Siegel S., Siegel B. The Encyclopedia Of Hollywood

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in fact, she was the fourth! Those who were offered the role

before her (and who turned it down) included Mary Pickford,

MAE WEST

, and

NORMA SHEARER

. Despite winning an Oscar

nomination, the role didn’t bring Swanson a new career. A few

ﬁlms followed over the next several decades, the last of them

being a not insigniﬁcant role in Airport 1975 (1974).

The ever-energetic Miss Swanson then embarked on a

new career as a sculptress; her works were exhibited in a Lon-

don gallery in 1979. When she died four years later, one of

her famous lines in Sunset Boulevard seemed to jog the mem-

ory: “I’m still big; it’s the pictures that got small.”

swashbucklers Adventure ﬁlms that are usually set in

exotic locales and that feature ﬂamboyant swordplay, acro-

batic feats, and heroic derring-do. The genre has had limited

success because there are relatively few actors who can carry

such a ﬁlm. It requires genuine panache, sex appeal, and

enormous athletic ability, not to mention a good script and a

lavish budget.

The ﬁrst and foremost swashbuckling star was Douglas

Fairbanks, who created the genre in 1920 with his exuberant

version of The Mark of Zorro. His name became synonymous

with swashbucklers during the rest of the 1920s when he

starred in such hugely popular ﬁlms as The Three Musketeers

(1921), Robin Hood (1922), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), The Black

Pirate (1926), and The Iron Mask (1928). Fairbanks set the stan-

dard that very few would meet in the decades to follow.

The coming of sound put a damper on the swashbuckler.

The requirements of the new sound equipment kept the

actors and the action static for several years, and by then more

contemporary ﬁlms had come into vogue. Besides, who was

willing to try to ﬁll the shoes of Fairbanks? Warner Bros.

gambled on British actor Robert Donat as the next great

swashbuckler and signed him up to star in the big-budget buc-

caneer movie Captain Blood (1935), but the actor backed out at

the last moment. In desperation, the studio rushed one of

their new, lowly contract players into the role—Errol Flynn.

Flynn took on the mantle of Fairbanks and became the

next great swashbuckling hero, having the distinction of star-

ring in the only two swashbucklers to be nominated for Best

Picture Oscars, Captain Blood (1935) and The Adventures of

Robin Hood (1938). He went on to star in such other swash-

bucklers as The Sea Hawk (1940), and during his years of

decline, Adventures of Don Juan (1949), Adventures of Captain

Fabian (1951), and The Master of Ballantrae (1953). Flynn’s

success in the 1930s opened the door to other swashbuckling

heroes, including Ronald Colman, Louis Hayward, Tyrone

Power, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

Colman didn’t leap around the set like a Fairbanks or a

Flynn, but he held his own in the swordplay department and

he certainly had plenty of sex appeal, which was much in evi-

dence in such ﬁlms as Under Two Flags (1936) and The Prisoner

of Zenda (1937). Hayward had the dash of Flynn but not the

charm; yet he was quite successful in The Man in the Iron Mask

(1939), The Son of Monte Cristo (1940), and The Return of

Monte Cristo (1946). Tyrone Power, possessed of a somewhat

shy temperament, seemed an unlikely brash hero, but he gave

strong performances in the remakes of The Mark of Zorro

(1940) and Blood and Sand (1941). It was Douglas Fairbanks

Jr., however, who brought a sense of déjà vu to the movies,

showing himself to be the spitting image of his swashbuckling

father with splendid performances in The Corsican Brothers

(1941), Sinbad the Sailor (1947), which was easily the best

swashbuckling ﬁlm of the 1940s, and The Exile (1947).

The rise of television in the late 1940s and early 1950s

made swashbucklers more important to the studios. Exotic,

big-budget ﬁlms with sweep and style could not be duplicated

by the small-screen competition. But just when grand heroes

were needed, the actors who might have ﬁlled the bill were lit-

tle in evidence. At ﬁrst, the best the movies could come up

with were pallid imitations of Fairbanks and Flynn in the form

of Cornel Wilde, who made such ﬁlms as At Sword’s Point

(1952), and Tony Curtis, who began his career as a swash-

buckler in such mediocrities as The Prince Who Was a Thief

(1951), Son of Ali Baba (1952), and The Purple Mask (1955).

There was only one great swashbuckler during the 1950s,

Burt Lancaster, and he made far too few ﬁlms in the genre to

satisfy those who appreciated such movies. He was the closest

of all the swashbuckling stars to Douglas Fairbanks. His mag-

niﬁcently lithe body, acrobatic skills, charm, sex appeal, and

enormous energy made The Flame and the Arrow (1950) and

The Crimson Pirate (1952) the best swashbucklers of the 1950s.

Unfortunately, the swashbuckler went into decline in the

later 1950s and has rarely resurfaced. There was a disap-

pointing attempt to resurrect the genre with the poorly writ-

ten and far too obviously titled Swashbuckler (1976); it was a

ﬂop with both the critics and with audiences.

The stars of today seem generally ill suited to the swash-

buckler. For instance, one can hardly imagine

TOM CRUISE

a swordﬁght with, let us say, Charlie Sheen. Among current

actors, only Kevin Kline has shown promise as a swashbuck-

ler in his limited ﬁlm career, most notably in The Pirates of

Penzance (1983). Kline is a dashing, charming, physical actor,

and he even looks something like Errol Flynn.

See also

COLMAN

RONALD

;

CURTIS

TONY

;

FAIRBANKS

DOUGLAS

;

FLYNN

ERROL

;

LANCASTER

BURT

;

POWER

TYRONE

SWASHBUCKLERS

418

take A single uninterrupted scene, or part of a scene, that

is recorded on ﬁlm. A take may be as short as a fraction of a

second or as long as the camera rolls before running out of

ﬁlm (the latter type of take being used by

ALFRED HITCH

COCK

in Rope, 1948). Takes are often repeated, and for sev-

eral reasons, the most common being that the director

desires a choice among the best performances given by the

actor(s). It is not uncommon for there to be anywhere from

two or three to 20 takes of a single shot. Each take is num-

bered, the number appearing on the slate held in front of the

camera when the ﬁlm begins to roll.

Tarantino, Quentin (1963– ) One of the most

inventive and controversial young directors of the 1990s,

whose reputation rests mainly on two groundbreaking fea-

tures, Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994), Tarantino

helped to deﬁne the movement toward independent features

during that decade. He seemed to come from nowhere

(Knoxville, Tennessee, actually), an autodidact who claimed

to have learned his craft by watching movies, especially while

working at Video Archives, a rental operation in Los Ange-

les, rather than following the conventional route of attending

ﬁlm school and then serving as apprentice in the industry.

ORSON WELLES

, another wunderkind, he has demon-

strated a certain ﬂair for self-promotion, which has endeared

him to his fans and alienated some in the ﬁlm business who

are skeptical about his staying power.

Although born in Tennessee, he moved to Los Angeles

with his mother when he was two. Bright but not suited to

formal schooling, he was a rebel with a contempt for author-

ity (he once spent nine days in jail because of unpaid parking

tickets). His mother was partly responsible for his addiction

to ﬁlm, which was further developed by his stint working ﬁrst

as an usher at the Pussycat Theater in Los Angeles and then

at Video Archives. “My Best Friend’s Birthday,” an unrealized

project, was his ﬁrst attempt at ﬁlmmaking (writing and

directing). While working at Video Archives, he wrote True

Romance, a ﬁlm eventually made and directed by Tony Scott

in 1993, remarkable for its crazily inventive and energetic

script. Another screenplay, this one for

OLIVER STONE

, was

Natural Born Killers (1994). Clearly Tarantino had gotten the

attention of established Hollywood directors at this point.

All the while, he continued working on his own projects,

writing Reservoir Dogs, which he ﬁnanced independently with

the aid of actor

HARVEY KEITEL

, who was also in the cast with

Tarantino and the unique Steve Buscemi. Released in 1992 at

the Sundance Film Festival, Reservoir Dogs caused an immedi-

ate response because of its extreme violence and hip dialogue.

Although it earned less than $2 million at the box ofﬁce, it

brought international attention to Tarantino and was the basis

for the fan base that began to form around him. Miramax dis-

tributed Reservoir Dogs and agreed to ﬁnance his next project.

Tarantino knew that he would have to come up with an even

more startling ﬁlm, and he was up to the challenge with Pulp

Fiction, released the same year as Natural Born Killers and cre-

ating a powerful industry buzz. The ﬁlm had a powerhouse

cast led by

JOHN TRAVOLTA

(reenergizing his career with a

Best Actor Oscar nomination) and

SAMUEL L

JACKSON

(Best

Supporting Actor), supported by Ving Rhames,

BRUCE

WILLIS

HARVEY KEITEL

, Uma Thurman, Amanda Plummer,

Tim Roth, and Tarantino, but its major innovation was in its

idiosyncratic narrative design, with plots and counterplots

interweaving and intersecting. With reason, the picture

earned Academy Award attention for Best Editing. Tarantino

won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Clearly, then, Tarantino had arrived, but could he con-

tinue to amaze and dazzle audiences? He has appeared in

ﬁlms directed by others as himself, as in Intimate Portrait:

Pam Grier (1999). Like any successful screenwriter, he has

419

done uncredited work on scripts directed by others, such as

Past Midnight (1992), Crimson Tide (1995), and The Rock

(1996). His next two efforts, Four Rooms and From Dusk to

Dawn (both 1995) were disappointing. He next directed

Jackie Brown, adapted from the Elmore Leonard novel Rum

Punch in 1997, and it was more on target. It starred

BLAX

PLOITATION

superstar

PAM GRIER

in the title role, as an air-

line stewardess and courier for arms dealer

SAMUEL L

JACKSON

. The cast included Bridget Fonda,

ROBERT DE

NIRO

and Michael Keaton in secondary roles, but it was the

charisma of costar Robert Forster that gave the picture a dis-

tinctively cynical edge. Tarantino hedged this bet by using

the Leonard novel as his source to guarantee a strong story.

Tarantino is indisputably clever and innovative, but his work

can also be too cute and is always in danger of sliding into

sleaze. Even so, he was the stand-up young writer-director of

the 1990s. He returned to the screen with Kill Bill: Volume I

(2003) and Kill Bill: Volume II (2004).

Tashlin, Frank (1913–1972) A former cartoonist who

established a reputation in the 1950s and early 1960s as an

inventive writer-director of comedies, he is most closely asso-

ciated with the ﬁlms of Jerry Lewis, whom he directed in a

great many hits. Tashlin had a gift for ﬁnding humor in the

vulgar and had a special ability for turning human characters

into caricatures. A specialist in comedy, Tashlin directed

almost all of the major comedians of his era, including

BOB

HOPE

, Red Skelton,

DEAN MARTIN

JERRY LEWIS

DANNY

KAYE

, and even

DORIS DAY

Tashlin, like so many visual artists, was not a success in

school, which he quit at the age of 13. He had no special

career until he stumbled into the ﬁlm business as a cartoon-

ist in 1930, working on Paul Terry’s Aesop’s Film Fables

series. He knocked about for another 15 years, working at

jobs ranging from gag man for

HAL ROACH

to story editor for

WALT DISNEY

. He even left the ﬁlm business for four years to

write his own comic strip. In the mid-1940s, he began to

write comedy screenplays with a strong dash of whimsy, such

as One Touch of Venus (1948), The Paleface (1948), The Fuller

Brush Man (1948), and Love Happy (1949).

After having written scripts for comedians such as Bob

Hope and Red Skelton, he was given the opportunity of

directing them in his own scripts. His ﬁlms were successful,

his career reaching its peak during the latter half of the 1950s

and early 1960s when he wrote, directed, and produced the

classic Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) as well as wrote

and directed a string of highly successful Jerry Lewis solo

ﬁlms, among them The Geisha Boy (1958), Cinderfella (1960),

and The Disorderly Orderly (1964).

Either comedy changed or Tashlin lost his touch, but in

the mid-1960s, his ﬁlms seemed exceedingly tired and lack-

ing in his usual verve. He directed a couple of late Doris Day

vehicles, The Glass Bottom Boat (1966) and Caprice (1967),

without much ﬂair, and his last ﬁlm was the disastrous Bob

Hope comedy The Private Navy of Sgt. O’Farrell (1968).

Tashlin died four years later, largely forgotten in the

United States, but hailed as an important comic director by

French critics who appreciated his work with their idol,

Jerry Lewis.

Taylor, Elizabeth (1932– ) A former child actress

who became an adult superstar. Said for a time to be the most

beautiful woman in the world, she has remained the last of the

great stars to conduct her life in the glamorous style of old

Hollywood. The voluptuous, violet-eyed Taylor has appeared

in more than 50 ﬁlms and has won two Best Actress Oscars in

a career that has been limited mostly to serious dramatic roles.

Born in England to American parents, she didn’t return to

the United States until just before the outbreak of World War

II in Europe, whereupon her family settled in Los Angeles.

Her father opened an art gallery in the ritzy Chateau Elysee

Hotel, and several inﬂuential people in the movie business who

visited the gallery took notice of the young Taylor. Universal

and MGM vied for her when she was 10 years old, and Uni-

versal signed her and put her in one movie, There’s One Born

Every Minute (1942). She was dropped after the ﬁlm, and the

casting director at Universal was quoted as saying, “The kid

has nothing,” earning himself a dubious place in ﬁlm history.

Taylor was always beautiful, even as a child, and she man-

aged to get a second chance at MGM, which put her in a cou-

ple of Lassie movies and loaned her to other studios for a few

featured roles in such major productions as Jane Eyre (1944)

and Life with Father (1947). But her most important child-

hood role was as the star of MGM’s National Velvet (1944).

Taylor continued acting in adolescent roles throughout

the 1940s, but she never went through that difﬁcult young

ingenue period that destroyed so many child actresses’

careers. Taylor exhibited a very rapid physical growth,

becoming a stunning young woman while still in her teens. In

fact, she was courted by none other than billionaire Howard

Hughes when she was just 17.

Taylor was still 17 when she married her ﬁrst husband,

Nicky Hilton, heir to the Hilton Hotel chain. But even

before the marriage, she was playing older, more-sophisti-

cated parts, such as Robert Taylor’s wife in Conspirator (1950),

Van Johnson’s love interest in The Big Hangover (1950), and

the future wife in her biggest hit of the new decade, Father of

the Bride (1950). She was no doubt happier with her ﬁctional

husband in the latter movie than she was with Nicky Hilton;

the couple divorced mere months after marrying.

The 1950s was certainly Taylor’s best decade in terms of

quality ﬁlms. The combinations of good scripts, increasingly

ﬁne acting on her part, and her startling beauty made for a

long list of memorable movies. Among Taylor’s many tri-

umphs during the decade were A Place in the Sun (1951), in

which she began her long and passionate platonic relationship

with actor Montgomery Clift, The Last Time I Saw Paris

(1954), Giant (1956), Raintree County (1957), Cat on a Hot Tin

Roof (1958), and Suddenly Last Summer (1959). She received

Best Actress Academy Award nominations for the latter three.

During the 1950s, Taylor became the focus of consider-

able publicity. After her marriage to Michael Wilding

(1952–57), she became Mrs. Mike Todd until Todd’s tragic

death in a plane crash one year later, bringing her the sym-

TASHLIN, FRANK

420

pathy of millions of movie fans. That sympathy turned to

sneers when she suddenly married Eddie Fisher in 1959, tak-

ing him away from the wholesome

DEBBIE REYNOLDS

. Iron-

ically, Eddie Fisher had been the best man at her wedding to

Todd, just as Debbie Reynolds had been her matron of

honor. The affair made for great copy, but Taylor was saddled

with the image of homewrecker.

In the meantime, she starred in the mediocre Butterﬁeld 8

(1960) and won an Oscar for her performance, though many

suggest that she was really given the award in recognition for

her past performances. In any event, her personal popularity

was still exceedingly low until she came down with a rare

form of pneumonia, requiring a tracheotomy to save her life.

Finally, public opinion softened.

Taylor’s most famous ﬁlm, Cleopatra (1963), marked the

ﬁrst time an actress was offered $1 million to appear in a

movie. She actually received $2 million (thanks to the enor-

mous delays in the ﬁlming) after her contract was renegoti-

ated to $10,000 per week. On the set of Cleopatra, she met

British actor Richard Burton and began a love affair that

lasted two decades, eventually marrying Burton twice.

Throughout the 1960s and into the early 1970s, Taylor

and Burton starred together in a seemingly endless series of

mediocre movies. Only two were genuinely noteworthy:

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), for which she won her

second Oscar, and The Taming of the Shrew (1967). Many of

the others, especially the early ﬁlms, were box-ofﬁce winners

despite their poor quality.

Taylor’s last critical and commercial success was Secret

Ceremony (1968). Her subsequent ﬁlms, such as Ash Wednes-

day (1974), The Blue Bird (1976), and A Little Night Music

(1977) were all ﬂops. The Mirror Crack’d (1980) brought her

mixed reviews in what was, essentially, a parody of her own

image. She received greater attention, though, when she

married the future senator from Virginia, John Warner, in

1976; it was her seventh marriage and lasted until 1981.

Beset by weight problems and recovering from drug and

alcohol addiction, Taylor was unable to ﬁnd suitable vehicles

in movies throughout the 1980s. While she did star in Franco

Zefﬁrelli’s Young Toscanini, the movie was never released after

its initial public screening at the 1988 Venice Film Festival.

She worked primarily in the theater and in television, appear-

ing in special made-for-cable movies and in a featured role in

the network miniseries, North and South.

Taylor appeared with Mark Harmon in a made-for-tele-

vision remake of Sweet Bird of Youth (1989); in the ﬁlm she

played an egotistical, has-been movie star, much like

GLORIA

SWANSON

’s role in Sunset Boulevard—and, of course, there

are similarities between Taylor and her role. In 1994, she was

a voice in The Flintstones. She has been much more successful

peddling perfume—her 10th perfume appeared in 2002.

See also

BURTON

RICHARD

;

CLEOPATRA

;

CLIFT

MONTGOMERY

Taylor, Robert (1911–1969) An actor, he starred in

ﬁlms for nearly 35 years, coming into his own as a competent

performer after making his early reputation as a pretty boy.

Billed during his heyday in the latter half of the 1930s as

“The Man with the Perfect Proﬁle,” he was a tall, well-pro-

portioned actor with strong features and a memorable

widow’s peak. Taylor held two unusual distinctions: He was

the lowest paid contract player in the history of Hollywood,

earning a paltry $35 per week when he was signed to a seven-

year contract in 1934 by MGM, and he also set the record for

the greatest number of years (25) under contract to one stu-

dio (also MGM), beating

CLARK GABLE

by one year.

Born Spangler Arlington Brugh, Taylor had the most art-

ful real name of any actor in Hollywood. The son of a

Nebraska doctor, he was comfortable with the spoken word,

winning the 1929 Nebraska State Oratorical Championship

when he was in high school. Music was his initial interest,

however, and he traveled to Pomona College in Southern

California to study the cello. While at Pomona, Taylor

became interested in acting and was spotted there by a talent

scout in a production of Journey’s End, which eventually led

to his being signed by MGM.

His ﬁrst appearance on ﬁlm was in the

WILL ROGERS

vehicle Handy Andy (1934), but by late 1935, after being

groomed in a string of low-budget movies, he quickly

attained stardom as the male lead in The Magniﬁcent Obses-

TAYLOR, ROBERT

421

Elizabeth Taylor was presented to the public as a mature

young woman when she was still a mere teenager. At the

age of ﬁfteen she was already being hailed as the most

beautiful woman in the world.

(PHOTO COURTESY OF

MOVIE STAR NEWS)

sion. Taylor went on to become male decoration in the ﬁlms

of MGM’s major female stars, such as Loretta Young’s Private

Number (1936),

JOAN CRAWFORD

’s The Gorgeous Hussy (1936),

GRETA GARBO

’s Camille (1937), and

JEAN HARLOW

’s Personal

Property (1937). He also starred in two

BARBARA STANWYCK

ﬁlms, His Brother’s Wife (1936) and This is My Affair (1937),

marrying Stanwyck in 1939; they were divorced in 1951.

After having been a star for three years, he ﬁnally began

to come into his own as an actor in Yank at Oxford (1938),

Three Comrades (1938), and the ﬁlm he personally thought his

best, Waterloo Bridge (1940). The latter ﬁlm certainly repre-

sents the peak of his career, though he continued to register

at the box ofﬁce throughout the early 1940s.

Before leaving Hollywood for war service in 1943, Tay-

lor starred in a large number of ﬁlms, but two stand out: the

ﬁercely emotional Bataan (1943), one of the movie industry’s

stellar war ﬁlms, and Song of Russia (1943), little more than a

pleasant piece of hokum but later described by Robert Tay-

lor to the House Un-American Activities Committee as a

communist-inspired project he had been suckered into

appearing in.

After the war, Taylor began to show his age. Never an

exciting actor, his diminished good looks hurt him at the box

ofﬁce. He had few noteworthy ﬁlms during the latter half of

the 1940s. His career was saved when MGM cast him in big-

budget costume epics such as Quo Vadis (1951), Ivanhoe

(1952), and Valley of the Kings (1954). All of these ﬁlms were

hits, and his star was brieﬂy on the rise.

He began to fade again in the later 1950s. Though get-

ting some attention for his work in

NICHOLAS RAY

’s Party

Girl (1958), he was through at MGM the following year after

he made The House of Seven Hawks (1959).

Taylor continued to work throughout the rest of his life-

time, making a number of cheapie ﬁlms overseas as well as

starring in his own TV series The Detectives and working as a

host of the syndicated TV show, Death Valley Days.

Taylor died of lung cancer in 1969.

Technicolor The trademark name of the most famous

and widely used color process invented by Herbert T.

Kalmus and Daniel F. Comstock. The pair created the ﬁrst

Technicolor movie in 1917, a short called The Gulf Between.

It was made by a crude two-color process that projected sep-

arately shot red and green strips of ﬁlm on a screen, where

they were superimposed to create a color picture.

The two inventors continued their work and soon reached

the point where they were able to combine the red and green

images on a single piece of ﬁlm. Toll of the Sea (1921) was made

in the new Technicolor process by MGM, and it proved to be

a sensation. It took a long time to convince the studios to

spend the money to make Technicolor features because the

costs were prohibitive, as Famous Players soon discovered

when they made Wanderer of the Wasteland (1924), the ﬁrst

full-length motion picture in the new color process. The ﬁlm

was a hit, but the movie had trouble earning back its expenses.

After more experimentation, the Technicolor process was

improved enough so that

DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS

was willing to

chance making The Black Pirate (1926) in color. Both the ﬁlm

and the process were winners. Although the costs had not

come down appreciably, at least the appeal of color to audi-

ences had proved itself. Filmmakers began to jump on the

bandwagon, using Technicolor for individual scenes and

sequences in their movies. For instance, Irene (1926), Red

Hair (1928), King of Kings (1927), and a great many other

silent ﬁlms originally had two-color Technicolor scenes.

WARNER BROS

., which spearheaded the talking picture

revolution, was also the ﬁrst studio to introduce the all-color

sound motion picture when it released On with the Show

(1929). For the most part, however, studios continued the

trend of ﬁlming individual color sequences within otherwise

black-and-white ﬁlms. The list of ﬁlms with color sequences

became staggering during the early 1930s, so much so that

the novelty soon wore off.

The Technicolor company was working on a three-color

process that included blue along with red and green. It was

ready to be used when interest in color, along with the econ-

omy, hit bottom. Only

WALT DISNEY

was willing to take a

chance on the new system, using it for his line of Silly Sym-

phony cartoons, starting with Flowers and Trees (1932), and

scored a huge success in 1933 with Three Little Pigs, which

went on to win the Best Short Subject

ACADEMY AWARD

Studio interest was piqued, and a live action short was

done, La Cucaracha (1933), and that, too, proved to be a hit.

The Technicolor three-color process was miles ahead of any

other color system, and it made their old two-color system

look positively ancient. Soon, studios went back to the prac-

tice of adding Technicolor sequences to their ﬁlms, which

could be found in the likes of The House of Rothschild (1934),

Kid Millions (1934), and The Cat and the Fiddle (1934). Finally,

in 1935, the ﬁrst full-length three-color Technicolor movie

was made, Becky Sharp, and there was no turning back.

Though still an expensive process, Technicolor proved to

be so popular that every major studio apportioned part of

their budget for making an ever-increasing number of

movies in the new color system. Whether or not a ﬁlm was

made in color became a measure of the importance of a

property or star.

Meticulous care was given to the early Technicolor ﬁlms,

and one can see that the color values of these movies was (and

is) particularly glorious and rich. Films such as Snow White

and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and The Adventures of Robin Hood

(1938) were shining examples of spectacular color photogra-

phy. But the height of Technicolor’s achievement was cer-

tainly Gone with the Wind (1939), a ﬁlm that looks as vibrant

today as it did upon its release 50 years ago.

The credits at the end of a ﬁlm that say “Color by Tech-

nicolor” mean just that; Technicolor cameras are rented by

ﬁlmmakers from the company and Technicolor cameramen

and/or consultants are present during the making of a ﬁlm.

Technicolor literally supplies the color in consultation with

the director and cinematographer of the motion picture.

There have, of course, been competitors in the color

ﬁeld, such as Eastman Color, but Technicolor has been syn-

onymous with color movies from the 1930s to the present.

See also

COLOR

TECHNICOLOR

422

teen movies Films for and about teenagers have been

constantly growing and changing since the late 1930s. The

early teen-oriented ﬁlms were essentially family movies that

used the teen hero or heroine as the movie’s focal point. Such

ﬁlms as the

MICKEY ROONEY

Andy Hardy series of the late

1930s and early 1940s, the

DEANNA DURBIN

movies of the

late 1930s, and the Henry Aldrich series of the 1940s were all

celebrations of family life where teens and their wise parents

live in harmony.

The teen movie began to change in the 1950s, capturing

growing adolescent alienation in classics such as The Wild

One (1954), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and The Blackboard

Jungle (1955). Young boys found new sympathetic heroes

who touched a nerve of restlessness and ennui, and young

girls were drawn to the vulnerable yet dangerous sexuality of

stars such as

JAMES DEAN

Another change in teen movies came as a response to this

ﬁrst wave of serious, troubling ﬁlms: Hollywood saw a bur-

geoning market of young baby boomers with money to spend

and an interest in heroes and heroines their own age. The

ﬁlm industry sought to provide a steady diet of easily pro-

duced, homogenized movies that would entertain the young,

placating this youth market by keeping adult characters very

much in the background. In this fashion, the teen-movie

explosion was on. Films such as Tammy and the Bachelor

(1957) and Gidget (1959) were huge hits. A new crop of teen

stars emerged including Troy Donahue, Connie Stevens, and

the remarkably popular Sandra Dee, who had a steak of light-

weight hits that began while she was herself still a teenager.

Her ﬁlms, such as The Reluctant Debutante (1958) and Tammy

Tell Me True (1961), were virtual cash machines.

Teen music—rock ’n’ roll—was a natural breeding ground

for stars who would appeal to the youth market. As a result,

ELVIS PRESLEY

, Bobby Darin, and Connie Francis were

rushed into ﬁlms to capitalize on their appeal to teenagers.

Also during the 1950s,

ROGER CORMAN

was making teen

movies with titles such as Rock All Night (1957), Teenage Doll

(1957), and Teenage Caveman (1958). At the same time, the

mating of horror and teen movies had begun with I Was a

Teenage Werewolf (1957) and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein

(1957), a trend that would blossom anew in a darker hue in

the late 1970s and 1980s.

The teenage movie trend accelerated in the early 1960s

with ﬁlms such as Where the Boys Are (1960) and Palm Springs

Weekend (1963). The apotheosis of the teen movie was ﬁnally

reached with the

BEACH PARTY MOVIES

starring Frankie

Avalon and Annette Funicello.

With the rise of the civil rights and antiwar movements

and the drug culture, teen movies began to change yet again,

reﬂecting rebelliousness in a far more iconoclastic fashion.

Hollywood had far less control over independent produc-

tions such as The Wild Angels (1966), The Trip (1967), and

Wild in the Streets (1968), and the youth movement in ﬁlms

hit a new high when the low-budget

EASY RIDER

(1969)

turned into a giant sleeper hit.

Thanks to the success of Easy Rider and rock concert

movies such as Woodstock (1970), Hollywood moved quickly

to take advantage of the youth market with watered-down

protest movies like The Revolutionary (1970), but audiences

wouldn’t buy it. Film producers ﬂoundered until they put

their money into expensive special-effects ﬁlms and science-

ﬁction movies that drew great numbers of young people

throughout the 1970s.

Late in the decade, Hollywood finally recognized that

teenagers weren’t just a piece of the market; they were vir-

tually the entire market. Young people between the ages of

12 and 24 soon became the target of the vast majority of

Hollywood films. As a result, a whole new breed of young

actors came to the fore, among them Brooke Shields, Jamie

Lee Curtis, Matthew Broderick, and the brat packers Sean

Penn, Rob Lowe,

TOM CRUISE

, Emilio Estevez, Andrew

McCarthy, and others.

The late 1970s brought the ﬁrst new wave of teen horror

ﬁlms. Halloween (1978) was such a gargantuan hit that it not

only spawned sequels, but it also generated the even more

gruesome teen horror ﬁlm, Friday the 13th (1980) and a myr-

iad of follow-ups. Another subgenre was the teen farce sex

comedies of the 1980s, with Animal House starting the trend

in 1978 toward gross-out humor of the kind represented by

the repulsive Porky’s (1982), and its distasteful brand of sex-

romp comedy.

The 1980s brought a newer and more interesting varia-

tion, the teen-angst movie, beginning in 1982 with Amy

Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). These

were character-driven coming-of-age ﬁlms that regarded

high school as a metaphor for life and were interested not

merely in teen sexuality and parties, but also in party ﬁlms

with a message.

JOHN HUGHES

deﬁned this genre by infusing

an introspective dose of reality. Sixteen Candles (1984), self-

described by Hughes as a coming-of-age movie, moved par-

ties and dances into the background as comic relief, while the

central character, Samantha, learns a lesson of self-reliance,

perseverance, and the need to be true to herself.

The Breakfast Club (1985) was a brilliant follow-up,

introducing five students held in detention on a Saturday

during which the students go beyond stereotypes (the ath-

lete, the brain, the criminal, the basket case, and the

princess) in an attempt to understand themselves and oth-

ers. They come from different social groups and back-

grounds, and they have not socialized in the halls, paid

attention to one another in class, or respected each other

outside of school. Nonetheless, they have one thing in com-

mon: They all feel trapped by the identities others have

constructed for them. Written and directed by Hughes, The

Breakfast Club created the perfect teen microcosm and

became a trend-setter.

Pretty in Pink (1986) covered the conventional teen

themes: class struggle, personal identity, and social accept-

ance, this time tied to the ultimate teen social event, the sen-

ior prom, as Andie, a poor girl, falls for Blane, a rich boy;

fortunately, Blane falls for Andie, too, much to the chagrin of

his well-to-do friends, as the couple transcends social barri-

ers. Howard Deutch directed, but John Hughes wrote the

screenplay, distinctively, and reworked it the next year in a

ﬁlm he directed himself, Some Kind of Wonderful. In the

Hughes ﬁlms, teen stereotypes are not exploited simply for

TEEN MOVIES

423

amusement; the ﬁlms address issues of development, matura-

tion, and self-awareness.

In 1986 Hughes wrote and directed Ferris Bueller’s Day

Off, which shifted the focus toward high-jinks and practical

jokes as Ferris (Matthew Broderick) attempts to organize the

perfect “sick day.” The focus here was on comedy, not truth

and honesty and introspection. Hughes seemed to be follow-

ing a trend established by another teen vehicle, Risky Business

(1983), a sex comedy that launched the career of then teen

idol Tom Cruise. By 1995, Amy Heckerling directed a pic-

ture that seemed to rework the genre, Clueless, a ﬁlm about

rich kids with feelings in Beverly Hills but mainly a comedy

that parodied the very genre it emulated (and Jane Austen as

well). As with any genre development, the quest for innova-

tion ultimately led to self-parody and decadence.

Another successful teen treatment of a “classic” was 10

Things I Hate About You (1999). Directed by Gil Junger, it was

adapted from Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, and

starred Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles, who earned an MTV

Award for her breakthrough performance. Cruel Intentions

(1998) was adapted from a classic novel, Les Liaisons dan-

gereuses, later also adapted to stage and screen under the title

Dangerous Liaisons. And Tim Blake Nelson’s “O” (2001)

attempted to translate Shakespeare’s Othello to a prep school

in South Carolina, with Mekhi Phifer as a mini-Othello more

interested in shooting hoops than Turks. Mekhi Phifer was

also featured in High School High (1996) as Griff McReynolds,

a tough but gifted ghetto student.

Of course, the more usual and ordinary teen fare was also

served up during the 1990s by American Pie (1999) and its

sequel American Pie 2 (2001), featuring gross humor and

randy teenagers on the prowl. National Lampoon’s Senior Trip

(1995) was intended as good dumb fun, but was unusually

stupid and tasteless. Wayne Wang’s Anywhere but Here (1999)

played for more serious stakes in telling the story of a

mother-daughter conﬂict in a coming-of-age ﬁlm starring

SUSAN SARANDON

and Natalie Portman. Another effective

mother-daughter conﬂict ﬁlm was White Oleander, directed

by Peter Kosminsky in 2002, starring Alison Lohman and

Michelle Pfeiffer, who plays a convicted murderer who

attempts to control her daughter’s life while serving time in

jail. Soﬁa Coppola’s breakthrough ﬁlm, The Virgin Suicides

(1999), focused effectively on a dysfunctional family led by a

dominating mother (

KATHLEEN TURNER

). In the midst of

ﬁlms about high school sex games and adolescent humor,

Coppola’s ﬁlm was remarkable.

Also remarkable was October Sky (1999), a coming-of-

age film directed by Joe Johnston that told the story of

Homer Hickam Jr., a West Virginia youth who escapes a

future in the coal mines by pursuing his dream of becoming

a rocket scientist.

Temple, Shirley (1928– ) The most popular of Hol-

lywood’s child stars, she earned that distinction with uncom-

mon talent as an actress, singer, and dancer. A star at six years

of age, Temple had an unprecedented and (for a child star)

still unequaled string of hit movies throughout the better

part of the 1930s. With her blonde curls, dimples, and sunny

disposition, Shirley Temple was a beacon of hope and cheer

during the long years of the Great Depression.

The daughter of a Santa Monica bank teller, Temple was

a prodigy who began to appear in the Baby Burlesks series of

one-reel comedy shorts in 1931 doing imitations of famous

movie stars. In 1934, she sang and danced “Baby Take a Bow”

in Stand Up and Cheer, and audiences took notice. So did Fox,

which signed her to a contract. She quickly became Fox’s

biggest attraction.

In 1934 alone, she starred in Little Miss Marker, Baby Take

a Bow, Now and Forever, and Bright Eyes in addition to smaller

roles in several other ﬁlms, but her best movies were still

ahead of her.

Playing the lead in as many as four ﬁlms per year, Temple

had a staggering workload, particularly if one considers that

she was a mere tot carrying her ﬁlms and having to learn lines

as well as music and choreography. In 1935, she starred in

The Little Colonel, Our Little Girl, Curly Top, and The Littlest

Rebel. These ﬁlms, like most of her other starring vehicles,

TEMPLE, SHIRLEY

424

Shirley Temple was Hollywood’s greatest child star. In

addition to keeping Twentieth Century–Fox aﬂoat during

the 1930s, she also buoyed the ﬂagging spirits of a

depression-weary nation.

(PHOTO COURTESY OF THE

SIEGEL COLLECTION)

were quickly produced sentimental tales. But the public

couldn’t get enough of her. An entire industry was soon

spawned by her popularity, including Shirley Temple dolls

and coloring books. When she introduced her trademark

song, “On the Good Ship, Lollipop,” in Captain January

(1936), it seemed as if every child in America (as well as their

parents) had the song on their lips.

As her popularity grew, so did the budgets and the qual-

ity of her ﬁlms. In 1937 she starred in a much underrated

JOHN FORD

ﬁlm, Wee Willie Winkie, and in that same year

starred in the classic version of Heidi. In 1938, she remade

MARY PICKFORD

’s silent hit Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and

made it a hit all over again. It was also the year that she

reached the height of her stardom, becoming Hollywood’s

number-one box ofﬁce attraction. Her descent from the pin-

nacle came swiftly thereafter.

By the end of the 1930s, she suffered several ﬂops and the

magic was gone. No longer a precious little girl, the pretty

teenager had lost her audience. In 1942, she tried to establish

herself as an adolescent star in Miss Annie Rooney (1942), in

which she received her ﬁrst screen kiss from another aging

child star, Dickie Moore. Later, she was perfectly adequate as

an ingenue in some very ﬁne 1940s movies such as Since You

Went Away (1944), The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947),

and Fort Apache (1948), but neither her roles nor her per-

formances were so special that they catapulted her back into

the limelight. Without singing and dancing, Shirley Temple

was just an ordinary actress. Perhaps the biggest mistake of

her postpubescent years was that she didn’t follow the lead set

by such young stars as Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin who

hit it big in musicals.

Temple’s ﬁlm career was over by the end of the 1940s; her

last ﬁlm was A Kiss for Corliss (1949). She made attempts to

resurrect her career on television in the late 1950s and early

1960s, but her time had come and gone.

Known as Shirley Temple Black after her marriage to

businessman Charles Black in 1950 (it was her second mar-

riage; the ﬁrst was to actor John Agar), she later became active

in conservative politics and served as a member of the U.S.

delegation to the United Nations during the late 1960s, and

as the American ambassador to Ghana from 1974 through

1976. She then became the U.S. chief of protocol. After a suc-

cessful battle with breast cancer, she retreated from the pub-

lic scene until the publication of her autobiography, Child Star,

in 1988. She was appointed ambassador to Czechoslovakia by

President George H. W. Bush. She was awarded a Lifetime

Achievement Award at the Kennedy Center in 1998.

See also

CHILD STARS

Thalberg, Irving G. (1899–1936) As vice president

and head of production at MGM between 1924 and 1936, he

became Hollywood’s most highly regarded studio executive,

noted for his combination of uncanny commercial sense and

good taste. Thalberg brought class to MGM, putting much

of his energy into its “prestige” pictures, which were often

based on literary classics. His abilities were such that early on

he was tagged with the title “Boy Wonder.”

A sickly child, Thalberg was plagued with a heart dam-

aged by rheumatic fever. His medical prognosis was not

encouraging: He was told he might not live to reach his thir-

ties. As a consequence, Thalberg lived and worked twice as

hard to make up for the time he might never enjoy. He

skipped college and, through family connections, soon landed

a job as a personal secretary/assistant to

CARL LAEMMLE

, who

was in the process of building

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

into a

major studio. Laemmle was mightily impressed by the bril-

liant 20-year-old Thalberg and sent his charge out to Holly-

wood to oversee production at his faltering Universal City

ﬁlmmaking center. Before long, Thalberg had Universal run-

ning like a top, and it was then that he earned the sobriquet

Boy Wonder, thanks to a short story of that name in The Sat-

urday Evening Post about a character much like him.

All was going well for Thalberg until Laemmle pressed

the young man he so much admired to marry his daughter,

Rosabelle. While there was a good deal of intermarriage

among Hollywood royalty (e.g.,

DAVID O

SELZNICK

married

LOUIS B

MAYER

’s daughter, Irene), Thalberg would not be

pushed into such a union. Caught in an uncomfortable situa-

tion, Thalberg broke with Laemmle and, in 1923, went to

work for Louis B. Mayer Pictures. The following year,

METRO

GOLDWYN

MAYER

was formed and Thalberg con-

tinued to work for the gargantuan new company.

Already well known and respected in the industry, Thal-

berg enhanced his reputation to legendary proportions during

the last dozen years of his life at MGM. Much to the dismay

of his titular boss, Louis B. Mayer, Thalberg was given much

of the credit for MGM’s commercial success. The young pro-

ducer was responsible for all of MGM’s output, but his con-

tribution to such famous ﬁlms as The Big Parade (1925),

Ben-Hur (1926), The Crowd (1928), Anna Christie (1930),

Strange Interlude (1932), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934),

and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) was particularly signiﬁcant.

Thalberg didn’t merely produce movies; he developed

strategies for his stars to build their careers and make their

ﬁlms more proﬁtable. For instance, he thought the

MARX

BROTHERS

could be far more popular if they paced their

comedy differently and added music and a love interest to

appeal to women. When the brothers were dropped by Para-

mount, he offered them a deal on that basis and did the

unheard of thing of suggesting that they take the material for

their next ﬁlm out on the road and test it in front of audi-

ences. The result was the biggest commercial hit the Marx

Brothers ever had, A Night at the Opera (1935).

In the same vein, it was Thalberg who instituted the

sneak preview, which later became a standard industry prac-

tice. Reshooting after a poor audience reaction was not

uncommon for the perfectionist Thalberg. In fact, he once

said, “Movies aren’t made; they’re remade.”

The producer had found some measure of personal hap-

piness when he married actress Norma Shearer in 1927.

Thalberg guided her career, giving her MGM’s juiciest roles

until she became their highest paid star with the title of “First

Lady of the Screen.”

Known to work 16 hours a day, seven days a week, the

pace ﬁnally began to catch up on the frail producer. He had

THALBERG, IRVING G.

425

a heart attack in late 1932 and had a long convalescence. In

the meantime, David O. Selznick was brought in from RKO

to take over his duties as Louis B. Mayer quietly began to

usurp Thalberg’s power. By the time the Boy Wonder

returned to MGM, he found his inﬂuence much reduced.

Not long after, he became ill and died of pneumonia. He was

37 years old.

Throughout his career, Thalberg had eschewed the right

to place his name in the credits of his ﬁlms. He had said, “If

you’re in a position to give credit, you don’t need it.” As a

tribute, his name appeared in the credits of the last movie he

produced, The Good Earth (1937); the movie was dedicated to

his memory.

Hollywood mourned the tragic passing of one of its

giants by creating its most prestigious prize in his honor, the

Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, which is given for

“outstanding motion picture production” only when there is

a deserving recipient. Among those who have received the

coveted award have been many of Hollywood’s most talented

producers and producer–directors, including Darryl F.

Zanuck,

DAVID O

SELZNICK

SAMUEL GOLDWYN

WILLIAM

WYLER

GEORGE STEVENS

, and

ALFRED HITCHCOCK

Thalberg brought literature to the screen, and F. Scott

Fitzgerald brought Thalberg to literature, patterning Mon-

roe Stahr, the protagonist of his novel The Last Tycoon, on

Thalberg. When it was adapted for the screen in 1976,

ROBERT DE NIRO

essayed the role of Stahr/Thalberg.

See also

SHEARER

NORMA

Thornton, Billy Bob (1955– ) Musician turned actor-

director-writer, Billy Bob Thornton scored his ﬁrst movie

success with Sling Blade (1996), which proved to be more

than a ﬂuke hit for a rural talent who fought his way to the

top from humble beginnings in the Ozarks. He was born in

Hot Springs, Arkansas, on August 4, 1955, and began his

career performing in a band called Tres Hombres. In 1981,

he moved to Los Angeles where he began to take acting

classes in hopes of ﬁnding a career in ﬁlm. He found bit parts

in movies and television series but was barely able to survive

until he was cast in the Fox Television show The Outsiders.

The titles of some of Thornton’s early ﬁlms indicate the

nature of their contents: Hunter’s Blood (1987), One False

Move (1991), Trouble Bound (1992), and Chopper Chicks in

Zombietown (1992). In 1993, he made a short entitled Some

Folks Call It a Sling Blade, which was an earlier version of

1996’s Sling Blade. Between 1993 and 1996, he got better

roles in several ﬁlms: the cult western Tombstone (1993), for

example, On Deadly Ground (1994, with Steven Seagal), and

Indecent Proposal (1992, with

ROBERT REDFORD

). However, it

was the Sling Blade role of Karl Childers, a mentally handi-

capped killer with his own moral code, that established

Thornton in Hollywood. The story was utterly original, con-

cerning the friendship between the killer, just released from

a mental hospital, and a young boy, whose mother’s

boyfriend, Dwight Yoakam, is an abusive bully.

Thornton worked as an actor for another independent

actor-director,

ROBERT DUVALL

, whom he considered his

“acting mentor,” in The Apostle (1997). He played a trouble-

maker intent upon bulldozing the Duvall character. That

same year, he appeared in three other independent ﬁlms,

Homegrown, A Gun, a Car, a Blonde, and

OLIVER STONE

’s U-

Tu rn . He earned three major roles in 1998, in Armageddon,

Primary Colors, and, most notably, A Simple Plan, in which he

played Bill Paxton’s mentally challenged brother. The plan,

which is only ironically “simple,” to steal and hide $4 million

from a wrecked plane, goes wrong because of greed and stu-

pidity. Thornton won the Best Supporting Actor award from

various ﬁlm critics circles, and was nominated for both a

Golden Globe and an Oscar. Thornton portrayed the NASA

director in Armageddon, the top-grossing ﬁlm of 1998, and in

Primary Colors, he nailed the James Carville role in that Bill

Clinton allegory.

Mike Newell cast Thornton with Angelina Jolie in Push-

ing Tin (1999), a melodrama about Russell Bell, a Native

American air-trafﬁc controller who is a loose cannon. In 2000,

he directed Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz in All the Pretty

Horses, adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s novel, but the ﬁlm

did not come close to recovering its production costs.

THORNTON, BILLY BOB

426

Billy Bob Thornton in The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)

(PHOTO COURTESY USA FILMS)

Thornton’s next major acting role was costarring with

BRUCE WILLIS

in Bandits (2002), directed by

BARRY LEVIN

SON

, a comic caper movie that grossed nearly $42 million and

earned Thornton a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actor in

a Comedy. That same year, he also won a Golden Globe nom-

ination as Best Actor in a Drama, for his performance in the

COEN BROTHERS

productions, The Man Who Wasn’t There.

His most memorable role beyond Sling Blade was as a

prison guard in charge of executions in Monster’s Ball (2001). In

the ﬁlm, he plays a cold, unfeeling father who is responsible for

the death of his son, who botches an execution. Grief-stricken,

he later gives comfort to single mother

HALLE BERRY

after her

son is hit and killed by a car. (Ironically, it was his prison detail

that had executed her husband.) Then, surprisingly, they

become involved in a torrid romance. Halle Berry won the

Best Actress

ACADEMY AWARD

for her performance.

3-D Standard motion pictures show an image in two dimen-

sions (width and height), but the 3-D process adds depth.

Motion pictures appearing to have three dimensions

became a hit with audiences when a jungle movie called

Bwana Devil was shown in 1952, but 3-D movies (in more

primitive form) existed long before 1952. Famed French

ﬁlmmakers Auguste and Louis Lumière were responsible for

3-D movies that were projected at the Paris Exposition in

1903. In the 1920s, Plastigrams, made by a 3-D process that

required the audience to wear special viewing glasses, were

invented with the help of cameraman G. W. “Billy” Bitzer.

Plastigrams were popular for roughly three years before the

novelty faded. There were other systems in the 1920s, such

as the Fairall Process, the Teleview System, and the

Grandeur Process. None of them caught on with the public.

The 1930s saw more experimentation. It was as if the lure

of three-dimensional movies just couldn’t be resisted. Among

others, MGM toyed with 3-D, making shorts in a system

they first called Audioscopiks and later Metroscopics.

MGM’s efforts culminated with a short subject in 1941 called

Third Dimension Murder.

It was only later, however, with Hollywood reeling from

the impact of television on ticket sales, that 3-D ﬁnally had

its moment of glory. It didn’t last long, but it has never been

forgotten. Bwana Devil, a terrible movie with Robert Stack

and Nigel Bruce and produced, written, and directed by Arch

Oboler in 3-D, set box-ofﬁce records wherever it played.

Hollywood scrambled to get on the 3-D bandwagon.

Virtually every major studio put out at least several ﬁlms in

3-D (several studios released as many as a half-dozen or more).

Some of the more noteworthy among them are

UNITED

ARTISTS

’ I, The Jury (1953),

TWENTIETH CENTURY

–

FOX

’s

Inferno (1953), RKO’s Second Chance (1953), Paramount’s Those

Redheads from Seattle (1953), advertised as “the ﬁrst 3-D musi-

cal,” Universal’s The Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954),

Columbia’s Gun Fury (1953), MGM’s Kiss Me Kate (1953), and

WARNER BROS

.’ House of Wax (1953).

House of Wax was one of the best 3-D movies, but most of

the ﬁlms that were rushed into theaters were rather poor,

depending for their appeal on the novelty effect of the

process rather than on the quality of the ﬁlm itself, and even

among the better movies, the more successful of them tended

to be horror ﬁlms. Later, when movies such as the musical

Kiss Me Kate came out in 3-D, audiences ignored them, asso-

ciating three-dimensional movies with either poor quality

ﬁlmmaking and/or cheap thrills.

By 1955, 3-D was dying, done in by the

CINEMASCOPE

wide-screen process, which could attract audiences without

necessitating Polaroid glasses or extra projectors. (3-D

demanded two projectors running simultaneously; if one of

them ran at even a fractionally different speed, it would give

audiences headaches.)

Since the short glory days of 3-D, there have been a few

3-D ﬁlms, virtually all of them made with the hope of cashing

in on a new generation’s interest in the novelty of 3-D: There

have been 3-D pornographic movies in the early 1970s and

comedy 3-D westerns in the late 1970s and in the mid-1980s.

The only quality 3-D ﬁlm in recent years has been the hugely

successful short subject (shown exclusively at DisneyWorld),

Captain EO, made by

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA

and

GEORGE

LUCAS

and starring Michael Jackson and a host of guest stars.

See also

CINERAMA

Three Stooges, The A comedy team that made 190 two-

reelers between 1934 and 1958 at Columbia Pictures, setting a

record for the longest-running comedy series in Hollywood

history. Their humor was low-brow slapstick, often tasteless,

violent, and repetitive, but it was also liberatingly funny. There

was a cartoonlike nuttiness to the Three Stooges that lifted

their best work to the level of inspired lunacy.

Originally a vaudeville act created in 1923 and billed as

“Ted Healy and his Stooges,” the group consisted of star Ted

Healy and just two Stooges, brothers Moe Howard, born

Moses Harry Horowitz (1897–1975), and Shemp Howard,

born Samuel Horowitz (1895–1955). Larry Fine, born

Lawrence Feinberg (1902–75), joined the act ﬁve years later

in 1928, bringing the total number of Stooges to three.

Their ﬁrst appearance in the movies was with Healy in

the feature-length motion picture Soup to Nuts (1930), in

which they were billed as “The Rackateers.” Shemp left the

act after their ﬁlm appearance to begin a long and successful

solo career. He was replaced by Moe and Shemp’s kid

brother, Curly Howard, born Jerome Horowitz (1903–52).

After several more years of knocking around in vaudeville

and appearing in movies with Healy, the Stooges decided to

break away. They took their act over to Columbia, where they

reﬁned their peculiar chemistry as a comedy team. Moe was

the leader, the know-nothing know-it-all who bossed the other

two around by hitting, poking, and slapping them at every

turn. Larry was the innocent with the porcupine hairdo, the

sweet Stooge who just wanted to get along. Curly was the wild

man, the spark that ﬁred the team’s engine. He was pure id and

ego wrapped up in a fat, bald package full of manic energy.

Moe, Larry, and Curly made their stunning debut as the

Three Stooges in Woman Haters (1934), a musical with dia-

logue delivered in rhyming couplets! The team went on to

churn out an average of eight shorts per year throughout the

THREE STOOGES, THE

427