The John Garfield Story

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!!

This is an adoring, mythological biography of John Garfield that offers little insight into the real man, his psychological complexities or his turbulent personal and political relationships that led to his downfall and his death. For example, one of its standard boilerplate story lines is that Warner's misused Garfield. This same tired story-line is used over and over in biographies of Bogart, Cagney, Davis, Robinson, Muni, Flynn, and dozen of other actors who worked for Warners. There is nothing original or insightful into these old half-truths.

The fact is that actors are not necessarily the best judge of the materials they should be in. The fact is that the Warners did necessarily misuse its actors. Proof that Warners was not out of touch is that it managed to make a wealth of memorable classic films in the 1930's and 1940's, starring these so-called misused actors. If one accepts the story line, then one must presume that the studio made these films by accident.

Often the point of using this trite story line in a biography is to make the actor a proletarian victim of the more powerful capitalistic forces in the studio and therefore, someone who does not have control over his destiny, or his fate, or who is not responsible for the decisions that he or she makes. That would seem to be the case in this simplified love poem to Julie Garfield.

In this documentary, one does not get the real story of why Garfield lost his prize role in Golden Boy to Luther Alder, but instead a sugar coated one. The real story is much more interesting and pivotal in the career of Garfield, and had it been told would have made an much more interesting and meaningful biography. It would, however, have exposed much of what was covered-up in this documentary, and have undermined the final verdict of it, namely, John Garfield was a victim.

The outright deceits of this documentary are too numerous to comment upon here, especially those of James Cromwell, who appears as a snotty self-appointed expert on a subject that is obviously miles over his head, nor does it bring up the fact that John Garfield perjured himself when he testified before the House Committee, and that is why he found himself in the deep muddy. His egregious perjuries had little to do with his alleged refusal to name names. Of course, these factoids would undermine the mythologizing that this documentary sets out to achieve.

"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.

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

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.