Between them, they have been nominated for 15 Emmys, eight Golden Globes, and seven nods for the Oscar – not bad for a pair of brothers called Bridges, Jeff and Beau from Holmby Hills, California, a city that sounds folksy enough but is actually a posh neighbourhood wedged between Beverly Hills and Bel Air. Father Lloyd was a famous movie star who got his sons started in the family business with appearances on his popular show, Sea Hunt, back in the 1950s. Both are candid about benefiting from nepotism, though that’s not what earned them all those accolades as well as careers spanning over 50 years.
On 4 August, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented Beau and Jeff: A Tale of Two Bridges at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Bing Theater where the pair sat down with some of their favourite film clips, titillating tales of growing up on movie sets and family anecdotes such as the one about The Giver, the soon-to-be-released adaptation of Lois Lowry’s bestselling novel which Jeff purchased the rights to 18 years ago in the hope of casting his father in the title role only to wind up playing the part himself. In fact, there is footage shot by Beau’s son, Casey, of a family production of The Giver directed by Jeff, starring Lloyd, as well as Bud Cort playing the narrator, and Beau’s other son, Dylan, as Jonas. “When the DVD comes out, I want to get it as an extra,” Jeff told the crowd about the homemade production.
Jeff made his first appearance on camera as an infant in the arms of actor Jane Greer, co-starring with his mother Dorothy Dean Bridges in the 1951 movie, The Company She Keeps. “They needed a baby and so my mom said, ‘Here, take my son,’” he laughed. “The baby was supposed to be crying and I was kind of a happy child, and my mother said, ‘Oh, just pinch him, Jane.’” About 35 years later, Jeff found himself playing opposite Greer again in Against All Odds when, in need of inspiration, he jokingly asked her to pinch him again.
The programme opened with a clip from High Noon in which Lloyd Bridges and Gary Cooper duke it out in a stable. Lloyd brought Beau to the set that day, explaining to the seven-year-old that the fight he was about to see was just pretend. “My father did not tell me he was going to get knocked out,” recalled Beau. “Then Cooper goes over and throws a bucket of water on him, and I wasn’t ready for that. And I just lost it and started cackling and laughing and I destroyed the shot.”
His father chewed him out all the way back to the hotel, noting Cooper could easily have him fired from the movie. As they boarded the elevator, who should join them but Cooper who, before Lloyd could apologise, warmly invited them both to dinner.
Beau recently received his 14th Emmy nomination, this one for his work as closeted homosexual Barton Scully on the hit television series Masters of Sex. While brother Jeff has been nominated but never won an Emmy, he does have six Oscar nominations, including a win for his portrayal of broken-down country singer Bad Blake in 2009’s Crazy Heart, of which there was little discussion last night, though he did talk about Iron Man, which he referred to as a “student film”.
“You would think that for a $200m movie that they would have a script,” he sighed as the audience broke into laughter. “It was driving me crazy until I made a little adjustment: I said, Jeff, relax, we are making a $200m student film. And I thought: Don’t take it too seriously.”
It was a lesson passed on to him by his father who taught both boys to bring joy to their work. Jeff worked with the old man twice (Tucker and Blown Away), and both times noticed how contagious goodwill could be on a movie set. The importance of family was another valuable lesson, which may explain why both men have been happily married for decades, and why Jeff often invites his wife, Susan, and their three daughters to watch him work.
On a visit to the set of The Big Lebowski, Jeff was surprised to learn they would be shooting the fantasy sequence in which the Dude passes under the open skirts of a line of women. He asked if he could photograph the rehearsal, a favourite pastime of his, and found himself in an unusually hairy situation. “I snap my camera and I say: My God, that woman has huge tufts of hair coming out of her leotard – huge, insane,” he recalled after gliding under the first woman’s skirt. “I go to the next one and even more, and no underwear and I said: My God! And finally I find out the girls went to the makeup department and were shoving hair into their leotards.”
While Beau worked steadily in movies throughout the 70s, he peaked in the 1979 hit, Norma Rae, playing husband to Sally Field. After that, he worked mainly in television while Jeff’s film career flourished. When he was cast in 1989’s The Fabulous Baker Boys, about small-time musician brothers, Jeff insisted on real-life brother Beau to play opposite. Two clips were shown from the film, one of them featuring Jeff spraypainting Beau’s bald spot before a concert. It’s a warm, humorous scene that shows the pair interacting in a way only real-life brothers can. And yes, there’s a bit of joy in the scene that dares you to smile.
The clip prompted Beau to recall his years playing basketball at UCLA under the legendary coach John Wooden, who introduced his team to what he called the Pyramid of Success, the cornerstones of which are enthusiasm, joy and hard work. “Anybody can come to the task with hard work in mind,” Beau told the audience, parsing the principles that brought both Bridges untold success. “But when you bring hard work and joy together, that’s when fantastic things happen.”
