Sometimes actors do quite well on the small television screen. With their features filling 225 square inches, every blink, every jactitation, every fleeting suggestion of a smile registers like an earthquake. Then, when the actor appears in feature films, lamentably, we get to see that there isn't that much behind the momentary disarrangement. That's what seems to have happened to David Janssen. Not that he may have been anything other than a nice guy in real life, but that he had only two or three notes on his instrument.
"King of the Roaring Twenties" has a script by a Hollywood craftsman but it's as dull as some bent piece of old pewter found in a dark attic corner, and much of the responsibility is Janssen's. After all, Arnold Rothstein was a monumental figure in the world of gambling and organized crime. He was the Louis B. Mayer of the syndicate, larger than life. Michael Lerner turned him into an unforgettable figure in "Eight Men Out." And what do we get from David Janssen. A kind of nice, polite, quiet guy who has a habit of looking up shyly from his lowered head, whose voice hardly rises above a tranquil and reasoned moderato. He gets no help from the director, Joseph M. Newman. A viewer feels that if Janssen could do it, he'd actually erase himself from the screen, leaving a small hole behind. The other actors all walk through their parts except for the thumotic Mickey Rooney.
The story, anyway, borrows from all the other stories of the rise and fall of gangster figures. The protagonist must sacrifice his old childhood friend on the altar of his megalomania; the young cop who warned him early in his career must go on to plague him as an adult; and, if possible, the guy must be assassinated, and preferably in some public place.
As irritating as anything else is the kind of attention paid to wardrobe and the musical score. This is the early years of the 20th century -- Rothstein was at his peak in 1916 and died in 1928 -- yet the characters wear modern suits, except, in a nod to period fashion, the suits generally have vests and the hats sometimes bear a family resemblance to a derby.
Franz Waxman must have been asleep at the switch when he wrote the music. It's all undemanding modernistic jazz, with not a tango or a Charleston in a cartload.
What a terrible bore.
"King of the Roaring Twenties" has a script by a Hollywood craftsman but it's as dull as some bent piece of old pewter found in a dark attic corner, and much of the responsibility is Janssen's. After all, Arnold Rothstein was a monumental figure in the world of gambling and organized crime. He was the Louis B. Mayer of the syndicate, larger than life. Michael Lerner turned him into an unforgettable figure in "Eight Men Out." And what do we get from David Janssen. A kind of nice, polite, quiet guy who has a habit of looking up shyly from his lowered head, whose voice hardly rises above a tranquil and reasoned moderato. He gets no help from the director, Joseph M. Newman. A viewer feels that if Janssen could do it, he'd actually erase himself from the screen, leaving a small hole behind. The other actors all walk through their parts except for the thumotic Mickey Rooney.
The story, anyway, borrows from all the other stories of the rise and fall of gangster figures. The protagonist must sacrifice his old childhood friend on the altar of his megalomania; the young cop who warned him early in his career must go on to plague him as an adult; and, if possible, the guy must be assassinated, and preferably in some public place.
As irritating as anything else is the kind of attention paid to wardrobe and the musical score. This is the early years of the 20th century -- Rothstein was at his peak in 1916 and died in 1928 -- yet the characters wear modern suits, except, in a nod to period fashion, the suits generally have vests and the hats sometimes bear a family resemblance to a derby.
Franz Waxman must have been asleep at the switch when he wrote the music. It's all undemanding modernistic jazz, with not a tango or a Charleston in a cartload.
What a terrible bore.