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Batman Villains; Columbo Villains...Hitchcock Villains

posted 3 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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In their famous book long interview Hitchcock/Truffaut, at one point Hitchcock says to Truffaut, "The better the villain, the better the picture."

Hitchcock knew of what he spoke. Hitchcock was known to often FAVOR his villains over his heroes. Sometimes the villain got top billing (Ray Milland in Dial M for Murder; Anthony Perkins -- we know now -- in Psycho.) Often the villain was a more important actor than the hero -- Joseph Cotton vs MacDonald Carey in Shadow of a Doubt(though first-billed Teresa Wright is really the protagonist of the piece); Anthony Perkins versus John Gavin in Psycho.

A couple of "near-equal" actor pairings -- Robert Walker and Farley Granger in Strangers on a Train, near-unknowns Barry Foster and Jon Finch in Frenzy -- ended up with the villain being the true "lead" and focus of the story.

And one time, even with a major star as the hero -- Cary Grant in North by Northwest -- Hitchcock found the budget money to hire a pretty big star to play the villain: James Mason. The two men were like a matched pair: middle-aged, British-accented with a twist, elegant and suave.

Less well matched but sympathetic against Grant was the diminuitive Claude Rains in Notorious. Rains is an ex-Nazi with designs on a return to power but -- he's rather the poor little schmuck cuckolded by Ingrid Bergman with Cary Grant.

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Many of the actors listed above -- and their Hitchcock villains -- are lost to the sands of time in 2021 as I post this, but I thought I'd drop by to salute them , and to demonstrate two SETS of other villains who rather paved the way for MY interest in Hitchcock villains.

I grew up in the 60's and the 70s, and there were two TV series in those two decades(one per decade) that very much illustrated Hitchcock's credo: "The better the villain, the better the movie" (or in this case, the better the TV series.)

Batman: Once upon a time -- in 1966 through 1968 -- the only Batman the viewing public got was a TV series. Two half hours a week -- one on Wednesday night, one on Thursday night, a cliffhanger in between. It was aimed at kids(older kids, I'd say, what with all the va-va-voom molls for the villains), it was "campy," and it was "written bad on purpose."

But early on , the show's producer made this point: "This series isn't about Batman and Robin -- its about the villains."

True enough. Batman and Robin were "fixed in place," but as a young fan I always clamoured to see who "next week's villain" would be. Often , that villain was a "known quantity" from the comic books. The Big Four , of course, were: The Joker(Cesar Romero), The Penguin(Burgess Meredith), The Riddler(Frank Gorshin, except one time, John Astin) and Catwoman(Julie Newmar, except one time Eartha Kitt on TV, and Lee Meriweather in the movie made from the show.)

But "TV Batman" had a load of OTHER villains, too , and I was always intrigued by them and what they were going to look like and how they were going to act.

Some were from the comic book -- Mr. Freeze, for instance, who was played on TV by three different actors three different times(George Sanders, Eli Wallach, and director Otto Preminger.)

Some were evidently "invented for the TV show." I may be wrong, but I think that those included The Bookworm, Egghead, The Puzzler , and Shame.

My favorite of the TV era was David Wayne as "Jervis Tetch, The Mad Hatter" so named, I suppose, because to just say "Mad Hatter" would leads to copyright problems. I liked Wayne's flamboyant look (big hat, big moustache), wild tailoring, INCREDIBLE voice ("It's curtains for you, Baht-man") and general meanness. Wayne only played the role twice, but its memorable.

Also memorable about those Batman villains: a lot of them were played by once-bigger movie stars of the 40s and 50s including these "Hitchcock players":

George Sanders (Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent) (Mr. Freeze)
Anne Baxter (I Confess) (Zelda the Great AND ...some Russian chick.)
Tallulah Bankhead (Lifeboat) (The Black Widow)
Walter Slezak (ALSO Lifeboat) (The Clock King)

but also non-Hitchcock but notable players like Roddy McDowall, Vincent Price, Carolyn Jones, and Art Carney.

Van Johnson played The Minstrel (Renaissance Fair, not blackface) and he had been a BIG MGM movie star in the 40s.

And Cliff Robertson played Shame (a spoof of Shane) in 1968 -- the same YEAR he won the Best Actor Oscar for Charly.

So, yeah -- the villains were a big deal on Batman, and the big casting on Batman. That said, kudos to Adam West's Dudley Do-Right version of Batman and Burt Ward's thoroughly bratty and irritating Robin(he didn't DO anything wrong -- he was just irritating.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The TV series Batman crashed quickly and it took to 1989 for the franchise to reach the big screen with one of the biggest stars of all as the Joker: Jack Nicholson. Interesting: the Batman movies seem to be more interested in new actors playing the same old villains(Joker, Catwoman...now Riddler and Penguin) than exploring the many, many alternatives on the old TV show. Mr. Freeze...we've gotten, its true. But little else.

And this. Certain MOVIE Batman villains -- Poison Ivy, Two-Face Harvey Dent, and Bane -- were never on the TV show. (Two-Face was rumored to have been played by Clint Eastwood -- ! -- but his face was deemed too ugly for TV; they went for a masked character called False Face instead -- played by "?" -- Malachi Throne instead.)

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With Batman on TV gone by the 60's, another series came up with the idea of a "Special Guest Villain" each episode -- not each WEEK(it was only a once-a-month show at BEST): Columbo.

Columbo came from a Broadway play called Prescription: Murder which became a TV movie in 1968 and introduced Peter Falk's rumpled, absent-minded police lieutenant as a tougher, more traditional cop with better clothes and a shorter haircut. But the elegant guest villain was well in place -- here suave and handsome Gene Barry(with a slight Cary Grant voice) as a murderous doctor. Three years later, a pilot was made -- with hot female lawyer Lee Grant as the killer -- and soon Columbo "went to series" and a true legend was born.

Unlike as with the TV Batman, it can't be said that Columbo mattered less than his villains - but surely each episode's villain was a pretty major star(mainly of TV, not generally of movies) and held their own with the rumpled little detective.

On Columbo, we find TWO female stars of one of the greatest Hitchcock movies -- Psycho -- as Special Guest Killers: Vera Miles (as a gorgeous cosmetics queen) in one; Janet Leigh(as a fading movie star) in another.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

CONT

Crossing over from Batman, we find Anne Baxter as a guest killer on Columbo in one episode.

And one Hitchcock villain -- Ray Milland from Dial M for Murder -- once played a Columbo killer (though, oddly enogh, Milland had a better role, in a better episode, where he was support to Robert Culp as the Guest Killer.)

Speaking of Dial M for Murder, this Hitchcock film is pretty much the template for Columbo: rich, elegant villain plots the Perfect Murder; police inspector turns up for some cat and mouse and exposes the plot. Further advancing the Columbo template is how the first half hour of Dial M has the villain laying out his plot and carrying it out(but it backfires in THIS story) BEFORE the cop arrives. Plus, the cop is a tweedy Scotland Yard man(John Williams) and not a rumpled New Yorker lost in LA (Falk.) Still: Columbo IS "Dial M for Murder: The TV Series."

...and with an added "taste" of one other Hitchcock classic: Psycho.

Hitchcock fans will remember that the middle third of Psycho is given over to Martin Balsam as "Arbogast"(first name Milton, never said in the movie, only in the book), a private eye who arrives at the Bates Motel to do a one-scene cat-and-mouse interrogation of Norman Bates that very much resembles Columbo's friendly verbal duels with Columbo killers yet to come. There are a coupla differences between Arbogast and Columbo (despite the similarities of their single-named characters) One is that Arbogast is much more serious, efficient and put together than Columbo. And the other is that just as Arbogast is about to solve the murder -- HE gets murdered(slaughtered, really) in one of the great horror scenes of all time.

Still, Arbogast is as much a part of Columbo as Dial M for Murder -- two Hitchcock movies surely inspired that show.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Rather as Batman "re-used" key villains (The Joker, The Penguin, Catwoman)...Columbo "re-used" a few actors a few times. They were just too good as villains to be used only once.

Hitchcock used Cary Grant and James Stewart four times each as Hitchcock heroes.

Columbo used Jack Cassidy and Robert Culp three times each as Columbo killers.

Cassidy and Culp were studies in contrast: Cassidy was blonde, flamboyant, rather preening and arrogant. Culp was dark haired, cold, deadpan, grouchy. I preferred Culp of the two.

Funny how Culp played each of his three villains: One with eyeglasses, no moustache. One with a moustache, no eyeglasses. One clean shaven, no eyeglasses. Some wag found a photo of Culp in glasses and a moustache on some other show and said: "Look he's playing two villains at once."

The original Columbo series ran in the 70's. The return was mainly in the 90's. By the 90's, Jack Cassidy was long dead(young, in a house fire.) But Culp was still around. But he elected not to play a killer ..but rather the FATHER of a killer: a horrible spoiled rich brat of a college kid in a "Leopold and Loeb" Rope-type duo of murderers.

Which brings us to Patrick McGoohan. He twice played a Columbo killer in the 70s, and twice played a Columbo killer in the 90's, so he beat Cassidy AND Culp: four times a Columbo killer (won an Emmy for one of them.)

Columbo in the 70's also toyed with using famous 60's series stars as Guest Killers:

William Shatner AND Leonard Nimoy (Star Trek)
Robert Conrad AND Ross Martin (The Wild Wild West)
Robert Vaughn (The Man From UNCLE - David McCallum was NOT so used.)

Dick Van Dyke -- such a good guy in his series -- was a very arrogant Columbo killer; and , as with Robert Walker and Anthony Perkins for Hitchcock , cast "against type."

A few other Columbo killers -- William Shatner and George Hamilton for two -- joined McGoohan in appearing in both the 70's and 90s series.

CONT:

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

"Too bad": Anthony Perkins never played a Columbo killer. His "Psycho" interrogation by Martin Balsam proves he would have been a great one.

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Leaving where I came in: frankly, Hitchcock had almost of four decades of screen villains before the public long before TV Batman and Columbo came in. But Batman and Columbo villains rather "prepared me" to go back into the past and meet all of Hitchcock's great villains, and few great Hitchcock villains appeared during the Batman-Columbo runs: The creepy East German security man Gromek(Wolfgang Kieling) in Torn Curtain; the brawny Castro lieutenant Rico Parra(John Vernon) in Topaz; the cheery and charming "everybody's pal"(when he's not a rapist-strangler) Bob Rusk(Barry Foster) in Frenzy; and William Devane in Family Plot -- a man with two identities(Eddie Shoebridge and Arthur Adamson), a day job as a jeweler and a night job as a professional kidnapper, along with a great smooth voice and a scary toothy grin. I'd rank Barry Foster's Rusk and William Devane's Adamson as among the best Hitchcock villains -- and Rusk goes on my top ten Hitchcock villains.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Speaking of which, my list of the Top Ten Hitchcock Villains:

1. Anthony Perkins in Psycho
2. Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train
3. James Mason in North by Northwest
4. Barry Foster in Frenzy
5. Joseph Cotton in Shadow of a Doubt
6. Ray Milland in Dial M for Murder
7. Raymond Burr in Rear Window
8. The birds in The Birds
9. Claude Rains in Notorious
10. Judith Anderson in Rebecca

..

And four of the top five are "Hitchcock's great once a decade psychopaths," each more graphically violent in his kilings than the one before:

The 40s: Joseph Cotton as Uncle Charlie (never shown strangling anyone)
The 50's: Robert Walker as Bruno Anthony(commits a brutal strangling that is turned into an arty mirror shot)
The 60s" Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates (commits the two most brutal and bloody movie killings up to that time, via knife)
The 70s: Barry Foster as Bob Rusk (RAPES and strangles his female victims, with a necktie; the worst.)

I think Hitchcock felt that each decade could only really handle one "wild card psycho killer" from him, so he made sure that each one counted -- and that each one (especially Norman Bates) had a certain sympathetic charm.

But: the two gay male killers in Rope put off a scent of psychopathy , too. I just don't think they make the Top Ten list.

[–] christomacin (4655) 3 years ago

In some alternate universe there are two Hitchcock films with Vincent Price and Patrick McGoohan (a Colombo regular) as the respective villains. The baddie McGoohan played in Silver Streak was rather Hitchcockian, I think. And Vincent Price is self-recommending. As good as Otto Kruger was in Saboteur, I could certainly see Price in that role also.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

In some alternate universe there are two Hitchcock films with Vincent Price and Patrick McGoohan (a Colombo regular) as the respective villains.

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Either would be great. Note in passing -- Vincent Price appeared on a "Columbo" but not as the villain. He's support to Vera Miles (from Psycho, natch) who is the Guest Killer. Young Martin Sheen took the part as Vera's victim specifically to meet Vincent Price on set, even though the two actors had no scenes together!

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The baddie McGoohan played in Silver Streak was rather Hitchcockian, I think.

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Very much so. The film remakes North by Northwest with Gene Wilder in for Cary Grant, Jill Clayburgh in for Eva Marie Saint, and McGoohan in for James Mason. McGoohan comes closest to the original -- and has a great confronataton with...Richard Pryor! Who steers Silver Streak away from Hitchcock and into buddy- movie land. He's hilarious.

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And Vincent Price is self-recommending.

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Yes. Hitchcock DID get to direct him (as a killer) in a half hour TV episode. Alas, I think as time went on, Price rather devalued himself in Wiliam Castle movies, Roger Corman movies and beach party movies. And perhaps his great voice was a bit "too much."

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As good as Otto Kruger was in Saboteur, I could certainly see Price in that role also.

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I can see Price in that part; as Tony Wendice in Dial M, and as Vandamm in NXNW...but again, as time went on, Price's value for A movies seemed to go down. "House of Wax" (1953) was a big 3-D hit, but kind of B.

Otto Kruger just misses my "Top Ten Hitchcock Villain" list (in fact, there are a few more than 10, though not a lot, really) and I guess his only problem is that he was not much of a star.

Hitchcock wanted a more "All American actor" named Harry Carey (Senior) for the Kruger part. He presides over the Senate in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Harry Carey JUNIOR can be found as a grizzled bad guy in a few late John Wayne Westerns.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Which reminds me:

There are a lot of actors we can WISH were Hitchcock villains (like Vincent Price and Patrick McGoohan), but there is actually a record of quite a few actors who were OFFERED Hitchcock villains, and did not take the roles..thus opening up those roles for others.

Consider this:

Among "the four Hitchcock psychos", two of them were Hitchcock's first choices: Robert Walker as Bruno Anthony and Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates.

But two of them were NOT: Hitchcock wanted William Powell for Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt, and Powell wanted to play this villain; but the studio wouldn't loan him out. "Recently" (50 years ago!) Hitchcock wanted Michael Caine for the villain in Frenzy, but settled for Caine lookalike/soundalike Barry Foster.

Hitchcock wanted Clifton Webb for the villain in Notorious. He got Claude Rains. Claude got an Oscar nomination.

The villain Vandamm in North by Northwest was called "Mendoza" in the first script -- and Yul Brynner was considered for the role. I've also read that Curt Jurgens was considered for the role. I'm thinking that George Sanders and Vincent Price would have been fine for the role, but not "A" enough back then. James Mason was dead solid perfect -- and influential -- as Vandamm, but it might have been itnersting to see a man with the macho menace of Yul Brynner in NNXW versus Cary Grant.

Caine famously turned down the villain in Frenzy. At least two actors turned down the Wiliam Devane part in Family Plot: Burt Reynolds and Roy Scheider(who said "I was sorry to do that to Hitch" in an interview. Roy Thinnes ( a very minor actor, alas) PLAYED the Devane part for a few weeks before being fired and replaced by Devane.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I can't say I can recall many other "alternative" Hitchcock villains. He sought Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, William Holden, Burt Lancaster, Rock Hudson, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino,
and Robert Redford for some Hitchcock heroes, but to no avail. Here's for what:

Gable: Foreign Correspondent
Cooper: Foreign Correspondent(with Claudette Colbert), Saboteur(with Barbra Stanwyck)
Holden: Strangers on a Train, The Trouble With Harry
Lancaster: Under Capricorn (the Cotton part)
Rock Hudson: Marnie
Jack Nicholson: Family Plot

I also think Hitchcock sought Henry Fonda for both Saboteur and Lifeboat. He didn't get Fonda for those, but later got Fonda for The Wrong Man.
Al Pacino: Family Plot
Robert Redford : Family Plot (though maybe for the villain?)