Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, August 27, 1993                   TAG: 9401140004
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Paxton Davis
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

'BIOPIX'

Pity the poor biographer who can't fill in the gaps to tell us - what biographical subjects generally prove to have avoided - what their thoughts and emotions and the misgivings of hindsight were. One would like to know, for example, what, apart from the brief exclamation, "My fault, my fault," Robert E. Lee was really thinking as he retreated from Pennsylvania after Gettysburg.

I am put in mind of all this, however, not by the many biographies that seem to make up the better part of my reading these days but by a number of biographical movies, all of them shot in better times than these, that I've also caught, on the tube or in videocassette.

These "biopix" - as Variety first called them - were once a staple of Hollywood production, dished up to display the studios' concern for "quality" and "seriousness" between screwball comedies, westerns and gangster films starring Cagney, Robinson, Raft and Bogart.

George Arliss, a forgotten British figure nowadays, made the genre popular on the stage and repeated many of his most famous peformances - Alexander Hamilton, Disraeli, Richelieu, Wellington - on films that, during the late '20s and early '30s, were considered the epitome of great acting.

Paul Muni, an American, gave the genre new life in the late '30s in his famous portrayals of Louis Pasteur, Emile Zola and, perhaps most notably of all, "Juarez." Even Edward G. Robinson, who usually had a gat in his hand and a sneer on his mouth, made a memorable Paul Ehrlich in "Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet." Gary Cooper was Wild Bill Hickok, Sergeant York, Lou Gehrig and Billy Mitchell, while James Cagney was George M. Cohan, Lon Chaney and William F. Halsey. It was the prestigious thing to do.

Few of those "biopix" hewed very close to the truth of their subjects' lives, to be sure, but the movies, which were almost invariably popular, breathed genuine life into lives that were often less dramatic - and certainly less melodramatic - than their screen translations. Spencer Tracy may not have been more interesting than Thomas Edison, but his portrayal was livelier.

A popular sub-category amongst biopix was the musical biography, which gave the movies a chance to wrap up a vaguely factual life story with a dozen or more ambitious production numbers that, more often than not, beat anything the composers themselves had seen.

Cornel Wilde was Chopin, coughing blood, and Walter Connolly was Victor Herbert. Robert Alda, father of Alan, was Gershwin, and Robert Walker, more than 6 feet tall, was Jerome Kern, who may have hit 5-6; and in both instances, though the facts along the way got mauled, what can you say when the picture ends with Frank Sinatra, wearing a white tuxedo and standing on a pedestal, singing "Old Man River"?

My favorite farce among these high-camp classics was, however, "Night and Day," in which Cary Grant portrayed Cole Porter. It's a wonderful picture in a way, always assuming you care nothing for the truth. Cary Grant, for whom the women pant and yearn from first reel to last, is vigorous and robust, though Porter was small and frail; more to the point, Porter was a famous homosexual whose exploits at home and abroad were widely known (and little concealed by him, to his credit), while his wife of convenience, here played by Alexis Smith, was his senior by some years.

But so what? The story is told that on the night of the picture's premiere, Porter watched with rapt excitement as "his story" unfolded on the screen. Afterward, as he left the theater, a friend said to him, "My God, Cole, there wasn't a syllable of truth in it."

"Yes," Porter answered, wrapped in smiles, "but did you hear all that wonderful music?"

\ Paxton Davis is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.