Actors' Last Screen Moments
by John Aquino on 08/31/14
My recent post about celebrity deaths caused me to think about last movie or tv scenes of movie stars
- Dick Powell. He was a singer in Warner movie musicals until 1943 when he decided to completely change his image and starred as the detective Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet. From that point on he sang in movies only once more, six years later in the non-musical Mrs. Mike playing a Canadian mountie. He played in mostly film noir as adventurers and detectives, with a few comedies tossed in. Then around 1954, he and David Niven and Charles Boyer created Four Star Productions and alternated as stars of "Four Star Playhouse." In his autobiography, The Moon Is a Balloon, Niven described how in addition to acting in shows Powell was the one of the three with a good business and management sense. Powell also directed a few movies, most notably The Enemy Below in 1957. And then in 1963, Powell made a cameo appearance in a Four Star Productions' comedy series "Ensign O'Toole" about the schemes of the title character played by Dean Jones. The episode on April 28, 1963 was about a talent contest O'Toole and his men were holding. Powell, billed as Chief Richard E. Powell, showed up to audition. When he was doing movie musicals, Powell had appeared in military uniform in Flirtation Walk, The Singing Marine, and In the Navy. As a sailor accompanies him on the piano, Powell sings, "Over the seas let's go men. We're shoving right off, we're shoving right off again. Nobody knows where or when. We're shoving right off, we're shoving right off again." As he sings, he notices that O'Toole and his men appear disinterested. Powell continues singing, walks over to the accompanist, singing, "We're shoving right off for home! Shoving right off for home--" and then he takes the sheet music off the piano and says to O'Toole, "I think I get the picture, mates. Shove off?" O'Toole smiles and nods, and Powell walks away.. Powell had died Jan. 2, 1963, almost five months before the show was broadcast. It was his last professional appearance and the last time he sang on film. After he left the scene, O'Toole says to his men in an in-joke, "It just goes to show that without the navy I don't know how a guy like him would be able to support himself." A pretty fitting exit.
- Spencer Tracy was only 68 in 1967 when he appeared in Guess Who's Coming Together with Katherine Hepburn. But due to his alcoholism and a heart condition he looked like a very old man. It was his first movie in four years, and he felt it would be his last. In the movie, Tracy and Hepburn's daughter plans to marry a black doctor named John Prentice, played by Sidney Poitier. In the final scene, Tracy has a long speech to all concerned: "And Mrs. Prentice says that like her husband I'm a burned-out old shell of a man who cannot even remember what it's like to love a woman the way her son loves my daughter. And strange as it seems, that's the only statement made to me all day with which I am prepared to take issue--because I think you're wrong, you're as wrong as you can be. I admit I hadn't considered it, I hadn't even thought about it. But I know exactly how he feels about her, and there is nothing,absolutely nothing that you son feels for my daughter that I didn't feel for Christina. Old? Yes. Burned out? Certainly. But I can tell you the memories are still there, clear, intact, indestructible, And they'll be there if I live to be a 110. Where John made his mistake, I think, was in attaching so much importance to what her mother and I think. Because in the final analysis, it doesn't matter a damn what we think. The only thing that matters is what they think and what they feel, and how much they feel for each other. And if it's half of what we felt for each other--that's everything." Tracy, who was a Catholic, never divorced his wife but lived with Hepburn for 25 years. In the scene, she is visiblly weeping as Tracy speaks. There's a real sense that he was expressing his love for her in the scene, which is beautifully written by William Rose. Tracy died 17 days after filming was completed.. Tracy was posthumously nominated for an Academy Award for the film, as was Hepburn. She won. Interestingly enough, Hepburn played Henry Fonda's wife in the 1981 film On Golden Pond. It was Fonda's last film role, and they both won Oscars.
- There are other examples. Tyrone Power in his last completed film, Witness for the Prosecution (1958) brilliantly played against type. Clark Gable, in a switch from his more recent string of comedies, tackled an Arthur Miller screenplay in The Misfits (1961) and said it was the first time he really acted in a movie. He died two weeks after the picture wrapped. Steve McQueen's last words on screen in The Hunter (1980) were "God bless you," said in response to his newly delivered baby's sneeze. In the film, he played a bounty hunter, coming full circle from his breakthrough role in the tv series "Wanted Dead or Alive." He died three months after the movie's release. Charles Laughton took on a Southern accent for the first time in Advise and Consent (1962) and etched a truly memorable final role as a cantankerous Southern senator. And John Wayne, who had survived cancer, played a dying gunfighter in The Shootist (1976) and would die three years later.
Comments (0)
