5. PAUL NEWMAN (1925-2008)
As the man who inspired this list, it's entirely fitting that Mr. Newman wound up in our Top 5...and we recently posted 10 good reasons why (in addition to the official Screengrab obituary by Phil Nugent) so, uh...moving on to number 4...
CARY GRANT (1904-1986)
In his single funniest movie, His Girl Friday, Grant responds to a threat by crowing, "The last man to say that to me was Archie Leach, just a week before he cut his throat." The line is an in-joke meant for mass consumption, since it was fairly common knowledge that Grant's real name was Archie Leach. But Grant really did cut "Archie Leach's" throat; the product of a Dickensian childhood -- as a rich, internationally famous movie star, he was unexpectedly reunited with his mother, who he had believed was long dead -- he created a romantic image of perfection and lived in it on screen and off. What makes the image so supremely, universally attractive is that it is perfect in its imperfection: unlike the countless male models and juveniles who tried their best to never put a foot wrong, Grant was a trained acrobat and natural farceur who had the solid instincts to know that the best way to win the audience's heart was to send his strapping, handsome frame falling all over itself in slapstick pratfalls, as if none of his physical assets were enough to keep him from being rendered powerless by what the sight of a female co-star was doing to his center of gravity. By the time the cycle of screwball romances that made him a star was gearing up, Grant was not juvenile, and he was never a shrinking violet: he was a brash scene-stealer who enjoyed getting a verbal rhythm going with the other people in a scene. Since he and his romantic partners couldn't actually get it on in the movies of their day, they exchanged wisecracks as a metaphor for foreplay; in this context, the moment when he gets Irene Dunne to reluctantly laugh when he's collapsing in on himself at a society recital is one of the sexiest stand-ins for an orgasm in movie history. Grant had other sides to his talent: his buddy-buddy-buddy act with Victor MacLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. helped to make Gunga Din one of the most joyous action comedies ever to come out of Hollywood, and he gave an honorable, committed performance in Clifford Odets' None but the Lonely Heart, a box-office failure and labor of love. But in more than sixty years, nobody has come close to displacing him as the most iconic romantic comedian in movies; the best anyone can do is to say, as they say of George Clooney now, that he's the closest we're likely to get these days to Cary Grant.
3. JACK NICHOLSON (1937 - )
Yes, his talent long ago calcified into an all-too-familiar repertoire of raised eyebrows and half-hearted devilish grins, but the case could be made that Jack Nicholson was the American leading man for nearly two decades, ranging roughly from 1970's Five Easy Pieces to 1989's Batman. (And yes, technically Michael Keaton was the leading man in Batman, but it was Jack who raked in a record $50 million thanks to all those lucrative Joker products.) Easy Rider made him an "overnight success" after spending the bulk of the '60s on Roger Corman's work farm, but Five Easy Pieces established Nicholson as the anti-hero for America's counterculture hangover – quick to anger, with little use for authority, but magnetic and funny nonetheless. He got on a hot streak that encompassed some of the most revered films of the era, from The Last Detail to Chinatown to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Soon he was an Academy Awards fixture, as both attendant (always in the front row, all shades and wolfish grin) and recipient (12 nominations, including wins for Cuckoo's Nest, Terms of Endearment and As Good as It Gets), and then he was a caricature, albeit one still capable of firing up the jets on occasion (A Few Good Men, a few scenes in The Departed). Through it all, he's always been Jack – one name, four letters, and just about everyone on earth knows who you mean.
2. MARLON BRANDO (1924-2004)
There’s little that can be said about Brando that hasn’t been said before, and better besides. After all, he’s obviously a genius, with a style that revolutionized movie acting. But although much is made of how well he plays brutish characters onscreen, what helped Brando transcend the trap of playing “tough guys” was the tenderness with which he approached them. Look no further than the famous scene in On the Waterfront where he’s chatting with Eva Marie Saint and he suddenly starts to fiddle with her glove. There’s a gentle, almost feminine quality to this blue-collar palooka, one that manifests itself in his bashful-boy approach to the girl on whom he’s got a crush. Granted, in his later years, Brando became essentially a monologist, noodling in the corner while everyone else tried to make a movie around his whims. But when he was actually in a collaborative mood, no movie star engaged so completely with those around him. In his last great role in 1972’s Last Tango in Paris, Brando took what was essentially a two-character drama and shot it full of electric intensity, locking on to costar Maria Schneider so completely that we begin to see him anew through her eyes -- middle-aged and hulking, but undeniably erotic.
1. HUMPHREY BOGART (1899-1957)
So, what makes a classic leading man? If it’s staying power, then Bogie’s got it: he was a star for decades during his own lifetime, then enjoyed a posthumous resurgence of popularity during the 1960s, and remains a household name today, his timeless mug even now adorning the wall of a dorm room near you. Though some may argue his range was limited (despite two Oscar nominations and a win for The African Queen), it’s hard to imagine the history of modern cinema without his influential wised-up, world-weary, cynical/romantic tough-guy persona and his indelible performances in all-time classics like The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, Key Largo, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, etc., etc., etc. He was a box office badass, and despite a famously hangdog physiognomy that could charitably be described as “unconventional,” he somehow managed to seduce the insanely hot 19-year-old Lauren Bacall (or was it the other way around?) during production of To Have and Have Not and hold onto her for thirteen years until his death by cancer in 1957. And despite the 26 year age difference between them, Bacall was certainly no giggly schoolgirl...Bogart was just that cool, I guess. Cooler than Nicholson, cooler than Clooney...and certainly cooler than Sinatra, who many still believe was the original head of the Rat Pack, when in fact it was Bogie who was and remains the indisputable king of the ultimate fraternity of cinematic cool.
Click Here for Part One, Two, Three, Four, Six, Seven & Eight
Contributors: Phil Nugent, Scott Von Doviak, Paul Clark, Andrew Osborne