So many faves have passed on since the beginning of 2011. Here are some thoughts about them:
Peter Falk: Sure he was the star of the best - and my favorite - detective series on American television: Columbo. But even though that was his signature role, Falk was so much more then a rumpled one-trick pony. For example, he was a wonderful comic actor. Just recall his sidesplitting supporting turns in Pocketful Of Miracles, The Great Race, It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Robin And The Seven Hoods.
In regards to the latter film, Falk adlibbed so much as the gangster Guy Gisborne, the director Gordon Douglas complained to producer/star Frank Sinatra that such impromptu antics had put the production ten pages behind schedule. Sinatra then asked for a copy of the script. Upon receiving it, Ol’ Blue Eyes ripped out the next ten pages they were going to shoot. (Which, by the way, included a Sinatra solo on the terrific Sammy Cahn/Jimmy Van Heusen song “I Like To Lead When I Dance.”) “Now, we’re on schedule,” proclaimed Sinatra who then handed the script back to a stunned Douglas.
Falk also unveiled a dazzling Humphrey Bogart parody in two Neil Simon comedies Murder By Death and The Cheap Detective as well as bringing a warmly humorous verve to films like The Princess Bride, Tune In Tomorrow, All The Marbles, Cookie, Roommates and The Brink’s Job. And he and Alan Arkin made a memorable comedy team in two Andrew Bergman-penned films: The In-Laws and Big Trouble.
But Falk was a sensational dramatic actor too. He was chilling as killer Abe Reles in Murder, Inc. and was no less lethal nearly four decades later as the imprisoned crime boss in Walter Hill’s underrated Undisputed. Falk was beatific as the angel in Wim Wenders’ Wings Of Desire and cynical as a war-weary soldier in Anzio. And his collaborations with John Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara and Gena Rowlands – a Method Rat Pack – on the searing dramas Husbands and A Woman Under The Influence revolutionized cinema with their hyperrealistic style. (They’re the sort of films that make viewers feel as though they’re watching the action unfold not from a screen but from an open window across the street.) And the acting between them was the stuff of legend. Just check out the interplay between Falk and Cassavetes as two low-level hoods in Elaine May’s Mikey And Nicky. Like much of Falk’s career, not a false note is struck. Not a one. He will be missed.
Gene Colan: As a kid, my favorite comic-book character was Marvel Comics’ Daredevil. (And damn you, Ben Affleck for ruining him in that lousy movie adaptation.) Much of my monthly enjoyment of Daredevil was due to the sweeping style of illustrator Gene Colan. Even today, when I close my eyes and picture the character, it is Colan’s rendering - not the much-acclaimed Frank Miller reboot - that comes to mind. And Colan’s stylish, brooding work on Tomb Of Dracula was absolutely brilliant. He made the horrific beautiful and the mundane ominous. Colan was, in the best sense of the term, a true artist.
Clarence Clemons: The Big Man with the big sound. His impassioned sax solos with the Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band often evoked the most primal emotions in their listeners. He was the sound of escape in “Born To Run” and of the city life on “Jungleland.”. Perhaps most importantly to those who came of age in the AOR – Apartheid Oriented Radio – ‘70s when stations across the dial appeared to be segregated by callous racial divides, the images of Clemons and Springsteen cavorting side-by-side onstage on anthems like “Rosalita” spoke volumes to we listeners who unashamedly loved all kinds of music. It reminded us that soul – true soul – comes in all shades and colors. For that alone, Clemons should be lionized.
Jimmy Roselli: Unfairly branded as the ‘other’ singer from Hoboken, Roselli sang, for over a half-century, traditional pop fare like “When Your Old Wedding Ring Was New” with a full-throttle, full-throated approach. What Roselli lacked in subtlety, he definitely made up for in heart. (In his excellent autobiography Making The Wiseguys Weep, the ever-understated Roselli called it ‘singing with balls.’) His showstopping approach worked best when he was reenergizing old-timey standards like Al Jolson’s “Toot Toot Tootsie” and “Little Pal” with palpable verve and feeling.
Gil Scott-Heron: So much has been written and said about this terrific performer that I’d simply like to add this. On December 13th, 1975, when Richard Pryor hosted Saturday Night Live for his one and only time, he demanded that Paul Mooney write the skits, that Thalmus Rasulala and the beautiful Annazette Chase appear with him in them and that the musical guest be… Gil Scott-Heron. Over thirty-five years later, that episode – the show’s seventh - remains the Blackest 90 minutes that comedy institution has ever produced.
Sidney Lumet: Considered by many to be the quintessential New York filmmaker, Lumet’s movies had much in common the glorious city he featured in so many films. Like life in the Big Apple, his work careened from great – Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, and Prince Of The City – to the thoughtful – Fail Safe, The Hill and The Fugitive Kind - to entertaining - Just Tell Me What You Want, The Anderson Tapes and Murder On The Orient Express to the disappointing like Gloria, Family Business and The Wiz. But they all contained a directorial dynamism fortified by committed characterizations. Even his uneven efforts contained great performances: Nick Nolte and Armand Assante in Q & A, Don Johnson and Rebecca DeMornay in Guilty As Sin, Vin Diesel in Find Me Guilty, George Segal in Bye Bye Braverman, Ron Leibman in Night Falls On Manhattan, Jane Fonda and Jeff Bridges in The Morning After and Steven Hill, River Phoenix and Christine Lahti in Running On Empty to just name a few. And, occasionally, he helmed irrefutably incandescent work like Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Twelve Angry Men and “The Verdict. Was he a visual stylist? No. But he was something equally important: a filmmaker genuinely interested in human emotions. That’s why Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Anna Magnani, Katherine Hepburn and Henry Fonda were so great in Lumet films. He had the gift of turning stars into regular people and regular people into stars.
