Tweet Future Shock: when old actors are your age

A few years ago my wife and I were watching Malaya (1949), and about mid-way into it she asked me: “How old was Spencer Tracy when this movie was made?” I thought for a moment, and replied: “Forty-nine, a year older than I am now.” She was amazed, and frankly so was I, since he looked like such an elderly guy in the film, but we quickly concluded that, of course, Spence didn’t take very good care of himself, what with the heavy drinking and all, so naturally he looked a lot older than he actually was at the time.

More recently we were watching The Enforcer (1951), and at some point she asked me: “How old was Humphrey Bogart when this movie was made?” I thought for a moment and said, a little uneasily, “Uh, Fifty-two. A year older than I am now.” That seemed quite impossible, but, of course, Bogie was a hell-raiser who drank heavily and smoked and caroused and all, so naturally, he looked a lot older than he actually was at the time.

This evening we watched A Hard Day’s Night (1964), a longtime favorite, and marveled at how young and energetic The Beatles were in their heyday, and how great the songs still sound. Along the way it occurred to us both that Wilfred Brambell, the “clean old man” who played Paul’s grandfather, really didn’t seem to be all that ancient, the way we’d remembered him. After the movie was over I went over to my laptop to look him up in IMDb, and . . . Oh my God, Paul’s grandfather was a year younger than I am now when the movie was made!

So, okay. I’ve recovered sufficiently to ask: has anyone else had a similar traumatic experience, regarding the age of an actor in a classic film?

I recently discovered that Laura Ingalls Wilder...Little House on the Prairie...pioneer girl... was alive during my lifetime! Sort of like discovering Daniel Boone was in the high school class that graduated just a few years before mine.

Somehow appropo to this thread is the old Tom Lehrer quote: " When Mozart was my age, he had been dead for three years".....


RICHARD M ROBERTS

I don't have much of a problem - mostly, I am older than any of 'em!

Dan'l was well before my time, but some of my older friends claim to remember him.

Apropos me personally, I don't really notice or care about such comparisons, but I'm continually struck by how many men in pictures of the '20s & '30s whom I initially take to be thirty-somethings are later revealed to be twenty-somethings. Ditto for the dames, except with them the contrast is even greater--matronly types who turn out to be no more than 40. Dress creates some of this illusion--think of how often college kids, or even adolescent boys, are shown attired in coat, tie, & hat. But not sure dress alone accounts altogether for this false impression--social differences between then & now must also be exerting influence toward an appearance of greater maturity.

I remember the Coleoptera--alas.

Here's a clip of a guy who witnessed the Lincoln assassination from I've Got a Secret from 1956. I might have seen it live from my crib.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_iq5yzJ-Dk

Bob

Thanks, Bob, that was worth the entire thread!

Yes, I've played the "when they were my age" game from time to time. Just for fun I just looked up a few names to see what they were up to at my present age. Some results are more uplifting than others!

Anthony Asquith: The Browning Version
Humphrey Bogart: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Frank Borzage: The Vanishing Virginian
Lionel Barrymore: The Show
Clara Bow: long since retired
Marlon Brando: one year after The Godfather and Last Tango in Paris
Louise Brooks: long since retired
Luis Buñuel: One year before Los Olvidados
James Cagney: The Time of Your Life
Elisha Cook Jr: Don’t Bother to Knock
Gary Cooper: Bright Leaf
Lon Chaney: dead two years
Charlie Chaplin: Two years before The Great Dictator
Bobby Clark: Two years after final Clark & McCullough film, one year before The Goldwyn Follies
John Cleese: A Fish Called Wanda
Johnny Depp: Dark Shadows
Leonardo DiCaprio: eleven years to go
Carl Th. Dreyer: six years after Vampyr
W. C. Fields: one year before The Golf Specialist
James Finlayson: Our Relations
Henry Fonda: one year before Mr. Roberts
John Ford: December 7th
Jodie Foster: Carnage
Dwight Frye: dead five years
Janet Gaynor: two years before Bernardine (last theatrical film)
John Gilbert: dead ten years
Lillian Gish: Commandos Strike at Dawn
Cary Grant: Dream Wife
Sydney Greenstreet: thirteen years to go until film debut
Alec Guinness: one year after Lawrence of Arabia
Oliver Hardy: A-Haunting We Will Go
Phyllis Haver: long since retired
Howard Hawks: one year before The Big Sleep
Alfred Hitchcock: Rope
Edward Everett Horton: Top Hat
Boris Karloff: The Walking Dead
Danny Kaye: between On the Double and The Man from the Diner’s Club
Buster Keaton: San Diego, I Love You
Fritz Lang: The Return of Frank James
Harry Langdon: Knight Duty and Hallelujah, I’m a Bum
Charles Laughton: The Big Clock
Stan Laurel: A Chump at Oxford
Harold Lloyd: five years before last film, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock
Ernst Lubitsch: That Uncertain Feeling
Shirley MacLaine: Terms of Endearment
Tully Marshall: one year until film debut
Chico Marx: one year after A Night at the Opera
Groucho Marx: At the Circus
Harpo Marx: A Day at the Races
Zeppo Marx: long since retired from acting
James Mason: Cry Terror
Paul McCullough: The Iceman’s Ball
Adolphe Menjou: Golden Boy
Robert Mitchum: El Dorado
Colleen Moore: long since retired
F. W. Murnau: dead six years
Mae Murray: long since retired
George O'Brien: Fort Apache
Franklin Pangborn: Topper Takes a Trip
ZaSu Pitts: Let’s Face It
William Powell: Love Crazy
Marie Prevost: dead ten years
Edward G. Robinson: Tales of Manhattan
Charlie Ruggles: Ruggles of Red Gap
Barbara Stanwyck: These Wilder Years
Josef Von Sternberg: one year before The Town
Erich Von Stroheim: Crimson Romance
Preston Sturges: The Sin of Harold Diddlebock
Gloria Swanson: two years before Sunset Blvd.
Raoul Walsh: Klondike Annie
John Wayne: The Searchers
James Whale: Sinners in Paradise
Billy Wilder: The Seven Year Itch
Fay Wray: Rock, Pretty Baby

[Mike Gebert]

"Luis Buñuel: One year before Los Olvidados"

That's at least kind of encouraging, since Bunuel would be about as obscure as Viking Eggeling if he'd been hit by a bus then and we only had his late 20s/early 30s films.

My interest/amusement is with the age difference of parent/child combinations, which aren't often realistic and can get strangely close, or on rare occasion even inverted. I can't say the original question here ever interested me much, though I noticed how Spencer Tracy aged quickly and it's really a study in how a body can deteriorate with abuse.

My interest/amusement is with the age difference of parent/child combinations, which aren't often realistic and can get strangely close, or on rare occasion even inverted. I can't say the original question here ever interested me much, though I noticed how Spencer Tracy aged quickly and it's really a study in how a body can deteriorate with abuse.

There were other leading men -- I'm thinking of Gary Cooper, and to some extent Clark Gable -- who also seemed to age unusually fast, but who were not in Tracy's category where booze was concerned. Of course, practically everyone smoked in those days, and that must have been a factor.

And then there was Cary Grant, who defied the calendar for a very long time. He's a perfect example of the parent/child age disparity you mention, in North by Northwest, wherein his "mother" Jessie Royce Landis was only about seven years older.

Mistinguett maintained her looks for many years--In Rigolboche (1936), she was 61 but looked many years younger.

On the other end of the spectrum, Pearl White was only 48 when she returned to the U.S. for a visit in 1937, but she could've easily passed for being much older.

-HA

At the other end of the spectrum, years ago I saw Cary Grant walk into a theater in L.A. and every man in the crowd wanted to kill him "How dare he look that good at his age."

On the other end of the spectrum, Pearl White was only 48 when she returned to the U.S. for a visit in 1937, but she could've easily passed for being much older.

The spectrum can be distorted at both ends--such as Lauren Bacall exuding the slinky cool of 28 (or maybe 38!) when she was only 18; she's the only specific example I can presently think of, but there were plenty of others.

My interest/amusement is with the age difference of parent/child combinations, which aren't often realistic and can get strangely close, or on rare occasion even inverted. I can't say the original question here ever interested me much, though I noticed how Spencer Tracy aged quickly and it's really a study in how a body can deteriorate with abuse.

There were other leading men -- I'm thinking of Gary Cooper, and to some extent Clark Gable -- who also seemed to age unusually fast, but who were not in Tracy's category where booze was concerned. Of course, practically everyone smoked in those days, and that must have been a factor.

And then there was Cary Grant, who defied the calendar for a very long time. He's a perfect example of the parent/child age disparity you mention, in North by Northwest, wherein his "mother" Jessie Royce Landis was only about seven years older.

That's one of the more famous oddball pairings that works. To go really far and still mostly work, in the 1924 Peter Pan it's 3-1/2 years. I often find pairings of ten years or less.

Some people age gracefully for awhile and then within a few years, they look really old especially if their face collapses (this happened to my father, it's shocking to see a mid-'50s photo with one just five years later). Smoking is a real issue, and I bet the number of actors of the era (especially men) who didn't smoke is a good deal shorter than those who did.

[Mike Gebert]

Some people just have a youthful face that alters in an unpredictable way, too. Gary Cooper, who's so beautiful as a young man, was never haggard, but for some reason he suddenly looks worried and fearful after a certain point (in a way that, say, Jimmy Stewart or Randolph Scott, other all-American tall-drinks-of-water, never did). Fortunately he used that well, especially in things like High Noon and Man of the West, but it is curious how what looks like sublime confidence at 30 is suddenly middle-age angst a short time later.

On the other hand, I think Bogart needed a few years to add some lines of humor to his face; they didn't just keep him typecast in the early days as a thug because they were too dense to imagine Casablanca yet.

I'll be 62 in a few months so as I reflect on some of my favorites at my age I find the following:

Gary Cooper dead two years
John Barrymore dead two years
Warner Oland dead five years
Conrad Veidt dead twelve years
Warren William dead nine years
Clark Gable dead three years
Errol Flynn dead twelve years
Tyrone Power dead eighteen years

Other favorites who made it to 62 didn't have much time left:

Ronald Colman five years left
Al Jolson four years left
Walter Huston five years left
Warner Baxter about a month left
W.C. Fields four years left
Harry Carey seven years left
Edward Arnold four years left

There's a saying - "Every day above ground is a good day."

The above grim litany inclines me to think I should move Buddy Rogers to the top of my favorites list--made it to his late 90s. Quite a few ladies achieved the same of course, but not so with the unfortunate XY carriers. (Far from being a favorite, I've wondered how Buddy won his plum part in Wings, but having just watched My Best Girl, I for the first time see something of his appeal.)

There's one thing, however, a good deal worse than meeting the Reaper sooner than you'd like--having your MD write you a script for Aricept.

Other favorites who made it to 62 didn't have much time left:

Ronald Colman five years left
Al Jolson four years left
Walter Huston five years left
Warner Baxter about a month left
W.C. Fields four years left
Harry Carey seven years left
Edward Arnold four years left

There's a saying - "Every day above ground is a good day."

On the brighter side: at 62, Cary Grant had twenty years to go, Jimmy Cagney had almost a quarter-century, and William Powell almost thirty years. And Adolph Zukor, forty!

A few years ago my boss at the time was living opposite Lincoln Center in Manhattan. She already knew about my old movie fixation so I couldn't resist telling her what LC looked like when, as a teenager, I saw Charlie Chaplin and there were "Hello Charlie" banners posted about with the Tramp's likeness. As she listened intently it dawned on me that she was born a few years after Chaplin had died...well...talk about suddenly feeling every bit your age!

My interest/amusement is with the age difference of parent/child combinations, which aren't often realistic and can get strangely close, or on rare occasion even inverted. I can't say the original question here ever interested me much, though I noticed how Spencer Tracy aged quickly and it's really a study in how a body can deteriorate with abuse.

The age gap between Cary Grant and Jesse Royce Landis seems small potatoes compared to the impossible age gap between Laurence Olivier and the woman who played his mother, Eileen Herlie, in HAMLET. She was 11 years younger than her son.

It's a bit daunting to watch SUNSET BOULEVARD with the realization that "ageing movie queen" Gloria Swanson is TEN YEARS younger than I am now!

Likewise amusing to read complaints in the various TV magazines of the 1950s about the "ancient" and "antique" movies then being shown on television--not one of which was any older than 29 years, and most of which had only been made 10 or 15 years earlier.

I'm only in my twenties, so no major "shocks" for me as of yet, but it's funny that this topic was brought up just now, because a few days ago I realized, within a year or so, I'll be the age Chaplin was when he invented the Tramp. Okay, that may not sound so bad, but I was still surprised as it feels only yesterday that my age was the same as when he appeared in "Sherlock Holmes" on stage (just for the record, I'm born exactly 100 years after Chaplin, so that explains part of why I compare my age to him that much, apart from the fact that he's a hero ).

Following along these lines, I'm 55 and can sort of "appreciate" from this perspective the rather short but very productive life Lou Costello had, dying at 53. His whole film career took place during a mere thirteen years or so with Bud Abbott. Within those thirteen years were several eras in their career, so it seemed more lengthy than it actually was. Thirteen years from now I'll be...ah forget it!

Following along these lines, I'm 55 and can sort of "appreciate" from this perspective the rather short but very productive life Lou Costello had, dying at 53.

The concept of a deceased performer whom we still watch on film can be difficult for a child to accept. Oliver Hardy, Curly and Shemp Howard, Lou Costello -- I remember as a 5 year-old asking myself, how can they be dead, I see them all the time on TV?

Good point. It's been awhile but sometimes somebody who's just not into "old movies" will ask me if I don't find it morbid watching and hearing people in films who are all dead. I point out that they were all alive when they made the films. Oh yeah!

The concept of a deceased performer whom we still watch on film can be difficult for a child to accept. Oliver Hardy, Curly and Shemp Howard, Lou Costello -- I remember as a 5 year-old asking myself, how can they be dead, I see them all the time on TV?

I can remember the precise moment I learned that Oliver Hardy, who I so enjoyed watching on TV on a regular basis, was no longer living. I was barely 4 years old when President Kennedy was assassinated, and I guess up to that point I'd assumed that everything I was seeing on TV was happening "live." I couldn't understand why I kept seeing clips of JFK delivering speeches, when they kept saying that he'd been killed.

So my mother told me something like: "You know those Laurel & Hardy movies? Those were made a long time ago. The skinny guy is an old man now, and the fat guy has been dead for years, but you can still watch their movies because they're on film."

WHAM! In one fell swoop, the President is murdered, I find out that one of my favorite comedians has been dead all along, and I also learn about the concept of film.

A statue of Costello in Paterson? Then there's got to be the same for Alice White...or something's rotten in the state of Jersey.

Lou Costello was the first "celebrity death" that affected me, even though he was already gone about four years. I was maybe seven when I learned it. Some neighborhood kid tipped me off that Costello had died in 1959, and my parents sadly confirmed the fact when I confronted them. I still remember running into the kitchen, saying "Is Lou Costello dead?!"

Given how much mileage I still get out of so many "dead performers," I have no qualms watching their celluoid shadows decades after their departure.

Good point. It's been awhile but sometimes somebody who's just not into "old movies" will ask me if I don't find it morbid watching and hearing people in films who are all dead. I point out that they were all alive when they made the films. Oh yeah!

It never occurred to me that it was morbid at all, not even when I was young. I took it for granted that the '30s players were either old or dead, and since I was a kid in elementary school, I'd likely never meet them. It was more a happy surprise to find those who were still living and sharp in mind (and tongue!).