Influencers & Inspiration Whereby the influence on set or in the theatre watching someone else’s film, inspires another…
Written and directed by Preston Sturges, The Great McGinty (1940) tells the tale of a hobo’s (Brian Donlevy) political rise up through the ranks to the governor’s mansion. This, all thanks to playing along with ‘The Boss’ (Akim Tamiroff) of the state’s political machine. A witty farce with as much to say about politics and human nature today as it did back then. The Great McGinty was a smash and won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for 1940. Its success launched Sturges’s brilliant, though brief, career which incredibly, produced 7 more hit films in just the next 4 years!
So, what’s one of the lasting legacies of this witty, brilliant, man who’s known mostly now to film school students and TCM fans? Cue the evil laughter…
Akim Tamiroff is not a household name, but the character actor’s performance as ‘The Boss’ was extremely popular among the public, including the then-20-year-old Jay Ward sitting in the audience. Sturges wrote ‘The Boss,’ as a vertically-challenged, so-called-big-man with an explosive temper. A bad guy who was always mangling the English language and yet somehow remained likable despite his rather vain, delusional ways. Tamiroff’s performance was so beloved that years later it influenced Jay Ward, now of Jay Ward Productions, to echo his performance in his own character, Boris Badenov. Badenov was half of the villainous Cold War spy team of Boris and Natasha, on TV’s The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (1959-1964). Not only does Badenov look, sound and act like Tamiroff, but the English language is but a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma when spoken through Boris’s poorly animated grimace.
Boris Badenov.
Unfortunately, Sturges died before the first episode of The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle aired. And, the Stanislavsky-trained Tamiroff never commented on, or perhaps was unaware of, this animated homage. However, it did make Boris Badenov the very first ‘Method’ cartoon character of children’s television.
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