MovieChat Forums > Mirage (1965) Discussion > Jack Weston's Witty Work as Lester

Jack Weston's Witty Work as Lester

posted 13 years ago by ecarle
26 replies | jump to latest

Hard to say why Jack Weston missed being included with some of the "pack" of character guys who came out of the fifties and flourished in the sixties, guys like Jack Warden, Jack Klugman, Martin Balsam and the one who became a star...Walter Matthau.

The first take on Jack Weston was that he was a chubby kind of guy. Roly poly. And yet, in his early roles, he isn't particularly fat. Just kind of rotund. Obesity is an effect rather than a reality.

Weston had a pleasant face and a mushy, weirdly pitched voice that gave him the requisite uniqueness to be a good character actor.

The needs of the movies being what they were, Jack Weston could play "pleasant sidekick comic relief" and "villainous henchman comic relief" with equal aplomb. When they hired him as a villailn, I think producers and directors enjoyed using Weston's impish and cherubic presence "against type."

Before getting to "Mirage," I will note "the ultimate Jack Weston villainous henchman comic relief role" -- his role in "Wait Until Dark"(1967) as the -- you guessed it -- chubby and somewhat bumbling crook who, along with handsome partner Richard Crenna, finds himself allied with and then pitted against creepy psycho drug gangster Beatnik Alan Arkin. EVERYBODY from the sixties remembers "Wait Until Dark," and Jack Weston found himself an "equal" in a small cast that included Audrey Hepburn and those other guys.

"Wait Until Dark" is famous. "Mirage" is not. But Jack Weston in "Mirage" is a warm-up for his "Wait Until Dark" character. And nifty in his own way.

Gregory Peck meets Weston early on, and from the moment they meet -- outside Peck's apartment, as Weston pulls a gun on Peck -- "Mirage" becomes a thriller.

The two men enter Peck's apartment and Weston proves an unnerving gunsel. He wants to watch "wrestling out of Chicago" while waiting to escort Peck to Barbados for a secret meeting with "The Major". Weston notes, "I know wrestling's fixed, but since the Westerns went psycho, its the only place where you can tell the good guys from the bad guys." A funny line(written by the masterly Peter Stone) but interestingly rigged: does a lethal henchman like Lester enjoy watching wrestling so as to identify with the GOOD GUYS? Or does he know he's a bad guy.

Weston's chit-chat with an intrigued but nervous Peck includes the running gag "I hear the weather is wonderful in Barbados." Weston plays to his character's wit. And Stone plays to his own wit as Peck's sudden jump at Weston is cut off as the camera switches to the finale of the wrestling match on TV. We see nothing of the Peck-Weston fight, just the knocking out of one wrestler by another on TV. Then we see the unconscious Weston being dragged away to an outside utility room by Peck(an odd choice of "dumping place." Why doesn't Peck turn this guy over to the police? Maybe because he doesn't want his secrets revealed until he knows what they are.)

Jack Weston plays the scene funny, but he also plays it with a hair-trigger psychotic anger that reminds us that Lester IS a killer, must have some experience in the murder trade. Low level Mafia, maybe?

Jack Weston only has a couple more scenes in "Mirage" after his initial one, but its that initial one that counts. By the time he made "Mirage," Jack Weston was a known actor on TV(where he starred in a comedy show about a man who raises a family of chimps in his HOUSE) and in movies; his very appearance in the scene with Gregory Peck gets us "comfortable in the world of Mirage." We know Jack Weston. We like Jack Weston...but we are ready to fear Jack Weston. He's that good in his hair-trigger switchover to psychotic behavior.

The next time Weston turns up is creepy. Its in the sad and dumpy little apartment of elderly Unidyne floor greeter "Joe Turtle." Lester is holding a gun on Peck(again), but he hands another gun to Peck -- and that one has blood on its butt. Blood from the back of Joe Turtle's head -- dead in the bathtub at Lester's pistol whipping.

And so it goes.

Like "Wait Until Dark," "Mirage" is kind of a Hitchcockian piece, and I'm reminded that Hitchcock never got to work with Jack Weston. A shame. Weston's ability to mix the comic with the menacing was right up Hitchcock's alley. Weston in "Mirage" is a bit like tweedy little Edmund Gwenn as a hit man in "Foreign Correspondent."

So good was Jack Weston at this type of role that I've always thought he missed one perfect role of this type for him: the killer played by Ned Glass in "Charade" who is joined by George Kennedy(also in Mirage) and James Coburn as "co-villains" menacing Audrey Hepburn. Ned Glass is good as the sneezing little haberdasher of a killer in "Charade," but it is a "perfect Jack Weston part."

Finally: Jack Weston made the TV rounds and was once a memorable guest on the all-star weekly "whodunnit" "Burke's Law." The episode in question was called "Who Killed the 13th Clown?" and opened with 13 circus clowns clambering out of a small car as part of their act. Jack Weston is one of the clowns(make-up and all) and he discovers the 13th clown was stabbed by a spring knife in the car seat. Whodunnit?

Well, at the end of the episode, supersleuth Amos Burke(Gene Barry) also made up as a clown, determines that the killer is...Jack Weston! Perfect. "Jack Weston as the killer clown." A comical/serious chase around, through and out of the circus tent ensues.

The 60's were Jack Weston's heyday, but he kept on graying and guesting through the 70's, in good movies like "A New Leaf" (with now-a-star Walter Matthau) and "Fuzz"(with Burt Reynolds) and -- of all things -- a starring role in the movie of the Broadway play "The Ritz," about a straight man's(Weston's) accidental sojourn in a gay hotel/bathhouse.

So: a nice little career for Jack Weston. Comedies, thrillers, a leading role in a movie, the works. Me, I prefer him in thrillers. "Wait Until Dark" above all -- but "Mirage" not too far behind that.

[–] rorysa 13 years ago

I also loved Weston in a film the year before "Mirage," "The Incredible Mr. Limpet" (which unlike "Mirage" I saw in its initial release). It's a comedy role, but Weston gets to play both a good guy AND a bad guy. He's the arrogant "friend," the interloper making time with Limpet's wife while belittling him for being 4-F (I think that's the right designation); he's also the middleman who helps win the war and promises to take care of Limpet's widow. He's also pretty funny as the short-tempered, slightly inept Lester in "Mirage."

[–] ecarle 13 years ago

Yes Weston was fun in "Limpet"...which seemed to get annual CBS Friday Night Movie showings for years(it was rumored for a Jim Carrey remake a few years ago, but no more.)

I just recalled Jack Weston in a "comedy villain role" in which he was quite good:

The ACTUALLY FUNNY Jerry Lewis comedy "Its Only Money"(1963) directed by Frank Tashlin and kind of a Hitchcock spoof with a plot out of "Family Plot." Jerry is the missing heir to a fortune; Zachary Scott wants to kill him to keep the family fortune, Jack Weston is Scott's henchman killer -- a butler(in this one, "the butler did it") and a "card carrying member of the Peter Lorre fan club."

Weston gets to mix his comedy AND villain chops in "Its Only Money."

[–] dreamonforever1 13 years ago

i saw "mirage" for the very first time. i really like it, and i will just say that the cinema always needs character actors like jack weston.
i have seen many of the films mentioned in this thread ("wait until dark" is one of my favorites from the 60's). i decided to watch this one on one of the movie channels because i saw that gregory peck and walter matthau were in it, but weston's appearance was a pleasant surprise...he adds some much-welcomed comic mayhem to a tense thriller.

gregory 111111.

[–] irvberg2002 9 years ago

How can you discuss Jack Weston without mentioning his role as a lecherous actor in Cactus Flower?

[–] dsfa2020 (14) 6 years ago

And remember his part, appropriately named ‘Pig’, in The Cincinatti Kid made the same year as Mirage.

[–] telegonus (736) 5 years ago

Jack Weston is a childhood favorite of mine (along with Hans Conried), and I remember him from as far back as The Cheaters episode of Thriller. Then he did the charming chimp-com The Hathaways, with Peggy Cass. While I doubt he was or could have been in the same league as Martin Balsam he had a special "something" (pathos?) that put him in a class by himself as a player, on television and in the movies.

It's always been my sense (and with no intended disrespect) that had Dom De Luise not come along and rather (if you'll excuse my word usage here) queered the deal for chubby-funny character guys Weston might have enjoyed a better career. DeLuise was a treasure of another sort, and I do like him, but Jack Weston could go further, deeper, have played a wider variety of good and bad guys without having to buffoon it up (so to speak).

Weston could play perp or victim with aplomb. As an all-round character guy he wasn't an especially good fit for his generation. I can see bits and pieces of earlier players in Weston's repertoire: some early Jack Oakie and Stu Erwin; maybe some William Bendix; Lionel Stander; even, allowing for their being very different types, William Demarest. Overall, Weston's Common Man persona kept him in low rent roles, likely denied him "classy" parts of the sort Jackie Gleason played. That there was always the air of an incipient funny man to him is what likely held him back.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Jack Weston is a childhood favorite of mine (along with Hans Conried),

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Five months later, telegonus, I stumbled onto your post here...I should really look into "notifications."

I liked Weston and Conreid, too. Conried hosted "Fractured Flickers" one of my childhood pleasures(it put hilarious new dialogue and narration on old silent movies -- I suppose that's a little disrespectful, but it sure was funny.)

But you raise a point here that for many of us , of a "certain age," we had a whole SET of rather interestlng-looking, sounding, rather eccentric character people to choose from. I "met" many of the them on the weekly "all star whoudunnit," Burke's Law -- Both Weston and Conried guested as suspects -- and Weston was the killer once. (A killer clown, literally.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I remember him from as far back as The Cheaters episode of Thriller. Then he did the charming chimp-com The Hathaways, with Peggy Cass.

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The Cheaters, I did not see. The Hathaways(with the chimps) I DO remember, with both Weston and Cass as funny looking and sounding people.

And yet, Jack Weston could segue from sympathetic parts in comedy like The Hathaways to real villains(Mirage, Wait Until Dark, Burke's Law..somewhat in The Cincinati Kid.)

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While I doubt he was or could have been in the same league as Martin Balsam he had a special "something" (pathos?) that put him in a class by himself as a player, on television and in the movies.

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Just as with leading men, so with character actors: each one has a particular "special" quality that doesn't really match up with the other. Try seeing Jack Weston as Arbogast in Psycho -- he lacked the toughness and vocal "gravitas" of Balsam, and hence would have seemed a bit too sympathetic and even silly to get killed in that bloody staircase murder.

Later on, with A Thousand Clowns and other films, Balsam had to "deliver the goods" that win an actor Oscars. I don't think Weston quite had that.

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It's always been my sense (and with no intended disrespect) that had Dom De Luise not come along and rather (if you'll excuse my word usage here) queered the deal for chubby-funny character guys Weston might have enjoyed a better career.

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Hmm. Yes, possibly. Its been noted that Jack Lemmon had formed a sort of "comedy team" with the more deadpan and tough-guyish Ernie Kovacs in the 50s...and when Kovacs died in a car crash, it became a rather sad oppportunity for Walter Matthau to slip into that buddy bit with Jack.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

DeLuise was a treasure of another sort, and I do like him,

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Weirdly, you can find DeLuise in a dead-serious military man part in the nuclear doomsday thriller, "Fail Safe"(1964), but soon DeLuise was a "funny guy," a bit sillier still than Jack Weston..he almost had a "mime" quality, it seems, kind of a clownish, mincing manner.

Came the 70's, Mel Brooks used DeLuise a lot(The 12 Chairs, a gayish cameo in Blazing Saddles -- I guess the days of gays for comedy relief- are over -- and back to "mime" in Silent Movie) but eventually Burt Reynolds teamed up with him a LOT -- to Burt's detriment, I always felt -- Burt became more like Dom than Dom could be Burt.

On the other hand, Burt gave Weston a good role in "Gator" around the time that Weston's career was winding down(Weston landed the movie of "The Ritz" during this time too; it was a "comeback year" for him.)

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but Jack Weston could go further, deeper, have played a wider variety of good and bad guys without having to buffoon it up (so to speak).

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Yes. Weston played at least one rotter on The Twilight Zone. On the Burke's Law where he WASN'T the "killer clown," Weston was merely a suspect -- a Kiddie Show host who left an open mic on(ala Andy Griffith in "Face in the Crowd") and unintentionally called his kiddie audience a bunch of punks.

On the good guy side, Weston is a federal agent in "Gator" -- and he gets killed so that Burt can go on a righteous rampage of revenge.

Still, for Jack Weston as for Martin Balsam, their big decade was the sixties. They were in EVERYTHING then, looking pretty good, shifting from comedy to drama, from good to bad, and then they both ended up struggling through the 70's into the 80's(I simply can't remember Weston's last major role after The Ritz. I guess I better go look it up. And then see how much farther into the 80's -- 90's? Weston's career went. Balsam got some ways into the 80's and then did some cameos in the 90s before his death in 1996.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Weston could play perp or victim with aplomb. As an all-round character guy he wasn't an especially good fit for his generation. I can see bits and pieces of earlier players in Weston's repertoire: some early Jack Oakie and Stu Erwin; maybe some William Bendix; Lionel Stander; even, allowing for their being very different types, William Demarest. Overall, Weston's Common Man persona kept him in low rent roles, likely denied him "classy" parts of the sort Jackie Gleason played. That there was always the air of an incipient funny man to him is what likely held him back.

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Good analysis...and interesting comparisons to character guys before him. I think what was most interesting about Weston to me was that, though he had a face, build and voice for comedy...he was quite believably menacing as henchman types in Mirage and Wait Until Dark.

Indeed, I expect all these years later, Weston's most famous role IS the one in Wait Until Dark, he's an interestingly odd partner for handsome Richard Crenna, you almost figured they formed this "handsome guy/pudgy guy" team to work their various cons with different looks to play different parts(and Weston's character is a disgraced ex-cop with a cop's authority and willingness to beat people up.). Crenna tells psycho Alan Arkin that he and Weston are willing to "hurt people" for money and you realize -- nobody would see the violence in Crenna or Weston until its too late(Arkin, you'd steer clear from immediately.)

[–] telegonus (736) 5 years ago

Hi EC, and welcome back. This board is probably the nearest we're going to get into the immediate future (if that makes any sense) to a serious successor to the dear departed IMDB boards, gone two years and counting now. (IMDB v2's good but almost too busy, and classic type folders end up with discussions of mostly recent films. One of the great pleasures of the old site was the commitment of its member to the word classic, which for most of us means pre-1970, or in my book, better still, pre-1960.)

As to Jack Weston, I've been seeing a of him lately. He was a nasty jazz loving guy on a Hitchcock half-hour, and quite nasty as a suburban "bully" in an alien invasion episode of The Twilight Zone. I always like him; his presence. He doesn't wear out his welcome with me. Dom DeLuise was definitely a mincing, gay seeming Jack Weston knockoff (!) or wannabe (!) who carved out a nice niche for himself mostly on television. Weston could play mean and menacing but he always struck me as not quite up to the job for that. His natural pathos and good guy likability worked against that. There was nearly always a comic undercurrent with him, though I don't think I've ever seen him truly over the top. He was more like the guy "people laugh at" rather than someone who truly wanted to elicit laughter.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Hi EC, and welcome back.

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Thanks..it seems that I just tend to "stumble upon" your posts...I guess I should look into notifications.

Moreover, I have planted myself at one particular board, as you know(for various reasons) but taking a stroll around the other pages here helps me...find folks like you.

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This board is probably the nearest we're going to get into the immediate future (if that makes any sense) to a serious successor to the dear departed IMDB boards,

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Well, it has the "original" IMDb pages going back some time(not ALL the way), that's what keeps me here. I really should look into some other boards...

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gone two years and counting now.

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Time flies in all manners...

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(IMDB v2's good but almost too busy,

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Too busy? Not the case here, except on the big new young hits(Endgame).

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and classic type folders end up with discussions of mostly recent films. One of the great pleasures of the old site was the commitment of its member to the word classic, which for most of us means pre-1970, or in my book, better still, pre-1960.)

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Better still, pre-1960 indeed. And yet here I am more knowledgeable from about 1960 ON. I count on reading YOU for insights into the 30s, 40s, much of the 50s. Though it is interesting -- you pull up certain names (like Stu Erwin or Laird Cregor) and i DO remember those guys. Their movies or TV shows were on TV when I was a kid, and my parents identified them to me from THEIR movie youth.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

As to Jack Weston, I've been seeing a of him lately. He was a nasty jazz loving guy on a Hitchcock half-hour, and quite nasty as a suburban "bully" in an alien invasion episode of The Twilight Zone.

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Ya see? He could really play mean when he wanted to, and make us believe it. I suddenly leap to..of all people...Joe Pesci, who in his prime was a very short guy with a very high voice...but played menace great(anyone capable of horrific violence is menacing, I guess.)

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I always like him; his presence. He doesn't wear out his welcome with me.

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Nor me. One grows up in the "comfort" of familiar faces and voices, and Jack Weston was such a one. As I've noted before, if he had taken the Ned Glass part in Charade(along with fellow baddies James Coburn and George Kennedy), I'd have felt some "early 60's perfection" in that thriller. Perhaps he was too young (the characters are WWII vets.)

I zipped over to IMDb and learned some interesting things about Jack Weston:

He worked well into the 80's and the hit "Dirty Dancing" in 1987.

He was in "Cuba"(1979) starring Sean Connery..alongside Martin Balsam!(there, a movie shared by the two great 60's character guys.)

He died the SAME YEAR as Martin Balsam(1996), though Balsam died older(76 to Weston's 71.)

71 is not that old, but it looks like Weston pretty much took the 90's off before dying; I wonder if he was ill?

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Dom DeLuise was definitely a mincing, gay seeming Jack Weston knockoff (!) or wannabe (!) who carved out a nice niche for himself mostly on television.

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Outside of his serious role in "Fail Safe," I think DDL (Hey, same initials as Daniel Day Lewis!) was a bit too goofy for the villains that Weston played in Mirage and Wait Until Dark, for instance. However, as you note below:

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Weston could play mean and menacing but he always struck me as not quite up to the job for that. His natural pathos and good guy likability worked against that. There was nearly always a comic undercurrent with him, though I don't think I've ever seen him truly over the top. He was more like the guy "people laugh at" rather than someone who truly wanted to elicit laughter.

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Afraid so. In Wait Until Dark, you never really take him as a serious "thug" -- he seems out-of-his-league and vulnerable to the psycho Arkin from the get go(and Arkin DOES kill him, though a stunt man and a dummy get run over by the killer car.) Truth be told, I'm not sure that Crenna was quite believable as a baddie, either -- he turns "good" at the end, anyway(and dies.)

Back to Dom DeLuise: I only recall him playing gay once, and it was very broad, in a cameo for Mel Brooks at the end of Blazing Saddles, as a gay musical director(surrounded by male gay dancers) whose set is invaded by macho cowboys(some of whom "hook up" with the male dancers.) Shall I say "those were the days" -- or figure they are better off gone? In other words, comedy ABOUT being gay might work(laugh with), comedy MAKING FUN of gays doesn't.

For his part, Dom DeLuise was married; his wife is one of the frontier women in Blazing Saddles.

And around 1966, DeLuise had a big goofball part in the Doris Day/Rod Taylor comedy "The Glass Bottom Boat" which rather sealed his fate as a comedy guy. Onward to The Cannonball Run!

[–] ElizabethJoestar (946) 3 years ago

Afraid so. In Wait Until Dark, you never really take him as a serious "thug" -- he seems out-of-his-league and vulnerable to the psycho Arkin from the get go(and Arkin DOES kill him, though a stunt man and a dummy get run over by the killer car.) Truth be told, I'm not sure that Crenna was quite believable as a baddie, either -- he turns "good" at the end, anyway(and dies.)
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To be fair, in WUD those two guys were mainly con-men-- professional liars after money rather than thugs/hired killers. The weapons they had on them seemed more a precaution against any possible angry victims or fellow criminals.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

To be fair, in WUD those two guys were mainly con-men-- professional liars after money rather than thugs/hired killers. The weapons they had on them seemed more a precaution against any possible angry victims or fellow criminals.

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That's a good point about why they carried those particular items...while Crenna says that they are willing to "hurt people," maybe that's just talk. They are more clearly con men types selected to undertake a con.

There is a "flavor" to Crenna and Weston as a Mutt and Jeff team -- one handsome, tall , younger; one not so handsome, short and heavy, older. It feels a BIT out of central casting, but it works with those two actors -- especially Crenna, whose movie star career ended rather quickly in favor of TV and supporting roles.

[–] telegonus (736) 5 years ago

Thanks, EC. I think that Weston could be a convincing bad guy, but wholly bad would have been hard for him; or maybe I've just never seen him in quite that mode. Gross and crass, yes, yet he lacked much in the way of physical menace. William Bendix was somewhat similar and yet he could play a brutal thug and rough a guy up real bad; and in a kickass Untouchables episode (The Tri-State Gang) he was, years later, just barely post-Chester A. Riley, once again playing a brute. His character wouldn't just holding up trucks with his gang, he'd shoot every single driver, anyone who could identify him. This might sound prosaic, and by today's standard maybe it is, but sixty some years ago this must have been a shocker. Because it's a product of its time, and with the usually lovable Bendix as a psycho killer, it's a stark thing to watch even today. The ending is impossible to guess, and I won't give it away. Jack Weston's the sort of guy who could be IN the Tri-State gang but not OF IT (by temperament), would likely have been cut down by his boss for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, in a restaurant maybe, then taken out into an alley and shot.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Thanks, EC. I think that Weston could be a convincing bad guy, but wholly bad would have been hard for him; or maybe I've just never seen him in quite that mode.

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Well, try him in Mirage and Wait Until Dark, that's about as close as he got. And he COMMITS a very cruel murder in Mirage, I just remembered that one.

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Gross and crass, yes, yet he lacked much in the way of physical menace.

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He got killed a lot in any serious movies he did.

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William Bendix was somewhat similar and yet he could play a brutal thug and rough a guy up real bad; and in a kickass Untouchables episode (The Tri-State Gang) he was, years later, just barely post-Chester A. Riley, once again playing a brute.

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Yes, Bendix could play nice OR brutal and find the core of the character each way.

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His character wouldn't just holding up trucks with his gang, he'd shoot every single driver, anyone who could identify him. This might sound prosaic, and by today's standard maybe it is, but sixty some years ago this must have been a shocker. Because it's a product of its time, and with the usually lovable Bendix as a psycho killer, it's a stark thing to watch even today.

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No, that's pretty bad, and I'm reminded that the violence and cruelty of The Untouchables didn't survive the "touchy feely" changes to TV made around 1970(a US Senator named John Pastore led the effort to "tone down TV violence" even as theatrical R-rated MOVIES were more violent than ever.

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The ending is impossible to guess, and I won't give it away.

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OK. Off to The Untouchables I go.

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Jack Weston's the sort of guy who could be IN the Tri-State gang but not OF IT (by temperament), would likely have been cut down by his boss for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, in a restaurant maybe, then taken out into an alley and shot.

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Ha. Well, that's kinda his fate in Mirage...

[–] ElizabethJoestar (946) 3 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

When I think of Weston, I tend to think of his criminal roles-- this, WAIT UNTIL DARK, and THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR. He has such an odd presence. You're right to say the juxtaposition between his bumbling, seeming affability, and criminal inclinations make him a memorable presence even in small roles.

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Character actors are often called upon to play good OR bad...just making adjustments to their characterizations and "playing the script."

In Mirage, Weston's sudden leaps into psychotic anger tell us a little about the character -- true criminals often have no control over their rages.

But he's funny, too "Since the Westerns went psycho, (wrestling's) the only place where you can tell who the bad guys are."

And he IS a bad guy.

In Wait Until Dark, Weston is a former cop(disgraced? discharged) and has the requisite bullying down that a cop needs to handle people.

I don't remember Weston much in Thomas Crown -- it isn't a movie I like much, even with fave Steve McQueen in it -- but I vividly remember a scene where Weston's Ford station wagon is grabbed by crooks and he falls to the ground unceremoniously in a New York grocery store parking lot -- the burbs I take it. Weston just looked humiliated in that scene.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (946) 3 years ago

I love that line about the westerns!

I always figured in WUD that he was a cop that was discharged from duty. When Roat calls him sergeant and Carlino snaps, "Don't call me sergeant!" it even suggests Carlino's rather ashamed or at least still smarting over whatever happened to get him kicked out too. He's a minor character in the long run, but that gives him an interesting dimension (one that isn't present in the play where there is no hint that he was ever a real cop). During his scenes with Hepburn, you do feel he's having fun pushing her around (I love his smiling and nodding when Crenna starts shouting about "studying the Constitution at police school").

I love THOMAS CROWN, even though I'm aware of why others dislike it. It's a movie my dad and I bond over a lot. Weston doesn't get to play as fleshed out a character as in MIRAGE or WUD, but he does make a sympathetic figure. Always felt terrible for him-- that's a movie where the two leads are really rather rotten people, but McQueen and Dunaway have a weird charisma that makes me like them anyway.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I love that line about the westerns!

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Its funny. We've been dumping a bit on the poor plotting of the Mirage script and yet the screenwriter(Peter Stone) put plenty of great one-liners into both this and Charade. Its like I'm sad to realize he wasn't such a great plot man. At least not here. He should have worked with Hitchcock. It would have been good for both of them.

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I always figured in WUD that he was a cop that was discharged from duty. When Roat calls him sergeant and Carlino snaps, "Don't call me sergeant!" it even suggests Carlino's rather ashamed or at least still smarting over whatever happened to get him kicked out too.

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That's right.

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I love THOMAS CROWN, even though I'm aware of why others dislike it. It's a movie my dad and I bond over a lot. Weston doesn't get to play as fleshed out a character as in MIRAGE or WUD, but he does make a sympathetic figure. Always felt terrible for him-- that's a movie where the two leads are really rather rotten people, but McQueen and Dunaway have a weird charisma that makes me like them anyway.

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I try to spend more time extolling movies that I like rather than dissing those I didn't -- because of course, THOSE movies are somebody's favorites. So...regrets.

Thomas Crown is a caper film,and I'm not a big fan of those -- except with Gambit, that rather threw the whole genre upside down. McQueen and Dunaway were a great, sexy couple together, but the movie just sort of bored me.

And this: McQueen is a rich guy(a VERY rich guy) who does this caper "for kicks," but at least one innocent man is shot in the leg(kneecapped?) and innocent people are terrified during the robberies. What kind of "fun" is that to inflict on people.

Funny to me: when I saw Thomas Crown, I said "this isn't a Steve McQueen part, its a Sean Connery part."

Years later I learned that the script was written with Connery in mind, he was offered the role first and turned it down -- and regretted it later.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (946) 3 years ago

And this: McQueen is a rich guy(a VERY rich guy) who does this caper "for kicks," but at least one innocent man is shot in the leg(kneecapped?) and innocent people are terrified during the robberies. What kind of "fun" is that to inflict on people.
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That's part of what I meant when I said he's pretty unlikeable. He does borderline sociopathic things. Same with Dunaway's character. Yet I find the whole movie oddly compelling. I don't think we're supposed to like them as in a traditional heist movie. McQueen's character is thoroughly empty where his life is basically nothing but games. Even his relationship with Dunaway, where there might be something more than just lust, is a game to him. He can't commit.

But it's different strokes. I find it strange thinking about how sympathy for a character can vary. Like, i find McQueen's character engaging in this film even though he's a lout, but take another movie like, say, TWO FOR THE ROAD where you're supposed to be invested in the romance between Hepburn and Finney... and I just... am not. I find both characters selfish, self-indulgent, and superficial-- and most of all uninteresting. But a lot of people love that movie and find the love story in it "real" and "believable" so... I don't know. As always, everyone's mileage varies. Some movies gel with you and others don't.

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I try to spend more time extolling movies that I like rather than dissing those I didn't -- because of course, THOSE movies are somebody's favorites. So...regrets.
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No, I get it! I try to do the same, but as long as everyone is respectful that's fine.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

From Bonnie and Clyde on, and including Thomas Crown, we had a run of bank robber movies. I saw and enjoyed most of them THEN, but modernly I watch them and I keep thinking of the terrified customers (in real life some such customers have been killed.)

Here they are:

Bonnie and Clyde
Thomas Crown
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid(the biggest hit of 1969)
The Wild Bunch
The Getaway (McQueen again)
Charley Varrick (Walter Matthau!)
Dog Day Afternoon

I could SPOIL in which movies the robbers get clean away and in which movies the robbers die, but I do believe that the ones that bugged me were the ones where...they got away. Except Charley Varrick.(ok...ill SPOIL that one.) Matthau leads a gang that kills cops and his wife is one of the gang and killed, but he outsmarts and kills(by proxy) WORSE villains and seems to deserve his getaway. His wife is dead after all.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I try to spend more time extolling movies that I like rather than dissing those I didn't -- because of course, THOSE movies are somebody's favorites. So...regrets.
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No, I get it! I try to do the same, but as long as everyone is respectful that's fine.

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I appreciate that. Thank you for understanding. I can't quite help myself. I would LIKE to say "oh, that was a good movie, I liked it," but I can't if I didn't.

HOWEVER, I'd say with Thomas Crown, the statement should be "oh, that was a good movie..but not my type of movie."

Trivia: The Thomas Crown Affair was an original screenplay written by a Boston lawyer, often on cross country plane rides. He got an agent and sold it just like that. McQueen then hired the lawyer to do a re-write(and get co-writer credit) on Bullitt. One cop..one robber. I think the lawyer went back to lawyering.