It’s my lucky month and your’s, too. Why? Because Melvyn Douglas is the Star of the Month and he not only has a great body of work as an actor, one of the greatest actors ever in my opinion, but appears in many great films. It doesn’t always work out that way. Many times we can appreciate an actor’s talent while acknowledging there aren’t a lot of great films in his or her catalog. Other times, an actor may have dozens of great and entertaining movies but not be much of a thespian when you get right down to it (I’d give examples here but I fear that would derail the whole post – maybe another time). Melvyn Douglas had it both ways: Great talent, great movies. The thing is, like many actors of the thirties and forties, I came to his career in reverse, discovering him in the contemporary movies of my youth and his old age and then rewinding back to the start of it all. It’s a process of discovery I rather enjoy. It’s one thing to follow an actor throughout their career from start to finish, quite another to come in late and then, piece by piece, put together the puzzle of their early career while you discover just how amazing they truly are.
Before I ever saw a single Melvyn Douglas movie, I knew his name. I knew it because as a kid I had read through the section of the encyclopedia listing Oscar winners and had memorized each and every one of the acting, directing, and picture awards. I still know them by heart until you get to the nineties when, entering into the advanced elderly years of cinephilia, I stopped caring one whit for those things. I haven’t watched an actual telecast in years and forget almost immediately after reading or hearing of the winners who got what for what. But I digress. The point is, I knew Douglas because his name appeared under the Best Supporting Actor section for 1963 for the movie Hud. The encyclopedia set only went to 1969 (my parents never updated it or bought a new one) so that was his only entry. Still, I knew the name so when, in 1980, I heard he had won another (the 1979 Best Supporting Actor Oscar) it intrigued me and Being There, the movie for which he received that second Oscar, became my first encounter with Mr. Douglas.
Being There quickly became one of my favorite movies and I watched it so often on cable, then videocassette, that I eventually couldn’t watch it anymore thanks to saturation. It was years before I saw it again and when I did, didn’t find it nearly as incisive as I thought it was. In fact, it seemed a far gentler movie than I remembered, and I found that heartening. Sharpened, cutting satire doesn’t hold up too well with me and Being There works as a lighthearted mistaken identity comedy as much as a political satire. And Melvyn Douglas was even better than I originally understood. Naturally, being a cynical teenager when I first saw it, I assumed he got the Oscar as a kind of “career” award, despite having already one a competitive one before. I was wrong. Watching it again with adult eyes confirmed that his performance was the worthy winner that year. Douglas playing the elderly power broker who finds comfort in someone he feels is of a simpler temperament and a straight talker. There’s a poignancy to his wanting to believe that Chance the gardener is Chauncy Gardner. As he nears the end of his life, he deludes himself into believing it because he wants someone, anyone, who will tell it like it is, not kiss his ring and bow to his money.
After that, I discovered he was in two other movies readily available to me on cable: The Changeling and Ghost Story. Being a horror fan, I took to both and by the end of both, quickly found myself becoming a Douglas fan to boot. However, I wasn’t seeing him at his best in those two movies. Oh, he was fine, it’s not that. It’s that his parts were very small and didn’t give him the opportunity to show off what he could really do. Perhaps that Hud movie finally merited a viewing.
I can’t remember if I first saw Hud courtesy an early video rental or on tv thanks to TBS (long before either TNT or TCM) but when I did, I thought Douglas was fantastic (as was Patricia Neal, who also won the Oscar for this film, and Paul Newman). However, as good as Douglas was in the role of the stoic father, angered and disappointed by his son, I still wasn’t seeing all that Douglas could do. I had no idea, still, that this actor could do deadpan delivery with the precise comic timing of a comedy genius. Finally, I made my way back to the early years and saw Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House and there, I found the Melvyn Douglas of the classic era, and what a find it was. To this day, in a movie featuring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy, both at the top of the comic form, I kid you not, Douglas’ Bill Cole is my favorite thing in the movie. Every word that comes out of his mouth is timed and delivered with perfection and all deadpan. It’s a brilliant performance, as good to me as his Oscar winning turns later.
After that I finally started to see him in anything and everything, taking in the great early Douglas in Old Dark House and classic romantic comedy lead Douglas of Ninotchka. To date, he’s never let me down. I came to his career in reverse and I’m happy it happened that way. There’s something enchanting about seeing an actor grow younger before your eyes. This month, TCM gives everyone the opportunity to follow his career in a more free form way, from start to finish or side to side, as they roll through dozens of his credits until September 30th. Catch one, catch many, catch them all, if you can. No matter what order you see them in, Melvyn Douglas shines, as he always did, back to front.