A 19th-Century Forrest Gump

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"I was an honored guest so they gave me a special treat: boiled dog. Now I will admit, dog is greasy, but you'd be surprised how downright delicate the flavor is — especially when you're starving."

Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman)

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The last time I watched Arthur Penn's "Little Big Man" — which premiered on this day in 1970 — it occurred to me that Little Big Man (Dustin Hoffman) was the 19th–century version of Forrest Gump.

He was always where big things were happening in the West — just like Forrest Gump kept showing up at the White House ... after he showed up on the infamous occasion when George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door in an attempt to block the integration of the University of Alabama.

Forrest Gump was always rubbing elbows with the big names of 20th–century history, with presidents and would–be presidents, often in the news footage of the day. Little Big Man wasn't around too many big names. He was almost always around the practically anonymous Indians who tried without success to resist the invasion of the white Europeans.

The only big name I can think of who encountered Little Big Man was Gen. George Armstrong Custer (Richard Mulligan).

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Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that "Little Big Man" was "an endlessly entertaining attempt to spin an epic in the form of a yarn." He was right.

"It mostly works," Ebert observed. "When it doesn't — when there's a failure of tone or an overdrawn caricature — it regroups cheerfully and plunges ahead. We're disposed to go along; all good storytellers tell stretchers once in a while, and circle back to be sure we got the good parts."

In "Little Big Man," they were all good parts.

"Hoffman, or Little Big Man, gets around pretty well," Ebert wrote. "He touches all the bases of the Western myth. He was brought West as a settler, raised as a Cheyenne, tried his hand at gunfighting and medicine shows, scouted for the cavalry, experimented with the hermit life, was married twice, survived Custer's Last Stand and sat at the foot of an old man named Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George), who instructed him in the Cheyenne view of creation."

And that, in a nutshell, was Little Big Man's character — except he answered to Jack Crabb when he came West as a settler or when he found himself among other whites.

The "yarn," as Ebert put it, was told by Hoffman's character at the age of 121. Yes, you read that right. And it worked quite well. Extremely well.

"The yarn is the most flexible of story forms," Ebert observed. "Its teller can pause to repeat a point; he can hurry ahead 10 years; he can forget an entire epoch in remembering the legend of a single man. He doesn't capture the history of a time, but its flavor. 'Little Big Man' gives us the flavor of the Cheyenne nation before white men brought uncivilization to the West."

It would be hard to pinpoint what kind of movie it was. It was a comedy, a drama, a satire, a tragedy. Sometimes it was just one; at other times, it was a mix of two or more.

One thing it was not was literal history.

And Ebert observed that the story was circular. "All the characters who appear in the early stages of the film come back in the later stages, fulfilled. The preacher's wife (Faye Dunaway) returns as a prostitute. The medicine–quack, already lacking an arm, loses a leg (physician, heal thyself). Wild Bill Hickok decays from a has–been to a freak show attraction. Custer fades from glory to madness. Only Old Lodge Skins makes it through to the end not merely intact but improved."

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The really ridiculous thing about "Little Big Man" is how it was all but overlooked by the Oscars.

Chief Dan George was nominated for Best Supporting Actor (which he lost) — and that was it. Even the schmaltzy "Love Story" got seven nominations.

Well, it wasn't the first time that a more deserving movie got snubbed by the Oscars.

The Enduring Myths of 'Bonnie and Clyde'

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Faye Dunaway has played some villainous characters in her career.

But her portrayal of infamous outlaw Bonnie Parker — along with Warren Beatty's turn as her equally infamous outlaw boyfriend Clyde Barrow — was rated #32 of all the bad guys in the history of motion pictures by the American Film Institute.

AFI also rated "Bonnie and Clyde" — which premiered 45 years ago today — #42 on its list of the Top 100 movies of all time.

But, in reality, was Bonnie really that villainous?

Of the story, I guess it can be said that it was proof that truth really is stranger than fiction. You probably couldn't make up a story that was stranger than the real–life saga of Bonnie and Clyde.

And yet ...

That sure hasn't kept the media from embellishing that story and fueling its myths.

The adventures of the "Barrow Gang," as it was known, captivated the nation in the early 1930s — although the media of the time tended to exaggerate things. Based on the poems Bonnie wrote, the reality of life on the run was grittier than the popular narrative.

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Bonnie was often said to have at least been present for, if not a participant in, dozens of robberies and shootings. But a member of the gang later said he didn't think she had ever fired a weapon at an officer.

The more mundane details of Bonnie and Clyde's story were left out, I suppose.

The modern media was a little more honest. Director Arthur Penn did create what came to be regarded as a landmark film, but he still relied heavily on the sometimes romantic, more often brutal stories and images that sold so many newspapers about 35 years earlier.

Ironically, movie audiences were very nearly deprived of the opportunity to see the film because Warner Bros. almost didn't make it. Beatty had to talk studio executives into financing it — and then it turned out to be Warner's second–highest grossing film.

I guess that was evidence of the ongoing fascination the public had with that story — not unlike its obsession with the sinking of the Titanic.

"Bonnie and Clyde" had something in common with film versions of "Romeo and Juliet," too. Like the lead characters in Shakespeare's play, Bonnie and Clyde were simply too young to be portrayed by most people their actual age. They were in their early 20s.

But Beatty and Dunaway didn't miss by much. Both were older, but Dunaway was 26 when the film premiered, and Beatty was 30.

Historically, it was Bonnie who gave the gang their popular appeal. Without her, I have heard it said, Clyde might well have been overlooked by the media of the day as just another punk with a gun. And I suspect that was true.

Movie trivia buffs who watch "Bonnie and Clyd" today will see Gene Wilder in his movie debut, Gene Hackman in his first Academy Award–nominated performance and Estelle Parsons in her only Oscar–winning role.

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One more thing.

I have often heard it said that the scene in which Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed was the bloodiest scene ever filmed — and, in the late 1960s, I am quite sure that was so.

I never saw the movie on the big screen. I first saw it on TV about five or six years after its debut, and, in my comparison of what I remember seeing on that occasion to edited versions I have seen since that time, I believe the first version I saw was much more heavily edited.

It was a violent scene. I'll grant you that. But it really had to be — if it was going to be true to the facts. The posse that had been tracking the outlaw couple unloaded about 130 rounds.

There's no way to whitewash that, and I don't think Penn tried. I think his portrayal of that event was realistic — even if the censors of that time and years that followed had trouble with it.

Forget It, Jake

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There was a saying when I worked in newsrooms that I presume still has some value even though many years have passed since I worked in a newsroom.

Essentially, the idea was that the deaths of prominent people come in threes. The logical extension of that, I suppose, would be that the deaths of prominent people in the same business come in threes.

If that is true — and, in my newsroom experience, it usually was — the motion picture industry exceeded its quota this week.

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It started last Sunday when Gloria Stuart, the actress who played the elderly version of Kate Winslet's character in "Titanic," died at the age of 100.

Stuart had quite a career long before she made "Titanic," but she earned her only Academy Award nomination for playing the 101–year–old "Rose." The film won 11 Oscars, but Stuart lost to Kim Basinger.

I suppose it is inevitable that, when you are Stuart's age and you are nominated for an Oscar for a film you made when you were in your 80s, that is what you would be remembered for. There wouldn't be many people left who would remember the early years of your career.

And that is a shame because she really was an attractive young woman, svelte and sultry. Even decades later, when Stuart was in her 80s and her skin was wrinkled with age, you could still see some of that young beauty in her eyes and her face.

"Wasn't I a dish?" she asked her granddaughter in the film. It wasn't just a line in a movie. She was a dish in her youth.

Then, two days later, Arthur Penn, the man who directed "Bonnie & Clyde," passed away at the age of 88.

It is, primarily, for "Bonnie & Clyde," I suppose, that Penn will be remembered, and I guess that is fitting. It was a movie that really changed the motion picture landscape in its presentation of both sexuality and violence.

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But as much as I admire what Penn accomplished with "Bonnie & Clyde," my favorite of his films had to be "Little Big Man."

It would be a mistake to think that everything Penn touched in his life turned to gold. He enjoyed great success with some groundbreaking films, but he had his share of misses as well.

"Penn’s later movies seemed to confuse people," wrote Bruce Eder for the AllMovie Blog, "[a]nd his last movies ... were more noted by critics than the public."

Well, as Chief Dan George's character said in "Little Big Man," "Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn't."

If you want to see some of the magic of which Penn was capable, Turner Classic Movies will be showing "Bonnie & Clyde" at 7 (Central) tonight.

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Then, the following day, actor Tony Curtis died at the age of 85.

He is being remembered, as he should, for his performances in Billy Wilder's classic comedy "Some Like It Hot" and Stanley Kramer's drama "The Defiant Ones."

But I really think more of Jack Lemmon when I think of "Some Like It Hot," and I tend to think of Sidney Poitier when I think of "The Defiant Ones." That doesn't mean I don't recognize the contributions Curtis made to both films. He just isn't the person I associate with either one.

The film I do associate with him is "The Boston Strangler," which was based on the true story of the murders of several women in the Boston area.

It wasn't the best film he ever made. It probably wasn't his best performance. But it was a departure from the norm for him. And I liked that.

Curtis readily acknowledged that — in his early years, at least — he got by on his looks. "But behind the pretty–boy looks was a dramatically potent combination of naked ambition and deep vulnerability," wrote Dave Kehr of the New York Times.

In "The Boston Strangler," I think he used that vulnerability to tap into the character of Albert DeSalvo. The film acted on the assumption that DeSalvo was guilty, but his confession has been vigorously disputed, and there were times in the movie when I felt Curtis' portrayal reflected the ambiguity that surrounds DeSalvo long after his death just as it surrounded him in life.

Some would argue that was symptomatic of DeSalvo's alleged multiple personality disorder, but he was never diagnosed with that illness to my knowledge.

Well, anyway, that's three.

But there was a fourth this week. The same day that Curtis died, an actor named Joe Mantell died at the age of 94.

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Mantell's was not a household name, even though he had a lengthy career as a supporting actor in the movies and on television.

But, as Bruce Weber wrote for the New York Times, he had the distinction of delivering two of the most memorable lines ever uttered by a movie sidekick.

In the mid–1950s classic "Marty," as Ernest Borgnine's best friend Angie, there was a running dialogue between the two, Weber observed.

"Angie began almost every conversation with the same question — 'What do you feel like doin' tonight?' — and always got the same answer: 'I don't know, Ange. What do you feel like doin'?' "

The second line was delivered at the end of "Chinatown," when Jack Nicholson's character is recoiling from the story's unsatisfying conclusion. Mantell, in a small role as a private investigator, encourages Nicholson to go home and try to put the matter behind him.

"Forget it, Jake," Mantell's character said. "It's Chinatown."

I guess that's a fitting eulogy for this week in the motion picture industry.

None of the four people who died in the last seven days was younger than 85 so their deaths can't be said to have been tragic in the way the loss of a young person is believed to be tragic. All four lived longer than most of us probably will.

All four probably earned more money than most of us will, and their names, even Mantell's, will be remembered after most of us are gone. They were not denied the fame and fortune that most of us are denied.

And, yet, something of value seems to have been lost to us — inexplicably, perhaps.

Forget it, Mantell might say. It's life.