicably passionate comment in IMDB that says that (say) "Selena Gomez/Jennifer Lopez/Jena Malone/Rachel Bilson/Nicola Peltz/Emma Watson/NameSomebodyHere is teh best actress ever and should win an Oscar!!!" Mm-hmm.

*** The distributor has nothing to do with it, kiddo. It's the producer and the director and the design team. 

On the road-trip where we saw this movie, we stopped by the
Ft. Worth Water Gardens where this was filmed. We didn't visit the Mall
where a lot of the interiors were shot.

**** The plight of the science-fiction film would be resolved (or made worse, depending on your view) the next year with the release of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The success of these films kick-started the on-again/off-again Star Trek film and its resultant film series. And Magicam is not the hardware or the app, it was a VFX company that was attached to the first still-untitled Star Trek movie that would become Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

***** This was originally bolded in big block letters. The sentiment is still good (if obvious everywhere except Hollywood), but, really, there's no need to shout!

Jenny Agutter O.B.E. today—from Captain America: Winter Soldier

****** In my dotage, I have acquired a taste for tapioca pudding.

The History of John Ford: The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936)

When Orson Welles was asked what movies he studied before embarking on directing Citizen Kane he replied, "I studied the Old Masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford." 

Running parallel with our series about Akira Kurosawa ("Walking Kurosawa's Road"), we're running a series of pieces about the closest thing America has to Kurosawa in artistry—director John Ford. Ford rarely made films set in the present day, but (usually) made them about the past...and about America's past, specifically (when he wasn't fulfilling a passion for his Irish roots). 

In "The History of John Ford" we'll be gazing fondly at the work of this American Master, who started in the Silent Era, learning his craft, refining his director's eye, and continuing to work deep into the 1960's (and his 70's) to produce the greatest body of work of any American "picture-maker," America's storied film-maker, the irascible, painterly, domineering, sentimental puzzle that was John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.

The Prisoner of Shark Island (John Ford, 1936) I've always been fascinated by the events surrounding the assassination of Lincoln. The nation, just after the surrender at Appomattox, was hit once again by a revenge killing by a Southern sympathizer, whose own grandiose ego put the Nation into an uproar, and generated an hysterical government response that usurped the judicial process in the quest for its own vengeance in the prosecution of half-hearted conspirators and acquaintances. 

One of those was Dr. Samuel Mudd, who was visited the night of Lincoln's assassination by a fleeing and injured John Wilkes Booth, and who treated a leg fracture sustained in the assassination.* The film would have you believe that Booth and his accomplice—one could call him a "getaway driver" if you transposed it to horses—stumbled on Mudd's house that night, and Mudd, helped the man without any knowledge of the man and his murderous deeds at Ford's Theater of that night.

But it simply wasn't true. Samuel Mudd did know Booth, and had often seen him on-stage, and being a Southern sympathizer himself, had even met with Booth and his followers a few times. The movie depicts them as strangers, which is a stretch of credibility considering Booth's notoriety as an actor. And the two were well-acquainted. And although it can be said that Mudd was not guilty of Lincoln's assassination, he was hardly innocent, either, aiding and abetting the man who was. Mudd was an accessory after the fact, at the very least. But not here.

The Prisoner of Shark Island gets the basic story right, though. Mudd is soon swept up by the law in the hysterical days following the murder, tried with the other conspirators, but is spared the gallows and is, instead, sent to the Dry Tortugas, a prison off the coast of Florida (there is no "Shark Island" in the U.S.—the name is purely exploitative). Mudd was sent to Fort Jefferson on that island, and whether the place was surrounded by a shark-infested moat, as the movie has it, is probably more part of the fabrication that is woven throughout the movie. All the details are wrong. Including a local black sharecropper named "Buck" (played by Ernest Whitman) following Mudd to Dry Totugas at the behest of Mrs. Mudd (Gloria Stuart—you might remember her as the elderly Rose in a little movie called Titanic).

An aside on that: Race relations in the movie might be a bit unsettling for some—the film was made in 1936 and a few years later in 1939, Gone With the Wind (where Whitman has an uncredited role) proved to be as condescending, if not more so. However, the cast of black actors is a bit more extensive, most of them are guards or prisoners, but Mudd treats them (despite his Southern leanings) as peers in the prison situation. I did smile when some of the characters refer to Mudd as "the white boy." You don't hear that every day in early movies.

Anyway, the best part of the movie and where Ford seems to have his interests highest (aside from the dramatically acute assassination sequence) is in an early attempt by Mudd to try escaping from the island, by means of friendly guards, makeshift ropes, and a boat commanded by his wife's father (Claude Gillingwater) who fought for the South. Ford has loved the play of light throughout his career and the sequence is not only suspenseful, but beautiful as well. In Shark Island, Ford has already established an atmospheric way of portraying the prison by dousing it in inky blackness, with any luminescence a metaphor for freedom, but the escape (photographed by Bert Glennon, who worked with von Sternberg—in black and white—and de Toth—in color—and who photographed Ford's Stagecoach, Rio Grande, Wagon Master, and Young Mr. Lincoln in black and white, and Drums Along the Mohawk in Technicolor) is a showcase of interesting angles, shadowy depths, and mastery of light surrounded by darkness.

The escape only worsens his plight, once he is re-captured (John Carradine's malevolent villainy as a vengeful Northern guard is never more apparent than when he casually confronts Mudd with a "Hiya, Judas!") he is thrown into a sweltering pit with Buck, until a yellow fever epidemic overtakes the Fort, killing the only physician on the premises. As the only prisoner with medical experience, he is charged by the Fort's Commandant (played by Ford's first cowboy star, Harry Carey) with trying to halt the spread of the disease (which, despite its conventionality as a "Hollywood" type of idea is historically accurate), for which Mudd is ultimately pardoned.

Warner Baxter, Harry Carey, and Ernest Whitman (lying down) in "the pit"

The true bones of the story make for a good historic melodrama (despite the messing with details and the white-wash of Mudd's relationship with Booth) and that always held an appeal for Ford and the producer that he would collaborate with on some of his greatest films: Darryl F. Zanuck, who was only a year into running his motion picture conglomerate 20th Century Fox. This was their first work together in a string of legendary films that would cement the careers of both men.

The conclusion of Ford's depiction of the assassination—
a veil is drawn across the stricken president, becoming abstract
"Now he belongs to the ages."

Dr. Samuel Mudd

* The legend is that Booth sustained it jumping from the Presidential viewing box in Ford Theater to the stage, where he vaingloriously quoted Shakespeare—"Sic semper tyrranus"—to the horrified crowd and made his escape (this is how it's depicted in the film). Some accounts speculate that Booth got the injury when his horse stumbled and fell on him during his frantic run from Washington D.C. Not as dramatic. In Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a newspaperman says at one point "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Ford was a frequent activist for that practice, as The Prisoner of Shark Island shows throughout its story, which has the basic story right, but the details are enhanced for dramatic effect. Sic semper dramatis (which is a podcast with John Hodgman).

Pawn Sacrifice

Toppling the Fischer-King
or
"No, He's Worried About What's Going to Happen if He Wins"

Chess is a game, but it is a tough one, not child's play. As one character (Peter Saarsgard's Father Bill Lombardy) describes it in Pawn Sacrifice, it's a "rabbit-hole." Get good enough to get out of the "potzer" stage and pretty soon you're studying it and that comprises zillions of moves and zillions of games, and, like most drama, "there's nothing new under the sun." It comes down to knowledge and making the right move and anticipating the next few moves of your opponent with history as your guide.

But that's if you're playing "by the book."

That's if you're playing to win—and there's no reason to play chess if the only thing you want to do is move pieces around a board for fun. You approach the game with one goal in mind and it is not to lose. Chess is a mano-a-mano cage-match to the death. It is not a game of enjoyment or social interaction. It ain't "Twister." To play chess is to want to win. Absolutely. It's binary. Win or lose. And the twisting scenarios are a guide and a complication to that one singular goal: win. Don't be a loser.

You have to have a tinge of the megalomaniac to play chess. And the fiefdom that you want to claim is 20 inches by 20 inches, barely enough to contain the smallest of egos. It is not a game for the indifferent. It is not a game for those who see it as merely a game. It demands a cold, calculating killer instinct that plays "all-in."

As such, the recreation informs the player, to the point where it becomes a question whether the participant is playing the game or the game is playing them. 

So...Bobby Fischer. The script of Pawn Sacrifice had been on the legendary "Black List" of unproduced scripts since 2009, and like most of those, they're really good scripts that are judged "unmarketable"—in other words, "no superheroes." How do you make a compelling movie...about chess?

You make it about when the entire world was gripped in the biggest chess-match on Earth between Fischer and Russia's Boris Spaasky in 1972. World leaders were watching this match, and everyday citizens, too. At the time, Fischer was on more magazine covers than in Kate Upton's dreams (including Sports Illustrated), and for an obsessive-compulsive with an out-sized ego and the aggressiveness of a pit-bull, all this attention caused a crack in that precise, disciplined mind. 

Which wasn't that disciplined in the first place. Chess is what focused a troubled kid with a family life in chaos. It became his refuge, became his weapon, the place he'd rather be than home with a Mom and a revolving door of "dad's," checkmating kings being the alternative to punching older men in the face—having control.

And control is relative. It's one thing to control a chessboard. You might even delude yourself into thinking you control the player on the other side. But, that's it. And for Bobby Fischer, it's a hard lesson of how much control his mastery of chess ultimately gave him. It got him money, fame, notoriety, maybe a legacy of sorts. But, never control.

After a brief look at Fischer's childhood (where he's played by Aiden Lovekamp and Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick), we see the eccentric adult Fischer (a dynamite performance by Tobey Maguire, who looks like he didn't sleep throughout the entire production), rising through the ranks. He is approached by an agent Paul Marshall (Mark Stuhlbarg), who is a chess fan and a self-described "hopeless" patriot, who wants to see an American loosen the stranglehold the Russians have on the World Chess Championship. He has investors who might be able to fund Fischer's attempt. The Russians, after all, support Spassky (played by Liev Schreiber), with bodyguards, drivers, official cars and nice hotel digs. Fischer's entourage is a "minder" and fellow chess advocate Father Lombardy (Saarsgard) (he'd played Fischer in 1965; "We were young. He'd destroy me now.") who, after some reluctance over Fischer's behavior in the past ("Bobby has problems" he warns Marshall. "So did Mozart" is the reply), agrees to oversee his progress through the Championship.

Fischer's behavior is flinty even in the best of times. But with the added pressure of the tournament, the increasing stakes, the growing attention paid to it, and the less-than-five-star accommodations the privately funded endeavor can afford (as compared to the Soviets'), he begins to crack under the competitive strain. His behavior turns petulant, paranoid (he's convinced that his phone is bugged—he's just not sure if it's by the Russians, the Americans, or the press) and he begins to act out, complaining about his pay, his rooms, the venue for the contest, the audience for the tournaments, even the noise coming from the air conditioner in the tournament hall. Anything that distracts him from the game becomes intolerable, and everything is distracting from the game—even the pressure of the game itself.

In one brilliant sequence (aided and abetted by sound designer Lon Bender), a tournament becomes torture, as every single noise in the room is amplified to the point of irritation—the scrape of a pencil taking notes a few tables down, the tick of a clock, the buzzing of the room's "exit" signs—his focus on the game is so acute that everything else becomes larger than life in significance. And as Lombardy duly notes "without chess, he doesn't exist."

Check and mate. 

Chess is all he knows. And although he may be king of his castle, the board that Bobby Fischer is playing on is neither uniform nor even—it is, in fact, very unstable—and if one has built a life around the tactics of chess and not much else, life can be daunting on that field, as it is full of shifts and turns, both seen and unseen (and sometimes only suspected) that may un-do oneself some many moves down the road. Why are you making THAT move? What's the reason you're moving THAT piece? Is that part of a plan to take me down? And just because I don't see it does not mean that it ultimately will not be my demise. Chess breeds paranoia if you take it too seriously.

Life is not like chess. It is, only if you assume every person you see is trying to beat you and take everything away from you. The funny thing about chess is, more often than not, it is not the other player's strategy that defeats you, it is the way you react to their moves, which can lead you into a trap that you ultimately can't get out. You defeat yourself. 

Check, mate. 

This sort of movie is where director Ed Zwick is at his best—a small movie where individuals interact in interesting ways (His TV movie "Special Bulletin" is a favorite of mine). He has been stuck in a rut doing movies that have an epic sweep since Glory (and Legends of the Fall, The Siege, The Last Sumarai, Defiance, and the like), which ultimately feel a bit empty, but he's at his best in more personal movies without much reach but a lot of room for depth. His cast in this is superb without a false note in the bunch—and Maguire's performances can be problematic in that regard, but not here, where despite not looking like Fischer, he manages to make a distinct portrait of almost sympathetic paranoia. Sarsgaard and Stuhlbarg are becoming ubiquitous in movies now, which is all to the good for movies in general—they are the very best of utility players, who, like Mark Ruffalo, are at the cusp of breaking out into full-blown stardom.

Not many people saw Pawn Sacrifice and more's the pity. It's an intelligent script (okay, there's a gaffe involving Jimi Hendrix) with a lot of very good actors doing extraordinary work. But, there's a reason the film was on The Blacklist—that's where really good scripts that aren't very marketable go to wait to be noticed. It's still waiting.

Don't Make a Scene: Sunset Boulevard

The Story: Oh my. There are so many deep layers to this scene they could fill the biggest pot-hole ever conceived on Sunset Boulevard.

This series of frames is a mere way-stop on Joe Gillis' journey from being a writer kept on retainer to "kept man" by former silent film star Norma Desmond, holed up like a black widow spider in her creepily ornate California mansion of faded glories. There was plenty of material to choose from in Hollywood's musty past to make a blistering screenplay in Billy Wilder's part-noir/part-horror show of the dead souls left behind in the Movie Biz. But it was the casting that solidified it, like the cement at Grauman's Chinese. Or Louis B. Mayer's heart.*

The first choice to play Norma Desmond was Mae West (who said she was too young to play a silent film star**). Wilder and writer-producer Charles Brackett personally asked Mary Pickford (who was so horrified at the story that Wilder and Brackett just apologized for bothering her, and slunk away). Pola Negri (whose thick Polish accent, which hampered her career for sound movies) would have been hard to understand. They even asked Greta Garbo. But director George Cukor pushed Gloria Swanson to try out for the role. She was an inspired choice. There are some actors that Wilder could transform, like Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend and Swanson in this film, to show the mad glint in the eyes that come from dreams of glory. That's part of this scene, certainly.

But, even more interesting is the choice of film that is screened in Norma Desmond's parlor. It is one of Gloria Swanson's silent pictures, but one that had never been seen in the United States: Queen Kelly, made in 1929.

It was directed by Erich von Stroheim.

Yes, the actor who plays Desmond's ex-director, ex-husband, and now butler, directed this film for star Swanson and producer Joseph P. Kennedy.***

Von Stroheim's career in Hollywood was a colorful one, as actor and director. he was one of the great screen villains during the silent era, and, as a director, he made epic, gargantuan movies of such scope that they were usually shanghaied by the production company and edited down to lengths that were a mere flickering shadow of their former selves—the classic example being his ten hour version of Greed (1929). Though not as large as Greed, Queen Kelly under von Stroheim's supervision would have clocked in at four hours, and shooting was over schedule and over-budget. Swanson, who also had problems with von Stroheim, demanded that Kennedy fire him from the production. Additional footage was shot to bring the film to a bridgeable conclusion, but due to stipulations in von Stroheim's contract (he had to give permission to show it), the film was never seen in the United States—until Sunset Boulevard.

And that at von Stroheim's suggestion.

So, there he is, on-screen, the real director playing a reel humiliated director screening a section of his own mutilated film. And it is the glow of this film (and its own story) that back-lights the sordid story to come; the light that Norma Desmond basks and glories in.

When one digs a little into Sunset Boulevard, the spine shivers, the hairs on the back of your neck straighten, and you're overcome with "the creeps."

The Set-Up: Wisenheimer Hollywood scipt-hack Joe Gillis (William Holden) has just fallen down a rabbit-hole. In an attempt to evade his creditors chasing him down Sunset Boulevard, he's pulled into a drive-way to an abandoned house and hidden his car in the garage. What starts as an accident turns into a lucky break as he finds it is the home of silent-screen star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), not-so-gracefully retired, and in a vain attempt to make a come-back, hires Joe to write a new starring vehicle, to be called "Salome." Norma sees stars, and Joe sees a steady pay-check but with negative benefits — a lack of his freedom and unwanted attention from Norma, both of which are irksome, as is the baleful glare of Norma's gruff, doting man-servant Max (Erich von Stroheim).

Quiet, everybody! Lights! (Are you ready, Norma?) All right! Camera! Action!


B-9 THE BIG ROOM -(NIGHT) Shooting towards the big Gold Rush painting. Max, white gloves and all, steps into the shot, shoves the painting up towards the ceiling,revealing a motion picture screen. Max exits.
GILLIS' VOICE: It wasn't all work - of course. Two or three times a week Max would haul up that enormous oil painting that had been presented to her by some Nevada Chamber of Commerce...
GILLIS' VOICE: ...and we'd see a movie, right in her living room.
B-1O NORMA AND GILLIS They sit on a couch, facing the screen. On a table in front of them are champagne, cigarettes and coffee. Above their heads are the typical openings for a projector. The lights go off. From the opening above their heads shoots the wide beam of light.
GILLIS' VOICE: "So much nicer than going out," she'd say.
GILLIS' VOICE: The plain fact was...
GILLIS' VOICE: ...that she was afraid of that world outside.
GILLIS' VOICE: Afraid it would remind her that time had passed.
B-11 MAX, IN THE PROJECTION BOOTH BEHIND THE ROOM The light of the machine flickering over his face, which is frozen, a somber enigma.
GILLIS' VOICE: They were silent movies, and Max would run the projection machine, which was just as well...
GILLIS' VOICE: -- it kept him from giving us an accompaniment on that wheezing organ.
B-12 NORMA AND GILLIS watching the screen. Gillis looks down and sees that Norma's hand is clasping his ann tight. He doesn't like it much but he can't do anything about it. However. when she for a second lets go his arm to pick up a glass of champagne, he gently withdraws his arm, leans away from her and crosses his arms to discourage any resumption of her approach. Norma puts the glass down doesn't find his arm, but is not aware of any significance in his maneuver. They both watch the screen.
GILLIS' VOICE: She'd sit very close to me, and she'd smell of tuberoses, which is not my favorite perfume, not by a long shot.
GILLIS' VOICE: Sometimes as we watched, she'd clutch my arm...
GILLIS' VOICE:...or my hand forgetting she was my employer becoming just a fan...
GILLIS' VOICE: ...excited about that actress up there on the screen....I guess I don't have to tell you...
GILLIS' VOICE: ...who the star was.
GILLIS' VOICE: They were always her pictures -- that's all she wanted to see.
B-13 THE OTHER END OF THE BIG ROOM. WITH THE SCREEN On it flickers a famous scene from one of Norma's old silent pictures. It is not to be a funny scene. It is old-fashioned, but shows her incredible beauty and the screen presence which made her the great star of her day.
B-14 NORMA AND GILLIS ON THE COUCH
NORMA: Still wonderful, isn't it?
NORMA: And no dialogue. We didn't need dialogue.
NORMA: We had faces. There just aren't any faces like that any more.
NORMA: Well, maybe one -- Garbo.
In a sudden flareup she jumps to her feet and stands in the flickering beam of light.
NORMA: Those idiot producers! Those imbeciles! Haven't they got any eyes? Have they forgotten what a star looks like?
NORMA: I'll show them. I'll be up there again. So help me!
Sunset Boulevard

Words by Charles Brackett, D.M. Marshman Jr. and Billy Wilder

Pictures by John F. Seitz and Billy Wilder

Sunset Boulevard is available on DVD from Paramount Home Video.

* In IMDB's "Trivia" section for Sunset Boulevard it is reported that Mayer, then head of M-G-M, screamed that Wilder should be "tarred, feathered and horse-whipped" for denigrating the film industry with the film. Wilder's tart reply: "F*%k you!"

** Well, "technically" yes but no. While West never made a silent film—after years of writing and starring on Broadway, she was signed to a contract by Paramount Pictures in 1932—she really wasn't too young to be a silent film star. She signed that contract at the age of 38, making her born in the year 1893—a full six years before Gloria Swanson was born.

*** Patriarch of the Kennedy clan, father of President John F. and Senators Robert and Edward. He was rumored to be involved with Swanson as more than her producer.