The Passion of Christopher Walken

Another Separated at Birth. I have always thought that these soulful photos from the 1928 silent classic The Passion of Joan of Arc (starring Renee Jeanne Falconetti) resemble a young Christopher Walken, doe eyes, eerie gaze, great cheekbones and all. The fact that Walken looked almost feminine seems ironic in light of the fact that he aged into something more like deeply weathered shoe leather. 

I've seen people claim that the very young Walken (who is plastered all over the internet, being a child star from birth) looks like Scarlett Johansson, and it's somewhat true: the bow-shaped lips and Scandinavian-looking facial structure are congruent. I've also seen him compared to Jon Voight, and that one I can get on-board with because I have mistaken him for Voight more than once. They've aged similarly, the way a peach ages. When the juice goes out, the skin shrivels. Blonde men are thin-skinned like women, and are more likely to suffer this fate. But his twinkly ironic smile still flashes like a searchlight, igniting his enigmatic face most delightfully.

I don't know if there is a Walken biography out there - no doubt if there is, it would be inadequate to cover the incredible breadth and depth of his career, which he is so deceptively nonchalant about. He talks as if it fell into his lap. Well, maybe it did, but he'd be the first. 

I'm re-reading a massive bio of Marlon Brando by Peter Manso - well over 900 pages, and this was written before Brando died! Another couple hundred could have been added, and maybe was. This is the sort of book where the binding falls apart, where it makes a welt in your lap when you read it.

We need that sort of book on Walken, because his career is vastly more varied and detailed than Brando's, without being derailed by chasing after social issues which always looked a little like publicity stunts. Sacheen Littlefeather, indeed. A time and a place.

I don't know, however. He is a chameleon and seems to skate over things, perhaps for self-protection. I have seen only one picture of him with his wife, a tiny woman who barely comes up to his shoulder, and his pose with her is so protective he seems to enfold her. He takes any old work now, just takes it because it's all he has, seemingly. He gives the same interviews over and over again, same questions, same answers. Though he is a crack dancer and has had moments of brilliance in this long and wide career, this huge map spreading out in every direction, he has also been in some turkeys - quite a lot of them - just for something to do. I winced a bit to see him in a Superbowl ad for some kind of car, in which he did a blatant parody of himself. This, when he despises scriptwriters who try to "Walkenize" his part.

But at least he didn't self-destruct like all those other child stars did, which is pretty amazing. He got married just once when he was very young, stayed that way, and doesn't talk about it. This is a definite sign of sanity. And no drastic visions, so he isn't likely to be hitched to a pole and set on fire any time soon.

Separated at birth: Rudolph Valentino and William Shatner

AFTERNOTES. I was going to run this with no text at all, but now I feel moved to Say Something. Anyone who follows this blog (me, maybe?) knows that I am nuts about The Shatman. To be 85 years old and have that kind of energy and passion is phenomenal. (And the horses, don't get me started!) But I am also finding out more about Shatner's roots. I found a very poignant story about his professional beginnings in Stratford, Ontario (a place I've been to many times) as a Shakespearean actor. I have seen clips on YouTube from Hamlet and Julius Caesar, and this so-called-over-the-top actor gives, if anything, restrained performances. The article - God, where did it go? I should've bookmarked it - talks about how insecure he was as a young man, and how much of a loner he was. Loner? Insecure? None of these match with the energetic dynamo-of-85, the Shatner of a thousand interests and enterprises (ch-ch-ch-ch - dry ironic chuckle). And yet, and yet.

I'm also finding all these things he did when he was much younger. The segment on the boxer was breathtaking, for he has the body of an Adonis. He is ripped. This powerful, grounded physicality is the foundation for his phenomenal longevity and vitality in his 80s: if you wreck your body when you're young, you're toast by age 60 (sorry, Carrie, I'm afraid it's true). 

As for Rudolph Valentino, he was perhaps my first movie star crush. As a kid, I saw pictures of him in a book we had lying around, a big coffee table book called The Movies. (I thought I imagined it, until I was able to buy a used copy from Amazon.) When I was ten years old I wrote short stories about him, set in the 1920s. Maybe these foreshadowed my completely obscure, mostly-unread novel about Harold Lloyd. Who knows. But I was fascinated with him. 

I am not saying these two are "alike", but is there not something - an elusive something, perhaps, in the exoticism of their eyes, the sensuous bow-shaped lips, the incredible facial structure with cheekbones to die for - is there not something almost Mongolian about Shatner's slightly slanted eyes, something Moroccan about Valentino's inscrutable gaze? 
He was, of course, a Latino from Spain, but Shatner is not the waspy, white-bread leading man people assume he is. He is a Jewish boy from Montreal, and no doubt carried that label and responsibility with a degree of pain.

The pain you can see in those incredible, unfathomable brown eyes.

Separated at. . . oh, you know

Yes, I know I've been through this 

(and through this) before. 

But bear with me.

When an actor plays someone famous, 

such as - uh, er, Ashton Kutcher playing 

Steve Jobs - we expect a startling physical 

resemblance and not much else. The 

"oh, doesn't he look like" phenomenon

 lasts for about 15 minutes.

But after a while you need some acting chops to carry it through. 

And it is VERY important not to aim for caricature, or you could ruin the whole thing.

When you look at these two, it gives you the sense of some kind of blood kin, however distant. 

I just find it interesting, is all. 

I do. 

Not that the two of them really have anything to do with each other. Or with me.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Separated at birth. . . the strangest one of all

Clark Kent. . . 

. . . and Harold Lloyd.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Separated at Birth, Part 956: Helga and Anne

And now comes perhaps my strangest Separated at Birth of all.

From the first time I saw National Velvet, I noticed a remarkable resemblance between Anne Revere, the actress who plays Velvet Brown's mother, and Andrew Wyeth's legendary Helga.

I don't know why others don't see it. The hair is different, and Revere more prone to smiling, but surely the features are very close. 

Put aside the differences in wardrobe and hair, and focus on cheekbones, lips, nose, chin.

Even the rose-colored skin is a match. It's just one of those strange, strange things.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

REVEALED: Strangest "separated at birth" EVER!

Can't you see it? It's the beak.

Jake and Harold: could they be blood kin?

Writers love to do this. They love to cast their own movies. The movies that won't be made out of the novels they will never publish. It sustains them, somehow.

I've posted on this before, but it's time to revisit. I have a couple of candidates in mind for the role of Harold Lloyd (and guess how I'm going to audition them. The casting couch is still very much in operation.) One was Zachary Quinto, until I realized his energy is all wrong (just too self-contained and subdued, though he made a marvelous Spock in the latest Trek movie). Then I went and saw something with Jake Gyllenhaal in it - he doesn't look like his photos, you know, but has a sort of a strange, vaguely cockeyed look and in some angles is almost nerdy. He has a much beefier physique than Harold, who did 85% of his own stunts and was made of springs and rubber bands. But he could capture Harold's energy, I know he could, and he has those puppy eyes and that tinge of love-me narcissism (just a tinge).

No, I wouldn't say they look alike because Harold's face is much more aquiline, if that's the word - narrow of face and nose, with a classic jaw that kept him handsome until the end of his life. And that three-cornered smile could be a trifle vulpine, evoking a forest faun or perhaps the Great God Pan.

But what about the vulpinosity (or vulpitudinousness) of this shot? There's more than a hint of it there.

Jakey Boy loves to seduce the camera, at least in his still shots. I still think his looks are kind of unorthodox, almost as if one side of his face doesn't quite match the other.

He has that bow-shaped-lips thing going on which can transform a man's face, giving it an appealing androgynous touch. But here it is on someone else.

(Hard to believe this is a goofy comedian, with that super-serious look.)

Somebody's rockin' my dreamboat. . . 

But what could be dreamier than this shot of a very young Harold, looking awfully satisfied about something? In this shot, I think I see a blood-kin kind of resemblance. In fact, it's quite startling.

Yes, the breathtaking Jake can be a bespectacled nerd, reminding you of your Grade 9 Physics teacher. The glasses suit him, somehow.

But they suit him even better.

POSTSCRIPT. Do you think I spent hours finding these? I found these two in fifteen seconds. I am not kidding you. The photos just glom together magnetically. I don't know what's going on here.

'Yeah, I always loved Uncle Harold. . . people used to say I looked like him. . . "

And just one more pair (I promise) just to prove they were both. . .

CROSSEYED!

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm