Honoring James Bridges

Debra Winger’s voice is etched with affection and melancholy as she recalls her deep friendship with James Bridges, the man who directed the actress to stardom in 1980’s “Urban Cowboy.”

“I guess you know he was sort of my mentor,” says Winger of Bridges, who died of cancer in 1993 at the age of 57.

“He was a combination of every male relationship that you ever have in your life,” Winger says. The three-time Oscar nominee quit film acting four years ago and now has a fellowship to teach a literature course at Harvard University.

“He was my father, my brother, sometimes like my son, my peer, my comrade,” Winger adds. “He was pretty much everything to me. He was my Hollywood world when I first entered it, and that was not a bad planet to live on.”

Winger is winging out from her home in Cambridge, Mass., to help honor Bridges, who also wrote and directed such acclaimed and sometimes controversial films as “The Baby Maker,” “The Paper Chase” and “The China Syndrome,” tonight when UCLA officially dedicates the former Melnitz Theater as the James Bridges Theater.

The special tribute will also feature a screening of “Mike’s Murder,” the 1984 drama that reteamed Winger with her mentor (see Screening Room, Page 18), as well as speakers Robert Rosen, the dean of the School of Theater, Film and Television at UCLA; and Jack Larson, Bridges’ longtime friend and producer on many of his films.

Though best known as Jimmy Olsen from the old “Superman” TV series, Larson is a well-respected playwright who has also written the libretto of numerous operas. After Bridges’ death, Larson created the Bridges/Larson Foundation; in 1995 the foundation established the James Bridges Award in Film Directing at UCLA. (Neither Bridges nor Larson attended the school, but Bridges worked there as a stage manager for John Houseman’s Theater Group.)

Going Beyond Technical Aspects of Directing

“I started the grant because Jim had very strong ideas on [directing],” Larson says. “He became a successful director after ‘The Paper Chase.’ He was admired by universities and film departments and he would go with his film [to colleges].”

But, Larson says, Bridges was “progressively aghast” over the fact that directing students were only learning the technical aspect of the craft. “He said they are being taught everything technical, but the one thing that in no department can you learn is how to work with actors.”

So after Bridges’ death, Larson realized UCLA “was the only school where theater, TV and film were under one dean. What I wanted to do was give a massive grant--then you have an effect.”

The criteria for the James Bridges Award in Film Directing is that the candidate must show an excellence in theater and film. “It has had a big effect,” says Larson, who also has established a similar grant at USC. “[The students] want the $25,000 so they are all studying theater.”

“It’s a very prestigious award because it is a very big one,” says Rosen. “One of the things about the school is that it’s very hard to get in to our directing program. It is solely by talent and ability, not financial account background. So being able to supply funding and support, it’s a real central mission we have. A fellowship like this is very crucial. It is an investment in the future of the industry.”

Larson points out that Bridges rarely if ever did publicity for his films. The director wanted his films to speak for themselves. So the annual grants help to keep Bridges’ memory alive. Still, Larson says, “I wanted to do something else in Jim’s memory.”

Two years ago the Bridges/Larson Foundation donated a $500,000 gift to turn the Melnitz movie theater into a superior, state-of-the-art screening venue.

“I have gone there quite often [to see films],” Larson says. “I saw that they had a terrible time with silent films. I am a fan of silent films and now they can show them in the proper ratio. . . . It is the best theater or archival films. They are showing wonderful films, films [we] would never get a chance to see.”

The foundation’s donation has also attracted other support for the theater’s renovation from the Cecil B. DeMille Foundation and the Blum-Kovler Foundation.

Winger believes Bridges was “out of place” in Hollywood. “I think he was an Arkansas boy deep down inside,” she offers. “He had a basic respect for human beings. Once in a while you run across a person like that and you go, ‘I hope they make it. I hope they don’t get eaten alive.’ ”

Film crews, Winger says, would leave other projects to work with him. “They often worked for less just to be on his set,” she says. “You stood a chance to learn something, but mostly because you were going to be in a humane environment and you are going to be with someone you knew loved and appreciated your work and valued your opinion.”

Bridges, who threatened to quit “Urban Cowboy” unless the then-unknown Winger was cast, taught the actress everything about film acting.

“He took me into the editing room,” Winger says. “I was completely green. You know how much I learned in the editing room? It would have probably taken me four years of working solid to gather the information I was able to gather off of one film. Suffice it to say I never made some mistakes twice as far as film goes.”

Bridges and Winger used to live minutes apart in Los Angeles. “He used to come by every day,” she says quietly. “He died while I was doing ‘Shadowlands’ [in England]. It was pretty intense. The fact that I couldn’t be with him at that time. I was with him a couple of weeks before [he died]. It was hard not to comfort Jack and be there for him.”

Nowadays, says Winger, she only acts in the theater and only if a director has the passion and enthusiasm of Bridges.

His films, Winger says, “present a slice of America that only could have been captured when it happened. His legacy is completely timeless and now he’s gone. He didn’t have as much time as people normally get.”

BE THERE

The James Bridges tribute and dedication takes place at 7:30 tonight at UCLA’s James Bridges Theater. General admission is $6, $4 for students, seniors and children. For further information, call (310) 206-FILM or visit https://www.cinema.ucla.edu.