Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 11, 1994 TAG: 9402150261
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Paxton Davis
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Actors Warren Beatty, Shirley MacLaine and George C. Scott, of a later generation, are Virginians too; and it is interesting to note, in passing, that none of them appears on screen as frequently as did stars of their magnitude in the golden era of Hollywood.
Cotten was something of an exception, however, moving into small parts - often in European movies never shown in the United States - when his career as a leading man petered out in the '50s. The irony of that is that using him almost entirely as a romantic leading man, a choice carelessly made by the imperious David O. Selznick, may well have been a classic piece of stereotyped miscasting.
Born in Petersburg in 1905, Cotten grew up there amidst a prominent family, and the graces of an earlier time in Virginia life could always be heard in his voice and glimpsed in his manner. He trained at an acting school in Washington, then set out for New York, where - before he became a movie star - he made a name for himself opposite Katharine Hepburn in ``The Philadelphia Story.''
Orson Welles recruited him for his famous Mercury Theater in the late '30s, then took Cotten to Hollywood with him, as one of the co-stars of the epochal ``Citizen Kane'' in 1941.
It was, in fact, the most important movie of its time, and Cotten, along with such other Mercury actors as Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins, Everett Sloane and George Coulouris, rose to sudden prominence with it. Cotten, as Kane's cynical drama critic and surviving friend, was alternately wry and funny, and it might have been smart of the men who ruled Hollywood to notice it. His good looks were conventional enough, but his face had an edge and his acting had a quality of bemusement and skepticism that might have recommended him for a wider variety of parts.
He was again luminous - and again oddly edged - in Welles' second picture, ``The Magnificent Ambersons,'' and he made a strong impression again in ``Journey Into Fear'' opposite Welles, but then Welles went haring off after strange gods and Cotten was on his own. It could be the tragedy of his life that his contract was taken up by David O. Selznick.
Selznick used him in ``Since You Went Away,'' again as a handsome naval officer, but then began making money from Cotten by lending him out to other studios. Cotten gave journeyman performances in such romantic pictures of the time as ``I'll Be Seeing You'' and ``Love Letters,'' then was cast in big roles in two Selznick pictures, ``Duel in the Sun'' and ``Portrait of Jennie,'' both of which enhanced his romantic image.
Along the way, however, he had made one of Hitchcock's finest, ``Shadow of a Doubt,'' as the murderous uncle, and though few seem to have noticed it, it was his portrayal upon which everything in the picture turned. He had revealed the devil beneath the pretty face, and could have done it and other demanding things again had he been asked. His only other truly important picture was as a weakling in ``The Third Man,'' again opposite Welles, and his sly acting nearly put Welles away.
He never quit, though, making many pictures here and abroad, Westerns, detective tales, romances, though almost always directors wanted to steer him back into conventional roles. He can be seen, memorably, as the drunken coroner in Welles' last great picture, ``Touch of Evil.''
Felled by a stroke more than a decade ago, he learned to speak again; but his acting career was over, though when he died few could look back upon a busier one.
\ Paxton Davis is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB