by Allan Fish
I think it was Richard Burton who once said that he always had trouble playing a drunk, because he could never remember how he acted when he was drunk. Drunks on screen have been a fixture on screen since the beginning. Indeed, it was his drunk act in Fred Karno’s London show that Mack Sennett saw and caused Charlie Chaplin to be invited to Hollywood. He arrived, wasn’t recognised by Sennett, then promptly did the act again. He was hired. Drunks stayed at the heart of silent comedy and Chaplin’s in particular. His short masterpiece One a.m. is a ballet of perfection, an extended version of that Karno drunk act. In The Cure he gets everyone drunk, while in City Lights Harry Myers couldn’t remember…we’re back to Burton again.
Most actors have had drunk scenes in their time, or have played them. Think of Dean Martin in Rio Bravo, of Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou, of Charles Laughton chasing the moon (appropriately on the way back from the Moonrakers Arms) in Hobson’s Choice, Garbo tasting champagne in Ninotchka, Albert Finney getting a battering on the way home from the pub in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Dan Dailey in It’s Always Fair Weather, Jean Arthur with Thomas Mitchell in Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Mitchell himself as Doc Boone in Stagecoach, Alan Bates in A Kind of Loving, even Donald O’Connor in There’s No Business Like Show Business. Then there were the serious drunks, those who went as far as to make alcoholism a career choice, like Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend, Lowell Sherman in What Price Hollywood? (tragically mirrored in real life), Fredric March and James Mason in A Star is Born, Susan Hayward in Smash Up and I’ll Cry Tomorrow, Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon in Days of Wine and Roses, Errol Flynn (never more touching) in The Sun Also Rises and Too Much, Too Soon, James Dunn (another mirroring real life) in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Maurice Ronet in Le Feu Follet, Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, right up to Johnny Depp as John Wilmot in the criminally neglected The Libertine. A special mention, too, to Tom Walls’ drunk acts in the old Aldwych/Travers farces, especially A Cuckoo in the Nest and, of course, Frank Kelly as Father Jack Hackett.
It’s two actors that I have chosen to represent all drunks in the pantheon. The first, Arthur Housman, quite literally made a career out of it. he started in the silent era; he’s in Sunrise as a drunk. But he will largely be cherished for propping up more bars than any man in history in the 1930s. One recalls him asking his way to the men’s room in The Greeks Had a Word for Them and being told “there’s a door marked gentlemen, but don’t let that stop you.” He appeared with Harold Lloyd in Feet First, with Mae West in She Done him Wrong, in The Thin Man (where even he may have struggled to keep up with Nick and Nora Charles’ martini quota), and in Show Boat. But more than anything he was a stooge for Laurel and Hardy, memorable in Thark, The Fixer-Uppers and, best of all, in Our Relations. Here he is with Edgar Kennedy in Gridiron Flash:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7t6CZmfXHA
For all Housman’s comic brilliance, and the brilliance of all the actors listed previously, if I had to nominate the greatest EVER screen drunk, there could only be one winner; the one, the only Willie Ross, representing Glaswegians everywhere. My first sight of Willie Ross on screen was as the poor sod being covered in unmentionables in the opening scene of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. But he’d made an earlier impression, as the abusive, alcoholic father in Alan Clarke’s last big screen film, Rita, Sue and Bob, Too. The opening scene sets the tone…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGqh0jyGnBQ
And it continues…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J8p_h2gwJM
There would be other drunks, but two stood out. Firstly, as Geordie’s abusive father in Our Friends in the North, pie-eyed on a scale probably not seen since the height of the Roman Empire. And then again, in one of his last roles, as Mr Dolls, the drunken father of Jenny Wren in Our Mutual Friend, staggering across the sets of the Thames riverside with a balletic brilliance worthy of Harold Lloyd a-top the building in Safety Last. Sadly, in 2000, life imitated art, as it is wont to do. He was killed in a fall down his stairs at home. Drunk, naturally. There will never be another like Willie. Grab a handy beverage, and salute Arthur, Willie and all those whose screen inebriation have so enriched our viewing.
Never recognized Ross, though I obviously saw him in The Cook etc., but Housman always delivered the goods, though he was a specialty act too often unacknowledged by his employers. The list of uncredited performances in his filmography is rather sad considering how the overall list reflects his reliability in his special role. I imagine the audiences knew the man if not his name. I saw him most recently as an uncredited drunk in Men Must Fight, chiding a Briton from the then-futuristic vantage of 1940 (the film’s from 1933) for not properly appreciating alcohol, having never had it prohibited by his government. The habit hastened his end as well, they say.
Allan, a fascinating posting. I haven’t seen ‘Rita, Sue and Bob Too’ as yet, but must agree Ross was brilliant as Mr Dolls in ‘Our Mutual Friend’. (And Dickens had come a long way from Mr Pickwick to Mr Dolls.) I’ll also look out for Housman now. After seeing Alan Hales in ‘Stella Dallas’ just today, I’ve been wondering why it is that drunkenness is so often compelling to watch in films – it seems as if, when you have a self-destructive drunk character in a film, that is very often the performance that is the most memorable. For instance, thinking of ‘Diner’, which I saw a couple of times years ago, I don’t really remember the rest of the Brat Packers in it now, but I remember Kevin Bacon going from joke to disaster.
I’m pleased to see you mentioned Lowell Sherman, whose performance in ‘What Price Hollywood’ is so devastating. Of course there is also his one-time brother-in-law, John Barrymore – it’s sad to see one or two of his later roles where his real-life drink problem was so bad that he could really only play himself propping up the bar (though there is always the odd flash of brilliance even then), but he is great in ‘State’s Attorney’ and other earlier films.
There are so many great screen drunks when you think about it – like Richard Barthelmess and the rest of the cast in Lost Generation pre-Coder ‘The Last Flight’. And actually Barthelmess in ‘The Dawn Patrol’ as well… and Errol Flynn, who you discuss here, played drunk scenes in both the remake of that and ‘The Sisters’, which I know is a soapy film. but he is heartbreaking (and both of these performances were the same year as ‘Robin Hood’!)
Ah yes, The Last Flight – Rhymes with tight. Yes, Ross is the supreme modern drunk. Check out the clips of Rita listed in the post.
Flynn was an interesting case, and of course there’s the added wonder of his turn as John Barrymore in Too Much too Soon.
Peter O’Toole played drunkenness to good comic effect in Another Year. On the other hand, Glenn Close has acknowledged really being drunk during the elevator scene with Michael Douglas in Fatal Attraction. My acting teacher always said the most effective way to play drunknenness was to try NOT to be drunk — which turns out to be more convincing since drunks most often don’t try to look drunk, they try not to look drunk.