Celeste Holm Syndrome

August 10, 2020
Columbia College professor Lazar (I’ll Be Your Mirror) celebrates some of classic Hollywood’s most acclaimed character actors in this spirited essay collection. He begins by celebrating writer-director Preston Sturges’s unofficial stock company of brilliant character actors, including William Demarest, Julius Tannen, and Esther Howard, and elsewhere celebrates the physical comedy of Jack Carson, “king of the double take,” and Eric Blore’s “supercilious but frustrated” servant characters. However, Lazar goes beyond praise to investigate the nuances of performance, singling out what made these performers successful, and often subversive. In the title essay, Lazar laments the Hollywood trope of the sexy, confident woman passed over by the male lead for a waifish young ingenue, recalling in particular Celeste Holm’s standout turn in Gentleman’s Agreement (he slyly notes that Holm, deemed too old, at 30, for Gregory Peck in the 1947 film, died at 95 married to her 41-year-old third husband). One of the most resonant essays, “Ma,” considers five classic portrayals of mother characters, including Thelma Ritter’s in Birdman of Alcatraz and Jane Darwell’s in The Grapes of Wrath, alongside reflections on Lazar’s mother’s death from cancer when he was a young man. Fans of Hollywood’s Golden Age will delight in this affecting look at what makes actors truly memorable, even if they’re not in the spotlight.

August 1, 2020
Background becomes foreground in this take on actors with memorable faces and forgotten names. As a young man in the 1970s gazing up at the silver screens of the Thalia, the Art, and the Bleeker Street--Manhattan's film classic revival cinemas--Lazar learned about the importance of supporting actors--e.g., Edward Everett Horton and Ruth Donnelly in the comedy Holiday, who upstaged the film's stars, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. In personal, insightful essays, the author defines the brilliance of second-billed players such as Horton and Donnelly as well as many others (Eric Blore, Jessie Royce Landis, Franklin Pangborn) in Hollywood films from the 1930s through the 1960s. Lazar divides his subjects into two categories: actors whose quirks, mannerisms, and attitudes remained constant in all of their films and actors who created a gallery of completely different characters. Among the former group, the titular Holm, along with Eleanor Parker, Nina Foch, and Eve Arden, played chic, mature, canny women whom male leads ultimately threw over for bland, unthreatening leading ladies. At the time, Hollywood's version of patriarchy ruled. Throughout, Lazar limns his subjects with wit. Holm's voice in All About Eve, he writes, was "tonic to [Bette] Davis's gin." But his essays transcend reminiscence. A look at the difficult Oscar Levant reflects on the broader nature of character itself, and, inevitably, the observations on the performers reflect on the author. A perceptive chapter on actors notable for playing mothers leads to Lazar's sensitive memories of his own mother. Most entertaining, though, is the penultimate chapter, about Martin Balsam. The actor was a close friend of Lazar's father, a successful travel agent who himself knew a bit about acting: He impersonated VIPs on the phone to get "unavailable" rooms and plane reservations, and he once foiled a robbery by feigning a faint. Well-observed reflections for true fans of the silver screen.

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