Gotta Know When to Holden

I saw my seventh William Holden movie on Wednesday night, so it's time for him to get the 7-movie treatment. Here are the seven William Holden movies I've seen:

Stalag-17 (1953): Holden in a crew cut. Holden in a crew cut playing a loner prisoner-of-war who only looks out for himself. Holden winning an Oscar. Holden didn't even want to make the damn movie.

Sabrina (1955): An enjoyable enough Billy Wilder comedy, Holden was a little long in the tooth and wrinkly in the face to be believable as golden boy David Larrabee. Still, he's irresistably charming in Sabrina, helped along by the cardboard dullness of his brother Lionel, played by Humphrey Bogart.

Network(1976): I was too young when I saw this for the first time, and I really need to watch it again. When I was 15, I think I was mainly drawn to the "I'm as mad as Hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore" speech. This movie should be required viewing for anyone absorbing massive quantities of media today. Long before Dateline turned from a semi-legitimate newsmag into the "Capture the guy on camera trying to hook up over the Internet with a 12-year-old girl" show, long before anchorwomen were doing double-duty hosting Big Brother, there was Diane Christiansen, programming head at UBS, who filled the network news with soothsayers, launched The Mao Zedong Hour, and hired terrorists to dispose of a celebrity whose ratings went stale.

The Towering Inferno(1974): When I was in Junior High school, I caught this movie on LIFETIME, which showed it all the time, even though I'm not really sure of its appeal to women. This was well before LIFETIME got the rights to its savior show, The Golden Girls and before they started churning out ridiculously banal movies of the week like The Truth About Jane and The Secret Life of Zoe. Let me help you avoid the same misery I endured: The truth about Jane is that she's a lesbian. The secret about Zoe is that she's hopped up six ways to Sunday on weed and prescription drugs and booze. Here's a little snippet of dialogue:
Zoe: Mom, it's not a big deal.
Mom (played to perfection by Mia "oh my god I can't believe this is my career now do you think anyone remembers when I had real work" Farrow): You're right. It's not a big deal. It's the BIGGEST deal.

Wait, where were we? Right. Towering Inferno.

Like most classic disaster flicks from the 70s, along the lines of Airport, Poseiden Adventure, Earthquake, etc.,
the cast was filled with celebrities in small but meaningful roles. Holden plays Duncan, and wears a really silly red tuxedo jacket. More importantly, he's the contractor whose no-good son-in-law is responsible for the "beautiful but clearly doomed from the start skyscraper" becoming the death trap for which the film is named.

The real star, of course, is the fire itself. Well, no. The REAL stars were Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. McQueen reportedly was set to costar with Mr. Newman in Butch Cassady and the Sundance Kid, but refused to be billed behind Newman. When Inferno came around, the dispute was settled with an innovative new equal billing technique: One star's name would be listed first, but lower than the other star's name, which would be adjacent but higher. You may remember this strategy being used for the theme song to Laverne and Shirley. Unfortunately, there are no known shots of Paul Newman popping out of the closet door at the exact moment that Steve McQueen opens the front door to their apartment, thus knocking the doors into each other before turning to the audience and breaking into cheesy smiles.

But we're here to fete the late William Holden, who died from injuries from a fall incurred when he was dirty stinking drunk.

Damien: Omen II< (1978): It's two years since the original film, but Damien has managed to age from a toddler to a precocious teen who learns he is not actually a biological member of the powerful Thorne family, but rather the spawn of Satan and a randy little female jackal. (See? This is why I'm against open adoption.)
Gregory Peck gave the first film a whiff of legitimacy, but the original was also a cleverly scripted thriller, and the casting of a legendary actor in the lead role of Damien's adopted father only strengthened an already well-orchestrated nailbiter. Its sequel, on the other hand, is little more than a kill-by-numbers horror flick, and the presence of Holden lends the production a much-needed lift--as do the numerous creative death sequences: Lew Ayres drifting away under the ice of a frozen lake, Meschach Taylor, sporting a pre-Designing Women late seventies 'fro, crushed by an out-of-control elevator, some actress whose name I can't remember losing her eyes to some enthusiastic crows before stumbling into the path of an oncoming truck. . . you get the idea.

Born Yesterday (1951): A cute premise, a little too slow-moving for my tastes. Holden plays a newspaper reporter hired by a thug to smarten and sharpen up his dame while he tries to find corrupt D.C. politicians to hide in his pocket.

Sunset Boulevard (1950): Holden plays failed screenwriter Joe Gillis, who goes all gigilo for aging silent star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), for whom we all know the pictures got too small. Billy Wilder turns the poison pen on his own biz for a cynical film noir that peeks into the crumbling lives of two hopeless characters: one trying to get a foot in the door of a cutthroat industry and one desperate and looney to get back in the saddle.

And that's my 2 cents about my 7 William Holdens.