Top 20 Desert Isle Films

It’s sure refreshing to take a breather from backpacking—and talking about it—especially during these steamy dog days of August. One last trail observation, though: I discovered a nifty trick for alleviating the toil of steep mountain climbs is to create mental lists.

Here’s one of them, yet another of my periodic “desert isle” lists. This time it’s my top twenty favorite films (appropriate, since I’m partially immobile due to a leg vein that looks and feels like a red-hot fire iron, and have once again become good friends with my recliner and television remote). I think I formulated this list while struggling up Pond Mountain in Tennessee. Or maybe it was while descending into the town of Erwin.

Uncharacteristically for a born critic like me, I didn’t critique them. I just provide year, two key actors, and a short plot summation. I omitted director for brevity’s sake…but if you’re curious, directors Martin Ritt and Sergio Leone take top honors here, with two films apiece (all four are Westerns).

My favorite era is the 1960s, so it’s no surprise these films were made during that decade, or close to it. And I think you’ll see that many could be characterized as “guy flicks”…maybe because I’m a guy? 🥸 Who knows.

Lastly—while in my mind all of these movies are well-made—not all might be Leonard Maltin four-star-caliber. I admire critically acclaimed powerhouses like Citizen Kane and Schindler’s List, but they may not be the best entertainment for an isolated island in the South Pacific. However, the movies below I return to time and again and are entertaining with a strong nostalgia element, and those are the criteria I use for my desert isle collection.

Check ’em out, and let me know some of your own fave films—especially if made outside Hollywood, since this list woefully neglects foreign and independent films. I’m thinking of you, Neil, Mike, and CB!

“I hardly think a few birds are going to bring about the end of the world.”

“These weren’t a few birds.”

(Listed in order of release date):

On the Waterfront (1954). Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger. An idealistic young boxer and longshoreman defies a corrupt and powerful union boss.

Twelve Angry Men (1957). Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb. A jury of twelve very different personalities deliberates guilt or innocence in a murder trial.

Ben-Hur (1959). Charlton Heston, Stephen Boyd. The life of a Jewish merchant, galley slave, and charioteer during the time of Christ.

“Hate keeps a man alive. It gives him strength.”

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). Gregory Peck, Mary Badham. A woman reminisces about her influential father and her childhood in segregated southern Alabama.

Hud (1963). Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas. A free-spirited man without principles clashes with his rancher-father while negatively influencing his younger nephew.

The Birds (1963). Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor. A woman visits a small seaside village and has a strange and horrific effect on bird behavior.

The Train (1964). Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield. A French Resistance fighter and railway inspector tries to prevent a Nazi colonel from absconding with priceless paintings.

A Hard Day’s Night (1964). John Lennon, Paul McCartney. Humorous semi-documentary of The Beatles and their recording and touring activities.

Goldfinger (1964). Sean Connery, Gert Frobe. Agent 007 tries to prevent an evil mastermind from stealing gold from Fort Knox.

“Do you expect me to talk, Goldfinger?”

“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!”

Nevada Smith (1966). Steve McQueen, Karl Malden. A young man in the West goes on a trail of vengeance after three men brutally murder his parents.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach. Three men compete to uncover buried treasure in the West during the American Civil War.

Hombre (1967). Paul Newman, Fredric March. A white man raised by Apaches is forced into helping a group of bigoted stagecoach passengers.

The Graduate (1967). Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft. A recent college graduate confused about his future falls in love with the daughter of a woman who seduced him.

Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Henry Fonda, Jason Robards. Sprawling Western involving land rights, vengeance, and the arrival of the railroad in the changing American West.

The Party (1968). Peter Sellers, Claudine Longet. A bumbling but lovable Asian-Indian actor creates havoc after accidentally being invited to a swanky Hollywood dinner party.

Easy Rider (1969). Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper. Two hippies experience the best and worst of America while riding cross-country on motorcycles.

“Oh, they’ll talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But if they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ’em.”

Woodstock (1970). Michael Lang, Artie Kornfeld. Award-winning documentary about the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair Festival.

Little Big Man (1970). Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway. An aged white man reminisces about being adopted by Indians and his relationships with Custer, Wild Bill Hickock, and his elderly Cheyenne mentor.

Jeremiah Johnson (1972). Robert Redford, Will Geer. A disillusioned Mexican-American War veteran flees to the mountains and becomes a mythic figure to Crow Indians.

Gettysburg (1993). Jeff Daniels, Martin Sheen. Docu-drama of Union and Confederate armies clashing in an epic three-day battle in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

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And the winning actor is…envelope, please…character actor MARTIN BALSAM, who amazingly appears in four of these films (On the Waterfront, Twelve Angry Men, Hombre, and Little Big Man).

Never mind that you never snagged a lead role, Martin. Winning the Longitudes Lifetime Achievement Award is nothing to sneeze at!

Carnival of Familial Souls

 

In my last post, I talked about my grandmother. Sadly – and I don’t fault her for this – she was merely a sheet of newspaper that the wind blew toward me one November day. But since I’m plucking walnuts from the family tree, I might as well keep plucking, and climb out on another limb.

These kinfolk, to my knowledge, never experienced forced incarceration like Grandma. But they may be even more interesting, if only because they managed to circulate amongst “normal” society. It’s no coincidence that three of them share the same bloodline as Grandma.

All are long deceased, I’m not using last names, and there are no living descendants, so I shouldn’t need to worry about a libel suit. If their ghosts visit me some night of the full moon… well, if I can avoid strangulation or suffocation, their specters will provide enthralling material for a future nonsensical longitudes post.

Grandma had an older sister named Blanche. According to my dad (who heard it from his dad), Blanche was even more “peculiar” than Grandma. My aunt claims that Blanche used to cook meals while dancing around in her wedding gown. Since the name Blanche is French for “white,” this makes sense. Maybe it was the only garment she owned, because my mom says that, after she drove her husband to his death by suicide (my aunt’s theory) or a broken heart (my dad’s theory), she was reduced to scrubbing toilets in Penn Station. (For you younger readers, I’m not referring to the fast-food chain, but a historic passenger terminal in New York City.)

But this was during the Depression, and I’m sure a lot of people felt lucky to be employed scrubbing toilets.

Blanche had two children, Virginia and John. John, like his heartbroken and/or suicidal father, died mysteriously at a young age. John fancied himself a poet. My dad knew him and said he was “a real oddball.” But my dad hated non-pragmatic things like poetry, so maybe that’s why he considered John an oddball.

After John died, his mother (Blanche, the toilet cleaner with the wedding dress) paid for a large copper caricature of him to be embedded in his tombstone, accompanied by the words “The Forgotten Poet.”

(If this is getting too weird for y’all, I won’t be offended if you stop reading).

Virginia (John’s sister) was the most normal one in the family. But even she had her idiosyncrasies. She deliberately married a gay guy named Bown (the silent film buff who was in my last post). Now, I’m all for gay marriage. But I’ve never heard of a gay man and a straight woman exchanging vows. Do people do that? What the heck was he thinking?

Like my piano-playing grandmother and failed-poet cousin, Virginia and Bown were artsy-fartsy. But their domain was theater.

They ran an acting studio in Manhattan in the 1950s. Some of their plays were written by Bown, who seems to have been sort of an Ed Wood of New York theater. One of the plays was a one-character oddity starring a woman who was both deaf and blind. This was a very compassionate and progressive thing for Bown to attempt. I’m assuming the actress wasn’t also dumb. Now that would have been really avant-garde.

Even though this “Professional Actors’ Studio” was off-off-off-off-Broadway, a few big names did pass through. One of the students was television and movie star John Forsythe. So was either Ann Blyth (MILDRED PIERCE) or Anne Baxter (ALL ABOUT EVE)… one of those Annie B’s, anyway. And Kirk Douglas briefly was a guest instructor. Probably very briefly.

My impression is that Bown was the mastermind behind this troupe, and Virginia merely acted. Or, at least, tried to. I Googled their studio once and came across a review by noted theater critic Kenneth Tynan of a production of theirs. Virginia had the lead role in the play. Tynan referred to her as a “rock-like creature.” The play was called “Queen Lear.”

(Folks, I’m not making this stuff up).

This acting studio seemed to exist in a New York City nether world: it aspired to artistic greatness, but was permanently stuck in mediocrity (similar to this blog… hey, at least we aspire). There’s little evidence it even existed, other than one or two small newspaper blurbs. Bown closed it down abruptly one day after he caught several of his actors backstage smoking marijuana. It wasn’t so much that he objected to the drug’s illegality. It was because the incident deeply saddened him: he felt that acting was the highest “high” in life, and one shouldn’t need anything else.

Later on, Bown amassed one of the largest collections of silent films in the country. It’s now preserved at Phillips Exeter Academy in Massachusetts.

Well, there you have it. Bown, Virginia, Blanche, and John the Forgotten Poet. Somewhere I’m sure they’re happily munching popcorn together while watching one of Bown’s favorite silent films.

It may sound like I’m poking fun at these people. But I honestly don’t mean any harm. I’m sure all were very nice (maybe even Blanche). I just find curios like these interesting, and they definitely make for great conversation. Every family seems to have at least one member who’s a little “off:” the free-spirited uncle, the bawdy aunt, the self-destructive sibling, the perverted grandpa. I just happen to have several.

Whether or not I’m a similar curio, or whether or not I’m evolving into one, I’ll leave for others to judge.

Steve McQueen: The King of Cool (Part One)

One of the fun things about hosting a blog is you get to share with others your fave hobbies and heroes. Most of my childhood heroes were either musical or athletic. But some were delivered via MGM or 20^th Century Fox.

In my last post I took a swipe at the Academy Awards ceremony. But as crude and ostentatious as Tinseltown can get, it’s not all bad news. In its defense, the film industry does provide (fairly) affordable diversion for a large demographic. And moving pictures do have a way of making our lives just a little less drab.

Ray Davies of The Kinks sang that “Celluloid heroes never really die.” If that’s true of anyone, it’s true of actor Steve McQueen. McQueen’s heyday was the 1960s-70s, when he was the biggest draw in Hollywood. He left us way too young, but he’ll always be alive in celluloid. He was my favorite actor, bar none. “Cool” is real important when you’re young. And McQueen virtually defined the concept of cool.

But to be cool, McQueen didn’t need sunglasses, fast cars, or a stable of foxy women (though he had all that and more). It was more the way he moved and spoke both on and offscreen. He had a ruggedness and lithe athleticism that appealed to men as much as women. He rarely overacted, kept his dialog sparse, and emphasized a graceful physicality (plus, not every actor is lucky to be born with steel blue eyes and a winsome smile).

McQueen created a mold for numerous “action heroes” who sprang up in his wake – I won’t name them, you can probably guess. But these screen children of McQueen always looked stilted, plastic, mass-assembled. They just didn’t have McQueen’s naturalness and poise. Maybe because the line between McQueen’s art and life was often blurred. He was the anti-Hollywood anti-hero.

McQueen is a celluloid hero who was so riveting a presence, he’ll never fade from screen glory. March 24 will be his 85^th birthday. Here’s my two-part tribute to the King of Cool.

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The first movie of McQueen’s that I ever saw was the WW2 POW escape film THE GREAT ESCAPE. In 1963 it had been a major box-office success, and it was soon scheduled to debut on television. This was in a time when there were only three TV stations: ABC, CBS, and NBC. One of the older kids on my block (either Mike Keefer or John Hire, I can’t remember which) had probably seen a television preview or a “TV Guide” advertisement. Well, the buildup to the televised airing of this film was almost as big as the annual showing of THE WIZARD OF OZ. Here’s how our curbside talk probably went:

“Man, you just gotta see this movie!”

“Why?”

“It’s really cool! This escaped POW jumps a barbed wire fence with a motorcycle!”

(Obviously, the motorcycle stunt was the sole incentive for watching the movie).

Well, THE GREAT ESCAPE came on at 9 pm, and I did see a little of it before bedtime (it was the latest I’d ever stayed up – at least until the debut of the popular detective show “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.“). The much-anticipated motorcycle scene came toward the end, so I probably missed this tilting of the earth’s axis. But THE GREAT ESCAPE was my introduction to Steve McQueen, and over the years I would see almost all of his flicks.

When I die I don’t wanna go to heaven

I just wanna drive my beautiful machine

Up north on some Sonoma country road

With Jimmy Dean and Steve McQueen”

– Jimmy Webb, from “Too Young to Die”

McQueen was born March 24, 1930 in Indianapolis, Indiana as Terence Steven McQueen. His father, a stunt pilot in a traveling circus, abandoned the family when Steve was young. His mother was supposedly an alcoholic and prostitute. McQueen briefly lived on his great-uncle’s farm in Missouri, before moving to Los Angeles with his mother and an abusive stepfather when McQueen was 12.

In California, McQueen joined a gang and had frequent clashes with both his stepfather and the cops. He was eventually sent to California Junior Boys Republic in Chino, California. This reform school helped tame McQueen’s lawless ways a little (after he became famous, he made frequent visits to the school, and made secretive and substantial charitable contributions).

Chilling out on the set of “The Great Escape” (1963) with Charles Bronson and James Coburn

At age 16, McQueen joined his mother in Greenwich Village, New York. He eventually signed with the Merchant Marine, and later the U.S. Marine Corps, where he served in the honor guard. In the Marines, McQueen learned discipline, and he was honorably discharged in 1950. He later drew on his military experience in several movies.

The G.I. Bill helped McQueen finance acting classes at Sanford Meisner’s renowned Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, in New York City. Then he auditioned for Lee Strasberg’s famous Actor’s Studio. Out of some 2,000 actors, McQueen was one of only five who was accepted (Martin Landau was another). He acted in small theater productions, supplementing his income with winnings from weekend motorcycle racing on Long Island. In 1955 he starred in the Broadway production of “Hatful of Rain,” a story that dealt with heroin addiction (the play was later made into a movie, without McQueen). McQueen’s dramatic turn in “Hatful” spurred a move to Hollywood to try his hand at film.

Between 1955 and his breakthrough role in THE GREAT ESCAPE, McQueen popped up in many TV roles and movies, sometimes uncredited. Most are unmemorable, but some of the highlights include the following:

Ready to fight, in his first film

Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956): a loose biography of boxer Rocky Graziano, this is McQueen’s earliest film role. He draws on his rebellious past for a bit part as a switchblade wielding pool hall punk. This movie is notable for being Paul Newman’s second film, and it’s very good (Sylvester Stallone had to have seen this at least a dozen times before he wrote ROCKY). McQueen and Newman would later become the top grossing male stars in Hollywood and, despite being friends offscreen, battle for top billing.

Stalking slime with Aneta Corsaut in “The Blob”

The Blob (1958): a typical cheesy, 1950s monster movie, this was McQueen’s first lead role in a movie. Even though a wizened 28, he played a teenager who helps save his town from an alien slime that has a hunger for humans. The cult film is notable for the title song, an early and decidedly goofy composition by Burt Bacharach. Also notable for McQueen’s love interest, Aneta Corsaut, who later appeared as Helen Crump in “The Andy Griffith Show” (why the heck would she dump the King of Cool for a small-town sheriff??!!).

Perfecting the cool quotient in “Wanted: Dead or Alive”

Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958-61): McQueen became a TV fixture in this series, playing a bounty hunter named “Josh Randall.” It was an ok show, running for 94 episodes, but it was overshadowed by another CBS Western, “Rawhide,” which starred another future film superstar (and professional rival): Clint Eastwood.

The Magnificent Seven (1960): this Western was based on Akira Kurosawa’s well-regarded Japanese-language film SEVEN SAMURAI (1954). Most critics agree that THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN falls short of Kurosawa’s film, but it did have a memorable musical score by Elmer Bernstein, it spawned three sequels, and it featured a posse of present and future stars: McQueen, Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and Robert Vaughn (Bronson and Coburn later rejoined McQueen in THE GREAT ESCAPE). Steve would become the biggest star of all. Although Brynner had the lead role, McQueen quietly stole the picture. His smooth portrayal of a drifter/gambler/gunfighter, banding with others of his ilk to protect a small Mexican village from marauders, solidified his antihero credentials.

Magnificent, in “The Magnificent Seven”

Here was a character who (like bounty hunter Josh Randall) lived on the fringes, alienated from conventional society. With THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, McQueen began to construct a movie persona of a flawed protagonist… an antihero, or a hero who lacks traditional moral attributes. While the antihero character had been around since classical Greek drama, until James Dean and Marlon Brando popularized him in the 1950s, he was largely absent from production-code Hollywood.

McQueen would vault himself to the highest rafters in Hollywood portraying antiheroes. And, like fellow speed freak and Indiana native Dean, he never lost an appetite for danger.

(Continued…)