The Silver Screen Oasis

Hey, Gang!
As the Dog Days of Summer fast approach, and Sirius (the star, not the pay-radio provider) wheels spirographically overhead (in my mind, to the 60's instrumental Telstar), I thought it might be a lark to reflect on which actors from Classic Films gave the sweatiest performance, and in which film (we'll say '32 - '78, just to give it some structure).
Below are some examples that jumped to my mind:

George Kennedy, Cool Hand Luke
Woody Strode, Spartacus
Robert Morley, The African Queen
Neville Brand, D.O.A.
Tim Holt, The Treasure of Sierra Madre
Cornell Wilde, The Naked Prey
Roy Scheider, Sorceror
Mako, The Sand Pebbles
Richard Burton, The Night of the Iguana
Raymond Burr, His Kind of Woman
Jeff Chandler, Foxfire
Sidney Poitier, The Defiant Ones
Thomas Mitchell, Bataan
Albert Dekker, Dr. Cyclops
Frederic March, Inherit the Wind
Richard Harris, A Man Called Horse
J. Carrol Naish, Sahara
Charlton Heston, The Naked Jungle
William Bendix, Macao
Christopher Walken, Deer Hunter
Jack Lemmon, The Fire Down Below
Robert Ryan, Inferno

What would you put on your list?
Who do you think deserves that slippery, salty crown?

Who do you think deserves that slippery, salty crown?>>

Klondike,

With my tongue firmly in cheek, I nominate BenWHowell, Suex2 and myself for being in Las Vegas the last week where the thermometer has cracked 110 almost every day.

I nominate Yves Montand in Wages of Fear, Orson Welles in Touch of Evil, and Humphrey Bogart for Passage to Marseilles and The African Queen. What would the actual trophy for the sweatiest performance look like, Klondike? Would it be called a "Sweaty"?


If I could, I'd award small personal fans like the ones they used in Inherit the Wind with the initials SSO emblazoned upon them for their "endurance under sweat" to all those who've been demonstrating coolness under fire in the Southwest and far West during the past week. I'd also throw in a cd of "Too Darn Hot" from Kiss Me Kate and "We're Having a Heat Wave" sung by Ethel Merman.

Two nominees:

Rod Steiger in Back From Eternity

Charles Bronson, "Tunnel King" in The Great Escape

Edmond O'Brien in "The Barefoot Contessa"
Marlon Brando in "A Streetcar Named Desire"
The entire cast of "Papillon"
Robert De Niro in "Raging Bull"

Sylvester Stallone and Carl Weathers in the first three Rocky movies. (My attention strayed after that.)

How about the Death Valley scene in Greed. I felt sorry for everyone in that scene, even the mule. I was feeling a bit warm just watching it.

Do any of you manly men out there remember the quote from Orson Welles, when he was married to the lovely Rita? A photographer was doing some studio shots of her, and asked an assistant to wipe the sweat from her face. Mr. Welles replied, "Miss Hayworth does not sweat. Miss Hayworth glows."

That's what my mother said about women. My wife sweats. (Her own words.)

knitwit45 wrote:Do any of you manly men out there remember the quote from Orson Welles, when he was married to the lovely Rita? A photographer was doing some studio shots of her, and asked an assistant to wipe the sweat from her face. Mr. Welles replied, "Miss Hayworth does not sweat. Miss Hayworth glows."

But that's what was said of all ladies. As the old maxim went:
"A horse 'sweats', a man 'perspires', a lady 'glows'."

Aw, shoot, you took all the shine out of it

Woody Strode and the dynamite in The Professionals.

One not mentioned yet - Bogie in THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE.

cmvgor wrote:Woody Strode and the dynamite in The Professionals.

Hey, CM!
Was just re-reading the above reply/vote from you, and suddenly flashed back on an anecdote my Dad shared with me about TNT "sweat".

In the wake of Pearl Harbor, my Dad hustled down (in unison, I'm sure, with every red-blood Joe in the US) to his local recruiter to sign-up & defend his country, only to be told his work would be needed "right here at home", using his road construction experience to supervise the building, rebuilding and interconnection of the roads linking Northern New England to Canada (for possible strategic deployment purposes, I guess, much like the Alcan), through the mountains of Central New Hampshire, which would ultimately become known as the Kancamagus Highway -
ANYWAY -
Many of the supplies his crews were allocated were government surplus, including, over the next 5 years, close to a ton of some badly over-aged dynamite, all of which had to be "graded" for use according to how much nitroglyceride exfusion it was "sweating".
Which led to jobsite stunts like "rolling" the glyceride off your fingers by snapping your hand open quickly, so it would make little "booms" and "bangs" in the air (!).
(Ahh, those carefree days before Workman's Comp!)
And the sticks that were too old & decrepid to use with any reliability? They dug out the blasting caps, and then burnt them in the evening campfire !

"Little stenchy", my dad recalled, "But they sure made for some pretty colors."

Klondike;

Memories bestir memories. I remember an old Dragnet episode involving safe crackers. At one point Jack Webb, as Sgt. Friday, faced the
camera head-on and gave one of his patented lectures-to-the-public. It
concerned incidents of thieves boiling the nitro out of sticks of dinamite to
use in blowing a safe. Carrying the stuff to the job: bump a door, step off
a curb, blow an arm off.

Another plot I recall involved a group of men who were going to rob a wealthy home, to include opening a safe. An experienced demo man was
going to boil out the nitro, with another member of the gang to help him.
He picked up a box of dinamite and told the helper to get another box and
follow him. Then this dialogue:
Nervous Novice: "Uh, shouldn't we start with just one or two sticks and see how it works out?"
Old Pro: "And risk losing an arm or a leg? Never mess around with
less than enough to kill ya!"
I do believe this scene was in the failed James Garner series Nichols