by Stephen Vagg
James Caan was 82 when he died, yet his death felt as a shock, mostly because I followed him on twitter, which is irrational, I know, but in the world of 2022, people you follow on twitter often feel more present in your life than people who, say, you might actually be related to but haven’t seen in a while. I can’t even say for sure that Caan himself wrote his tweets – they may have been done on his behalf by an intern, a nurse, a lover, a fan (or a combination of all four), or someone else, or the man himself, because they did have a unique style, signing off with “end of tweet”. Touchingly, the tweet from that account that announced his death was signed the same way.
The shock came too because while, yes, I admired Caan as an actor – I admire a lot of people as actors – it’s more that I’ve always been fascinated by what sort of star he was. I mean, yes, of course he was a star – someone with a name above the title, who could get a film greenlit by his presence in it, able to turn director, considered an icon, doing a stint at the Playboy mansion, all that stuff.
Yet he never quite made the top rank. A star, definitely, “A” list, agreed, “A-plus” list… not quite. For instance, Caan was never in a list of top ten box office attractions decided by exhibitors, even in his ‘70s heyday, something achieved by actors like Elliot Gould, Jill Clayburgh, Tatum O’Neal and Ryan O’Neal (to be fair, Caan did make number 13 in 1974 and 12 in 1975). He never had the strongly individual presence of, say, a Burt Reynolds, Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson – has/can anyone do a James Caan impression? A Sonny Corleone impression, certainly, but Caan?
Audiences seemed to prefer him in harness with some other element – a popular source material (The Godfather, Misery, Chapter Two) or name co-star (Funny Lady, Chapter Two again), or sci fi high concept (Rollerball, Alien Nation), but he never seemed able to bring in audiences to a film on his own – for instance, he was amazing in Thief (1981), a terrific picture in a commercial genre, one would think, but it was not a hit; ditto other basically-solo turns like Slither (1973) and The Gambler (1974). I mean, yes, who cares, the reputations for those films have only increased over the years, in part because of Caan’s presence in them, etc etc… but I think it’s worth analysing and wondering why that was the case, if one can draw any conclusions.
People thought Caan was going to be a star pretty much from the get-go. And it’s not hard to see why. Watch him in his early movies and TV appearances, and he’s simply got “it”: he was handsome, virile-looking, and could act (New York trained, Broadway broken). Most of all, he had X factor: a nervous energy and intensity that you can feel off the screen. A lot of stars take a while to warm up – Caan was good from the beginning.
And the thing is, Hollywood noticed it too. Once Caan started looking for work, he found employment almost straight away in shows like The Naked City and Route 66, and within something like two years, executives were trying to turn him into a star.
His first breakthrough was a splashy, eye-catching part as a psycho who torments Olivia de Haviland in Lady in a Cage (1964) [above]. The film was forgotten for a long time (director Walter Grauman has no cult to speak of, nor does de Havilland, certainly not compared to, say, Joan Crawford or Bette Davis) but was something of a hot topic on release, the presence of ladylike Livvy in such a nihilistically violent film causing much pearl clutching about the Decline of Hollywood. The film’s been reappraised in recent years, deservedly, as the tough, unusual thriller it is, even if it only has half an hour’s worth of plot if you’re honest about it.
Caan leapt to leading man status quickly after that. He played a support role in an attempt to do a John Ford Western, specifically Fort Apache: this was The Glory Guys (1965) with Caan playing, of all things, the Victor McLaglen role as an Irish sergeant, when he clearly should have had the lead instead of Tom Tryon (Sam Peckinpah wrote the script and if he’d directed, this film would be famous and most probably good instead of being forgotten, like all Arnold Laven movies).
But then Howard Hawks, still very much a major player in Hollywood (only a few years after Rio Bravo) picked Caan to play the lead (ish) in his racing car drama Red Line 7000 (1965). This was a Big Deal at the time for a young actor – few directors had a better track record than Hawks at launching new stars (Jane Russell, Montgomery Clift, Rita Hayworth, Lauren Bacall, Angie Dickinson, Paula Prentiss, etc). Indeed, it led to Hawks becoming a little too cocky around this point, as if saying “I can turn anyone into a star”. In Hatari he’d tried to launch Gerard Blain, Michele Girardon and Valentin de Vargas, and in Red Line 7000, Hawks tried to make names of John Crawford, Skip Ward, Charlene Holt, Laura Devon, and Mariana Hill. Caan was the only one to make it and watching Red Line 7000 today it’s not hard to see why: he’s terrific, a believable jock (something which made him a rarity among Hollywood stars, along with Burt Reynolds), sensitive, tormented, sympathetic despite playing a character who when you analyse it is rape-y and loathsome. The film has some interesting things about it, but really isn’t that good – despite the insistence of some Hawksian fanatics who presumably love it because everyone stands around being Hawksian.
Even if Redline 7000 [above] didn’t do that well at the box-office it was widely seen, and Caan’s profile raised. He did an interview with the LA Times in 1965 which gave clues to how he would handle his career. Caan described himself as an actor who was “75% method, 25% instinct”, saying “you must commit yourself to this instinct even if it makes you look like an egotist.” He added that his idol was Paul Muni. “He has been brilliant in many roles, bored out in others. I want that kind of chance too – a chance to be interesting but never the same.” I quote that because I feel it’s one of the defining elements of Caan’s career and may explain why he never (a) became a bigger star or (b) stopped being in demand, i.e. because he kept trying different things.
Hawks used Caan again with far happier results, playing the Ricky Nelson role in his re-do of Rio Bravo, El Dorado (1967) [below], supporting John Wayne and Robert Mitchum. This was Caan’s first classic, a splendid Western, due very much in part to the young man’s excellent work: funny, cocky, respectful to his legendary stars but holding his own with them.
This one was a hit and Hollywood said “New star!” Caan was thus given the lead in six pictures, all of which flopped. It’s often said that Caan became a star with The Godfather, which is true but incomplete: he became a successful star then. After El Dorado he was an unsuccessful star, appearing in six non-hits: Games, Countdown, Submarine X-1, Journey to Shiloah, The Rain People, Man without Destiny, and Rabbit, Run.
Now, this doesn’t mean the films were bad, or that Caan was bad in them, far from it. Games (1966) is a fascinating Curtis Harrington gaslighting thriller in the vein of Les Diaboliques; Countdown (1968) is an interesting dated-really-quickly astronaut drama from a pre-MASH Robert Altman (with Robert Duvall co-starring). Most of all, there’s The Rain People [below], Francis Ford Coppola’s credit card indie made with left over cash from Finian’s Rainbow; watching it today it’s kind of like an Australian movie: a low budget, visually interesting amble, but Caan is superb as a brain damaged footballer. For those who haven’t seen it, your heart may sink on hearing the words “brain damaged”, fearing some piece of Simple Jack-esque Oscar bait ham with ticks and gestures, but Caan simply underplays beautifully. If you don’t think Caan was a great actor, go see The Rain People first, then try arguing that position.
These films are better remembered than Caan’s more obviously “commercial” efforts. Journey to Shiloh (1967) was a Magnificent Seven knock-off made in part to show off Universal’s young contract stars who included Michael Sarrazin, Harrison Ford, Don Stroud and Jan Michael Vincent; the only interesting thing about the film, which stinks of cheap TV and dodgy craft, is that cast and Caan’s terrible wig. Submarine X-1 (1968) was one of a series of forgotten medium-budgeted war movies made by Walter Mirisch featuring an American star in England (633 Squadron kicked off the cycle, others included Attack on the Iron Coast, Hellboats, Mosquito Squadron, The Thousand Plane Raid, and The Last Escape – the sort of films only Quentin Tarantino, and this is said with affection, could whip up too much enthusiasm for). Caan was announced for – but did not appear in – the Steve McQueen role in Return of the Magnificent Seven, the part played eventually by Robert Fuller.
Even more obscure are some attempts at being hip. Man without Destiny (1969) was a jokey Western (with Sammy Davis Jnr and Aldo Ray) that wasn’t even released until 1975, under the title Gone with the West. Rabbit, Run (1970) attempted to cine-mise John Updike (there was a vogue around this time to film novels about horny Jewish men eg Goodbye Columbus, Portnoy’s Complaint, The Heartbreak Kid); Caan called it “one of the great disasters… a piece of crap”, and he was pretty close to the mark. It’s also completely depressing (SPOILERS – Caan appeared in two films where a baby dies, this and Cinderella Liberty).
By the end of this run, in terms of Hollywood “heat”, Caan was cold. He would play support roles for his next two films, and his third was a telemovie. This is the sort of ‘70s career trajectory enjoyed by other young male actors who had been in the Mirisch war movies, like James Franciscus, Christopher George and Stuart Whitman, ending in the inevitable European crime film and guest shot on Fantasy Island.
This seemed confirmed by the first of these movies – TR Baskin (1971), a sort of female Graduate/young woman’s Diary of a Mad Housewife, with Candice Bergen looking for love in the big city. It’s written and directed by men (Peter Hyams of all people did the script) and looks it but isn’t without interest and co-star Marcia Rodd is terrific.
However, the second movie was The Godfather (1972) and the TV movie was Brian’s Song (1971), both of which were instant classics, hugely popular and critically adored. Both were also films in which everyone was good, but Caan carved out his own spot. In The Godfather he was, of course… do I really have to talk about The Godfather? Why not – he played the flamboyant, hot-tempered Sonny Corleone, adulterous, impulsive, wife-beating, with an all-time legendary death scene that no doubt traumatised a generation of criminals over driving through toll booths; the sequel badly misses his energy, which becomes apparent in his brief cameo in that at the end.
Brian’s Song has a deserved reputation for the definitive guy cry movie – cancer, race, football, stoicism. Caan’s performance is brilliant, very different to Sonny: sensitive, self-mocking, tough, scared.
These two films took Caan from being on the road to yesterday’s man to red hot once more. By now, he would’ve been well aware that there was really no such thing as a safe movie – a best-selling, critically-acclaimed source material didn’t help Rabbit, Run nor did a solid genre assist Journey to Shiloh – so he spent his chits on some fascinatingly odd projects.
Slither (1973) was a quirky road movie that covers genres (search for a bag of cash, a musical number, comedy) from an Elmore Leonard-ish script by cult scribe WD Richter and the directorial debut of commercials guy Howard Zieff made by ‘70s MGM.
Cinderella Liberty (1973) was a rom com with a pre-Neil Simon Marsha Mason, from a script by the writer of The Last Detail; that film has overshadowed Cinderella Liberty which nonetheless works on its own terms, full of wonderful moments (especially the inane Navy chatter) and a star making turn from Mason.
The Gambler (1974) is a splendid character study with Caan as a dream surrogate for the screenwriter, sex pest James Toback: educated professor of literature, playing hoops with African Americans, having an impossibly glamorous girlfriend (Lauren Hutton), hanging with the mob, ripping off his rich parents. “I like playing different things, like Brando does,” Caan said around this time. These movies are peak ‘70s Caan with the star at his swaggering charming curly haired best (he combed it down in the ‘60s but allowed his fro to flower in the ‘70s). He’s superb in all of them.
None were particularly huge hits at the box office, but Caan then appeared in two: Freebie and the Bean (1975), an anarchic buddy cop movie opposite Alan Arkin, and as Barbra Streisand’s leading man (along with, to be frank, the costumer) in Funny Lady (1975). Caan teamed so well with both, it’s a mystery why he never reunited with either. He reprised his role as Sonny Corleone for one scene in The Godfather Part II (1974) for a fee of $35,000 – his fee for the original, apparently.
There were two popular action movies: Rollerball (1975) was a classy sci fi action flick from Norman Jewison that launched the dystopian sports movie genre and a series of rip-offs (Death Race 2000, etc) – most of which, to be frank, were a lot more fun than Rollerball, which could have stood to be a little less important and a little trashier. Caan is superb as a sporting star who gets politically active while also smashing a lot of stunt men. It was far superior to The Killer Elite (1975), no one’s favourite Sam Peckinpah movie, which feels like it was made by an exhausted cocaine addict doing it for cash (though Caan has some decent byplay with Robert Duvall at the beginning, demonstrating once more how much he rose when he had someone strong to bounce off). Caan’s fee for the latter was a reported $750,000 plus ten percent of the profits.
Inside every tough guy star is a ham struggling to get out, so Caan tried to mix things up, playing a vaudevillian opposite Elliot Gould in Harry and Walter Go to New York (1976) [below]. This was one of a series of flop buddy comedies set in the past that followed in the wake of The Sting (eg Lucky Lady, Nickelodeon). Everyone looks as though they are having fun, but it is not infectious to the audience in a film with far too many lead characters.
There are stories of famous roles Caan turned down at his peak – a lot of stars have these, and you often have to dig a little to confirm the truth. Caan was definitely one of several stars approached by the Salkinds to play the title role in Superman but no one was willing to make a fool of themselves in that suit (I don’t want to view the past in rose-coloured glasses but part of me misses those days, stars are all a little too keen now), so the producers went with the idea of stars in support and an unknown in the lead. Francis Ford Coppola offered Caan $1.25 million to star as Willard in Apocalypse Now, after first choices Steve McQueen and Al Pacino had rejected it; Caan knocked it back (he wanted $2 million) before Jack Nicholson and Robert Redford (I don’t think he was ever offered Kurtz as well, unlike McQueen and Pacino). All of these stars feared a long shoot with Coppola in the Philippines (not without cause: eventual star Harvey Keitel was fired; replacement Martin Sheen had a heart attack).
United Artists wanted Caan to play the lead in Rocky, and he would’ve been perfect, but Stallone would not give up his script without the chance to star. Caan turned down One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (which had flopped on Broadway), as had Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman before him. These things happen. The one Caan really should have done is Apocalypse Now because of the Coppola connection: it could have been to him what, say, Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon were for Al Pacino, or Taxi Driver was for Robert De Niro, i.e. a post-Godfather film that was big and serious and a box office hit.
Instead, after an effective cameo in A Bridge Too Far (1977), Caan made a film for Claude (A Man and A Woman) Lelouch, Another Man Another Woman (1977), the sort of thing no big male Hollywood star did then (except for Jack Nicholson), so dammit that’s pretty cool! He loved making it, incidentally, and while the movie isn’t a classic, I was surprised how much I enjoyed it… it’s a little McCabe and Mrs Miller-ish with its usual, semi-lyrical look at an old West interspersed with shocking scenes of violence. It was shot (mostly) in English with a name co-star Genevieve Bujold, but no one saw it. More’s the pity.
Presumably to offset the risk of making Another Man Another Woman, Caan then went into two big “package” movies, both of which must have sounded sure-fire in shorthand: Comes a Horseman (modern day Western reuniting Jane Fonda and Alan Pakula off Klute), and Chapter Two (adaptation of popular Neil Simon play, with Marsha Mason reprising her stage role, based on Mason in real life). As if to prove no one knows anything, both films were disappointments critically, and only Chapter Two did well commercially. Comes a Horseman (1978) is breathtakingly dull, unable to use its perfectly cast stars for anything interesting dramatically, clearly made by a director too cool for the genre. Chapter Two (1979) has brilliant source material and Mason is perfect but – as much as I hate to admit this – is sunk by Caan’s performance, which plays all of the grief of his widow character, and none of the humour. (Simon publicly disparaged Caan’s work, wishing they’d cast someone funnier; I’d argue Caan was capable of being funny, he just didn’t play it that way, and the film suffered.)
Caan was keen to develop his own material, and in 1977 set up a company, Tara Films, at UA, declaring “I want young people to send in scripts. I’m tired of seeing scripts by the same old writers who have been writing the same old scripts for the last 40 years. You can’t go with the tried and true. Audiences out there don’t want the same old garbage.”
In between making Horseman and Chapter Two, Caan starred and directed Hide in Plain Sight (1980), a true life drama about a working class guy who loses contact with his kids when his ex-wife goes into witness protection with her new boyfriend. I think Caan only directed it because United Artists wanted him to star, and they couldn’t find a director, but anyway, Caan’s handling of the material is genuinely assured and interesting – he uses lots of masters and long takes (he seems influenced by Claude Lelouch). His acting is excellent too, although the script doesn’t quite work; it never seems to make up its mind if it wants to go realistic or Hollywood.
Hide in Plain Sight was barely seen, and the experience turned Caan off directing, griping “everybody wants to do ‘Rocky Nine’ and ‘Airport 96’ and ‘Jaws Seven’ and you look and you listen, and what little idealism you have left slowly dwindles… I’d have to have a passion for the project, and things would have to be right, so I didn’t have to have heartaches every day.”
Caan’s next two films were not widely viewed either. No one seems to remember the second, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1982), despite co-starring Sally Field and Jeff Bridges under the direction of Robert Mulligan; it’s an amiable redo of Blithe Spirit/Topper with Caan as a ghost, but sinks under a script which doesn’t give Caan enough to do. It is fun to see Caan as a Bob Fosse style hoofer-director.
However, the movie he made before that – Thief – has become regarded as a stone cold classic, the film that usually comes up right after The Godfather when people discuss Caan. The movie was a personal favourite of its star, who is superb, whether breaking into high security storage facilities, taking down the Mob, or having long monologues to Tuesday Weld.
Then the Disappearance, with Caan offscreen for a number of years until Gardens of Stone (1987) [above]. Various reasons for this have been given over years: cocaine addiction, grief over the death of his sister, cocaine, lack of enthusiasm for Hide in Plain Sight, cocaine, burnout, and cocaine. For all Caan’s talk about wanting to be Paul Muni (“You ought to be able to try to play all different kinds of characters, you ought to have the luxury of falling on your face. That’s what it’s about. It’s not about playing the same damn song all the time.”), he had embraced the perks of being a Hollywood star: big salary, expenses, ex wives, playboy bunnies, drugs. He was meant to star in The Holcroft Covenant (1984), but quit after a number of days filming, replaced by Michael Caine.
Coppola brought him back in Gardens of Stone, a film overshadowed by the circumstances of its production (Coppola’s son died). Caan was once again superb as a sergeant, but the film dull (like Rain People, it gave off Australian cinema vibes); few saw it.
He then had two hits: Alien Nation (1988) [above], as a cop paired with an alien; and Misery (1990) [below], an author tormented by crazed fan Kathy Bates. The former was a solid piece of genre filmmaking which spawned a TV series. The latter was a Big Deal At The Time – Rob Reiner, Steven King, William Goldman, etc – and Caan lobbied for the part, only getting it after a swag of other stars turned it down (including William Hurt twice). He delivered a strong performance; Goldman praised Caan’s physicality in particular, which gave great tension for a character unable to move for most of the running time.
And so, James Caan was back. Kind of. Because he never regained his former level on the A list. I think the Hollywood studios decided by this stage that he was a famous name rather than a star – I remember when Misery came out all the publicity seemed to focus on Kathy Bates. He was certainly no longer a romantic lead – while still in good shape, he was now pushing fifty, the hair had thinned, the drugs had made their impact and he was clearly a middle-aged man. Caan’s contemporary Al Pacino still got to be sexy in Sea of Love and Heat, but not Caan. He never quite enjoyed late character actor career bloom of, say, a Gene Hackman or Robert Duvall and I wonder why – maybe his voice lacked their depth and intensity, maybe he was too blue collar to play authority figures. Or maybe it was bad luck.
Nonetheless, his credits remained consistently interesting and varied: big studio comedies (Honeymoon in Vegas, Mickey Blue Eyes, Bulletproof, Get Smart, That’s My Boy) and action flicks (Dick Tracy, Eraser), children’s films (Elf), musicals (For the Boys), arthouse hits (Dogville), sports movies (The Program), directorial debuts (Way of the Gun, Bottle Rocket), crime pieces from auteurs (The Yards, Flesh and Bone), passion pieces from fellow actors (City of Ghosts, This Is My Father, Mercy), meaty opportunities on TV (Poodle Springs), some TV series (Back in the Game, Las Vegas).
Caan spent his last three decades acknowledged as Hollywood royalty, including a big TV pay day (Las Vegas) and seeing his son Scott enjoy enormous success on Hawaii Five-0. The grief and affection that followed his passing from film fans was genuine, full of love, respect and gratitude.
To wind this up, a quick James Caan primer for his pre-1990 work:
* The undisputed classics you would’ve seen if you’ve read this far, but I’m listing anyway – The Godfather, Thief
* The classics you probably would have seen if you’ve read this far – El Dorado, Brian’s Song, Rollerball
* Ones for your great directors’ completion list – The Rain People, Gardens of Stone, Red Line 7000, Another Man Another Woman, Countdown (I’d skip Killer Elite unless you’re a die-hard Peckinpah completionist – like, you have to have done Osterman Weekend and the Julian Lennon video clips as well)
* If you love your ‘70s cinema – The Gambler, Freebie and the Bean
* Little gems – Games, Cinderella Liberty
* Worth checking out – Hide in Plain Sight
RIP Jimmy. End of tweet.