I seem to recall when Hollywood actors studied stagecraft, maintained some manner of decorum and could be counted on at the box office for entertainment. and if not, at least they could be remembered for a bit of titillation, gossip and sex appeal off screen.
as a kid I can recollect the professionals like George Sanders, Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn doing yeoman's work and, if anything, having a bit of fun, sometimes too much so, off camera. and ditto for the women of that era, beginning with Mae West and moving to Myrna Loy, Carol Lombard and Susan Hayward.
My early era of film going was crowded with the likes of John Wayne, Peter Sellers, Claudia Cardinale, Peter Cushing, Barbara Shelley, Sophia Loren and Harry Carey, Jr., to name a few of the hundreds of actors who paraded across the large and small screens in good, fair and poor productions which kept my kid brother and me entranced and out of my mother's hair during those critical "formative" years.
But somehow, I just don't see those actors using the same grace and urbanity, the same high level of courtesy and class, the same clear objective thought and clarity that the Hollywood stars of today use in their light, witty and luminous monologues about today's most controversial and troubling topics.
Nope, a George Sanders, a John Wayne or a Cary Grant just wouldn't hold a candle to a Sean Penn, an alec Baldwin, or a Whoopi Goldberg when it comes to raw cognitive abilities and the incredibly wide range of true emotive potentialities. Nor would these bumpkins from an earlier time measure up to today's stars when it comes to a frank discussion of politics, the description of leading political figures of the party in opposition or in the explanation of dearly held beliefs of these effete catchpoles of modern liberal thought.
Today's Hollywood leading personae possess far greater educational achievements, a far richer vocabulary, a grander and more incisive understanding of the planetary forces of good and evil, are far more widely read and published, travel in infinitely richer and more variegated circles of fellow achievers, have access to grander sources of proven facts to marshal, are more keenly aware, were born with perceptive faculties far beyond those of their adoring public, and are utterly fearless in their promotion of their own private and vivid logotype of reality. In addition, their views - which they alone are able to reduce from their Einsteinian complexity to the understandably simple terms comprehensible by the common man on the street - are more clearly and effortlessly tossed out than a David Niven or a Dame May Whitty could ever even hope to mimic, were they alive and possessed twice the talent they were alleged to have had.
Take Sean Penn, for example. Never one to hide his candle under a bushel, the silver tongued super patriot called folks who disagreed with his highly charged "fact" finding trips to Iraq, "as failed actors, people who are envious." Which most of the world's population have been proven to be. But Sean's internecine, inchoate and expensive ramblings inserted in the New York Times, especially the tortured grammar concerning Saddam's retreat, gave us all a quick view into the murky twists and turns in Penn's finely tuned Weltanschauung.
Later, however, Sean's near fatal grandstanding in the Katrina quicksand backfired. Clad in a white flak jacket, wearing designer sunglasses, launching a sinking boat load of flunkies, hangers on and cameramen worthy of an apocalypse Now voyage into nowhere, bailing the rising water with a red plastic cup, all in a send up to a Kerry-esque filming of his own bravery in a "save the children" fiasco - Penn barely escaped the clutches of the toxic sludge in this poorly planned and executed personal rescue mission. as one wag was quick to point out, however, there was, at last, no room in the boat for the children he was intent upon rescuing. This episode did, however, garner the struggling actor a good deal of interesting publicity, especially considering the Hollywood view that publicity of any type is good.
Poor alec. He was absolutely terrific as Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October. But what happened? Somewhere along the way poor old al became a stolid mind-numbing railler. In addition to his latest descriptions of Dick Cheney as a "terrorist," Big alec also explained to the world that the Republican Party has been "hijacked by fundamentalist wackos," and has gone on to say that he's sorry that his party is led by the "chickens**t Democrats in the Senate." Baldwin now dreams of assisting the Democrats in gathering evidence for Cheney's impeachment because of the unheralded Democratic sweep of both houses of Congress he sees coming in 2006. a stroke of serendipity, he believes, appearing as a direct result of his clear thinking and his ability to impart his grandiloquent and sweeping ideality to the people.
Of course a few years ago, in a bid for a Hollywood embrace of Islamist ideals long before the recent worldwide cartoon madness took hold, the rotund Baldwin called for the stoning of Henry Hyde to death and the "killing of their (sic) wives and children," before an enraptured and chiliastic crowd of similarly titillated boot lickers and lackeys.
Whoopi, Whoopi, Whoopi, what are we to do. The old genital grab and the accompanying send up to the President was in such good taste, required such a high level of talent and repeated practice that not much more need be said. Your class, your sense of humor and your ability to hold a crowd speechless can't be faulted. Your innate ability to transcend fashionable lineage, to break the mold of social rank, to expand the boundaries of quaint discourse, to toss off the occasional four letter word without the slightest hint of a derogatory meaning has expanded the consciousness of americans and citizens of the world alike. all this, combined with your dizzying array of acting talent, has served to thrust you among the true apogees of acting ability, where you inhabit that gilded galaxy of pure talent with al Franken, Punxcatawney Phil and the Geico Gecko.
Thank Heavens we are no longer forced to labor along with the likes of a John Barrymore or a Sir Lawrence Olivier, those poorly spoken, rarely practiced and two dimensional oddities.
No, it is far better to listen to the gas house gang of today. after all is said and done, the best lines, the most outlandish buffoonery and by far the greatest monkey shines are to be found off screen with today's beau monde of loud mouthed poseurs.
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