John Ireland as Jack Burden in All the King’s Men (1949)
Approximate time on screen: 65 minutes, 59% of runtime
All the King’s Men
is one of those rags-to-riches-to-rags-again kind of movies that usually
involve either politicians or rock stars. This is one of the former, the story
of a man named Willie Stark, a “hick” who runs for local office and loses. He
then gets drunk one night, which apparently makes him see how corrupt the political
world really is and causes him to turn from kindly “Man of the People” into a
raving maniac bent on power. He wins a governor’s election and slowly loses all
his friends and family’s respect as he becomes more and more crooked.
Broderick Crawford stars as Stark in an Oscar-winning role
that is “supported” (according to the Academy) by John Ireland’s character of
writer-turned-henchman Jack Burden, though Ireland supports the film like a
foot supports a toe. From the beginning, as we are introduced to the Jack
Burden character and he is sent on an assignment to interview this small-town
celebrity, it is evident that this is Ireland’s picture, though it is
easy for him to be overshadowed by the persistent showmanship of Crawford.
You see, Jack Burden is the most complicated aspect of an
otherwise extremely straight-forward story/movie. Throughout Stark’s entire
rise to fame and corruption, Burden is always in eye’s view, either hovering
beside the governor or lurking near the front of his followers. Burden’s
journey from confident reporter to needy follower is more interesting than the
cut and dry motivations of the other characters, mostly because we are so
seldom clued in to just exactly what his motivations are. This is especially
odd considering that Burden is the film’s narrator, with his disembodied voice
popping up here and there throughout to inform us of how he fits into the
picture, but not nearly as often explaining why.
Burden is something of an enigma. We do eventually get some
answers as to the cause of his actions, but they are the obvious ones and we
are still left wondering what was really going on in that head during some of
the movie’s dramatic high points. Burden is left a moral mystery due to Ireland’s
portrayal of him as a withdrawn and detached individual, even when supposedly
indulging his secrets to the audience. This gives the character an air of
casualty, which is broken by sudden bursts of passionate action, an alarming
and disorienting effect, since viewers traditionally are aware of a character’s
actions before they happen.
This means that Ireland avoids the broad body language
of his fellow actors, adopting a slight hunch and such a solemn expression that
even in moments of joviality there is melancholy. His manner of skulking
through the movie can therefore be easily confused as stiffness, although one
needs only to watch Ireland
in one of his many truly supporting roles in various B-westerns to see that Burden
is no stock character on his resume.
In many ways, John Ireland’s performance here is strange and
unusual, not unlike that of his co-star Mercedes McCambridge, who also won an
Academy Award. However, McCambridge’s turn is unusual for its brashness, with
her butch “I wish I were pretty” routine remaining weirdly memorable. Ireland
is strange because he is the only thing in this very dated movie that keeps its
distance and keeps us guessing.
Whether or not praise for the performance should be more
deservedly given to writer/director Robert Rossen for crafting it or to Ireland for
acting it out is a matter of debate. When watching Rossen’s heavy-handedness in
everything else, though, it’s hard not to admire Ireland’s restraint and superb
ordinariness. It was, at the very least a case of great casting.
Did John Ireland win
the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor of 1949? No. Dean Jagger did
for Twelve O’Clock High.
Did he deserve to
lose? Not necessarily.
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