Killer Tomatoes
Page 37
Work on television kept her increasingly occupied. She had made her TV debut as far back as 1950 on Pantomime Quiz, and followed that with dramatic shows (Ford Theatre, Pepsi-Cola Playhouse), comedy (Eddie Cantor, Red Skelton) and Westerns (Cheyenne, Maverick, and, as Belle Starr in Stories of the Century). Marie’s professionalism graced other shows like Perry Mason, Lassie, Hawaiian Eye, Batman—literally hundreds of episodic TV roles well into the 1970s, stretching to 1991 and her final TV gig, Murder, She Wrote.
She did a little theater work starting in 1959 with Would-Be Gentleman at the Ritz Theater in Los Angeles with Buddy Ebsen and Anna Lee. Another around this time was George S. Kaufman’s Fancy Meeting You Again, in which she played four roles, at the La Jolla Playhouse with Joan Caulfield and Richard Crenna. Marie’s stage roles allowed her the chance to do comedy.
However, her movie parts began to slip permanently into the supporting bracket when she returned in 1962. “I hate to admit this, ’cause it really isn’t a very classy statement,” she divulged later, “but I never turned a picture down unless they asked me to strip! So I’d take anything, unless it was too tiny. Now I don’t care how tiny, I just would like to work.”
In Mail Order Bride (1964), with Lois Nettleton in the title role, Marie was quite touching as a widow (and saloon keeper) who eventually finds love with Buddy Ebsen. She played the owner of “Polly’s Palace Saloon” in The Good Guys and The Bad Guys (1969). Both were directed by Burt Kennedy, who clearly saw Marie in those surroundings. He later cast her in Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971) as, yes, a bawdy madam.
Marie was another madam in Chamber of Horrors (1966). It was “made from a TV pilot called The Hook,” she revealed to Jim Meyer at the time. “It was a wonderful pilot film, but too gruesome for TV … no one would buy it.” It was released to theaters.
Windsor’s motion picture parts were no longer giving her satisfaction, and her choice to be with her family and to do TV led to more rigid casting decisions and less opportunities. “I wanted to work,” she explained, “and TV had faster turnaround and quicker paychecks.” But that didn’t save her from the screen parts she did get: she was a sharpshootin’ con in Wild Women (1970), and ran ever more brothels in One More Train to Rob (1971) and Manhunter (1974). She was to be yet another madam in Disney’s The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975), but reportedly Disney execs were so abashed at her too realistic portrayal that her scenes were completely cut. She owned a bar in The Outfit (1974).
Good, if still smallish, roles continued to find their way to her. She was cast opposite old friend John Wayne in Cahill, U.S. Marshal (1973), warmly sincere as a widow in love with Wayne. She did an amusing turn in Hearts of the West (1975), a nostalgic piece set in 1930s Hollywood, about B-western movie making. She was funny in Freaky Friday (1977), a Disney movie she wasn’t cut out of. Instead of a madam, they made her a schoolteacher.
The suspenseful Stephen King vampire saga Salem’s Lot (1979), a four-hour TV mini-series directed by Tobe Hooper, reunited Marie with The Killing’s Elisha Cook, Jr. She said of her one-time co-star: “Elisha was a real character. He was pleasantly off-the-wall, full of energy … he brought me a white orchid with a sweet note about how happy he was about our reunion.”
Her movie appearances started winding down. Her last was Commando Squad (1987), where Variety found her “hilarious” as the owner of a memorabilia store (a front for illegal activities).
During this slow stretch of movie making in the ’80s, Marie made a triumphal return to the stage, mostly in Los Angeles. Among the plays she appeared in were The Vinegar Tree and The Shadow Box. She won the L.A. Drama Critics’ Best Actress Award for The Bar Off Melrose (1987), in a part playwright Terry-Kingsley Smith wrote with her in mind. Marie’s work in the latter drew raves, with Jack Holland of Drama-Logue mentioning her “amusing and sharp-edged performance”: “Windsor, with her deep husky voice, tosses off the lines with acid delight. It is a potent reminder of one talent that was wasted by the studios.” Her work on the stage would earn her four Drama-Logue Awards.
Marie got more attention during her later years. “It’s mind-boggling,” she mused in 1991. “For [an] actress who … never became a genuine name-above-the-title star—there’s consolation in belated recognition.” She got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1983, the Golden Boot Award (for excellence in Westerns), “The Woman of Western Fame Award” at the 1993 Sonora Film Festival and the Bronze Halo Award. The Screen Actors Guild, with which she was a board member of good standing for almost 30 years, honored her with their Ralph Morgan Award for distinguished service in 1990; she also helped establish the SAG Film Society. When she retired from the Guild, she was made Honorary Chairperson of the Film Society and awarded a SAG Lifetime Membership.
She was involved with the Thalians, a group dedicated to helping troubled children, and WAIF (Women’s Adoption International Fund), while also serving on the board of the women’s auxiliary of the John Tracy Clinic, dedicated to teaching hearing-impaired children to speak.
The flow of her career was seriously hampered during the ’90s with numerous illnesses and physical complications: arthritis, botched eye surgery, a brain concussion, heart surgery, shoulder replacement and back surgery that left her paralyzed for a time; she was only able to walk after several operations and intense therapy. Marie’s optimism never failed through it all. “I just think that every day will be better,” she asserted in 1999. But even the toughest lady on film couldn’t surmount all the physical problems troubling her, even though she put up a valiant fight. Marie passed away peacefully on December 10, 2000, a day shy of her seventy-eighth birthday.
Her approach to her career was very simple: “If it wasn’t meant to work out—if I never got the star-making part—that’s just how it goes. I’d forge on.”
And forge on she did, through cat women, mummies, fast-guns and brothels. She was strong, possibly too strong for her own good, but clearly having a ball overpowering everyone in sight (“I wasn’t afraid to dirty my hands with tough, unsympathetic roles”). Windsor was unconventional in looks, height and manner; she could never be classified as an ingenue. Marie was a good actress relegated either to B movies or supporting parts in major movies. Fair? Not at all. But despite this, she, through her work in film noir, Westerns and sci-fi, will always be remembered fondly as one of the great screen femme fatales.
“I like him because he’s so good,” Marie seductively coos in Hellfire, one of her favorites, “and he likes me because I’m so bad.”
1941: All-American Co-ed (UA), Weekend for Three (RKO), Playmates (RKO), Four Jacks and a Jill (RKO). 1942: Joan of Paris (RKO), Call Out the Marines (RKO), Smart Alecks (Monogram), Parachute Nurse (Columbia), Eyes in the Night (MGM), The Lady or the Tiger (MGM short). 1943: Chatterbox (Republic), The Iron Major (RKO), Three Hearts for Julia (MGM), Let’s Face It (Paramount). 1945: Good, Good, Good (soundie). 1947: The Hucksters (MGM), I Love My Wife, But! (MGM short), Romance of Rosy Ridge (MGM), Living in a Big Way (MGM), Song of the Thin Man (MGM), The Unfinished Dance (MGM). 1948: On An Island with You (MGM), The Pirate (MGM), The Three Musketeers (MGM), The Kissing Bandit (MGM), Force of Evil (Enterprise/MGM). 1949: Outpost in Morocco (UA), The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (TCF), The Fighting Kentuckian (Republic), Hellfire (Republic). 1950: Dakota Lil (TCF), The Showdown (Republic), Frenchie (Universal), Double Deal (RKO). 1951: Little Big Horn (Lippert), Hurricane Island (Columbia), Two-Dollar Bettor (Realart). 1952: Japanese War Bride (TCF), The Sniper (Columbia), The Narrow Margin (RKO), Outlaw Women (Lippert), The Jungle (Lippert). 1953: The Tall Texan (Lippert), Trouble Along the Way (WB), USSR Today (Artkino Pictures documentary), City That Never Sleeps (Republic), So This is Love (WB), Cat Women of the Moon (Astor), The Eddie Cantor Story (WB). 1954: Hell’s Half Acre (Republic), The Bounty Hunter (WB). 1955: The Silver Star (Lippert), Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (Universal), No Man’s Woman (Republic). 1956: Two-Gun Lady (Associated Film), The Killing (UA), Swamp Women (Favorite Films).
1957: The Parson and the Outlaw (Columbia), The Unholy Wife (Universal), The Girl in Black Stockings (UA), The Story of Mankind (WB). 1958: Day of the Bad Man (Universal), Island Women (UA). 1961: Paradise Alley (Sutton). 1963: Critic’s Choice (WB). 1964: The Day Mars Invaded Earth (TCF), Bedtime Story (Universal), Mail Order Bride (MGM). 1966: Chamber of Horrors (WB). 1969: The Good Guys and the Bad Guys (WB–Seven Arts). 1970: Wild Women (TVM). 1971: Support Your Local Gunfighter (UA), One More Train to Rob (Universal). 1973: Cahill, U.S. Marshall (WB). 1974: Manhunter (TVM), The Outfit (MGM). 1975: Hearts of the West (MGM). 1977: Freaky Friday (BV). 1979: Salem’s Lot (TVM). 1980: The Perfect Woman (Cable). 1981: Lovely But Deadly (Juniper). 1987: Commando Squad (Trans World). Cut Footage: 1942: The Big Street (RKO), George Washington Slept Here (WB). 1943: Pilot #5 (MGM). 1975: The Apple Dumpling Gang (BV).
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