Don’t get me wrong… I love stars. Big ones, little ones. Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn and John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart and Sidney Poitier and Myrna Loy. I love them dearly. But after years of Summer Under the Stars, an annual programming event for which TCM reserves a full day to showcase as many films starring a particular Hollywood A-lister as it can shoehorn into a 24-hour block, I’m left wishing we could do something for the supporting cast, the day players, the character actors. You know ‘em, you love ‘em, and the movies just wouldn’t be the same without them. Imagine!
Imagine the glory of Elisha Cook, Jr. Day! Where to begin? You could toss in his film debut in HER UNBORN CHILD (1930, above left), in which Cook reprised the role of the pink o’cheek Stewart Kennedy from the Broadway production two years earlier. And from there the sky’s the limit for a guy with a near 60 year film career. You’d have to include his immortal turn as sawed off gunsel Wilmer Cook in THE MALTESE FALCON (1941, above center) as well as the death row convict in STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR (1940), the porter in ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968), Lawrence Tierney’s luckless roommate in BORN TO KILL (1947), the pathetic George Peatty in THE KILLING (1956), the doomed Sonewall Torrey in SHANE (1953 — actually, “doomed” would describe most of Cook’s characters — the bug-eyed Watson Pritchard in THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959), the hook-handed morgue attendant in BLACULA (1972), the wizened midway worker On-Your-Mark in CARNY (1980), and maybe even a wild card appearance, such as the screenwriter Selby in HELLZAPOPPIN’ (1941, above right), who winds up riddled with bullets but still alive… if leaking madly.
Who was more fun than Agnes Moorhead? Okay, Maybe Mary Wickes but don’t make me choose! I love a good hatchet-faced woman, but I love a bad hatchet-faced woman even more, and Agnes Moorhead certainly fit that bill. From her film debut in CITIZEN KANE (1941, above left) to her final significant performance in the made-for-TV FRANKENSTEIN, THE TRUE STORY (1973), Moorhead was always on-message and on-target and always, always better than you… whether she was playing a snooty society dame with something to hide in DARK PASSAGE (1947, above center) or a dried out old piece of white trash in HUSH… HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE (1964, above right). Of course, we would have to include anything she did with Orson Welles, including THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (1942), JOURNEY INTO FEAR (1943), and JANE EYRE (1943), but I would also make room for atypical turn as the reform-minded warden of CAGED (1950), as “Third Cousin” Henry Travers’ wife in DRAGON SEED (1944), as the stone-faced Sister Cluny, whose air of hawk-like stoicism cuts through the treacle of THE SINGING NUN (1967), or as Joe E. Lewis’ better half Parthy Hawks in SHOWBOAT (1951). But, really, you can’t put your foot wrong with Agnes Moorhead, so if you’d rather watch JOHNNY BELINDA (1948) or FOURTEEN HOURS (1951), or WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH HELEN? (1972), I’m not likely to kick.
In retrospect, though, I bet TCM would do a whole day for Agnes Moorhead… but I doubt they’d pay the same respect to Olin Howlin? Who?, you ask? Oh, you know… the old guy who is the first to get eaten by THE BLOB (1957, above right) and the old soak in THEM! (1954, above center) who sings “Make me a sergeant in charge of the booze!” That guy! Man, I love Olin Howlin (sometimes Howland) so much that when he appears on screen I shout “Olin Howlin!” even if I’m the only one there. (And I usually am.) Olin Howlin is such a memorable utility player — the perfect fit for the doctor, reporter, doorman, sheriff, stagecoach driver, station master, ranch hand, pirate, or desk clerk with an unsettling folksy edge — that it’s remarkable to consider that he often had only a minute of screen time to make an impression. That he takes up so little of the running time in each of his movies does in no way diminish his wonderful gift for being memorable, as he was as Veronica Lake’s shifty agent in THIS GUN FOR HIRE (1942), as the undertaker in THE RETURN OF DR. X (1939), as the flustered detective Dunhill, forever one step behind Warren William’s wily private dick Ted Shane in the oddball MALTESE FALCON variation SATAN MET A LADY (1936), as the crossdressing (for professional purposes, of course) Sergeant Entwhistle in NANCY DREW… REPORTER (1939), as the delightfully-named Cisco Tridd, Henry Fonda’s brutish father-in-law in CHAD HANNA (1940), as the paint crew boss whose steadfast professionalism leaves Laurel and Hardy dangling from a window ledge in NOTHING BUT TROUBLE (1944), as the spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child schoolmaster in LITTLE WOMEN (1949), or the bus stop storyteller in the Robert Florey short CHARLIE’S HAUNT (1950), produced by Bell Telephone and starring Edger Bergen (and, it follows, Charlie McCarthy). But again, you can’t make a false move if Olin Howlin is in the picture. He’s in the first two versions of A STAR IS BORN and very early in his career played a capering, fiddle-playing Death in the 1922 silent DANSE MACABRE; he’s unrecognizable under a cloak, his face obscured by a Death’s head mask, but I just like knowing he’s there.
Who doesn’t love Una O’Connor? Who?! Say your name and I will come to where you live and shove you hard! The Belfast-born actress is near and dear to many of us for her classic horror performances in THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933, above left) and THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935, above center), but she plied her trade on the silver screen for nearly thirty years, playing parts for Alfred Hitchcock in MURDER! (1930), George Cukor in DAVID COPPERFIELD (1935), Michael Curtiz in THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938) and THE SEA HAWK (1940), Jules Dassin in THE CANTERVILLE GHOST (1944), Ernst Lubitsch in CLUNY BROWN (1946), and Billy Wilder in WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (1957), her final film role. She’s even in CAVALCADE (1933), that Clive Brooke movie that stole the Best Picture Academy Award from KING KONG (1933), and she played Joan Crawford’s maid in CHAINED (1935). Don’t you wish she had written some memoirs?
I could go on and on. Mary Treen! Mort Mills! Eily Mayon! Whit Bissell! Noble Johnson! Barton McLane! They’re in so many movies and they are always wonderful and my heart leaps whenever they walk into the frame and I am not alone in that! Not everybody grows up wanting to be Clark Gable or John Wayne or Rita Hayworth or Ava Gardner. Not all of us are cut out to be heroes or femme fatales. Some of us are fat or short or weird looking, or we have great big noses and recessed chins or buck teeth and we grow up understanding that no one will ever fall in love with us because of how we look so we just make ourselves interesting. If you live long enough, you come to understand that you are not the star of the show we call Life; you understand that the show will go on without you, and if you don’t want to make yourself crazy you accept that you are just a supporting player and you learn to make your scenes memorable.