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..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

It’s funny what some newspapers leave out of the obituaries they publish when a celebrity takes that final stroll down the big red carpet in the sky.

Unless the deceased was known solely for his or her most infamous act, reporters tend to ignore the blemishes and accentuate the positive aspect of a newsmaker’s life. This is especially true when obits are written to commemorate the deaths of racist politicians, directors of really crappy movies and notoriously greedy business executives. Instead of leaving it at “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” journalists will go out of their way to identify the one or two good causes the stiff supported – usually as a tax dodge -- or the rare artistic achievement that rose above the level of exorable.

Meanwhile, the deaths of thousands of ordinary citizens – many whom volunteer to fight brush fires, buy more Girl Scout cookies than they can possibly eat and never bother to take tax deductions for their charitable donations – go unreported and largely unheralded.

On rare occasions, though, the achievements of influential men and women are left understated. In the case of entertainers, this anomaly generally occurs when the deceased won an Oscar, Emmy or Tony in a vehicle that was more popular than distinguished, or, late in life, the artist became an iconic figure in some obscure genre or cult.

In the obituaries that appeared in Monday’s papers – on this side of the pond, at least – Sir Alan Bates was rightly praised for his memorable work in Zorba the Greek, Georgy Girl and Women in Love, and as a representative of the “angry young man” period in British theater and film. In honoring the totality of Bates’ career, the reporters touched all of the right bases, and proper length generally was accorded to the articles.

Still, something was missing.

By focusing on the most recognizable of the Derbyshire native’s achievements – including a nude wrestling scene in Women in Love no studio would touch in 2003 – the obituaries unintentionally gave short shrift to a body of work that was as significant as any that played out in the later half of the 20th Century. Not only was Bates a familiar presence in the European and American theater, movies and television over the last 40 years, but he also collaborated with a who’s-who of directors, writers and actors whose names will never be forgotten by fans of English-language drama.

These included Sir Laurence Olivier, John Osborne, Harold Pinter, Michael Cacoyannis, Simon Gray, John Schlesinger, John Frankenheimer, Dalton Trumbo, Ken Russell, Joseph Losey, Peter Medak, Richard Lester, Carol Reed, Dennis Potter, Lindsay Anderson, Robert Altman, Paul Mazursky, James Ivory, Allan Bennett, Michael Caine, Anthony Quinn, Oliver Reed, Dirk Bogarde, Terence Stamp, Albert Finney, James Mason, Bette Midler, Julie Christie, Glenda Jackson, Jill Clayburgh and all sorts of Redgraves and Richardsons. And, Bates was as adept at performing in classic works by Shakespeare, Chekhov, D.H.Lawrence and Thomas Hardy, as he was in adaptations of modern novels by Nikos Kazantzakis, Bernard Malamud, Ray Bradbury and Tom Clancy.

For men of a certain age, Bates may have been the least threatening sex symbol in the movies. In An Unmarried Woman, he gave women a reason to warm up to guys with untrimmed beards and shaggy hair, and, in Zorba, he helped millions of uptight white guys learn that it’s OK to dance to music only they can hear. Women in Love demonstrated that love and intimacy could take as many forms as there were men and women.

Still, for those of us who came of age amid the anarchy of campus life in the ‘60s – and used movies as roadmaps to adulthood – there was one Bates comedy, in particular, that helped convince us of the insanity and futility of war. Although Philippe de Broca’s King of Hearts went largely unmentioned in Bates’ obituaries, for untold thousands of students and would-be flower children it served as an entry point to the anti-war and human-rights movements..

The film was as much a part of the hippie-dippy fabric of the times as Catch-22, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and any book by Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Brautigan, Thomas Pynchon or Jack Kerouac … or, for that matter, an extended jam by the Grateful Dead. More importantly, perhaps, it complemented such decidedly offbeat flicks as Harold & Maude, Marat/Sade, Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment, How I Won the War, A Thousand Clowns and Where’s Poppa? Two years ago, King of Hearts served as a blueprint for Andrei Konchalovsky's House of Fools.

In King of Hearts, which is set in the final days of World War I, Bates played Private Charles Plumpick, a Scottish ornithologist chosen by his commander to go into a deserted French town to uncover the whereabouts of a huge bomb planted by the German army. Plumpick’s entry is a bit premature, however, and, along with his carrier pigeons, he’s forced to take refuge inside the local insane asylum, where the inmates welcome him as returned royalty. The befuddled soldier tries to convince his eccentric new friends – including a lovely and delicate tightrope walker/prostitute, played by Genevieve Bujold – to evacuate the town, but, instead, they warm to their newfound freedom by letting their fantasies take wing. When the threat of imminent disaster is removed, the war returns to the town of Marville and the inmates flee to the safety – and sanity – of their asylum.

As such, it was impossible to avoid comparisons between King of Hearts and what was transpiring simultaneously in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury and the rice paddies of Vietnam,. And, coming off the goofy ugly-duckling Brit comedy Georgy Girl – in which he played a cad in the Alfie mold – De Broca’s film helped establish Bates as an international star.

Next would come a series of titles that would be the envy of any actor before or since: In the next decade, Bates’ credits would include Far From the Madding Crowd, The Fixer (his only Oscar nomination), Women in Love, Three Sisters, The Go-Between, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Story of a Love Story, Butley, An Unmarried Woman, The Rose, The Shout and Nijinsky. In today’s terms, Bates was a hybrid of Colin Firth, Russell Crowe and Jeff Bridges.

At the same time, Bates was performing in the theater and on British theater to great acclaim. His career suffered a huge blow in 1990, however, when his son suffered a fatal asthma attack in Tokyo, and, two years later, his wife of 23 years, Victoria Ward, also died. It would take several years before he recovered enough to take on major projects.

In 2001, his delightful presence in Robert Altman’s ensemble Gosford Park – and a Tony-winning run in Furtune’s Fool (his second such honor) – re-established Bates as an actor hitting on all eight cylinders. These works would be followed by appearances in The Sum of All Fears, The Mothman Prophecies, Evelyn, The Statement and the upcoming mini-series Spartacus.

Bates also appeared in a movie I didn’t see mentioned in any of the obituaries I’ve read today. Hollywood North is a straight-to-DVD title from Canada that, at once, tries to explain and skewer the movie industry in the Great White North. Bates plays a “bankable American star", whose bouts with paranoia and imaginary terrorists threaten the production of a tax-shelter action-thriller. It wasn’t one of Bates’ stellar roles, but his presence enhanced the entire project.

Ironically, while several other of Bates’ lesser efforts are readily available on DVD, some of his most important work isn’t, yet.

Of the titles available on disc, King of Hearts, The Entertainer (as Laurence Olivier’s son), In Celebration, Butley, The Rose, Three Sisters, Britannia Hospital, Women in Love, the BBC mini-series The Mayor of Casterbridge (adapted from the Hardy novel, by Dennis Potter) and Gosford Park, are the most noteworthy.

Remarkably, though, absent in DVD here are such important films as Zorba the Greek, Georgy Girl, An Unmarried Woman, Far From the Madding Crowd, The Fixer, The Go-Between, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Whistle Down the Wind, The Collection, The Running Man, A Kind of Loving, Story of a Love Story, Royal Flash, The Shout, The Return of the Soldier and Nijinsky. James Ivory and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Quartet will be released in February.

Perhaps, to mark the recent death of John Schlesinger, several of these omissions will soon be rectified, as Bates was one of the director’s favorite actors. A similar reassessment should occur for the early work of such revered British stars as David Hemmings, Oliver Reed and Richard Harris (all of whom appeared in Gladiator before they died), as well as that of the very alive Terence Stamp (Billy Budd, Poor Cow), Albert Finney (Charlie Bubbles, Night Must Fall, Two for the Road) and Tom Courtenay (The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, A Taste of Honey, The Loved One). Blessedly, Blow-Up will be released in February, as well.

After all, as the bromide goes, "Better late than never.” As it applies to DVD, though, I’d suggest, “Better late than a special collector’s edition of ‘Cat in the Hat’ or “The Simple Life: Season One.”

Amen.

- by Gary Dretzka

December30, 2003