In Praise of William Conrad

Honestly, guys, I was contemplating posting something about Bill (as I call him) Conrad well before Seattle-based "film critic" and all around dribbling loon N.P. Thompson pronounced that I bear "an uncanny resemblance" to the much-beloved (not by Thompson, mind you) television actor. ("Grizzled, bald, and portly," Thompson also notes. And apparently my taste in trousers lacks as well; I am cited as sporting "nondescript slacks." I'll have to remind myself, next time I'm in Seattle, to buy a pair of acid-washed jeans to have on when I throw a strong drink in Thompson's face. And yes, in case you're wondering, pretty much all the rarely-photographed Thompson does in his passage concerning your humble servant is criticize my appearance.) And the reason I was contemplating this was on account of a picture he directed in 1965 called Brainstorm, one of the kind-of-fabulous obscurities that can be your through the good (and yet strangely evil) offices of the Warner Archive Collection, which I wrote about here. 

The picture is cited by some cinephiles as the last "real" film noir, and its storyline, which crosses The Killers (SIodmak's 1946 film, that is, scripted by Anthony Veiller with uncredited assists from Richard Brooks and John Huston, and featuring, as a tight lipped assassin...William Conrad!) with Fuller's Shock Corridor (minus the political commentary and complete off-the-wall-ness) certainly divvies up the noir bonafides. It crosses these elements with something that was considered pretty up-to-the-minute back in '65—the development of computer technology.

 

Jeffrey Hunter plays a software-developing brainiac who gets mixed up with the young, suicidal wife (Ann Francis, as lovely as ever) of his ruthless tycoon boss (Dana Andrews, very slimy). Pushed to the brink by various and sundry of said boss' vengeful machinations, he conceives the perfect murder, as it were. He intends to kill Andrews' character in broad daylight, in a room full of witnesses...and get off the hook by faking insanity. 

It's pretty nifty stuff, and the underrated Hunter gives one of his more intense performances. Still. There's something workmanlike, and something anachronistic (George Duning's brassy, TV-cop-drama-evoking score, most likely), and something...else that I can't put my finger on, that holds the picture back from classic status. Like so much else proffered by the Warner Archive, this is a marginal piece...and hell, what's wrong with that?

Back to Conrad. The fellow certainly had what you'd call a protean career. First there was that voice of his, exemplary for radio (where he got his start), as well as for narrating the immortal "Rocky And Bullwinkle Show." He was a solid actor as well. And his directing and producing projects, while not necessarily the stuff of immortality, were all of interest.

Did you know he was also a great friend of the novelist Anthony Burgess? The second volume of Burgess' "confessions," You've Had Your Time, is filled with the writer's reminiscences of collaborating and carousing with the man he calls Bill. For instance:

"In...[a] lavish [clipjoint] Bill paid a hundred pounds to a large-breasted strumpet he favoured: this was the fee for getting me laid as he had been laid. I declined the gift, rightly: Bill was later to complain that she gave him a dose."

Their great unrealized project was a musical biopic of Shakespeare, to be titled Will! (obviously they were under the influence of Lionel Bart). Burgess also recalls that it was Conrad's facetious proposal to produce an all-black version of Oedipus under the title Mother-Fucker that inspired, at least in part, one of Burgess' most vexatious novels, M/F. Falstaffian and slightly racist. Well, what are you gonna do.

Anyway, I do not bear an uncanny resemblance to the guy. I bear, I am told, an uncanny resemblance to another guy.

  

So there. 

Comments

[jwarthen]

I was driving to NYC before dawn one Saturday, using a tag-sale tape-casette collection of old radio dramas to keep myself awake, and ten minutes into "Leiningen versus the Ants", I had to pull over to seek confirmation that Orson Welles was playing the lead role. Turns out to have been Bill Conrad. Didn't know anyone else could project OW's self-amused resonance-- did Conrad ever make conscious use of the likeness?

[dm494]

Conrad is the best--i.e., most atmospheric--thing about Cromwell's THE RACKET, where he plays a casually dirty cop who's always in the background, chewing on what must be an ever-juicy wad of tobacco. It's the sort of small performance, happening in the corner of the frame and obsessive in its emphasis on one or two small, seedy details, that makes me wonder what Manny Farber thought of it.

Glenn, the best critic-actor example must be Stanley Kauffmann, although he's the reverse of what you're looking for--an actor who became a film critic, rather than a film critic who's made a dip into acting. (Another problem is that he was a stage actor only.) I'd also mention Graham Greene, who has a cameo in DAY FOR NIGHT.

[jbryant]

Yeah, you basically look nothing like William Conrad. I always wonder about other people's perception of things. I have been told by various people that I resemble Pierce Brosnan, John Cassavetes. Bill Clinton, Frank Whaley and Chip from "My Three Sons," none of whom look remotely alike. Maybe my face is a Rorschach blot.

[Brian]

Growing up, I mostly knew Conrad from television, and it wasn't until years later that I discovered what a fine radio actor he'd been. He narrated/starred in several episodes of the innovative, mid-50s delight THE CBS RADIO WORKSHOP, whose entire run can be heard here:

http://www.archive.org/details/CBSRadioWorkshop

Going back to the Welles connection jwarthen made, it owes a lot to the Mercury Theater of the 1930s, and was an attempt to keep that experimental spirit going in the 50s. It didn't last terribly long, but it was pretty cool.

[Griff]

Gordon Parks' autobiography has a wonderful passage in which Parks, preparing to direct the screen version of his novel THE LEARNING TREE for Warners, is shown the ropes around the studio by a grumbling, taciturn William Conrad.

That Anthony Burgess-scripted Shakespeare biopic was in development at WB for a long time in the 'sixties; at one time it was announced as THE BAWDY BARD, to be produced and directed by Conrad.

[Ian W. Hill]

Re the Welles similarity: In the very first ROCKY AND HIS FRIENDS storyline (which of course Conrad narrated and did occasional other voices for), there is a brief appearance by "Dorson Bells" reporting on a flying saucer invasion, and as I recall it's Conrad doing a pretty spot-on OW.

I also have that radio version of LEININGEN, as part of a 30-CD box set of classic radio shows, and Conrad is probably the most constant presence throughout the entire set. The man was a worker.

Okay, dammit, I've wanted to see BRAINSTORM for about a decade now, so even though I can't really afford it, I'm paying $20 for a CD-R.

[Ryland Walker Knight]

That "film critic" sure has a lot of, um, opinions.

Also, you probably need to box with a few more butterflies. Or, box a few more butterflies. Or, butter some flies for a box with words which won't write themselves but rather fold back and down, into, say, each other and make a little world all their own full of conjecture and imagination--in a good, but still unreliable, way.

[does that make any sense to anybody but me?]

[Lou Lumenick]

Conrad's dyspeptic night city editor in Jack Webb's -30- is frighteningly like many genuine specimens I encountered as a youngster in the '60s and '70s.