Archives
Thursday, May 18, 2006
The Absence of Being
Earnest
Glenn
Ford, Van Heflin, and Joel McCrea
MOTION PICTURES. We were talking movies — or trying to — and I began to wonder what my friend’s son would reflect on at a later time, tables turned, in a similar conversation with a person half his age. That’s when I realized something was missing.
I’m not an avid movie goer, but used to be. In the fifties and early sixties, Saturday afternoon was the time to box up the Fort Apache stockade, put away the plastic burp gun, and bike to the movies. “Shoot-em-ups” my mother called them. Westerns and war flicks. Occasionally, usually by accident, I’d see films with no combat at all.
I wasn’t lusting for bloodshed, I wanted to see heroes, learn what it takes to be a man. But the names and the faces I call up are barely known today, or so it seems. They were genuine, solid, and, yes, earnest. They could win you over without histrionics or fake attitude. All of them looked exactly like my father. Van Heflin in Shane. Joel McCrea in Ride the High Country. Glenn Ford in any movie that had him in uniform. Each would invariably leave me with the impression I’d encountered someone real, someone worthy to emulate. Someone who would stand and fight if he had to — and only for the right reasons. No phoniness. Just men. Who remembers them now?
Not my young friend. One name, he says, sounds vaguely familiar. Then it’s his turn. He asks what I think about someone in some movie I think I’ve seen but can’t exactly place. I’ve caught several, I’m certain. Can almost recollect the special effects, which seem to be the real point. See in my mind’s eye a few smug expressions and maybe bring up a one-liner or two of bravado. I know these big movies feature big stars, because that’s the way it’s supposed to work. I just can’t recall their faces or their names. But the fact is, I just don’t care.
In the end we might have found one icon in common, the brightest star of all for me, William Holden. He remembers him, sort of. Something about a river and a bridge. Time rolls on.
