Oscar Profile #17: Sidney Lumet

Born in Philadelphia, Penn. in 1924, Sidney Lumet is one of the most prolific film directors of the last fifty-plus years. His films have received a total of forty-six Oscar nominations, and won four. He has directed seventeen actors to eighteen Oscar nominations, been nominated himself five times, and won an honorary award at the 2005 Academy Awards.

Known as an actor’s director, the seventeen who were nominated for Oscars under his direction read like a who’s who of Hollywood. They are: Katharine Hepburn, Rod Steiger, Al Pacino (twice), Ingrid Bergman, Albert Finney, Chris Sarandon, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, Beatrice Straight, William Holden, Ned Beatty, Peter Firth, Richard Burton, Paul Newman, James Mason, Jane Fonda and River Phoenix. Bergman, Dunaway, Finch and Straight won.

Originally an actor, he was one of Broadway’s original Dead End kids, but did not repeat his stage role in the film version.

As famous for his marriages as for his professional career, that career can be traced through those marriages.

A TV director during his first marriage to actress Rita Gam; he directed his first two major films, the suspense-filled jury drama, 12 Angry Men, and Eugene O’Neill’s semi-autobiographical Long Day’s Journey Into Night during his second marriage to Gloria Vanderbilt; but directed most of his films, from the gritty Holocaust remembrance, The Pawnbroker, through the musical re-imagining of The Wizard of Oz, re-titled The Wiz, during his third marriage to Gail Horne Jones, Lena’s Horne’s daughter. Married to his fourth wife, the non-professional Mary Gimbel, since 1980, he has directed films as diverse as the tense courtroom drama, The Verdict; the taut social drama, Running on Empty, and the modern noir, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, during this period.

The height of his film career was undeniably during the 1970s when he went from directing the realistic biographical police drama, Serpico, to the all-star murder mystery, Murder on the Orient Express, to the hostage drama, Dog Day Afternoon, to the farcical Network, to the psychological drama, Equus. After that his films became hit or miss. The 1980 farce Just Tell Me What You Want failed to repeat the success of Network, but Prince of the City was compared favorably to Serpico and The Verdict was generally considered his best late-career film.

Of his later films, only Garbo Talks, a bittersweet ode to Manhattan starring Anne Bancroft as a dying do-gooder, and the previously mentioned Running on Empty and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead are really watchable. Just about everything else he’s made in the last quarter century or so is either ho-hum or downright bad. Still, he has had quite a career and that honorary Oscar was well deserved.

Although he hasn’t made a film in the last three years, he may surprise us yet with another must-see movie before he’s through. He’s only 86!

ESSENTIAL FILMS

12 ANGRY MEN (1957)

This prototype of the jury deliberation drama, written by Reginald Rose, was first performed live for TV’s Studio One in 1954 with Franklin Schaffner’s directing a cast headed by Robert Cummings, Franchot Tone, Paul Hartman, Walter Abel and Edward Arnold in the roles played on screen by Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Jack Warden, E.G. Marshall and Ed Begley. Joseph Sweeney and George Voskovec got to repeat the roles they originated.

Rose adapted his own work for the screen and he and Henry Fonda co-produced the film, with Sidney Lumet stepping in to helm his first film. Lumet’s expert direction of the tense drama earned him his first Oscar nomination. The film was also nominated for Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay.

LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (1962)

Eugene O’Neill’s semi-autobiographical play opened on Broadway in 1956 with Jose Quintero directing Fredric March, Florence Eldredge, Jason Robards (Jr.) and Bradford Dillman as the fictional Tyrones. Without changing a word of dialogue, Lumet turned it into a vehicle for Katharine Hepburn as Mary Tyrone, the drug addicted wife and mother. He did it by focusing his camera on her during key scenes in which the focus on stage is generally on other cast members. Despite this, all three of Hepburn’s co-stars, Ralph Richardson, Robards and Dean Stockwell, manage to shine. Hepburn won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival, while the other three shared the Best Actor award. Lumet was nominated for the Golden Palm, but lost to Anselmo Duarte for the Brazilian film, The Given Word. Hepburn received the film’s only Oscar nomination.

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1974)

Sandwiched between two gritty Al Pacino classics, Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon, Lumet lightened up with this all-star-cast film of Agatha Chrstie’s Murder on the Orient Express. From the opening strains of Richard Rodney Bennett’s score you know you are in for something special, as well as for something elegant and extravagant from the director whose work was generally made on location without elaboration.

Though filmed many times, no version of Christie’s novel has ever had the star power that this one had. All but one of the film’s many stars is given a major star entrance – from Albert Finney to Lauren Bacall to Sean Connery to Vanessa Redgrave to Jacqueline Bisset to Michael York to John Gielgud to Wendy Hiller to Rachel Roberts to Richard Widmark to Anthony Perkins, they are all given a build-up. The one exception is the biggest star of all, Ingrid Bergman, playing a shy, retiring missionary, who timidly boards the train with no fanfare. She, of course, steals the film, and wins her third Oscar in the bargain.

NETWORK (1976)

A farce on the surface, this film about a TV network’s cynical treatment of a deranged newsman to win the ratings war has proved amazingly prophetic over the years. We’ve long since become accustomed to screaming male broadcasters in the wake of Peter Finch’s “mad as hell” loon riling up viewers. Strident women, though, as personified by Faye Dunaway’s win-at-all-costs executive have been infrequently seen until now. Lately, however, they have been turning up on TV with increasing frequency, particularly in political coverage.

Finch, Dunaway and Beatrice Straight as level headed executive William Holden’s betrayed wife, all won Oscars for their performances, while Paddy Chayefsky won for his screenplay. Holden, Lumet and the film were nominated. Of all his Oscar losses, this is the one that bothers Lumet. He has said it wasn’t that his film lost, but that it lost to Rocky!

THE VERDICT (1982)

Easily the best of Lumet’s late-career films, The Verdict also provided Paul Newman with his strongest role in years as an alcoholic has-been lawyer who is redeemed by a seemingly no-win case in which he takes on the Catholic Church in a medical malpractice case. James Mason as his courtroom adversary, Jack Warden as his assistant, and Milo O’Shea as the defendant-eaning judge also turn in impeccable performances.

For Lumet and Mason, it would be the last film for which they would receive Oscar nominations. For Newman, it would be a career resurgence that would culminate in a long overdue Oscar win on his next nomination for 1986’s The Color Money and two more nominations before his death in 2008.