Books for Dudes: What Makes a Dude
Douglas Lord -- Library Journal, 12/30/2008
Welcome to winter, dudes, when the sun sets at an ungodly early hour, and all you want to do is go home, watch the boob, and sleep. I’m sure it’s a biological throwback to cavemen lying around watching their fires flicker and dance. Or maybe it goes farther back to a mammalian instinct to eat, curl your tail around your nose, and hibernate. As Angelina Benedetti noted in her last column, it’s a time of year for "staying inside with your cozy blanket." (Or if you’re me, your stuffed unicorns, Webkinz, and tartan Snuggie).
So I’m in flop mode, flipping from channel to channel until I stumble upon a Western. Hey, I know that music—it’s The Magnificent Seven, John Sturges’s 1960 classic starring Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, and Steve McQueen, among other celluloid heavyweights. It’d been forever since I’d watched it, so watch it I did, delighting in the heros and baddies who managed to ride horses, drink firewater, and even get dirty with style and grit.
The movie got me thinking about the oversized Hollywood personalities who played Chris, Calvera, and Vin, not to mention other marquee actors who made their mark with similarly unforgettable roles. What was it about their portrayals of cowboys and gunfighters that so pulled at my Y chromosome? They all seemed to live by a mysterious, unwritten code of masculinity that I sought out in the biographies and autobiographies of the old Hollywood guard collected below.
Spoiler: In many cases, the answer appears to be, let your id run wild and injest rivers of drugs and alcohol; fornicate with abandon, your wife and children be damned. Dude factors: You will take pride in your modest paycheck; your not-so-modest decency; your lack of flattering makeup, wardrobe, and lighting; and, yup, even your tendency to twitter about cassoulet like Dude Poster Boy Josh Hadro. To boot, you will glean fascinating Tinseltown anecdotes to share at the watercooler or gym and feel infotained.
But I’m not going to leave you with just that. It’s a new year; we dudes need a new working definition of masculinity to help us evolve into sensitive, intelligent beings, and I found it in Welsh poet Lloyd Robson’s sprawling Oh, Dad!: A Search for Robert Mitchum, a chronicle of the three years the author spent researching Mitchum and pondering the actor’s films, himself, and masculinity in general. A courageous experiment with a generous dollop of sleaze, it’s an extended solo road trip in which Robson unearths a few nuggets of man-wisdom. I think one of them—"looking yourself in the eye [and b]eing brave enough to be honest, to admit what you are and what you aren’t"—encapsulates what we should be doing on life’s journey.
I have, accordingly, anointed some of Hollywood’s golden oldies with the "dude" sobriquet. And just because I was on a roll, I've included some Extra Credit for those of you who can't get enough of these old fellas.
Borgnine, Ernest. Ernie, the Autobiography. Citadel. 2008. 288p. photogs. index. ISBN 978-0-8065-2941-7. $24.95. AUTOBIOGRAPHYIf we take Borgnine at his word, he is a wonderfully down-to-earth fella—and a dude shoo-in thanks to his gentlemanly conduct, Oscar win for Marty, appearances in Escape from New York and McHale’s Navy, and marriage to Ethel Merman. The quintessential blue-collar star, Borgnine worked for over 50 years in theater, TV, film, and Broadway with pretty much everyone (he’s even on SpongeBob SquarePants!). His anecdotes are engaging, that is to say, not as juicy as those offered up by Tony Curtis in his American Prince, but only because Ernie exercises restraint. (See LJ’s original review.)
Brown, Jared. Zero Mostel, a Biography. Atheneum. 1989. 334p. photogs. index. ISBN 978-0-689-11955-2. $22.50. BIOGRAPHY
So he wasn’t in The Magnificient Seven, and he didn’t make straight men’s hearts go aflutter with his brawn and badness. But the fascinating Mostel was oversized and overtalented; his genius in singing, comedy, and painting destined him for performing. He married a chorus girl and, just when his career was blooming, he was blacklisted for suspicion of communism. If those aren’t enough dude factors, just as his career starts to rekindle, he is hit by a bus (!), and his leg is crushed (!!). He limps the rest of his life. After all this, four words: Rhinoceros, Forum, Fiddler, Producers. A legend he was. Brown’s biography delves backstage for dish and admirably covers a most underrated dude’s career.
Buford, Kate. Burt Lancaster: An American Life. Knopf. 2000. 464p. photogs. index. ISBN 978-0-679-44603-3. $27.50; pap. ISBN 978-0-306-81019-0. $20. BIOGRAPHY
Buford presents brooding hunk Lancaster as an intellectual, politically active liberal perfectionist; an actor, producer, rabble-rouser, and film star. She eschews gossip for cultural context: watch Burt free himself from the shackles of the studio system. His start as a circus performer is perhaps the strongest dude factor, but he was also a grump, a womanizer, and slack as a dad and as such cannot be admitted to the dude club. (See LJ’s original review.)
Capua, Michelangelo. Yul Brynner: A Biography.McFarland & Co. 2006. 208p. photogs. ISBN 978-0-7864-2461-0. $35. BIOGRAPHYCapua (Montgomery Clift: A Biography) reveals much about the mysterious Brynner, who luuuuuhved the layyyyydayyyyyys. Married four times and notorious for affairs, he was also inscrutable about his personal history, down to what year he was born. Boastful (he claimed to be a descendant of Ghengis Khan) and colorful, Brynner was a talented TV director before he became a film star. Though a lot of his movies were poor, he could sing and dance (Mongkut in The King and I was his signature role) and played heros and antiheros superbly. Dude factors: he loved kids, served as a consultant to the UN High Command for Refugees, and was also The Godfather of Bald.
Lord, Graham. Niv: The Authorized Biography of David Niven. Thomas Dunne Bks: St. Martin’s. 2004. 384p. photogs. index. ISBN 978-0-312-32863-4. $25.95. BIOGRAPHYNiven epitomized the suave, cocksure gentleman. A former soldier, he was funny, talented, and charming. Lord’s is a clear, revealing book, if a bit reverential. Readers will learn that Niven was a study in contrasts: his voracious appetite for women belied his deep love of his first wife (who died after a tragic accident). A talented memoirist and a big-time drinker, Niven had that most desireable dude trait—complexity—in spades.
Server, Lee. Robert Mitchum: "Baby I Don’t Care." St. Martin’s. 2001. 608p. photogs. index. ISBN 978-0-312-26206-8. $29.95; pap. ISBN 978-0-312-28543-2. $21.95. BIOGRAPHYServer (Ava Gardner: "Love Is Nothing") confirms most of the lore about legendary Hollywood bad boy Mitchum. Yes, he rode the rails during the Depression, was possibly a Communist, got busted for reefer, and recorded a calypso album. He also left behind an admirable oeuvre, not to mention earned the respect of many directors for his workmanlike attitude toward acting (perhaps best summed up in the subtitle of Mike Tomkies’s The Robert Mitchum Story: "It Sure Beats Working"). Because Mitchum didn’t give a damn about praise, and because his rough public persona was genuine, many view him as the protean masculine icon. The Night of the Hunter and Out of the Past rule, but his life was one of drunken, womanizing irresponsibility. (See LJ’s original review.)
Terrill, Marshall.Steve McQueen: Portrait of an American Rebel. 3d ed. Plexus Pub. 2008. 512p. photogs. index. ISBN 978-0-85965-425-8. pap. $19.95. BIOGRAPHY
Terrill reveals rebel McQueen’s terribly chaotic early years, replete with neglect and dyslexia. Acting out in frustration and rage characterized McQueen’s youth (including two years in a reform school), continued through a stint in the marines, and carried into adulthood. TV work led to a film break, then stardom with The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape. A combative, competitive alpha dog on the set, McQueen had a temper that made him an eminently watchable actor. While he loved motorcycle racing, he also loved booze, acid, and coke and used women like tissues. Though it’s difficult to say this about the guy who starred in The Blob, he’s a far cry from a dude.
Vaughn, Robert. A Fortunate Life. Thomas Dunne Bks: St. Martin’s. 2008. 336p. photogs. index. ISBN 978-0-312-37112-8. $25.95. AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The star of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. reminisces about the great times he had hanging out on TV and movie sets with costars like Steve McQueen and the awfulness of foreign shoots. He spends a considerable amount of text voicing his opposition to the Vietnam War and just a tad dishing about Hollywood. Despite enjoying many years of TV work, this seemingly happily married, clean-cut actor doesn’t take us much past his heydey in the 1970s. A dude even if he doesn’t have huge cultural cachet.
Wallach, Eli. The Good, the Bad, and Me: In My Anecdotage. Harcourt. 2005. 320p. photogs. index. ISBN 978-0-15-101189-6. $25; pap. ISBN 978-0-15-603169-1. $14. AUTOBIOGRAPHYWallach, known for playing grunty, dirty characters like Tuco in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Calvera in The Magnificent Seven, demonstrates beaucoup dudeness in his memoir. The Brooklyn, NY, native attended the Actor’s Studio alongside Marlon Brando and largely prefers performing in theater to film. A true actor’s actor, Wallach selects roles for content instead of pay and in writing both likable and wise proves that there is more to happiness than fame or money. He also scores huge points for fidelity, proud of his 50-plus years of marriage to actress Anne Jackson. Thumbs way up.
EXTRA CREDIT: Mr. Wonderful, aka Jimmy Stewart, was pretty cool (he bedded Marlene Dietrich and Olivia de Havilland, after all). Marc Eliot’s Jimmy Stewart is a little heavy-handed, but it’s informative and juicy. Christopher Plummer manages to bring himself down to the plane of normal mortals as he jets from Budapest to Bern in his wonderfully hoity-toity In Spite of Myself. Don Rickles, in his Rickles’ Book, reveals himself to be a freaking funny Jackson Heights, New York City, boy done good. Marlon Brando had a shot, but…there’s so much material out there on him, and he was a little too eccentric to be a dude. Roger Moore's fatal flaw is chumminess; there’s little to his My Word Is My Bond, save anecdotes. Both Robert Wagner and Tab Hunter are disqualified for being too good-looking. Wagner’s Pieces of My Heart shows that he was raised with a little too much money to be considered for membership in Club Dude, plus he needs lots of attention. I concede, however, that Hunter’s Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star is a fascinating and intelligent look at how he lived and learned as a closeted heartthrob and later gay icon. Though George Hamilton’s Don’t Mind If I Do shows Mr. Tan as a self-deprecatingly funny name-dropper extraordinaire, we're still talking about George Hamilton—it might as well be Laird Hamilton; there’s no leveling the playing field with him. Bob Newhart is dismissed, maybe somewhat cruelly. His memoir, I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This, is a fine thing for the blow-by-blow of his long career, but it’s pretty short on manliness. William Shatner, on the other hand, is a fascinating dude who needs more props (see his Up Till Now), yet I couldn't seem to fit him into the regular review section. He is Kirk, of course, but he’s also a funny, charming, and honestly sensitive fella who lost a beloved wife and is finding happiness later in life.
