A Note about Ned Beatty

On June 13 veteran character actor Ned Beatty died at the age of 83. I've always been a fan and wondered if any of his work had an Alabama connection. So I checked his Wikipedia and IMDB entries and found one in his long list of film and television credits. More about that in a moment.

He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and by the age of 19 began appearing in theatrical productions in that state. His first film was Deliverance, and he started his career with a memorable role. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about; if not, I won't spoil it.

Beatty appeared in a television role in that same year and continued to act frequently in both media until 2013. If you are not familiar with him, I urge you to seek out some of his appearances. I especially urge you to watch him in the 1976 film Network. If you've seen it, go watch it again. I watched it last year [probably for the fourth or so time], and the entire movie just gets better and better.

Network focuses on a low-rated  tv network and its attempt to raise ratings by turning the news division into entertainment. The film is a perfect storm of great personnel and casting. Sidney Lumet directed, Paddy Chayefsky wrote the script, and the stars include William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall and Beatrice Straight. Dunaway won a Best Actress Oscar, Straight a Best Supporting Actress one and Chayefsky won for Best Original Screenplay. Peter Finch received a well-deserved posthumous Oscar as Best Actor, playing newscaster Howard Beale. 

Beatty was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, but lost to Jason Robards in All the Presidents Men, another stellar performance. Beatty's nomination was somewhat unusual; he has only one scene in the movie, which lasts about five minutes. He appears as Arthur Jensen, the CEO of the corporation that owns the network, and who summons Howard Beale to lecture him on how the economic forces of nature work. In his five minute speech, Beatty proves to be a force of nature himself. His delivery has been described as one of the best, and one of the most terrifying speeches in American cinema. Watch and you will understand.

When it was first released, Network was viewed as a well-done but way over the top satire of television and its news business. Watch it today and it seems like a documentary....

Wait, I was supposed to discuss an Alabama connection, right? Two years before Network, Beatty played the priest Father Stafford in a television movie, The Execution of Private Slovik, first broadcast on March 13, 1974. Martin Sheen in the title role plays the only American soldier executed for desertion since the Civil War. The film is based on the non-fiction book by William Bradford Huie, a journalist and author with strong state connections. I've written a bit about his life and work here. 

This piece is the 700th blog post I've done since March 2014. Sheesh...

Beatty at the 1990 Emmy Awards

Source: Wikipedia

William Bradford Huie [1910-1986]

Beatty as Arthur Jensen, CEO, and newscaster Howard Beale's ultimate boss, instructing Beale about the primal economic forces of nature. You can watch it on YouTube but if you haven't seen it, watch the film first. The speech is even more impressive in context. 

Source: American Rhetoric Movie Speeches where you can read the entire speech. Impressive as it is even on paper, it's just not the same without Beatty's delivery.

Movies with Alabama Connections: The Revolt of Mamie Stover

One of two films Jane Russell made in 1956 was The Revolt of Mamie Stover, which has an Alabama connection. Let's investigate.

In 1941 Leesburg Mississippi, native Mamie is working as a prostitute in San Francisco. Authorities tell her to leave the city, so she boards a freighter for Honolulu. The only other passenger is Jim Blair [Richard Egan], a writer. They fall in love, but part ways when the ship docks and Jim's sweetheart meets him. Mamie goes to work at The Bungalow, a dance hall, quickly becoming the star attraction. She and Jim renew their relationship until the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Jim joins the army. Meanwhile, Mamie begins buying up real estate from residents returning to the mainland and gets rich selling it to the military. She and Jim meet again, but things don't work out, and as the film ends Mamie is returning to Mississippi.

Marilyn Monroe was first choice to play Mamie Stover, but that didn't work out. She was in the midst of contract negotiations with the studio, 20th Century Fox, at the time and turning down many properties offered to her as a bargaining ploy. I enjoyed the film with Russell, but would have really like to see Monroe in the role. 

Russell handled the hard-bitten aspects of her role pretty well. Mamie tells her story of origins in abject poverty to Blair right away, and as we learn that drives her behavior. She wants to get rich, go back to Leesburg and lord it over all the people who looked down on her and her family. She does get rich, but loses Blair in the end. Apparently, if we go by the ending, she gives it all away before returning to her roots. 

The film is based on the 1951 novel of the same name by William Bradford Huie, born in Hartselle on November 13, 1910. Over his long career Huie wrote numerous novels, non-fiction books and short stories and articles for magazines. Among his best-known works of non-fiction is The Execution of Private Slovik about the only American soldier executed for desertion during the Second World War. By the time he died on November 20, 1986, he had been living back in Alabama for several decades. He is buried in Hartselle, where the public library was renamed in his honor.

Huie served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and his experiences influenced three of his novels. The first was Mamie Stover, followed by The Americanization of Emily in 1959 and then Hotel Mamie Stover in 1963. Americanization was filmed in 1964 with Julie Andrews and James Garner. All three novels have the same narrator.

Some changes were made in the first novel's story on its way to the screen. Mamie left Mississippi for Hollywood to become and actress, but ends up as a prostitute there before leaving for Hawaii. The location was probably changed to San Francisco because the screen version dropped Huie's criticisms of Hollywood. One thing unchanged is Mamie's relentless pursuit of war profiteering. Her poverty-stricken childhood in Mississippi left her with only one desire--to make money. 

Agnes Moorehead [almost unrecognizable as a bleached blonde!] plays Bertha Parchman, the crusty owner of The Bungalow. I've written about her 1973 visit to Birmingham here. 

Jonathan Yardley, long time book critic for The Washington Post, published an appreciation of Huie and his Mamie Stover novel in 2006. 

Sydney Boehm [1908-1990] was a screenwriter and producer whose career in Hollywood began in 1944 and extended until 1967. 

I think we can conclude Jane looks fabulous in the film, although she does spend most of it with red hair as "Flaming Mamie". 

Money comes between the lovers literally and figuratively. 

This paperback edition from Signet was published in 1964.

This first hardback edition had a somewhat less exciting cover than the paperback.

This inscription appears in my copy of the first edition. 

William Bradford Huie [1910-1986]

Alabama Book Covers (12): William Bradford Huie

Born in Hartselle in 1910, William Bradford Huie had a long, varied and controversial career as a writer of novels, non-fiction and investigative journalism. He graduated from Morgan County High School and in 1930 the University of Alabama. Soon he and new bride Ruth had settled in Birmingham where he wrote for the Post newspaper for several years. In 1936 he and a colleague started the pro-business magazine Alabama, the News Magazine of the Deep South. Although Huie stayed less than a year, the magazine continued publication until 1955.

Huie served in the Navy in World War II, and his experiences would give him lots of material for future novels and non-fiction. He spent much of the 1950's as a writer and then editor at the American Mercury Magazine and also traveled on lecture tours and made various television appearances.

By the second half of the decade he and Ruth had settled back in their hometown of Hartselle. Huie had already begun what might be called the Civil Rights period of his career. He and fellow Alabama native and writer Zora Neale Hurston attended the appeal and second trial of Ruby McCollum in Florida in 1954. McCollum, a wealthy and married black woman, had killed her white physician lover. The judge had issued a gag order, which Huie was accused of violating. He was arrested and spent a brief time in jail. 

He covered the murder of black teenager Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955 and the Freedom Summer murders in that state in 1964. Huie interviewed Martin Luther King, Jr.'s killer, James Earle Ray; King had written the introduction to Huie's book about the Freedom Summer deaths. In recognition of his efforts, the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross in his yard in 1967. He was interviewed in 1979 about these events for the documentary Eyes on the Prize. In 1997 a documentary about Huie appeared, I'm in the Truth Business.

Huie spent the rest of his life in Alabama. After Ruth died in 1973, he and his second wife lived in Scottsboro and then Guntersville where he died. He is buried in Hartselle; the public library was named after him in 2006. His papers were donated to Ohio State University. 

Below the photographs are some covers of Huie's books with comments on a few. 

William Bradford Huie [1910-1986]

Huie is buried in the Hartselle City Cemetery. 

Published in 1967, this novel was filmed in 1974 with Lee Marvin and Richard Burton in the cast. A recent assessment of this film by David Cranmer can be found on his blog Criminal Element. 

Published in 1942, Mud on the Stars was Huie's first novel and very autobiographical.

One of Huie's best known books, Slovak was published in 1954. In 1974 NBC broadcast a television movie version starring Martin Sheen. He won an Emmy for the performance, but refused to accept it since he felt actors' work should not be compared. Son Charlie had a small role in the production.

The novel Revolt of Mamie Stover (1951) follows a woman from Mississippi who rises through prostitution in Hollywood to become a war profiteer in Honolulu. This book, The Americanization of Emily (1959) and Hotel Mamie Stover (1963) form a trilogy with the same narrator. In 1956 Jane Russell played the title character in the film version of Revolt. 

Huie published this novel set in World War II in 1959. James Garner brought his considerable charm to the film version in 1964. Starring along with him were Julie Andrews, Melvyn Douglas and James Coburn.