The Great Escape

In the quiet of night, a man awakes. The walls of his dull cell closing in on him. Faced with a sense of dread since daylight is still hours away, he plots his escape. Resist the darkness! he shouts to no one. You are alone! The future, a mirage, hidden by hurdles so high they cause vertigo. Get over it. The wall, that is. Take flight!

So what does he do, this man locked up in solitude, condemned to death? He pops a DVD into the television and vanishes into another man’s dream. This time, it’s Robert Bresson’s astonishing film Un condamné à mort s’est échappé (A Man Escaped), the perfect antidote to self-pity.

Bresson’s extraordinary legacy is relatively new to me. Somehow in my film classes in college, we skipped over his contributions to cinema. Perhaps the department was too wrapped up in Truffaut and the nouvelle vague, and its world of ennui. (Truffaut, typically, characterized A Man Escaped as a movie about a man battling boredom.) Like Jules Dassin, whose film noir fantasies deserve to be better known, Bresson’s vision and artistry dazzle as much as they delight. Spare, luminous, breathtakingly honest, his films speak volumes, without almost saying a word.

In A Man Escaped, the word is all. It is the mechanism of hope. For the Christ-like prisoner, bloodied and beaten, wears handcuffs that stifle his ability to express himself. Later, after removing his handcuffs with a safety pin, he shows his defiance, in fact, the spirit of the Resistance, by refusing to turn over his pencil. His writing utensil is his weapon, and means of escape. He counts the knocks of his condemned neighbors, who tap on the thick concrete walls to which he presses his ear. He marks their messages, as he counts the days, by scratching, leaving jagged, seemingly meaningless scrawls on the surface. He is like the Cro-Magnon artist at Lascaux, leaving cave-dwelling representations of life outside. The prisoner, Fontaine (the name is itself literary, as in the legendary storyteller Jean de la Fontaine, and implies a flowing pen) then expresses himself in meticulously written notes passed along by his confreres, willing to risk their lives to get the word out. Writing is everything in this scripted dreamscape.

In fact, Bresson opens his film with a handwritten message saying that the story we are about to see is true, “unadorned.” But we know that is not the case. Film is a lie. Art can never express reality. It must prevaricate, twist, and reshape, fine tune, to make a point, like the graphite at the tip of the pencil. It is the essence of propaganda. And yet, by holding back, trapping us like prisoners ourselves, imposing his pacing, his style, his vision, Bresson achieves the perfect lie. He makes us believe in something which is intrinsically false, deviously surreal. A fable.

Bresson’s mastery of cinematic techniques was not entirely new to me. I’d seen Pickpocket (1959), and was swept away by its ingenious visual legerdemain. It’s a confidence trick par excellence. So it was no surprise, when I finally encountered his earlier masterpiece, A Man Escaped (1956), that I was left reeling by Bresson’s level-headed, painstaking artistry. But what did surprise me was an indisputable realization, a kind of revelation, one that confirmed what I had felt about Pickpocket, but was too circumspect to fully believe: a subtle, between-the-lines homoeroticism at the core of Bresson’s work.

Director Robert Bresson

Watching Pickpocket, I was amazed by the similarity between the act of stealing and that of cruising. For both entail a mindset of hunting for prey: stalking, plotting, and circling one’s victim, culminating in the act itself, a violation, which is breathtakingly intimate, yet brutally anonymous, and over in a flash. Bresson captured this exotic, hyper-masculine underworld in the haunted expression of the thief’s eyes, the furtiveness of his hand movements, the ruthlessness of his stalking, and that of his cohorts. It is a subterranean set, a secret fraternity of mischief and mendacity.

Intense focus: from Pickpocket

This unspoken language is also at the heart of A Man Escaped. For what begins as a simple prison film, of a single man’s plot to escape, suddenly takes a dramatic turn halfway through when a young man, a changeling, is dropped into his lap, so to speak. The boy, a satyr-like waif, Francois Jost, is an enigma. Half Resistance fighter, half German turncoat, he embodies the duality of Vichy France. A mere 16, he is filthy, disheveled, and infested with lice, but not enough to be undesirable. Bresson cleverly cast a handsome young man, Charles le Clainche, without any acting experience, whose vacant, yearning glances suck you in. It’s a child’s face, but also a punk’s mask. Could he be a spy? A plant? Or is he like Parsifal, the “naive fool”? Could he be the condemned man’s soul mate, his brother in arms, who helps him find the Holy Grail?

We are left wondering, just as the prisoner too wrestles with his dilemma. Should he trust this mysterious stranger with his deep, dark secret? Ironically, it is because of the urchin’s lack of artifice that he is embraced, and accepted. Jost admits to having just a few lice, which surely a Nazi spy would never do. A liar would never be so fair, so lacking in guile. He’d be all or nothing, not ingenuous. Jost’s naivete is Fontaine’s ticket to freedom. And vice-versa. The boy is propositioned. Will you come with me? Or must I kill you? The youth chooses life.

A partnership is signed, not with a pen, but with a regard, a nod, a supreme gesture of submission: “Yes.” From there, the pace picks up. The static quality of the first half of the film is replaced by a state of ramped-up drama, of action. The rope, made out of sheared bed linens and clothes, serves as a tightrope, and ultimately as a lifeline.

But first, the man who seeks life must kill. The German guard is slain, off-screen, the only clue to his fate, a faint, garbled sigh as the soldier is stabbed to death with his own bayonet and slumps to the ground. Having killed for freedom, Fontaine turns to his partner, and helps him down the rope. The boy leaves his shoes and coat at the prison, half in and half out, braving this new frontier without protection. There is no holding back now. The couple climbs down the final wall to the ground below.

And then the moment of climax. “Jost!” the man exclaims, clutching the boy to his side, pulling him tight in a spontaneous embrace, their bodies so close it’s almost a kiss. Savoring his triumph, the man does not fall to the ground, or cry out “Free At Last,” or “Vive La France,” or even “Thank God!” His only sound is the name of the boy he has rescued. The man he loves. "Jost!"

But Bresson lets the boy have the last laugh, with a wink and a nudge. For Jost is slightly embarrassed by his savior’s devotion. He cracks a joke, about what his mother would think if she saw him like this (poorly translated below). It’s the perfect note to end on, a play on words. Le mot juste. Jost’s jest.

For this is not just a film about war and the inhumanity of man — it’s a film about loneliness. And the quest for love. Jost’s awkward ragamuffin is not only Fontaine’s partner in crime, but his savior. They walk off together, not into the sunset, but towards a new dawn.

His Kind of Man

In honor of Noirvember, an annual celebration of all things film noir, I am reposting this piece I did a few years back about the movie Her Kind of Man (1946), not to be confused with the later His Kind of Woman. It sure as hell ain't no Laura or Out of the Past, but Her Kind of Man has plenty of curious twists and turns, and is well worth a watch. I'll be posting more Noirvember tributes as the month progresses. 

Three on a match: Zach, Janis & Dane

Certain films encapsulate all the quirky elements that I love about vintage Hollywood, and in particular film noir. Her Kind of Man, a dark, rarely shown 1946 melodrama from Warner Bros is just that type of picture. Starring two of my favorite Hollywood actors, Zachary Scott and Dane Clark, it’s the intriguing tale of a romantic triangle (revolving around Janis Paige) set amid swanky gambling joints and nightclubs at the end of Prohibition.

 

What sets this decidedly B-movie apart from the usual film noir fare of the period is the other passionate triangle at its core. Like another of my faves, Gilda, this flick has a carefully hidden homoerotic subplot that bubbles up through the cracks in its screenplay. Gilda was released shortly before Her Kind of Man and I wonder if the latter wasn’t produced quickly to cash in on the A-list flick’s appeal. Directed by Frederick de Cordova, it bristles with flair but falls a bit short of the mark.

Staff and Rod: Glenn Ford sizes up his boss George Macready

In Gilda, you will recall, the relationship between handsome, young Glenn Ford and his older mentor, played with chilling sangfroid by George Macready, oozes a sinister sort of subterranean subtext that makes you wonder whether Macready is more in love with Ford than his sultry wife Rita Hayworth (no small feat considering how gorgeous Hayworth is in that film.) All the signs are there, though. The way the two meet late at night in an alley; how Macready sets Ford up with new clothes, fancy digs, fine jewelry and a high paying job; and the jealousy he exudes once Ford and Hayworth hook up. Such hidden gay angles were often evident in 1940s mysteries and suspensers. John Huston’s take on The Maltese Falcon played up Peter Lorre’s effeminate character and the queer rapport between Sydney Greenstreet and his “gunsel,” Wilmer, played by Elisha Cook, Jr.

Gunsel for Hire: Falcon fortune hunters

In Her Kind of Man, the romantic ménage à trois is even more convoluted. First off, we have Zachary Scott playing a tough crime czar (a bit of a stretch for the refined esthete from Texas) who has a strange tie to his cabaret owning sister, played with elegant restraint by Faye Emerson.

Twisted Sister: Faye Emerson

Then a nightclub singer, Janis Paige, captures his interest. At first she just flirts with Scott, then marries him, all the while being courted by another man, Dane Clark — shades of Gilda. Earlier, after nearly being shot by a disgruntled gambler named Bender, Scott is rescued by a mysterious young man, played by Harry Lewis, who goes by the deliciously camp handle, “Candy.” The bow-tie-sporting lad is smitten with Scott, looks up to him as a dark knight, and will do anything to join his gang. When Bender, soothing his wounds, asks Candy what his connection is to Scott, the gunsel shoots back, “I’m his governess.” Soon after, Scott slaps Candy hard across the face for being indiscreet. Scott sends him away, then says revealingly, “Some guys are like women. Slap them down and they’ll love you even more.”

Dandy Candy: Harry Lewis

The bizarre relationship is further underscored when in another confrontation Scott slaps Lewis a second time. Janis Paige, who stumbles in as Candy leaves, rubbing his cheeks, says to him, “Did you get your bonus?” That’s an odd touch of sarcasm for a wife to make to one of her husband’s underlings, especially since she is supposed to be the “good girl” in the flick. The S/M subtext is practically explicit. Her role as honorary fag hag is further illuminated in a funny dance number she does at the club, featuring a group of sailors who seem more interested in each other than her.

My Salts!: Janis Paige with her "sailors"

This is followed by a scene in which Scott is supposedly cheating on his wife with two lissome party girls, with Candy standing guard. Suddenly the two men leave together and one of the girls cries out to Candy, “Hey, what about us?” Candy shrugs his shoulders wistfully, smiles, and follows after Scott. Moments later, when Scott is tracking down Paige, who has run off again with Dane Clark, Candy says to Scott, “Hey Boss, I never thought I’d see you chase a dame.” Scott counters by saying, “Only when there’s an angle… a reverse angle.” One doesn’t have to probe too deep into tortured dialogue like that.

Playing all the angles: homme fatal Zach

The fresh double talk continues when Dane Clark comes up against Candy, whom he keeps calling “sucker.” He’s been beaten up by Candy and his henchmen after a sparring match with Scott (one of the funnier sequences in the film since it is obviously just an excuse to get both Clark and Scott to take their shirts off.) Clark thanks Lewis for the “massage” he gave him, adding, “You wouldn’t want one yourself, would you?” If as much screen time were given to Clark and Paige as a romantic couple one could overlook this ripe dialogue between the male characters, but Candy is in almost every scene.

The Mirror Crack'd: Zach, sister slayer.

At the end of the movie (SPOILER ALERT), after snitching on his boss, Candy still runs to save Zachary Scott, but to no avail. Scott shoots his sister dead (a Freudian alter ego scenario that seems to come right out of a Balzac droll story) then is killed by her vengeful husband, Joe, played by George Tobias. Candy, surprisingly, survives, as do Clark and Paige, who, one assumes, will live on happily ever after, making little babies and avoiding the evil, twisted corners of the underworld. 

The Case for Robert Hichens

Robert Smythe Hichens

Nearly forgotten today, but once one of the most popular and prolific authors of his time, Robert Hichens deserves to be rediscovered and celebrated. Unfortunately his name is overshadowed by another Robert Hichens who was the quartermaster on the Titanic and is still a figure of great controversy. On Wikipedia, the writer Hichens is now awkwardly called Robert Smythe Hichens to differentiate him from the other, although as far as I know he never used his middle name in any of his books.

He was born at Speldhurst, Kent, November 14, 1864, and educated at Tunbridge Wells and Clifton College, then became a student at the Royal College of Music, London. He was drawn, however, to journalism, and soon became the music critic of London World, replacing George Bernard Shaw. Hichens wrote his first novel The Coastguard’s Secret, at the age of seventeen. He followed this with approximately one novel a year, many of them quite popular. His style was slightly purple, as far as the prose, but his themes captured the yearning on the part of his generation for adventure and psychological intrigue. He often wrote about people in extreme situations, on the brink of insanity or murder. His novel Bella Donna (1904), set in Egypt, was a compelling tale of a beautiful woman who poisons her husband to death. It was first made into a film starring Pola Negri, then remade in 1946 as Temptation with Merle Oberon.

 

Perhaps the quality of his work is not on the same level as other writers I’ve singled out here, including Patricia Highsmith (who also often wrote about murder) and Beverley Nichols who had a lot in common with him, but Robert Hichens had more success than any of them.

His book The Garden of Allah was a phenomenal bestseller in 1904 when it was published, and later turned into a theatrical extravaganza on Broadway and London. In 1919 it was staged at the Powers Theatre for three nights with a “company of 100 Arabs, Algerians, Armenians with their camels, horses, donkeys, goats and other livestock.” The tale was filmed numerous times, most notably in 1927 as a silent starring Alice Terry. David O. Selznick revived it in 1936 as a Technicolor vehicle for Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer. The novel was also the source name for the legendary Hollywood hotel, The Garden of Allah (Dietrich in fact had once lived there.)

Hichens’ specialty was the romantic melodrama, usually set in the Middle East, with exotic occult themes. Hichens had a passion for Egypt, and wrote an acclaimed book about its architecture and monuments with illustrations by Jules Guerin. Today the book is considered a collector’s item primarily for its evocative depictions of the Nile and atmospheric ruins. It has its odd revealing moments in captions such as “The half-naked workmen toiling and sweating in the sun.”

 

One of his most intriguing works is An Imaginative Man (1895), a tale of madness and dissolution in which a young man wracked with jealousy over another man kills himself by throwing himself off the Sphinx, dashing his brains against the ancient rocks surrounding it.

Hichens also wrote a classic tale “How Love Came to Professor Guildea” that some consider one of the finest supernatural short stories ever written. In later years, he turned to detective fiction, perhaps to reach a wider audience or to cash in on the vogue for mysteries. One of his best-known works was published in this period: The Paradine Case (1933), which reflects Hichens’ themes perfectly, as well as the man. It’s based in part on the murder of James Maybrick, the alleged author of the Jack the Ripper diary which was the subject of intense scrutiny a few years back. That proved to be a modern-day hoax; the ink used by its supposed author was found to have chemical components that had not existed in the 19th-century. But Maybrick, who had no connection to the later scam, was a fascinating character nonetheless. His wife, Florie, had been accused of poisoning him to death in 1889 with arsenic she’d removed from fly paper traps and then served to him in meat juice. Some believe she was falsely accused since Maybrick was already an arsenic addict. She was convicted nonetheless and sentenced to life imprisonment, although she was released in 1903, and wrote a book entitled Mrs. Maybrick’s Own Story: My Fifteen Lost Years.

Hichens seized upon the love triangle that led to Maybrick’s murder for The Paradine Case, which was quickly snatched up by David O. Selznick and turned into a vehicle for the comeback of Greta Garbo. She decided, however, that she didn’t want to make her return to the screen as a murderess and the part was offered to Ingrid Bergman, who eventually decided against it. Alfred Hitchcock was hired to direct it as the last movie in his contract with Selznick. It proved to be one of the costliest he ever made, coming in at over $4 million and only taking in half that amount. It is now considered one of his flawed pictures, but retains a devoted fan base. I, for one, think it is one of his best because it does not rely on showy stunts or elaborate scenery. It takes place almost entirely in a courtroom and relies on brilliant camera work to create suspense.

Selznick insisted on casting his new discovery Alida Valli, above, a sultry Italian beauty whom he was grooming as the next Garbo. Hitchcock, who was fond of her, later said that she was too impassive and lacked enough fluency in English to put over the very talky script. Watching it again recently, I felt that the real problem in her performance was nerves. You can actually see her skin tremble in certain closeups. Gregory Peck, too, was miscast. While certainly a wonderful actor and a draw at the box office, he just doesn’t come across as an aristocratic English lawyer. Hitchcock had wanted Laurence Olivier. The picture was stolen by the always astonishing Ann Todd, and Ethel Barrymore, who won an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Charles Laughton’s browbeaten wife.

While Hichens certainly was inspired by the notorious Maybrick case, he also used elements of an even more sensational trial, that of the wife of Prince Aly Kamel Fahmy Bey, who in 1922 fatally shot her husband at the Savoy Hotel. Marie-Marguerite Laurent had married the volatile Egyptian playboy and converted to Islam. He kept trying to subjugate her and forced her to perform unusual sexual practices. It came out during the trial that he had engaged so often in anal intercourse that she required an operation to repair the damage. It also came out that he was having a clandestine affair with his male secretary.

Scandal at the Savoy

The trial was a sensation. The defense painted the victim as an evil monster whose “Oriental” perversions were the real culprit. Laurent was acquitted. The homoerotic element is still apparent in the novel as the valet (called Latour in the film) is slavishly devoted to his master, the blind soldier. This relationship is further developed in the movie. Louis Jourdan, as Latour, is stunningly handsome, and Hitchcock made the most of his looks. He is played as a moody pretty boy who worshiped his master, almost to the point of obsession. The man driving the trap and pony which takes Gregory Peck to the manor house where Jourdan still lives pointedly refers to him as “a queer one”. While a common expression, the use of it here does not strike me as accidental. Selznick and his various writers (including Ben Hecht who doctored the script) wanted to emphasize the strange erotic tie Latour had to his blind superior.

Louis Jourdan: villainous valet

Alida Valli, too, reflects the aura of the Fahmy case. She is the Continental femme fatale. At first she appears to be falsely accused. A mere innocent. But as the film progresses, one begins to question her part in the murder. Was she envious of Latour’s close ties to her husband? Did she kill her husband out of spite, in a jealous rage? By the end she has more in common with the murderess Marie-Marguerite Laurent than Mrs. Maybrick. Gregory Peck even says to her at one point, “When this is all over, you’ll be lunching at the Savoy again.” Audiences seeing this film in 1947 when it was released, especially in London, would surely have remembered the notorious case on which it was based and would have laughed at this telling line.

Hitchcock apparently had his own reasons for being drawn to The Paradine Case. In his youth he had known a beautiful girl named Edith Thompson, who had been convicted of conspiring with her boyfriend Frederick Bywaters in murdering her husband, Percy. It was a case which fascinated him and might have been instrumental in many of the themes he explored in his films. She was executed for the crime…by hanging.

Edith Thompson: convicted killer

Latent homosexual themes were not unusual in Robert Hichens’s novels. One of his finest works was a sensational satire that came out in 1894 entitled The Green Carnation. Dealing with the decadent aesthetic movement in London society, it was a thinly disguised roman à clef based on Oscar Wilde and his relationship with the much younger Lord Alfred Douglas. The book was subtle but pulled few punches. In describing the circle of men who sported green carnations in their lapels in deference to Esme Amarinth, the character obviously based on Wilde, Hichens writes: “All the men who wore them looked the same. They had the same walk, or rather waggle, the same coyly conscious expression, the same wavy motion of the head.”

The publisher, Heinemann, suggested that Hichens not use his name on the book. It was published anonymously. This led to speculation, just as the publisher intended, that it had been written by an insider in Wilde’s circle. Some accused Ada Leverson, “the Sphinx”, of having penned it. Others Reginald Turner, Wilde’s best friend. Still others openly accused Oscar Wilde of writing it to enhance his already scandalous reputation. Wilde guessed the authorship and sent Hichens a telegram warning him to skip town before he sought his revenge. It was a lampoon. But Wilde was annoyed enough that he sent a letter to the newspaper stating categorically that he could never have written a book that was so “middle class.” It was a pompous boast that underscores his arrogance and insecurity. He had already confessed to Ada that he thought the book was surprisingly clever.

Bosie and Oscar

It is clever. And wonderfully witty. Hichens had the “perfidy,” to use Bosie’s term, to steal his friends’ best lines and use them in the text. You can’t help when reading The Green Carnation to feel as if you are sitting right next to Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas at one of their intimate dinners. In fact, Hichens had gathered his material while on a trip up the Nile with E. F. Benson and Reggie Turner during which he met and befriended Douglas. Later in London he was introduced to Wilde and wrote down everything the man said to him. It all makes for a lively novel and one of the rare documents that truly captures the wit and charm of Wilde in his prime. 

Sadly, it was just a year later that Wilde was arrested and disgraced. Hichens, who perhaps felt that his book was contributing to Wilde’s scandal, asked his publisher to recall the novel from stores. It was not until 1949 that he consented to have it reprinted (below) by the Unicorn Press. Before doing so he wrote to Lord Alfred Douglas and asked for his permission. It was a gracious act and Douglas gave his consent without any reservations. In the new edition, Hichens used his own name and wrote a revealing introduction that recounted how he had come to write it. The book was out of print for decades afterwards and only recently has been reprinted.

Despite these tidbits gleaned from his books, there is scant information about Hichens, the man. He never married. In 1947 he wrote his memoirs, Yesterday. But he was extremely discreet, even coy, about his personal life, which is not surprising when you consider what had happened to his friend Oscar Wilde. It seems obvious that he was indeed homosexual. Rupert Croft-Cooke, in his chatty biography of Bosie, calls Hichens an “intelligent queer.” Hichens made a great deal of money during his long career and lived in luxury in Switzerland and along the Mediterranean until his death at 85 in 1950. Details of his personal life are sparse. He seems to have had a long-standing friendship with the Swiss author John Knittel. 

Robert Hichens and his friend John Knittel.

So is it worth reading any of Hichens’ exotic romances today? I think so. One has to read them in the light of literary archeology. The themes are dated; the style antiquated. But they reflect the cunning of a clever wordsmith, and are sparkling touchstones that evoke the spirit of their times.

Devil Ray

The other day while channel surfing, I stumbled upon an old film that I had never seen before: Ten North Frederick (1958), based on the popular John O’Hara novel. This A-list picture starred Gary Cooper and Geraldine Fitzgerald, as well as a young Diane Varsi. Suzy Parker played Cooper’s love interest. So how could I not watch? But the big surprise in the cast was a young actor that I vaguely recognized from other pictures named Ray Stricklyn. He was cast as Cooper’s tortured soldier son, battling a drinking problem and a massive chip on his shoulder due to his father’s highhanded negligence, and his mother’s firm hand.

Intense, trim and wiry, with dark, sultry good looks, Stricklyn oozed a dynamic sensuality that resonated with me. This was the epitome of juvenile angst that movies in the 50s thrived on.  Only here, it was obvious to me (and countless other like-minded souls, I'm sure) that there was something other than delinquency seething under this sad young man’s skin. Stricklyn gave off unmistakable gay vibes that served to enhance his performance rather than distract from it. He used his ambivalence to make the part stand out. For a youth to hold his own against the likes of Gary Cooper and Geraldine Fitzgerald was remarkable unto itself. But this young actor had something unique — a kind of feral rage — that I found instantly appealing and intriguing.

I looked up Ray Stricklyn’s IMDB record to find out where else I might have seen his face. One of his first roles jumped out at me. He had played the brother of Debbie Reynolds in the Paddy Chayefsky classic, A Catered Affair, one of my favorite of Bette Davis’s later films, above. Almost a cameo role, Stricklyn’s turn as a high-strung, but likable, teen had stuck in my mind. And apparently in Bette Davis’s too. She and Stricklyn, I learned, hit it off and remained close friends for many years.

The juvie classic Crime in the Streets (1956), directed by Don Siegel, starred John Cassavetes and former Yalie James Whitmore. Sal Mineo is the stand-out in a breakthrough role as a teen under Cassavetes's thumb, but keep your eye out for a young Ray Stricklyn as one of the gang members. 

Curious about his career, I tracked down some of his other roles, including the campy horror film The Return of Dracula (1958), above, co-starring Francis Lederer, in which Ray, somewhat less convincingly played the young starlet's love interest. He also appeared in a couple of westerns, such as Young Jesse James (1960), and played Billy the Kid on a Bronco TV episode, below. 



I also did a quick Google search. One link popped out at me and made my jaw drop. Ray Stricklyn had been on the notorious “Spy List” back in 1990, along with Milton Berle, Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee, Don Johnson, Mick Jagger, Tom Jones, and Rudolph Valentino.

One didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what these men all shared in common, especially since Tommy Lee would later show the world his credentials in explicit videos with Pamela Anderson. I certainly remembered Spy magazine’s list — which had created a sensation (this was before the days when things went viral online) — but had no memory of Ray Stricklyn, who it turned out, was the only one on the list who was openly gay. (Valentino was a bit more complicated.)

I decided to order the autobiography Stricklyn had written a few years before his death. Entitled Angels & Demons, One Actor’s Hollywood Journey (1999), the book is a fiercely candid, trenchant peek into the Hollywood studios's twilight years, and his struggles with his homosexuality. While many recent memoirs by gay actors have been informative and eye-opening — in particular Farley Granger’s Include Me Out, and Tab Hunter’s Confidential — Stricklyn’s autobiography goes far beyond theirs in terms of self-examination and soul-searching, and chronicles the highs and lows of a failed Hollywood career with an honesty that is at times painful to read.

While not the juicy homoerotic exposé one might expect (Tony Perkins’s bio, Split-Image, by Charles Winecoff, is much more rewarding in that regard), Stricklyn’s memoir does have its amusing kiss-and-tell moments, especially during an incident in which he and James Dean were lounging together in Central Park, with Dean’s head in Stricklyn’s lap. Dean suddenly pulled Stricklyn down and kissed him full on the lips. It’s a tender moment between two friends, nothing more. But that was the effect Stricklyn seemed to have on those around him, although he recounts a hilarious moment in Lee Marvin’s dressing room when the unpredictable actor pulled out a gigantic phallic-shaped dildo and nearly attacked him with it. Stricklyn didn’t stick around to find out what precisely Marvin had in mind.

While working with some of the hottest actors of his day (including Dee Pollock, Bill Smith, Ty Hardin, Paul Newman and “cocky actor” Nick Adams, with whom he did not get along), Stricklyn did not mix work with pleasure often. He lists among his lovers Tab Hunter (no surprise there); Tony Perkins (a quickie in Central Park); Craig Hill, a handsome TV idol (Whirlybirds) who went on to make westerns in Spain and later married; and his lifelong partner David Galligan, an antiques dealer who became a noted stage director. Stricklyn didn’t shy away from sex, but it was not his number one preoccupation. He tried to go straight (via psychotherapy) or at least to swing both ways for a while (flirting with Joan Collins), but that only exacerbated his already significant drinking problem. Ray Stricklyn had several demons struggling inside him.

But it’s clear that the perception of his homosexuality had a major impact on his career. While he landed good roles in important films such as The Proud and the Profane, The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker (playing Clifton Webb’s son), The Big Fisherman, The Plunderers, and The Lost World, he struggled to find regular work. Despite garnering accolades in almost every role he took on, Stricklyn was not given the leading roles he needed to firmly establish himself in Hollywood. The demise of the studio system was a major factor since his contract was not renewed when Fox ran into financial problems.



But watching his performances, one can’t help but be struck by the almost androgynous appeal Stricklyn showed — sort of a cross between the angst-ridden rebel of James Dean and the sensual vulnerability of Sal Mineo — and wonder if he was not a victim of his times. He did do a lot of TV work and had significant success in several stage plays, including Compulsion and Capote’s The Grass Harp, below. But his career seemed to be a never-ending stream of hopeful fits and false starts.

Stricklyn gave up acting for a time, working with the legendary PR mogul, John Springer. Stricklyn’s memories of promoting Peggy Lee, Mae West, Henry Fonda and Bette Davis are some of the highpoints in the book. But he yearned to return to the stage. It was Bibi Andersson, of Ingmar Bergman fame, who spurred him on to give acting another try. After several potent parts in plays, including Vieux Carré, for which he won the Los Angeles Drama Critics award for best actor, Stricklyn wrote and starred in a one-man show about that work’s author, Tennessee Williams. The show, Confessions of a Nightingale, toured the country for years, opened on Broadway (even the irascible John Simon liked it) and made Ray Stricklyn a bona fide star.

It’s gratifying to see a man fulfill his dreams. But apparently from what I’ve read elsewhere, Stricklyn never was able to shake off his demons. He did get sober in AA, and settled down to a happy partnership with David Galligan. But he continued to be wracked with worries and anxieties, smoked four packs of Kools a day, which led to a severe case of emphysema that eventually killed him in 2002. One friend wrote that even as he approached death, Stricklyn never lost his edge. He greeted death with rage, not submission.

Just for the heck of it, I looked up Ray Stricklyn on YouTube to see if any of his old TV shows might be posted. And lo and behold, one was: an episode of the 1957 inspirational series, Crossroads, entitled “A Call for Help,” above, starring Richard Carlson and a young Michael Landon. Stricklyn plays a Mama’s Boy who is picked on by a local gang led by Landon.

To prove he is not the “sissy” they repeatedly call him, Stricklyn grabs his father’s gun and shoots Landon and another boy, killing the latter. He is put on trial and defended on the theory that he was fighting more substantial inner demons (which I presume to be 50s doublespeak for homosexuality).

It’s a fun episode to watch, and one that underscores all of Stricklyn’s strengths, weaknesses and ultimately his enormous potential. Of course, it was the sexy bully Michael Landon who became a superstar. One can’t help but wonder what might have happened had their roles been reversed.