Sun 13 Mar 2011

15 Responses to “A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: QUATERMASS II: ENEMY FROM SPACE (1957).”

1. David L. Vineyard Says:
   March 13th, 2011 at 6:35 pm

   Hammer at this point needed all the help it could get, and Donlevy was at least a name American audiences would know if not flock to. Lee Patterson, Dane Clark, Paul Henried, Dean Jagger, and Marshall Thompson all headlined Brit films in this period too.

   The Japanese thought Donlevy was a good idea, they borrowed him for GAMMERA.

   You can see the original BBC serial on DVD from the collectors market Sinister Cinema has it, or did. Unlike the other two Quatermass serials it veers a good deal from ths one, but has a good cast.

   The next television Quatermass was Cec Linder, Felix Leiter from GOLDFINGER, in Quatermass III.

   John Mills was the only television Quatermass to play the role in the film version.

   Bryan Forves who plays the assistant here went on to a notable career as a director and author of best selling spy novels.

2. Richard Robinson Says:
   March 13th, 2011 at 8:35 pm

   plus, for the time, Donlevy had a kind of Everyman look that a lot of the audience could relate to – they may have known someone who looked a little like the character here.

3. David L. Vineyard Says:
   March 13th, 2011 at 9:26 pm

   Neither of the actors in the original BBC serials were that well known — though Leo McKern and Hugh Griffith both had roles in the BBC version of this one.

   I’m sure Hammer felt that both this and THE CREEPING UNKNOWN needed Donlevy’s relative name recognition, marquis value or not. CREEPING also added popular Brit Jack Warner (DIXON OF DOCK GREEN) who specialized in playing very human cops, so it was fairly clear they were looking to get better known names and faces in it for the British as well as American audiences.

   Hammer also imported Dean Jaeger for the film of the serial X THE UNKNOWN, so it had worked for them before.

   Quite a few American actors were appearing in British films over this period: Gregory Peck, Orson Welles, Forest Tucker, Lloyd Bridges, Victor Mature, Alan Ladd, Gene Evans, Bette Davis, Judy Garland, and Susan Hayward among them.

4. ed gorman Says:
   March 13th, 2011 at 9:46 pm

   The cast of the film thought that casting Brian Donlevy was a stupid mistake. Somewhere there’s a book on horror films in which the members of the cast bitch about how bad Donlevy was and spread rumors about him that are highly unlikely. They come off like campy twits.

5. David L. Vineyard Says:
   March 13th, 2011 at 10:00 pm

   Ed

   Donlevy was known to be something of an ass on set. He was so hated by the cast of BEAU GESTE that in the final scene when Ray Milland kills him with a bayonette Milland, an expert with small arms and the bayonette, actually ran him through. Even director William Wellman approved.

   Still I always liked Donlevy as a performer, and he brings a lot of energy to the films that certainly benefit from his presence.

   But likely his fellow actors had every reason not to like him.

6. Steve Says:
   March 13th, 2011 at 10:41 pm

   That story about Donlevy was told in Wellman’s memoirs, and I have to wonder how true it was. I guess I don’t doubt it, but it didn’t seem to have much affect on his career, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed his performance in everything I’ve seen him in.

7. David L. Vineyard Says:
   March 13th, 2011 at 11:48 pm

   Steve

   Milland also tells the story in his autiobiography, which is where I read it. Donlevy had taken his role as the martinet solcier a bit too much to heart and everyone was hot, tired, and sick of working with him.

   I always liked him too — especially in THE GREAT McGINTY znd even his radio and television series DANGEROUS ASSIGNMENT. He was also a damn good John J. Malone in THE LUCKY STIFF.

   Wellman worked with him in THE GREAT MAN’S LADY too (one of his best roles).

   But his reputation on the set was not good, and I tend to believe the story since he was missing from the set for several weeks afterwards and allegedly returned much nicer. His injury is a fact. Whether as Wellman and Milland claim it was deliberate I don’t know, but it wasn’t beyond Milland who was a professional soldier from age 15 to 30 and much tougher than his charming exterior might lead you to expect.

   The actual shooting schedule for the film suggests Wellman and Milland were telling the truth.

   It wasn’t beyond Milland, a champion marksman who taught bayonette drill as an officer in the British army before turning to acting when his military career ended.
   I’ve even read somewhere he did his own trick shooting in John Farrow’s COPPER CANYON where he plays a former Confederate officer turned trick shot.

   But Wellman and Milland are not the only people to have complained about Donlevy’s behavior. Maybe he was a method actor, some do take their roles a bit too much to heart.

   In any case it doesn’t seem to have unduly hurt his career. He still got some good roles relatively late in the game. And after all, a sort of bad boy image was always part of his charm on screen.

8. Dan Says:
   March 14th, 2011 at 6:27 am

   Donlevy also starred in a rather vanilla TV version of Fredric Brown’s THE DEEP END.

9. ed gorman Says:
   March 14th, 2011 at 8:49 am

   I’d never heard any of this about Donlevy. Thanks, guys. I think. 🙂

10. Steve Says:
    March 14th, 2011 at 11:41 am

    I’ve been looking for something online about Brian Donlevy and the filming of BEAU GESTE. Here’s a passage from his biography on the TCM website:

    http://moviemorlocks.com/2008/09/24/brian-donlevy-a-tough-guy-not-a-wrong-guy/#more-3909

    That spit and polish air also led to his playing more than his share of military types, including a role that won him a nomination for Supporting Actor in 1939 when he played the sadistic “Sgt. Markoff” in William Wellman‘s version of Beau Geste (1939) tormenting Gary Cooper, Robert Preston and Ray Milland in the desert. In training his charges, Markoff (Donlevy) barked out comments such as the following with relish:

    “I am Sergeant Markoff. I make soldiers out of scum like you, and I don’t do it gently. You’re the sloppiest looking lot I’ve ever seen. It’s up to me to prevent you from becoming a disgrace to the Regiment. And I will prevent that if I have to kill half of you with work. But the half that lives will be soldiers. I promise you”

    According to director Wellman‘s memoir, Donlevy took his role to heart, and managed to alienate his castmates and the crew with his autocratic behavior on their isolated Arizona desert location set. As with most of his previous and many of his future roles, In Old Chicago, Destry Rides Again and Brigham Young, he usually died in the end, and his dastardly characters usually deserved it.

    […]

    … it’s possible that the journeyman actor, who’d knocked around Hollywood and Broadway for more years than he wanted to remember, may have found the well written role in the big budget movie Beau Geste to be a bit overwhelming and inspiring. An arrogant cockiness and brusqueness were often the primary requirements of his many previous roles, which had also included an occasional B movie lead role thrown into his busy but repetitive Hollywood career in the ’30s & ’40s. Yet in private life, there were those who enjoyed working with him repeatedly, among them his fellow actors at Paramount during the ’40s, when better roles were coming his way.

11. BRADSTREET Says:
    March 14th, 2011 at 2:57 pm

    The main beef that Nigel Kneale had about Donlevy was that he did not even slightly resemble the character that he had created. The original TV Professor Bernard Quatermass was an cultured, urbane scientist with a strong sense of responsibility. Val Guest saw the Professor of THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT (THE CREEPING UNKNOWN) as an aggressive, antisocial engineer. Thanks to Kneale’s involvement in the film script, the way that he is written in QII is a little closer to the TV creation. He is more reasonable and humane (witness the early scene where he starts to chew out his assistant William Franklyn and then suddenly apologises).

    Kneale designed the story to be, at least in part, an attack on government secrecy. WWII had been over for a decade, but the powers that be were still attempting to avoid public scrutiny by invoking the old war time spirit of ‘Careless talk costs lives’. It’s probably no coincidence that he had recently written a TV version of Orwell’s 1984. Bureaucracy is as much the enemy as the aliens.

    For the record, I really like the film version of QII. Donlevy is not Kneale’s conception of the Professor, but he is compelling. He receives a lot of flak, but even at this stage of his career he still had that certain something.

    If you can, try and hunt out the dvd box set of the original TV series. There are so many differences between the film and TV series that it is like a new version; even the climax is different. You also get a beautifully restored and complete print of the TV version of Kneale’s masterpiece QUATERMASS AND THE PIT. This has, in my opinion, the definitive Quatermass – Andre Morell.

12. David L. Vineyard Says:
    March 14th, 2011 at 3:28 pm

    It’s entirely possile that personal demons could sometimes have made Donlevy difficult to work with or disliked, as well as possible that if his real personality was anywhere near as rough edged and gruff as his screen personality some people may have taken him wrong.

    Even Wellman, who didn’t have much nice to say about him, used him in one of the better roles of his career as Joel McCrea’s rival for Barbara Stanwyck in GREAT MAN’S LADY.

    Whatever else you can say about BEAU GESTE, Donlevy is memorably nasty in the part — a standout.

    As for Quatermass, the British cast may well have resented his presence no matter what he did or how he behaved as well as any cultue clash that raised its head, though considering his presence had helped make the first film in the series a success it seems petty to begrudge him the sequel.

    His career had its ups and downs. At times he looked close to becoming a major star (WAKE ISLAND, THE GREAT McGINTY, AN AMERICAN ROMANCE) and then he would be back to B leads and villains in A pictures.

    I always thought his gift for comedic roles was under used. McGINTY is one of the all time great screwball comedy political satires and a highlight of Preston Sturges career and in King Vidor’s AN AMERICAN ROMANCE Donlevy is outstanding as an immigrant who goes from poor illiterate mechanic to Henry Ford like head of a major company — he’s both very funny early on and very touching. He was excellent in COMMAND DECISION as the political general sent in to replace more independent Clark Gable, a role that could easily have been another martinet, but instead is played with some sensitivity.

    In GREAT MAN’S LADY Joel McCrea’s ‘great man’ is a bit of grandiose self centered jerk and it is Donlevy’s more likable and human lover Stanwyck briefly turns to. It may be the only time he played second romantic lead in any film, and he is quite good in it.

    Late in his career he still had a good role and played it well in John Sturges NEVER SO FEW as the sympathetic general forced to court martial Frank Sinatra’s commando leader for having taken revenge on Chinese Communist ‘allies’ who had ambushed his troops. It’s a big role and he handles it well.

    Nevertheless both Wellman and Milland claim the stabbing incident happened. Whether the behavior was a one time thing or happened on other movie sets I’m not sure, but there seems to have been as many actors who liked to work with him as hated him.

    Perhaps its like Fritz Lang, who just about everyone hated, but Sylvia Sydney loved to work with; just a matter of personalities.

13. michael Says:
    March 14th, 2011 at 4:24 pm

    I liked him in THE GLASS KEY with Alan Ladd.

    The gossip I always read was that he was a mean drunk who was unreliable, failing to show up on time and not know his lines. Being nice means little in Hollywood, costing producers money will have you hustling to overseas to find a job.

    But it is just gossip, so who knows?

    I still like to watch his movies.

14. Richard Moore Says:
    March 14th, 2011 at 4:42 pm

    I think it was in an issue of “Filmfax” where I read the various complaints by the British cast about Donlevy. My memory of the complaints is that as in BEAU GESTE, the traits of the hard-driving, impatient character continued after the cameras stopped rolling.

    As others have noted, if you look at his entire career, Donlevy is impressive. He was fine at comedy and could be a tough hero or a believably nasty villain.

    Whenever I think of Brian Donlevy, I think of Bela Lugosi. Lillian Lugosi became Donlevy’s personal assistant during the period when his production company was producing the “Dangerous Assignment” for radio and television.

    It used to drive Bela wild with jealousy even after Lillian divorced him. It was slightly less than 10 years after Bela’s death that Donlevy and Lillian married in February 1966.

    I love a happy ending.

15. David L. Vineyard Says:
    March 14th, 2011 at 4:59 pm

    If we only watched movies made by or starring nice people — or read books written by nice people — I’m afraid our apspects for entertainment would be pretty thin. What makes it onto the screen or into print is usually more important than what they do off screen. Luckily we aren’t expected to review their lives but their work.

    Still, it does make that scene in BEAU GESTE a bit more interesting to know Ray Milland is actually running Donley through. Talk about method acting.

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