Frank Langella fell heavily into Jabootu’s thrall after bursting into public consciousness as a sexy, romantic Dracula in a stage play, and then a 1979 film directed by director John Badham. The revisionist movie has few champions among horror buffs, and is basically remembered today for Langella and another of Laurence Oliver’s then trademark “bad accent” performances.
Hollywood tried him out in a few more starring roles, but the films tanked at the box office. He assayed a juicy role as a veteran summer stock actor in Those Lips, Those Eyes, and then starred as the love interest to heroine Lesley-Anne Downs in the would-be Indiana Jones-ish action flick Sphinx. Those titles aren’t ringing many bells, are they?
Next Langella was already driven to TV movies, including a titular role as Sherlock Homes. 1987 saw one of this finest performances (really), but despite his amazing chops as Skeletor, the Dolph Lundgren-starring Masters of the Universe was almost inevitably a craptacular movies. The next year, Langella first dipped his toe into Jabootuish fare by playing one of Rebecca DeMornay’s lovers in Roger Vadim’s atrocious remake of his own And God Created Woman.
Much of the rest of his career saw him in projects nobody remembers, many of them downright stinkers. While he has occasionally scored a good part, there’s no doubt that Jabootu shined much favor upon him. Langella has appeared in Madonna’s Body of Evidence, the hilariously bad Keanu Reeves romancer Sweet November, and the TV mini-series 10.5: Apocalypse. On the other side of the ledger, he played Perry White in a blink and you’ll miss him role in Superman Returns, and appeared in George Clooney’s well regarded (if historically suspect) Good Night, and Good Luck.
Langella isn’t a great actor, but he can be a very good one. Sometimes, sadly, that’s not enough. One can only hope he takes solace in make a decent living at his trade, as so few manage to do. Still, one can only imagine he occasionally thinks of what might have been.
