Broderick Crawford in HUMAN DESIRE - The model for Hank Quinlan?

[Harvey Chartrand]

Fritz Lang's HUMAN DESIRE (1954) was televised last week on Vision TV. It's the noirish story of a diesel locomotive engineer (Glenn Ford) who is drawn into the sordid world of floozie Gloria Grahame and her older, unemployed, alcoholic husband, played by Broderick Crawford. Ford flirts with evil and then pulls back from damnation just in the nick of time.
HUMAN DESIRE is a great, underrated film, made especially interesting by Crawford's amazing performance as the insanely jealous Carl Buckley. It hit me that this stocky fellow looks and behaves just like Hank Quinlan in TOUCH OF EVIL. Could Welles have seen HUMAN DESIRE and been influenced by it at all – at least as an actor?
The cinematography by Burnett Guffey is also quite Wellesian.

[dmolson]

Hi Harvey -- I didn't catch Human Desire but have read about its similarities with Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity. How much of Hank Quinlan was culled from the original screenplay 'Badge of Evil' -- maybe Welles modelled Quinlan's drinking after the real Crawford? Of course, another connection between these are Edward G. Robinson, who three years after playing Barton Keyes, the unceasingly by-the-books insurance investigator in DI, would play opposite Welles as the determined Nazi hunter Mr. Wilson in The Stranger. Robinson would complete his acting career opposite that decidely un-Mexican actor Charlton Heston, our hero in Touch of Evil, in the noir science fiction thrill-joy Soylent Green. It's people, people!

[Harvey Chartrand]

In his dotage, Welles claimed that actors were more important than directors. Nearing the end of the line, he had come full circle and become a miniaturist, making tiny perfect little movies that relied on static camerawork and extreme close-ups, as in the distant days of HEARTS OF AGE.

Sadly, life reflected art as far as Broderick Crawford was concerned. He was a talented actor who could never get his drinking under control. Federico Fellini had to rewrite his character in THE SWINDLERS/IL BIDONE as a drunk, because Crawford was in lousy shape when he arrived in Italy in 1955. Back in the fifties, Crawford would drink for days on end with other thirsty thespians such as Edmond O'Brien and Lon Chaney, Jr.

[Glenn Anders]

True, what you say about Brod Crawford.

Yet, from a distinguished theatrical family (son of comedienne Helen Broderick), knocking around as a merchant seaman until his 20's,Crawford had a very long career in the theater, movies, and TV.

He was the original Lennie Small in John Steinbeck's Broadway dramatic adaptation for Of Mice and Men. He came to Hollywood, in 1937, to play humorous side kicks, light leading men, even a romantic lead or two, and of course, later, his award-winning Willie Stark in Robert Rossen's film of Robert Penn Warren's ALL THE KING'S MEN; and then Harry Brock in BORN YESTERDAY. That opened up for him a long series of movie vehicles, TV series, and guest star roles -- plus the occasional stage appaearances, and parts in a number of Italian pictures.

Drink may have slowed him down, dimmed his promise, but he worked steadily until strokes stopped him before his death in 1986: 137 film and TV roles in nearly 50 years!

It is easy, as Welles would have agreed, to dismiss an individual as a drunk, without examining what he managed to accomplish.

I have a friend, whom I call BAMBO-BAMBO, who once went down to LA by Greyhound Bus, for a convention. Near the bus station, in a rather seedy part of town, he stopped after his arrival for a drink at a bar.

"Don't suppose you have many movie stars come here," my friend observed.

"Au contraire," said the bartender. "Have you heard of an actor named Broderick Crawford?"

"Sure. ALL THE KINGS MEN!"

"Well, Mr. Crawford is shooting The Interns at Desilu (?) right up the street from here. He comes in every evening around ten o'clock, five or six nights a week. If you come in this evening, I'll introduce you. He's an easy man to talk to."

So after BAMBO-BAMBO's meetings, he went back to the bar, and sure enough, a limo pulled up, about 9:30 in the evening.

Crawford and the driver got out. Crawford went to the bar; the driver waited by the door.

The bartender presently had a word with Crawford, who motioned to my friend. He came up, shook hands, and Crawford said, "Sit down, kid."

Crawford was living in a nearby motel, with the driver as a companion, during the production of the TV series. He would go home to his family in Rancho Mirage on weekends.

They had two drinks together, just two. "That's it for me, when I'm working," he said. "More than that during the week plays hell with the old memory."

Finishing the second drink, Crawford shook hands again with BAMBO-BAMBO, gave an "onward" motion to the driver. They were out the door, into the limo, and gone.

BAMBO-BAMBO wrote a fine short story inspired by that incident, one of his best.

It must have been tough for Crawford, a man who had seen so much, both of good and bad, of Broadway, Movies and TV.

Might remind us of someone, as Crawford may have reminded Welles of someone.

Glenn

[jaime marzol]

wonder if broderick crawford's mother looked anything like him. ever see w. c. field's mother? poor woman looked just like her son.

[R Kadin]

Here's his mother's picture. You be the judge. Ten-four!

[jaime marzol]

nope, she looks nothing like him.

ever see broderick crawford in a dress?

[Harvey Chartrand]

Broderick Crawford played the title role in Larry Cohen's THE PRIVATE FILES OF J. EDGAR HOOVER. However, as reviewer Thomas E. Reed notes in the user comments section of IMDB: "The film came out in 1977, before revelations that Hoover may have been a transvestite and homosexual - seeing Crawford in drag might have provided an extra kick."
By the way, THE PRIVATE FILES OF J. EDGAR HOOVER is an excellent film, featuring a cast of Hollywood veterans, including Jack Cassidy is his last role before his untimely death, and Howard Da Silva, star of Orson Welles' THE CRADLE WILL ROCK.

[jaime marzol]

would have been great to see him in a yellow dress with ribons in his hair, that big oaf. he had a good carreer before tv.

that whole edgar hoover thing is great. the kenedys porkin marylin, jfk and gianana sharing the same vagina back and forth. hoover porking men, and the world on the brink of ww3. talk about multi-tasking.

i see this mobster in documentary. says his father told him they had pictures of hoover 'fagging-out.' he said it in that italian clip, 'fagging-out" i was laughing trying to picture the pug-ugly hoover, square head, face like a chinese pug, fagging out. how would hoover fag-out!

[Bantock]

So is it possible that Hank Quinlan is based on J. Edgar Hoover?

[tonyw]

Larry told me that he visited Hoover's Washington home and found no dresses in the closet. Thus, the film depicts a lonely repressed man, unable to act out his own impulses so takes a voyeuristic pleasure in spying on others.

[Glenn Anders]

Bantock: I think that your insight may be a keen one.

Welles seems to have grown up in Media, acting in the March of Time (on Radio), identifying with the large figures of the 1930's and 1940's. He clearly identified with Ernest Hemingway, early on, for instance, and resented Hemingway's rejection of his narration for SPANISH EARTH. Given that Hoover had shown himself, not only in Welles' case, but in a number of others, to be a slick hypocrite, it would not surprise that, in one of many spots where Welles might have drawn upon a living figure for his characterization, he chose Hoover as a model.

Your insight might open a whole new field of Wellsian scholarship.

Glenn Anders

[jaime marzol]

you know who is more hank quinlan-ish than hoover, is the raymond burr cop in A PLACE IN THE SUN, a totally fabulous film. but i don't think welles based quinlan on any one.

i think quinlan was a product of the times more than any one person.

[Harvey Chartrand]

A PLACE IN THE SUN is one of the great films of the postwar years. Every time I see it I am swept along by its modern look, brilliant acting, haunting score and elegant cinematography. The doomed romance of George Eastman (Montgomery Clift) and Angela Vickers (Liz Taylor) mirrors the actors' real-life inability to connect, despite their passion for each other. Poor Monty ended up a tragic figure, face destroyed and life cut short by drugs and booze... In A PLACE IN THE SUN, he's at the peak of his beauty. He was called the most beautiful man in Hollywood back then. By the time Clift starred in I CONFESS three years later, he was noticeably unhappy and could no longer hide his deep misery from the camera. Hard to believe that Clift's face of a tortured angel would be pulverized in a tragic auto wreck in 1956.
Raymond Burr was very colorful as the chief prosecutor out to strap Clift to the electric chair, but in no way does he prefigure Hank Quinlan.
Check out HUMAN DESIRE and you'll see that there are moments when Broderick Crawford bears an extraordinary resemblance to Quinlan. Coincidence? Perhaps. Then again, Welles was in Hollywood at the time, and didn't he admire Fritz Lang? In which case Welles would probably have seen HUMAN DESIRE.

[jaime marzol]

i didn't say he pre-figured quinlan. burr is just another fat slob with an overcoat and cane.

i don't think welles copied any one. he didn't need to. he had his own groove.