Lining up a free throw against the
Lakers, Walt Frazier is weighing the basketball in his hands, letting
things simmer just a minute. He is about to let go and he hears a
voice, loud and gleeful, come right out of the stands clear across to
him: “Hey, man—you're the fourth-best guard in the league right
now, and you ain 't movin' up 'till somebody dies!” Frazier blows
the shot right there. The deep-dish whammy comes from a Lakers fanatic, bravura bench jockey
and this year's monster movie star, Jack Nicholson. He is letting off a
little steam by putting on the kind of pressure he gets and cultivates
almost every day. Nicholson is a past master at the Hollywood psych, a
vocational tool for professional survival he employs with a street
fighter's energy and a gamesman's cunning. On this occasion, he is just
taking it out for a little airing on behalf of Hollywood's favorite
team. For maximum effectiveness, the psych requires a jugular instinct for a
rival's weakness—his most intimate ambition, an insubstantial boast or
a small, fresh scar—and a sure knowledge that except on certain social
or sporting occasions, the only boy on the home team is yourself. Jack
Nicholson has been rattling and roughing up the competition since he
started acting out in Hollywood in the late '50s—at first with very
little luck. Then came a gradual success that right now is soaring. But besides infighting, Nicholson has through the years mastered the
craft of acting with such thoroughness and skill that each role seems
founded on some spontaneous intuition. It is his talent and pleasure
never to let all the preparation and all the work he does for each role
show. Nicholson shares that knack for apparently effortless deception
with the very best screen actors. As Humphrey Bogart once said of
Spencer Tracy, “He is so good because you don't see the mechanism
working.” In the kinetic performance in Easy Rider, the shrewd observation of the
frantic womanizer in Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge and the unflappable
incarnation of J.J. Gittes, the private eye on the make in Chinatown,
Nicholson has built up one of the most impressive actor's portfolios in
Hollywood. His are the kind of credentials the town likes best. The
recent movies Nicholson stars in are generally well received, and he
himself invariably is. His presence in a starring role seems to
guarantee both prestige and a profit. That makes Nicholson the man most
in demand, the dearest form of collateral when it comes to banking a
picture. Mike Nichols, who has just started directing Nicholson again in a comedy
called Fortune, says flatly that Nicholson is destined to become
“one of the giant film stars of all time.” Tony Richardson,
who hopes to snag him for a new film, gushes that “we are entering
the era of Jack Nicholson.” It is not necessary to have a vested
interest, however, to see that Nicholson right now is on top. A look at
Chinatown's weekly top-ten placing on Variety charts is one kind of
proof, Jack's current $750,000 asking price is another.
