Six degrees of W.C. Fields

[Tashman]

It may be news to no one else, but I was startled recently to wake up to the fact that Joseph Calleia has a conspicuous role in MY LITTLE CHICKADEE, a picture I've seen countless times over the years. For those who have never encountered him in his relative youth, Calleia's credits are similar to what young Anthony Quinn was always given, the "heavy" who is vaguely or specifically ethnic. He's quite striking looking here, partly by virtue of having to play opposite Mae West, and I'm not sure I would have picked him out if his name hadn't, for once, popped out during the opening titles. He must have been thankful that "Menzies" later gave him the chance to show what kind of depth he had as an actor, thanks to Welles and to Lloyd Bridges falling through. But check out CHICKADEE sometime if you hadn't noticed either.

[Glenn Anders]

Yes, Tashman, Joseph Calleia was a regular Maltese Falcon. Like a number the great Hollywood villains/tough guys (Marc Lawrence, for instance), Calleia began as a concert singer, which took him during his youth from Rabat in Malta through Europe and Britain. During his early career in Hollwood, in his thirties, he was typed older than his years, and often played gangsters, villains and detectives.

In addition to MY LITTLE CHICKADEE and others, Calleia had good roles as the revolutionary El Sordo in FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, as a gangster in THE GLASS KEY, and (importantly, from our standpoint) as a detective in GILDA.

Six degrees, indeed!

Glenn

[tonyw]

He also played a good villain role as the Italian Mafia boss with pretensions to Borgian renaissance culture in NOOSE (1948). It is a little known British film noir featuring Carole Landis in her last film appearance. Despite being coded as Italian, his role is obviously modelled on the post-war Maltese Messina brothers.

Like Hitchcock, Welles really knew his actors!

[Le Chiffre]

He also co-starred, I believe, with Paul Muni and Bette Davis in William Dieterle's JUAREZ (1939), with a script by John Huston. That story covers some of the same ground as Orson Welles's 1943 radio show JUAREZ: THUNDER FROM THE MOUNTAINS, which was written by Arthur Miller. I wonder if Welles saw the Dieterle film. Both film and radio show are very good.

[Glenn Anders]

Possibly not, but both Welles and Dieterle were working at RKO in the early 1940's. Dieterle had made films for F. W. Murnau, and despite Welles' protests to the contrary, it is hard to imagine that Welles did not pay some attention to German Expressionism, if only through his official movie "mentor," John Ford.

It may also be of interest that after making THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER (a rather Wellsian project), Dieterle's last feature at RKO was SYNCOPATION, which came out in 1942. It might be seen as a projection of the Jazz segment for IT'S ALL TRUE (later thought the father of NEW ORLEANS, 1947), obstensibly in preparation at the time. Like NEW ORLEANS a purported history of Jazz, SYCOPATION starred Adoph Menjou and Jackie Cooper, and featured Black artists like Todd Duncan and the Hall Johnson Singers, but mostly Swing Band Orchestras from those of Benny Goodman to Gene Krupa. It also had Sonny Bupp (CITIZEN KANE), in an uncredited part.

[Moyer MacClaren "Sonny" Bupp, later known as Mac, was nicknamed by his father because Al Jolson's THE JAZZ SINGER came out about the time of his birth (1928). Subsequently an executive of the Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, Michigan, Bupp (as of 2005) was thought to be the last living member of the cast which appeared in CITIZEN KANE.]

Glenn

[Tashman]

Oh, you beautiful buffs. Here's another note about William Claude. In 1943, he wrote a letter to his SALLY OF THE SAWDUST director and friend, D.W. Griffith, saying that the more he thought of it the more he wanted to act Pickwick on screen. He hoped Griffith would be his director. This was twelve years after Griffith's THE STRUGGLE, when he was living out his last act (about which there are differing accounts); he died five years later. Fields was already in flagging health and never starred in another picture. What a bow PICKWICK would have made for both of them.

[Le Chiffre]

Yes, but I would rather have seen W.C. make PICWICK with Welles instead, which is what was considered as a followup to CITIZEN KANE. A sprawling Dickens canvas like that would probably have had something for the entire Mercury Theatre. I do think the 1951 British version turned out very well though. It's very funny in spots.

Welles and W.C. Fields did both appear in the 1943 FOLLOW THE BOYS, though not together unfortunately. Their contributions are among that film's few bright spots.

[Glenn Anders]

Tashman, mteal, we might recall, too, that the Mercury Theater on the Air Production of "The War of the Worlds" was broadcast on October 30, 1938. Just three weeks later, on November 20, the Mercury presented "The Pickwick Papers." The series was sponsored after that date as "The Campbell Playhouse."

In the minds of eager moguls, this might have been seen as a near alignment of planets.

Glenn

[Tashman]

Agreed, entirely; a Mercury Pickwick would have been really special (and commercial, or bankable), and I wish it had happened. Obviously, though, at the time of W.C.'s letter, Welles was cooked with the studio. So a Welles team-up had probably as small a likelihood as the Griffith-Fields one. (Speaking for myself, having no Fields features at all after 1941 can be rued equally as having no PICKWICK.) But there's one thing to say in Griffith's favor, at least under ideal circumstances. And that is that he was something like Dickensian by nature and in his output, much moreso than Welles. At the right time, it would have been a nice marriage of sensibilities.