The Lemmon Song

Late in life, the brilliant American actor Jack Lemmon had a surgical facelift that smoothed out the wrinkles, removed the bags from under his eyes and sadly, took the expression and elasticity from that wonderful face. Few people noticed, but I did. In his last few movies - the grumpy old actor bookends the poor Odd Couple II, and the even poorer Out to Sea, all with Walter Matthau, and a couple of other turns - Lemmon relied on his voice, the inflections, the tart and sarcastic reaction, the exasperrated diatribe, but it wasn't the same. He died in the pre-September 11th world in June of 2001, just a year after Matthau.

Despite the last few half-hits, Lemmon's legacy is unassailable. To me, he's the greatest actor in American cinema (or at least amidst the rare peers of Fonda, Stewart, and Grant) and for some reason, in these January doldrums, his incredible body of work came to mind like a warm breeze. Maybe it was Lance Mannion's thoughtful posts on liberal (and conservative) Hollywood conventional wisdom and the complexity that really governs cinematic politics. Perhaps it's the fact that my new Netflix account seemed to bring on an instantaneous Lemmon festival, almost unbidden. Or maybe it's the fact that Lemmon once said this:

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. You must reach the emotional and intellectual level of ability where you can go out stark naked, emotionally, in front of an audience.

It's very hard to do a better job of describing the thespian arts than art, and Lemmon didn't just say it - he lived it. The antic comedy of a skinny young stage actor morphed into the serious, internal stories of a middle-aged man not afraid to show his age, and his sense that the world is moving on and he cannot crontrol it. Of course, his work with Billy Wilder was among his best and they span the full range - Some Like It Hot, the Apartment, Irma La Douce, The Front Page.

But lately, I've been thinking of a handful of Lemmon dramatic roles: the father searching for his son in Missing, the nuclear engineer turned whistleblower in The China Syndrome, and the conflicted suburban parish priest in Mass Appeal. Generally, these characters are little people - or at least, the guys we don't notice next door. But Lemmon inhabits them with an incredible sense of humanity. Each has a job that comes with a conventional point of view, a set of rules that are not to be challenged - until somebody, or something, or some event does. No one expressed that transition from staid convention, to puzzlement, to anger, to inner turmoil, to rage better than Jack Lemmon - no one.

So here we were this old last weekend, firing up The Out-of-Towners on the DVD and laughing aloud at the antics of Lemmon's Ohio executive who hits the perfect New York storm of transit strike, garbage strike, and a fogged-in Kennedy Airport. (Considering he played two of the great New York characters of all time in Felix Unger and C.C. Baxter, Lemmon can be forgiven this silly anti-Gotham farce). So I started jotting down my Lemmon Top 10, and here's what I came up with (in no partiular order):

Mister Roberts
Some Like It Hot
Days of Wine and Roses
The Odd Couple
Save the Tiger
The China Syndrome
Mass Appeal
Missing
Glengarry Glen Ross
The Prisoner of Second Avenue

It's funny: Lemmon's characters can usually be divided between comedic and dramatic, but in truth each of the good ones had a bit of both. The priest in Mass Appeal was funny, as the was the failing fashion maker in Save the Tiger - but each was tragic. And in his hilarious character (Unger leaps to mind) there is something of the resignation of the clown, the knowledge of a tough life that compels humor. The man himself summed it up best:

It's hard enough to write a good drama, it's much harder to write a good comedy, and it's hardest of all to write a drama with comedy. Which is what life is.

UPDATE: Wintering is an indoor sport in these parts, and along with sports in pre-pitchers and catchers territory, it seems to turn fertile minds to the movies - especially these days, when downloads and Tivo and Netflix makes every easy chair into a cinema seat. James Wolcott turns his attention to movie criticism, where these days, he finds "critics living so high in their heads that they've severed themselves from the wit and physicality of good acting, or even enjoyable bad acting." Wolcott confesses to Lemmon non-fandom in the same post, but graciously turns on his traffic spigot here anyway for precisely the latter value - enjoyable bad acting. Yessir! I love enjoyable bad acting,even the loud yammering of Lemmon's goofball low-level comedies (especially in January).

Indeed, "bad" acting and film-making of a higher order is a recurring theme in the exellent pair of posts by Lance Mannion and Jason Chervokas on Woody Allen. Outside of the brilliant book-ends Annie Hall and Manhattan, my favorite Woodman moments are the goofy ones - the silly lines, the purposeful mangling of language in shining a light on all of our insecurities that Allen masters. When he is at his most pretentious, he is at his worst - the farther from humor, the farther from truth, in my view. (This does not bury the human drama in his work; it merely raises those that retain the humorous edge, the delight at the absurd). Woody Allen is a humorist - the "great director" tag has been a drag anchor on his critical acclaim, despite an incredibly prolific career - and yeah, Bananas should be on any top 10 list (but to follow Wolcott's theme, I'd put Manhattan Murder Mystery - a thin Thin Man - on the list too, because it's got some great bad acting in it). Interiors? Nah - and certainly not in January, when it could push this indoor sportsman over the freaking edge.

Comments

[zeke]

A nice tribute to a great actor. Film appreciation is subjective, so I'll refrain from criticizing the absence of "The Apartment" from your list of his ten best: but it would be near the top of mine.

[Lance Mannion]

Just after Lemmon died I had a Lemmon fest of my own. I watched The Apartment, Irma La Duce, and, I don't know why except that I hadn't seen it before, Under the Yum Yum Tree. It was the only movie of his I've seen where he gave what I thought was an unconvincing performance. I'm counting the godawful movie he made with James Garner about two ex-presidents on the run, My Fellow Americans.

I'm with zeke, The Apartment is on my list of top 10 Lemmons. One of my favorites of I can't put in a top 10 list because the movie's so slight is The Wackiest Ship in the Army, but I'm not sure I'd leave off another lightweight service comedy, Operation Mad Ball.

Another one I love is The War Between Men and Women.

A Lemmon movie I'm planning to see is Cowboy, with Glenn Ford. I can't picture Lemmon in a western, even as a tenderfoot. But I once read he was the original choice to play Butch Cassidy...to Paul Newman's Sundance.

I noticed the face lift too and cursed it. It took the sadness out of his eyes.

[Lance Mannion]

Forgot one. The Great Race.

I'm serious.

[Tom W.]

Sound of hand slapping forehead - yes, the Apartment is top 10, er, 11 material. Haste makes waste, it's a classic.

The Great Race and Wackiest Ship in the Army are fine, wacky pictures - nothing wrong with that, indeed when they pop upon TBS, I watch 'em with the pleasure tat only comes when you realze oceans of your life are washing by and you don't really care.

[Tom K]

There's a good one where he plays a photojournalist run over by a football player, and Mattheu his personal-injury-lawyer-brother-in-law. I can't recall the title, but don't recognize it among the titles. Maybe not top 10, but pretty representative of his work: human and entertaining.

But if we're ranking, based on the ones I've seen, "Save the Tiger" takes the prize.

[Tom W.]

Yeah, Save the Tiger is probably the best dramatic performance, top to bottom, among many. nd man, as we age into the demographic of the character Lemmon plays, it's tougher to watch...at least for me.

[Tom K]

The one I was trying to remember is "The Fortune Cookie". It shouldn't displace any of the top 10, and might not make his top 20, but it was a fun film and typically Lemmonic.

[Claire]

You're right. Lemmon is an antidote to a frozen January. Thanks for helping me next I'm trying to pick a video to rent.

[Richard Cobeen]

I would mention "Short Cuts", "Operation Mad Ball", "It Should Happen to You", and "The Apartment" as better than all but a few of the movies you listed. Lemmon's career as a leading man was established by Wilder, but his range and roles he could be cast in was diminished during that amazing combination of "Some Like it Hot" and "The Apartment." Before those movies Lemmon's acting had a liveliness and excitement, which reach an apotheosis in "Some Like it Hot", that left him once he became straightjacketed by the role of the schlub everyman that was thrust upon him in "The Apartment.". Only in "The Great Race", a bad comedy, did he ever again allow the manic, confident side of him to come out. He and Wilder change Hildy Johnson into someone with no fire and no sign of being the best reporter in Chicago.

[M. O'Connor]

I was privileged a number of years ago to see Jack Lemmon on Broadway in "Tribute." He was absolutely wonderful and his performance unforgettable.

[LeeBaby]

I'll second "The Great Race", but should confess that it's largely due to sentimental reasons. As for Woody Allen, I'm a huge fan of "Zelig".

[Brian]

Great piece on Jack Lemmon. I only wish you'd said more about Days of Wine and Roses-- while it's arguably less about alcoholism than the downward mobility it affects, it's a harrowing, powerful film, and Lemmon is really amazing in it. In fact, his performance is its key-- as I think Owen Gleiberman or someone mentioned at the time of Lemmon's death (I do wish to properly give credit, but apologize if the credit is wrong) it takes his apartment everyman and uses it to seduce the audiences-- oh boy, another urbane comedy!-- only to turn it on its head and give us something dark and devastating. I don't think either Lemmon or Blake Edwards (whose use of mise-en-scene is masterful in it) ever quite did anything as "naked" (to use Lemmon's term) again.

[freq flag]

"Let's get Buddy-Boy to do it."
"Yeah, what's Buddy-Boy done for us lately?"

[David Ehrenstein]

Another vote for "The Great Race." I love the shot of Lemmon and Falk peddaling their balloon across the skies with the word "Fate" prominently stmaped on it.

It was obvious from the moment he appeared in "It Should Happen to You" that Lemmon was something special -- a "city boy" who while sophisticated was also "everyman." Wilder expanded on this neurotic everyman idea in "The Apartment" but in "Some Like it Hot" he reaches heights of comic Valhalla that precious few have ever touched. I treasure his upset at Joe E. Brown groping him in the elevator almost as much as their sublime tango. And what makes the greatest last line in the history of the cinema so perfect is the look on Lemmon's face on its delivery.

[Jose Padilla]

One word: Avanti.

[Peter L. Winkler]

How to Murder Your Wife is underrated and quite enjoyable.

[al Spafford]

When I finished seeing The Days of Wine and Roses (back in the early '60s) I left my friends as we left the theatre and immediately walked back in with a new ticket to see it a 2nd time that eve. I did not know at the time that I would later do graduate work in substance abuse and eventually be a program director at an alcohol detox facility. I have since seen The Days of... about 20 x. I think this was the first dramatic, not comedic, role I had ever seen Lemmon in--what a performance--Gregory Peck in ...Mockingbird...beat him out for the academy award that yr as I recall--I was very disappointed!

[Rosco]

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[shah cader]

My first Jack Lemmon film was "Irma la douce" when it was repeated in early seventies. I was barely a teenager then. The film created within me a feeling of warmth and safety, and a desire to be part of that Parisienne scene. Until today I was not able to properly explain this feeling to others. Since then I have of course seen quite a few films of late lamented Jack Lemmon including repeats of "Irma". "Odd Couple" also generated a similar feeling within me. Nearly 6 years after his death, I now realise that these comforting thoughts were built up inside me to counter the sense of loss and grief created by Mr. Lemmon's demise. What a great person he was!