A contraction of the words biographical and pictures, the term is Hollywood slang for a movie category that has long been a staple of the film industry. Biopics are movie versions of actual people’s lives, from honored statesmen to show business personalities. Hollywood film biographies haven’t always been terribly accurate in the portrayal of their subjects, but accuracy has never been an explicit goal; a good, dramatic story with strong entertainment value has always been the sought-after result. More often than not, the biopics from the dream factory have managed not only to entertain but to enlighten, as well.
The biopic existed in the silent era, but it came into its own as a film category very early with the talkies thanks to GEORGE ARLISS’s stately (if stagey) performances at Warner Bros. in a series of popular historical biographies such as Disraeli (1929), Alexander Hamilton (1931), and Voltaire (1933). Arliss set the Hollywood pattern of teaching history through the very palatable medium of filmmaking. He was followed at Warners—a studio that specialized in biopics—by PAUL MUNI, who made a strong mark playing historical characters in films such as The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), and Juarez (1939).
Warners, of course, wasn’t alone in making biopics. MGM jumped into the category in a big way in the late 1930s and early 1940s, with SPENCER TRACY playing the real-life Father Flanagan of Boys Town (1938) and the famous reporter Stanley in Stanley and Livingstone (1939). Then MGM made two film biographies of Thomas Alva Edison in the same year, Young Tom Edison (1940), with Mickey Rooney as the inventor, and Edison the Man (1940), once again starring Spencer Tracy in the title role.
Biopics have been used by filmmakers as a means of using historical figures to make contemporary political and/or social statements. For instance, as World War II approached, a different sort of biopic appeared that extolled the heroism of famous soldiers such as Sergeant York (1941) and even General George Armstrong Custer in They Died with Their Boots On (1942). The films proved popular, and soldier stories have served as biopic fodder ever since in films ranging from Audie Murphy’s To Hell and Back (1955) to Patton (1970).
Finding a perfect blend of melodrama and truth in the lives of America’s gangsters, Hollywood has made numerous biopics such as Baby Face Nelson (1957), Al Capone (1975), and Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Western heroes (and villains) have also been the stuff of biopics, although films such as I Shot Jesse James (1949), Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) tend to romanticize their subjects more than biographical films of other personalities. One of the most popular and logical areas that biopics have mined has been the area of sports. From Knute Rockne, All American (1940) to Jim Thorpe—All American (1951), and from Pride of the Yankees (the Lou Gehrig bio, 1942) to Fear Strikes Out (the Jimmy Piersall story, 1957), the movies have found high drama and solid ticket sales in biographies of famous and/or fascinating sports stars.
Hollywood has gone far afield for its biopic subjects, making films in the 1950s about fliers such as The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955) and The Spirit of St. Louis (the Lindbergh story, 1957), as well as films about painters, such as Toulouse-Lautrec in Moulin Rouge (1952) and Vincent Van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956). But the film industry discovered a gold mine of subject matter in its own backyard when it made a biopic about one of its own. Al Jolson, the famous entertainer who had been the first talkie star. The film, The Jolson Story (1946), was a smash hit musical. There had been other show business biopics before, but The Jolson Story was such a huge success that, like Star Wars in a later generation, it acted as a bellwether for similar projects. The studios assumed that audiences reacted to the music in The Jolson Story and commissioned a rash of show-business musical biopics based on popular composers such as Cole Porter, in Night and Day (1946), and Rodgers and (lyricist) Hart, in Words and Music (1947), but the big box office went again to the continuation of the Jolson story, Jolson Sings Again (1949).
Show-business biopics, particularly musicals, have been popular ever since, making up a significant number of the films in this category in the 1950s with titles including The Glenn Miller Story (1954) and The Benny Goodman Story (1955) and then reemerging in the last two decades with The Buddy Holly Story (1978), Loretta Lynn’s saga in Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980), and the Ritchie Valens biography presented in La Bamba (1987). During the 1990s, biopics continued to be made but, perhaps because of a more cynical era, the pictures have become more critical of their subjects. For example, unlike the William Bendix Babe Ruth Story (1948), which presented a sanitized image of the presumably lovable “Sultan of Swat,” John Goodman’s role as Babe Ruth in The Babe (1992) presents more of a “warts and all” approach, revealing a flawed but talented athlete. Cobb (1994) presents a despicable, paranoid, alcoholic, bigoted, brutal man who happened to be the best baseball player of all time. The sanitized treatment still prevailed, however, in films that portrayed African-American athletes, such as Ali (2002) and The Hurricane (1999), the latter being the story of boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter.
In the field of politics, Oliver Stone deconstructed Nixon in 1995, revealing more about the former president than most people probably wanted to know. One of the “founding fathers” apparently fathered an illegitimate child, according to the Merchant–Ivory Jefferson in Paris (1994). Oliver Stone also gave an unsanitized portrait of the dissenting Vietnam War veteran Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and of rock star Jim Morrison in The Doors (1991). Biopics treating artists took differing approaches, as signaled, for example, by Robert Altman’s Vincent & Theo (1990), which was as much about Van Gogh’s brother as about the painter himself. Pollack (2002) presented Ed Harris as a self-destructive but clearly talented painter. Hilary and Jackie (1998) featured Emily Watson as the talented cellist Jacqueline Du Pré, whose career was destroyed by multiple sclerosis; the film deals frankly with the sometimes mean-spirited competition between Jacqueline and her sister, as well as the bonding that finally takes place. One of the Oscar contenders for 2002 was the biopic Frida, starring Salma Hayek as Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and Alfred Molina as the famous muralist Diego Rivera; they were directed by Julie Taymor. The film doesn’t shirk from presenting the tempestuous relationship between two unfaithful spouses and the political turmoil and violence of the times.
(One of Frida’s lovers was Leon Trotsky, who was later assassinated in Mexico.) In these and other such features, there was a clear trend toward honesty and authenticity, however scandalous the lives treated might have been. In some cases, the subjects have been potentially maligned; in others, the films have reflected a new tolerance for alternative lifestyles and flamboyant behavior. When Hollywood made films about itself in the past, they were rarely critical. But in Ed Wood (1994), Tim Burton revealed the seamy side of the street, and Johnny Depp flamboyantly played the cross-dressing Ed Wood, the director of terrible “B” films. Later, in the award-winning Gods and Monsters (1998), Ian McKellan played Hollywood director James Whale as a charming homosexual seducer. In earlier decades, such material would not have been tolerated.
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