The John Garfield Story

JOHN GARFIELD was well used at Warner Bros. where he became a contract player in the late '30s, beginning with his much ballyhooed first film, FOUR DAUGHTERS ('38), sharing the screen with some of Warner's best contract players and stealing many a scene as the tough guy with a heart of gold.

But to listen to this documentary, his Warner contract allowed him to do too many prison films. Actually, his street smart, chip-on-the-shoulder type of personality was what the public expected to see rather than having him stretch to be someone who could do a variety of other roles.

After all, those tough guy prison films were what kept him so popular with the movie-going public during all those years at Warners. When he did "stretch," the accents proved too much for him to handle (as in TORTILLA FLAT and JUAREZ) and costume films were not his forte. The Brooklyn in his voice was always just beneath the surface, as was his tough guy attitude. It was the dangerous element in his personality that women loved. Aside from the prison dramas, he got to do a number of respectable war films (DESTINATION TOKYO, PRIDE OF THE MARINES) and films of social significance like GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT.

Garfield's biggest disappointment was not getting a chance to do Clifford Odet's GOLDEN BOY on public and repeating that performance on film. However, he made up for it ten years later by starring in a B'way version, just a little too ripe for the role at that point. We get to see a glimpse of a TV scene from the play opposite Kim Stanley which at least gives an indication of how good his performance in that role probably was.

As for the celebrities who talk about Garfield, that's the weakest part of the documentary. There's nothing particularly illuminating in any of the comments by Lee Grant, Joanne Woodward, Richard Dreyfuss, Norman Lloyd or any of the others who offer little insight into what made the man tick aside from his surface toughness as a result of a tough childhood in Brooklyn. Along the way he had help from someone at a school for troubled kids and developed an interest in the theater, soon a favorite with the Group Theater.

Garfield deserves a better bio than this, but it does offer some generous film clips from a few of his best films and should please fans who want to know more about his emergence as a star.

Narrated by his daughter Julie, this film offers the standard take on John Garfield: great actor, social activist, victim of HUAC. Clips from many of his performances are shown, including some we don't see every day on TCM. Pretty much an adoring portrait, although there are a few references to Garfield's darker side.

Was he a great actor? He was always quite good, but he had his limitations. He was generally better in film noir than the great outdoors and often stronger in supporting roles than in leads. The film makes an argument that Warner's frequently misused him, but he was hardly unique in this regard. In any case, he did some of his best work there (e.g.,"Pride of the Marines") before free lancing in the late 40s.

Was he an activist? Yes, though not any more so than a number of people and probably less than some. His roots may have been in the Group Theater, but even there the real emphasis was on acting, not activism. The film doesn't spend too much time on this side of his life, which is just as well, though the leftist actors who are interviewed clearly warm to this theme and to the concept of his martyrdom.

For all the talk about HUAC and blacklisting (Joe Bernard states flatly "the Committee killed him"), Garfield's acting career was at most only half dead when he died at 39. He'd just been on Broadway in "Golden Boy" and surely could have made a good living on the stage, which was always his first love.

As for his film career, that was probably on the skids anyway by 1952. Noir and social realism were played out. Hollywood was entering a white bread era and Garfield's urban/ethnic grittiness didn't fit into a landscape dominated by Westerns, Biblical epics, Technicolor musicals, and romantic comedies. Had he lived he surely would have made a big comeback in the 60s and 70s. It's not hard to imagine him as Sol Nazerman or Hyman Roth, but it wasn't in the cards.

In his last film, titled ironically "He Ran All the Way", he was allowed very little running. Rheumatic fever in the early 30s had damaged his heart and there may have been congenital problems as well (his son died of a heart attack at 41). Very likely he had been dying for years.

Recommended primarily for Garfield's fans or for those completely unacquainted with his work. Others will find it little more than routine.

My impression of John Garfield had always been that of a 1940s actor who played tough guy roles, and who grew up in a rough urban neighborhood. I tended to think of him mostly in the role of a boxer, rather short and stocky (his stated height is exactly the same as that of Tom Cruise). But since Garfield was before my time, my image of him was vague.

This one-hour bio put the man's life in sharper focus for me. I didn't know he played a variety of character types or that he studied method acting and spent much of his career affiliated with NYC's theater company. These factual details helped clarify my perception, though they also reinforced my image of him as a tough guy.

The bio includes interviews with current film VIPs, and is narrated by his daughter. Not unexpectedly these people gush with flowery compliments and adulation for Garfield. Has there ever been a film bio that featured interviewers critical of the deceased? In "The John Garfield Story" the interview responses thus seem overly eulogistic. However much the anticommunist HUAC may have wrongly hounded Garfield, the Committee didn't "kill" Garfield as one interviewer says flat out.

Even so, though the film may be a standard celebrity bio, it is still an interesting story, because Garfield himself was an interesting man and a fine actor.

I just want to say that I was so happy to see TCM do a special on John Garfield. My only complaint is that it only lasted an hour! John Garfield was the very first anti-hero. He paved the way for all who came after him...from James Dean and Marlon Brando to todays actors. Todays fans do not know who he is, and that is a shame. They are missing out on true quality acting. TCM did a great job summarizing his life and films. And I was pleased to see Julie Garfield, his daughter, commenting throughout the special. Bravo TCM!!

"The John Garfield Story" is a good look at an actor who died very young and under the cloud of the blacklist. The sections concerning the actor's personal life were most interesting to me, since I knew very little about it. Garfield's story is narrated by his daughter, the actress/teacher Julie Garfield. There was another daughter who died from a massive allergy attack as a child.

The documentary covers Garfield's early days as Jacob Garfinkle, whom his family called Julie and who later billed himself as Jules, and how at a school for problem kids his dramatic and boxing skills were honed with the help of the head of the school. It goes into his early theater work, and how he took a contract at Warners after losing out to Luther Adler as "Golden Boy," a play specifically written for him by Clifford Odets. He was evidently considered too green for the role by the Group Theater and actually didn't play the lead until 1952, when his Hollywood career was over.

Garfield's star rose quickly - he was a handsome tough guy who gave honest performances and was rewarded with some major films, including "The Postman Always Rings Twice," "Gentlemen's Agreement," and "Humoresque." And his star fell just as fast when the Communist witch hunt began. A liberal in his views, and one who consorted with writers, actors, and directors deemed questionable, his major sin was going to Yugoslavia during the war. He was unable to enlist because of a bad heart, and instead helped to entertain the troops. (Lee Grant ended up on the blacklist, by the way, because she attended the funeral of someone who was blacklisted.) When he was subpoenaed for the hearings and refused to name names, the last nail went into his coffin. His last film was a B picture, "He Ran All the Way."

I can't agree totally with one of the posters, who claims that Garfield would have been washed up anyway. Yes, it's true, the '50s were filled with costume dramas and musicals; they were also filled with angry young men for whom he was the prototype - James Dean, Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, and Paul Newman, to name a few - and surely Garfield could have successfully continued to work in and produce movies. The stage would have gotten him through the harder-to-cast middle-aged years until "The Godfather," and there's no doubt his later career as a character actor would have been very rich. But there's no use speculating.

If you don't know much about Garfield - and I didn't - you will find this a fascinating look at his career and life. But watch a little more closely, and you'll realize also that he was undoubtedly a lot more complicated than this documentary shows.