Peter Sellers, THE FIENDISH PLOT OF DR. FU MANCHU (1980)
Peter Sellers (arguably) got away with heavy lids and mangled diction in his portrayal of the Charlie Chan-esque detective Sidney Wang in Neil Simon’s 1976 murder mystery spoof Murder By Death partly because the performance matched the film’s smart, silly, good-natured tone: Wang was likeable and sophisticated rather than the butt of, y’know, a bunch of sophomoric “wang” jokes, and what racial humor there was tended to satirize Hollywood’s portrayal of Asians more than making fun of actual Asians (“Moose on wall talk!” Wang says at one point, prompting the exasperated response, “THE moose! THE moose! Say your goddamned articles!”). Unfortunately, Sellers’ portrayal of Sax Rohmer’s controversial master criminal Fu Manchu a few years later was nowhere near as smart or successful, featuring brain-dead groaners like the following lyrics to Manchu’s climactic glam rock number (don’t ask): “The cops they tell you I ain’t nice, the Fu knows how to fry the rice.” Making Sellers’ depressingly bad final performance even more ignominious, though, is the fact that, without Fu Manchu, the legendary comedian’s last film would have been the far more fitting career zenith, Being There. (Although, either way, the actor’s reputation still would have suffered the final ignominy of 2004’s bizarrely overpraised HBO hatchet job The Life and Death of Peter Sellers).
Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin in THE CANNONBALL RUN II (1984)
Neither Frank Sinatra nor Dean Martin was primarily known for his film work, but both made their mark. Sinatra won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in From Here to Eternity, and Dino won accolades for his role in Rio Bravo. Their Rat Pack movies like Ocean's 11 and Robin and the Seven Hoods were popular successes if not particularly memorable films, but the quasi-Rat Pack flick Some Came Running represents the high-water mark for both ring-a-ding-dingers as actors. If it had ended there, no complaints. Sadly, Burt Reynolds succeeded Frank and Dean as ringleader of the next generation of Rat Packers, and coerced both (along with cohort Sammy Davis, Jr.) into The Cannonball Run II, perhaps the laziest big screen version of Hollywood Squares ever conceived. How lazy? The actual cross-country race was animated by Ralph Bakshi, while Sinatra's scene with Reynolds was clearly shot on two different continents in two different decades. As for Martin's "I'm not really drunk, I'm just pretending to be drunk" performance, let us not even speculate. Both made appearances on TV subsequent to Cannonball II, but cameos on Magnum PI did nothing to rectify this sad cinematic end.
Veronica Lake in FLESH FEAST (1970)
Never a great actress but one of the indelible beauties of '40s Hollywood, Veronica Lake -- she of the blonde peek-a-boo hairdo and world-weary kewpie doll face -- vanished into tabloid infamy and then total obscurity after her peak of wartime fame but managed a small, brief comeback in the late 1960s when nobody was looking. The 1966 Canadian film Footsteps in the Snow was her first movie in fifteen years, and one year later she starred in the mega-low budget horror film Flesh Feast, which wasn't released until 1970, three years before her death. (Presumably it took the producers that long to collect enough change digging under the couch cushions of friends and family members before they had enough saved up to get the film developed.) Lake, her distinctive looks now a fond memory and her acting chops still at the beginners' stage, plays a mad scientist who has developed a youth-restoring technique that involves the application of flesh-eating maggots. The members of the local chapter of the Unrepentant Old Nazis Party employ her to help them regenerate der Fuhrer, little knowing that Dr. Lake lost her family to the Nazis and she is actually looking to have Hitler strapped to her surgical table so that she can give him a good talking-to. The climactic face-off between these two raises the question of whose shame is greater: the once iconic Hollywood star who has sunk to the level of flinging maggots in the face of an actor pretending to be Hitler, or an actor whose career reached its high point when he got maggots flung in his face by a Hollywood has-been?
James Cagney in TERRIBLE JOE MORAN (1984)
James Cagney had been retired from acting for twenty years when he agreed to join the large, distinguished cast of 1981's Ragtime. As New York Police Commissioner Waldo, Cagney looked stumplike and was largely immobile, but he also had the old fire in his eyes to set off his wry half-smile and dandy period mustache, and managed to bark out his lines with gratifying professional force. Plans were made to take advantage of Cagney's new willingness to perform by starring him in a TV movie in which he would play an aging New York boxer. A script was custom-tailored to the old star, clips of the young Cagney (taken from boxing pictures he had made decades earlier) were interwoven to create some nostalgic poignance, and an ace supporting cast (counting solid pro Art Carney and up-and-comers Ellen Barkin and Peter Gallagher, if not local cameo hog Edward I. Koch) were brought in, seduced with the promise of working with a legend. But by the time the film went into production, Cagney's health had declined, to such a degree that he looked miserably pained and unhappy even for a man in a wheelchair. In fact, Cagney was in such bad shape that he couldn't always deliver his lines audibly, so someone had the bright idea of bringing in night club impressionist Rich Little to dub his lines for him. The upshot is that Cagney's "final role" amounts to footage of a dying man being wheeled around the set while listening to someone do his best Jimmy Cagney imitation. Cagney's old co-star Pat O'Brien, who also appeared in Ragtime, reportedly urged the legend to return to acting by telling him, "Do it, Cagney. It's medicine." But Terrible Joe Moran makes you wonder if sometimes the cure isn't worse than the disease.
Click here for Part One & Part Three
Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Phil Nugent