The Illustrated Author: The Illustrated Man

Mr. Bradbury’s stories, at their best, are ironic comments on the contemporary scene projected into a nightmare future; at their worst, they are hoked up O. Henry, wearing space helmets. I suspect they always tell better than they read, and read better than they play in dramatized form.
Vincent Canby, from his 1969 review of "The Illustrated Man" in The New York Times

The Illustrated Man was originally published in 1951 as an anthology of 18 short stories, vaguely connected with the framing premise of a tattooed vagrant whose animated skin adornments reveal different tales to the book’s unnamed narrator. Author Ray Bradbury told director Jack Smight he would sell the film rights to the book if Smight hired either Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman or Rod Steiger in the lead role. Coincidentally, Smight had recently worked with Steiger on "No Way to Treat a Lady" (1968), a black comedy based on the William Goldman novel, starring Steiger as a mother-obsessed serial killer who preys on elderly women, with George Segal (currently featured in TV’s "Retired at 35") as a hangdog detective with mother issues of his own.

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Jack Smight and his University of Minnesota classmate, Peter Graves, roomed together in Hollywood with hopes of becoming actors. Graves, of course, went on to television stardom in "Mission: Impossible," while Smight abandoned acting to become a proficient director of a number of TV dramas of the 1950s and 1960s, including a number of episodes of "The Twilight Zone" and "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour." Graves, who maintained that Smight’s acting background aided his understanding of actors, said, "He was also a very intelligent, literate man who knew how to communicate with the writers."

Smight directed Paul Newman in "Harper" and "The Secret War of Harry Frigg," George Peppard in "The Third Day," Warren Beatty in "Kaleidoscope," Stacy Keach in "The Traveling Executioner" and James Caan in "Rabbit, Run" before returning to television in the 1970s, occasionally stepping out for such popular, star-studded feature films as "Airport 1975" and "Midway."

Once the rights to The Illustrated Man had been sold for $85,000 in 1967, Ray Bradbury was not consulted for the 1969 adaptation. The screenplay was written by producer Howard B. Kreitsek, an inconsequential Hollywood jounreyman who would go on to script two sequels to the 1973 drive-in favorite "Walking Tall," as well as the 1975 action flick "Breakout," featuring Charles Bronson, Robert Duvall, Jill Ireland, Randy Quaid, Sheree North and John Huston.

On the dusty backroads of 1930s Depression-era America, a young drifter named Willie crosses paths with an older hobo, Carl, who gradually reveals that he is ornately adorned from neck to toe. He, however, adamantly insists, "They’re not tattoos! They are skin illustrations! Don’t you ever call them tattoos!" Haunting flashbacks depict the younger Carl, a roustabout for a traveling circus, encountering a bewitching skin artist named Felicia who uses his body as a canvas before vanishing, in Carl’s words, "back into the future."

As if to grant Bradbury’s wish, Rod Steiger, who had recently won the Best Actor Oscar for his role as a Southern police chief in "In the Heat of the Night" (1967), was cast as Carl. Director Jack Smight had known Steiger since the 1950s. Robert Drivas, a young, acclaimed stage actor and director who made his film debut as "Loudmouth Steve" in "Cool Hand Luke" (1967) portrayed Willie, while the role of the spellbinding Felilcia went to London-born Claire Bloom (above), who had appeared in a number of films, including "Richard III," "Alexander the Great," "The Brothers Karamazov," "Look Back in Anger" and "The Haunting" and who happened to be married to Rod Steiger at the time.

Carl warns Willie, "Don’t you look at them illustrations too long, because they’ll come alive and tell you stories." And that is exactly the reason for Carl’s restless wandering on his quest to find the siren who cursed him. "These things come alive," he says, "and when they come alive, they scare people. Nobody’s going to hang around and look at them. I know they come alive because I can feel them squirmin’, movin’ on my back. I can’t hear what they’re sayin’ but, boy, I can feel them movin’!"

Claire Bloom and Rod Steiger trapped in "The Veldt"

The three futuristic tales the filmmakers chose to dramatize are a peculiarly uninspired lot, each featuring Steiger, Bloom and Drivas in multiple roles. "Of the three stories," Vincent Canby wrote in his 1969 review in The New York Times, "I can recall only the first (and the best) from the original Bradbury book." "The Veldt" is "the one about the paranoid parents…whose two, zombie-like children trap them in a very chic, environmental playground." More recently, Dave Kehr noted in The New York Times, "Judging from the white plastic furniture and Nehru suits that dominate the mise-en-scene, the future does not extend much beyond 1974."

Rod Steiger and Claire Bloom wait for "The Last Night of the World"

"The Long Rain" depicts the plight of four astronauts shipwrecked on Venus in a ceaseless, torrential downpour which drives the men to madness and suicide. This is actually the most effective of the stories, boasting genuine suspense and impressive special effects, sadly undone by a disappointing, ambiguous ending. The final tale, "The Last Night of the World," is a dull, talking-heads melodrama as a married couple contemplate poisoning their children to spare them the agony of the impending apocalypse. "The theme of all three stories," according to the editors of The Overlook Film Encyclopedia: Science Fiction, "is betrayal," not just in the illustrated tales but in the framing flashback as well.

Oddly enough, the genuine drama in the movie is stirred by the tension between the nomadic characters portrayed by Rod Steiger and Robert Drivas, two accomplished actors well-versed in their art, playing a tantalizing game of give-and-take in the course of a single, sticky summer’s day alongside a lazy river and creating a contradictory languid and unsettling mood reminiscent of the magnolia-scented phrasing of Tennessee Williams or William Faulkner.

An undeniable homoerotic undertone in the relationship is established from the opening title sequence as the camera cuts back and forth between the two drifters skinny-dipping in the river. Coincidentally, just prior to filming "The Illustrated Man," Rod Steiger portrayed an American soldier in 1950s Europe battling his attraction to a young private in "The Sergeant."

"The Illustrated Man," perhaps too much a product of the psychedelic 1960s (Steiger’s tattoos resemble the pop art posters of Peter Max), was not greeted warmly by critics. Time magazine noted, "Responsibility for the failure of ‘The Illustrated Man’ must rest with director Jack Smight. He has committed every possible error of style and taste, including the inexcusable fault of letting Steiger chew up every piece of scenery in sight."

Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times, "Mr. Kreitsek’s screenplay is unsharp, without focus, working into and out of the hallucinations with great awkwardness. It also is so thinly structured that it simply cannot contain Mr. Steiger’s baroque performance as the man whose very skin is haunted." On the other hand, Vanby complimented Claire Bloom as "wintry and beautiful in several  roles," while pointing out that Robert Drivas "is fine as the oddly pliant young victim…but less effective in his fantasy roles."

According to Canby, director Smight was "trapped by the screenplay. There are moments of eerie beauty…in the seesaw relationship between the old hobo and the young one. But everything remains fetus-like and underdeveloped, although shrouded in misty pretensions of grandeur."

Similarly, Roger Ebert commented, "Jack Smight’s confused, wandering film never does quite come to terms with what it wants to be." Ebert maintained, "It has its weaknesses - but they are not fatal. What finally brings the movie down is its inadequate attention to the expectations of the audience." That assessment adds significance to the haunting voice-over that book-ends the film as Claire Bloom ominously intones, "Each person who tries to see beyond his own time must face questions for which there cannot be absolute answers."

Say what critics would about the movie’s disappointments and unfulfilled promises, there can be no denying the sheer artistry of Rod Steiger’s astounding tapestry of skin illustrations. Years before computer-generated imagery, a makeup team spent ten hour-days applying the temporary tattoos on Steiger’s torso, plus another full day for his hands and legs, a laborious ordeal worthy of mention in The Guinness Book of World Records.

Zack Snyder, director of the 2004 remake of "Dawn of the Dead," as well as "300, "Watchmen" and "Sucker Punch," once voiced an interest in remaking "The Illustrated Man" before getting sidetracked by the upcoming reboot of the "Superman" franchise, "Man of Steel."

After "The Illustrated Man," Rod Steiger was offered the title role in "Patton" but reportedly turned it down because he felt it glorified war. He later referred to his refusal as his "dumbest career move." (Interestingly, he subsequently portrayed Napoleon Bonaparte in "Waterloo," a film known for its epic battle scenes.) Steiger died at the age of 77 in July 2002.

Robert Drivas followed "The Illustrated Man" with "Where It’s At," a painfully dated '60s generation-gap comedy featuring David Janssen as a Las Vegas casino owner and Drivas as his Princeton grad son, costarring Brenda Vaccaro, Don Rickles and Edy Williams. Drivas was 47 when he died of AIDS-related complications in June 1986.

Claire Bloom divorced Rod Steiger the same year that "The Illustrated Man" was released. In 2011, the 80-year-old actress played Mary (above), queen consort of the United Kingdom and mother of George VI in "The King’s Speech."

Offscreen, the ever beautiful Claire Bloom poses with Guy Pearce, who portrays Edward VIII in  "The King's Speech."