Worth Seeing For Richard Boone

It sounds as if you have seen this recently. Is that true? If so, where did you see it?

In "Rio Conchos"(another little-known Boone movie I love), Boone is playing a Confederate officer after the Civil War who keeps dismissing his Union captors' questions with "Its none of yer Yankee bizness!"

And yet Boone does not say those lines in the "classic Southern tones" of, say, Chill Wills, or Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump, or Brad Pitt in "Inglorious Basterds," or any of those British actors who so enjoy speaking with Southern accents in their movies (try Kenneth Brangauh-sp? as a Southern General in "The Wild, Wild West" movie sometime. Awful movie, hilarious Southern accent.)

Boone's take in both "Rio Conchos" and "The Kremlin Letter" seems to be to give us a kind of "home spun" country cousin bit that is hard to "trace." Its not so much an accent, as it is PHRASING. Texas isn't right.

And yet. Boone is first seen in "The Kremlin Letter" as a pallbearer. He wears a suit and a bolero-type string tie that suggests "Texas" to me. Perhaps the original novel or screenplay would better spell it out that the character was Texan.

In addition to always saying things like "Nephew, you have surely outfoxed me this time!"(when the "nephew" has done nothing of that manner at all), Boone has an affected line near the very end that goes something like this:

"Isn't there any way we can get that money at all?" But he says the last two words like "hait 'tall?" Its not so much an accent as a very precise choice of "cracker barrel phrasing."

That's how good Richard Boone was. I'm sorry, it just amazes me every time I hear him and watch his work. Find "The Kremlin Letter" and watch that scene near the end where he talks about going to Paris, if you don't believe me.

There's a touch of the ham to Boone's performance in "The Kremlin Letter," as he talks so much with his hands and makes exaggerated facial expressions --- but some of our greatest actors are entertaining BECAUSE of the ham. (Brando, George C. Scott, Nicholson and of course Pacino today are part of this tradition, dangerous though it may be.) Its "bigger than life" stuff, and its why actors are different than you and me. Hell, let's throw in Robert Preston, who didn't work a lot, but was delightfully "big" when he did(from "The Music Man" to "Victor Victoria.")

Its funny you mention Robert Mitchum(whose country cousin accent was syrupy, funny and menacing in "Cape Fear") because I often figure that Richard Boone played parts that Mitchum could also play. Mitchum is the much more famous guy -- and unlike Boone, he could play "nice handsome men" in his early career -- but both Boone and Mitchum had the same quality. They could play "amiable bad guys" and "menacing good guys" using roughly the same techniques and physical premise.

This is why I enjoy the reviled 1978 London-set(!) remake of Raymond Chandler's "The Big Sleep": Mitchum and Boone face off in one great little scene, and both men had seen much better days.

I love, love, love this scene like you do, ecarle. The more Boone I watch, the more I wonder how he somewhat flew under the radar of absolute primo actors because he was in that league.

Maybe it's because of that inconsistency we've talked about--when his heart wasn't in it he phoned it in a little bit.

This thread talks a lot about how he delivered his lines so entertainingly. I think the scenes where he is sitting in the background with those arms folded watching over and listening to what's going on are nearly as entertaining for me. He sometimes has these looks of amusement, so even when he is silent it's almost as if that good old boy demeanor is still being heard loudly and clearly.

Every second he's on screen is a treat to watch--speaking, silent, whatever. It doesn't matter. He steals every movie he's in, and especially this one, even from Orson Welles.