Last week Sam Juliano at Wonders in the Dark came out with a surprise post, “The 43 Greatest performances of all-time by an actor in a leading role” (click here to read the post), and invited his readers to submit their own lists. Like a large number of WitD’s regular readers, I couldn’t resist taking Sam up on his invitation and sent him my own list of the 50+ greatest performances. Because I consider sound films of 1930-1980 my area of knowledge, I stopped at 1980 and for silent performances included only the three great American silent comics. I also limited myself to one performance for each actor, and it was often hard to choose which one. How do you pick just one performance by Keaton, Bogart, Nicholson, or Gabin?
Interestingly, the same names appeared on list after list, if not always for the same performance, a good indication that there is a certain amount of agreement as to what constitutes good acting and who the best are. There was, however, some disagreement as to the distinction between creating a character and projecting a persona. Sam’s colleague at WitD, the very knowledgeable Allan Fish, objected to a couple of Sam’s choices by saying that “one may as well include W. C. Fields or Groucho Marx for one of their comedies. They’re great, but it isn’t acting.” I had already started my own list by the time Allan’s comment was posted, and the first two names on it were Groucho Marx and W. C. Fields! Clearly there was some disagreement among those who responded at least on the definition of acting.
My own view is that many great actors are neglected because they seem to maintain pretty much the same persona from role to role, so it doesn’t always seem as though they’re acting so much as applying their own personality to a new set of circumstances. We think of Groucho Marx, for instance, as Groucho. But take a look at a rerun of his fifties quiz show You Bet Your Life or his interview with Dick Cavett, and it is clear that the “Groucho” of the Marx Brothers movies was an invented character sustained from one film to the next. The same is true to some extent of other actor-personalities. Consider Chaplin and his Little Tramp or my two favorite screen actors, Cary Grant and James Stewart. In the cases where an actor was associated with a certain type of character or with a persona carried over from film to film, I chose the performance which most stood out for me.
Mick La Salle, the movie critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, has made the distinction between what he calls “essence” performances and “chameleon” performances. In the former type of performance, actors express the essence of their personality through a character; in the latter, actors transform into someone totally different from themselves or from their usual screen image. It’s usually this latter type of performance that gets the attention and the awards. Beautiful actresses like Grace Kelly transform themselves into frumps and win Oscars; great comic actors like Jack Lemmon take on a heavy dramatic role and get praised for their dramatic skills (and win Oscars too). The Myrna Loys don’t get Oscar nominations, and the Cary Grants get them only for the infrequent role that calls for heavy emoting. It was hard to construct a list of great performances without slighting the “essence” and comic actors, even though I tried not to. And because I limited myself to one performance per actor, it was difficult not to gravitate toward the chameleonic and the more serious performances in an actor’s body of work.
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Since there are eight novels in the series, I picture it more as a TV series than as a single movie. However, each book does stand on its own, so I’ll take whatever film deal I can get. I do visualize my scenes as I write them, including the look, sound and feel of that snowstorm, and I do have a clear image of the main characters, but they are not based on any real people.But what author has not secretly dreamed of that phone call from Hollywood? Which of us has not pictured one of the cinematic greats in the lead role? Who can resist the thought of Paul Newman repeating your lines and staring down the killer in your story? Never mind that my Inspector Green is a long way from handsome and has hazel eyes. Paul Newman is perfect, right?
The Badger’s Revenge is third novel in the Josiah Wolfe, Texas Ranger series. The book finds Josiah captured by two Comanche bounty hunters, far from home, and he must escape if he is ever to see his young son, again. Through luck, and fortitude, he does escape, and makes his way home, back to Austin, where he has to confront not only his past, but matters of the heart; whether he can allow himself to ever love again. Pearl Fikes is a widow, and a woman of privilege, while Josiah sees himself as a common man, with enough tragedy in his past to keep from ever risking love again. They two of them are worlds apart, but drawn passionately to each other. When Josiah makes his decision, it sets off a series of events that leaves him face to face with a scorned suitor, Pete Feders. Feders is the captain of Josiah’s Ranger company, and holds Josiah’s fate, and ultimately his life, in his hands. 
