Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1062452
64 DGA QUARTERLY very dark environment that led to Joseph McCarthy's Communist witch hunt and not fall into hopelessness and despair? "The Enterprise experience was extremely formative for him," Williams continues, "since it brought together left-leaning people like himself to make movies with social consciousness in the mode of Italian neo-realism and the progressive postwar West German cinema. A key nexus for understanding Aldrich's thinking is heard by the character of Hank Teagle in Aldrich's sixth feature, The Big Knife (1955), when he tells the tragic hero, actor Charlie Castle, 'Struggle Charlie, you may still win a blessing.'" According to Hill, Aldrich "was a man of the left, of deep politi- cal convictions. The interesting thing about him is that if his poli- tics changed at all over the years, it was toward a personal brand of anarchism." D E L L A L D R I C H , the director's daughter, recalls that her father was extremely well- read, and maintained a number of intellec- tual ties. He was arguably the only man in Hollywood who had friendships with many of Hollywood's blacklisted figures, including Polonsky and frequent writer-collaborator A.I. Bezzerides, as well as Elia Kazan, who named names to McCar- thy's House Un-American Activities Committee. When speaking with those who knew and worked with him, a picture of a complex man emerges. Adell recalls Saturday-night par- ties at their home where the diverse guest list included the likes of novelist Henry Miller and Dragnet's Jack Webb. When she started working for her father, Adell says "he was as hard on me as anyone else, but he gave praise if you did your job. You were always appreci- ated, [which is why] he maintained the same crew for years." Herb Adelman, a DGA trainee on The Frisco Kid, recalls Aldrich as being "down-to-earth and approachable, even though his big personality utterly commanded the set." Hill notes Aldrich's nuances for having "real feelings for social misfits. He's considered to be a rough, blunt director, but he really had a real sensitivity and a very fine mind." The Aldrich children didn't see their busy father, awake and work- ing daily at 4 a.m., during the week, but regularly shared Sunday din- ners, where Aldrich expected his children to have read stories in the major newspapers and answer questions about current affairs. "It sounds like such a challenge for a child," Adell Aldrich says, "but it made you well-read like father, and it was a gift for life. It set me up to let me think that I could be anything I wanted to be, which was extremely forward-thinking for that era." Aldrich's egalitarian principles point to an interesting paradox about the director, whose movies from the start, from 1953-55— the baseball-themed Big Leaguer (1953), World for Ransom (1954), Apache (1954), Vera Cruz (1954), Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and The Big Knife—were utterly dominated by men and men's stories. The macho brand was quickly established, and though "he couldn't be called sexist," Silver says, "he also couldn't be called a feminist, even though he made several fascinating movies about women. The important thing is that he hired a lot of women in many capacities and treated them with the kind of respect that was rare in Hollywood." The director's extraordinary 1950s period was first noticed not in the U.S. but in France, where the young Cahiers du Cinéma crit- ics, including Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and François Truffaut discovered Aldrich to be a profound representation of a new kind of Ameri- can cinema. Perhaps the only American critic to catch on at the time was Manny Farber, who wrote in 1957 that of the new American directors, Aldrich "is certainly the most exciting—a lurid, psychiatric stormer who gets an overflow of vitality and sheer love for moviemaking…This enthusiasm is the rarest item in a dried, decayed-lemon type of movie period. Aldrich makes viciously anti- Something movies—Attack stomps on Southern rascalism and the officer sect in war, The Big Knife impales the Zanuck- Goldwyn big shot in Hollywood. The Aldrich films are filled with exciting characterizations…of highly psyched-up, marred and bothered men." Unlike other film noir directors, Silver observes, "Aldrich made Kiss Me Deadly knowing he was making a film noir, which is partly why it marks a kind of climax of the genre. But he was also like the generation of John Ford and Howard Hawks—never tell them that they were artists. But like I did with David Lean, if you pointed out to CONTINUED ON PAGE 94 A From left, Aldrich demonstrates the proper punch on The Choir Boys (1977) and the proper kick to the ribs on the set of The Dirty Dozen (1967); and his work with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford (in the background) on What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) represented a mid- career high point. PHOTOS: (L-R) EVERETT (2); PHOTOFEST