Quintessential Jack

by Scott Edwards

  In the film’s climax, Jack passes from poignant to pissed off. He absorbs Meadows’ fate more than the kid himself. At their final “picnic,” Badass gets agitated, then upset, then teary and regretful. Gulping his Schlitz, Nicholson’s face becomes distorted in disgusted sadness at how Quaid’s character doesn’t stand a chance in the military prison, presenting a more painful bookend to the ennui he shows in the scene when they travel on the train to the kid’s mother’s home.

  Nicholson feels for Quaid’s character. His empathy becomes real, to the point that his uncontrolled rage at Meadows’ attempted escape in the snowy park is more about the personal affront and betrayal than the act itself. Parenthood severed is personal; a prisoner’s escape is not.

  That is why there is no goodbye at the prison and no last look. But it didn’t take long for the nonconformist among the most conformed of careers to rebel against authority (in the form of Michael Moriarty’s Marine OD). Afterwards, Nicholson harangues Young about it, combining hatred with pride, bombast with triumph. Badass has a problem with authority. He rails against the man in charge of a system that’s in charge of him and his destiny, represented by the long walk with Mule into the distance at the end of the film. Their last shot, grainy and lifelike, shows two men wracked with uncertainty about getting their orders or a more likely continuation of more “chickenshit” details.

  What happens when your last detail is a chickenshit one? Director Hal Ashby seeks the answer, a more complex and probing one than might be expected, in The Last Detail (1973). Badass Buddusky (Nicholson, center) subdues prisoner Meadows (Randy Quaid) after he is recaptured by Buddusky and partner Mulhall, played by Otis Young.

  Schiach categorized The Last Detail as “a discourse on class in American society,” with the Navy lifers representing the working man valued only for the menial tasks they perform, “in this case the escorting of one of their own to a punitive establishment where he will be treated with cruelty and contempt.” And they know it.24

  Nicholson should have gotten the Oscar. Reportedly, he felt so. Nancy Allen summarized his actor’s strength, explaining the “quintessential Jack” by saying that he is “specific about his choices. No safety. Goes all the way with his choices and is fearless. All great actors are.”

  That is the actor’s code. Duty to his character … to truth … and to the emotion of the moment. For a simple swabbie, Badass Buddusky is a pretty complex character. He does defend freedom, even while taking it from a kid named Meadows. He is not in the position to decide. He cannot judge. He can only follow the orders to support his union—like Colonel Jessep, like Jimmy Hoffa, like George Hanson. In the service of duty, honor and country, together they show us that liberty does not involve interpretation and that freedom does not invite individualism, let alone scrutiny.

  6

  * * *

  The School of Roger

  The Cry Baby Killer did not cry, nor was he a killer. In his haste to escape, Jimmy bumps into Wilbur, who not only doesn’t cry but laughs and delights at pain. The juvenile gunslinger could have hit the west, at first an innocent in a gang traveling under the name of Brocious or Wes and later hardened into a frontier hit man working for a vengeful and heartless woman, and finally as a big city mobster.

  All the while, a promising up-and-coming actor grasps for the opportunity to learn the movie business, whether as actor or writer or director.

  Paying dues never paid off so well. Whether Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Robert DeNiro, Ron Howard, Sylvester Stallone, Peter Bogdanovich, Talia Shire, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron, Sandra Bullock, John Sayles, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern or Jack Nicholson, much of the later 20th century’s filmmaking owe a huge debt to Roger Corman.

  Bruce Dern explained, “Different guys came from different routes, but in the early– to mid–60s, we got to go to ‘The University of Roger Corman,’ which I call it, which was the luckiest experience of our lives for us.”1

  * * *

  In Nicholson’s first film, he played the title role: The Cry Baby Killer. Corman executive produced it (and played a bit part). In the opening of the film, Nicholson’s Jimmy Wallace backs away in fear as four guys corner and beat him unconscious. Today, we would consider this bullying a prelude to the victim’s antisocial behavior. As expected with a newcomer, Nicholson has his good moments and his bad. In an argument with Fred, Jimmy’s all about fast eye-blinks with his head jabbed forward, too earnest to emote and project. After his character accidentally shoots his attacker and backs his way into a storage shed with a woman with her baby and an African-American cook, Nicholson becomes mercurial—distraught and explosive, playing his role big with wild hand gestures, carrying an ultra–Anthony Perkins aura.

  At times, Nicholson becomes overblown and over-the-top, but then shows promise when he gets very quiet and exhibits subtlety when talking about the baby being hungry. This wide balance can be seen as the premiere precursor of the classic Jack, bursting from Jacksplosion to soft-spoken and thoughtful.

  Mostly, however, Nicholson portrays Jimmy with jugular-popping yelling, as the highest of the high-strung. He holds his gun so tightly, you can see his forearm muscles straining. Many years later, the actor called it an insane film, but one that helped him learn, because “you get a chance to see what you’re doing that is horrible and then you eliminate it.”2

  At the end, though, when soda shop girl Carole talks to him, Jimmy softens, loses his way and comes out. He finally relaxes as he’s taken away, the first in a mini-trend of Nicholson being taken into custody to conclude a film, just as with the other J.D. in The Wild Ride.

  In a curious sidelight, the film foreshadows reality TV, when a news truck shows up to capture the real-life drama. Ed Nelson plays the frenzy-whipping reporter, cheerleading viewers to “witness as it happens,” while a crowd forms to watch the stand-off unfold. Called a “public service,” the live coverage was nothing more than an exploitive play-by-play spectacular.

  Nelson recounted, “Jack had never done any films at all. I saw this just last week…. I wanted to see what Jack did and remember it. He was hated, you know. A lot of the great stars when they started out were really hated. And he was really hated.”

  After Nelson did a nasally, indiscernible impression of Nicholson, he continued: “He talks like this … ‘Can you talk up a little bit, we can’t get that.’ [more mumbling] He became a great actor, but boy, when he started…”3 Cry Baby Killer co-star Brett Halsey agreed, describing Jack as just one of the young kids starting out with “nothing outstanding about him.”4

  The movie’s trailer was a lie, showing Nicholson violently breaking the storeroom window and shooting three times, hugely dramatic action that never happens in the movie. Perhaps this sequence was originally intended to be included, but deemed too intense for a general audience with a youthful bent.

  * * *

  Promotion played a large part in the Corman magic. Another part of that magic was giving young talent a chance to explore and get exposure in (low-budget) Hollywood films ones. Dern explained the draw best: “It was a chance for us, not knowing it, to be in a college of how to make a movie; how to get star billing in a movie; how to get big parts in a movie; and how to learn how to make a movie for $195,000. And that stood pretty well for us through the years.”5

  Nicholson: “I was originally drawn to films by a creative drive, so I really did almost any film.”6

  I asked Roger Corman if he ever tried asking Nicholson or the others to whom he gave their first break for “a favor” later and work in one of his films, but he said he never did and never would have considered it.7

  * * *

  Today, Nicholson’s most famous appearance in a Corman film is one of his briefest. He plays a true masochist—not so much because he loves pain as much as because he enjoys going to the dentist. Thirty-four minutes into The Little Shop of Horrors, a high-pitched and giggly Wilbur Force enters the dentist’s office and proceeds with
some good character business involving a magazine called Pain.

  When Nicholson enters the dentist’s office, he walks closed-in with a slight hunch and taking small steps as his knees and feet are narrowly held together. His vocal delivery sounds somewhat like a higher registered lampoon of Peter Lorre (a coincidence given that he later plays Lorre’s son in Corman’s The Raven). Expression comes from extra-active eyes and eyebrows. He shows a widened smile and emits a nervous, excited laugh combined with a needy air intake, as Nicholson pulls in air when he laughs.

  In a panel discussion at the Ohio convention Cinema Wasteland in 2007, Little Shop screenwriter Charles B. Griffith and stars Jonathan Haze and Jackie Joseph told me about Nicholson’s contribution and answered moderator and audience questions. Griffith described the dentist scene: “Jack was fantastic in that scene. He followed every word in the script, but he came up with all the business; pricking his finger and tasting the blood was all his. Jack dazzled everybody on that day.”8

  Haze added his own perspective on that same scene with a view inside the world of Corman as director and producer: “Roger borrowed the dentist chair from his dentist. He didn’t pay anything and he was concerned about not damaging it. Instead of saying, ‘Cut!’ he ran to get the dentist chair.”9

  Griffith’s insight into the low-budget, compressed schedule was that they “rehearsed the whole thing in one afternoon and started shooting the next day. A special leading lady [Joseph]; a special leading man [Haze]; and a helluva script [by Griffith himself].”10

  Haze had known Nicholson for years as a regular at Schwab’s Drug Store, but Little Shop “was the first time I worked with Jack. Jack was in the same acting class as Roger, who took it to direct actors. [Jack] was fantastic, so much fun.”11

  Much of the fun was in the goofily inventive character energy and the actor’s business such as putting on his own patients’ smock to get ready for the drilling in ecstatic anticipation. Part of it was the delicious lines, turning down Novocain because it “dulls the senses,” his “goody-goody” amusement park excitement, and the exhortation of innuendo: “Don’t stop now!”

  At the end of his first triumphant scene and first comedic breakthrough (brief as it was), Nicholson leaves the dentist office looking like Alfalfa, complete with a gap in his teeth and slicked-down hair. Haze, who played the iconic role of Seymour, stated that they hadn’t aimed to make a cult movie, except that it was “touched by magic. Because it was shot so fast, it had wonderful spontaneity and we weren’t playing it for laughs much, but straight.”12

  Nicholson remembered, “I went into the shoot knowing I had to be very quirky because Roger originally hadn’t wanted me…. I just did a lot of weird shit that I thought would make it funny.”13

  * * *

  A few years later, Nicholson played in back-to-back productions starring Boris Karloff for producer-director Corman. In The Raven, he plays Peter Lorre’s son and doesn’t show up until a half-hour into the show, which is also the first time on-screen that we really see the teeth that have become so famous. After his character’s fidgety introduction, Nicholson drives a coach as if completely possessed in a nice transformation for a young, inexperienced actor. Yelling and baring his teeth maniacally, Nicholson then comes out from under the spell and becomes more like Dennis Weaver as “the night man” in Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil. At this point, the youth injects the first sign of life in the movie. Hazel Court told me, “We shot the coach scene in the studio with back projection and it was quite a lot of fun as Jack Nicholson was driving the stagecoach going crazy.”14

  Mostly, Nicholson had lots of reaction shots and “Yes, father”’s, more physical than verbal and using quick eye-blinks. He’s not necessarily sweating, but shiny under the lights (perhaps a sign of youthful discomfort). There is a sign of the Jack we later came to know, attacking with “Scarabus, you maniac!” full-on with teeth and sneer working together. Otherwise, he most notably engages with some wonderfully playful action against the raven (meant to be his father, on his shoulder), with light, amusing interplay.

  There’s also an interesting and effective recurring comic physical bit with Lorre, featuring some business of fussing with his dad’s collar, coat, and more as a way to make contact—yet always rebuffed with disgust by Lorre.

  Corman described it as a Method-type subtext worked out on the set, with Nicholson wanting nothing more than his father’s love and approval while Peter wants nothing more than to be left alone by his son. “The business with Peter’s cloak was just actors’ devices,” Nicholson explained. “I grabbed his cloak—actually I grabbed a lot of other things that aren’t visible in the frame—just to keep him alive to the fact that I was trying to get him out of there. Of course, the good actor that he is, he just reacted to it spontaneously, slapped me and lashed out.”15

  When Jack played Peter Lorre’s son in Roger Corman’s The Raven (1963), unfounded charges of nepotism and unfounded rumors that producer James H. Nicholson was his father followed him around the shoot. From right: Olive Sturgess serves as a distraction from that problem for Vincent Price, Lorre, and Nicholson.

  Court reminisced, “It was my favorite film to work on because of all the great actors in it. A lot of it was improvisation. [Karloff, Price and Lorre] were such naughty boys. They laughed and giggled and we just had tremendous fun. It was a memorable film working with the three of them. They never gave up teasing me, all day long!”16

  One might guess that Nicholson, the aspiring actor, would go out of his way to learn from these accomplished men to the point of becoming a pest. Court described it more as an early indication of Nicholson’s ambitions beyond merely acting, and a sign to his period of work as screenwriter and sometime director. “Unbelievable. He would say every night he was going home to write, and I think he did, he wrote several pictures. He was working on the first big success he had. He would write when he was on the film. He kept saying, ‘I want to go to write.’ He wanted to do his thing.”17

  Perhaps some of his aversion to socializing could be attributed to the veteran actors’ misapprehension that Jack was the son of producer James H. Nicholson. Corman encouraged the young actor to learn from the professionals in order to complement his comedic improvisational strength. Vincent Price’s daughter Victoria (who coincidentally attended high school with Jack Nicholson’s daughter, Jennifer) told me that Price and Karloff were not too happy with this, particularly since they felt Nicholson was “kind of bad.”18 Producer Samuel Z. Arkoff remembered, “Vincent and Boris used to joke amongst themselves, ‘Nepotism! Nepotism!’ and roar with laughter.”19

  Less entertaining is the companion film The Terror, an odd combination of horror movie and period piece. Most curiously, Nicholson plays Lt. André Duvalier, seen for the first time in the film on a horse, familiar from his early westerns, yet in Napoleonic garb. He co-stars with then-wife Sandra Knight, then pregnant, with whom he has a powerful interplay upon their meeting.

  Another Corman alum, director Peter Bogdanovich, called the “very young and callow Jack Nicholson … a pretty unlikely Legionnaire.” Bogdanovich used footage from this “fairly lame Victorian-style horror film” in his Charles Whitman–inspired debut, Targets.20

  Nicholson is mostly stiff and smaller than the part would dictate, as co-screenwriter Jack Hill pointed out forcefully and more than once. Nicholson doesn’t sound particularly French (unless they spoke very differently back then). Hill, who later became a cult figure admired by Quentin Tarantino for directing Spider Baby and the Pam Grier Blaxploitation vehicles Foxy Brown and Coffy, wasn’t exactly a Nicholson acolyte—at least then: “He wasn’t really happy being in the movie and made jokes about everything. I thought he was totally miscast. I didn’t think he was a very good actor until I saw him in Little Shop of Horrors and then I realized what his quality was.” Hill co-wrote the Terror script and had a vision for the characters, and apparently Nicholson did not fit that vision as Hill re-emphasized, “He was kind of misc
ast.”21

  Miscast as he may have been, Nicholson comes off as very intent, with his brow suitably furrowed. In a confrontational scene with character actor extraordinaire Dick Miller (playing Boris Karloff’s manservant Stefan), Nicholson instills dominance and superiority vs. Miller’s anger and abruptness. Against Boris, Nicholson insinuates himself into the castle with an arrogance that’s indicated through his clipped, impatient manner of speech. Karloff is nuanced and poignant, emoting naturally, while Nicholson is stiff, one-note and flat throughout. It’s as if Nicholson decided to purposely underplay the role in order to reach the status of the person he is portraying. The thought may have been sensible, but the result lies there, dull and stiff.

  In his last scene with Miller, Duvalier takes a physically superior stance for the first time. After Stefan escorts the lieutenant from the castle at gunpoint, Duvalier punches Stefan and they fight with convincing rolling around and struggling before Duvalier knocks him out. This leads to the single “Jack” moment in the entire film, when he threatens an old woman to call off an attacking bird and threatens that she answer him “or I’ll break your neck!”

  In The Terror (1963), Nicholson is unlikely as a French military officer, shown here with then-wife and co-star Sandra Knight. She was pregnant with their daughter Jennifer Nicholson during filming.

  It’s action that brings him to life, throwing Dick Miller against the castle wall or attacking an old woman. Finally, though, his acting chops must be tested by a denouement reaction shot. Jack reassures his real-life wife and on-screen lover Sandra Knight that she is finally safe, just before he kisses her and lightning strikes, after which she becomes the decaying dead, degree by degree, causing him to look increasingly sickened and shocked until only a bloody skeleton remains.