A post of mine from 2019: "With all the talk about The Russians!!!! these last few years, it was fun to watch "The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!"
[T]hough the people do keep freaking out and running amok — because they think the Russians are invading — they keep coming back to order. They even find harmony with the Russians — who are climbing onto an American island because their submarine ran aground — simply by experiencing their common humanity....
Much of the fun was in the Russians' awkward English: "Remark to this, Whittaker Walt. We must have boat. Even now may be too late. This is your island, I make your responsibility you help us get boat quickly, otherwise there is World War III, and everybody is blaming YOU!"
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He is also the father of Adam Arkin - another fine actor.
A good movie, when movies were focused on telling an engaging story. Alan Arkin, and movies like this, will be missed.
Crewmen: EEEE-mare-gen-see! Every boody to git from stret."
Rozanov: Da, da, khorosho. Snova.
Shy Crewman: EEEE-mare-gen-see! Every budny to git frem strit.
Rozanov: Nyet, streeet.
Shy Crewman: Strit.
Rozanov: Nevazhno.
A major I-thought-that-he-was-dead-years-ago. His movie "Simon" is one of the more unusual movies I've seen.
From an earlier war, just as insane:
Yossarian: "Ok, let me see if I've got this straight. In order to be grounded, I've got to be crazy. And I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I'm not crazy anymore, and I have to keep flying."
“The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming“ was hilarious then, still seems pretty funny today. I also loved Arkin’s work in “Argo.” He was one heck of a comedic actor.
“E-mare-gency, E-mare-gency, Everyone to get from street.”
“Arrr, go f*** yourself.”
My college roommate was in that movie.
And don't forget this great cultural icon from the pen of Alan Arkin.**
** Or, maybe not, depending on your source: From the Wikipedia article on The Banana Boat Song:
"The Tarriers, or some subset of the three members of the group (Erik Darling, Bob Carey and Alan Arkin, later better known as an actor) are sometimes credited as the writers of the song."
"We are, of course...Norwegians."
Some of these passings hit me more than others. This one to me is crushing. Alan Arkin was one of my all time favorites. Just a great actor, director. For comedy or drama. Some of my favorites with him are some of the lesser known today, but were known in their day, maybe a little.
>The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
>Popi
>Wait Until Dark
>Little Murders
>The In-Laws (serpentine!)
>Joshua Then & Now
>Slums of Beverly Hills
Not to mention Glengarry Glen Ross, Catch-22 (he'll always be Yossarian), The Seven Percent Solution, Little Miss Sunshine, 'Russians', and on and on. So many great roles.
Sad to see this, but this is that time when my favorites are reaching their time. It happens to every generation.
Was there ever a more versatile actor, one who delivered beautifully in every role, regardless of the character? I can't think of anyone.
"...otherwise there is World War III, and everybody is blaming YOU!"
Deft blame-shifting. Arkin could have given lessons to CNN.
My favorite role was in The In-Laws. Especially when he's zig-zag running to avoid gunfire.
Little Miss Sunshine was good. Less broad comedy, more amusing situation.
He was damn good at what he did all over the place! Maybe a peer of his in that was Jack Klugman?
However, in TRAC/TRAC, all the actors were terrific. That movie did have a very '60s feel to it.
“Serpentine, Shel! Serpentine!”
and after reaching cover with the car keys he went out and returned because he forgot to serpentine. I laughed this past weekend watching The In-Laws.
I'm with Anthony on The In-Laws. To really appreciate just how great Arkin was in that film, watch the remake, which was terrible--but now that I said that, watching the remake is a waste of time.
I haven't seen it in so long that I have no idea if I'd like it today, but I loved The In-Laws.
Sad news. Not many people know him as a musician. I have a 10" Folkways disk from the early 50s of him sing children's folk songs. My kids loved the when 4-5 years old.
If you haven seen The Komimski Method on Netflix, watch it tonight. I've always been an Arkin fan but this may be his best as well as one of his last performances.
With Michael Douglas. It is terrific.
I saw Catch 22 a year or so ago and did not think it held up well. Or I hadn't. But he was still terrific as yossarian
I agree that son Adam is terrific as well
John lgb Henry
Serpentine, Shelly! Serpentine!
I loved The Kominsky Method.
Arkin actually played several roles in "Wait Until Dark" -- each of them another mask over his actual role as the villain. Very creepy.
The awkwardness comes from the fact that the Russian language does not use definite articles, and this slips into how Russians express themselves in English. The actors in the movie mimic this very well.
I loved him in "Wait Until Dark" and he was asked why he didn't get an award for that role. He said, "You don't get awards for being mean to Audrey Hepburn."
Well, another one gone. So sad.
Arkin had a small but amusing part in "So I Married an Axe Murderer", as the mild-mannered captain of the detective division. That film also had other great comedians in small but hilarious roles (Charles Grodin, Steven Wright and Michael Richards).
The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming annoyed me right from the start, it was one of those gosh darn message movies. Could say the same about Catch-22, the book was dishonest, the movie more so. Not that I mind satire with a message, Dr. Strangelove was great, but it also had a universal quality. I knew Russian immigrants who thought it hilarious.
That said, I hold no grudge against Arkin. RIP.
If you can find it watch Arkin in “The Defection of Simas Kudirka” a 1978 TV Movie based on the true story of a Lithuanian sailer who jumped from his ship on to a U.S. Coast Guard Cutter and begged for (and was denied) political asylum. Been years since I’ve seen it but my memory is that Arkin is fantastic in it.
Highly recommend "The Kominsky Method" series on Netflix where Arkin played an elderly rich, Hollywood agent.
“ I loved The Kominsky Method.”
You caused me to watch episode 1.
Thanks!
chuck at 401PM says Catch-22 was a dishonest book.
How so?
The In Laws taught me to SERPENTINE!, a very useful skill.
Yossarian: "Ok, let me see if I've got this straight. In order to be grounded, I've got to be crazy. And I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I'm not crazy anymore, and I have to keep flying."
That’s some catch, that Catch 22.
"Could say the same about Catch-22, the book was dishonest,"
How so?
I watched the clip and the moment where Arkin claws at the screen in front of the little boy - I had completely forgotten that moment. So it resumes its former role as one of my favorite things, of any category.
I'm not quite sure what to make of a 'dishonest' novel. How can a novel be dishonest?
@cook How so?
It didn't reflect Heller's actual experience in the war, he said as much in an interview. I see Catch-22, especially the movie, as a product of the Vietnam War, and The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming as a product of the Cold War, both essentially propaganda. Dr. Strangelove was also a product of the Cold War, but it is funny even out of context. I think what makes it work is that the "heroic bomber crew" are actors in a ridiculous situation and there are many digs tossed in all directions. I take the basic premise as a variation of the flouride brouhaha of the time, but you don't need to know that to appreciate it. Kubrick was a genius.
chuck, Catch-22 was a novel, not a memoir. It would only be dishonest--and it wouldn't matter much anyway--if Heller had claimed it to be truth.
Catch-22, the novel, couldn't have been a product of the Vietnam War, since it was published in 1961. It's popularity was certainly connected to Vietnam, and without Vietnam as cultural background probably would never have been Hollywoodized.
All of this is obvious and true; as obvious as the fact that a novel can not be dishonest.
For that matter, how does anyone but Heller know what--if any-- of his actual experiences did make it into the novel?
WWII? Check. USAAF? Check. Italy? Check. B-25s? Check.
@Narr, the novel was published in 1961, but it's great popularity was among my generation in the last half of the sixties when it was seen as an anti-war novel. At least, that is my recollection. The movie came out in 1970 and was definitely seen as such. Sometime in the 70's Heller was asked about his experiences and commented that all the officers he served under were good officers, that is to say, nothing particularly weird about them. The only WWII incident I've heard about that might fit into the book was a Sicilian in France who disappeared with a cargo plane. Oh, and a veteran of the 442nd regiment who told me about standing on a dock with some buddies watching a strange moving shadow in the water that turned out to be a one man Italian submarine that surfaced and the driver(?) climbed out and surrendered.
Anyway, I don't know what Heller's motivations were, no doubt they were a mixture of things, but I do find other WWII novels more informative.
@Narr, the novel was published in 1961, but it's great popularity was among my generation in the last half of the sixties when it was seen as an anti-war novel. At least, that is my recollection. The movie came out in 1970 and was definitely seen as such. Sometime in the 70's Heller was asked about his experiences and commented that all the officers he served under were good officers, that is to say, nothing particularly weird about them. The only WWII incident I've heard about that might fit into the book was a Sicilian in France who disappeared with a cargo plane. Oh, and a veteran of the 442nd regiment who told me about standing on a dock with some buddies watching a strange moving shadow in the water that turned out to be a one man Italian submarine that surfaced and the driver(?) climbed out and surrendered.
Anyway, I don't know what Heller's motivations were, no doubt they were a mixture of things, but I do find other WWII novels more informative.
Can a poem be dishonest? Can an opera?
Bob wright just mixed up Alan arkin and Alan Alda.
An understandable (sic) mistake.
Catch-22 is an antiwar satire. You'll notice it wasn't published until the early 60s. THere was Slow turn by the liberal establishment toward anti-war, anti-military attitudes in the early 60s. And it reached its crescendo in the early to mid 70s when the movie was made.
Its Heller taking his WW II experiences and using them for black comedy purposes to attack patriotism, the military, and war. That's because Heller didn't like the Cold war. But he did like WW II.
Its the inverse of Hemingway. He published an anti war novel "Farewell to Arms" about WWI, then published an a prowar novel "For whom the bell tolls" eleven years later.
Can a poem be dishonest? Can an opera?
An interesting proposition. On the surface it reduces to a matter of taste, but what about writing a poem praising Stalin? One could argue safety, necessity, or sincere love of the dictator, so who knows. In the time of serious social writers -- Dickens, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, George Elliot, Zola -- I suspect honesty could be part of the criticism of a novel. Orwell would probably have recognized dishonesty as possible. And I'd lay money that more than one love poem has been dishonest and written for dishonest reasons. This could go on forever ...
I've seen it argued that Heller's gripe wasn't with war, but rather G*d, but that sounds too academic to me. I do know that he later said that both he and other WWII veterans felt that the war was a noble cause. So why write the satire?
Wikipedia says that his first publishing attempt was a story about the Soviet invasion of Finland, written when he was a teenager and rejected by the NY Daily News. I'd love to read that story, it might inform my opinion :)
Heller's "Catch as Catch Can" is on my bookshelves a room away. I've read it. Maybe you should.
And I read Catch-22 in a single weekend the summer between 11th and 12th grade (1970), so I don't need history lessons about the period. I'm the first one to mention (IIRC) that the novel could NOT have been a commentary on Vietnam, which is how it's always treated.
It's not even, at heart and IMHO, anti-war whatever that means in the context; it was an exploration--with brilliant parodic sidetrips--of Man's propensity to trap himself in systems.
Please provide a few examples of informative WWII novels, so I'll have some basis of comparison.
Why write anything, satire or not?
Perhaps Heller couldn't find the right character and voice for what he intended without going into satire, farce, and parody.
Heller wasn't under any obligation to present a true and accurate picture, he was only obligated to entertain the reader. He succeeded brilliantly with me.
Please provide a few examples of informative WWII novels
I rather like James Jones' "The Thin Red Line". I wouldn't call him a master of style, but he makes good observations on the experience and is quick to point out BS when reviewing the art in his history of WWII, which isn't so much a history as a commentary on the experience. Apart from that, I prefer memoirs, of which many have come out over the years, peaking in the 1990's I'd say. The memoir that really stuck in my mind was "To Hell and Back". You could say I like experience more than the intellectual. When I grew up, pretty much all the men I knew had been in the war. There was the Boy Scout leader who could show how to use a tourniquet and recount saving a life with one in combat, to the little girl who took me to the basement of her house where we surreptitiously looked through a shoe box full of photos from the war, pictures of trucks full of dead bodies and such. Then there was the neighbor girl who got to wear the same coat her father had worn on Guadalcanal, holes and all. She wondered about those holes. It all left an impression.
Thin red line is an interesting novel. I didn't understand it when I first read it. I thought: "Oh, this is just a another Leftist attacking the US Army".
Then I read James' biography and some of his letters, and that's not it at all. Jones didn't like war. He thought it was a big scam. And he thought "antiwar novels" just added to the problem. They showed "war as hell". But subtext was: "Look at us Vets, we went through Hell, and we're courageous heroes. Are you man enought to do what we did?"
So, he set out to write a real antiwar novel that show "comaraderie" (sic) the whole "band of brothers" stuff, was a complete fake. And that's "Thin red line".
Again, Jones was NOT Trying to reflect reality. He was writing a novel that was antiwar. He was sick and tired of the Power Elite using 'rah rah. lets go get them' pro-war attitudes to con young men into getting themselves killed.
Who knows what Jones' REAL attitude was toward his experiences on Guadacanal. We do now his real attitude after he came back to the USA wounded and sick. He felt he'd "done his bit" and he was smart enough to realize that MILLIONS hadn't left the USA. As a result, Jones was bitter and angry that the US Army wanted him to go fight in Europe. He eventually went AWOL and got discharged in 1944.
James Jones is almost a forgotten writer. Too bad, because he was very good, and a welcome correction to the silly Speilberg propaganda we've gotten.
I loved his small comedic role in Grosse Pointe Blank where he's the psychologist selected by John Cusack's hitman character (Martin Blank) to try and deal with his problems.
Arkin: I'm emotionally involved with you
Cusack: How are you emotionally involved with me?
Arkin: I'm afraid of you.
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