Will Ulrich: Remembering three Hollywood legends

I recognize that the Academy Awards are -- at their core -- not much more than an orgiastic fit of celebrity self-congratulation. The Oscars are a night for a shallow, self-absorbed town to toot its own horn while the rest of the world's unwashed (and untucked) masses stand transfixed.

That said, I almost always watch the show. Like a moth hanging around a flame, I sat in my common room and took it all in on Sunday night.

Toward the end of the marathon affair, Kevin Spacey took the stage and made a two-pronged tribute to those lost in the past year. First, he led a moment of silence for the victims of Sept. 11. Second, he introduced a montage of the Hollywood types who had died since last year's Oscars.

The sappy segment honored -- among others -- actors Jack Lemmon and Anthony Quinn and Beatle George Harrison. Sitting there on my couch and watching these three men appear on screen, I felt a sadness, but also a marked eagerness to revisit their film work.

I know all of you are painfully busy, and I'm sure you have much better things to do than take video-rental advice from me. But you really would be well-served to take a look at the work of these recently deceased gentlemen.

Their movies provide convenient vistas from which to view what it is that cinema has done best.

Whether you watch Lemmon as the worried everyman, Quinn as the barrel-chested walking id or Harrison as the quiet member of a manic Fab Four, you have a chance to see moviemaking at its most genuine.

I've loved Jack Lemmon in about anything I've seen him, but two of his performances best exemplify his unparalleled ability to play the role of the vexed everyman, the average guy who can make you laugh one minute and cry the next.

In the Billy Wilder-directed classic The Apartment, Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter, a young company man who tries to climb the corporate ladder by loaning out his apartment to higher-ups as a place for them to carry out extra-marital affairs.

I won't ruin the plot for you, but it suffices to say that complications arise for C.C., complications that force him to make decisions about his own life -- both romantic and professional.

Although the morality tale element of The Apartment is slightly dated, Lemmon's performance features all the frenzied delivery, comic timing and pathos that made him unique.

In the late afternoon of his career, Lemmon played the Willy Loman-esque salesman Shelley Levene in David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross. The same sort of everyman touch one finds in C.C. Baxter teems from Lemmon's portrayal of the desperate Levene, a character the audience can't help but empathize with. His exchanges with Kevin Spacey make for some of the most compelling moments I have ever seen on a screen.

Anthony Quinn's career was astonishingly prolific; he had parts in over 150 films in his eight decades of acting. For my money, two of these performances are must-sees because of the way Quinn's inimitable screen presence -- vivacious and tremendously physical -- shines through.

The 1964 classic Zorba the Greek casts Quinn in the unforgettable title role of Alexis Zorba, the larger-than-life native who schools Englishman Basil (Alan Bates) on the finer points of a full life.

Zorba begs to be revisited many, many times. Quinn's title character and the zestful, immediate way he devours every day serves as an enduring lesson to the lost or the unsure.

Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962) sprang from the fertile mind of writer and Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, and as such, it brims with the intelligent, sophisticated, Cold War-era atmosphere that permeates so much of good early television.

Quinn plays the role of down-on-his-luck boxer Mountain Rivera in the film, alongside a cast which includes Jackie Gleason, Mickey Rooney and a cameo by none other than Muhammad Ali. Quinn lends his character dignity in the manner that only his talent could.

As a producer, director and composer, George Harrison gave plenty to filmmaking, but this contribution pales in comparison to the one made by him and his fellow Beatles in the form of the epochal romp, A Hard Day's Night.

Some recent commentators have perhaps made too much of the movie -- claiming it all but gave birth to MTV.

Still, A Hard Day's Night is a quintessential expression of how to have fun while making a movie -- and while watching one. Its rapid pacing, combined with the narcotic sound of the early Beatles (long before a Lennon-less McCartney penned such duds as "Freedom" and the theme to Vanilla Sky) makes any audience smile.

It -- like much of the work of these three men -- demonstrates what makes movies worthwhile.

Will Ulrich is a senior Philosophy major from the Brox, N.Y.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.