". . . because it’s Don Siegel and film noir at its best. And because Lee Marvin is outstanding in it. Marvin became a friend after The Dirty Dozen [in which Cooper was one of the dozen]. Sadly, I failed to make a political thriller that Lee and I wanted to do, which had been coscripted by Christopher Hudson, with whom I co-wrote Overlord."

"That movie blew me away. I think my dad made me see that and I remember Lee Marvin in that; Lee Van Cleef and Strother Martin are sort of the sidekicks. Woody Strode, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart. Just an incredible cast, I mean… It was just a surprise kind of western. There’s this scene where he gets his heartbroken — John Wayne gets kind of vulnerable in the bar. He loses the lady. That’s a great scene."

"Lee Marvin… That’s a great movie. It kind of sets the benchmark, I think. It kind of puts it up there, because you really engage. And also every part is so well-written. Angie Dickenson… from the female roles to the male roles, the parts are so well drawn. And yet there’s a danger to it, there’s a rawness to it. It’s like an expose of that world, you know?"

"Ernest Hemingway’s superb eight-page short story is the jumping-off point and inspiration for these two essential and very different movies (Stacy Keach reads the story magnificently in one of the DVD extras). I don’t understand why more people don’t know the 1946 Siodmak film. For my money, this is not only the best noir movie of all time but is just about my favorite Hollywood drama from the 1940s. The complex narrative structure begins as a jumbled Rubik’s Cube, and, slowly but surely, each piece falls into its precise place by movie’s end (the stuff Quentin Tarantino’s dreams are made of). The moody atmosphere provided by Siodmak and his technicians is a marvel. The cinematic execution of a heist has never been better. Here marks the birth of two glorious stars: Burt Lancaster (a beautiful caged animal, all teeth) and Ava Gardner (wow). Paul Schrader’s seminal essay on film noir, as a DVD extra, is invaluable. For those of you who wonder why Siegel’s 1964 violent, stylish, quirkily entertaining B version (the first TV movie ever made) is on this list, I have two words for you: Lee Marvin. There has never been a star like him before or since. Words simply cannot do justice to the magic of this guy—the timbre of his voice, the calm, paranoid, roughneck danger in his physical moves. In a spectacular extra on this DVD, fellow actor Clu Gulager gives a very moving (and, one feels while watching it, very truthful) account of working with Marvin, Siegel, and Ronald Reagan (who hated the movie—yet another reason to see it!)."

"I also love Elia Kazan and it was a toss up for me between On the Waterfront, which I saw as a child, and East of Eden, which I saw as a young kid, and also rediscovered as an adult. But I do remember more recently a beautiful print that was struck — maybe by UCLA archives, maybe by AFI; I’m not sure who — and they had a screening of it at a theater that’s the longer one there in Century City, beautiful theater. At one time I think it was the state of the art theater in the country, with the first reclining seats and all that. They had [screened it] somehow, in conjunction with the LA city school system and the English department of LA city schools. And I believe that the matinee that I saw was predominantly schools… And the kids have to read East of Eden or Steinbeck, Travels with Charley or something in school, and you could tell this was going to be their Steinbeck assignment, so it was a field trip. But this… wasn’t a movie for young people, and I was a little worried that the noise, the kicking of the seats, and the high jinx that were prevailing in the auditorium before the lights went down would keep going. And I remember about five minutes into the film there’s a shot of James Dean hopping a freight — he jumps this train, near Monterey and he goes to Salinas, or vice versa — he hops the train and is on his way to Monterey to visit his mother, to find his mother in a brothel. And it’s cold, it’s evening — he pulls his little sweater over his head like a hoodie and he bundles up almost in a fetal position on the top of this train, snaking it’s way through the country side in Monterey county. And the entire audience shut up and you could hear a pin drop. It was the power of a true movie star. It was the first American teenager, James Dean, on the screen. And it didn’t matter that it was a predominantly… junior high school to high school kids — they got it. They got his angst, they got his beauty, they got his rebellion, all in literally 30 seconds’ worth of him exuding teen angst in the film and it was just this great moment. It reminded me of the power of stardom, of light and shadow on the screen, of a Greta Garbo, of a great screen kiss between — God rest her soul — the late Maureen O’Hara and John Wayne in The Quiet Man, or John Travolta strutting down the sidewalk in Saturday Night Fever— it’s just this great thing. And I love that movie anyway. There’s sequences and scenes in that movie, and James Dean, his grace in that movie — I think his movement in that movie is only matched by one or two Lee Marvin performances, and maybe one or two Sean Connery performances that I’ve seen in terms of just male physical grace. Really a great film, and I had to put Kazan on my list. So Kazan would be my number five for East of Eden starring James Dean."

"“I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.” One of the great lines of this story, again based on a novel by Dorothy B. Hughes. I have recommended this movie to many a brooding actor, one of whom called me the next day only to admonish me, “Why did you think I needed to see this film?” I’m a dame, so don’t crawl all over me, but I think men like this film because they can watch it and be tormented, with a glass of scotch in hand, and think about all the dames who ruined them. In a Lonely Place asks: Can violence be romantic? Are all men violent by nature? Do women drive men to be violent toward them? Do women sometimes desire men to be violent? The film touches disturbingly on the psychology of physical abuse, so women, beware. It seems to say: I beat you because I love you, because I can’t live without you. And if I can’t have you, if you want to leave me, I may have to kill you. The fact that a love-hate relationship was going on during the making of the film between the people who made it—director Nicholas Ray and Ray’s then wife, star Gloria Grahame—only gives it an added dimension. It’s interesting to note that In a Lonely Place was made during a time when that sort of behavior toward women was more acceptable, was even considered love. Read up on Bogart’s third marriage, to actress Mayo Methot. They nearly killed each other but, while married, were affectionately referred to as “the battling Bogarts.” Humphrey Bogart always played a tough guy on-screen. He had an inner violence that escaped in a knowing snarl, or a slap or two for poor Peter Lorre in The Maltese Falcon. This Bogart is pretty ugly. Was he playing himself? He’s the producer here, so it seems obvious he wanted to expose himself within the confines of the story. Bogart plays Dixon Steele, a washed-up, once-famous screenwriter. He’s a loner, he’s an alcoholic, and he’s also quite the snappy dresser—which I thought was a great touch. It’s a signal that he sets himself apart. He’s better than everyone else. He doesn’t have to follow the rules. He has his own code of behavior, and if you don’t like it, he’ll smash your face in. He’s someone who seems so far removed from his own actions that it’s hard to even root for him. Although he is a violent drunk, he never sees it that way. He’s noble. There’s some kind of masculine honor in Dix that Bogart and Ray seem to say is lacking in every other man in Hollywood. Ah, when men were men, and you could booze and brawl all night. Every sadist needs a masochist, and no one plays sexy-doomed better than Gloria Grahame. Her suffering was usually some sort of retribution. Lee Marvin throws hot coffee in her face in The Big Heat. She becomes a prostitute in the nightmare vision of Bedford Falls, Pottersville, in It’s a Wonderful Life. She dies in a plane crash after cheating on Dick Powell in The Bad and the Beautiful. She shines here. And could someone explain to me the undercurrent of her relationship with her female masseuse? “She beats me black and blue.” Hmmm . . . In In a Lonely Place, she is the wrong girl who moved into the wrong place and got hooked up with the wrong guy while running away from another wrong guy. Laurel Gray. Wonder if they took the name from Laurel Canyon, a winding road in LA. She’s never going to find happiness, especially with a man like Dix, and you know that from the minute you see her. The original ending of In a Lonely Place has Laurel strangled by Dix in the heat of their last argument as she attempts to leave him. He then calmly finishes his screenplay as the police come to arrest him. That’s Hollywood. In spite of killing his girlfriend, he finishes his screenplay. I would have preferred that, because I think that’s a reflection of what Ray and Bogart really felt. Instead, Ray got cold feet, and the ending, though tragic, lets Dix off the hook, leaving us to believe he will forever be in that lonely place. He’s the victim. Is there nobility in that? Maybe Ray was looking for his own happy ending. He and Grahame divorced in 1952. In 1956, Ray made Bigger Than Life, another film I love that explores a man driven to almost killing his wife."