The Star Machine

by Jeanine Basinger

  When a character actor became so popular that the public formed fan clubs, the business would sometimes let him or her step up to carry a movie. It was bonus time. Obviously, since they were “types,” the business could feature them if the public so desired. Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, forever linked in audience’s minds by their roles in The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, were asked to co-headline two 1946 films, The Verdict and Three Strangers (Geraldine Fitzgerald was the third). Thelma Ritter, the wisest of the female wiseacres, headlined The Model and the Marriage Broker (1951). Charles Coburn, who was more lovable than you needed him to be, was paired with the lovely Spring Byington in a romantic comedy for the geriatric set, Louisa (1951). Most character actors never experienced this phenomenon, nor would it have been their goal. It was also not the goal of the studios, who had signed their characters to be their characters.

  There was, for the character actor, an additional casting brass ring—a bonus bonus. A truly popular character might be asked to headline a B-level series in which the leading role was actually just their own type elevated. Being given such a series didn’t reduce an actor’s workload—it increased it—and it didn’t stop the studio from continuing to cast them in A films as their established “self.” It simply meant they’d make more money for their studio. It was a business ploy. Studios coldly calculated the risks involved, weighed the character’s popularity, and decided that since they had the actor under contract, and since the public loved his or her character so much, it was worthwhile to set up a cheap B-film series, or perhaps a run of unrelated movies, to use any downtime.*

  Few character actors were lifted up to star in series movies. Examples include Guy Kibbee, famous for his lecherous old men, who played Scattergood Bains; Harold Peary, who was the Great Gildersleeve; and Jean Hersholt, who played the beloved Minnesota physician Dr. Christian in six independent movies.† The intrepid Edna May Oliver played the amateur detective Hildegarde Withers in three successful films: The Penguin Pool Murder, Murder on the Blackboard (both in 1934), and Murder on a Honeymoon (1935). Oliver was one of the best female character actors of the studio system. She represented the prototypical spinster, a sharp-tongued, sharp-witted, and sharp-elbowed living terror. For American audiences, that made her lovable. She sassed and complained and pricked and bullied. She was the spinster who sees the truth and pronounces it loudly. Oliver, born in 1883, had a long and successful stage career as well as a top-ranked movie life.* She was a strong and consistent presence, easily adapting her type to any genre, any mood, any period. No matter what the movie was about, Oliver’s character did the same thing: She gave a hearty and disdainful sniff, arched an eyebrow meaningfully, and shrugged a shoulder dismissively, all with an undercurrent of sympathetic intelligence. This never seemed to make her performing clichéd. She successfully used her type to play Aunt March in Katharine Hepburn’s Little Women (1933), the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland (1933), Aunt Betsey in David Copperfield (1935), the nurse in Romeo and Juliet (1936), and anything else that was thrown at her.†

  Rarely could an effective character actor become the sort of bonus the studios dreamed of: a player who wasn’t making a star salary but who could actually work at all three acting levels—star, character type, and support. Two men who managed it, Frank Morgan and Edward Arnold, were exceptionally talented and versatile.

  FRANK MORGAN

  Frank Morgan

  Morgan, who was born in 1890, began his career in movies in the silent era (around 1916), and he was also successful on the Broadway stage. (Today he is best remembered as the bumbling Wizard of Oz, a sort of male Billie Burke who’s running a show he doesn’t even understand.) Morgan was a freelance player for a time, and he earned an Oscar nomination for his role in The Affairs of Cellini in 1934.* But the height of his career was his years as a contract player at MGM from the mid-1930s until his death in 1949. It was at Metro that his type was polished and perfected. He was so good at playing wishy-washy that the majority of his Metro roles cast him that way. He bumbled and stumbled. He stammered and looked confused. He huffed and he puffed. He was brilliant at being a dithering idiot, a skirt chaser, maybe a boozer, but always a very confused and unreliable man. He could be had and then some. Audiences loved it. However, MGM realized that in Morgan they had an experienced professional who could, in fact, really act. He could do comedy, and could look white-haired, distinguished, and elegant, even fatherly if he had to. He was a “bonus” player in spades. They developed a shrewd plan for casting him for the maximum return on the money. In the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Frank Morgan releases for the calendar year 1940 can be seen the studio’s strategy.

  Frank Morgan, typical Hollywood character actor, in two of his most famous roles: (above) as the dithering husband who learns his wife is unfaithful, with Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart in The Shop Around the Corner

  Morgan appeared in seven movies during 1940 and rolled over immediately into 1941 with another five—twelve movies in release in under two years, or a movie about every six to eight weeks. His seven 1940 movies reflect his usefulness: one supporting tragic role, three ditherers, and three leads in vehicles designed specifically for him. His serious film is The Mortal Storm, in which he sympathetically and touchingly plays an aging Jewish professor who is persecuted by the Nazis. For an actor associated with silly comedy to take on such a role is not only daring but dangerous, yet MGM knew he could do it. (He’s excellent in the movie.) His three typical Morgan “character” roles present him in the way most people think of him—as a blustering fool. He dithers effectively at three levels: high dither for Broadway Melody of 1940, in which he’s a Broadway producer who always “loans” an ermine coat to his date but who retrieves it at her door if she doesn’t invite him in; mid-dither as a befuddled oil wildcatter, rival to Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy and the constant butt of their tricks (Boom Town); and low dither as a tenderly hurt shop owner who fears his wife is unfaithful in Lubitsch’s superb Shop Around the Corner.

  and answering the knock at his door by the Tin Man (Jack Haley), the Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr), Dorothy (Judy Garland), and the Scarecrow (Ray Bolger) in the legendary Wizard of Oz. Toto has apparently bunked off somewhere.

  In his remaining three films of 1940, Morgan is the star. Each role cleverly unites his familiar bumbler to his dramatic ability to become the hero. In The Ghost Comes Home, as Variety’s review says, “Morgan dominates.” It’s a light comedy about a Milquetoast husband (Morgan, of course) who is thought to have drowned accidentally. He hides out and observes his family, ultimately getting tough with them while also becoming a town hero. In Hullabaloo, he carries an entire company of newcomers on his back in a weak film that’s a comedy with music. The youngsters are all being “showcased” or “tried out” while he ensures their box office. Playing an experienced actor who’s trying to revive his career through radio, he has to imitate Al Jolson, Ted Lewis, Wallace Beery, Robert Taylor, Mickey Rooney, and Hedy Lamarr. As if that weren’t enough, he also has to reenact a scene from his own Boom Town, playing Gable, Tracy, and Colbert. (This type of self-reference is one of the absolute proofs of stardom.) In Henry Goes to Arizona, Morgan again steps up to the lead, working out of his familiar character. He’s a vaudevillian afraid of guns who inherits a ranch out west when his brother is murdered. He has to overcome his fear—cut the dithering—and become a hero.

  This year of Morgan releases shows him working the street, breaking with type, playing type, and using type to become the lead. In 1941, he started out with a movie called Keeping Company, the first of a planned series that was going to feature the homey adventures of a small-town family. (Andy Hardy, anyone?) Morgan would be a real estate broker with three daughters—Ann Rutherford, Gloria DeHaven, and Virginia Weidler. It was expected that Morgan would carry the series, provide romantic interest for the older women in the audience, and supply wisdom, charm, and his own adventures with suspected infidelity. The film did not take hold, but it illustrates how
MGM viewed Morgan: as a “bonus” character who could play at all three acting levels. The 1941 film that best illustrates what Metro could get out of Frank Morgan is Washington Melodrama. He steps out on-screen impeccably tailored and suave-looking as a millionaire philanthropist who’s pushing a Senate bill to help Europe’s destitute children. While his wife (Fay Holden) and daughter (Ann Rutherford) are in Europe, he forms a platonic friendship with a nightclub girl who’s murdered, setting him up for blackmail. Morgan plays rich. He plays well-dressed. He plays faithful and altruistic. He looks good, but not too good. And he dithers.

  Perhaps the ultimate in how MGM could put its character actors to work for a maximum bonus is illustrated by The Great Morgan: Frank Morgan plays Frank Morgan playing Frank Morgan. An equivalent to the “clip show” format that TV sitcoms use today, in which old shows are recycled while characters “remember,” The Great Morgan similarly uses the MGM lot (to play the role of the MGM lot), studio personnel to play themselves as studio personnel (Cedric Gibbons, Douglas Shearer, and Irene), and clips from films that had been cut before release (Eleanor Powell tapping out a nightclub routine). Making use of old Pete Smith specialty shorts, Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, the four King Sisters, Virginia O’Brien, and whatever else is lying around, the movie tells a “story” to hang it all on: Frank Morgan, that is, “Frank Morgan” has been at MGM for sixteen years and now wants to be a producer. He keeps looking over the current roster of MGM films in the works (Weekend at the Waldorf, The Harvey Girls, Easy to Wed, They Were Expendable, Her Highness and the Bellboy), which acts as a conveniently planted “prevues of coming attractions.” Morgan was a recognizable character actor associated with messy situations. He worked perfectly in this movie, which ends with his head replacing that of Leo the Lion in the MGM logo. (Leo is shown watching, and he says, “Brother, if I could only talk!”) As I’ve said, it was a ruthless business that would do anything to make a buck.

  Over the years, Morgan was moved up and down the star ladder without fans either realizing or complaining. After making more than one hundred movies, Morgan died in 1949. As has often been pointed out because it’s too perfect not to mention, he died with his boots on. Literally. He was playing Buffalo Bill—a dithering musical Buffalo Bill—in MGM’s version of Annie Get Your Gun, and he had to be replaced by Louis Calhern. The finished movie was released in 1950, as was Morgan’s final film, Key to the City, in which he played his familiar role of bumbling sidekick, this time to Clark Gable. Few actors (or actresses) could do what Morgan did.

  EDWARD ARNOLD

  Edward Arnold

  Although both Frank Morgan and Edward Arnold were character actors by Hollywood definition, there was a difference between them in that Morgan maintained, even in his Oscar-nominated performances, a fundamental base that was recognizably “Frank Morgan.” Edward Arnold, on the other hand, was an actor with even more depth and versatility. He had played Shakespeare, worked with Ethel Barrymore onstage (in 1907’s Dream of a Summer Night)—and entered movies and Essanay in 1915 as a cowboy star. He returned to the stage in 1919, but by 1932 he moved to Hollywood to become one of the most convincing of all the popular character actors of the medium. Like Morgan, Arnold had a long career that also found him playing successfully at all three levels: star, character, and support. A powerful screen presence, he played the lead in Diamond Jim (1935) and Sutter’s Gold (1936) as well as in The Toast of New York (1937) and Come and Get It (1936). His leads wooed the female romantic interest but usually didn’t capture them. (Hollywood knew the audience wasn’t crazy.) He also played detective Nero Wolfe in Meet Nero Wolfe (1936) and created his own “blind man” detective in Eyes in the Night (1942) and The Hidden Eye (1945). When he played “character,” he was the corrupt politician or the domineering tycoon. His large, not quite corpulent body seemed to represent power in a negative way, and his gravitas was considerable, making him a force to reckon with in the frame. There was a comedy version of this “character”—a roisterer with a twinkle in the eye. His corrupt pol roles included Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Meet John Doe (1941), and Weekend at the Waldorf (1945). His comedy variations were seen in Easy Living (1937) and Design for Scandal (1941). When he played “in support,” he was a sadly tragic, overweight, and alcoholic but somehow sympathetic husband to Joan Crawford in Sadie McKee (1934), a disapproving father who has to learn to be human in You Can’t Take It with You (1938), and the head of a talent agency in The Hucksters (1947). Arnold’s is a true show business life: Born in 1890, he appeared in more than one hundred movies; used his rich, deep voice with its little lilt to play comedy or tragedy equally well (even appearing in the musical Annie Get Your Gun); enriched assignments that were nothing on paper with his ability to add dimension or create sympathy where none should have occurred; showed no fear regarding the most outrageous kind of mugging, eyeball rolling, and double-taking anyone ever put on the screen; and died in 1956. Arnold did it all. He was a bonus on the hoof.

  Edward Arnold, a fine actor, was often cast as larger-than-life real people. He’s seen here in Diamond Jim.

  The studio system loved any character actor who could be a bonus moneymaker. These men and women were right on the roster, on the lot, and ready to go. They gave the star machine a day of rest.

  * An interesting question might be: Is Porky Pig, a cartoon, a movie “persona”? Of course he is. If Cary Grant is a “person” in the movies, then so is Porky. Grant is an entity who appears only in the movies and doesn’t exist in real life. He was drawn up and created by a system that used Archibald Leach as its material. Porky Pig is similarly drawn up—it’s just that the raw material was pen and ink, not a guy from Bristol, England.

  * Webb was in show business his entire life, first appearing onstage at the age of seven and later teaming up with dancer Bonnie Glass to form a highly successful duo that emulated Vernon and Irene Castle. During the 1920s and 1930s, Webb was a dapper, tuxedoed star of musical comedies in both London and New York, among them Sunny, Treasure Girl, and As Thousands Cheer.

  * The immediate postwar period in American movies found studios rushing to make lots of little movies like Sitting Pretty. They are shot in black and white, have very low budgets, use standing small-town sets and houses, and tell stories about “average” young American couples with small children, mortgages, and job woes. The glamorous worlds of Paris, Ruritania, and nightclubs and yachts were replaced by average homes with chintz curtains, kitchens, stay-at-home moms, and dogs.

  † Fox kept him working throughout the decade of the 1950s. After appearing in a Belvedere sequel in 1949 (Mr. Belvedere Goes to College, which paired him with former Fox star Shirley Temple, now grown up), he starred in thirteen successful movies between 1950 and 1960. In 1950, Clifton Webb, against all odds, was listed in the annual Motion Picture list of top box office stars. He was number seven on the list behind (in order) John Wayne, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Betty Grable, James Stewart, and Abbott and Costello. Following him were Esther Williams, Spencer Tracy, and Randolph Scott. His final film, Satan Never Sleeps, in 1962, cast him as an acerbic priest—Waldo Lydecker takes the veil. Webb died in 1966.

  * Beery’s nominations were for The Big House (1930) and The Champ in 1931. He won the latter award, sharing it with Fredric March in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

  * Beery’s older half-brother, Noah Beery, was a well-known actor in both stage and film, and Noah’s son, Noah Beery Jr., became equally successful as a top-ranked character actor of the 1930s and 1940s.

  † He married silent superstar Gloria Swanson in 1916, before either was famous. The marriage lasted only a month, although they didn’t officially divorce until three years later.

  * The only other time a tie has taken place was in 1968, when Barbra Streisand and Katharine Hepburn shared the Oscar for Funny Girl and The Lion in Winter, respectively.

  * Most people agreed, although Mickey Rooney loved him. Beery was famous for stealing props and costumes, taking them home to s
ell. When anyone complained, Louis B. Mayer said, “Yes, Beery’s a son of a bitch. But he’s our son of a bitch.”

  * Setting aside all discussions of his politics, Ronald Reagan is generally underrated as a movie actor. He was really handsome as a young man. He had a marvelous voice, a natural style of delivery, and an ease with the camera—all things that helped him, of course, become president of the United States. It is now fashionable to dismiss his film career, but he was far more successful and popular than is generally understood.

  † And just in case even this wasn’t enough, Metro added the plus of shooting the movie in a lovely sepia tone, a relative novelty at that time for a feature.

  * Because of Dressler’s death in 1934, she and Beery were co-starred in only two films, Min and Bill and Tugboat Annie. (Although they both appeared in Dinner at Eight, their story lines were entirely separate.) When Tugboat Annie Sails Again was made in 1940, Beery did not participate. Marjorie Rambeau played Annie, and her male foil was Alan Hale.

  * We don’t produce troupers like her anymore. There’s no outlet for them. College theatre, yes, or regionals, or perhaps a television series that can lead to stardom, but it’s not the same as facing up to new audiences night after night in hamlets and outlets and big-city killer venues.