Then: Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner as Mr. Spock and
Captain Kirk in Star Trek. Courtesy NBC/Photofest.

Director J. J. Abrams, whose Star Trek Into Darkness opens this month, is not counting on the sci-fi special effects (although there will be plenty) to guarantee the success of the sequel to his huge 2009 hit Star Trek. “I want it to be real and relevant,” he says, speaking of the 12th film based on the iconic ’60s TV show. “Cool as they are, the spaceships and the gadgetry aren’t what really matters.”

For Abrams, the crew of the Enterprise is paramount. “You want to be cruising with them on an amazing and fun adventure,” he says, echoing the words of Star Trek’s late creator, Gene Roddenberry, who famously pooh-poohed the technology component of his stories: “I wrote my daydreams,” he said. And his late wife Majel Barrett-Roddenberry pointed out: “He wrote about things that he understood, and that wasn’t science, it wasn’t technology.”

Maybe Roddenberry put his other interests before science, but there are countless concepts and tools we first encountered on Star Trek that have since become, not only real, but a part of our lives.

“Their Universal Translator? Today we’ve got an app for that,” notes Linda Wetzel, who teaches a course at Georgetown University on the philosophy of Star Trek. “We may not have phasers, but we have lasers and tasers. And we can talk to computers now, and they understand us.”

But the show was never really about the gear: “The original series tackled burning issues of the day,” says Wetzel. “It explored big ideas—philosophical, political, and scientific. Star Trek asks ‘What if?’ and just runs with it.”

The show first beamed into millions of living rooms in the tumultuous ’60s when visions of Armageddon danced in our heads; the U.S. and the Soviet Union were uneasy adversaries in a nuclear stand-off. Space exploration had become a priority after the Russians one-upped us with the launch of the Sputnik satellite followed by Uri Gagarin’s historic flight into space. We responded with a huge and expensive effort to put a man on the moon.

Against this dark, historical backdrop, Star Trek broke new ground with a racially diverse spaceship crew that included Nichelle Nichols as communications officer Uhura and George Takei as helmsman Sulu. It held out the possibility that an uncertain future could have a happy ending as The Federation tried to contain the vicious and violent Klingons, whose homeworld Kronos was a superpower not unlike the Soviet Union, while the Enterprise discovered life on other planets. And the series explored timeless questions about where we were going—not just in outer space but in our lives as human beings.

As William Shatner, the original Captain Kirk, explains, “A wonderful story is something people can relate to—whether it’s a search inside or an exploration of our future in space. I think the real, lasting connection is that we entertain people. I never came to the set thinking ‘Today I save the universe.’ I usually would say, ‘Where are the bagels?’”

Professor George Slusser, curator of the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy at University of California, Riverside, agrees. It’s important, he notes, that Roddenberry never let the values he promoted stand in the way of entertaining his audience. “A person who has a hard day isn’t interested in reading about philosophy or hard science,” Slusser says. “But they will sit down with a beer in their hand and watch Star Trek and encounter some grand ideas. And they may not even realize they’re getting them.”

Now: Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine reprise the roles of Mr. Spock and
Captain Kirk in Star Trek. Courtesy Paramount/PhotoFest.

As the late James Doohan who played Scotty once put it, “We knew about the lessons in Star Trek, and we knew as actors how important it was that we get them across. I remember Roddenberry once said to me, ‘If we think it’s going to be difficult for the audience to believe something, we’ll just cut to your close-up.’ I thought that was marvelous.”

Leonard Nimoy, who became legendary as Mr. Spock, says that Roddenberry’s perspective on life changed his own. “I was much more emotional before I started to play him,” he remembers. “Spock had a big impact on me personally. It made me understand better how to approach a difficult situation without the emotion taking over. And I hope some of that was passed on to the audience.”

What could have been the end of Star Trek turned out to be a new beginning. After three seasons on NBC, the series was cancelled because of low ratings. But in a serendipitous twist, reruns in TV syndication became more popular than the series had been on NBC and also attracted a coveted younger audience. That led to the first Enterprise venture on the big screen, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The flick got mixed reviews for drawing mainly on previously produced television episodes, but it scored huge at the box office with ticket sales of $82.3 million domestically, thanks in large part to Trekkers who returned to see it countless times.

The movie’s success jump-started a string of sequels, which were basically review-proof as Trekkers rallied around the box office—although many claimed, in a strange calculation with which a lot of critics seemed to agree, that the even-numbered sequels were always better than the odd-numbered ones.

Roddenberry had little involvement in Star Trek on the big screen but, nearly 20 years after the TV series had debuted on prime time, he re-imagined his vision in the syndicated Star Trek: The Next Generation, or TNG for short. An entirely new cast was led by Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who had the emotional control that was often missing in the impulsive Kirk, and the series’ trademark diversity included Whoopi Goldberg as an alien bartender and LeVar Burton as the blind engineer.

The series reflected a new time in America. While Captain Kirk’s Enterprise was always pressing on to a new planet and another conflict, Captain Picard headed a calmer and more sophisticated ship, complete with chamber music concerts. There was not much fighting but a lot of negotiating. The Klingons had been tamed and were now allies of The Federation. Everything was running pretty smoothly except for frequent technical turmoil ranging from dangerous radiation leaks to warp jumps that had to be calculated to the nanosecond.

To Boldly Return The Saturday Evening Post

1. “Live long and prosper” is the greeting of which planet?
a. Vulcan
b. Romulus
c. Earth

2. Which actress played the first female commanding officer in a leading role?
a. Kate Mulgrew
b. Denise Crosby
c. Nichelle Nichols

3. Name that alien:
a. Lieutenant Worf, Klingon
b. Nero, Romulan
c. Sybok, Vulcan

4. Who was the captain of the Enterprise in the original Star Trek pilot?
a. Christopher Pike
b. James T. Kirk
c. Jean-Luc Picard
 
5. In the original series, what was the tip off that a character would die early on in a mission?
a. The character would say the line, “Beam me up, Scotty.”
b. The character was the first one off the ship.
c. The character was wearing a red shirt.

6. Before Leonard Nimoy, which actor did Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry consider to play Spock?
a. Adam West
b. Patrick Stewart
c. Peter Graves

7. Besides Whoopi Goldberg, which other Oscar host appeared on a Star Trek TV series?
a. Seth McFarland
b. Billy Crystal
c. Johnny Carson

8. Other than Kirstie Alley, which Cheers cast member also appeared in the Star Trek franchise?
a. Rhea Perlman
b. Kelsey Grammer
c. Woody Harrelson

Check the Answers!

Trek Trivia The Saturday Evening Post

Alan Alda will be presenting the Flame Challenge Prize winner during the 2013 World Science Festival, which takes place May 29–June 2.
Credit: Greg Kessler © 2012 World Science Festival

In his first memoir Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I’ve Learned, Alan Alda recalls that as a young child, his mother would often caution him to keep silent in public. “Don’t notice anything,” she’d admonish him. It’s no small irony that years later, he would play a universally beloved television character named Hawkeye.

Alda played that part for 11 years in the classic hit M*A*S*H and, more recently, tweaked liberal sensibilities as the Goldwater-like Arnold Vinick in The West Wing. He is a prolific writer and director with 33 Emmy nominations (six wins) plus three Tony nominations for his work on Broadway. And then there are the many memorable film roles, from Crimes and Misdemeanors to California Suite to, most recently, Tower Heist.

It’s no surprise that Alda’s perpetually in demand for films and TV, but what is surprising is where his heart is these days. His deep-rooted passion for science has evolved into a remarkable endeavor: He’s currently visiting professor at Stony Brook University’s Center for Communicating Science—a department he helped found in 2009 to train scientists to communicate more effectively with the public. As if that weren’t a sufficient departure from show biz, in 2012 Alda and the center also created the Flame Challenge, an annual international contest in which scientists are challenged to explain complex concepts to 11-year-old children. More so than any of his television, stage, or screen credits, Alda is palpably animated when conversing about these unique ventures.

Question: How did you become a visiting professor at Stony Brook University?
Alan Alda: I realized when I was doing Scientific American Frontiers for 11 years on PBS how important it was for the scientists to have really good communication skills. Science really surrounds us in our lives, and it’s at the heart of our economy. We all have to understand it better. So, in my travels, whenever I was at a university where they taught science, I would ask, did they think it would be possible to train scientists as communicators while they are training them as scientists? The only place in the country that really picked up on the idea was Stony Brook. And Howie Schneider, who runs the school of journalism, got very enthused about it and began the Center for Communicating Science. And I’ve been helping with that.

Q: This is a rather unusual move for a movie star.
AA: My relationship with science is as someone who’s curious and hungry to know, hungry to understand. So all I have to offer is my ignorance and my curiosity, which is a good combination, as long as they come together. Ignorance without curiosity is not so hot. But I actually do have something to offer, which is that I’ve spent my life communicating and thinking about how communication works.

Q: There should probably also be a center for communicating economics, public policy, law—all kinds of other disciplines, don’t you think?
AA: I can’t change the entire world [laughing]. Yeah, better communication would be terrific. I’ve often wondered what the “fiscal cliff” was [chuckling], or even what “Obamacare“ actually entails—it’s always been a little murky and could have been communicated better.

Q: And yet we’re voting on these things.
AA: I know that some members of Congress have not understood these subjects as well as they might want to. So, yeah, our lives depend on good communication. Good communication helps personal relationships, it helps bosses and employees get along better. We rely on it.

Q: Speaking of science, what’s the status of your play, Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie?
AA: We did a wonderful production of it at the Geffen Playhouse in California. Anna Gunn played Marie, and she was fantastic and that was wonderful for me to see. I’m constantly revising it. In the car on the way over here I was making notes on a couple of scenes. It sounds stupid if I tell you how many drafts I have.

Q: I’m a writer. Please, share!
AA: How about 100. I probably will be continuing to work on it until well after I’m dead. I love the character; she is a hero of mine and I want to tell that story as well as I can.

Q: You write, act, direct. Do you sing, too?
AA: I have sung twice on Broadway—in The Apple Tree and in a musical that lasted until the end of the first act. [Laughs.] It was called Café Crown. I have to work hard at singing. I was thrown out of the glee club in high school because I had trouble staying in the same key. I have this unique ability to sing in three keys at once. Seriously, I’ve gotten a lot better over the years. I sing when I have to.

Q: Would you star in a television series again?
AA: If they asked me to do a show that I’m interested in or that I’d get to work with someone that I’d like to work with. I like to work with Laura Linney, so I did her show [The Big C] a few times. I did ER and The West Wing. They were really interesting places to act. And 30 Rock. That was fun. Tina Fey is so brilliant. I’m in this wonderful position where I can do what interests me. And whatever comes along that interests me, I do. The rest of the time I bother scientists about communicating.

Alan Alda The Saturday Evening Post

At the peak of success, self-doubt kept Quinn teetering between calm and fury.

Fifty years ago, the Academy Awards ceremony was handing out its Oscars to a remarkable crop of films—including big winners such as Lawrence of Arabia, The Miracle Worker, and To Kill A Mockingbird. Although Hollywood’s big-name actors were noted for memorable performances, several 1962 Post articles also pointed out that they were showing a trend toward rebellious, temperamental, and selfish behavior.

Rising stars like Anthony Quinn, Marlon Brando, and Peter O’Toole were becoming increasingly hard to work with, and were threatening the survival of the studios.

For example, an article about Anthony Quinn often described the actor as “volatile, unpredictable,” alternately gracious or bitter. A director, who had recently worked with Quinn in the movie Requiem for a Heavyweight, said, “I found Tony has great selfishness as a performer. He thinks how each scene can best serve him. Of course, when he’s good, he’s brilliant. He just makes it hard as hell for everyone around him,” [“Anthony Quinn, Unsettled,” October 13, 1962].

An article about Peter O’Toole, star of Lawrence of Arabia, mentioned the rumors among actors that O’Toole was brash, irresponsible, a braggart, and a drinker. The producer of Lawrence of Arabia believed the rumors, O’Toole said. “It hardly helped matters when a fifth of whiskey tumbled from my pocket during our first meeting,” [“Oscar Winner,” March 9, 1963].

Fellow Brit Richard Burton was becoming well known for his wild rages. While filming The Robe, he deliberately ran his head into a wall after failing to perform a stunt called for by the script. The year before, while performing in the Shakespeare festival at Stratford, “he got so carried away during a fight scene that he lifted [Michael] Redgrave and hurled him against the scenery, nearly bringing the set crashing down,” [“Actor With Two Lives,” January 27, 1962].

Robert Mitchum, who had just finished Cape Fear with Gregory Peck, instinctively fought any type of authority. His impatience often led him to lose his temper. When a studio phone failed to work, he destroyed his dressing room and walked onto the set to announce, “If they treat me like an animal, I’ll behave like an animal,” [“The Many Moods of Robert Mitchum,” August 25, 1962].

Newcomer Warren Beatty had starred in only three movies by 1962, but he was already making demands on the studio. He insisted on complete silence on the set while he was acting. He also demanded, and was given, the best dressing room on the lot, normally reserved for Gregory Peck, [“Brash and Rumpled Star,” July 14, 1962].

But of all the troublesome actors, none was more difficult or demanding than Marlon Brando. Lewis Milestone, who had recently completed Mutiny On The Bounty, told Post contributor Bill Davidson that Brando’s attitude—argumentative, uncooperative, and easily offended—“cost the production at least $6 million and months of extra work.”

The petulant superstar turned paradise into a moviemaker’s nightmare.

Co-star Trevor Howard said Brando’s behavior had been “unprofessional and absolutely ridiculous,” and Richard Harris said working with Brando had made “the whole picture a large dreadful nightmare.”

According to Milestone and other members of the cast, Brando rarely knew his lines and would fumble his way through as many as 30 takes of a single scene. He constantly used “idiot cards”—pieces of paper with his lines written on them—which he concealed on his person or somewhere on the set.

Says Director Milestone, “It wasn’t a movie production; it was a debating society. Brando would discuss for four hours, then we’d shoot for an hour to get in a two-minute scene because he’d be mumbling or blowing his lines. By now I wasn’t even directing Brando— just the other members of the cast. He was directing himself and ignoring everyone else.

“Did you ever hear of an actor who put plugs in his ears so he couldn’t listen to the director or the other actors? That’s what Brando did. … I’ve been in this business for 40 years, and I’ve never seen anything like it. … Whenever I’d try to direct him in a scene, he’d say, ‘Are you telling me, or are you asking my advice?’ [“The Mutiny of Marlon Brando,” June 16, 1962].

While Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer hoped to recoup the cost overruns of Mutiny on the Bounty, Twentieth Century Fox was starting to see similar budget problems on its production of Cleopatra.

Robert Wise, an Academy Award-winning director, predicted Hollywood would have to change to survive. Hollywood, he said, had built up its stars in order to compete with television. In the process, it had created monsters. “Brando’s behavior has made us realize how far out of hand the situation has gotten. More and more of us are saying. ‘The hell with the star. I’ll make little black-and-white pictures with good scripts and unknown actors.’ We must do that to survive. A few more mutinies by stars and we’ll all be out of business.”

Yet the Post editors seemed to expect actors to be demanding, difficult, and hard to work with. Movie stars had to be bigger than life in everything they did. The stars of Hollywood’s golden era, like Gable and Bogart, were “exciting personalities … every gesture and mannerism set them apart from ordinary men, creating about them the aura of a star.

“Each of these old-time stars was a vibrant personality with his own distinctive style. He snarled, fumed, raged, stormed, fought, loved, bled and died with a gusto that today’s pallid actors cannot match.” The editors compared the “glittering greats” of the past with the young stars of that year and concluded, “much of the excitement has gone out of the movies.”

Bad Boys of Hollywood, 1962 The Saturday Evening Post

Photo credit Michael Yarish/AMC

Matt Weiner, the creator of Mad Men, has a shelf full of Emmys and Golden Globes not to mention critical raves for the hit series now in its sixth season. The retro drama about a 1960s ad agency has left its mark on everything from fashion to the way we look at gender roles. So why is Weiner the first to admit he can be a little anxious about being at the top?

Maybe because he’s hardly an overnight success. He can laugh now about all the time he spent after grad school writing scripts, while his architect wife supported the family. Along the way, he wrote the pilot for Mad Men, but received nothing but rejections.

Weiner’s break came when he started writing for The Sopranos. That show was so hot it made his reputation, but even that wasn’t enough to sell HBO on Mad Men. Eventually it was AMC that took the gamble.

Weiner is charming—a great talker—but notoriously close-mouthed about where the series is going and whether the end is in sight. He’s already made his first bid to move to the big screen writing and directing with last fall’s You Are Here starring Zach Galifianakis and Jenna Fischer.

Question: How has success changed you?
Matt Weiner: I’m less combative. Finding an audience of even a few people after being rejected for a long time kind of recalibrates your perception of humanity, believe it or not. But I’m superstitious about the word success. It took awhile to realize that this really happened after years of privation and rejection. Ironically I’m the person who wrote, ‘Happiness is the moment before you need more happiness.’ So even the premise of the question, ‘How do you feel about success?’ is terrifying.

Q: What would you rewrite about yourself?
MW: I’ve got plenty of bad qualities that have not disappeared. I’m working on being more patient. That can be difficult to be around. I am very exacting. I think I can come off seeming unappreciative of the people closest to me sometimes because I have the complete expectation that I’m entitled to their affection. That’s probably my biggest fault—impatience.

Q: Are you different at home?
MW: I’m like every dad, I’m a joke. [He has four sons.] My anger’s a joke. My dissatisfaction’s a joke. My rules are a joke. I’m always fighting to enforce my authority. I work so much that when I come home and say, ‘Hey everybody, don’t do it this way,’ they’re like, ‘If you were here you’d know this is the way we do it.’ It’s like I’m powerless. You know what, once you take physical violence out of the equation, you really have no control over another person. [Laughs]

Q: Have you tried being a diplomat around the house?
MW: I lose my temper. I’ve got a bad temper. I’ll get mad and be swearing and using the ‘F’ word in the kitchen. Afterwards I’m so embarrassed and I look over at my kids in the next room and I’m like, ‘God, I hope they didn’t hear that.’ And I see they are laughing but trying to cover it up so they won’t embarrass me.

Q: What inspired you to be a writer and to stick with that unrealistic ambition?
MW: I had a lot of support from my parents. They loved and admired writers. We have a big poster of Ernest Hemingway in our hallway. I think that that mattered to me that they thought writing could be a heroic profession and a writer could make like a valuable contribution.

Q: What made you aim so high?
MW: I was a terrible student. I had a lot of mentors, teachers who encouraged me, kind of told me whether I believed it or not that I was a late bloomer. I gave a speech at my high school graduation and a dad in my class told me that I could be a TV writer. It wasn’t just any dad, it was Allan Burns who created The Mary Tyler Moore Show. And so I had that in my hip pocket. And then I went to college and did some acting and wrote poetry. Then I went to film school and was out of work for 5 years even though I was writing all the time. I tell people the hardest part about it was not knowing that it was going to be 5 years—it wasn’t that I was going do it, it was those years of not knowing when I was going to be a success.

Q: Don Draper the main character on the show says, ‘Everyone thinks this is temporary.’ Do you think that?
MW: I am extremely aware that the end is coming but not when. I’ve always had to sweat. I never have been sure Mad Men was going to go on again. I live and die by this thing. I want people to say, ‘That was the best season of the show ever.’ I want them to progressively say during the season, ‘That was the best episode of the show ever!’ I am always aspiring to keep it new and fresh. But you’re going to lose if you’re always trying to top yourself. You end up doing something crazy.

Q: You are pretty secretive about the plots of the episodes.
MW: I’m not trying to tease people. I just don’t want to give away to viewers what’s coming because not knowing what is going to happen is part of what keeps people interested. I think fans of the show, the ones who really love it, don’t want to know. But it is hard to talk about a new season without getting specific. At the beginning of a season I’m always like, ‘I’m starting a whole new story. If you don’t like it, then it’s not for you. But it’s not because it’s not as good as last year. It’s just different.’ No matter what happens you’ll be able to understand it. It’s a TV show, it’s not War and Peace.

Q: Are there lessons that having a huge hit have taught you?
MW: At a certain point you realize that being mature in this job is not thinking that you can do it all by yourself. You can’t forget that other people have the best stuff to offer and you need to be excited when you hear something you didn’t think about. I try to remember that I don’t always give enough praise. I get so much attention for my contribution to the series, and I wish I could share the glory a little bit more. I always mention the work of my producers and co-writers but it seldom gets printed. And I want people to know that that’s not my fault. That I try to share the wealth.

Q: What’s the right way to handle fame?
MW: I remember watching Jennifer Lawrence fall on the stairs as she went up to accept her Oscar. And I just thought, ‘If I were to write an acceptance speech, it would start like that.’ That moment to me was kind of like instant humility. She recovered with such grace and good humor. That’s a hard thing for people to understand. You just don’t want to attract the evil eye, become arrogant, rest on your laurels, and take it for granted.

Q: Does the great acceptance of the show give you more creative confidence?
MW: Trying to put a dream into words is a lot of what it is at the beginning of the season. And the ship leaves the port but you still don’t know if it’s any good. That’s the thing that never goes away. You don’t even know, even when the season’s over, even when you win an award, if you like pulled it off. And you know anyone who says they’re only interested in satisfying themselves is a fool.

Meet Mad Men Creator Matt Weiner The Saturday Evening Post

Born of Hollywood royalty, the Smash star, now 61, has found a new inner confidence. Illustration by John Jay Cabuay.

When Anjelica Huston enters a room, she commands your attention just as she does on screen. She’s an imposing presence, even a little intimidating—she’s just so tall!—until she breaks into that charming, mischievous grin. It’s quickly obvious that the actress is nothing like the scheming, tough-as-nails producer, Eileen Rand, whom she plays on the NBC series, Smash.

As Huston speaks, revealing a self-deprecating sense of humor that’s thoroughly endearing, it’s hard to separate the drama in her life from the memorable characters she’s brought to life, from the mob wife in Prizzi’s Honor to Morticia in The Addams Family.

Huston was born into Hollywood royalty. Her dad was legendary director John Huston. Her mother, John’s fourth wife, was Italian ballerina, Enrica “Ricki” Soma. Houseguests ranged from Marlon Brando to John Paul Sartre and John Steinbeck. She began acting in small roles, mainly in her father’s films. Then, just as she was coming into her own, her mother was killed in a car accident. That changed the direction of her life.

She moved to New York, and as a young woman, her grace, stature, and angular good looks led her to modeling. Richard Avedon photographed her for Vogue. The big change in her life came when her father cast her in Prizzi’s Honor, a part that earned her an Oscar and made her a star. She co-starred with her longtime love Jack Nicholson. They were together for 16 years, but once she got famous there was a lot more interest in them as a couple—always talk about the ups and downs of that relationship.

Finally, they split—another big life-changer.

When she and Nicholson parted company, Hollywood watched to see if she’d ever find her Mr. Right. The answer came when she walked down the aisle with celebrated sculptor Robert Graham–known for works like the Olympic Gateway at the Los Angeles Coliseum, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in D.C., and the Duke Ellington Monument in New York’s Central Park. The handsome artist and the beautiful actress were a standout couple in the arenas of entertainment and art.

Graham also loved to draw beautiful women and their bodies. There was one star-studded showing of his work where people teased him about nude drawings that looked an awful lot like Anjelica. She casually deflected the questions by talking about “my fantastic husband” and playing up his many other accomplishments. The two were inseparable, so his sudden death from a heart attack four years ago left her shattered. Her many friends within and without Hollywood rallied around her, but she credits Smash—her first venture into series television—with coming at a “vital time” and finally filling a void in her life.

Question: I have known you for years. I listen to the laugh in your voice and you’ve got the greatest smile. Why do they keep casting you as these stern women like Eileen in Smash?
Anjelica Huston: [Laughing] Well, Eileen does have a good sense of humor. But it’s true, they like me to be these slightly sinister characters. It’s good to play against type, I guess.

“Sometimes I’m a wimp, and other days I think I can conquer the world.” Photo courtesy NBC Universal.

Q: And what would you say your type is?
AH: I really don’t match any stereotype. I never felt like I “fit in.” That’s probably what makes me a great observer.

Q: But doesn’t your character’s feistiness reflect you maybe just a little?
AH: I would like to be as scrappy as Eileen. I can certainly wrap my brain around her scrappiness. But sometimes I’m a wimp, and other days I think I can conquer the world. I wish I could plan it out a bit better.

Q: You get some steamy romantic scenes on the show. Do you get a kick out of that?
AH: It all depends on who with. But it certainly livens things up—particularly at my age. I remember at the very outset, two years ago, I said to the producers, ‘Please, give me a love interest.’ I think it’s important to see strong women who also have a very vulnerable side and who are allowed to have a sexy side.

Q: As the years pass, what has changed for you?
AH: The older I get, the more I look for a good time. I remember when I was in my 20s and 30s, I was always in some fight with a boyfriend or involved in some drama, something to feel bad about. I feel so the opposite of that now. I just like to have a good time, smile, and be with my friends. You know, tell a story, have a drink. I’m certainly not looking for angst.

Smash Star Anjelica Huston The Saturday Evening Post

Illustration by Jody Hewgill

Shirley MacLaine has lived a lot in her 78 years. She also famously insists that she’s lived centuries more in past lives.

Outrageously outspoken with a rapier wit, the Academy Award-winning actress, singer, and dancer is a Hollywood powerhouse. As a best-selling author, she’s fascinated us with her mystical preoccupation in everything from reincarnation to psychics and spirit guides. Even skeptics agree that her exploration of the far-out is an entertaining ride. Whether guesting on a talk show or walking the red carpet she always manages to get a gasp along with the laughs at her no-holds-barred one-liners.

MacLaine hasn’t given a thought to retiring or even slowing down—why should she? Her deliciously nasty turn as an old woman a small town loves to hate in Bernie, opposite Jack Black, earned rave reviews. Her latest book of witty observations, I’m Over All That: And Other Confessions, shows how she winks at looking back and looking forward.

And now she’s got a juicy co-starring role in the hugely popular Emmy-winning Masterpiece series Downton Abbey, as Lady Cora’s mother Martha Levinson, who arrives from New York to upset the household. That, of course, pits her against another icon of the big screen, Dame Maggie Smith, who plays the fearsome Dowager Countess Violet Crawley.

As we move forward in the new year, who better than MacLaine to give us a little perspective in her own irresistibly humorous and thought-provoking style?

Shirley MacLaine The Saturday Evening Post

Sean Penn as Mickey Cohen in Gangster Squad (2013). Photo by Wilson Webb/Warner Bros.

Imagine Mickey Cohen. West Coast gangster kingpin, 1940s and ’50s. Gambler. Tax cheat. Mob enforcer. Major racketeer, with hands in prostitution and dope. Volcanic temper. Not the kind of guy you’d want to chat with over the backyard fence.

And nasty as all get out is how Sean Penn plays Mickey Cohen in Gangster Squad, opening in January, about Los Angeles police chief William Parker (Nick Nolte) and his elite squad (including Ryan Gosling and Josh Brolin) whose mission is to keep the West Coast mob, as represented by Cohen and his minions, out of the city. It’s a standard plotline—cops vs. hoods—but the release of the movie is just the latest proof that when it comes to screen portrayals of mobsters, real or imagined, Americans enjoy wallowing in all that anti-social behavior. Gangsters are individualists on steroids, and we can’t get enough of them.

“There’s something enticing about the world [gangsters] live in,” says Gangster Squad director Ruben Fleischer. “It’s this forbidden existence; they live life on their own terms. Gangster films make the bad guys the good guys.”

“We like people who have more power, more id, less super ego,” adds Stuart Fischoff, senior editor of the Journal of Media Psychology. “There’s a bit of a gangster in all of us. We can vicariously identify [with them], live out our fantasies.”

Guess what? It didn’t take filmmakers very long to recognize this. As early as 1912, D.W. Griffith’s The Musketeers of Pig Alley showed a fascination with organized crime on New York’s Lower East Side, and allegedly used real street gang members as extras. But it was the Great Depression, and the gangster films of that era, which really jump-started the genre: Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar. James Cagney in The Public Enemy. Paul Muni as Scarface and Humphrey Bogart as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest. Snarling nasty guys with their guns, molls, Prohibition-era chicanery, and personal charisma. All of which came out of a specific cultural and political context. Desperate times created desperate characters, and the collapse of the worldwide economic system caused many people to question the viability of the capitalist system—and their place in it.

Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar. Photo courtesy www.doctormacro.com.

“The early gangster films reflected the crisis of individualism in the Depression,” says film critic Dave Kehr of davekehr.com. “If you wanted to rise above, you had to go outside the law. Gangster films parody capitalism, they highlight class distinctions. It’s the anti-American dream.”

“If you go back to the 1930s, America was becoming more urban, there was the Great Depression, and Americans felt the economic system had failed them, so people like John Dillinger became folk heroes,” adds Glen Macnow, co-author of The Ultimate Book of Gangster Movies.

“The film audience was ethnic and urban,” he adds, “so Warner Brothers started the genre by giving the urban immigrants something they liked, with pictures featuring urban ethnic criminals like Scarface and Little Caesar. You had this perfect formula for success.”

Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway star as Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Photo courtesy Warner Bros./Seven Arts/Photofest.

And that’s pretty much how the gangster film played out over the next few decades. The bad boys remained individualists involved in all sorts of rackets, and as the Depression waned, the genre shifted into the bleak moral atmosphere of film noir, where, says Macnow, “the gangsters are less gunmen than businessmen running corrupt businesses.” Every once in a while there’d be a psychological take on the genre—James Cagney’s psychopathic mama’s boy in 1949’s White Heat—or, in the case of 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde, a film that startled with its violence and sociological insight.

“You got into the psychology of those people,” says Fischoff of Bonnie and Clyde. He explains how this particular twist on the gangster flick delved with Freudian insight into the roots of the characters’ pathology. The message was that “people weren’t born villains.”

Then came one of those great breaks from the past, as significant in cinematic terms as when dinosaurs seemed to disappear from the planet almost overnight. 1972. The Godfather. On one level, you can think of it as the heartwarming tale of an Army vet who goes into the family business. On another, it’s the tragedy of an honest son who evolves into a ruthless crime boss. All told in a groundbreaking, operatic style that took a trash novel and turned it into cinematic high art.

Marlon Brando in The Godfather (1972). Photo courtesy Paramount Pictures/Photofest.

Director Francis Ford Coppola’s classic film also represented a major shift in the underlying theme of the gangster flick. The game changed from “radical individualism to the pleasure of belonging to a group with special privileges,” says Kehr. “These were the guys excluded from society, constructing their parallel world where they’re safe and empowered.”

“The Godfather was an epic, a family saga, a Shakespearean tragedy,” adds Macnow. “It turned the Mob from a bunch of nasty thugs and turned them into a modern view of Roman royalty. It’s about family and honor and code.”

The Godfather led directly to Goodfellas, in which mobsters are family surrogates for Henry Hill, the lead character. And to The Sopranos, the groundbreaking blend of suburban psychoanalytic angst with the conventions of the mobster story. Even the Al Pacino classic, Scarface, certainly one of the most florid and over-the-top gangster movies ever made, dabbled in family dynamics.

These are our top-rated films documenting true-to-life nasties.

Click image to enlarge infographic.

So what’s left? The gangster film has been around for 100 years, morphing from stylized Depression-era tales of social consciousness to contemporary stories owing their popularity as much to family doings and the analyst’s couch as “going to the mattresses” and contract killings. In some ways, it seems the genre has exhausted itself, and contemporary audiences are more interested in tales of super heroes and alien slime things.

Which in some ways makes Gangster Squad a bit of a throwback, a nostalgia piece about the days when mobsters were predominantly Italian or Jewish—at one time the underdog, immigrant groups of a bygone era. But crime is ever resourceful, and so are our filmmakers. And as American demographics continue to evolve, its criminals will reflect that evolution. Which means that changing demographics have affected what kinds of villains we’re seeing onscreen, because the audience has changed. Now there’s plenty of room for films about Cuban dope dealers (Scarface), African-American drug masterminds (American Gangster), Russian crime families (Eastern Promises), and streets gangs of various ethnicities and races (Boyz n the Hood, Colors).

Can the movies about Nigerian, Albanian, and Chinese crime lords be far behind?

“We have always been fascinated with the guy who chooses to live his life on his own terms,” says Macnow, “We all want to believe we’re rebels, so when we root for the gangster, we get that vicarious thrill.”

Adds Fleischer: “America is a place that embraces liberty, and the right to live life on your own terms. People have looked up to these bad guys who are not following the rules. It’s safer to do that in movie form than reality.”

Mob Love The Saturday Evening Post

Sean Penn stars as real-life gangster Mickey Cohen.

Mob Love

(Lewis Beale, Sep/Oct 2012)

The classic toughs of the silver screen are the ultimate individualists. These are guys who know no boundaries when it comes to fulfilling their ambitions. For Americans, it’s a formula impossible to resist.

George Raft (right) became a star after his performance in the movie Capone.

Out of My Past

(George Raft, September 21, 1957)

Hollywood’s mysterious tough guy reveals he was once a gun-toting consort of underworld big shots. Here, finally, Raft tells the truth about his life as a young gangster.

Al Capone smiled on his way to prison in 1932.

Big Shots or Pop Guns?

(Post editors, August 15, 1931)

Post editors wonder if the arrest of Al Capone would lead to the end of the gangster era in books and film.

Mae Clarke and James Cagney in Public Enemy.

How I Got This Way

(James Cagney, January 14, 1956)

James Cagney knew what it was to flop on Broadway, but won overnight movie fame as a gangster who mashed his moll in the face with a grapefruit.

Giesler (left) with his client Bugsy Siegel.

I Defend a Mobster

(Jerry Giesler, December 12, 1959)

Jerry Giesler, a celebrated Hollywood lawyer, discloses how he sprang Bugsy Siegel from a murder charge in 1959.

Hollywood and Gangsters The Saturday Evening Post

Click here to download “How I Got This Way,” or read below.

How I Got This Way The Saturday Evening Post

Click here to download “Big Shots or Pop Guns?” or read below.

Big Shots or Pop Guns? The Saturday Evening Post

The article below is a small peek into Giesler’s famous career and covers the tale of his relationship with the man once known as one of the “six most dangerous gangsters in the United States.” Notorious mobster: Bugsy Siegel.

Click here to download “I Defend a Mobster,” or read below.

I Defend a Mobster The Saturday Evening Post

Click here to download “Out of my Past” by George Raft, or read below.

Out of My Past The Saturday Evening Post

The Deltas huddle off-screen around Verna Bloom, who played Mrs. Wormer—the dean's alcoholic, lecherous wife, Marion, in the film. Photos from Fat, Drunk, and Stupid by Matty Simmons. Copyright © 2012 by the author. Reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press, LLC.

Like Tiger Woods for golf or Elvis Presley for rock ‘n’ roll, National Lampoon’s Animal House single-handedly redefined the art of comedy and provided a quintessential model for future Hollywood projects. Following its release in 1978, Animal House spent eight weeks at box-office No. 1 and emerged as one of the highest grossing, most successful movie productions in the history of the entertainment business.

Today—and $600 million later—it remains one of the funniest movies to ever hit the big screen.

Fat, Drunk, and Stupid: The Inside Story Behind the Making of Animal House by producer Matty Simmons, recounts the film’s imperishable legacy.

“I wrote Fat, Drunk, and Stupid because I have constantly been amazed at the continued popularity of Animal House,” Simmons says. “People talk to me about it all the time, and I’ve always found it hard to believe that a movie released in 1978 would still be quoted and copied [today].”

Years before Animal House was even so much as a thought, Matty Simmons was living in New York City working as a press agent for local nightclubs and restaurants. However, as he details in the opening chapters of Fat, Drunk, and Stupid, it took but a few strokes of luck for his occupation to change and his career to flourish. From local press agent to company executive, he escalated up the professional hierarchy and eventually founded National Lampoon Inc., earning the title of CEO and propelling him ever closer to Animal House.

(From left) Animal House screenwriter Douglas Kenney, producers Matty Simmons and Ivan Reitman, and screenwriter Chris Miller on the last day of the 32-day shoot. Founder and CEO of National Lampoon, Matty Simmons shares the movie’s outrageous story in Fat, Drunk, and Stupid.

By 1975, Simmons had proven himself as a magazine, television, and Broadway musical producer. Despite Hollywood’s cruel and unpredictable reputation, he decided to embrace the challenges of the film industry, thus vowing never to allow the thought of failure to inhibit his vocational pursuit.

“Hollywood has a way of deflating egos. [However], it never entered my mind that I would remain a New York press agent forever,” Simmons remarked. “All my life, I’ve tried to reach up.”

Humorously appealing and utterly revealing, Fat, Drunk, and Stupid traipses through the development of Animal House and depicts how an unplanned trip through Hollywood resulted in one of the greatest American comedies of all time. Through personal stories and direct testimonies, Simmons reflects upon the days of production and engages his readers with on- and off-set humor from the Animal House undertaking. Complete with behind-the-scenes reports and exclusive cast and crew interviews, Fat, Drunk, and Stupid celebrates the success of Animal House with the unveiling of its incredible Hollywood saga.

For four weeks in 1977, the cast and crew of Animal House invaded the town of Eugene, Ore., home to the University of Oregon. Shooting on the grounds of an actual college campus in a fictional fraternity —Delta Tau Chi House (background)—gave the film a sense of authenticity.

Like all breakthroughs in filmmaking, Animal House experienced its share of difficulties and took time to evolve. In fact, as Simmons openly admits, the initial idea for Animal House received negative feedback and overwhelming disapproval from practiced Hollywood agents. Several networks and multiple Hollywood directors passed on the film’s script, and even when Universal Studios President Ned Tanen agreed to fund Animal House, he prefaced his proposal by saying, “I hate this treatment. … I’d never make this movie—except you’re the National Lampoon.” Thus, according to Simmons, the green light for production was offered somewhat unenthusiastically with Universal confining the crew to 32 filming days and $3 million in finances. However, with stories about luggage requirements and costume efficiency, Fat, Drunk, and Stupid explains how the Animal House team managed to overcome its financial concerns and turn a harshly criticized initial film script into an icon of the American cinema.

Saturday Night Live star John Belushi played the unforgettable character Bluto in the film, directed by newcomer John Landis who went on to direct such hits as The Blues Brother and Coming to America.

With the exception of John Belushi, Animal House cast members showed up on set with very little experience in the Hollywood spotlight. Many were struggling in the entertainment business, and some were even pursuing careers elsewhere. In Fat, Drunk, and Stupid, Simmons reveals the team’s recruiting tactics and explains the evaluation process he and director John Landis adopted to build their cast. He goes on to describe how well they interacted and how impressively they balanced work and fun, saying “It was Animal House during the day and a real-life animal house party room at night.” From fistfights to drunken romances and wild parties to harmless pranks, members of the Animal House team engaged in activities nearly as wild as those displayed in the movie, and Fat, Drunk, and Stupid recounts them all.

Because of the relationships that developed as a result of the Animal House production, many members of the cast and crew kept in touch and continue to meet at celebrations, awards ceremonies, and other social gatherings today. However, several members of the team have since passed away and Fat, Drunk, and Stupid honors them all, commemorating Belushi specifically with a special chapter tracing his illustrious career and recalling his wild, yet inspiring personality.

The cast of Animal House was made up almost completely of then-unknowns. However, the film earned more than $600 million, launched countless careers, and eventually became one of America’s most beloved comedy classics.

The legacy of Animal House extends far beyond Otter’s testimony or Bluto’s aggression against the guitarist, and despite an inauspicious start, sits perched atop the list of Bravo TV’s “100 Funniest Movies.” In what is Matty Simmons’ eighth book publication, Fat, Drunk, and Stupid rationalizes how a bunch of unknown actors came together to spearhead the movie production that will forever remain embedded in the culture of Hollywood and the roots of modern film comedy.

Book Review: Fat, Drunk, and Stupid The Saturday Evening Post

I literally grew into my favorite role—the part of Velvet in the picture National Velvet. I started to qualify for it as a small child by learning to love horses, and began riding at the age of three. When I was four, my godfather gave me a field horse, and soon I started jumping and steeplechasing. Later, I read Enid Bagnold’s novel, “National Velvet,” and began to dream of playing Velvet in a movie.

So when I reached a relatively ripe thirteen and heard tbat M-G-M planned to produce a picture based on this story, I went to Producer Pan Berman and told him bow much I wanted the role.

“But you’re too small and frail,” he said.

“I’ll grow,” I promised.

Afterward mother wondered why I had said tbat. “You know you haven’t grown a quarter inch in three years,” she pointed out.

“It wasn’t necessary then,” I said. “Now it is.” Until then, I had eaten like a bird. But after making that promise I started packing away steaks and chops like a lumberjack. In three months I grew about three inches and gained weight besides. Maybe Nature poked a helpful hand into my build-up program, but I like to think I did it all myself. Anyway, I got my favorite role—and King Charles.

King Charles was supposed to be a mean horse, and only his owner and his trainer were allowed to ride him. But I managed to win his trust by visiting him day after day. Then I persuaded the studio to buy him for the picture, and finally King Charles was presented to me as a birthday present.

By the time another 17 years had passed, she had left such ingenue roles far behind her to win the 1967 Academy Award for Best Actress playing the bitter, destructive Martha of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”

Next: Taylor’s Most Passionate Role, as an AIDS Activist

Remembering Elizabeth Taylor The Saturday Evening Post