April 2 . . .
It was a day pretty much like every other day in los Angeles in 1965. Spring was in the air but who who could see it through the smog and what difference would it have made anyway? Washed-up Hollywood B-movie actor and never-quite-star Tom Neal had fallen on hard times, living in a cheap dilapidated apartment, and all the days looked the same. His reputation for hard living and hard drinking had made him virtually unemployable in the industry. On top of all that, he was paranoid and suspicious that his wife, Gail, was having an affair.
The story that he later told police was that she had tried to kill him and the gun went off accidentally; the prosecution’s version of events was that he had shot her in the head while she slept on the couch. Strangely, the gun itself had vanished. Either way, accidentally or on purpose, on this day in 1965, Tom Neal killed his wife, along with whatever chance he had for a future.
The irony was thick. Years before, he gave one of the all-time great film noir performances as a down-on-his-luck drifter who meets one bad dame too many, gets a bad hand dealt him, and who accidentally kills his lover in the movie many consider the greatest film noir ever, the classic ‘Detour’ (1946). B-movie director Edgar Ulmer, working on a poverty-row budget, created a bleak, bitter, compelling masterpiece on the vagaries of fate. Neal is appropriately dim as the luckless hero, but it’s Ann Savage (an appropriate name if there ever was one) who steals the show as the brassy bitch Neal picks up hitchhiking in California. All in all, ‘Detour’ is an amazing movie, drenched in the darker hues of human nature; like watching a bad traffic accident, you’re compelled to look.
Neal, sentenced to 15 years for manslaughter, was paroled in 1971, but died August 7th, 1972. In a typical piece of Hollywood stunt-casting, his son, Tom Neal, Jr., played his old part in a 1992 remake of ‘Detour’. He hasn’t been heard from since. Like father, like son.
Click here for a clip from ‘Detour’ . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkwETw6mZ6k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maW4nFWyvz0
1 comment:
Your writing style is so captivating, Steve! As I read the first couple of paragraphs, I thought that I was reading the film's story. Life imitating art, indeed. And about his own son... wow.
Note that he was paroled when we were graduating from high school. Sort of puts us on the timeline.
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