What's say let's be buddies?

George Chandler

1898 - 1985

William Wellman

1896 - 1975

In the annals of great Hollywood director/actor teams, a few names spring immediately to mind - John Ford/John Wayne, John Huston/Humphrey Bogart, Billy Wilder/Jack Lemmon. Perhaps George Cukor/Katharine Hepburn. Some of us may even bring up Henry King/Tyrone Power. Not that it gets us anywhere, but we bring them up anyway. Rarely is the felicitous teaming of William Wellman and character actor George Chandler mentioned. Well, we're going to change that right now.

Wellman, the WWI pilot and Hollywood bad boy started out as an actor and became a director who wanted to make every sort of picture there was and created such bona fide classics as Beau Geste, The Ox-Bow Incident, A Star is Born, Wild Boys of the Road, The Story of GI Joe and Wings.

Chandler was born in Waukegan, Illinois and put himself through the University of Illinois by playing violin in orchestras. As a teenager he played the Vaudeville circuit billed as "The Musical Nut". He started working in movies in the silent era and is one of those fellows who worked constantly.

George is billed as a reporter/newspaperman/photographer in over 25 pictures from 1931's Sob Sisters to his 1961 television series Ichabod and Me. Watch for George as a journalist the next time you watch The Beast of the City, The Kennel Murder Case or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. If you need a taxi driver, doorman, stagehand or telegrapher - why, George is your man. His is a familiar face to Boomers as Uncle Petrie from Lassie and guest appearances on everything from Wagon Train to Dragnet. He played Jonathan Kent in the 1975 TV Musical It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman.

George Chandler as the radio operator in
Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937)

Between 1936 to 1951 George worked with his pal Wellman on 22 pictures. He had some great roles too. Amos Hart in 1942's Roxie Hart (I see you nodding your head sagely. You must have seen Chicago.) He was a stagehand in the terrific backstage murder mystery Lady of Burlesque in 1943. Hubby commented before watching this movie that it didn't seem like a Wild Bill sort of movie until he saw all the gals strutting their stuff!

My favourite Chandler role is probably "Mackeral Face" in Westward the Women in 1951, as an anxious potential bridegroom. In the recently blogged about Battleground, the Academy Award winner from 1949, George plays a walking wounded mess sergeant.

Wellman spoke about George in his 1974 autobiography, A Short Time for Insanity:

"I had different techniques to gain time to gather my so-called directional forces together. George Chandler was technique number one. George was not only my pal but a great actor as well. He had played everything for me, from the dumb messenger boy in A Star is Born to the screwball husband of Ginger Rogers in Roxie Hart. George had been in close to forty of my pictures, and he developed a second sight of my moments of uncertainty. If he happened to be in the scene that was bothering me, he would find some way of buggering it up, forgetting his lines, sneezing, not once or twice, a seizure, or whispering while I was talking - then the roof blew off, and believe me I could blow it a mile. When I had put George and all his relatives and ancestors where they belonged, I called off work for ten minutes, stormed into my dressing room office, slammed the door shut and sat down quietly, and always worked out my problem. It was like magic."

George Chandler was married for 50 years to Catherine Ward and they had three sons. He was a Screen Actors Guild board member from 1946 - 1948, SAG's treasurer from 1948 - 1960 and in 1960 took over its presidency following Ronald Reagan. George Chandler is one of the reasons so many of us are fans of the movies of the classic Hollywood era.

Favourite movies: Battleground (1949)

Wild Bill Wellman
1896 - 1975

William Wellman is a director I have long admired. He was a rogue, a character and a man who made many, many fine films. I'm sentimental about the man and his work dating back to Tuesday, July 9, 1974. On that date The Ontario Film Insitute hosted An Evening With William A. Wellman that included two of his best, the thoughtful movie about a lynching based on Water Von Tilburg Clark's novel, The Ox-Bow Incident and a story of displaced youth during the Great Depression, Wild Boys of the Road. The highlight of the evening was the entertaining presence of the director. It was a free evening of entertainment. My Dad read about it in the paper and asked if I would like to go. Would I? Sixteen years old, absolutely mad for classic movies and a night out with my dad!

"Wild Bill" Wellman wanted to direct every kind of movie there was, and I believe he did. Westerns (Track of the Cat), comedies (Nothing Sacred), crime pictures (The Public Enemy), et cetera. A WWI veteran, he seemed to have an affinity for stories of people facing adversity. He directed Wings, the first picture to win the Academy Award. He directed the well-regarded story of war correspondent Ernie Pyle in The Story of G.I. Joe. And he directed Battleground, a picture MGM didn't want to make in 1949. The reasoning was that nobody would want to see another war picture. If it's as good a picture as Battleground then, yes, people would want to see it. It was the idea of producer/writer Dore Schary and when the receipts and the awards piled up, he was made head of the studio.

Battleground is the story of one squad of the 101st Airborne Division. It is the epic Battle of the Bulge through the eyes of a few men - strangers, yet family. We see them through the eyes of rookie replacement Jim Layton (Marshall Thompson). The polished Sgt. Kinnie (James Whitmore), cocky Holley (Van Johnson), thoughtful Jarvess (John Hodiak), easy-going southerner Spudler (Jerome Courtland), all-round great guy Rodrigues (Ricardo Montalban), elder statesman "Pop" Stazak (George Murphy), whiner Kippton (Douglas Fowley) and others played by Richard Jaeckel, James Arness, Herbert Anderson and Don Taylor.

Layton grows up before our eyes. It is inevitable and not always pretty. Holley, too, for all his bravado grows through facing up to his own fears. James Whitmore was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Sgt. Kinnie. While we begin to see the emotional layers crack for the men, in Sgt. Kinnie we see this physically as the uniform becomes ragged and his boots are lost to rags. My feet hurt just thinking about him. Whitmore wanted his character to look like Pulitzer Prize Winner Bill Mauldin's Sadsack - and, does he ever!

Thanks. Just what we needed.

The script of Battleground is by Bastogne veteran Robert Pirosh, who won an Oscar for his work. It's one thing to write what you know, but another to write as well as Pirosh did. He would be Oscar-nominated a couple of years later for his work on another war picture, Go for Broke! the story of an all Japanese-American platoon. He would also develop the television series Combat (1962-1967) as well as writing for every show from The Waltons and A Family Affair to Ironside and Bonanza.

A favourite line which typifies the movie for me is spoken by Jarvess (John Hodiak), who ran a newspaper with his wife back home. "Only one thing gets me. When you work on a newspaper, I'd get those wire releases and know I was the first person in town who had the news, all the news. I guarantee you my wife knows what's going on in Bastogne. All I know is what is going on in the 2nd squad of the 3rd platoon of I Company."

Battleground is an enthralling story and a fine example of an ensemble cast. All the elements mesh perfectly to entertain, educate and move the viewer.

The final scene of the movie, with fresh troops moving to the front and "our guys", their ranks depleted and their bodies broken, proudly marching back to Sgt. Kinnie's cadence count is iconic among war pictures, and chokes me up every time.

Recent passings: Van Johnson (1916 - 2008), Ricardo Montalban (1920 - 2009) and James Whitmore (1921 - 2009).