klondike wrote:Karen, thank you so much for visiting with us here at the Oasis this week; it would certainly be delightful if you could continue to drop-in on us, and share your thoughts & insights about our on-going film discussions. My question is: in your opinion, why wasn't Sterling Hayden used more thoroughly than he was, in the Noirs of the 50's? He was very striking & memorable in the ones he did do, for visionaries from Kubrick to Coppola, so it would seem that he would have been utilized more than the body of his work indicates. Was this due to decisions of Hayden's, or of the studios, or the result of forces & consequences beyond anyone's direct control?
Hi, Klondike! I would love to come back. I’m not good at keeping up with websites these days (hence, my once-every-two-months visits to Facebook), but visiting y’all here would be a priority!
Of Sterling Hayden’s six films noirs, five were filmed during the 1950s – Asphalt Jungle, Crime Wave, Suddenly, The Killing, and Crime of Passion. I can’t say for sure why he didn’t appear in more, but I can share some of his off-screen experiences during that time that may have served as contributing factors.
First off, after he was seen, to great critical acclaim, in The Asphalt Jungle, Hayden rightfully expected a spate of first-rate roles to come his way, but he was disappointed to find that he was mistaken. (“I thought that would crack everything wide open. I’d just sit back and be turning down offers. Well, I got a few, but none good.”) So here, we have Hayden rejecting the few offers he received during this period – who knows what they might have been? Then, the following year, he was called as a “cooperative witness” before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which had been investigating Communism in Hollywood since the late 1940s. Admitting that he’d joined the Party in 1946, he termed his act “the stupidest, most ignorant thing I ever did in my life,” and went on to name several others, including screenwriter Abraham Polonsky (who penned Body and Soul and Force of Evil). Years later, Hayden regretted his actions, calling it its “one-shot stoolie show.” This, too, may have had an impact on his career.
Aside from his noir features, all of which are well worth watching, Hayden was seen in a number of clunkers throughout the 1950s – perhaps as the years progressed, he grew a little less selective than he’d been at the start of the decade. There certainly were some good ones (including The Star, opposite Bette Davis, and So Big, the third film version of the Edna Ferber novel), but I’d venture to say that more often than not, they were fairly forgettable. Then, in 1958, Hayden entered a bizarre period in his personal life, becoming embroiled in a nasty and lengthy court battle with his ex-wife, Betty deNoon. The sordid details included Hayden’s revelation that he’d had deNoon investigated in the mid-1950s and discovered that she’d “engaged in intimacies” with several men; Hayden taking his four children, against deNoon’s wishes, on an extended sea voyage; deNoon accusing Hayden of kidnapping; and charges against the actor of conspiracy and child stealing – all of which was reported daily in the press. Who has time to appear in film noir when your life is film noir?
An interesting footnote is Hayden later told reporters that he’d always hated acting. “It was an easy way to make money. It was an escape. They give you a check for doing nothing.”
Incidentally, during the decades that followed, Hayden remarried, spending half of each year with his wife and their two children and the other half fulfilling his lifelong desire for adventure by living alone on a Dutch canal barge in France. He also wrote a well-received autobiography, called Wanderer, as well as an epic novel of the sea, Voyage; appeared in such acclaimed films as Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, The Godfather, The Last Goodbye, King of the Gypsies, and 9 to 5; and fought the battle of the bottle, only to later extol the virtues of marijuana and hashish. He was quite a character, to say the least.