6 Movies / September 17 and 24

Singer/songwriter/artist John Mellencamp joins TCM as a special guest for two nights of hosted conversations about some of his favorite classic movies and performers. Mellencamp’s film choices offer a lineup of the “new breed” of earthy, Method-trained actors who changed the tone of film performances beginning in the 1940s and continuing through the 1950s and ‘60s: John Garfield, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, James Dean and Paul Newman.

Mellencamp, born in the small town of Seymour, Indiana, in 1951, was fronting a soul band by the time he was 14. He was known for a time as Johnny Cougar and later as John Cougar Mellencamp. His first album was released in 1976 and, beginning in 1982, he amassed a series of 22 Top 40 hits. Mellencamp has sold more than 30 million albums in the U.S. and 60 million worldwide. He has won a Grammy Award and been nominated for a dozen others. His most recent album, Sad Clowns and Hillbillies, was released in 2017 to critical acclaim. He has several film credits as an actor.

He is also an accomplished visual artist, specializing in portraits with an influence of German Expressionism. His artwork has been the subject of several exhibitions. Below are the actors and films showcased by Mellencamp during his TCM appearance.

John Garfield (1913-1952) stars with Spencer Tracy and Hedy Lamarr in Tortilla Flat (1942), based on John Steinbeck’s 1935 novel about life in a poor Mexican community near Monterey, California. Garfield, an alumnus of the famous Group Theatre, introduced a new kind of naturalism with his acting in this and other films including The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) and He Ran All the Way (1951). Mellencamp once said of Tortilla Flat, “It’s a movie about possessions and how useless they are.”

Montgomery Clift (1920-1966) has a relatively minor role in The Misfits (1961), playing a battered rodeo rider in support of stars Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable. But a decade earlier Clift had been the ultimate sensitive young leading man in such films as A Place in the Sun (1951) and From Here to Eternity (1953).

Marlon Brando (1924-2004) won a Best Actor Oscar for On the Waterfront (1954) for playing Terry Malloy, a dockworker embroiled with the mob. He also stars in The Fugitive Kind (1960) as drifter Val Xavier, a character created by Tennessee Williams. Brando, who established his reputation as the most exciting actor of his generation in Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), also attracted attention in the 1953 film The Wild One. It was his appearance as a trouble-prone biker in this film that inspired Mellencamp’s lyric in his song “You’ve Got to Stand for Somethin’”: “I saw Marlon Brando/On a motorcycle/He was actin’ out rebellion.”

James Dean (1931-55) made his cinematic debut starring in East of Eden (1955) and appeared in only two more films before his life was cut short by a car accident. Dean, who specialized in playing alienated young loners, was also a master of attitude. Again, Mellencamp used the name of one of the actors he most admires in his lyrics. In his song “Jack and Diane,” young Jack does “his best James Dean” to impress Diane with how cool he is.

Paul Newman (1925-2008), the star of Cool Hand Luke (1967), was the successor to James Dean in certain ways, taking over some of the late star’s roles and proving his own skill at playing rebels who were tough on the outside but sensitive underneath. Newman’s other memorable vehicles included Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) and Hud (1963). Mellencamp has commented that Newman was “the first movie star I liked.” He was especially intrigued by Cool Hand Luke and “the whole thing of this guy who was really at war with the system.”