![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Jun. 1st, 2008 09:48 amI tend only to read the Financial Times during the week these days, and I hardly watch any TV, so an increasing number of deaths are passing me by. I simply don't notice them.
One cult figure who passed away recently was Adagio (Adi) Estefez, (1928-2008) the elder brother of Francisco Estefez and the uncle of Martin Sheen.
Adi Estefez left Spain a few years after his brother and made his way to Hollywood in the late 1940s. Although he is credited by many as the inspiration for Martin Sheen's move into acting, others have noted that there was some bad blood between the brothers (possibly the cause of Francisco's move from Apsin to Dayton, Ohio, in the first place) and Martin's decision to try to break into the business in New York rather than in Los Angeles tends to support this idea.
Adi Estefez is a cult figure because, although he made a living out of movies for nigh-on 50 years, before Parkinson's disease took hold in the mid 1990s, there is no known record of him making it to the screen. His habit of working for directors who were legendary for shooting more than they used led to his work always ending up on the cutting room floor. In 1998 or thereabouts the BFI somehow managed to cobble together a selection of these Adi-outtakes and put on a screening at the National Film Theatre. It was a revelation.
His first most famous cut was in Night of The Hunter (1951), where Charles Laughton was reportedly delighted with Adi's performance as a petrol pump attendant and his interaction with Robert Mitchum, but a fault in the camera meant that the sunny day brought too much light onto the film. The scene vanished into the mists of time and no known copy remains.
Mitchum recalled to Lee Server in the biography "Baby I Don't Care" that
One person who did spot Adi was Stanley Kubrick, who was the uncredited assistant cinematographer on Night of the Hunter -- one of Kubrick's first steps in the industry. Indeed, rumour has it that it was Kubrick who messed up the lighting settings on the camera in question, and that he was haunted to his dying day that perhaps his own inexperience had destroyed another man's career. Adi, however, never held it against Kubrick, and never named him publicly. In an interview with "LA Screen" in 1975, he said that
Kubrick attempted to make up for his error by casting Adi as the famous "fourth prisoner" in Paths Of Glory (1958), but once again the gods were against Adi. During a five-minute scene where Adi talks with Kirk Douglas about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the context of a war where lions were led by donkeys, an explosion in the special effects department blasted the set to smithereens and temporarily deafened both Estefez and Douglas. By the time Adi had recuperated enough, financial problems and time deadlines meant that the scene could not be reshot. Regrettably, Kubrick cut it.
Adi was stuck in bit parts and extras scenes for a decade, but his parts always got cut. "I reckon I've got 400 hours of material on some floor somewhere", Adi said in the LA Screen interview. "It would make one hell of a CV".
His next near-break came in 1968 with The Graduate. Some think his performance as the deaf-mute pool-cleanner was his finest hour, and this at least survives. Certainly the interplay between the young Hoffman and the old and wise pool-cleaner is almost heartbreaking in its poignancy. Hoffman, in a sense, uses Estefez as a foil, having a discussion with himself rather than with Estefez. But Estefez adds a range of facial expressions in his silence. Roger Ebert referred to it as "the finest crossover between a discussion and a soliloquy there ever was. It was as if the skull in Hamlet was winking back at him."
Schlesinger, however, shot five hours of The Graduate in its first draft. Not just Estefez failed to make the cut -- three "lost" Simon and Garfunkel songs (available on their album "The Cutting-Room Tapes" released in 1977) were also dropped, including the majestic "It's a Long Bus Ride to Jersey".
Adi's last "near-miss" (and the cause of the interview in LA Screen) was his part in The Godfather. Estefez recounts the tale.
"Coppola said he had seen some of the rushes that I had appeared in and that he could not believe that, after more than 20 years in the business, I hadn't broken through big time, let alone hadn't even appeared on a movie screen. He said that he had just the role for me in his new movie, based on Puzo's book. I didn't have much faith in it. Gangster movies were like, so 1950s. And I hadn't heard of half the cast. Some kid called Pacino, Jimmy Caan, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire; these people weren't, y'know, they weren't exactly box office. So he got Brando in for as long as he could afford him, and Sterling Hayden was in there too. The rest were just bit-part Italian guys. Dickie Castellano, Abe Vigoda, John Cazale. It was like Sergio Leone in New York.
"So, Francis said that he wanted me to play Dickie Castellano's bodyguard, 'cos, well, I was fairly chunky by then and Dickie was not exactly a tall guy. He knew I was Spanish originally, so he figured that I could do Italian just as good. And, well, he was honest, he said that I was cheap!
"I still can't figure out how I don't appear in the movie. It's as if I was airbrushed out. I think that there is one point, just one, where you see my left hand move across Dickie's back, as I'm helping him up the stairs just at the end, before he shoots that guy in the elevator. But, like, I shot for three weeks on that film. I was in about four hours of cuts.
"Even Francis couldn't figure out how it happened. He said to me 'Adi, I just had to cut it. And when I saw the finished product, I said to myself, Where's Adi! I'm so sorry man.'
"But, well, I said to Francis, 'them's the breaks, Frankie.'"
His final 20 years of acting were less spectacular. Few of the films were notable and Adi's parts in them were less notable still. Single lines being cut, extras scenes not being used. There is an unverified claim that Estefez's face can be seen in Day Of The Locust (Schlesinger, 1975). As the crowd advances on Homer Simpson (the character played by Donald Sutherland in the film) to extract mob-inspired revenge, Estefez is thought by some to be two rows back, fourth from the right. However, Adi could not confirm this when a PhD student of his work* asked him. "Hell, it was a long time ago", he said.
*Adi Estefez, Lost Prophet" by Todd Andan (unpublished PhD, Cornell, 2002)
Adi never married.
Adi Estefez, born July 16 1928. Died May 3 2008.
One cult figure who passed away recently was Adagio (Adi) Estefez, (1928-2008) the elder brother of Francisco Estefez and the uncle of Martin Sheen.
Adi Estefez left Spain a few years after his brother and made his way to Hollywood in the late 1940s. Although he is credited by many as the inspiration for Martin Sheen's move into acting, others have noted that there was some bad blood between the brothers (possibly the cause of Francisco's move from Apsin to Dayton, Ohio, in the first place) and Martin's decision to try to break into the business in New York rather than in Los Angeles tends to support this idea.
Adi Estefez is a cult figure because, although he made a living out of movies for nigh-on 50 years, before Parkinson's disease took hold in the mid 1990s, there is no known record of him making it to the screen. His habit of working for directors who were legendary for shooting more than they used led to his work always ending up on the cutting room floor. In 1998 or thereabouts the BFI somehow managed to cobble together a selection of these Adi-outtakes and put on a screening at the National Film Theatre. It was a revelation.
His first most famous cut was in Night of The Hunter (1951), where Charles Laughton was reportedly delighted with Adi's performance as a petrol pump attendant and his interaction with Robert Mitchum, but a fault in the camera meant that the sunny day brought too much light onto the film. The scene vanished into the mists of time and no known copy remains.
Mitchum recalled to Lee Server in the biography "Baby I Don't Care" that
"Adi could have made it to the top if he had a break, but people don't know how much luck there is in the industry. If the light had been different that day, if the camarea had worked properly, Adi would definitely have become a 'face'. He didn't have the rugged good looks of his nephew, but he could have been a great character actor."
One person who did spot Adi was Stanley Kubrick, who was the uncredited assistant cinematographer on Night of the Hunter -- one of Kubrick's first steps in the industry. Indeed, rumour has it that it was Kubrick who messed up the lighting settings on the camera in question, and that he was haunted to his dying day that perhaps his own inexperience had destroyed another man's career. Adi, however, never held it against Kubrick, and never named him publicly. In an interview with "LA Screen" in 1975, he said that
"maybe things might have turned out different, but I've had a good life here. I'm always getting work. I just never seem to end up on the screen!
Kubrick attempted to make up for his error by casting Adi as the famous "fourth prisoner" in Paths Of Glory (1958), but once again the gods were against Adi. During a five-minute scene where Adi talks with Kirk Douglas about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the context of a war where lions were led by donkeys, an explosion in the special effects department blasted the set to smithereens and temporarily deafened both Estefez and Douglas. By the time Adi had recuperated enough, financial problems and time deadlines meant that the scene could not be reshot. Regrettably, Kubrick cut it.
Adi was stuck in bit parts and extras scenes for a decade, but his parts always got cut. "I reckon I've got 400 hours of material on some floor somewhere", Adi said in the LA Screen interview. "It would make one hell of a CV".
His next near-break came in 1968 with The Graduate. Some think his performance as the deaf-mute pool-cleanner was his finest hour, and this at least survives. Certainly the interplay between the young Hoffman and the old and wise pool-cleaner is almost heartbreaking in its poignancy. Hoffman, in a sense, uses Estefez as a foil, having a discussion with himself rather than with Estefez. But Estefez adds a range of facial expressions in his silence. Roger Ebert referred to it as "the finest crossover between a discussion and a soliloquy there ever was. It was as if the skull in Hamlet was winking back at him."
Schlesinger, however, shot five hours of The Graduate in its first draft. Not just Estefez failed to make the cut -- three "lost" Simon and Garfunkel songs (available on their album "The Cutting-Room Tapes" released in 1977) were also dropped, including the majestic "It's a Long Bus Ride to Jersey".
Adi's last "near-miss" (and the cause of the interview in LA Screen) was his part in The Godfather. Estefez recounts the tale.
"Coppola said he had seen some of the rushes that I had appeared in and that he could not believe that, after more than 20 years in the business, I hadn't broken through big time, let alone hadn't even appeared on a movie screen. He said that he had just the role for me in his new movie, based on Puzo's book. I didn't have much faith in it. Gangster movies were like, so 1950s. And I hadn't heard of half the cast. Some kid called Pacino, Jimmy Caan, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire; these people weren't, y'know, they weren't exactly box office. So he got Brando in for as long as he could afford him, and Sterling Hayden was in there too. The rest were just bit-part Italian guys. Dickie Castellano, Abe Vigoda, John Cazale. It was like Sergio Leone in New York.
"So, Francis said that he wanted me to play Dickie Castellano's bodyguard, 'cos, well, I was fairly chunky by then and Dickie was not exactly a tall guy. He knew I was Spanish originally, so he figured that I could do Italian just as good. And, well, he was honest, he said that I was cheap!
"I still can't figure out how I don't appear in the movie. It's as if I was airbrushed out. I think that there is one point, just one, where you see my left hand move across Dickie's back, as I'm helping him up the stairs just at the end, before he shoots that guy in the elevator. But, like, I shot for three weeks on that film. I was in about four hours of cuts.
"Even Francis couldn't figure out how it happened. He said to me 'Adi, I just had to cut it. And when I saw the finished product, I said to myself, Where's Adi! I'm so sorry man.'
"But, well, I said to Francis, 'them's the breaks, Frankie.'"
His final 20 years of acting were less spectacular. Few of the films were notable and Adi's parts in them were less notable still. Single lines being cut, extras scenes not being used. There is an unverified claim that Estefez's face can be seen in Day Of The Locust (Schlesinger, 1975). As the crowd advances on Homer Simpson (the character played by Donald Sutherland in the film) to extract mob-inspired revenge, Estefez is thought by some to be two rows back, fourth from the right. However, Adi could not confirm this when a PhD student of his work* asked him. "Hell, it was a long time ago", he said.
*Adi Estefez, Lost Prophet" by Todd Andan (unpublished PhD, Cornell, 2002)
Adi never married.
Adi Estefez, born July 16 1928. Died May 3 2008.
