Another pair of passings of fascinating, under appreciated, and, in their own way, pretty important entertainment figures, which I only just heard together about via a Twitter from my esteemed Bullz-Eye colleague, Will Harris.

I’m a bit pressed for time and not really expert enough in either’s career to do any kind of justice to them — I had even forgotten that Nina Foch was a hugely respected teacher at USC and AFI, whose work influenced teachers I’ve studied under. I certaintly didn’t know she was still teaching, right up until the moment she fell ill on Thursday. So, I’ll simply note the passing of two great women of classic-era film and beyond. The Los Angeles Times has good obituaries on both: Ms. Foch, who to me will always be Marie Antoinette from Scaramouche (and damnit, I wish I could find her crucial scene with the late Mel Ferrer to show you just how great she was), and Ms. Garland, probably best known today for D.O.A., her time on My Three Sons, and, to Angelenos and tourists, for her North Hollywood hotel.

Yet another departure of a show-biz artist of some note. This time, Mel Ferrer, an underrated actor who was also a producer and director, has passed away just a few months shy of his 91st birthday.

He doesn’t deserve it, but with his lengthy list of appearances in now little-known films of some quality (or at least seriously attempted quality), and fair amount of out and out schlock, Mel Ferrer is the kind of figure who causes people to snap their fingers as they try to sort out there memory of him and just who he was. Unless I’ve missed something, he was no relation whatever to that other noted actor and director, José Ferrer, and therefore no relation to his son, Miguel Ferrer (to whom Mel had a slight coincidental resemblance, I think), the outstanding character actor and noted comic book geek. And, as the headline of his WENN mini-obit cruelly emphasizes, Mel Ferrer was probably best known as the former husband of a fully fledged movie star, Audrey Hepburn. According to his obits, even he tended to downplay his lengthy acting resume in favor of his producing and directing work.

Still, his acting at its best had a low-key intensity and commitment I always looked forward to. Admittedly, I’m a bit biased by having seen perhaps his best work at a young age in one of my favorite movies — the (also underrated) action, romance, and comedy packed sword-fighting classic Scaramouche. As I mentioned in a previous ode to the film, his character in the film is a murderous sociopath with men and a sensitive, lovestruck schmo with the noblewomen in his life. Ferrer pulls off both ends of the equation perfectly. He builds believable chemistry with both Nina Foch as Marie Antoinette (the illicit love of his life) and Janet Leigh as a debutante he is set-up and later falls for, but he also portrays convincing, even chilling, cold thirst for blood on numerous occasions, making him probably the most simultaneously nasty and pitiable villain in any classic-era Hollywood production.

The film also follows a common quirk of classic era swashbucklers, in that the bad guy is nearly always the better fencer than the hero, and here he about outdoes Hollywood’s most practiced bad-guy fender, Basil Rathbone (not that it ever stopped him from getting run through in the end by lesser fencers and lesser actors). Ferrer pulled that feat off despite little experience with that kind of stage combat prior to the film — he credited his background as a dancer.

Anyhow, there are other notable films in Ferer’s filmography. I recently saw him in the offbase movie version of The Sun Also Rises as yet another lovestruck schmo (this time an actually Jewish one), and I guess he did as well as anyone in that film. But for the most part, I always seems to see only portions of Ferrer’s movies. There’s the offbeat, racially charged, science fiction film, The World, the Flesh and the Devil with Harry Belafonte and Inger Stevens, which I lost interest in and summarily deleted from my DVR a couple of years back — though it wasn’t any of the actors’ fault. And then there was Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive (originally titled Death Trap) which I saw, my famed gorephobia notwithstanding, partly because Mel Ferrer was in the cast (he’s second billed) — how bloody could the film be, I reasoned, with old Hollywood guys like him in the cast? However after a crazed hotel manager (played by Neville Brand, no less) graphically scythes a young woman to death and and begins to feed her to his pet crocodile, I decided that this was one R-rated film I really was too young to see (I still may be) and I’d rather sit in my big sister’s car and listen to an old episode of “Suspense” on the radio than continue with the film. Mumblety-mumblety years later, I’ve never seen Ferrer’s performance in that one. Perhaps I’ never shall — but I’m sure he was a pro in it.

There’s more on Mel Ferrer, including a nifty piece from the mysterious horror maven, Arbogast and, of course, Greencine is the place for meeting all of your obituary and appreciation needs.

The following is my entry in Nathaniel R.’s mighty, massive Action Heroines Blogathon. There are one or two spoilers ahead, but you’ll probably forget them before you see the movie.

Before feminism and wu xia flicks created both a women’s and co-ed division of action filmmaking, Hollywood was a long way from even imagining characters like Ripley, much less Beatrix Kiddo. Leading women in studio-era action films came in three basic flavors: sexy villains, spunky virgins, or sheer ornamentation. Sure, the gun-tottin’ women of Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar and Sam Fuller’s Forty Guns were powerful, but we were supposed to regard them as borderline freaks — or how do you explain all those whips?

Women tended to play larger roles in swashbucklers than Westerns. But even in the many versions of The Three Musketeers, which features several strong female characters including the terrifying Milady, these women are prizes to be won or harpies to be fought. They generally function pretty much in the same way that women do in one of the better James Bond films. Not horrible, but not all that empowering.

There are exceptions, but in a lifetime of watching films from all eras and around the world, I don’t think I’ve ever seen women function in a more or less traditional action picture quite like they do in 1952’s Scaramouche. These women don’t take up arms, or even whips, but they still find a way to righteously beat their men into submission. The film’s two heroines — a tempestuous actress (Eleanor Parker) and a virtuous young noblewoman (Janet Leigh) in love with the same man — might fit Hollywood’s standard good girl/bad girl paradigm, but only superficially. Standard issue sexism aside, the “good girl” might be a sheltered virgin, but she’s emotionally strong and willing to risk her life for someone she cares about, and the “bad girl” is the film’s most heroic character.

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