John Phillip Law

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John Phillip Law

John Phillip Law (born September 7, 1937 in Hollywood , † May 13, 2008 in Los Angeles ) was an American film actor .

Life

Beginnings in Italy

As the son of a police officer and a theater actress, he chose the profession of his mother, Phyllis Eva Mae Sallee (1909-1994), who had made a career on Broadway. He gained his first stage and film experience in the 1950s as an extra . After graduating from high school, he moved to New York in 1960 , where he attended drama school at the Neighborhood Playhouse and in 1962 took on his first supporting role in Garson Kanin's Broadway comedy Come on Strong (at the Morosco Theater ) about an actress and her lover, a photographer. Production was canceled after only 36 performances. He then studied with Elia Kazan and moved to Italy, where he was cast in several films directed by Franco Rossi : First in Smog (1962), in which an Italian tourist has to wait 24 hours in Los Angeles for his visa, in 1964 in first part ( Scandaloso ) of the four-part episodic comedy Alta Fedeltà (High Fidelity), as well as in Tre Notti d'Amore (also 1964).

1960s male sex symbol

Director Norman Jewison saw one of the Rossi films, who then saw Law for the ideal actor of a seductively well-built, lovesick Russian sailor in the political satire The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming! held. In the film, a Soviet submarine runs aground off New England , whereupon the crew upset the well-ordered, petty-bourgeois world of the coastal inhabitants. Law, who spoke fluent Spanish, French and German in addition to English and Italian, was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Young Actor in 1966 for his performance alongside Carl Reiner and Alan Arkin . Thereupon he played the leading role alongside Lee van Cleef in the spaghetti western Da uomo a uomo ( From man to man ), where his "minimalist" gestures and his barely moved facial expression matched perfectly with the character of the cold avenger he portrayed. Law had little success in two films of Otto Preminger , the Southern drama Hurry Sundown (dt. Tomorrow is a new day ) (1967) with Jane Fonda and Michael Caine , and the hippie and LSD Satire Skidoo (1968), in who he struggled with the role of dropout Stash at the side of such prominent colleagues as Groucho Marx and Peter Lawford : As a hippie, his brother Tom Law was more believable in real life - he was the manager of the band Peter, Paul and Mary at the time and rented out together with John Phillip Zimmer to later pop and art greats such as Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol . Tom's wife Lisa Law published the photo book Flashing on the Sixties about it .

On the role of the taciturn soldier Tom Swanson in The Sergeant (dt. The sergeant Law was (1968) particularly proud): In the film, he is by his gay supervisor, a highly decorated, strict Sergeant ( Rod Steiger ) erotic harassed and must fend off these advances. He also appeared sexually desirable as a super villain in the psychedelic crime thriller Danger: Diabolik! , where he preferably stood in front of the camera in skin-tight gold lamé or leather costumes. A scene in which he slept under a blanket of dollar bills with his provocative assistant enjoys cult status to this day. The French Beau Alain Delon had been in discussion for the lead role for a long time before she hired producer Dino de Laurentiis to Law. Once again, its notorious lack of expression was its strength in this case. Law once said in an interview that the more absurd his roles, the more excited he was. Critics wrote that the most interesting thing about Law's films is whether and what clothes he wore.

Tall, handsome and with his steel blue eyes, Law quickly became a male erotic star outside of the cinema industry in the sixties. He was a regular VIP guest at Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion .

Appearance in Barbarella

Law had his best-known role, which marked his entire career and shaped his style, at the side of Jane Fonda in the science fiction satire Barbarella by Roger Vadim (1968) after a comic series that was particularly successful in Italy at the time. Law was seen as a blind, pure angel Pygar , who wore only short, feathered trousers and imposing, white wings for the entire length of the film. Critics then called the actor a "feathered fruitcake" (Eng. "Feathered treat"). Fonda, then Vadim's wife, was also mostly scantily clad as a "love-hungry" astronaut. The film became a cult and is still considered to be the epitome of design and the lifestyle of the late 1960s, mainly because of its features. As Pygar , Law arouses sexual desire in the title character Barbarella, an urge that has long been forgotten in the "41st Century" and is replaced by taking pills. Vadim and Jane Fonda thought Law was "a real feast for the eyes," and probably not just them. All varieties of sexuality, from lesbian love to sadomasochism to the "sex machine", a kind of love organ, are dealt with in detail in Barbarella .

More roles

In Love Machine (1971), Law, as a powerful and outwardly irresistible television boss, had an erotic attraction for a number of beautiful women as well as a homosexual photographer ( David Hemmings ). Another role was that of the Red Baron Manfred von Richthofen in Roger Corman 's film of the same name from 1971. The fantasy adventure film Sindbad's Dangerous Adventures followed in 1973 , in which he took the title role. In the following years he played mainly in Europe, preferably in Italian B-movies , but occasionally also in the United States small and medium-sized roles in film and television productions, including a guest role in the Austrian crime series SOKO Kitzbühel . He was unable to build on earlier times either artistically or in terms of the meaning of his roles. According to his own statement, Law has appeared in around fifty films in 24 countries.

He was married to actress Shawn Ryan, with whom he had a daughter, Dawn.

Law died of a pancreatic tumor in his Los Angeles home in 2008 .

Filmography (selection)

Awards

  • 1967: Golden Globe nomination for Best Young Actor (for various roles)
  • 1967: Laurel Award : Fifth place in the election for the best young actor

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. [1]
  2. [2]
  3. [3]
  4. Movie Facts, Vol. 12, University of Southern California 1969, p 342
  5. ^ Gail Gerber: Trippin 'with Terry Southern: What I Think I Remember , Jefferson / North Carolina 2009, p. 63
  6. Enrico Lancia, Fabio Melelli: Dictionnaire del cinema italiano. Attori stranieri del nostro cinema. Gremese 2006, pp. 113/114
  7. [4]