|
|
Post by Doghouse6 on Sept 28, 2017 16:21:32 GMT
You've seen Henry O'Neill in dozens of films spanning three decades from the dawn of talkies. If you watch enough films of that era, you could easily have seen him in well over a hundred. Dignified and gray-haired, he was most typically cast in staid or vaguely authoritarian roles: judges and military officers; professors and attorneys; the occasional doctor or businessman. Equally well-suited to playing them in either drama or comedy, he was one of those eminently reliable character actors who dependably delivered exactly what was required but rarely, if ever, was given the opportunity to shine in a role beyond their typecast range.   In director Phil Karlson's 1952 newspaper/crime drama Scandal Sheet, O'Neill had just such an opportunity and - although I'm not generally given to sports metaphors - knocked it out of the park. Top-billed players were Broderick Crawford, Donna Reed and John Derek, but it's O'Neill who stands out as boozy former reporter Charlie Barnes, who once won the Pulitzer Prize but has long since hit the skids, living on past glories, optimistic illusions and a little help from sympathetic friends. Once a newshound, always a newshound, and he's forever sure his big comeback break is just around the corner...right after just a few with the boys at the local bar. O'Neill doesn't need to steal his scenes, he owns them, and delivers truly multi-layered work: under the frayed clothes and battered hat, behind the three-day growth and watery eyes, he conveys a full sense of the crack reporter he used to be as well as that of the nearly-forgotten man he's become.   Mention should also be made of Rosemary DeCamp's brief and effective turn as an embittered deserted wife, but it's Henry O'Neill who comes across with something I so love to find in films: the kind of performance you may never have expected from a familiar player, as though they'd been carrying it around in their pocket for years, just waiting for the chance to pull it out. And pull it out he does. |
|
|
|
Post by mattgarth on Sept 28, 2017 16:49:44 GMT
Effective as the Prosecutor in CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY but ... a surprise at end of SHADOW OF THE THIN MAN |
|
|
|
Post by teleadm on Sept 28, 2017 18:33:52 GMT
I might have seen him in more than I thought.  Such as Anchors Aweigh 1944 |
|
|
|
Post by BATouttaheck on Sept 28, 2017 18:53:13 GMT
Doghouse6Thanks for bringing to our attention another of those un-sung stalwarts of the movies. Henry O'Neill His trivia page is well worth reading.
|
|
|
|
Post by petrolino on Sept 30, 2017 16:13:04 GMT
His filmography is incredible.
|
|
|
|
Post by hitchcockthelegend on Nov 27, 2018 19:05:27 GMT
www.imdb.com/name/nm0642180/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1It's a very special CV  He managed to feature in a few noir pics before he passed on, I'll have to seek out No Man of Her Own since I haven't seen that one yet. I imagine he's doing very good character actor work in it. He was the judge in Alias Nick Beal , I love him for that.
|
|
|
|
Post by BATouttaheck on Nov 27, 2018 21:06:54 GMT
Here I thought that Doghouse6 had posted another of his all too rare OPs … but great to see an oldie but goodie with his By-line on it. Thanks for the bump hitchcockthelegend  |
|
|
|
Post by Doghouse6 on Nov 28, 2018 0:18:08 GMT
Here I thought that Doghouse6 had posted another of his all too rare OPs … but great to see an oldie but goodie with his By-line on it. Thanks for the bump hitchcockthelegend You know what happens during holiday season: in between the specials, lotsa reruns. |
|
|
|
Post by Doghouse6 on Nov 28, 2018 0:38:34 GMT
www.imdb.com/name/nm0642180/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1It's a very special CV He managed to feature in a few noir pics before he passed on, I'll have to seek out No Man of Her Own since I haven't seen that one yet. I imagine he's doing very good character actor work in it. He was the judge in Alias Nick Beal , I love him for that. is one of those films I'd never gotten around to, so I made a point of catching up with it today. Interesting cross-pollination of film noir and Faust, and right up Ray Milland's alley. Speaking of Milland, nice call on the other thread about a Scandal Sheet/ The Big Clock double feature. And to drag your usernamesake into it, Milland might have been more suitable casting than James Stewart for Rope. One of the nice things about ol' Ray was his ability to play both earnest protagonist and nefarious reprobate with seemingly equal comfort, and the moral ambiguity of Rupert Cadell would have allowed him to display aspects of both at once. |
|
|
|
Post by telegonus on Nov 28, 2018 6:59:36 GMT
Henry O'Neill had one of the kindliest, friendliest faces in the movies. Warners was his home base  for many years. He was one of those what I like to call "mascot" players (no, not the Mascot studio) in that he nearly defined the studio he worked at. Lewis Stone was in a similar position at Metro and, for several years there, Lynn (sp?) Overman at Paramount. Universal had Samuel S. Hinds, though not so exclusively. For a few years, in the Forties, Rags Ragland was a specialty comedy player for MGM. In addition to Henry O'Neill at Warners, Frank McHugh and Allen Jenkins served that studio well during much the same period O'Neill was there,--in obviously very different kinds of roles. |
|
|
|
Post by mattgarth on Nov 28, 2018 7:05:34 GMT
Another excellent O'Neill performance -- as the honorable French army officer 'Colonel Picquart' in THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA.
|
|
|
|
Post by hitchcockthelegend on Nov 28, 2018 9:23:16 GMT
www.imdb.com/name/nm0642180/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1It's a very special CV He managed to feature in a few noir pics before he passed on, I'll have to seek out No Man of Her Own since I haven't seen that one yet. I imagine he's doing very good character actor work in it. He was the judge in Alias Nick Beal , I love him for that. is one of those films I'd never gotten around to, so I made a point of catching up with it today. Interesting cross-pollination of film noir and Faust, and right up Ray Milland's alley. Speaking of Milland, nice call on the other thread about a Scandal Sheet/ The Big Clock double feature. And to drag your usernamesake into it, Milland might have been more suitable casting than James Stewart for Rope. One of the nice things about ol' Ray was his ability to play both earnest protagonist and nefarious reprobate with seemingly equal comfort, and the moral ambiguity of Rupert Cadell would have allowed him to display aspects of both at once. Absolutely as regards Milland. So Evil My Love is one that sees him on the dark side - www.imdb.com/review/rw3214092/?ref_=tt_urv - www.imdb.com/title/tt0040809/referenceAlias Nick Beal. Cool you checked it out so I'll add my review in case anyone else might be interested > Old Nick - Crafty Devil. Alias Nick Beal (AKA: A few other titles...) is directed by John Farrow and adapted to screenplay by Jonathan Latimer from the Mindret Lord story. It stars Ray Milland, Audrey Totter, Thomas Mitchell and George Macready. Music is by Franz Waxman and cinematography by Lionel Lindon. It's the Faustian legend filmed through film noir filters as Thomas Mitchell's politician unwittingly makes a deal with Ray Milland's suspicious Nick Beal. Nicholas Beal - Agent. It's all fogs, smogs and smoky pubs here, it's 1949 and John Farrow and his team are having a great time of things blending Faust with politico machinations. Narrative thrust comes by way of corruption and character disintegration, sprinkled naturally with your good old cinematic staple of good versus evil in bold type. Don't touch him! He doesn't like it! Milland is superb here, his Nick Beal is the ultimate Machiavellian Mannipulator, and the chief film makers really bring these traits to the fore. Beal is a bundle of smug grins and glinting eyes, he just appears in scenes, Farrow cunningly using various props and persons to suddenly unleash his little old devil when he is least expected. Around Nicky there are subtle changes of clothes and snatches of dialogue that hit the requisite devilish notes, Totter is our darling who is caught in Old Nick's trap, Mitchell (great) even more so. The last time I was here was quite exciting. City was on fire. Picked up quite a lot of recruits that night. Made quite a transportation problem. Lionel Lindon and Franz Waxman are also key components to what makes the pic work. Waxman (Sunset Blvd.) deftly shifts between big bass drums for thunder clap effects, to delicate swirls that give off other worldly - eerie - effects. Lindon (I Want to Live!) does great work isolating the eyes in light, while his fog and shadows work wouldn't be amiss in a Val Lewton picture. This is a criminally under seen movie, it's far from perfect because the collage of genre influences give it a very unbalanced feel, but there's so much fun, spookiness and technical craft on show to make it a must see movie for fans of the stars, noir and supernatural tinged pictures. 8/10 |
|
|
|
Post by telegonus on Nov 28, 2018 15:51:26 GMT
Thanks for the write-up on Alias Nick Beal. I've never seen it, heard so many great things about it. One of these days...
|
|
|
|
Post by Doghouse6 on Nov 28, 2018 23:21:47 GMT
Henry O'Neill had one of the kindliest, friendliest faces in the movies. Warners was his home base for many years. He was one of those what I like to call "mascot" players (no, not the Mascot studio) in that he nearly defined the studio he worked at. Lewis Stone was in a similar position at Metro and, for several years there, Lynn (sp?) Overman at Paramount. Universal had Samuel S. Hinds, though not so exclusively. For a few years, in the Forties, Rags Ragland was a specialty comedy player for MGM. In addition to Henry O'Neill at Warners, Frank McHugh and Allen Jenkins served that studio well during much the same period O'Neill was there,--in obviously very different kinds of roles. Oh, yeah, the wonderful Warners' stock company; like repertory theater for film but with each player filling their own specialty niche, keeping ones like Jenkins, O'Neill, McHugh, Guy Kibbee, Grant Mitchell, Lyle Talbot, Aline MacMahon, Ruth Donnelly, Glenda Farrell and so many others busy as bees. One month, audiences could see any one or more of them in a Perry Mason, next month in a hard-boiled Cagney picture, then a Berkeley musical followed by a Davis melodrama, Joan Blondell romantic comedy and so on. And if major names like Davis, Cagney or de Havilland sometimes felt they weren't treated with respect off screen, they were presented with something like affection on, with each leading and featured player displayed with a big closeup during the opening credits - along with their name and character billing - through most of the '30s, so audiences would always know who was whom. You can tune into just about any in-progress Warners' film - including those you've never seen - from, say, 1932 to 1948 and identify the studio within a few seconds from the cast, look, sound, pacing and a handful of other stylistic signatures (which, depending upon one's point of view, may be considered either asset or liability). The same is true of MGM of roughly the same period, where O'Neill became as much a fixture in the '40s as he had been at Warner's in the '30s, and to some extent, the other majors as well. Ticket buyers became as familiar and comfortable with corporate images projected through their product as consumers later did with auto manufacturers, TV networks and even bands and record companies ("The Motown Sound," for instance). Those were different times, weren't they? |
|
|
|
Post by Doghouse6 on Nov 29, 2018 2:27:39 GMT
hitchcockthelegend - I wish to add my thanks to those of telegonus for the ANB review. Qualities I hadn't yet mentioned but especially admired were the expressionistic and surrealistic touches in the sets associated with Nick, such as the angular and off-kilter design of the waterfront dive bar and those Salvador Dali-esque murals in Donna's sleek apartment. In the soon-to-be-fashionable vernacular of the Beat Generation, cray-zee, man, cray-zee.
|
|
|
|
Post by telegonus on Nov 29, 2018 8:08:42 GMT
Truly, Doghouse, as regards "recognizing the studio without seeing the movie's credits" back then. I think that television is a major factor in this, though at the time moviegoers probably knew their studios, had their favorites,--and yes, even B western stronghold Republic.
Many of us who grew up on those old movies on the tube remember the local TV stations that owned the "libraries" of the various studios, and how some channels seemed to "favor" one over the other. Well, that's how it was done.
No Ted Turner back then, though Columbia's Screen Gems and Lew Wasserman's MCA owned the films of certain studios by "lot". They had "packages". One local channel I noticed, even as a child, showed Warners films from roughly 1930 through 1949, while another station, two notches up on the dial, had Warners post-1950.
The "Warners station" also had the MCA distributed pre-1950 Paramounts; while, as one might imagine, the RKO General stations had all the RKO pictures. They also had the (once again) pre-1950 pictures from MGM.
The studios seemed to in most cases refrain from showing post-1950 pictures, as many were sold to the major networks, such as most of the Fifties Fox and Paramount pictures, both of which were featured on NBC's Saturday and other prime time movie showcases, which eventually all the major networks had at least one of.
That so many much older films were shown on local stations caused an extreme familiarity of movie buff Boomers with the Depression and the World War II and immediate postwar period. I saw only an almost literal handful of more recent films on local stations. Steel Helmet (1951) here, Invaders From Mars (1953) there, and not much else. At times it felt like I was as familiar with the slang, social mores, music and car models from the Thirties-Forties era as I was with those of my own. I don't think I was alone in this.
|
|
spiderwort
Junior Member
@spiderwort
Posts: 2,100
Likes: 9,421
|
Post by spiderwort on Nov 30, 2018 1:17:38 GMT
Oh, yeah, the wonderful Warners' stock company; like repertory theater for film but with each player filling their own specialty niche, keeping ones like Jenkins, O'Neill, McHugh, Guy Kibbee, Grant Mitchell, Lyle Talbot, Aline MacMahon, Ruth Donnelly, Glenda Farrell and so many others busy as bees. One month, audiences could see any one or more of them in a Perry Mason, next month in a hard-boiled Cagney picture, then a Berkeley musical followed by a Davis melodrama, Joan Blondell romantic comedy and so on. And if major names like Davis, Cagney or de Havilland sometimes felt they weren't treated with respect off screen, they were presented with something like affection on, with each leading and featured player displayed with a big closeup during the opening credits - along with their name and character billing - through most of the '30s, so audiences would always know who was whom. You can tune into just about any in-progress Warners' film - including those you've never seen - from, say, 1932 to 1948 and identify the studio within a few seconds from the cast, look, sound, pacing and a handful of other stylistic signatures (which, depending upon one's point of view, may be considered either asset or liability). The same is true of MGM of roughly the same period, where O'Neill became as much a fixture in the '40s as he had been at Warner's in the '30s, and to some extent, the other majors as well. Ticket buyers became as familiar and comfortable with corporate images projected through their product as consumers later did with auto manufacturers, TV networks and even bands and record companies ("The Motown Sound," for instance). Those were different times, weren't they? Truer words were never spoken. Warners was and always will be my favorite classic studio. I loved that they weren't afraid to represent the darkness of the Depression during that era (among many other things, as we have discussed before). Their Midwest Street backlot reminds me of my hometown. I always felt so at home when shooting there.
As for Henry O'Neill, he was indeed one of the stellar character actors who disappeared so easily into whatever character he was playing.
|
|
|
|
Post by Doghouse6 on Nov 30, 2018 2:07:32 GMT
Truer words were never spoken. Warners was and always be my favorite classic studio. I loved that they weren't afraid to represent the darkness of the Depression during that era (among many other things, as we have discussed before). Their Midwest Street backlot reminds me of my hometown. I always felt so at home when shooting there. And more than any other, Warners' was one studio you could recognize with, quite literally, your eyes closed: the sound of their studio orchestra was the most distinctive in town from the '30s through the '60s. That was true even after they got into television production in the '50s; I was watching a Maverick episode a while back, and recognized a recycled music cue from The Big Sleep. |
|
spiderwort
Junior Member
@spiderwort
Posts: 2,100
Likes: 9,421
|
Post by spiderwort on Nov 30, 2018 2:19:39 GMT
And more than any other, Warners' was one studio you could recognize with, quite literally, your eyes closed: the sound of their studio orchestra was the most distinctive in town from the '30s through the '60s. That was true even after they got into television production in the '50s; I was watching a Maverick episode a while back, and recognized a recycled music cue from The Big Sleep. Oh, yes. Never thought of that before. And what television productions they did at Warners. They were my staple back in the days of Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, et al! Those were the days!!
I remember how disheartened I was when they became, for a time, Columbia/Warner Brothers. Seeing that tower without the WB logo on it was hard. So glad when they went back to being Warner Brothers. Well, of course, it's a mega-corporation today, but at least it still looks like its old self, save the loss of the Western backlot to a parking lot -- oh, I'm going to shut up now. Change is inevitable, of course, but for me it's often unbearable.
|
|
|
|
Post by Doghouse6 on Nov 30, 2018 4:33:00 GMT
And more than any other, Warners' was one studio you could recognize with, quite literally, your eyes closed: the sound of their studio orchestra was the most distinctive in town from the '30s through the '60s. That was true even after they got into television production in the '50s; I was watching a Maverick episode a while back, and recognized a recycled music cue from The Big Sleep. Oh, yes. Never thought of that before. And what television productions they did at Warners. They were my staple back in the days of Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, et al! Those were the days!!
I remember how disheartened I was when they became, for a time, Columbia/Warner Brothers. Seeing that tower without the WB logo on it was hard. So glad when they went back to being Warner Brothers. Well, of course, it's a mega-corporation today, but at least it still looks like its old self, save the loss of the Western backlot to a parking lot -- oh, I'm going to shut up now. Change is inevitable, of course, but for me it's often unbearable.
Ahh, yeah, the "TBS" years. I was still working on the MGM lot the day their signs came down and a temporary "Lorimar Studios" banner went up, but it wasn't long before Lorimar was acquired by Warners, which traded the old MGM lot to Columbia to get 'em off their Burbank real estate. I remember thinking Louis B. Mayer must have been spinning in his grave at the thought of "Columbia Pictures" going up over the Culver City main gate, and that Harry Cohn must have been laughing in his. |
|
for many years. He was one of those what I like to call "mascot" players (no, not the Mascot studio) in that he nearly defined the studio he worked at. Lewis Stone was in a similar position at Metro and, for several years there, Lynn (sp?) Overman at Paramount. Universal had Samuel S. Hinds, though not so exclusively. For a few years, in the Forties, Rags Ragland was a specialty comedy player for MGM. In addition to Henry O'Neill at Warners, Frank McHugh and Allen Jenkins served that studio well during much the same period O'Neill was there,--in obviously very different kinds of roles. 