Music Babble

I've only seen him in Witness For The Prosecution, which he's fine but unremarkable in. But whenever I hear his name, I think of Helen DeWitt's novel The Last Samurai. A character in that who worships The Seven Samurai dismissively refers to The Magnificent Seven as Tall Men In Tight Jeans ("Not ONE but SEVEN tall men in tight jeans - it's simply MAGNIFICENT") and says the actors are all "recruits from the Tyrone Power school of acting."

"It's only when you see Tall Men In Tight Jeans that you realize what a handicap it was to Kurosawa in not being able to draw on the genius of Charles Bronson. If he had had an actor with a face like a Japanese woodcut who knows what he might have achieved."