The John Garfield Story

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.

"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.

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!!

A newspaper reviewer of Garfield's performance in his first movie, "Four Daughters," wrote that it was unclear whether it was the script or the performance that was so great, but the that the critic opted for the performance.

That's the way it was with Garfield: so natural and convincing was his rendering that the viewer completely forgot that it was a "performance," rather a real character being observed and experienced.

So successful were Garfield's "bad-boy" roles, that Warner Bros. kept him stuck there, to John's chagrin. On rare occasions he proved he could play other parts brilliantly, and the total body of his work is remarkable--particularly in so short at time.

To have died before the age of 40 was a serious loss to the profession, yet his legacy paved the way for the likes of Brando, DiNero, Pacino and Hoffman.

This original Turner Classic Movie production does justice to Garfield's work, and includes such thespian notables as Dreyfus, Woodward, Glover, and Cronyn paying tribute to one of their "heros."

This is the feature-length documentary on the DVD of The Postman Always Rings Twice, with a running time of 58 minutes. It consists of interviews, many clips from his(and those of others) films(note that those contain spoilers for several of them), some "real" footage, stills and such, and the whole thing is narrated by his daughter. I did not actually know anything about the man before watching this(so I can neither confirm nor deny anything in it, but I'd imagine it's the truth), and now I want to get more movies that he's in. Did you know that he and the rest of The Group *invented* method acting? That he became one of the victims of the shrill communist scare? Or how about that the reason he was so good at being vulnerable is because they used to call him Julie? ...ok, granted, that last one is my theory on it. In addition to giving us his life story, this goes into his personality, his choices of roles, etc. Hearing the likes of Danny Glover and Harvey Keitel talk about his influence is really amazing. Everyone has something to say, and this keeps to a nice pace. It is well-edited, and the form(that of a virtual script to open and close it) is well-chosen and unobtrusive. The ending is very sweet without being corny or sappy. There is a bit of disturbing content in this. I recommend this to fans of the subject and his pictures. 8/10