DREAMS ARE WHAT LE CINEMA IS FOR...

On the occasion of having completed a collection of Agatha Christie mystery novels gifted to me by my partner this Christmas (in hardback yet!), I’ve taken the opportunity to revisit 1978’s Death on the Nile, the second film in the unofficial Poirot Trilogy from British producers John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin (Murder on the Orient Express -1974, Death on the Nile -1978, Evil Under the Sun - 1982).

Released in the fall of 1978 at the height of American Tut-Mania born of the 1976 - 1979 tour of The Treasures of Tutankhamun museum exhibit, Death on the Nile was a less stylish, not quite all-star follow-up to the wildly successful Murder on the Orient Express, and marked the first appearance of Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot. It seems Albert Finney declined the opportunity to reprise his Oscar-nominated performance from that first film after considering the rigors of applying and wearing the extensive Poirot makeup and prosthetics in the triple-degree heat of the Egyptian desert. Lacking, for my taste anyway, the star quality Finney brought to the role which made him more an equal participant in the proceedings, Ustinov nevertheless brings a character actor’s zest to his interpretation of Poirot, making the character uniquely his own. Ustinov would go on to play Christie’s Belgian sleuth in two more feature films (Evil Under the Sun and the awful-beyond-imagining Appointment With Death) and three contemporized TV-movies.

Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot

Bette Davis as Mrs. Marie Van Schuyler

David Niven as Colonel Race

Mia Farrow as Jacqueline De Bellefort

Simon MacCorkindale as Simon Doyle

Lois Chiles as Linnet Ridgeway

Jack Warden as Dr. Bessner

Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Salome Otterbourne

George Kennedy as Andrew Pennington

Maggie Smith as Miss Bowers

Jon Finch as Mr. Ferguson

Olivia Hussey as Rosalie Otterbourne

Jane Birkin as Louise Bourget

As a huge fan of Murder on the Orient Express but having missed the opportunity to catch it on the big screen, I made sure to see Death on the Nile the day it opened. I recall the audience as being sparse but appreciative, and I remember enjoying the film a great deal; albeit more for its cast and surprising twists of plot (it’s quite a puzzler of a mystery and hands-down the bloodiest film in the series) than anything particularly noteworthy about its execution.

Murder on the Orient Expresswas a glamorous, cinema-inspired recreation of an era, purposefully romanticized, and steeped in nostalgia. Death on the Nile, under the journeyman, traffic-cop guidance of large-scale-logistics director, John Guillerman (The Towering Inferno, King Kong), is, on the other hand, a murder mystery well-told, but one devoid of either mood or atmosphere. The claustrophobic tension of a luxury passenger train is traded for the more scenic vistas offered by a majestic paddle steamer cruising down the Nile, and while Anthony Powell’s dazzling, Academy Award-winning costume designs do most of the heavy-lifting in the glamour department; the visual splendor of the British countryside and sunny, travelogue-worthy scenes of Egyptian landmarks offsetting the otherwise straightforward, TV-movie-style cinematography highlighting the lavish, stagy sets.

Putting the best spin on it possible, Death on the Nile’s competent but indifferent direction and utter lack of visual distinction immediately put to rest any inclination on my part to compare this film to its (to my taste) far superior predecessor. Divested of any expectation to duplicate that film’s elegant, diffused-light visual style or compete with its first-class pedigree cast, I was able to better appreciate Death on the Nile on its own modest, nonetheless worthwhile, merits.

Intelligently and wittily adapted by playwright Anthony Schaffer (Sleuth) from Christie’s 1937 novel (which began life as a stage play alternately titled, Moon on the Nile and Murder on the Nile), Death on the Nile finds Poirot (Ustinov) vacationing in Egypt aboard a river vessel jam-packed with potential victims and suspects. Poirot’s distinguished friend, Colonel Race (Niven) is aboard investigating a mysterious passenger; an imperious dowager and her mannish nurse (Davis and Smith); a dipsomaniacal romance novelist and her soft-spoken daughter (Lansbury and Hussey); a pompous Austrian physician (Warden); a peevish Socialist (Finch); a calculating American lawyer (Kennedy); a rancorous French maid (Birkin); a too-rich, too-beautiful, too-happy couple on their honeymoon, (Chiles and MacCorkindale); and a woman scorned (Farrow).

As is to be expected, not a single soul aboard the good ship Karnak is there merely by chance, and all the character's lives connect and intersect in the most intriguing, mysterious ways. The fun to be had in Death on the Nile is seeing these diverse personalities clash, the entertainment is found trying to stay one step ahead as the details of the masterfully intricate mystery at the center of the story come to be revealed.

Bette Davis looks to be channeling a future Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey, while Maggie Smith is putting out a serious Tilda Swinton vibe

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Death on the Nileis one of those movies that plays much better today than when it was released.

When Murder on the Orient Express opened in 1974, its all-star cast and artful recreation of a bygone era rode the crest of the 70s nostalgia craze and the public mania for star-studded disaster films. But by the time Death on the Nile was made, the cultural climate had changed significantly. Thanks to TV’s The Love Boat and several dozen unbearable disaster films (Airport 77, The Swarm, Avalanche) all-star casts no longer meant glamorous...they became synonymous with cheesy. And while not officially a sequel to Murder on the Orient Express(although conceived as one) Death on the Nile was perceived as one in the minds of the public, and thus fell victim to the overall cultural disenchantment with the glut of uninspired sequels Hollywood churned out in hopes of duplicating the success of 1974s The Godfather Part II (Jaws 2, The French Connection II, The Exorcist: The Heretic. etc.).

People seeing Death on the Nile today see the classic stars of All About Eve, My Man Godfrey, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Rosemary’s Baby, The Manchurian Candidate, Romeo and Juliet, and The Great Gatsby, all appearing in the same film. But back in 1978, the film's biggest stars, Bette Davis and David Niven, were appearing on TV or in low-rent Disney movies, Peter Ustinov was best known as "That old dude in Logan's Run," Mia Farrow had not yet hitched her wagon to Woody Allen, Angela Lansbury was better known on Broadway, and George Kennedy was like the James Franco of the disaster genre (he seemed to be in all of them).

Time has been kind however, and the biggest treat now is being able to enjoy all these great stars - many of them no longer with us - in a handsomely-mounted old-fashioned film, looking so outrageously young, entertaining us with the kind of marvelous, once-in-a-lifetime talent it was once so easy for us to take for granted.

Swag
If you ain't got elegance you can never, ever carry it off

PERFORMANCES
Just to lodge two main performance complaints from the getgo: 1) Lois Chiles is drop-dead gorgeous, but I've never understood how she landed so many plum roles in high-profile films. When it comes to flat line readings, she really gives Michelle Phillips (Valentino) a run for her money. 2) Simon MacCorkindale's performance would have improved tenfold had he just been given a scene or two shirtless or pants-less. It's a proven fact (See: Evil Under the Sun / Nicholas Clay).

Dressed to Kill

I love ensemble films, but its almost impossible to write about individual performances without appearing to intentionally slight those not mentioned. I like the cast assembled for Death on the Nile, the weaker actors benefiting from roles requiring them to play a single note; the stronger ones running with the opportunity and creating memorable, ofttimes hilarious, characterizations. Anyone studying acting should keep their eye on David Niven, his silent reactions - whether exasperation at having to play audience to one of Poirot's frequent self-aggrandizing speeches, or delighting in seeing his friend taken down a peg - are more eloquent than most of the film's dialog.

As a fan of camp and bitchy dialog, I find every scene with Bette Davis and Maggie Smith to be pure gold. Their pairing is really inspired. Jack Warden is the master of comical bluster, George Kennedy cleaned up isn't half bad, and I like seeing Mia Farrow and Lois Chiles, who played best friends in 1974s The Great Gatsby, reunited and playing a sly tweak on that relationship. It helps that Farrow is much more compelling as a woman on the edge than she was as Gatsby's dream girl.

The radiant Olivia Hussey (last seen sliding around on bookcases in Lost Horizon) and the late Jon Finch. Finch, looking thinner here than he did in Macbeth, was diagnosed with diabetes in 1974.

Even after having read three Hercule Poirot novels, my mental image of the detective is not so defined as to find any fault with Ustinov's portrayal. Although I personally prefer Finney, Ustinov's more sensitive take on the detective (he has a marvelously heartbreaking exchange with Farrow near the end) is quite good.

Although I read somewhere that the actress feels she went a little over the top in the theatricality of her performance, I absolutely adore Angela Lansbury in this. Light years away from Murder She Wrote's Jessica Fletcher, or her Miss Marple in 1980's lamentable The Mirror Crack'd (but with a hint of Sweeney Todd's Mrs. Lovett) Lansbury's tipsy romance novelist: "Snow on the Sphinx's Face", "Passion Under the Persimmon Tree" - is the comic highlight of the film for me.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Death on the Nile's only Oscar win is also its only Academy nod. Anthony Powell won Best Costume Design for his eye-popping period creations; costumes which indelibly establish the identities of each member of the sizable cast with style, wit, and considerable theatrical panache. Although I'm surprised to learn his astonishing designs for Evil Under the Sun failed to get a nomination, as a six-time nominee and three-time winner (Travels With My Aunt, Tess, Death on the Nile), I don't suppose Powell is losing any sleep over it.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I get too much of a kick out of the surprise and suspense of movie whodunits to ever wish I’d read Agatha Christie earlier, but I must say that reading Death on the Nile after the fact had the pleasant effect of filling in some of the narrative blanks and backstory impossible to include in a film.

What I liked so much about the film version of Murder on the Orient Express is that in addition to a crackling murder mystery, it offered by way of subtext a poignant illustration of the manner in which a single act of violence can have a rippling effect resulting in the harm done to one ultimately wounding a great many others. The film version of Death on the Nile I’ve always felt suffered from being too much of a tale told expediently. It’s a great mystery with interesting characters and many surprises, but I never felt it had anything larger to express. Certainly nothing to justify that aforementioned choke in Poirot’s throat at the end of the film.

Poirot and Colonel Race call the attention of the ship's manager (I.S. Johar) to a matter not at all pleasant

Happily, the novel (which, short of a few excised characters, was faithfully adapted for the screen) expounds upon the larger thematic threads connecting the characters and their actions. Themes relating to the secrets kept, risks taken, and fatal sacrifices made in the name of protecting those we're afraid are incapable of taking care of themselves.
And while I feel fairly safe in stating that little to none of this actually factors in John Guillerman's film adaptation, keeping it in the back of my mind as I rewatched Death on the Nile did wonders for my reappraisal of it.

BONUS MATERIAL
Because so many fans of Death on the Nile feel so shortchanged by Simon MacCorkindale remaining fully-dressed throughout, by way of compensation I offer this screencap of Mr. Mac from the 1987 straight-to-video film: Shades of Love: Sincerely, Violet. A least that director knew (gay) man cannot live by Sphinx alone.

Simon Says: Eat your heart out

“Do you have a thing about older women? That’s sort of faggoty, isn’t it?”

Carrie Fisher interrogating Warren Beatty in Shampoo (1975)

Thinking back to those old Popeye the Sailor Man cartoons I watched as a kid, I used to think it was funny the way Olive Oyl ‒ tall, gangly, big-footed, needle-nosed, granny-voiced, and severe-of-hairdo ‒ saw herself as this breathtaking dreamboat, irresistible to men. Funnier still was the fact that in the bizarro world of Popeye cartoons, especially in episodes featuring shapely females of more conventional appeal, not only did Popeye and Bluto pay little heed to the flirtations of more comely lasses, but, obviously sharing Olive’s delusion, fought each other tooth-and-nail for her affections. Of course, it helped that the writers and animators of Popeye were in on the absurdist joke. A factor that goes a long way in making Olive’s subversively contagious brand of self-enchantment feel more like nonconformist self-acceptance than uncurbed mental illness.

Alas, not a trace of fun or self-awareness is to be found in Mae West’s live-action feat of self-delusion titled, Sextette. A film that started out as novelty, slipped into curiosity, careened into embarrassment, and, through its plodding execution and pedestrian lack of wit, leapfrogged right over camp. Its ultimate destination: Bizarre has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed cult oddity.

Mae West as Marlo Manners the female answer to Apollo

Timothy Dalton as Husband #6 Lord Michael Barrington

Dom DeLuise as Manager, Dan Turner

Tony Curtis as Husband #3 Russian diplomat Alexei Karansky

George Hamilton as Husband #5 gangster Vance Norton

Ringo Starr as Husband #4 film director Laslo Karolny

Keith Moon as Roger, the excitable dress designer

Sextette takes place in a world where an 84-year-old silver screen siren is enthusiastically pursued and fawned over by throngs of excited males; the mere sight of her inciting near-riots of inflamed masculine passion and desire. Obviously, such a place does in fact exist in the real world...it’s called the world of the gay fanbase. It’s the world of the camp aficionado, the admirer of the drag queen aesthetic, the diviner of covert gay sensibilities in mainstream entertainment, and the upholders of that enduring mainstay of queer culture - diva worship. Had Sextette installed itself in this world, the only world where it made the slightest bit of sense for men in their 20s to go ga-ga over a woman old enough to be their grandmother, a hint of verisimilitude might have graced this otherwise preposterous Hollywood (it can’t be helped) fairy tale.

But were talking Mae West here. The unapologetic egotist who once told a reporter she never wanted children because, “I was always too absorbed in myself and didn't have time for anybody else.” A woman so self-serious and protective of her image she slapped Bette Midler with a cease and desist order when she saw the up-and-coming performer do an impersonation of her on The Johnny Carson Show. A woman who adored her gay fans yet bristled at any suggestion that her appeal to them might have anything to do with camp.

And so although Sextette’s existence as a film at all is wholly due to the efforts and participation of a battery of gay men both behind and in front of the camera (not to mention a gay sensibility running through it with a ferocity unmatched by any movie until Can’t Stop the Music); gays don’t really figure in the absurdly heteronormative world of Mae West, Sextette, or geriatric sex-goddess Marlo Manners (except as the setup for a tiresome running gag).

(Above) Alice Cooper, the singing waiter, serenades Mae West on a glass piano. (Below) The glass piano - and also, by the looks of it, Alice Cooper's wig - appeared first in the 1974 Lucille Ball musical, Mame.

The world of Sextetteis the world of Mae West, and in Mae West’s world, all men are straight (despite flaming appearances to the contrary), and frail-looking octogenarians mouthing puerile vulgarisms while dressed in 1890s finery are the stuff of wet dreams. Watching the film as anything other than a colossally bad joke played on both the actress and the audience is a Herculean task worthy of West's small army of porn-stached bodybuilder co-stars. To be asked to accept the plot particulars of this wheezy sex farce while pretending to ignore the fact that the object of unbridled lust and erotic desire at its center is in serious danger of falling and shattering her hip, is more than any viewer should have to take on. Small wonder that the film (completed in 1977) took a full two years to find a distributor and enjoyed a brief, money-losing limited release before taking its place in the annals of misguided movie megaflops. How could it be anything but? The experience of watching Sextette was like a Vulcan mind-meld excursion into the delusional, soft-focus fantasy world of a real-life Norma Desmond.

Hooray for Hollywood
Slow-moving Marlo is welcomed to her honeymoon hotel by a phalanx of singing bellboys

The story is simple…simple for a farce, anyway. Amidst much hoopla and fanfare, movie star and international sex symbol Marlo Manners (West, who else?) checks into London’s ritzy Sussex Court Hotel to honeymoon with husband number six, one Lord Michael Barrington (Dalton). The never-to-materialize comedic hilarity arises out of the happy, horny couple being unable to consummate their marriage due to an endless stream of ex-husbands, show-biz obligations, and a world peace summit (you can't make this stuff up).

While the wacky Love, American Style disturbances are painfully labored and unfunny, they do at least serve to keep West and Dalton from ever getting anywhere close to doing “the deed,” and for that we can all be grateful.

Given how enjoyably smutty Mae West was in 1970’s Myra Breckinridge (the film that brought West back to the screen after a 26-year absence) I thought Sextette - made a full seven years later in the hedonistic atmosphere of disco, gay liberation, porno chic, and Plato’s Retreat- had the potential to be a fun, over-the-top, musical comedy capitalizing on everything that there was too little of in the Raquel Welch film. No such luck.

Instead of a hip, off-beat entertainment like The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) or cheesy curio like The First Nudie Musical (1976), Sextette was just a crass throwback to those smirking, sexless “wholesome” sex comedies of the 60s. All wink-wink, nudge-nudge, but for a few touches of 70s bluntness, Sextette would have fit right in among those neutered, pre-sexual revolution comedies like A Guide for the Married Man, Boy, Did I Get the Wrong Number!, or Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?. Shot in that murky, flat style so prevalent in on-the-cheap exploitation films of the era, Sextette doesn't recall the Mae West’s glory days or even the glamour of old Hollywood. It feels very 70s, very desperate, and very much an ill-conceived, opportunistic attempt to meld the nostalgia craze with the new permissiveness.The film Sextette most resembles, in both style and content, is the tawdry soft-core vaudeville of trash like The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington(1977)

Before it turned into a career embarrassment, Sextette was envisioned as something of a "best of" tribute to the career of Mae West. It was the hope that fans would delight in all the visual and verbal references to her old films. Here, West's famous Swan Bed from her 1933 film, She Done Him Wrong (below) is recreated (and widened) for Sextette (top).

There would be no movie stars without their fans, but sometimes fans can be an artist’s worst enemy. Fan disapproval kept the talented Doris Day trapped in virginal, goody-two-shoes roles well past the age of expiration, and fans allowed Mae West to believe there was actually a public clamoring to see her shimmy and sashay one last time on the big screen.

I totally get how Sextette came into being: The 70s nostalgia boom was in full swing. In 1976 alone, the following nostalgia-based films were released - W.C. Fields & Me, Gable & Lombard, Bugsy Malone, Won Ton Ton The Dog Who Saved Hollywood, That’s Entertainment II, Silent Movie, Nickelodeon, A Matter of Time, & The Last Tycoon.

That almost all were resounding flops might have raised a red flag for seasoned producers, but in 1976, two first-time movie producers in their early-20s, Daniel Briggs and Robert Sullivan (Danny and Bobby as they were youthfully known in the press) paid no heed and followed instead the clarion call of Late Show fans everywhere. Gable was gone, Bogart was gone, but Mae West, one of the last living legends was still with us, that's all they needed to know.

Hollywood columnist, Rona Barrett
Sextette also features appearances by journalist James Bacon (the white-haired reporter in the hotel lobby), Regis Philbin, and sportscaster Gil Stratton.

Although I can’t imagine she needed much convincing, Briggs & Sullivan came to West with an opportunity to pay tribute to her career while giving her fans what they'd been clamoring for: one last chance to see their idol in all her glory. She'd trot out her old gowns, sing a few songs, recite a few of her famous lines...everybody would be happy. The idea must have seemed like money in the bank. (I suspect West always felt the failure of Myra Breckinridgerested on there being too much Welch and not enough West).

The finished product proved far more dire, of course, with Mae West's performance in Sextette evoking the out-of-control narcissism of Sunset Blvd.'s Norma Desmond making Salome. Aghast critics responded to West's elderly sex symbol act with a virulent stream of misogynist, gerontophobic insults on par with the "Old woman's p*ssy" jokes leveled at Valerie Cherish aka Aunt Sassy (Lisa Kudrow) in The Comeback.

Do Not Disturb
Although she appears to be napping here, Marlo Manners is actually helping leading man Ronald Cartwright (Peter Liapis) with a screentest. Mae West was reportedly only pleased with Dalton and Hamilton as her co-stars. She thought Tony Curtis and Dom DeLuise "too old," and was less than thrilled at the lack of sex appeal of younger stars Ringo Starr and Keith Moon. Alice Cooper likes to repeat the story that West propositioned him, but I have a feeling he means she asked him to help her out of a chair.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Miscalculations of this caliber are rare and should be treasured. Sextette is valueless as a straightforward musical comedy, but it's priceless as a glimpse into a certain kind of insanity possible only through ego (you know who), greed (a good argument could be made for the producers cruelly exploiting West's delusions), and bad decision-making at almost every turn. Perhaps most shocking of all is that Sextette was directed by Ken Hughes, the director of the charming (if odd) children's film, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968).

A few of my favorite things.

1. The grab bag of songs comprising this musical's soundtrack are not only odd, but sound as if they were culled from scratchy recordings made at wildly different points in West's career. In one scene the tinny arrangement sounds as if started up on a Victrola. Another sounds overcranked, and many of the recordings have the hollow sound of demos.
2) The ungainly musical numbers were choreographed by 60-year old Marc Breaux (The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins) and assistant, Jerry Trent (Xanadu). I would like to think the post-dubbed taps coming from the busboys on the hotel's carpeted staircase is an intentionally camp touch.
3) Mae West has exactly two spot-on perfect line readings: (Following a knock on the door) DeLuise: "Who's that?" West: "It ain't opportunity!". The second comes at a moment of exasperation when she says (with all too much feeling) "I don't know how I got into this!"
4) In a film with so many obviously gay men playing straight, casting Keith Moon as a flamboyantly effeminate dress designer is more than a little perverse.
5) In Mae West's opening interview with the press, I love the way everyone laughs uproariously at everything she says, only to stop in unison while they await her next quip.
6) The way she just kind of slams into that table during the "Next, Next" number.
7) The weird, decidedly sexist reverse alchemy that goes on when older women are paired with men a third of their age (think Judy Garland, Martha Raye and Margaret Whiting): They don't make the woman look younger, she makes then look gayer.
8) Mae West to an athlete- "And what do you do?" Athlete -"I'm a pole vaulter." Mae -"Aren't we all!"
9) The way DeLuise's dialog referencing Marlow's insatiable sex drive has a way of backfiring when you realize it's in relation to a senior, senior citizen: "This is her wedding night and Marlow's going to need all the oxygen she can get." or "By the time Marlow gets out of bed there'll be a new Administration."

Mae West made her first and last film with George Raft
West made her film debut in Raft's 1932 film, Night After Night. As a favor to West, he agreed to appear in what turned out to be the last film for them both, Sextette. Story has it that West didn't want Raft to wear the grey hair toupee he always wore (he'd look too old, you see), and Raft refused to wear the jet-black wig they'd picked out for him. Compromise: the hat

PERFORMANCES
Mae West made a total of twelve films, always playing a variation of the Diamond Lil character she created way back in 1928. As a writer, actress, singer, and comedienne, she's a genuine trailblazer and groundbreakingly feminist icon from early days of Hollywood. But, I find (unlike her quote "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!") a little of Mae goes a long way. I like her a great deal in some of her old movies, and she isn't without a little bit of charm even in this misbegotten horror show. She doesn't bother me too much in Sextette, possibly because she is virtually impossible to take seriously.
Sure, she makes you gasp or laugh at first viewing, but later you kind of have to give it up to the old girl for still being in there pitching. Also, at her absolute worst, lowest ebb, Mae West is still more talented and interesting to watch than today's no-talent Kardashians, Lohans, or Beibers.

In 1964 Mae West made an appearance as herself on the popular TV sitcom, Mr. Ed. She wore the same gown in that episode (below) that she wears in the final scene of Sextette (above). If you've never seen this episode, I recommend it. Five minutes of it are funnier than the entire running time of Sextette.

Mae West never carries on a conversation. People feed her straight lines, she delivers the gags. This leaves the other actors adapting an every-man-for-himself approach to the material. Every "guest star" doing their bit independent of what anyone else is doing, and then disappearing to the sidelines. George Hamilton comes off perhaps best, with Dalton achieving the near-miracle of escaping the whole mess unscathed. There's a curious prescience in Sextette in casting Hamilton as a mafia lug (he would appear in The Godfather:Part III in 1990), and Dalton playing a spy (of course, he became James Bond in 1987).

Keith Allison of the 60s pop group, Paul Revere & the Raiders

In spite of the film's aggressive-but-unconvincing heterosexual thrust (Hmm, sounds like a West-ism), the casting of Sextette veers more to the gay-friendly. Sextette's entire cast of extras and dancers looks like gay pride weekend in West Hollywood. Timothy Dalton first came to my attention playing gay/bi-sexual roles in The Lion in Winter and Mary, Queen of Scots. Dom DeLuise always had a kind of comedy style that seemed very queer as well. And then of course there's the whole bodybuilder thing which has always seemed more gay than heterosexual in its appeal.

"They're flushin' my play down the terlet."
Mae West speaking to companion Paul Novak as overheard by Ringo Starr

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Images of Mae West surrounded by bodybuilders were used extensively in advance publicity for Sextette. Her gymnasium musical number promised to be more outrageous that Jane Russell's beefcake-heavy "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love" number in 1953s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Unfortunately, like everything else in Sextette, the end result was a disappointment. While there is plenty of eye candy on hand, the entire sequence is little more than a lot of guys standing around feeding West straight lines for her familiar comebacks.
Like my own high-school locker room experiences, this scene is awkward, uncomfortable, full of exposed male flesh, and you'll want to avert your eyes but find you can't.

Former Mr. America Reg Lewis was an alumnus of West's 1954 Las Vegas act

To the left is Cal Bartlett as the coach of the US Athletic Team. Front and center is Ric Drasin. Recognizable to fans of 70s physique porn as Jean-Claude(!)

Roger Callard (aka Stacy) is another 70s alumnus of Colt Studios, a studio specializing in nude male physique photography. At the center is Denny Gable, to the right, former Mr. USA Cal Szkalak

That an Olympic team has for its "mascot" a blow-dried and dewy-eyed male starlet (Rick Leonard) is far more provocative than anything Marlo Manners had to offer. Here Leonard greets Miss West with his best Gloria Upson (Mame) straight-arm handshake. Next to him is Mr. Olympia, Jim Morris

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Those musical numbers....

Love Will Keep Us Together

Baby Face

Next, Next
This upbeat Van McCoy disco composition was a replacement for the ballad "No Time for Tears" which Mae West vetoed for being out-of-character

One might have thought that the best way to deal with Mae West's age is to not make reference to the subject at all. Perversely, most of the songs seem to go out of their way to the topic. There's "Happy Birthday, 21" ; a disco version of "Baby Face"; and the reworked lyrics of "Love Will Keep Us Together" - "Young and beautiful, your looks will never be gone!" Um,...OK.

Walter Pidgeon as the chairman of the World Peace summit.
To the right is Van McCoy,composer of the popular disco classic, The Hustle, and contributor of Sextette's "Marlo" theme song, and the finale "Next, Next." Some sources list him as the film's musical director.

BONUS MATERIAL
You have a chance to hear Alice Cooper singing "No Time For Tears", the finale song from Sextette vetoed by Mae West because (as everyone knows) Mae West never cries over any man.

Watch the season 4 episode of Mr. Ed titled: Mae West Meets Mr. Ed (1964) on YouTube

A 1976 interview with Mae West by Dick Cavertt. Not really an interview, he feeds her a lot of lines, and she says the very same qips you expect. However, there's one terrific moment when she talks about the loss of her mother where you get a fleeting glimpse of a real person and not an image. See it on YouTube

Miss West and the boys bid you goodbye
I think this is the first time I've ever seen her so covered up, or wearing anything even remotely approaching a contemporary garment.
I can see why she stuck to the Gay 90s

In Praise of Older Women or: I Love Lucy, But Even That Has Its Limits

Though not originally conceived as such, this look at Lucille Ball’s Mame makes a fitting companion piece to my previous post on Mae West’s Sextette. Both films were made in the 70s, both star actresses who found their greatest fame after turning forty, and both films represent the simultaneous big screen return-of / farewell-to beloved show-biz legends in star vehicles (vanity projects?) modeled after the old-fashioned, large-scale musicals of Hollywood’s Golden Era.
Although light years away from one other in terms of competency, quality, and budget, both films were greeted with near-identical waves of incredulity and hostility from the press and public. The lion’s share of the brickbats hurled centering on accusations of fan-pandering, a distracting over-reliance on age-concealing diffused lighting and fog-filters, and an overall sense of the stars in question being both ill-served by the material and frankly too old for their roles. (West was 84 playing 32. Ball, at 62, begins the film, which spans 1928 to 1946, at roughly the age she should be when it ends.)

Lucille Ball as Mae Dennis

Bea Arthur as Vera Charles

Robert Preston as Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside

Jane Connell as Agnes Gooch

Bruce Davison as Patrick Dennis

Kirby Furlong as Young Patrick Dennis

The eccentric heroine of Patrick Dennis’ fictional 1955 autobiography, Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade- first turned into a Broadway play in 1956, later a film in 1958, and ultimately the 1966 Broadway musical upon which this movies is based - is logically somewhere in her mid to late 40s, but, philosophically-speaking, has always seemed “ageless” (spoken like a press agent). It’s conceivable to me that an actress of any age could convincingly play the wealthy, irrepressible free-thinker who becomes an instant mother when entrusted with the upbringing of her late brother’s son and teaches the child to “Open a new window” and live by the motto,“Life is a banquet and most poor sons-of-bitches are starving to death.” Provided she has the necessary iconoclastic verve, personality, and spontaneous, life-affirming energy to bring Mame Dennis to life.

Sixty-two-year-old Lucille Ball certainly had plenty of energy, but after six seasons each of I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show, and Here’s Lucy (the last episode aired a week before Mame was released wide), most of it had calcified into drive, determination and will. Ball hadn’t made a film since Yours, Mine, & Ours (1968), and Mame presented the actress with a dream role she actively campaigned to acquire; this in spite of the expressed preference for Angela Lansbury (the role’s originator on Broadway) by the show’s creators: Jerome Lawrence, Robert E. Lee, and Jerry Herman.

Luckily for Ball, there was no way any studio would mount a $12 million film adaptation of Mame without a star of her caliber and popularity attached to it, so, clearly not having learned his lesson from the film version of Hello, Dolly! (where the common complaint was that Streisand was too YOUNG for the role), composer Jerry Herman handed over Mame’s singing and dancing chores to a well-loved household name of advanced age who has repeatedly gone on record decrying her own inability to either sing or dance.

(I’ve read that Herman, so displeased with how Mame and Hello, Dolly! turned out - and apparently after having banked enough money from both to finally buy himself some principles - has since refused to grant permission for the film adaptation of any of his work without his having creative control.)

Mame was one of the most heavily-promoted musicals since 1973s Lost Horizon (and we all know how that turned out). Lucille Ball supported it tirelessly through personal appearances television interviews. (Top) Hollywood's Cinerama Dome theater is decked out like an Easter bonnet cloche hat for the March 26 premiere. (Below) An advance trade magazine ad.

It can’t be said that a movie version of Mame didn’t have timing working in its favor. In 1974 the nostalgia craze in fashion (BIBA), music (The Pointer Sisters, Bette Midler), and TV (The Waltons, Happy Days) was in full swing, along with the films: The Great Gatsby, Chinatown, and the remake of The Front Page, all slated for release within months of one another.

I was stoked to see Mame not only because I was such a huge fan of Rosalind Russell’s non-musical Auntie Mame (perhaps too much so, since I think that film is hilarious and Russell slays in the role), but because, like everybody else, I was raised on Lucille Ball and totally adored I Love Lucy (not so much The Lucy Show, Here’s Lucy, or – and this should have been a tip-off – her film appearances. As Lucy Ricardo, Ball was adorable, warm, and outrageously funny. In films, she tended to lapse into into a starchy, ladylike persona that was rarely any fun).

Mame - starring Diane Belmont
Fans expecting to see Lucille Ball's rubber-faced TV persona were surprised to find in its place, the regal, slightly haughty grande dame Lucy of the 1943 Al Hirschfeld caricature that closed every episode of The Lucy Show. Ball goes through most of Mame with her chin tilted up, lips pursed, and cheeks sucked in. A look that does wonders for her close-ups, but absolutely kills the comedy. Diane Belmont was the hoity-toity stage name Ball adopted during her modeling days as the Chesterfield Cigarettes Girl.

Nevertheless, in March of 1974 my family allowed me to drag them (kicking and screaming) to see Mame. And if hard work paid off in entertainment value, I would have had a wonderful time, for Lucy is clearly working her ass off. But under several pounds of make-up, elaborate wigs, movement-constricting Theadora Van Runkle costumes, a network of face-tightening surgical tape and straps - not to mention nursing a leg broken in four places just a year before - I'm afraid there wasn’t much room for fun, élan, or even much in the way of a performance to rise to the surface.

In fact, a character named Mame Dennis is less in attendance in this film than Lucille Ball the revered “comedy institution.”
All the while the musical around her has been transformed into a kind of formal, laugh-free, drag-queen-inspired fandom career tribute. Lucy fans, those who had stuck by their star through 18-years-worth of black-and-white housedresses and dowdy office attire, were rewarded with a two-hour-plus fashion parade of Lucille Ball looking like the glamorous movie star Ricky Ricardo and Mr. Mooney never allowed her to be.

Joyce Van Patten is an all-too-brief bright spot as the conniving Sally Cato

Lucille Ball's age factored in my enjoyment of Mame only insomuch as it seemed to preoccupy the filmmakers to distraction. Everything is so constructed with an eye toward camouflaging its leading lady’s age: filtered lenses, careful lighting, and a raised chin become the film’s dominant motifs. Ball looks terrific throughout, and I really only thought about her age (and that broken leg) when it came to the physical comedy and modest dance requirements. Ball can kick as high as a chorus girl, but I don't think my reactions - alternately, relief that she didn't hurt herself and awe at her moxie in even undertaking these moderately strenuous endeavors - were conducive to getting in the spirit of things. Mame is a character so full of life she gives the impression of never sitting still. Lucille Ball, for all her efforts, always made me want to offer her a chair.

She'll Croak the Blues Right Out of Your Heart!
Much was made of Lucille Ball's "singing." A lifetime of smoking, a voice-damaging stint on Broadway in Wildcat (1960), and a fondness for bourbon left Ball with a distinctive rasp that wasn't always kind to Jerry Herman's songs. Some critics at the time claimed Lisa Kirk (Rosalind Russell's voice in much of Gypsy) dubbed some of the vocals (Ball said Kirk should sue!), but Ball claimed all responsibility. While it would have been nice to have had a singer in the role, if we had to have Lucy (and it seems like we did), I prefer hearing her real voice. I'm not a big fan of dubbing. Marni Nixon's soulless voice ruins West Side Story and My Fair Lady for me, Marianne McAndrew's voice in Hello, Dolly! seems to emanate from her hat, and don't get me started on the voices they chose for Liv Ullman and Peter Finch in Lost Horizon...

But Mame Dennis is a bohemian at heart, a sophisticated misfit thumbing her nose at convention. But like the actress herself, Lucille Ball's Mame exudes too much practicality. The only thing oddball about her is her wardrobe.

If anything, I found Gooch’s age to be far more problematic. I know Jane Connell originated the role on Broadway and all, but I couldn't help wishing that her pregnancy number "What Do I Do Now?" had been scrapped (it's always been pure torture for me anyhow) or refashioned into a menopause anthem or something. She just seemed too old. And her sheltered virgin bit was a cartoon. All through the film I kept imagining what fired-during-rehearsals Madeline Kahn might have done with the role.

Open a New Window
Ball has the best onscreen chemistry with Kirby Furlong, who plays young Patrick (my favorite moment is when he's allowed to slide down the banister in her apartment). The actress's legendary comedy timing seems to have abandoned her throughout much of the film, but whenever she is allowed to smile or laugh, her childlike appeal is irresistible.

For all its faults, I have to say it was rather thrilling seeing Mame on the big screen for the first time; a feeling that has diminished significantly with subsequent DVD revisits. The scale and glossy sheen of the film was breathtaking to me at the time, Ball looking spectacular, if not exactly comfortable, in her elaborate wardrobe (she seems about as at-home in those outfits as she does in the role itself). And if hampered by a lumbering pace, overlong running time, too-familiar plot, and a paucity of real humor (Jerome Lawrence: “The screenplay was by Dostoyevsky…they took out all the laughs!”), something about Mame is so eager-to-please and well-intentioned, you kind of want to forgive it. Just like Ricky always forgave Lucy.

Audrey Christie & Don Porter as the uppity Mrs. & Mr. Upson

Mame does a lot of things wrong, but for me, three of the things they get right are so sublime that Mame has remained a favorite all these years strictly on the strength of them.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
The Title Sequence.

In his review of Mame, New York Times critic Vincent Canby observed, "The opening credits, which look like a Cubist collage in motion, are so good they could be a separate subject."
Indeed, the titles are so classy and eye-popping (footage from old Warner films like Public Enemy and Forty-Second Street are utilized) they whet your appetite and set a standard of style and sophistication the film only intermittently lives up to.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Loving You.
It's common practice for musicals adapted from Broadway shows to have at least one original number written for the screen version. Cynics (or are they realists?) say its to make a bid for a Best Song Oscar nomination, as only songs written expressly for a film are eligible. But in the case of Mame, one can make a good argument for needing to beef up the supporting role of Beauregard (he has only the title song) in order to attract a two-time Tony Award winner like Robert Preston. Also, since Mame was being marketed to women (so-called women's director George Cukor was initially attached to the project but had to drop out when Ball's skiing accident delayed production for an entire year) there was a desire to place a stronger emphasis on the romance.
But most important of all, Robert preston could actually sing, and Mame needed all the good voices it could get.

The song composed for the film is "Loving You," and not only does the very dashing Preston sing and perform it beautifully, but the number as staged (a honeymoon montage) is so sweepingly romantic, I find myself moved by it each and every time. It's a great song anyway, but how its presented is so nicely handled. Special applause goes to the musical arrangement. The segment in a great ballroom has the most amazing recreation of a 30s sound orchestral sound, then, when the scene changes to a grand garden, the music erupts into a piano crescendo of such goosebump-inducing romantic lushness, blending magically with the image of the dancing the couple...that the waterworks that had been building up just have to go for it. I just love this sequence. It's so wonderful it really does feel as though it were hijacked from another film.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
The Title Number.

In a word: Perfection. Every single thing about how this number is done just puts a smile on my face. It's rousing and old-fashioned in just the right way, vibrantly staged and choreographed...it's everything that ever made me fall in love with musicals. The sight of all those red jackets and white jodhpurs in a kickline on the big screen was quite unforgettable! Had the rest of the film been up to this standard, Mame would have been a classic.

PERFORMANCES
On its release, all the performers were understandably positive about the film. In later years Bea Arthur spoke of Ball being miscast in her opinion and that the film was "A tremendous embarrassment." Even Lucille Ball later recanted all her initial happy talk and described making the film as being, "...About as much fun as watching your house burn down."
Personally, Rosalind Russell spoiled my chances of enjoying anyone else in this role, so Lucy bothers me less than those who perhaps loved Angela Lansbury in the role. I don't think Lucy's very good in the role, but how does one go about disliking Lucy? To this day no other TV show can make me laugh like I Love Lucy, and I think she is a genius in that regard. When she was still around, it was easy to rag on this picture....now that she's gone, I find myself a lot more at peace with my disappointments. She's missed, what can I say?

Other than a few unflattering costumes, the late-great Bea Arthur in Mame really has nothing to be embarrassed about (although she should have been upset the way her hilarious number "The Man in the Moon is a Lady" was butchered by so many cutaways). To my taste, Auntie Mame's Coral Browne IS Vera Charles, but Arthur is Mame's saving grace. (Bette Davis famously campaigned for the movie role of Vera opposite Lucy. Can you imagine a sound technician trying to measure those two voices in a duet?)

Mame is one of my "Fast-forward Favorites": A movie I find it difficult to watch all the way through, but delight in watching a la carte...hopping from one favored scene to another. I highly recommend this method with this film - most of the film doesn't work, but there are flashes of brilliance here and there that are just too good to miss.

BONUS MATERIAL
Mame opening title sequence. (*Designed by Wayne Fitzgerald thru Pacific Title & Art). *Thanks, Rick Notch

Here's Lucy: Lucy Carter Meets Lucille Ball. This episode aired March 4, 1974 to tie-in with the release of Mame. Lucy appears in one of her Mame outfits hosting a lookalike contest and plugging her film.

Lucille Ball on The Merv Griffin Show. Ball talks to the host about the making of Mame.

Ginger Rogers in Mame 1969. Mame's choreographer, Onna White also choreographed the original Broadway production. Here's a chance to see the same equestrian choreography from the film as it was performed on the stage.

Angela Lansbury and Bea Arthur perform "Bosom Buddies." The 1987 Tony Awards give us an opportunity to see what might have been.

My Three Mames: *An ingenious montage of the "Mame" number as performed by Lucille Ball, Angela Lansbury, and Ginger Rogers. *Thanks, Jeff!

“Just goes to show what can be accomplished when a bunch of closeted gay men put their heads together!” Overheard following a screening of The Last of Sheila

In 1973 Stephen Sondheim, Anthony Perkins, and Herbert Ross - three closeted gay men in show business who knew a thing or two about keeping secrets - collaborated on The Last of Sheila, an Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery with a touch of All About Eve vitriol set aboard a luxury yacht on the French Riviera.

The Last of Sheilacame about after Herbert Ross, one-time choreographer (Funny Girl) turned director/producer (The Owl and the Pussycat, The Turning Point), persuaded composer Stephen Sondheim (Company, Follies) to channel his extracurricular passion for inventing elaborate games and puzzles into a movie project. To that end, Sondheim, who at the time was working on the Broadway musical A Little Night Music, sought the help of friend and frequent game collaborator Anthony Perkins (then filming Play It as It Lays) and the two devised a brain-teasing murder mystery thrilling enough to be entertaining and intricate enough so that audiences can play along with the characters in the film.

An early first-draft from these two first-time screenwriters had the mystery take place over the course of a snow-bound weekend in Long Island between business associates. But at Ross’ suggestion, the locale was changed to the more photogenic south of France, and the game-playing participants changed to a glamorous, in-joke cross section of Hollywood movie industry types.

James Coburn as sharkish movie producer Clinton Green

Joan Hackett as heiress and Hollywood outsider Lee Parkman

Richard Benjamin as floundering screenwriter Tom Parkman

Raquel Welch as glamorous movie star Alice Wood

Ian McShane as Anthony Wood, Alice's ambitious manager husband

Dyan Cannon as pushy talent agent, Christine

James Mason as once-famous director Philip Dexter

A year after his gossip-columnist wife Sheila Green (Yvonne Romain) was killed in a hit and run accident near their Bel-Air home, movie producer Clinton Green (Coburn) invites six friends – five of whom were guests at his house that fateful night – to spend a week aboard his yacht (The Sheila) in the Rivera. A gathering that promises to be part vacation, part memorial, and part career-carrot dangled under the noses of a gaggle of show business opportunists willing to subject themselves to week of sadistic game-playing in hopes of being offered a job on Clinton’s planned film about the life of his late, not-exactly-lamented wife. A film to be titled, “The Last of Sheila.”

This being a murder mystery, the murder half gets under way when, in the course of playing an elaborate, subtly cruel, detective/gossip game in which each player is assigned a gossipy secret the others must discover first, one of the participants winds up dead. The mystery revolves around the true inspiration for Clinton's game - the public exposure of the identity of his wife's killer - and whether or not that person or persons is willing to go to even greater lengths to keep their secret a secret. The stage has been successfully set (an isolated group of people seeking to discover who among them is a killer) for a rise in the body count, the typical-for-the-genre tearful revelations, several heated incriminations, and skeletons tumbling out of closets faster than you can say whodunit.

The ability to watch and rewatch The Last of Sheila on DVD has revealed it to be a much sharper and smarter film than it was credited with being when first released. Virtually every single frame and bit of character business reveals information pertaining to the overall mystery.

The Last of Sheilais a cinema rarity: a real corker of a murder mystery which plays fair with the viewer and doesn’t tip its hand in the first five minutes. It’s a nesting-doll of a murder mystery in which people characters start out just playing a game for fun must resort to actually engaging in game-like sleuthing methods to unearth a mystery. A mystery which in itself is one we in the audience are invited to play separately (Sondheim and Perkins are our literal “Clintons”…peppering the film with visual and verbal clues which, should we be swift enough to pick up on, lead us to the solution to the mystery).

And if, as many critics cited at the time, The Last of Sheila lacks the humanity necessary to make this murder mystery scant than just a fun intellectual exercise (the common critical complaint was that the characters are all so despicable you don’t give a hoot about trying to solve the mystery because you couldn’t care less whodunit or who it’s about to be done to); time and DVD availability has been kind to The Last of Sheila experience.

And by that I mean, not only is it a kick to see folks like Richard Benjamin and Dyan Cannon and Raquel Welch all in the same film, but the characters and their deep, dark secrets seem almost quaint in line with what celebrities do these days (and happily tweet about). Most significantly though, the ability to rewind, rewatch, and reexamine The Last of Sheila, a film about whose mystery critic Rex Reed wrote, “…requires a postgraduate degree in hieroglyphics to figure out,” has made watching it a considerably less frustrating experience than it was back in 1973.

Let the Games Begin
The original boat sank before filming. Original cinematographer Ernest Day (A Clockwork Orange) was fired after a week. Joan Hackett refused to say certain lines and was nearly replaced by Lee Remick. Arab terrorist group, Black September, threatened to blow up the set. James Mason couldn't stand Raquel Welch. Welch ruffled the feathers of costume designer Joel Schumacher (later the director Batman & Robin) by arriving with her entire wardrobe already designed and fitted by boyfriend, Ron Talsky. Welch (my, her name does keep popping up, doesn't it?) temporarily halted production when she walked off the film threatening to sue director Herbert Ross for assault and battery.

The Last of Sheilawas made in the 70s, so it almost goes without saying that a post-Watergate cynicism and assertive preoccupation with exposing the ugly side of the Beautiful People runs like an undercurrent throughout the film .

Hollywood is never at its most naïve than when it thinks it has to ratchet up the heartlessness in an attempt to dramatize for us plebeians what a phony, anything-for-a-buck business it is. The joke of course has always been that only Hollywood thinks its cash register heart is a well-hidden secret. Most of us over the age of ten grasped long ago what an assembly line of falseness the movie industry is, and after years of “seedy underbelly” exposés (S.O.B.,The Day of the Locust, Burn Hollywood Burn, The Bad & the Beautiful, Sunset Blvd., The Player, Two Weeks in Another Town, A Star is Born, The Oscar, etc.) I’m STILL waiting on a film to show just how soulless and venal it can be…something perhaps only possible were the film conceived as a horror/porn film with traces of science fiction.

The Last of Sheila
Gossip columnist Sheila Green (Yvonne Romain) moments before she,
as Christine so tactfully puts it "...got bounced though the hedges."

The busy schedules of Sondheim and Perkins prevented the two from having many opportunities to actually write the script while in the same room, thus the bulk of The Last of Sheilawas done through phone calls and courier (Perkins has said only two scenes were written while both were in the same room at the same time), Sondheim handling the particulars of the game (natch), Perkins working hard to infuse Stephen’s academic brain puzzler with scare elements and Hollywood insider atmosphere. The result, while entertaining, sometimes feels as choppy and disjointed as the process of its creation.

The Last of Sheila, is the result of the combined efforts of a composer not exactly known for his warmth; a tortured, somewhat embittered actor whose promising leading-man career was derailed and forever haunted by the spectre of Psycho’s Norman Bates; and a famously grumpy director whose idiosyncratic relationship with his actors rivals that of Otto Preminger. With nary a sympathetic character in sight, The Last of Sheila is a unified cold front of a movie desperately in need of a few real chills and perhaps some script tweaking to help raise the modest level of high-toned bitchery to a level of wit and bite worthy of the intellectual wizardry of Sondheim’s puzzle.

Stephen Who?
With A Little Night Music opening on Broadway in February, a Newsweek Magazine cover story in April, and a June release set for The Last of Sheila; 1973 marked the beginning of Stephen Sondheim's emergence as a household name. (Center) Perkins and Sondheim on the Cannes set of The Last of Sheila.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

To have Joan Hackett, that darling of idiosyncratic vulnerability, in the same film with the magnificent Raquel Welch, a startlingly uncraggy and boyishly cute Ian McShane, and the comically raucous Dyan Cannon, is quite a treat. But the real star of The Last of Sheila is its twisty murder mystery plot and the cunning “game” motif which runs throughout the film.

From the start, an atmosphere of narrative disequilibrium permeates every scene.

All the characters are such phonies with ulterior motives behind everything word and action, it’s clear any number of games are already well underway long before Clinton bullies everyone into participating in what he calls “The Shelia Green Memorial Gossip Game.” Once the real game does begin, it becomes harder and harder to know who to believe, who to trust, trust or who’s reality you're seeing.

Elaborate Clues Are Part of the Game

And if, in the end, the frequent scenes of lengthy exposition and reenactments necessitated by the complexity of the puzzle have the effect of leaving scant room for fleshed-out performances or dimensional characterizations (in Craig Zadan's book, Sondheim & Co., Perkins concede to he and Sondheim "writing too much" and having to excise some 100 pages of the script before filming); one at least gets to console oneself with the not-unpleasant fact that The Last of Sheila is a fun, difficult-to-solve mystery that respects the viewer’s intelligence and rewards attentiveness.

One of what I can only assume was a series of The Last of Sheila promotional pinback buttons

PERFORMANCES

It’s unlikely anyone seeing this now 42-year-old film today knows or even cares that the characters in The Last of Sheila are based on and cobbled together from real-life Hollywood notables (equally unlikely is that anyone could identify them). But at the time of its release, the whole “Who is that supposed to be?” element was just one more of the many games The Last of Sheila set before the viewer.

Of those rumored, Orson Welles was said to have inspired James Mason’s failed director character (even the casting of Lolita's Mason being a bit of a clue to the mystery for the audience). Richard Benjamin was Anthony Perkins' surrogate, and the sex-symbol and pushy husband portrayed by Welch and McShane were presumed by many to be Ann-Margret and Roger Smith. Although more popular opinion favored the filmmakers somehow getting Welch to agree to play herself (and husband Patrick Curtis) in spite of the character’s unglamorous name (Alice “Wood”) being a sly reference to Welch’s acting ability. However, it was no secret that Dyan Cannon was playing super-agent Sue Mengers (Bette Midler portrayed Mengers in a one-woman show on Broadway in 2013), as the actress’s lively impersonation was a major point of publicity at a time when Mengers ruled Hollywood with her client list: Barbra Streisand, Anthony Perkins, Richard Benjamin, Ryan O’Neal, Dyan Cannon, Faye Dunaway, et al.

Any movie that affords the opportunity to hear Dyan Cannon laugh is a worthwhile endeavor

Like pawns in a chess game, the somewhat overqualified cast of The Last of Sheila are there chiefly to be in service to the riddle of a plot, the minimal requirements of their roles rarely rising above TV-movie competency. So even if few are offered opportunities to really shine (Dyan Cannon has the best lines and the most to work with) all are in fine form and The Last of Sheila offers up an attractive gathering of some of the most familiar faces of the 70s. My particular favorites are James Coburn and Dyan Cannon, with the always-terrific Joan Hackett giving the film a much-needed dose of humanity. (With this film, The Group, Five Desperate Women, and The Class of ’63, Hackett must be the queen of reunion-themed movies).

Hunting Clues In An Abandoned Monastery

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

I was 15-years-old when I first saw The Last of Sheila, dragging my family to see it the first week it opened (smug in my film/theater geek certainty that I alone among my high school peers knew who Stephen Sondheim was). I recall being very taken with the film as a whole, this being the first time I ever saw the traditional Agatha Christie drawing room mystery setup played out in anything resembling a contemporary setting.

I’m not sure how modern audiences respond to it, but in 1973, the mystery worked especially well because outside of James Coburn, no one else in the cast was ever typed as a villain. What with the Riviera setting and Hollywood types featured, it all seemed very glamorous and sophisticated to my adolescent eyes, the only dissonant chord being how old-fashioned all the name dropping seemed. In the 70s Hollywood of Jane Fonda, Warren Beatty and Ali MacGraw, chummy references to Steve & Edie, Kirk Douglas, Yul Brynner, and Sandra Dee seemed very Old World.

Oh, and The Last of Sheila introduced me to Bette Midler. She sings “Friends” over the film's closing credits and I so loved the song, I immediately went out and bought The Divine Miss M album. I've been a fan ever since.

Christine tries to convince Anthony that two heads are better than one

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

As much as I loved The Last of Sheila, poor advance press (it opened out of competition at Cannes to disappointing word of mouth), mixed reviews (claims of it being indifferently directed and aloof were outdistanced by critics throwing up their hands saying the whole thing was just too damned confusing!), and perhaps the overall sourness of the film's tone, kept it from being a hit. It disappeared from theaters rather rapidly and for years you could mention the title and nobody would lay claim to having heard of it, let alone seen it.

Now available on DVD,The Last of Sheila has developed quite a cult following. Worth checking out if you've never seen it before, worth revisiting to discover all the giveaway clues you missed the first time out.

Friends?

A fun bonus on the DVD is the commentary track provided by Welch, Cannon, and Benjamin. Cannon and Benjamin are obviously watching the film together and having a blast, while Welch (who always comes across more relaxed and funny on the commentary tracks for her films than she does in the films themselves) recorded hers separately.

Little in the way of inside information is imparted - 42 yeas is a LONG time - but in its place is a nostalgia that appears to have erased memories of the troubled, over-schedule and over-budget shoot, replacing them with diplomacy (Cannon alludes to a person causing a long delay because they were dissatisfied with their outfit...one can't help thinking of Ms. Welch) and fond recollections of the experience.
Everyone cops to having found the complex script very hard to follow during filming, and amusingly, Dyan Cannon (who had to gain weight for the role) can't seem to get over how fat she looks, while Raquel Welch laments that she herself looks too thin. All the while Cannon and Benjamin make references to Perkins and Sondheim which make it sound as though they were a couple for a time. I certainly hope so. I'm sure that both gentlemen would be proud to know their sole screenwriting collaboration still has a few gossipy secrets to impart.

“Life is never quite interesting enough, somehow. You people who come to the movies know that.” Dolly Gallagher Levi - The Matchmaker

Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is a (melo)dramatization of what can happen to lives when the consoling balm of idol worship (movie or otherwise) becomes a crutch for self-delusion, avoidance, and the denial of truth.

As anyone knows who has spent more than five minutes at an autograph convention; attended a pro sporting event; visited Comic-Con; stood among the glassy-eyed throngs outside a movie premiere; or navigated the choppy waters of an internet fansite chat room (a drama-queen war zone littered with trolling land mines): fame-culture idol worship and devout religious fanaticism are merely different sides of the same coin.

Life presents us with challenges and can sometimes feel like a cruel, dispiriting, achingly lonely place. In those moments when we feel its sting most keenly, it’s natural to seek solace (and sometimes escape) in the arts: that spiritual oasis of inspiration and beauty that has the power to restore hope to the human soul the way rainfall can restore life to the scorched, arid plains of a drought-plagued Texastown.

But all too often the need to salve the pain of life and fill the void of loneliness through external means (as opposed to, say, self-reflection and action) leads to the quick-fix distraction of fame culture. Fame culture being the existential bait-and-switch that says our personal lives can somehow be enriched through the over-idealization of someone else’s. Particularly the lives of those perfect demigods and goddesses of the silver screen.

Fame culture doesn’t speak to the individual who works to fulfill his/her potential through the inspirational example of the genius and talent of others. Fame culture merely requires one to surrender the concerns of one's own existence to the enthralled pursuit of information about, and preoccupation with, the comings and goings of the rich and famous. Such passive fealty is rewarded with the blessed gift of never having to think for a second about one's own life, one's own concerns, or anything remotely connected to what is real and germane to one's life. As questionable a tradeoff as this seems, it represents the absolute cornerstone of what we jokingly refer to as pop culture.

“Believing is so funny isn’t it? When what you believe in doesn’t even know you exist.”

Entire networks and charitably 85% of the internet are devoted to feeding us ‘round-the-clock updates on what celebrities are up to. Celebrities whose careers and personal lives are staunchly and vigilantly defended against slander and attack by legions of devoted fans. Fandom of the sort that leads to cyber-bullying, broken friendships, and in extreme cases, death threats.

All rather sad when faced with the reality that celebrities by and large go about the business of living of their lives grateful for, but blithely unaware of, said fans’ existence (outside of the hefty dollars fan devotion brings to their bank accounts, enabling them -irony of ironies - to build stronger fortresses, hire more bodyguards, and enforce stricter security…all the better to keep fans at arm's length).

“‘Cause growing up is awfuller than all the awful things that ever were." - Peter Pan

The desire to lose oneself/find oneself in the idealized illusion of salvation presented by the arts and fame culture is something most keenly felt in adolescence. Adolescence being the time when, in the immortal words of The Facts of Life theme song: “The world never seems to be living up to your dreams” - the kind of escapism that can be found in movies is often the only recourse left for bullied and isolated teenagers longing to feel a little less like outsiders and misfits. At its best, the idol worship of celebrities and movie stars can be a catalyst for change and growth, providing a hopeful vision of a world not defined by the limitations of ignorance, bigotry, and small minds. At its worst, fame idolatry can be such an effective pain reliever that it encourages avoidance, inhibits emotional growth, and promotes living in the past.

September 30, 1955
Members of the McCarthy, Texas James Dean Fan Club, The Disciples of James Dean,
react to news of the actor's death

“Think what you can keep ignoring…” Stephen Sondheim - Company

Sandy Dennis as Mona

Cher as Sissy

Karen Black as Joanne

The year is 1975, and on the 20^th anniversary of the death of James Dean, the last remaining members of The Disciples of James Dean (make that the last remaining interested members) - a fan club which held its weekly meetings afterhours in the local Woolworth’s 5 & Dime - return to the drought-ridden, near-deserted, West Texas town of McCarthy for a reunion.

Still residing in McCarthy in various states of arrested development are: moralistic bible-thumper, Juanita (Sudie Bond), who inherited the 5 & Dime after her husband died; goodtime girl, Sissy (Cher), “The best roller-skater in all of West Texas” and over-proud owner of the biggest boobs in town; and Mona (Dennis),James Dean fan club leader and lifetime Woolworth employee whose preeminent moment in life was being chosen as an extra in the film Giant (although no one has ever been able to find her in the film), and who lays claim to being the mother of James Dean’s only son.

Kathy Bates as Stella Mae

The only out-of-town attendees are boisterous Stella Mae (Kathy Bates), now the wife of a Dallas oil millionaire, and mousy Edna Louise (Marta Heflin), pregnant with her 7^th child and still, as she was in high-school, ever on the receiving end of Stella Mae’s relentless verbal abuse.

Into this airless environment of stasis comes Joanne (a wonderfully reined-in Karen Black), a chaos device in a tailored suit, a woman mysterious in a yellow Porsche (Dean died in a Porsche). In true Southern Gothic tradition, her presence incites the unearthing of secrets and the head-on confrontation of several dark and painful truths.
And as for the two Jimmy Deans of the title, they are less a titular redundancy than a reference to the two unseen Jimmy Deans of the tale: The Hollywood actor whose untimely death at age twenty-four assured him a place of cultish immortality; and Mona's twenty-year-old son, Dean's son, a rebel with considerable cause. Both are the unseen male presence - "ghosts" of you will - that figure so prominently in Mona's delusions, making her feel special, giving her life importance.

Marta Heflin as Edna Louise

As titles go, I was never too crazy about Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Deanwhich always reminded me too much of the unpleasant, similarly phrase-titled 1976 film, When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder? …which as it so happens, also had a diner setting. But I suppose it might be a nod to Inge's Come Back Little Sheba and that play's similar theme of longing for an idealized past. But who cares about a title when you have Altman alumnae Sandy Dennis (That Cold Day in the Park) and Karen Black (Nashville) joined by pop-star, tabloid queen, Cher, returning to the big screen for the first time since her somnambulistic tile role performance in 1969s Chastity?

I saw Jimmy Deanwhen it was released in Los Angeles in the fall of 1982. The buzz at the time was that, on the heels of the flop trifecta of Quintet, A Perfect Couple, and HealtH (the latter I don’t recall even opening in LA), plus the off-beat oddity that was Popeye; Jimmy Dean was to be a return to 3 Women form for Altman. Filmed on a shoestring budget, shot on Super16mm and blown up to 35mm, in a year of bloated megafilms (ET, Annie, Tron) Jimmy Dean was small, personal, and idiosyncratically appealing (and oh so 70s) in its determination to be an anti-blockbuster.

Featuring the same cast as the film, Robert Altman mounted a much-ballyhooed Broadway production of Ed Graczyk's play early in 1982. The critics were not kind. The show closed after 52 performances. A week later the film version was underway and completed in 19 days.

Long before Carol Burnett’s hilarious “Eunice” character came along and forever altered my ability to take the genre completely seriously, I have been in love with Southern Gothic films. Adapted from the works of authors like Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and William Inge, these extravagantly melodramatic films had their heyday in the sexually repressed climate of the 50s. Their crisis-filled plots – all sex, secrets, lies, and hypocrisy – stylistically dramatizing the submerged conflicts and contradictions of an era obsessed with sex, yet rooted in conservative Christian dogma and the sustained illusion of conformity at all costs.

Though initially drawn to the genre for its female-driven narratives and the camp potential of the traditionally overheated performances; I eventually came to appreciate the subtle queer-coding concealed in so many of the stories related to isolated individuals struggling to find love and self-acceptance in environments unsympathetic to anyone not fitting in with the mainstream.

Making his film debut as Joseph Qualley, a teen bullied for dressing up in women's clothes,
openly gay actor Mark Patton (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2) was a real-life victim of bullying
growing up in his hometown of Riverside, Mo.

Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Deanmay not be true Southern Gothic per se, but it has all the trimmings. It’s got ponderous themes (Is the entire world just a deserted dustbowl full of pitiful souls trying to give their lives meaning by worshiping gods that don’t know we exist?); weighty symbolism (Reata, the palatial mansion in Giant, is, like so many of the characters at the 5 & Dime, only a false façade); religious allegory (Mona's assertion that she was "chosen" to bring Dean's only son into the world); and a steady stream of tearful disclosures and shocking revelations done to a fare-thee-well by a cast to die for.

"Miracle Whip is poetry, mayonnaise isn't."
Robert Altman defending one of the improvised changes he imposed upon Graczyk's screenplay.
Sudie Bond as Juanita

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

In his book, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan, late film critic Robin Wood makes an interesting point about how often the best of Robert Altman’s films are those expressing the female (if not necessarily feminist) perspective. I’d have to agree. Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, makes a superb companion piece to 3 Women: the former being a study in reality imposing itself upon the guarded illusions of women with nothing to cling to but the dreams of the past; the latter a kind of magic-realist exercise in which fantasy and wish-fulfillment come to erode the personalities of three dissimilar women.

While I've always had a little problem with the actual screenplay of Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (five major epiphanies in one afternoon must be some kind of record), I have nothing but praise for the stellar performances, the film's themes, and Altman's sensitive and thoughtful direction. This movie is a MAJOR favorite.

PERFORMANCES

It took the formulaic, “high-concept” Hollywood of the 1980s to unite my favorite iconoclast director with two of the most famously idiosyncratic actresses of the 70s. Much has been written about the mannered acting styles of Sandy Dennis and Karen Black, but in Jimmy Dean, the stark originality of these actresses rescues the film from the kind of Steel Magnolias down-home, southern-fried clichés Graczyk’s screenplay flirts so recklessly with.

As with so many Altman films, the performances here represent the best example of ensemble work, each character fleshed out in ways that make even the most theatrical contrivances of the plot feel genuine and emanating from a place of authenticity.

Deservedly so, Cher was singled out for a great deal of critical acclaim for her performance. After having become something of a tabloid punchline for the public soap-opera that was her personal, she amazed audiences by more than holding her own with several formidable seasoned professionals. Her relaxed, natural performance nicely offsets the more eccentric contributions of her costars (although Sudie Bond comes across as perhaps the most real of Graczyk's characters) and she is a delight to watch. Mike Nichols, after seeing her in the Broadway production, cast her opposite Meryl Streep in 1983s Silkwood.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

One of my favorite quotes is Bergen Evans’ “We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.”

In Jimmy Dean the past of 1955 and the present of 1975 play out simultaneously on opposite sides of mirrors situated behind the Woolworth’s soda fountain counter; each side serving to illuminate and provide insight and counterpoint to the actions and motivations of the characters.

I’ve never seen a theatrical production of this film, but on the DVD commentary, the playwright says it was Altman’s idea (one he didn’t agree with) to have the same actors play their adult and 16-year-old selves. Maybe the decision isn’t true to Graczyk’s vision, but Altman’s idea is makes for a marvelous visual commentary on how these characters never change. Watching the 1955 sequences played by the mature actresses reinforced for me the feeling that the seeds of what these characters would become has already taken root. It’s a creative choice that imbues Graczyk's sometimes overstressed plot points with poignancy and poetry.

Maybe people don't change. Perhaps we just never saw who they really were.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Robert Altman has often expressed a dislike of idol worship and fame culture, feeling it distracts people from looking at their own problems and, like religion, encourages them not to think for themselves. It's certainly a theme he’s addressed before in his films (Nashville, Buffalo Bill & the Indians, HealtH, and The Player).

In a 1982 interview for New York Magazine, Robert Atman stated that one of the main reasons he was drawn to making Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean was to counterbalance his 1957 documentary, The James Dean Story. A sparse, nonsensationalistic look at the brief life of the actor he felt was misunderstood and subverted into a work of hagiography by James Dean cultists.

Thanks to the internet, I at last got to see that for-years-rumored-about nude photo of James Dean that figures in the narrative and Stella Mae paid over $50 dollars for (Edna Louise: "Is that a tree branch in his hand, or what?"). I don't think it looks much like him, but I do love a good myth.

Altman’s adaptation of Graczyk’s play, which depicts the most devout of Dean’s worshippers as an intensely unbalanced woman coping with the emptiness of her existence by shrouding herself in an elaborate delusion, does indeed stand in stark contrast to the harmless, romanticized view of fandom promoted by the media and so-called entertainment news. A point of view all the more rarefied when applied to otherwise unassailable pop-cultural icons like James Dean, Audrey Hepburn, and Marilyn Monroe.

But what I found most provocative and what gave me the most food for thought in Jimmy Dean is how ingeniously it dramatized the two-way mirror effect of idol worship.

One side of the mirror is idealized fantasy, the other is reality. The idealized side is the side we project ourselves into when we escape into movies or obsess over the lives of celebrities. There, time is frozen. We don’t have to grow up, and the only risk is that it can become a time-stealing distraction.

The reality side of the mirror offers nothing but the naked lightbulb of having to look clearly at ourselves and our lives. Tragedy is when the world of dreams feels so compelling to us, reality pales in comparison. Salvation comes through the realization that it is only on the reality side of the mirror where genuine happiness and fulfillment is possible.

Altman may have disliked celebrity culture, but idol-worship (in the form of the standing-room-only
throngs crammed into the Martin Beck Theater to see Cher's legit stage debut)
played a huge role in the play lasting even 52 performances

Like a great many gay men of my generation who grew up feeling isolated and misunderstood, movies were my solace, escape, salvation, and inspiration. I grew up loving movies and movie stars, and, as the title of this blog asserts, they were the stuff to inspire dreams. I was one of the lucky ones in that I didn’t lose myself in my love of movies (well, not completely) and that my own pop cultural obsession (Xanadu…yes, THAT Xanadu) altered the course of my life and led me to a profession which has been more fulfilling to me than I ever could have imagined.

Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is a reminder that the arts are here to help us better cope with life, not retreat from it.

BONUS MATERIAL
Sandy Dennis' character in this film claims that her child is the son of James Dean. In the 2007 documentary Confessions of a Superhero, Christopher Dennis, a wannabe actor who dresses as Superman for tips in front of Grauman's Chinese theater, claims to be the secret son of Sandy Dennis.

Somewhat hooty 1982 TV commercial for the brief Broadway run of Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.

Robert Altman's documentary: The James Dean Story (1957) on YouTube.

Cher actually made her feature film debut playing herself opposite Sonny Bono in the musical comedy spoof, Good Times - 1967 (it's also director William Friedkin's first film, and is in its own way, every bit as terrifying as The Exorcist). In 1969 with a script by Bono, Cher made her dramatic acting debut in Chastity, A film in which she plays a hippie drifter with one facial expression. Both are available on YouTube and are prime examples of late-60s cinema.

The DVD of Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean has as its only extra feature, a great, many-axes-to-grind interview with playwright Ed Graczyk, who. while respectful, clearly did not relish working with Robert Altman. Like listening to an embittered Paul Morrissey griping about how Andy Warhol got all the credit for the films he directed, Graczyk seems loathe to extend any gratitude to Altman for his part in making Jimmy Dean the playwright's most well-known play. Instead he devotes considerable time detailing (in admittedly enjoyable behind-the-scenes- anecdotes) the many ways in which Altman deviated from his original concept.

The Disciples of James Dean - 1955
James Dean is the perfect pop culture icon. A figure of idolatry who didn't live long enough to
disappoint, disillusion, or age (in other words, seem human), Like all gods, he remains forever unchanged in a state of youthful perfection,

After more than a decade of shouldering, with both dignity and grace, the damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t burden of being Hollywood's first African-American superstar (the representative movie face of the entirety of black America, while at the same time liberal Hollywood’s unofficial Civil Rights symbol), Sidney Poitier’s appearance in the well-intentioned, but nonetheless cringe-worthy 1967 film, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, successfully brought his trademark Noble Negro character to its logical conclusion. I number myself among those who felt that by 1967, if Poitier's godlike paragon of Afro-American perfection was the kind of sugar necessary to make the medicine of interracial marriage go down, then the time had indeed come for a complete overhaul of the cinema image of the American black male.

Sidney Poitier as Jack Parks

Abbey Lincoln as Ivy Moore

Beau Bridges as Tim Austin

Lauri Peters as Gena Austin

Leon Bibb as Billy Talbot

Carroll O'Connor as Frank Austin

Nan Martin as Doris Austin

I was just ten-years-old at the time, but I recall Sidney Poitier being all over the place in 1967. First, there was To Sir With Love, which I went to see more times than I can count; In The Heat of the Night, which was powerful, but I can’t say I enjoyed it much; and the release of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? was such a major event in our household (my mom adored Poitier and was a Katherine Hepburn fan), it occasioned the rare movie outing for the entire family. (As much as I can't really abide the movie now, you have no idea what a groundswell of controversy it sparked when it came out. I also remember how scary it was that, no matter how divided everyone was about the film, the only ones leveling angry protests, violent threats, and acts of terrorism at theaters showing this almost comically circumspect movie were the KKK and white extremists.)

With Poitier starring in three such profitable and high-profile films in the same year, signs would seem to indicate the Academy Award-winning actor’s already illustrious career (1964 Best Actor -Lilies of the Field) was on the ascendance. But, irony of ironies, after being virtually the sole lead black actor working consistently in films for many years, Poitier's popularity started to decline in direct proportion to the emergence of the youth-market fueled, black film explosion of the 70s. With a new decade dawning, and with it, an exciting array of new black talent and afro-centric narratives filling movie screens; Poitier must have found it dismaying to have the very doors he had been so instrumental in opening for actors of color, suddenly closed to him.

40-year-old Sidney Poitier Grooves at a 60s Happening
Poitier's comforting, buttoned-down image began to look dated as the more militant 70s approached

Sidney Poitier’s screen persona – that of the non-threatening, nobly acquiescing, almost saintly black male – embodied the assimilationist ideals of the early days of the Civil Rights Movement. But it wasn’t long before factions of the African-American community began to find the sexless, selfless characters Poitier played in films like A Patch of Blue (1965) and Lilies of the Fieldmore representative of white fantasy than black reality. In the tumultuous social climate of the late 60s, as Civil Rights assimilation gave way to the more self-identifying thrust of the Black Power Movement, and galvanizing events like the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (four months after the release of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?) signaled a new self-determination and militancy; Poitier's image (inseparable from Poitier the actor) had become an anachronism.

Thus it was perhaps with no small sense of relief on his part, when Poitier was at last able to discard his socially-appointed halo and embark upon a series of human-scale roles designed to update and reconstruct his image. That he essentially had to write, produce, and eventually direct most of these roles in order to achieve this, points to the level of reluctance he faced within the industry when called upon to relate to him as anything other than a symbol of tolerance. In 1969s The Lost Man Poitier played a militant revolutionary (!), a single father in A Warm December (1973), and a thief in A Piece of the Action (1977). But his very first attempt at downsizing the saintly Poitier mystique was in the charming romantic comedy, For Love of Ivy.

Debunking the myth of the contented domestic,
happy to be "Like one of the family."

Jack - "Looks like you've got a pretty good setup here."
Ivy - "Too good!. I don't want to die here."
Jack - "You've got to die somewhere."
Ivy - "Well, isn't it better not to go ignorant and alone?"

The upscale suburban household of the Austin family is thrown into a tailspin when Ivy (Lincoln), the family maid of nine years, decides to quit, move to New York and attend secretarial school (in other words, make a life for herself). Certain she’s simply lonely, the younger members of the family, Tim & Gena (Bridges / Peters), elect to find her a boyfriend. Not just any suitor, since they certainly don’t want her falling in love and leaving, but someone who’s altar-shy and willing to wine and dine Ivy with no strings attached. Their best candidate for the job is Jack Parks (Poitier), the wealthy owner of a trucking company whose reputation as a swinger assures Ivy won’t be whisked away, and whose illegal mobile gambling operation makes him a shoo-in for a little maid-courtship extortion.

With Ivy thinking she's dating Jack just to help the family business (the Austin's own a department store and contracts with Jack's trucking company), and Jack doing it to avoid exposure of his illegal nighttime activities, each thinks they know what they're getting into as the embark on their arranged rendezvous. And if you’ve ever seen a movie in your life before, there’s no mystery as to how things between Ivy and Jack will play out.

The Set-Up

The plot is negligible, but the context is what fascinates. The well-intentioned Austins mistake their need for Ivy with actual concern for her welfare. She's a buffer between the acrimonious father and son, a sister of sorts to the daughter, and she completely runs the household. White liberalism is lampooned, black self-reliance is championed, and among a cast of characters at loggerheads over how to best live their lives, Ivy emerges the one clear-headed individual who never strays from her desire to have a life of her own.

Genre-wise, it's all familiar territory that feels somehow unfamiliar due to the fun of seeing how significantly these Doris Day / Rock Hudson tropes are turned on their heads when (at long last) the lovers at the center of their own narrative - permitted to be funny, determined, amorous, conflicted, self-assured, independent, and imperfect - are black. A rarity then, and not exactly a commonplace occurrence now.

For Love of Ivy was taken to task for being corny in the Swinging 60s. In today's atmosphere of misogynist, mean-spirited rom-coms, the respectful, genuinely sweet romance at the center of the film looks positively cutting-edge.

With a screenplay adapted by Robert Alan Aurthur (All that Jazz) from a 19-page story treatment written by Poitier himself (that was turned down by three studios), For Love of Ivy is one of those familiar, old-fashioned romantic comedies built around a grand deception. A lie first contrived to bring the lovers together, followed by a misunderstanding, ending with a romantic reconciliation. It’s exactly the kind of movie Hollywood has churned out for years. And therein lies the twist.

For the longest time, Hollywood’s depiction of African-Americans in movies has been defined by the narrow parameters of symbols, stereotypes, sidekicks, or vessels of suffering in need of white rescue. Characters just being black and human in a motion picture is still such an original concept, you could use plots from silent movies, but with blacks in the leads, the film would still come out looking like an innovative act of cultural insurgency.

Paraphrasing the sentiments of a movie critic from the time – after having played so many solemn, “uplift the race” roles, Poitier, as a black movie star, was more than entitled to exercise his right to appear in the same mindless, escapist movie fare white stars like Frank Sinatra and Tony Curtis had been making for years. Sidney Poitier had earned the right to be in an amusing diversion.

After nearly 20 years in the business, leading man Sidney Poitier finally gets a love scene

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

When a film dismissed at the time of its release for being too light and conventional provides: 1) One of the screen’s most independent, dimensional black female characters, 2) The still-rare occurrence of a black romance at the center of a mainstream, non-niche motion picture, 3) An Afro-centric narrative in which the goals and objectives of the black characters are in no way invested in, nor dependent upon, the happiness of white characters - perhaps there’s a bigger statement to be made about why it is today, during the Administration of our first black President, Hollywood still seems unable to move beyond butlers (The Butler- 2013), maids (The Help- 2011), and slaves (not enough space to list them all).

Ivy Is The Only Austin "Family" Member Required To Use The Service Entrance
This silent, throwaway shot of Ivy returning home from a date contains the crux of the reason she wants to leave. A reason right under the noses of the people unable to understand why she wants to quit.

I have a real soft spot in my heart for For Love of Ivy...and not just because I find Poitier and Lincoln to be an absolutely adorable couple. The gimmicky aspects of its plot notwithstanding, I have a huge sentimental response to For Love of Ivy because the character of Ivy Moore is one of the most satisfyingly believable black female characters I've ever seen in a film.

Surprisingly, this feather-light comedy was directed by Daniel Mann, the director behind the film adaptations of the dramas, Come Back Little Sheba, The Rose Tattoo, and I'll Cry Tomorrow. Sidney Poitier was inspired to write For Love of Ivy to provide his four daughters with an alternative to the usual glamorized (fetishized?) images of black women onscreen. Stars like Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, and Diahann Carroll (with whom Poitier once had an affair), were favored for their Eurocentric features and exotic similarity to white actresses. Poitier wished to present a more authentic representation of black womanhood. And authenticity is what I find in the character of Ivy, as embodied by the late Abbey Lincoln. Ivy is a dignified, independent woman who wants love and a better life, but isn’t looking to be rescued or saved by anyone but herself. She's a woman who only works as a maid, she is not a maid. An important distinction.

"What do you want?"
"I'm not sure. I just know I haven't got it now."

When I watch For Love of Ivy, I see my four sisters, my mom, and every black woman who has ever had to define herself, for herself, because society, by and large, can't be bothered. I have a huge sentimental response to the character of Ivy because, when I was small, my mother worked for a time as a maid. I was a pre-teen when my parents divorced. I remember my mom going to school and getting her driver's license, eventually working her way to a managerial position in government at San Francisco’s Federal Building. All the while sending all of us kids to private Catholic school. That she eventually came to meet and marry a terrific, well-to-do gentleman who was her own Sidney Poitier figure (and a dynamite father figure for me), making it possible for her to quit her job and live out her days in comfort, is the kind of real-life "Hollywood" ending for a deserving woman that makes the fairy tale romanticism of For Love of Ivy feel a good deal less sappy for me than perhaps it does to others.

Self-reliant and proud, my mother, as remarkable as she sounds, isn’t really unique among black women. There's lots like her around. But I never saw any black women like my mother represented in the movies (glamorized and glorified, to boot) until I saw For Love of Ivy.

Principally a jazz singer and songwriter, here is 25-year-old Abbey Lincoln as she
appeared in the 1956 film, The Girl Can't Help It

PERFORMANCES

For all its abundant charm, For Love of Ivy is a bit of a puzzler when it comes to comedic tone. It’s like when I was a kid and easy-laugh sitcoms like Gilligan’s Island aired before laugh-free “heartwarming” humor shows like The Ghost & Mrs. Muir. I always felt like my funny bone had a short in it or something.

Watching For Love of Ivy, comedically speaking, I get a sense of where it’s coming from: It’s partly one of those fraught-with-complications Cary Grant romantic comedies like That Touch of Mink; part class-satire along the lines of Goodbye Columbus; and part bourgeois romantic comedy, like Cactus Flower.

Making her film debut (far right): Jennifer O'Neill of The Summer of '42 (1971)

Making her film debut (far right): Gloria Hendry, the first black Bond Girl in Live & Let Die (1973)

I say I get a sense of where the film is coming from because, comedy-wise, For Love of Ivy never really arrives. Movies like this thrive on wit and a kind of effortless effervescence, but the comedy rhythms in For Love of Ivy always feel a little off. Beau Bridges as one of those super clean-cut hippies that only exist in the movies, has great comic energy. He’s a terrific actor capable of conveying sincerity while inhabiting the genre-mandated hyperactivity of expression, inflection, and body language. But too often it feels as if he’s working a particularly tough room.

Tim Harbors A Not-Too-Secret Crush On Ivy
No stranger to onscreen interracial relationships, Bridges fell in love with Diana Sands in 1970s The Landlord, and most recently, portrayed Tracee Ellis Ross' father on the TV show, Black-ish

Sidney Poitier, playing a morally dubious character for the first time since Blackboard Jungle (1955), looks to be enjoying himself, and is more relaxed than he’s been in years. Cutting a dashing figure in his tux and fairly oozing sex appeal and star quality, Poitier finally gets the chance to look the part of the matinee idol he’s always been. Poitier has a splendid chemistry and rapport with co-star Lincoln, but when it comes to the comedy; the palpable intelligence behind his piercing eyes has a way of grounding even the most convoluted of plot contrivances in an emotional reality antithetical to the breeziness of tone required of material like this. (It would be six years before Poitier loosened up enough to give his disarmingly funny performance in Uptown Saturday Night -1974.)

Not really given much to do in this film, Nan Martin would go on to play a tougher version of the same role the following year in Goodbye Columbus. Carroll O'Connor , along with his fame from All in the Family, would play the Rod Steiger role in the long-running TV series based on Poitier's film, In The Heat of the Night

But while the broader comedy doesn't always catch fire in For Love of Ivy, the very gentle, very affecting character humor and touching relationships are handled rather extraordinarily. Beau Bridges' character is a misguided liberal, but his very real affection for Ivy is a rather endearingly portrayed.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Displaying that rare brand of professional generosity I generally associate with Clint Eastwood - being one the few leading men willing to hand over his film to his female co-star - Sidney Poitier allows For Love Ivy to be Abbey Lincoln's show completely. And the picture is all the better for it.

For Love of Ivy Should Have Made the Beautiful and Gifted Abbey Lincoln a Movie Star
She was nominated for a Golden Globe for this, but wisely (in terms of holding on to her sanity and dignity) stuck to her music career. She didn't make another film until 1990- Spike Lee's Mo' Betta Blues.

She's a natural in capturing the essence of a uniquely contemporary female character who possesses a a great deal of old-fashioned charm. Word has it that Lincoln, a singer and Civil Rights activist, for whom Ivy represents just her 2nd film (first: the must see 1964 drama, Nothing But a Man), beat out 300 actresses for the role. I can easily see why. She's one of a kind.

From beginning to end, Lincoln commands the screen in a way born not so much of technical skill, but rather of an ability to appear 100% genuine every single minute.
In the film's brightly-lit, Love American Style gloss, Lincoln stands out as the real thing.
There's not a single moment in the entire film wheres she's present that doesn't fill my heart up. In fact, I honestly have yet to watch the film dry-eyed. Her character is so endearing and Lincoln's performance at times so emotionally raw, I've pretty much got the waterworks going full-throttle by the film's conclusion.

Get Out Your Handkerchiefs
I have many favorite scenes, but this one slays me. Poitier has never been more charming,
and Lincoln is a heartbreaker

Along with Two for the Road and A New Leaf, For Love of Ivy is one of my top favorite romantic comedies. Nostalgia plays a role (after all, it was released the same year as so many of my most beloved films: Rosemary's Baby, Barbarella, Secret Ceremony, etc.). As does sentiment (Poitier & Lincoln make a sweet couple). But there's also a bittersweet element. I think of Sidney Poitier's heroic career and all he sacrificed in the way of personal choice in roles because he believed he had a responsibility. I think of an actress as gifted as Abbey Lincoln and all the great performances of hers we've been deprived of because nobody was writing roles like this for black women.

And then I think of how things are today, and that it feels sometimes like so little progress has been made. I mean, can you imagine what Tyler Perry would do to a remake of For Love of Ivy? (For Love of Medea) or how hard I have to wrack my brain to think of the last time I saw a black female on character onscreen with as much dimension as Ivy Moore?

Although For Love of Ivy has been a favorite of mine for years, how I came about rewatching it is due to my being contacted by Deep THOTS, a weekly pop-culture podcast hosted by the amazing Angie Thomas, and asked to participate in a conversation contrasting the depiction of domestics/maids in For Love of Ivy and The Help. What a difference 45-years can make...in anti-progress! You can listen to the spirited podcast HERE.

BONUS MATERIAL
Quincy Jones' title song was For Love of Ivy's sole Oscar nomination. Listen.

Nothing But a Man (1964) - Complete film available on YouTube

This updated and expanded repost of an earlier essay is part of The Lauren Bacall Blogathon hosted by The Good Old Days of ClassicHollywood. Visit the site for more posts from participating blogs.

At an age when most of her industry peers were retired, forgotten, or guesting on episodes of Fantasy Island and The Love Boat, 56-year old Lauren Bacall was enjoying a career resurgence and visibility rivaling her 1940s heyday when she was known as “The Look.” She was headlining in the Broadway musical, Woman of the Year; topping the bestseller charts with the paperback release of her 1978 memoir, By Myself; shilling everything from jewelry to cat food in TV and print ads; and, most remarkably in those pre-Meryl Streep/Helen Mirren years, starring in a $9 million major motion picture release.

The Fame Game

The Fan, a suspense thriller based on Bob Randall’s 1977 epistolary novel about an aging Broadway star stalked by an obsessive fan, gave Bacall arguably the biggest role of her career. Certainly the first in which she’d be required to carry the entire film on her own.

Filmed on location in New York from March to July of 1980, The Fan was poised for release at the most opportune time to take advantage of Bacall’s already-in-motion Broadway and bookshelf publicity. Unfortunately, as The Fan’s PR-friendly release date of March 15, 1981 neared, several real-life, obsessive fan-based tragedies (targeting John Lennon and President Ronald Reagan) conspired to make this fame-culture melodrama seem more an exercise in bad taste than ripped-from-today's-headlines relevance.

Lauren Bacall as Sally Ross

Michael Biehn as Douglas Breen

Maureen Stapleton as Belle Goldman

James Garner as Jake Berman

Hector Elizondo as Inspector Raphael Andrews

Kurt Johnson as David Barnum

If musical theater geeks, Glee habitués, and folks capable of making it through an entire Tony Awards broadcast ever longed for an 80s slasher film to call their own; then The Fan more than fills the Playbill. This unappetizingly bloody, yet oh-so delectable / derisible blend of backstage musical, 1940s career-woman soap opera, slasher-flick, and woman-in-peril melodrama, is high camp movie nirvana. An upscale cousin of the hagsploitation genre of the 60s, The Fan may substitute glamour for grotesquery, but the film's raison d'être remains the prolonged persecution and victimization of a mature classic Hollywood star.

Alas, when it opened in theaters in the spring of 1981, The Fan– to quote one of the hooty Louis St. Louis (Grease 2) showtunes sung in the film – “Got No Love” from either audiences or critics. Patrons old enough to be enticed by the film's elder cast risked having their blue rinses turned stark white by the movie's copious bloodshed and the artless, Bogie-wouldn't-stand-for-this dialog: “Dearest bitch, see how accessible you are? How would you like to be fucked by a meat cleaver?” Similarly, the teen demographic ordinarily drawn to slasher films didn’t quite know what to make of a movie set in the Sardi's and cigarettes world of the New York theater, totally devoid of comely, scantily-clad bimbos, and whose median character age hovered somewhere around the fifty-five mark. A wholly uninspired publicity campaign only added to the film’s troubles.

Had The Fan been a play, it would have closed in Boston. Whisked off screens within weeks of its release, The Fan resurfaced with some regularity on HBO and Showtime throughout the 80s before ultimately disappearing into relative obscurity. Obscurity so complete that Robert De Niro's unrelated but same-titled 1996 sports-themed film has totally eclipsed Bacall's The Fan in the public's memory.
Happily, The Fan's release on DVD has rekindled awareness of this very 80s curio. A glimpse back at a New York still atmospherically seedy. A vision of a world populated with record stores, typewriters, payphones, legwarmers, and heavy smokers. All with nary a Starbucks in sight. And while no undiscovered classic, The Fan does have its merits (most of them camp-related, I'm afraid) which make it a movie worthy of rediscovery. Not the least of them being Lauren Bacall, a smoking, drinking, tough-as-nails star of Broadway and the silver screen, playing a smoking, drinking, tough-as-nails star of Broadway and the silver screen. And convincingly, too!

The psychological subtheme of The Fan

And the audience LOVES me! And I love them! And they love me for lovin' them and I love them for lovin' me. And we love each other. And that's 'cause none of us got enough love in out childhoods.

And that's show biz, kid! - Fred Ebb

No low-budget gore-fest populated by a cast of nondescript teens stalked by a masked phantom, The Fan was conceived as a stylish, A-List, Hitchcockian thriller along the lines of Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) and Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980). The latter garnering 50s sexpot, Angie Dickinson, some of the best notices of her career. At least that's how things started.

Produced by movie/music mogul Robert Stigwood on the downturn side of a 70s winning streak that included youth-centric films like Jesus Christ Superstar, Saturday Night Fever, and Tommy; The Fan was Stigwood’s most expensive film to date and first stab (if you’ll pardon the pun) at cracking the adult market. To this end he amassed a distinguished cast of New York actors, pedigreed Broadway composers (Marvin Hamlisch and Tim Rice collaborated on two – fairly terrible – original songs), and the up-and-coming talents of first-time director Edward Bianchi (from TV commercials and music videos) and choreographer Arlene Philips (Can’t Stop The Music, Annie).

If you've ever seen a Lauren Bacall musical, you know that her being lifted and carried about is a choreography requisite. I was surprised by how many online reviewers, questioning Bacall's "believability" as a Broadway musical star in The Fan, later express surprise upon learning she was a rel-life musical theater star, a Best Actress Tony Award winner for Applause and Woman of the Year.

But as the saying goes, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and somewhere between screenplay to movie-house, The Fan transmogrified into a film beset by:
1) Bad decisions: Friday the 13 became a hit during The Fan's post-production, prompting Paramount to order reshoots to ratchet up the violence.
2) Bad timing and bad decisions: Three months before The Fan's release, John Lennon was killed by an obsessive fan outside NY’s Dakota apartments (as it happens, also the home of Lauren Bacall), after which it is said the film's original downbeat ending (if true to the novel) underwent some 11^th-hour tinkering.
3) Just generally lousy luck: Not only was Lauren Bacall's promotion of The Fan limited exclusively to her expressing to the press her disappointment in the finished product, but three weeks into The Fan's less-than-illustrious release, an attempt was made on President Reagan's life by a Jodie Foster-obsessed fan.

Bacall the Buzzkill
Bacall: "The Fan is much more graphic and violent than when I read the script."
Anna Maria Horsford (who appeared in Stigwood's Times Square in 1980) as detective Emily Stolz

Stigwood severely scaled back his usual bombastic pre-release publicity for The Fan (STD results have been released with more fanfare), while Paramount added a disclaimer to its theatrical trailers claiming The Fan was in no way inspired by the tragic death of John Lennon. This latter decision prompting the outspoken Bacall to declare to People magazine: “I think it’s disgusting, revolting and exploitive!”

In the end it didn't really matter, for The Fan wound up being one of those rare films capable of offering audiences simultaneously contradictory experiences – none of them satisfactory. Stylishly shot, overflowing in chichi urban gloss, and embellished with a chilling Pino Donaggio score (Carrie, Don’t Look Now) The Fan ultimately failed to find an audience because it clearly didn't know who the hell that was. Classic movie fans familiar with Lauren Bacall thought the film was too classy to be so trashy, slasher fans thought the film wasn't trashy enough. Gays had their own problems with the film.

Strangers in the Night

The Fan did itself no favors by alienating the very audience most receptive to a film offering up ample doses musical theater, backstage drama, showtunes, tight male bodies in various states of undress, and Lauren Bacall in full Margo Channing mode. On the heels of Windows (1980), a stalker thriller about a lesbian psychopath, and Cruising (1980) a crime thriller about a homosexual psychopath; many members of the gay community felt The Fan's closeted theater-queen stalker was one gay psycho too many.

That wasn’t me, however. I’d read The Fan back in 1978, really getting a kick out of how the book used the thriller genre to comment on what I’ve always felt to be the odd love /hate relationship between stars and their adoring public. As a fan of Lauren Bacall from her movies with Bogart on The Late Show, the Broadway musical Applause (1973 TV broadcast), and Murder on the Orient Express; I was thrilled when I heard she had been cast.

More exciting for me still was that Edward Bianchi was hired to direct and Arlene Phillip was to do the choreography. Bianchi & Phillips had collaborated on a series of eye-popping Dr, Pepper commercials in the late 70s for the advertising agency of Young & Rubicam that inspired me in many of my film school classes. When I also learned that Broadway great Maureen Stapleton had joined the cast and that Bacall’s rumored paramour, James Garner was also on board ; The Fan swiftly became one of the most eagerly-awaited films of the year for me.

I saw The Fan on opening day at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, and the smallish audience of young people in attendance (clearly in search of a good scare) was underwhelmed. I, on the other hand, felt as though I’d died and gone to camp film heaven. Not since Eyes of Laura Mars had I seen a thriller capable of being enjoyed on so many levels at once. I saw it three times before it disappeared from theaters.

Shot on location, The Fan provides many great glimpses of of 80s-era New York.
Here the famed Shubert Theater is the site for Sally Ross' opening night in Never Say Never; the fictional musical providing The Fan with so much of its camp appeal

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

What brings me back to The Fan time and time again are its many sequences depicting the behind-the-scenes creation of the fictional Broadway musical, Never Say Never. Much is made of it being Sally Ross’ singing and dancing debut, and we don't doubt it for a minute. Bacall's foghorn baritone and reliance on chorus boys to lug and lift her about give the scenes a comic authenticity.

Populated with recognized Broadway dancers, shot in actual NY rehearsal studios, with a knowing attention to procedural detail; the show in question may look terrible, but these sequences are great fun. The 80s vibe is irresistible (all those short-shorts, spandex, legwarmers, and Arlene Philips' trademark Hot Gossip choreography), and the risible music ("No energy crisis, my professional advice is...") gets caught in your head like an earwig. Of course, it certainly doesn't hurt that I saw this film during my early days as a dancer and that in 1982, when I took my first trip to New York, I studied dance at Jo Jo's, the studio used in the film.

All the Boys Love Sally

Choreographer Arlene Phillips wouldn't actually choreograph for
Broadway until 1987's Starlight Express

Call Her Miss Ross
Broadway dancer Justin Ross (l.) appeared in the film version of A Chorus Line,
and dancer Reed Jones (r.) originated the role of Skimbleshanks in Cats

PERFORMANCES

If you’re going to make a film about the kind of old-school, glamorous, show-biz diva capable of inciting the flames of obsessive fandom, you couldn’t do much better than landing all-around class-act, Lauren Bacall. Her gravitas as a full-fledged movie star from the golden era gives The Fan a shot of instant legitimacy every time she appears. In one of the largest roles of her career, Bacall is not always filmed as flatteringly as you'd imagine, but the effect is rather refreshing. She looks marvelously lived-in, and her still-striking looks serve as a welcome change from the botoxed mannequins we've grown used to. Playing a role that can't be considered much of a stretch in some ways, she's awfully good. So good in fact, that I kept wishing the film would just allow for the natural character drama of this ageing star grappling with loneliness, self-doubt, and vulnerability, play itself out minus all the genre machinations.

Bacall's appearance on Garner's TV show, The Rockford Files in 1979, followed by their appearing together in Robert Altman's HealtH (1980), and then here in The Fan, had gossip-columnist tongues wagging about a romance between the two

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

The 80s come vividly alive in the film's Broadway musical sequences, which are sort of Solid Gold meets Can't Stop The Music. As would be the case with the Broadway musical numbers in 1983s Staying Alive, it's near-impossible to imagine just what kind of Broadway this could be. The numbers look more appropriate to a Las Vegas revue.

A Remarkable Woman

Hearts, Not Diamonds

Disco Bacall - Has to be seen (and heard) to be believed

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I've never considered The Fan to be as bad a film as its reputation has led people to believe. Its screenplay is clichéd to be sure (the stage doorman is actually named “Pop”) and the violence needlessly gruesome for such a visually distinguished and stylish film (Bianchi’s music video background is in full evidence), but with a provocative theme and talented cast, The Fan has quite a bit going for it even with its flaws. One might have wished for a little more finesse in the areas of motivation and character, but I seriously have a soft spot in my heart for this movie...mostly centered around the Broadway setting, the images of a still gritty and grimy New York, and reminders of my early years in dance. And of course, it really is great to see late-career Bacall - with that amazing Gena Rowlands-like mane of hair - command the screen once more. Who was it that said, "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be"?

BONUS MATERIAL

"Deep Brewed Flavah!"

During the 80s Lauren Bacall's commercials for High Point instant coffee were the stuff of legend. In honor of The Fan, here's one of her most Sally Ross, "theatah"-themed ones. HERE

Before "Be a Pepper!" became the company's slogan, Edward Bianchi directed this stylish and award-winning 1975 Dr. Pepper commercial. HERE

I’ve always been a sucker for playwright Tennessee Williams’ overheated southern gothics.
By the time most of the films adapted from his plays began airing regularly on late-night TV, Williams’ trademark psychoanalytic, sweat ‘n’ lust domestic melodramas – so popular in the 40s and 50s – had long gone out of fashion. But watching these movies as a kid gave me the impression of adulthood as this distant, mysterious wonderland where one’s life would be ruled by fiery passions and profound emotions, and where the simplest, most unassuming countenances concealed deep wellsprings of poetic sensitivity.

Admittedly, I couldn’t always distinguish actual Tennessee Williams movies from look-alike works from William Inge (Come Back Little Sheba), Eugene O’Neill (Desire Under the Elms), Carson McCullers (The Member of the Wedding), Lonnie Coleman (Hot Spell), or William Faulkner (The Long Hot Summer). But as each film seemed to reinforce the same themes ("Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you - gently, with love, and hand your life back to you. Like something golden you let go of."); they might well have sprung from the same imagination.

The Emotionally Unavailable Man

When I was young and my entire world not much larger than the size of my family, I responded to the way Williams’ domestic dramas gave the mundane conflicts of the American household the scope and grandeur of Greek tragedy. In my adolescence, I related to his characters’ flawed humanity and struggle with self-forgiveness. When I was a teenager and became more aware of the hormonal drives propelling Williams’ narratives, I was excited by his introduction of implicit and codified homosexual longing – inevitably tortured – through characters seen (Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof); unseen (Blanche’s husband in A Streetcar Named Desire); male (Sebastian inSuddenly, Last Summer); and female (Karen Stone in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone).
Young adulthood brought forth in me both a heretofore untapped propensity for supercilious scoffing and an appreciation of camp; two dubious talents put to good use when confronted by some of the more outdated aspects of Williams’ oeuvre, and 50s-era Hollywood's quaint notions of what constituted "steamy." A feeling only heightened by my fondness at the time for those brutally trenchant “Family” skits on The Carol Burnett Show. Those hilariously acerbic episodes of familial discord were so well-written, yet so exaggerated, they forever altered my ability to take the southern gothic genre nearly as seriously as I had in my youth.

Elizabeth Taylor as Margaret (Maggie) Pollitt

Paul Newman as Brick Pollitt

Burl Ives as Big Daddy

Judith Anderson as Ida "Big Momma" Pollitt

Jack Carson as Gooper "Brother-Man" Pollitt

Madeline Sherwood as Mae "Sister-Woman" Pollitt

Life experience and changing times have sapped many Tennessee Williams’ films of much of their initial profundity for me, leaving in its place a kind of winsome nostalgia for a time when Williams’ ennobling of the outcast and defense of the delicate-of-spirit proved the perfect balm for my adolescent insecurities. But the richness of his characters, poetry of language, and finely-observed details of familial tension still have the power to engross. And if every so often his movies lapse into campiness…well, these days that only serves to sweeten the experience.

One of Williams’ more accessible films is Cat on a Hot Tin Roof , his 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning play adapted for the screen (Williams would say bowdlerized) in 1958 by director Richard Brooks (Looking for Mr. Goodbar) and screenwriter James Poe (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?). Parodied, imitated, and discussed to a fare-thee-well, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and the saga of the Mississippi Pollitts –a family of epic dysfunction long before such a term existed – is too familiar to warrant a summary (those who need it can find one HERE).
But Maggie the Cat, Brick, Big Momma, Big Daddy, Gooper & Mae and their troop of little no-neck monsters, occupy a short list of Williams characters so colorfully drawn and finely realized onscreen; just their names alone evoke images of real-life, flesh-and-blood beings with lives that extend beyond the celluloid frame. Not all of Williams’ characters strike me this way, but to this list I’d add Blanche DuBois, Stanley Kowalski, and Sebastian Venable; the latter of whom I can see plain as day in spite of his never being shown.

"They've brought the whole bunch here like animals to display at a county fair."
Monster of Fertility, Mae Pollitt, nee Flynn, and Her Brood of No-Necks

I think Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is the very first Tennessee Williams film I ever saw. Certainly, coming as I do from an extended family arguably as dysfunctional and just a shade more Machiavellian, it’s the first Tennessee Williams movie I actually “got.” Which is to say, at my young age. I was able to follow it. Not necessarily grasp with insight any of what the film had to say about things like, the duality of lying – how people use lies to both protect and to harm; the crippling, self-destructiveness of guilt; the relativity of love and truth; and the indomitability of the self-preservation instinct, aka that cat staying on the tin roof as long it can.

Like those shiny shells the surf leaves on the beach that require minimal effort to spot and pick up, the things that most entertained me about Cat on a Hot Tin Roof were primarily on its surface. I loved the setup: over the course of a long, hot summer day (I learned early that there's no such thing as winter in southern gothic), a family estranged and at odds is forced to interact and put on a good face on the occasion of Big Daddy's 65th birthday. Possibly his last.
Beautifully shot, well-cast, and finely acted, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a finger-lickin', family-size, southern-fried fracas with overlays of Freudian psychology. As often as not, the characters lie to each other with the same alacrity with which they lie to themselves, and when not repressing some deep, dark secret, are pressing forth some hidden agenda. Resentments, revelations and epiphanies flow as freely as the bourbon from Brick's bottomless booze bottle, while unsure southern accents clash musically in the background. It's great stuff that I've come to appreciate more as I've grown older.

Mendacity Manor

Unaware as I was of the Production Code-mandated excision of all references to homosexuality from Williams’ original play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof came across like every other overly-coy, repressed-yet sex-obsessed 50s-era movie: it wouldn’t stop talking about what it couldn’t speak aloud. I thought the entire hubbub in the movie surrounded Brick's belief that Maggie slept with his football buddy, Skipper, a man that Brick, love-starved from Big Daddy's inattention, held up as a hero. That's it. I never picked on any homosexual subtext beyond the fact that Paul Newman was impossibly gorgeous. A sizable chunk of my early memories of watching Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on TV are scene after scene of characters proffering endless variations on:“Don’t say it, Maggie!”; “I’m gonna talk about it!”; “Tell him! Go on, tell him the truth!”; "It’s got to be told!”; "First you've got to tell me!"
Yeesh! Just say it already!

"When a marriage goes on the rocks...the rocks are there, right there!"

The anthology TV program, Love, American Style was still on the air the first time I saw Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. An identical brass bed was featured in several of the comedy show's episodes and black-out skits (above), contributing to my feeling that sections of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof played out like an episode titled, "Love and the Deep Dark Secret"

I also remember being distracted by Paul Newman’s immobile, insanely photogenic face. Easy on the eyes as he is, he goes through the entire film with but a single, all-purpose expression: smoldering insouciance. Sure, he's playing a character all-bottled up and cut-off, and perhaps my biggest complaint is how the character is conceived in the first place; but even those cool blue eyes fail to register much. Every close up looks like the same GQ Magazine cover. I guess they don't call him "Brick" for nothing.

Winner of the Keanu Reeves / Kristen Stewart / Sean Combs one-face-fits-all Sphinx Award

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Over the years, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has been restored to Williams’ preferred version in any number of permutations (two are linked in the Bonus Materials section below). But, as gratifying as it is to finally see the entire play as it was originally intended, the film version remains my favorite.
Why?
Because even at its most frank, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a seriously closeted play. Nearly 2½ hours are devoted to a man turning himself inside out over the shameful prospect that he might be gay. Another man kills himself over the fact. I recognize that as the work of a repressed playwright in a repressed era, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is daring and groundbreaking as hell, but contemporary actors tackling this material today always seem forced and false. They over-emote and practically burst blood vessels portraying characters who are motivated by pretense and a need to play things close to their vest.
My feeling is that if I’m going to enjoy a work of closeted art, there’s something to be said for seeing it with all its repression intact.

The movie version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof feels every inch a product of the 1950s. It’s an uptight, skirting-the-issue, kind of movie that was made and takes place within in the very era that created the Bricks and Skippers of our society. In some odd, meta kind of way, there is something perfect about a movie dealing with latent homosexuality, which, in its telling, leaps through hoops and fire in an effort to avoid even mentioning the word. The drastic alterations Cat on a Hot Tin Roof underwent to make it to the screen communicate Williams' themes better than he knew.

Madeline Sherwood (who I only knew as Reverend Mother on The Flying Nun) and Burl Ives
(who will always be Sam the Snowman from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) recreated
the roles they originated on Broadway

PERFORMANCES
What makes Cat on a Hot Tin Roof so re-watchable for me are the performances. All of which are standouts. Everybody is in fine form (even Newman as the immovable Brick, has his moments). The feel of a great ensemble cast is captured in the easy, familiar way in which the characters interact, and happily, Williams' play and the screenplay affords each with at least one big moment to shine.
Madeline Sherwood and Jack Carson are letter-perfect and a lot of fun. Sherwood's southern accent and single-minded, Lady Macbeth maneuvering are a constant delight.

"One more crack, Queenie..."

Burl Ives is perhaps my all-time favorite Big Daddy, although I suspect the effect of his performance was undermined somewhat in 1958 by his giving an almost identical one in Desire Under the Elms earlier the same year. And while my vote for favorite Big Momma has to be split evenly between Maureen Stapleton and Kim Stanley (the 1976 and 1984 TV-movie versions, respectively), Judith Anderson's atypically refined take on the role is surprisingly moving.

And then we come to Elizabeth Taylor. Given how many of her films have made their way onto this blog, it should come as no surprise that her Maggie the Cat is the central reason why Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has been a favorite of mine for all these years and only gets better with time. For me it really isn’t a matter of how well she embodies the character Tennessee Williams created (the screen Maggie is less tense, catty, and consumed with a clawed-her-way-up-from-nothing fear of poverty), it's that she succeeds in making Maggie both the heat and life force of the film.
Taylor is so celestially beautiful and appealing in the role, Brick doesn't come off troubled so much as having rocks in his head. Ironically, as rumors of Paul Newman's probable bisexuality began circulating after his death, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof reclaimed the gay subtext it fought so hard to lose.

Taylor's third husband, Mike Todd, was killed in a plane crash three weeks into the film's production

Even with that questionable southern accent of hers (“I caint! I caint!") no one (at least no one I've seen) can touch Taylor's Maggie. In this film she's more than a jewel; she’s the entire crown.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
It’s no secret that Tennessee Williams didn't care for the film version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. But Williams, like a lot of artists conflicted by a desire for legitimacy and popular success; tended to hedge his bets after the fact. Williams had a habit of willingly applying suggestions from directors (Elia Kazan, most explosively) with a talent for discerning popular appeal. But once a show proved successful, feelings of self-betrayal poisoned the pleasure of his many trips to the bank. This would result in Williams making a great show of giving self-serving statements to the press about how he'd had to compromise his principles in order to satisfy provincial sensibilities.
(John Lahr’s exceptional biography, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh recounts this pattern of behavior in delicious detail.)

Virtually the entire third act was rewritten for the film. Among the changes: a sentimental
backstory for Big Daddy, and a father and son reconciliation

Certainly the film version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof thoroughly subverts the entire theme of Williams’ play, but given his run-ins with the censors and Hollywood Production Code during the making of A Streetcar Named Desire six years earlier; one wonders what he possibly could have expected. Exactly what he got, it seems. For the half-million dollars he accepted from MGM for the rights to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof proved to be his guilt-ridden deal with the devil.

"I do love you Brick. I do!"

"Wouldn't it be funny if that were true?"

Above is how Cat on a Hot Tin Roof's last scene might have played out had the film kept Williams' original ending. But after 108 minutes of advance-retreat, Hollywood knew 1958 audiences would tear down the theater if these two beautiful specimens weren't granted their hard-won happy ending.

BONUS MATERIAL

The 1976 made-for-TV adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roofstarring Natalie Wood, Robert Wagner, Laurence Olivier, & Maureen Stapleton. (Features the Broadway ending.)

The 1984 made-for-TV adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof starring Jessica Lange, Tommy Lee Jones, Rip Torn, and Kim Stanley. Features Williams' preferred "original" ending, restored text, and at a running time of almost 2 ½ hours, is the most complete filmed staging.

Copyright © Ken Anderson

This forgotten little film has long been a favorite of mine and used to show up fairly regularly on late night television when I was a kid. Until it resurfaced recently on YouTube, I can say it’s easily been 40 years since I last saw this last-gasp effort in Hollywood’s love affair with the works of Faulkner, O’Neill, Williams, & Inge.

Adapted by Meade Roberts (The Fugitive Kind, Summer & Smoke) from William Inge’s little-known 1959 play,A Loss of Roses and directed by Franklin J Schaffner (Patton, The Planet of the Apes, Sphinx); The Stripper is, like a great many of my favorite films from the 50s – especially those written in the Southern Gothic / Midwest Melodrama tradition, a heavy slice of mordant Americana served up with plenty of lost illusions and broken dreams on the side.

Joanne Woodward as Lila Green

Richard Beymer as Kenny Baird

Claire Trevor as Helen Baird

Robert Webber as Ricky Powers

Shot in somber black and white (then de rigueur for contemplatively downbeat movies), The Stripper is the so-familiar-you’ll-swear-you’ve-seen-it-before story of Lila Green (Woodward); a down-on-her-luck wannabe actress touring with a seedy theatrical troupe (The Great Renaldo & Madame Olga: Magic & Mirth Par Excellence). Abandoned mid-tour in a small Kansas town by her equally seedy boyfriend, Ricky (Webber), Lila is forced to depend on the kindness of strangers. Not literal strangers, mind you, for Lila grew up in this town before a Betty Grable look-alike-contest was her second-class ticket to Hollywood. Merely friends from the past to whom Lila now appears as gaudy and out of place as a fur coat in July.

Kenny Thinks Lila Is Hot. She Is...It's Mid-Summer in Kansas
Before settling on the grossly misleading The Stripper, other titles considered for this screen adaptation
of A Loss of Roses were: Celebration, Woman of Summer, and A Woman in July

Lila secures temporary lodgings with Helen Baird (Trevor), a widow for whom she once babysat in her youth. Helen, now a fulltime nurse pulling swing shift as a fault-finding, overprotective mother-hen to her only son, Kenny (Beymer), is initially glad to be of help. She begins to doubt the soundness of her philanthropy when it becomes clear that the restless son she has such high hopes for has developed a major infatuation on the glamourous, at least ten-years-older, new tenant in stretch pants.

Just as the arrival of a train-hopping drifter shook up the small-town residents in William Inge’s Picnic, the emotional (and sexual) disruption instigated by the intrusion of Lila – a peroxided, emotionally-wounded, aging starlet with a squalid past and a childlike disposition – into the vaguely oedipal Baird household, is the source of The Stripper’s central conflict.

For Lila, the return to the birthplace of so many of her unrealized dreams rekindles a desire to reclaim her lost innocence. For Kenny, irresolute in his manhood over failing to fill the idealized shoes of his late father; Lila’s age and superficially worldly charms are like a beacon of maturity. Helen, conflicted in wanting Kenny to grow up and stand on his own two feet, yet saying things like, "You're all I have to live for," grows concerned when Kenny's intensifying infatuation with Lila turns to mutual attraction. She fears that Lila's bad influence will corrupt her son's interest in "good" girls like neighbor, Miriam Caswell (Carol Lynley), while hastening his inevitable departure.
In this environment, everyone seems to be looking to someone else for salvation, rescue, liberation or redemption.

Carol Lynley as Miriam Caswell

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
The Stripper is something of a “Best of” collection of what had become, by 1963, the over-familiar clichés in the Tennessee Williams/William Inge oeuvre (it was Williams’ The Glass Menagerie which inspired Inge to write his first play). Set in the fictional small town of Salinson, Kansas (the same town Kansas-born William Inge chose for hisplay, Picnic), The Stripper has it all: the emotionally fragile fallen woman; familial discord; small town provincialism; sexual restlessness; Freudian psychology; and the eternal battle between idealism and truth. And, of course, heat and summer used as a metaphor for passion.

Seeing the film again after so many years, it’s so clear to me why I was all over this genre of movie when I was young. First, they were accessible to my limited frame of knowledge and experience. Unlike James Bond movies that took place all over the world, or action adventures featuring acts of derring-do and non-stop danger; these films took place in familiar, low-tech settings of town and neighborhood. The drama was often operatically over-the-top, yet human-scale in that it concerned itself with relationships, family tensions, and the applicable-at-any-age struggle with how our character flaws work to keep happiness at bay.

Legendary real-life stripper Gypsy Rose Lee as Madam Olga St. Valentine
Louis Nye as Ronnie "The Great Renaldo" Cavendish

On the more “entertaining” side, not only were these films “daring” and “sex-obsessed” in ways suitable to a young person’s comprehension level (aka: all talk and no action), but the main characters were invariably women who could just as well have been gay men. Overwrought, theatrically histrionic gay men. I of course wasn’t aware of it at the time, but Williams and Inge (both closeted gay playwrights), were only able to express their truth through their female characters. Thus, their female protagonists were often imbued with a depth and dimensionality lacking in most roles for women written during this period.

As a youngster, the stoic, heteronormative macho leading man never spoke to any reality I knew. But I did recognize parts of myself in the bruised, vulnerable, idealistic outsiders Inge and Williams wrote so empathetically about.

Dreamers
Lila shows Kenny her prized possession: Film clips of her failed Hollywood screen test
for the 1955 Fred Astaire musical, Daddy Long Legs

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

As much as I enjoy this film, I’m inclined to agree when I encounter reviews labeling this movie “lesser Inge.” The Stripper has a lack of subtlety and obviousness of intent that made me think it was early William Inge (it a little like an episode from one of those 60s anthology TV programs like Playhouse 90). In reality, it’s based on the playwright’s first Broadway flop following a string of unbroken successes starting with Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1945), Come Back Little Sheba(1950), Picnic (1953), and Bus Stop (1955).

Indeed, as A Loss of Roses signaled the beginning of a reversal trend in Inge’s career, the problematic work play has a legacy of misfortune surrounding it rivaling that of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

Michael J. Pollard as Geoffrey "Jelly" Beamis
Pollard and Webber are the only members er of the original Broadway cast to recreate their roles in the film

The first victim was Shirley Booth, who had previously won both a Tony and an Oscar with Inge’s Come Back Little Sheba, and accepted the role when promised the role of Helen would be made more prominent. Alas, Booth wound up quitting the show just days before its Broadway debut for the rumored reason that Inge was shifting the production to favor a Broadway neophyte he had a crush on. An actor by the name of Warren Beatty, making his Broadway debut.

The second victim was William Inge himself. For although he had faith in the play and expressed the belief that A Loss of Roses was a “Sure thing,” the play opened to disastrous reviews and closed after a mere 25 performances. It was Inge’s first flop, and one that so devastated him, he never had another stage success again.

The third victim was Warren Beatty. For although he was nominated for a Tony Award, the experience was so unpleasant, he never again appeared onstage. On the plus side, Inge's enduring crush gave Beatty (when Jane Fonda met Beatty for the first time in New York, she thought he was Inge's boyfriend) a foot-up in Hollywood. He made his film debut in Inge's Splendor in the Grass, and starred in the Inge-penned, All Fall Down, a 1962 film with an older woman/younger man theme similar to The Stripper.

Victim number four was 20^th Century Fox production head, Buddy Adler, who purchased the rights to A Loss of Roses for a whopping $400,000 (in 50s dollars!) before it opened strictly on the strength of Inge’s reputation. As he told columnist Louella Parsons“Yes, we paid a big price, but Inge writes only hits. He wrote 'Bus Stop' , 'Picnic,' and 'Dark at the Top of the Stairs.' There were a number of producers trying to get 'A Loss of Roses' so we were lucky to get it.”

Something's Gotta Give
As she strips, Lila sings the 1954 Johnny Mercer song Fred Astaire introduced in Daddy Long Legs - the movie she unsuccessfully screen-tested for. Ironically, the song is also the title (as Something's Got to Give) of Marilyn Monroe's last film. The Stripper was released a year after Monroe's death in August of 1962, and the movie is loaded with reminders of its being a vehicle originally intended for her.

Victim number five was Fox Studios. Adler purchased A Loss of Roses for then-under contract Marilyn Monroe, and teen heartthrob Pat Boone (!). Both turned the film down. Monroe (who enjoyed a great success with the film version of Inge’s Bus Stop in 1956) likely found the Lila character (a stripper with lousy taste in men, who at one time tried to kill herself and was institutionalized) a tad too close to home; while Boone objected on moral grounds, finding the illicit affair between the young man and slightly pathetic stripper all wrong for his image.

Victim number six was actor Richard Beymer. Boosted to leading man stardom after West Side Story(1961), The Stripper jinx apparently hit, because this was his last major motion picture.

Finally, victim number 7, Joanne Woodward. An Academy Award winner for The Three Faces of Eve(1957) , Woodward retired from the screen not long after marrying Paul Newman and having two children. The Stripperwas her to be her comeback vehicle, but its DOA arrival at the boxoffice got her career reemergence off to a rocky start from which it never fully recovered.

Helen Interprets Kenny's Birthday Gift as a Gesture to Replace his Father
A great many of the more unhealthier aspects of the mother-son relationship in
A Loss of Roses were excised when it became The Stripper

PERFORMANCES

While many found fault with Inge’s original play and Meade Robert’s considerably less sordid adaptation, critics were largely in agreement over the quality of Joanne Woodward’s performance. Overcoming a blonde, cotton candy wig that hovers at least an inch over her head, Woodward has some really remarkable moments playing character who’s part Blanche DuBois and part Charity Hope Valentine (and one can’t help but detect a bit of Ellen Green from Little Shop of Horrors).

Looking pretty spectacular in her Travilla wardrobe (Monroe’s designer), Woodward occasionally falls prey to the gimmicky tricks of smart actors trying to play dumb, but she truly shines in the film’s final scenes and achieves several moments of heartrending poignancy.

"I want my roses back."
Promotional stills of several sequences not in the film suggest the already problematic storyline
of The Stripper underwent a significant amount of post-production editing.
Below, a segment of an 1891 Emily Dickinson poem quoted in the film:

I’m nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody too?

Then there’s a pair of us - don’t tell!

They’d banish us, you know.

The rest of the cast is solid, if perhaps let down a bit by a script which doesn't offer supporting characters much beyond a quick surface impression. Richard Beymer is good as the juvenile, but never succeeds in getting me to understand Kenny's darker, brooding side. The always-welcome Claire Trevor is a standout as the mother fills an empty life with overconcern for her nearly adult son.
Carol Lynley doesn't get much of a chance to be anything but gorgeous in a thankless "girlfriend" role, and there really is far too little of the quirky Michael J Pollard and the Auntie Mame-ish Gypsy Rose Lee. TV stalwart Robert Webber is convincingly oily.

In spite of the film's sensationalist title, Woodward makes for a very covered-up stripper.
Happily, the same can't be said for her co-star

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

In all these years I have never forgotten the The Stripper's opening, pre-title sequence. It's just that terrific. It promises a level camp sleaze the movie never delivers, but how can you loose with a movie that opens with a shot of the original, iconic Myra Breckinridge showgirl billboard?

Bus Driver: "We are approaching the world famous Sunset Strip! Here You may see in the flesh the great names of show business you've only watched on the screen before!"

Tourist #1: "Look! There's Jayne Mansfield!"
Tourist #2: "No it isn't...it's Kim Novak!"

Bus Driver: "No it isn't, lady."
Tourist #1: "Then who is it?"

Bus Driver: "Nobody."

BONUS MATERIAL

"The Stripper" Watch the complete film on YouTube. HERE

The Stripper's sole Oscar nomination was for the costume designs of William Travilla (Valley of the Dolls, Black Widow, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes). Visit the blog: 50 Years of Film & Fashion Travilla Style to read more about his costumes for this film.

"It's what I want more than anything. More than winning contests or being a movie star,
or anything like that.. 'Cause if you know you've got one person who loves and respects you,
then you don't need love from a lot of people, do you?"

Richard Attenborough’s atmospherically tense adaptation of William Goldman’s 1976 bestseller, Magic, doesn’t seem to come up much in conversation these days; although when it does, it’s inevitably in reference to those nightmare-inducing, kindertrauma TV ads that ran at the time of its release. There’s scarcely an adult of a certain age who can’t be reduced to a quivering mass of jelly on hearing this poem recited (preferably in a shrill, nasal voice with a New Yawk accent):

Abracadabra,

I sit on his knee.

Presto chnago,

and now he is me.

Hocus pocus

we take her to bed.

Magic is fun;

we’re dead.

Being 21-years-old at the time, I wasn’t among those frightened by the TV commercial, I only remember being so taken with the eerie effectiveness of the ad (even if you weren't watching the screen, that weird voice seriously sent chills up your spine), I could barely wait for the movie to open.

A masterpiece of minimalism, the entire 30-second teaser-spot consisted of nothing more than a slow zoom into the face of an intensely demonic-looking ventriloquist’s dummy whose dead eyes stared maniacally into the camera as it recited the above poem in a high-pitched, not entirely human-sounding voice. Without showing a single frame of footage from the film, this unsettling confluence of dramatic lighting, ominous music, and the built-in necromantic creep-out of being confronted by an animate inanimate object, incited the outcry from concerned parents of traumatized tots across the nation, to have the ads taken off the air.

I’d read Magic sometime in college when it was still on the bestseller list, but only because I’d read in the trades that producer Joseph E. Levine (Harlow, The Carpetbaggers) had secured the film rights for the tidy sum of $1 million, enlisting Goldman to adapt his novel to the screen. What excited me was the early talk citing Roman Polanski as director and Robert De Niro starring as the magician/ventriloquist with the dark secret. After Polanski bailed, Steven Spielberg, Mike Nichols, and Norman Jewison were each attached to the project at various times, with actors as disparate as Jack Nicholson, Chevy Chase, Gene Wilder, and Al Pacino considered for the lead.

Ultimately, directing chores went to British actor/director Richard Attenborough (Séance on a Wet Afternoon), with the lead going to Welsh actor, Anthony Hopkins. After several years in the business, Hopkins was suddenly hot stateside, appearing in several major films in rapid succession: s Audrey Rose (1977), A Bridge Too Far (1977) and International Velvet (1978).

William Goldman has always maintained Magic’s central female character, high-school dreamgirl Peggy Ann Snow, was inspired by and written with Ann-Margret in mind. So when it came time to cast the film, I’m not sure if any other actresses were considered, but it didn’t hurt Magic’s boxoffice chances any that the 60s ingénue was experiencing a career resurgence at the time, thanks to her Oscar nominations for Carnal Knowledge (1971) and Tommy (1975). With Burgess Meredith (The Day of the Locust) on board as the Swifty Lazar-like talent agent (a role once slated for Laurence Olivier), and $7 million allocated for the budget, advance buzz on Magic augured a Hitchcockian psychological thriller with an A-list pedigree.

Anthony Hopkins as Charles "Corky" Withers

Ann-Margret as Peggy Ann Snow-Wayne

Burgess Meredith as Ben Greene

Ed Lauter as Ronnie "Duke" Wayne

Fats

That 20^th Century Fox was able to successfully market Magic on the strength of single, non-disclosive graphic, is only in part attributable to the popularity of Goldman’s bestseller. Magic’s boon and bane has always been the fact that any thriller with a ventriloquist at its center is bound to utilize one of two fairly overused and predictable plot possibilities: 1) The deranged ventriloquist who schizophrenically imagines his dummy to be real (The Great Gabbo, Dead of Night); 2) The supernatural take on the same theme, in which case the dummy indeed proves to be alive (Devil Doll, The Twilight Zone episodes, “The Dummy” & “Caesar & Me”).

Magic falls into the former category.

Corky Withers (Hopkins), a failed, personality-minus magician, finds success when he adds a foul-mouthed ventriloquist’s dummy named Fats to his act. An act in which the outspoken, self-assured Fats, who resembles a grotesque caricature of Corky, hurls comically lewd, X-rated invectives at the audience while his mild-mannered human half engages in minor feats of legerdemain.

When savvy theatrical agent Ben Green (nicknamed “The Postman” because he always delivers) lands Corky an opportunity to crack the big time, the sheepish showman balks at a TV network’s request for a physical, and hightails it out of New York. He finds refuge and an indelible part of his past when he checks into a rundown Catskills lake resort belonging to unrequited high school crush, cheerleader Peggy Ann Snow (Ann-Margret), now a sad-eyed hotelier unhappily married to the former high-school sports hero, “Duke” Wayne (Lauter).

15 years has served to narrow the gulf once dividing Corky and Peggy, mutual discontent now inflaming a mutual attraction brokered on the unexpressed hope of rescue and reclamation.

But for Corky’s long-nurtured, once-thought- impossible dream to come true, he has to overcome a few obstacles. Peggy’s husband isn’t a problem, for although he still loves her, Peggy has grown tired of his drinking, philandering, and verbal abuse. And Corky’s agent, nosy and over-protective though he may be, really only wants what’s best for Corky. Doesn’t he?

No, there is really only one obstacle standing in Corky’s way...but it’s a big one.
Fats won’t like it.

Yes, Corky is mad as a hatter. And his schizophrenia has taken the form of seeing Fats as a separate, increasingly malevolent entity out to control his life and force him to do very bad things.

"You can't believe how much people want to believe in magic."

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Ventriloquist dummies are so inherently creepy I’m certain a fairly terrifying horror film could be made simply by training a camera on a roomful of them for 90 minutes. If you doubt it, try doing a Google Images search of “ventriloquist dummies” sometime. You’ll be sleeping with the lights on for a week.

That’s why, given Magic’s overall impressiveness as a taut psychological thriller wrapped in a character study; it’s so frustrating Attenborough & Co. weren’t better able to capture that unsettling aspect of magic and ventriloquy which seems to intentionally flirt with the bizarre and grotesque. Between the dark demons fueling Corky’s madness (the novel hints at Corky being a serial killer) and the mysteries shrouded in the truth/illusion world of magic, the story offers ample opportunities. But the filmmakers are content to rely on Fats’ spectacularly chilling puppet design to do all the heavy lifting, horror-wise.

In a way, Magic, by virtue of being yet another reworking of the predictable “ventriloquist with a split-personality” plot device, is forced to wring suspense out of audience concern over whether it will add anything new to the over-familiar mix. While Goldman’s script dutifully takes us through updates of dominant dummy vs. overpowered ventriloquist sequences we’ve seen countless times before; suspense is generated by a wishful certainty on our part that a cast this stellar and production values this first-rate cannot possibly yield a retread of material Michael Redgrave and his dummy, Hugo, fairly nailed back in 1945.

Yet that’s precisely what Magic does. I saw Magic when it opened in 1978, and when I first saw it, I tied myself in knots waiting for it to live up to those TV ads (it didn’t), and wondering how Goldman was going to handle the novel’s “big reveal” (It's jettisoned. The book is told from Fat’s perspective, so we don’t even find out until near the end that what we thought was a two-person narrative is actually a memoir). My expectation of what I hoped the film to be clouded me to what it was.

Only After returning to see Magicagain was I able to appreciate how cinematically William Goldman adapted his novel. It’s not without its flaws, but it’s an engrossing -albeit familiar- story very well told and exceptionally well-acted. The Catskills setting has a chilly foreboding about it that's significantly enhanced by Jerry Goldman’s (Coma, The Omen) ingeniously spooky score, and the character conflicts are skillfully buttressed by several nicely-realized suspense set-pieces.

"Kid, I have lived through Tallulah Bankhead and the death of vaudeville. I don't scare easy."
After a string of eccentric roles, it was nice to see Burgess Meredith playing a regular person again

PERFORMANCE

Anthony Hopkins gives a remarkable performance in Magic, virtually flawless in its versatility and depth. He brings an modulated authenticity to a character we have to simultaneously dread and sympathize with. His character runs the emotional gamut from cripplingly shy to theatrically assured; from touchingly vulnerable to deviously maniacal. He has a full-tilt mental breakdown scene that could easily have veered into camp or ridiculousness, that instead becomes an object lesson in how to ground extreme behavior in something real (Faye Dunaway would have done well to take notes before doing Mommie Dearest).

All that being said, Hopkins is terribly miscast. Instead of casting for Corky’s stage persona and wresting a tortured performance out of whomever was chosen, Attenborough seemingly cast for Corky the mental case. Hopkins is great as the haunted, hunted Corky, but as Pauline Kael perceptively wrote, “Hopkins has no light or happy range and doesn’t show a capacity for joy.”

One of the very few scenes in Magic to feature Hopkins smiling

When looking back and taking the entire film in, for me Magic's most valuable player is Ann-Margret. The role of Peggy Ann Snow may have been written expressly for the talented actress, but Goldman doesn't exactly give her a lot to work with. What she does with it is a thing a beauty.

In the manner of all male writers who betray with each female character they write, just how little they know about women; Goldman's way of letting us in on Corky's deep feelings for Peggy is to have him exclusively reference her beauty. Her breasts, specifically.

And true to the adolescent roots of Corky's/Goldman's infatuation, the breathtakingly lovely Peggy doesn't think she's beautiful. Yeah, that happens a lot.

To make matters worse, an inordinate amount of Peggy's dialog is relegated to "girl-isms" like "Coffee's on!', "Do you want the asparagus tips or french cut green beans?"By the time she made reference to a bubble bath, I thought it would turn out that Peggy Ann Snow never existed at all, and that she was just another one of Corky's delusions.

In spite of these hurdles, Ann-Margret gives a movingly sensitive performance that transcends the inanity of her dialog. She turns a boy's fantasy into a living-breathing woman, centering the genre pyrotechnics with an earthy naturalism and melancholy sadness.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
I wonder if young people watching Magic today find the idea of a nationally-famous ventriloquist to be more far-fetched (and terrifying) than a wooden figure come to life? I grew up at a time when ventriloquist acts like Shari Lewis, Willie Tyler, Wayland Flowers, and Paul Winchell were staples of TV variety shows. As were borscht-belt comics with Corky Withers-type names like Shecky Green, Sandy Baron, and Morty Gunty. (I even had a ventriloquist's dummy as a child. I named him Eddie Arnstein because he looked like a cross between Eddie Cantor and Omar Sharif inFunny Girl.)

If magic is problematic on television because you can't misdirect the camera; ventriloquism in the movies always opens the question of post-dubbing. Much was made at the time of Hopkins learning ventriloquism and doing the voice of Fats. Some sources have since cited Magic's ventriloquist consultant Dennis Alwood as not only manipulating Fats, but serving as his voice as well.

I bring this up because I think my familiarity with this almost vaudevillian style of show biz act is what make Magic's nightclub scenes so cringe-worthy for me. William Goldman is a talented writer but he's not a gag-writer. Anthony Hopkins is a great actor, but he has absolutely no comedy timing. this collision of limitations is fine when Corky is supposed to be awful, but when he's supposed to have struck paydirt with Fats, I found myself wishing Goldman had hired a genuine comedy writer to do these scenes. And the fact that the act is so lousy is only exacerbated by constantly having characters say (not laugh, say) "Now that's' funny!"

I do have to say that Fats did make me laugh, but only once. When introduced to the toupee-wearing TV executive (David Ogden Stiers) Mr. Todson, Fats slips and accidentally (on purpose) calls him "Mr. Wigston." I'm laughing just thinking about it.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
The set-pieces I made reference to earlier comprise my favorite Magic moments. The collaborative efforts of the actors; director Attenborough; cinematographer Victor J. Kemper (Xanadu, Eyes of Laura Mars); editor John Bloom (Closer); and composer Jerry Goldmsith; they represent Magic at the top of its game.

Amateur Night Breakdown

Meeting of the Minds

"Make Fats shut up for five minutes."

The Thing in the Lake

If 1978 audiences were left disappointed at Magic not living up to the horror suggested by the commercials (among the audience I saw it with, I remember the degree of consternation born of the film ending with Ann-Margret's near-unintelligible closing line: [Delivered in a voice imitative of Fats] - "You may not get this oppor-fuckin-tunity tomorrow!”); audiences since then have come to appreciate Magic as an engrossing, mature thriller effectively employing the devices of the genre while being a moving parable about using illusions to mask our vulnerability and fear of rejection.

THE AUTOGRAPH FILES

Actor Jerry Houser, who made his film debut in The Summer of '42 (1971), plays the cabdriver in Magic.

BONUS MATERIAL

The television spot that launched a thousand nightmares
(reportedly pulled from NYC TV stations after only one broadcast)

Serving as proof that the longstanding narrative tradition of associating ventriloquism with personality displacement has yet to hit dry dock, take a look at Kevin Spacey in an excellent 2012 short film titled, The Ventriloquist.

Jay Johnson, who played ventriloquist Chuck Campbell on the 70s sitcom, Soap, read for the role of Corky in Magic when Norman Jewison was set to direct. And while I have no idea how serious a contender he was, I must confess I find Johnson to better conform to my mind's-eye image of Magic's schizophrenic protagonist. Anthony Hopkins, although remarkable in the role, comes across as more than a little unhinged from the start. Johnson, on the other hand, possesses that faint quality of sadness and anger present in so many comics, shrouded by a cheery, superannuated boyishness capable of conveying outward charm masking all manner of internal conflict. I'm doubtful Johnson would have matched Hopkins' dramatic virtuosity, but I'm certain his stage act would have been a damn site more entertaining.
Here's a clip of Johnson from his 2006 Tony Award winning Broadway show, The Two and Only.

I actually happen to be friends with a magician, one who actually knows Peggy Ann Snow! Emmy-nominated illusionist Larry Wilson was Ann-Margret's opening act for a time. Credentials don't get much better than that! Visit Spellbinders International Festival of Magic

As a huge fan of GosfordPark and Downton Abbey, I harbor a special weakness for romantically rendered, period-precise ruminations on the post-war decline of Britain’s aristocracy and the erosion of its class system. There’s that and much more in Alan Bridges’ (The Return of the Soldier) superb adaptation of L.P. Hartley’s (The Go-Between) 1957 novel, The Hireling– wherein the tentative reformation of a shell-shocked England serves as backdrop and counterpoint to the unorthodox relationship forged between a hired limousine driver and his society-class employer.

Sarah Miles as Lady Helen Franklin

Robert Shaw as Steven Ledbetter

Peter Egan as Captain Hugh Cantrip

Elizabeth Sellars as Lady Franklin's Mother

The first time we see Lady Helen Franklin, she appears to be lost in an absent-minded daze, staring blankly out at a pond from behind a chain-link fence surrounding what looks to be a home in the British countryside (people peering from behind barriers will be a recurring motif in the film). It is indeed a home, of sorts, as it turns out Lady Franklin is a patient at a “rest cure” sanatorium for the rich and titled. It's a sprawling, mental-health facility whose tasteful opulence adheres to British “keeping up appearances” standards of discretion by not betraying its true function; the grounds more resembling a country estate than a hospital.

Lady Franklin is recuperating from a nervous breakdown and suicide attempt brought on by the deaths – suffered over a brief but unspecified period of time – of both her father and her husband. Deaths over which she feels so much guilt and remorse, life has virtually ceased to exist for her.

Little is known of Lady Franklin at this point, but from our short acquaintance it's clear this woman is among the walking wounded. A fragile, ragdoll of a figure who appears distant, distracted, and barely able to keep it together. In spite of all this, her doctor (Lyndon Brook) insists the time has come for her to return to “normal life,” and so with brusque solicitude, he discharges her into the temporary care of chauffeur service driver, Steven Ledbetter (Shaw), the titular hireling enlisted by Lady Franklin’s mother (Sellars) to transport her daughter home to London.

It's in this scene that The Hireling’s narrative theme exploring the contrast of pragmatism vs. emotionalism as survival skills is first introduced. We first see it dramatized in the air of exasperated impatience the doctor and hospital staff displays toward their wealthy clientele. A gently condescending attitude indicative of the pervasive working-class belief that nervous breakdowns and the coddling of psychological maladies are luxuries only the well-to-do can afford.

Dr. Mercer (Lyndon Brook) expedites Lady Franklin's sanatorium release a little too eagerly

The drive to town – over the course of which, images of poverty and post-war squalor are glimpsed from behind the polished panes of Ledbetter’s pristine Rolls Royce – further emphasize the film’s themes of class division.

Foreshadowing later events, Ledbetter and Lady Franklin’s labored initial exchanges across the glass partition separating driver from passenger, display a sympathetic commonality, yet are fraught with caution and misunderstanding.

Ledbetter, a former sergeant major in the army, finds security and a sense of purpose in conforming to the arbitrary formalities of his station. Well-mannered and polite, he speaks only when spoken to, peppers his responses with “milady,” and is not above fabricating a backstory (he lies about the scope of his driver-for-hire business and makes up a wife and children) if it results in engendering client faith in his stability.

Ledbetter’s unquestioning acceptance of his lot, indeed, his appearance to have made the most of it, appeals a great deal to the floundering Lady Franklin, who has come to view her society life as both directionless and empty. As they drive, Ledbetter’s matter-of-fact directness has the effect of bringing Lady Franklin out of her shell. Enough so that she has the bravery to request he drive past the cemetery containing the bodies of the two most important men in her life, and just enough to prepare her for her impending reunion with her flinty mother (Sellars).

Lady Franklin suffers another small breakdown, but her mother is more concerned
the window washer will witness this lapse of decorum

Almost as a form of therapy, Lady Franklin hires Ledbetter to take her on drives twice weekly. His pragmatism inspiring in her a newfound independence, her taking him into her confidence serving to thaw his formal facade and disarm his firmly-rooted hostility toward the upper classes. Of course, their ostensibly professional arrangement is clearly one forged of a mutual rapport and affinity extending far beyond the boundaries of employer and hireling, yet it remains one neither party feels disposed to examine in depth until it’s too late.

Too late rears its head in Lady Franklin’s emerging self-reliance colliding with Ledbetter's rapidly accelerating infatuation with her. Too late also manifests in the triangular intrusion into their twosome, of the louche Captain Hugh Cantrip (Egan); a former political ally of Lady Franklin’s late husband, and, naturally, a gentleman of more appropriate social stature for Lady Franklin's company. Like all the characters in The Hireling, Cantrip is struggling with readjustment to life after the war. But the ease with which he insinuates himself into Lady Franklin’s life (coupled with a level of deception inarguably more injurious than Ledbetter’s) underscores Ledbetter’s deepest resentment: that the wealthy classes have always had an easier go of it, and that he is doomed to forever be on the outside looking in.

Lady Franklin's unorthodox request to sit in the front seat with Ledbetter dramatizes both the casual
familiarity the wealthy feel towards those in their employ, and the lack of equal license afforded the working-classes

In speaking of The Hireling at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973 (where it shared the Grand Prize with Jerry Schatzberg’s Scarecrow), actress Sarah Miles described it as “A tragedy of miscomprehension.” And indeed, The Hireling is at its most compelling when exploring the ways in which the rigid constraints of Britain’s class system perpetuate emotional and sexual repression. Set in 1923, The Hireling presents a world in which human beings reach out to one another from within the socially imposed/self-imposed cages of class and station. Behavior and motivation is clogged up in ritual, and emotions are caught up in antiquated modes of conduct which make it next to impossible for anyone to ever convey to someone else how they really feel. In situations where a person’s passions are as opaque and inaccessible internally as they are externally, human contact inevitably loses out.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

What I find most enjoyable about The Hireling (as I do Gosford Park and Downton Abbey) is its evocation of a time when one type of world was on its way out, clumsily making way for a new way of living and interacting. Without becoming heavy-handed, The Hireling uses the interwoven lives of its three main characters – all of whom represent a faction of Britain’s walking wounded, readjusting to post-war existence – to comment on the failings of the class system.
While our attention is called to the characters’ connection (Lady Franklin and Ledbetter ease each other’s loneliness) and contrasts (She’s more amenable to the dropping of class-based formalities than he); the film makes us subtly aware of the rigid inequities that always linger on the fringes (Lady Franklin’s wealth and station afford her an interclass autonomy denied Ledbetter).

Lady Franklin asks Ledbetter to be her escort at an amateur boxing match

Time and time again it’s underscored that the working classes, when faced with tragedy and hardship, have no option but to be practical and “Get on with things, ” while the rich are tended to, sympathized with, and are afforded the luxury of breakdowns both emotional (Lady Franklin) and ethical (Capt. Cantrip). For example, Lady Franklin is ignorant to the fact that her maid, Mrs. Hansen (Patricia Lawrence), who appears to have been with her for some time, has a blind son; a fact of life never dwelled upon or grieved over by the devoted servant as she goes about her duties.

Patricia Lawrence as Mrs. Hansen

Similarly, as the film progresses, the once-fragile Lady Franklin comes to rebuild her life just as the life of the stalwart Ledbetter begins to unravel, yet she's not able to be there for him in the same manner he was there for her. Perhaps there is no real way in which she could be, for when presented with an opportunity to return his kindness, she does so very graciously and generously, but (to Ledbetter's dismay) at the cost of having to reveal she doesn't know his first name. These sequence of events only further serve to solidify the perspective that Britain's post-war resurgence was achieved largely on the backs of its working classes, yet once the rich were reinstated and their lives returned to normal, little in the way of reciprocal attention was given to the labor classes and working poor who made it possible.

PERFORMANCES

I’m afraid I was a little too enamored of fellow Brits Julie Christie and Susannah York to have paid much attention to Sarah Miles during her brief heyday in the 70s. My strongest memory of her (outside of her endorsement of drinking her own urine twice daily as a kind of golden, pee-scented fountain of youth. I've seen recent pictures of her and she looks great, so maybe she's not just pissing up a rope, so to speak) is the hubbub surrounding the filming of the otherwise forgettable 1973 Burt Reynolds western, The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, involving the mysterious on-location death (murder?suicide?) of Miles’ personal assistant/lover. A scandalous event which not only ended her marriage to screenwriter Robert Bolt (Lawrence of Arabia), but successfully stalled her ascendance as a leading lady of the 70s.

Over the years I’ve come to enjoy Sarah Miles’ performances in The Servant (1963) and Ryan’s Daughter (1970) a great, but in my limited exposure to her work, The Hireling stands out as perhaps her best.

I saw The Hirelingfor the first time only last year, but I know had I seen it in 1973; it would have been a lasting favorite. Miles displays an amazing range and brings a great deal of nuance and depth to a role in which her character’s true motivations and feelings are not always clear to us (or her).

Two years before his iconic role as Quint in Jaws (1975) made him the late-70s man of the hour, Robert Shaw’s appearance in The Sting eclipsed his much finer work in The Hireling, released the same year. As the brutish but sensitive chauffeur, Ledbetter, Shaw carves out a complex figure of concealed motives and glowering resentments. In fact, much of The Hireling plays out like an emotional suspense film in trying to fathom the depth of Ledbetter’s sincerity or the objective of his deceptions. Shaw's is a surpassingly intense performance I rank among his best.

Brooding Brute
Watching Robert Shaw's powerful performance, I couldn't help thinking that outside of Idris Elba and Daniel Craig, contemporary films are lacking in men and overpopulated with boys

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

I really love the look of The Hireling, with its deceptively lush, romantic imagery and rich period detail. A sense of time and place is conveyed superbly, especially the attention given to differentiating the working class locations and those of the wealthy. And in I mean that there is no heavy-handed condescension favoring the rich; intriguingly, the film captures both social strata in a manner emphasizing the ways in which the characters are trapped by their surroundings.

Indicative of the repressive nature of Britain's class system The Hireling frequently films the principals in surroundings emphasizing borders and separation. Mirrors, windows, and reflective surfaces abound, conveying characters' dual nature and motivations, along with the inability to sometimes see what is right in front of them.
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THE STUFF OF DREAMS
I've always entertained the theory that Americans eat up movies about class struggles in the UK because it allows certain factions of our population to enjoy narratives of class-based conflict without the guilt.
In America, we still have a long way to go towards being able to present our own class issues (aka: racism) in ways that aren't wholly designed to make white audiences feel liberally guilty while reassuring them that the oppressed classes aren't really as mad at them as they fear.
In British films, the downtrodden classes are afforded their humanity, allowed to express their rage, and even allowed not to forgive. At its core, The Hireling is pretty vicious to the aristocracy, and with good reason.

Those expecting The Hireling to be a Driving Miss Daisy-esque heartwarmer, will be shocked to find it a dark, fairly scathing indictment of the upper class.

Here in the States, we aren't that evolved yet. It's still the duty of African-Americans in films to take the moral high-road and never really express anger or resentment, lest they lose audience sympathy. The status quo can't be sufficiently criticized because in all likelihood, Hollywood's typical behind-the-scenes lack of diversity (thanks for reminding us of that, Matt Damon) is such that there are too many wealthy special interests to protect.
So, British films wherein the oppressed and the oppressor are both white tend to be the spoonful of sugar that helps the class struggle/ discrimination medicine go down on these shores.

Personally, I find it cathartic to see movies in which servants and oppressed classes are afforded the dimensionality to view their lot in life in ways far from noble or heroic. I love the potential for conflict it presents, and the opportunity to show the curious symbiosis that exists between the haves and have-nots. It's certainly more authentic, and, as is the case with The Hireling, makes for a far more layered and thoughtful examination of the emotional consequence of social structures designed to support commerce, labor, and the status quo; but calls upon people to suppress all that's human and instinctual within themselves.

"We all have our place in life."

This essay is part of The Silent Cinema Blogathon hosted by The Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood.

Visit the site for more posts from participating blogs!

Were I to try pinpoint the source of my lifelong indifference to silent films, my best guess would be my traumatized reaction to the opening sequence of the 60s TV show, Silents Please, when I was just an impressionable tyke. Silents Please was a half-hour TV program highlighting films and stars of the silent era. It ran in reruns on Sunday afternoons but never it seems at scheduled times I could avoid. It always popped up as a time-filler following a football game or (most terrifyingly) at night when I least expected it. I don’t recall ever seeing an entire episode all the way through, for each episode began with a startling command from an unseen announcer for Silents Please (a pun I didn’t appreciate then and don’t appreciate now), which was my cue to high-tail it out of the living room before the title sequence montage of silent movie clips began.

When I was small, I couldn’t have been more than four or five, silent movies would crop up occasionally on television. I just remember being creeped out by the grainy images, deep shadows, jerky movements, and the ghoulish white makeup and exaggerated dark eyes of the actors. But what did me in about Silents Pleasewas that the show’s opening montage featured a quick “reveal” of Lon Chaney in full The Phantom of the Opera drag, and it scared the hell out of me. The nightmares it inspired kept even comic silent movies off my radar for much of my childhood, an antipathy that stayed with me well into maturity.

The Three Silent Stooges
Dom Bell (Dom DeLuise), Mel Funn (Mel Brooks), and Marty Eggs (Marty Feldman)

In later years, when I attended film school, my wholesale disinterest in classic films of the silent era made me a majority of one amongst my peers. I saw and studied a great many silent movies in Film History class, but in the end I remained impressed (what they were able to achieve with no dialog and such low-tech equipment is quite remarkable), yet unmoved. When I’d try to relay these feelings to my cinephile classmates, they looked at me the way I look at people who tell me they like Vin Diesel movies.

It was during my college years that Mel Brooks released Silent Movie, a contemporary silent film fashioned as a Hollywood spoof and affectionate homage to the films of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Mack Sennett, and Hal Roach. Child of the 70s that I am, I guess this was the first silent film I remember taking a liking to.

Touted as the first feature-length silent film to be made in over forty years, 20^th Century-Fox released Silent Movie at the height of Mel Brook’s popularity. Following the blockbuster success of Brooks’ western spoof, Blazing Saddles, and his horror spoof, Young Frankenstein, former television gag writer, Mel Brooks, was hailed by critics and audiences alike as the king of motion picture comedy. Rather remarkably, both of these films directed and co-written by Brooks came out in the same year. At the close of 1974, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein occupied the #1 and #4 slots, respectively, on the list of the year's top boxoffice moneymakers.
Previous to his late-blooming emergence as the comic voice of the 70s, I only knew Mel Brooks as the writer/director of one of my favorite comedy movies, The Producers (1967); the co-creator of one of my favorite TV shows, Get Smart; and for that 2000 Year Old Man skit he performed with Carl Reiner. But by the mid-70s, EVERYBODY was talking about Mel Brooks. At 50 years of age, Brooks was suddenly a hit with the college crowd. Naturally, with such a high degree of success, Brooks could virtually write his own ticket when it came to his next film. Sort of.

When Brooks announced his follow-up project was to be a silent film, the natural assumption – given his reputation for lampooning Hollywood movie genres – was that it would be a movie in a vein similar to that of his previous hits: a period-accurate recreation of a 1920s era silent film with doses of irreverent, slightly raunchy, contemporary comedy. Perhaps because director Peter Bogdanovich had already began production on his own comic film set in the early days of silent movies (Nickelodeon - 1976), Brooks opted to set his film in the Hollywood of today (today, as in 1976, today). A modern-day silent movie poking fun at the motion picture industry and a gentle spoof of the comedies of yesteryear.

Vilma Kaplan: A Bundle of Lust
Bernadette Peters, in what could be called the Madeline Kahn role, as the seductress
hired by Engulf & Devour to corrupt Mel Funn

Since Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein had successfully launched two of the most valuable players in the Mel Brooks repertory off into careers of their own (Gene Wilder and Madeline Kahn), their inability to participate in Brooks' followup project was a hurdle audiences were eager to see if Brooks (casting himself in his first lead role) could surmount.

Silent Movie’s premise casts Mel Brooks as Mel Funn, a once brilliant movie director whose career has hit the skids due to alcoholism. Hoping to make a comeback, Funn pitches his idea of making a modern-day silent movie to the head of Big Pictures Studio (Sid Caesar). After initially rejecting the suggestion, the failing studio, desperate for a hit to avoid takeover by NY conglomerate, Engulf & Devour, relents after Mel promises he can fill his movie with big name stars. Funn, with the help of his two associates Bell & Eggs (DeLuise & Feldman), thus embarks on a slapstick quest to secure the biggest names in Hollywoodfor new his silent movie.

Art Imitates Life
Silent Movie actually spoofs Mel Brooks' real-life efforts to get a studio
interested in his making this silent movie

As a follow-up to the phenomenon that was Young Frankenstein, the level of anticipation and expectation surrounding the release of Silent Movie was both its blessing and its curse. Folks expecting the envelope-pushing effrontery of Blazing Saddles, or the technically impeccable lunatic genius of Young Frankenstein, were forced to content themselves with a genial, sometimes hilarious, mostly hit-and-miss, comedy that delivered a good time, but not really much else.
There were gentle jibes at silent movies (verbose exchanges translated in terse title cards). Satirical jabs at the movie business (a sign on an executive's door reads "Current Studio Chief"). And sight gags galore. But it was all rather safe and old-fashioned. In fact, none of the jokes would have looked out of place on a typical episode of Get Smart, and that had gone off the air in 1970.

When Mel falls off the wagon, his friends embark on a search for him accompanied by the usual cliche dissolves of neon-lit nightspot signs. Only this time capped with a Brooks-ian touch of the unexpected

People went to see Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles multiple times, wanting to relive favorite comic moments or catch bits of business missed the first time out. Conversely, Silent Movie was a pretty straightforward affair. All the laughs are accessible, obvious, and intentionally broad. Much in the same way that suspense in a horror film can be sustained even after multiple viewings, while “gotcha” scare moments in horror are effective only once; Silent Movie’s funny but unsubtle slapstick and vaudeville-level mugging didn’t invite a lot of repeat business.

While failing to live up to the success of its predecessors, Silent Movie was nevertheless a sizable hit, ranking #11 on boxoffice charts at the close of the year. Citing the silent movie angle as more gimmick than legitimate satirical target, critical and popular opinion varied as to the relative merit of the enterprise as a whole. Most willing to forgive its elemental inconsequence in favor of applauding what clearly was a labor of love for Brooks; an affectionate valentine to the comics and style of comedy that inspired him in his youth.

Sid Caesar as The Studio Chief
Mel Brooks got his start as one of the staff writers for Caesar's 1950s
variety program, Your Show of Shows

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I’m from the generation raised on Laugh-In style blackout comedy. I remember when it was business as usual for corny variety shows to encourage their movie star guests to “let their hair down” in groan-inducing, out-of-character skits and musical numbers. I grew up at a time when stand-up comics all had pseudo-ethnic, faux chummy/hilarious names like Shecky, Totie, Marty, Sandy, and Morty.

In short, I came from the era that produced Mel Brooks.

Hilarious in 1976, meh in 2015
Now that all major movie studios are owned by conglomerates, this jab at the 1967 acquisition of
Paramount Studios by Gulf & Western Industries barely rates a smile

Because my personal comedy tastes run towards the cornball and old-fashioned, I was perhaps less disappointed than many when Silent Movie came out and proved to be a film so tame it could have been made beforeThe Producers. But even I hoped for something more, even while acknowledging that Brooks’ experiment with the genre was largely successful and good for a few laughs. Not particularly memorable, retell over the watercooler at work, laughs...but laughs.
With its excellent wall-to-wall score (John Morris) of jaunty, amusingly responsive music; hyperactive grab bag of exaggerated sound effects; and its non-stop barrage of sight gags, blackout skits, and slapstick physical comedy; Silent Movie is as much a send-up of those old Warner Bros. cartoons as it is a take-off on silent-era comedies.

"Poverty Sucks!" - "Yea for the Rich!"
Ron Carey as Devour / Harold Gould as Engulf

PERFORMANCES

With Silent Movie, Mel Brooks’ usually behind-the-scenes talents (with the occasional voiceover or cameo) are for the first time placed front and center, and, at least for me, the movie suffers for it. Brooks is an undeniably funny writer, gag man, and skit performer; but he’s no actor. And I don't think I ever grasped or appreciated how significant a role a good comic actor plays in making a motion picture work (Gene Wilder is the all-time best) until I watched what happened when a talented Catskills standup comic cast himself as a leading man.

As an actor, Brooks is very much in line with the borscht belt comic, Ernie Bernie (Sid Gould) from That Girl, or the woefully schticky comic played by Johnny Haymer in Annie Hall. They do bits of comedy business and make with the funny faces, but they don't know how to bring a character to life. Brooks is the worst thing in the film. As cute as he is, every moment he's on is like when you're at an office party and the boss comes in trying to show you what an average Joe he is. Brooks plays his material almost like he's patting himself on the back for coming up with it.

Mel Brooks is too likable to actually spoil the film for me, but his lack of...what is it, lunacy? abandon?...seems to have the effect of muting the talents of Feldman and DeLuise. As much as I admire Mel Brooks as a comedy genius, I can honestly say Mel Brooks' films only began to suffer after Mel Brooks began starring in them.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
The star cameos in Silent Movie are a great deal of fun and a major part of the attraction when the film was released (remember, this was the era of the disaster film, star casting was all the rage). Back in the 70s it was exhilarating to see these celebrities poking fun at their images. Now, I watch these sequences filled with so much nostalgia. Not just because so many of its performers are no longer with us, but because the film is brimming with familiar faces. Comics, character actors, and TV personalities whose faces you recognize, but whose names you often don't know.

Ranking of celebrity cameos. Favorite to least-favorite:

1. Surrounded by gigolos, Anne Bancroft (Mrs. Mel Brooks for any youngsters out there) looks to be having a great deal of fun playing herself as a haughty movie star (the original choice to star in Mommie Dearest, she would have been great). Not only does she get to dance, but she dazzles us with her ability to cross her eyes...one at a time!

2. Oddly enough, Burt Reynold's egotistical movie star bit plays funnier now. Back in the 70s, he used this routine to excess on his many late-night talk show appearances. Fresh off the flop film Lucky Lady with Liza Minnelli, Reynolds was nevertheless a really hot property at the time, with two other films in release in 1976 and Smokey and the Bandit just a year away.

3. Liza Minnelli, the star I most wanted to see in a Mel Brooks movie, is pretty much wasted in a segment requiring her to do little but react to the slapstick antics of Brooks, Feldman, and DeLuise (or their stunt doubles). Decked out in a costume from her Vincente Minnelli directed flop-to-be, A Matter of Time and rebounding from the debacle that was Lucky Lady, the Cabaretstar wouldn't appear in another hit movie until 1981s Arthur. And that wasn't even hers!

4. What's Marty Feldman looking at there? Tough guy James Caan plays off his macho but dumb image in a brief physical comedy sequence involving an off-balance dressing room trailer. The sequence is cute, but doesn't have much impact.

5. A wheelchair-bound Paul Newman, looking ridiculously gorgeous at 50, spoofs his love of auto racing by leading Mel and his associates on a high speed chase. Once again, an amusing sequence, but so reliant on stunt doubles, Newman winds up making a cameo in his cameo.

6. The use of legendary French mime Marcel Marceau in a silent movie is inspired and provided the film with one of its biggest laughs. But I'm afraid his brief sequence (whimsically involving walking against the wind to answer a phone) only reminds me of how simultaneously terrifying and annoying mimes can be.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I don’t pretend to know how or why comedy works, but I know that a great many fondly remembered sequences from comedies work well for me precisely because they are silent. I’m no fan of Jerry Lewis, but his 1960 directing debut, The Bellboy, is a favorite because he keeps his mouth shut in it for all but the last scene. And while no one should be deprived of hearing Peter Sellers saying, “Birdie num num” in an Indian accent, Blake Edwards’ The Party (1968) is at its most uproarious when it’s silent.

Another Brooks-ian Sight Gag

When it comes to updates of the silent movie, Mel Brook’sSilent Movie doesn’t come anywhere near approaching the comic eloquence and grace of Michel Hazanvicius’ Oscar-winning silent film, The Artist (2011); but Brooks gets points for being the first out of the gate and for succeeding in achieving what I honestly think were his modest goals. He made a funny little movie that said “Thank you” to the silent comics and filmmakers who inspired him to become a comedy legend himself.

As for me, know I’ve grown fonder of silent movies over the years (Metropolis-1927, is a favorite), but I’ve still have yet to garner the courage to watch The Phantom of the Opera.

THE AUTOGRAPH FILES

I worked at Honda dealership for a time in 1979, and Mel Brooks came in to the service department to pick up his car.
I remember asking a co-worker for permission to temporarily hijack his job (escort the customer to his car) so I could talk to Brooks for a while and get his autograph.

BONUS MATERIAL
Here's the intro to the TV program, Silents Please. I guess I scared easily as a kid.

What would the movies ever do without the South as the go-to metaphor for all things hot, steamy, and neurotic in American culture during the sexually and emotionally repressed 1950s? Hollywood, pandering to post-war propaganda intended to reassure the nation of a return to prosperity and stability, consistently promoted the image of the Midwest and middle-class suburbs as exemplars of familial “normalcy.” To this end, metropolitan cities were represented as cold and impersonal sin-bins, rife with crime and corruption; while the South – where mossy oak trees and people’s accents drooped in languid surrender to the oppressive heat – was a veritable pressure cooker of stifled passions. No wonder the Southern Gothic (a film genre dear to my heart) came to embody the existential frustration, spiritual discontent, and sexual dissatisfaction of an entire nation.

Between 1958 and 1959, Hollywood released no fewer than six southern-fried movie melodramas: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Long Hot Summer, God’s Little Acre, Suddenly Last Summer, The Sound and the Fury, and the focus of this essay, Lonnie Coleman’s (Beulah Land) little-known but no-less overheated domestic drama, Hot Spell.

Hot Spell is based on Coleman’s unproduced play, Next of Kin, and was directed by Daniel Mann (Come Back, Little Sheba) from a screenplay by James Poe (Summer & Smoke, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). Considering its cast and pedigree, I’m surprised that I hadn’t heard of this film, let alone seen it, until relatively recently.

Hot Spell’s theatrical roots are manifest in the size of its cast (it’s basically a four-character story), the talkiness of its script, and the simplicity of its plot. In the sweltering heat of the eternal summer that is the mainstay of all good Southern Gothics (where a glass of sweet tea is never far from reach), long-suppressed tensions threaten to rupture the gossamer-thin fabric of delusion holding a small New Orleans family together. As frustrations rise to the surface, carefully-constructed illusions begin to crack and blister like paint in the scorching sun.

Shirley Booth as Alma Duval

Anthony Quinn as John Henry "Jack" Duval

Shirley MacLaine as Virginia Duval

Earl Holliman as John Henry "Buddy" Duval, Jr.

Clint Kimbrough as Billy Duval

When the film opens, matronly housewife Alma Duval (Booth) is all aflutter over the 45^th birthday party she’s planning for husband, Jack (Quinn); a seductively "wild" Cajun whose restless nature she's found – after 25 years of marriage – impossible to fully domesticate. As we observe her nervous attempts to orchestrate (manipulate?) every conceivable variable to assure a favorable outcome for her efforts, Alma’s fervent preparations betray an air of desperation more than celebration.

Armed with the birthday presents she herself purchased for her adult children to give to their father, Alma visits each at their workplace, dispensing behavioral directives and cheery dialogue prompts with every pre-wrapped gift. Perhaps too metaphorically (not for a fan of heavy-handed 50s Freudianism like myself), each child embodies contrasting, narratively-pertinent character traits, and have jobs reflective of their personalities.

Eldest son, Buddy (Holliman), all self-seriousness and ambition, works at the family employment agency. Recently out of the army, Buddy is headstrong and restless to make a way for himself in the world. Daddy’s-girl and middle-child, Virginia (MacLaine), works at the local 5¢ &10¢ and spends her time lost in fanciful daydreams about her new summer suitor, a pragmatic pre-med student (Warren Stevens). Surrounded all day by valentines, flowers, and perfumes, Virginia is a dreamy romantic. Youngest son, Billy (Kimbrough), is a bookish, sensitive type (coded: gay) who works in a library, and too-keenly feels the tension behind all that remains unspoken in the Duval household. His survival tactic is to escape; first into books, then by going so far as to enlist in the Air Force.

Alma, who refuses to see her offspring as anything but children, charges into these workplace sanctuaries, as heedless of their discomfort as their in-vain efforts to dissuade her from making a big deal out of an event they all know their vain father hardly looks upon as cause for celebration (no one, least of all Jack himself, even remembers the birthday). It’s Alma’s wish (passive-aggressive insistence, actually) that everyone live the same lie she clings to: to ignore the open-secret of Jack’s mid-life crisis affair with a woman young enough to be his daughter, and just carry on as if they are still (if indeed they ever were) one big, happy family.

An absorbing drama that benefits significantly from the top-notch performances of its cast, Hot Spell, with its over-familiar central conflict, falls prey to a fate similar to that which befell The Stripper (1963), the screen adaptation of William Inge’s A Loss of Roses; which is to say Hot Spell,in lacking a certain psychological profundity and depth of characterization, feels more like a Playhouse 90 television production than a feature film. But in spite of much of it feeling as though it were culled from earlier, similar sources (most in the Shirley Booth oeuvre) Hot Spell does provide a fairly moving examination of the what the inexorable passing of time portends to a family fighting hard to evade the inevitabilities of growing up, growing older, and growing apart.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

The fact that I come from a large Catholic family that never spoke about our emotions (until the 70s when my mother went through EST, after which we spoke of little else) is perhaps the main reasons I love movies like Hot Spell. Call it fantasy projection, but domestic dramas wherein suppressed hostilities and resentments erupt into biliously confrontational exchanges that ultimately prove to be liberatingly cathartic are a favorite of mine. Double if it takes place in the South of the 50s and 60s.

While no one in Hot Spell adopts a Southern accent,and it doesn’t take place in Kansas, the film nevertheless has the stamp of Tennessee Williams and William Inge all over it.

The Two Shirleys
MacLaine and Booth appeared in The Matchmaker this same year

As is the custom of the genre, Hot Spell is centered around a social event. An event or occasion necessitating the close-knit interaction of characters (usually under circumstances forcing a display of false emotion or sentiment). Hot Spell’s pivotal birthday party, the catalyst for the film’s domestic upheaval, is largely ironic in function, being that a celebration of growing older is particularly ill-suited for Jack and Alma Duval; a couple deeply invested in living in the past.

In a deluded effort to reclaim his lost, wild youth, Jack imbues a thoroughly common extramarital physical attraction with all the romantic gravitas of true love reborn. Alma, no less delusional, lives in an aspic world frozen in time. Feeling acutely the impending loss of her family, Almapins all her hopes on a longed-for return to the town of New Paris– a state of mind as much as geographical location – idealized in her mind as the place where everyone was happiest.

Come Back, Little New Paris

Caught in the middle: the children (their main offense being their failure to remain so), nurtured as infants to fill a void, weaned in adulthood to be the guardians of their parent’s illusions. There’s more than enough culpability, regret, and incriminations to go around as the Duvals of New Orleans endeavor to weather their personal hot spell of discontent.

Running at a brisk 86 minutes, Hot Spell may be Southern Gothic-lite, but it’s like a Greatest Hits collection of all I hold near about that obsolete film genre.

Running Wild
Anthony Quinn was already a two-time Oscar winner when he appeared in Hot Spell.
Here with actress Valerie Allen as Ruby, Quinn's restless character longs for a new life in
Florida, "Land of Eternal Youth"

PERFORMANCES

For those keeping score, this was Booth’s second onscreen swipe at playing a dowdy, once-beautiful housewife delusionally fixated on the past. Perhaps it was an intentional move on Booth’s part to revisit a character almost identical to the one she played in 1952s Come Back, Little Sheba (and won an Oscar for), but the effect created is déjà vu to distraction.

Shirley Booth is a remarkable actress, and her performance here ranks among her best. She IS the entire film, as far as I’m concerned, and the nuances of vulnerability she brings to the role (along with a hint of the subtle manipulative strength unique to the very weak) is a tour de force. She single-handedly keeps the film from sinking into a mire of clichés. But I’d be lying if I said that much of it feels like I’d seen it all before. It’s like later career Maggie Smith; she’ always excellent, but she’s always the same.

Oscar-winner Eileen Heckart (The Bad Seed) steals every scene as Alma's best friend, Fan. The hilarious sequence where she gives Alma lessons in being a Modern Woman is a worth-the-price-of-admission classic.

Fan: "Well what's he gonna say the first time you fish out a cigarette and light up?"
Alma; "He's gonna say, 'Alma, have you gone crazy?'"
Fan:"Yeah, well when he does you just take a drag on the cigarette, blow the smoke in his face and say, 'What's it to ya, lover?'"

1958 was a banner year for Shirley MacLaine, appearing in Hot Spell, Some Came Running (for which she won an Oscar nomination), and the delightful The Matchmaker. As the lovesick daughter, MacLaine isn’t called upon to do anything here that Elinor Donahue didn’t do on TV every week in Father Knows Best, but her easygoing, natural appeal is a major asset to a film as dramatically stagy as Hot Spell.

Things heat up between Virginia and Wyatt (Warren Stevens)

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that the same breast-fixated/blonde bombshell era that produced Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, also found room to appreciate the matronly charms of actresses like Shirley Booth and Geraldine Page. These actresses may not have been the pin-up type, but they played middle-aged women who were a still afforded passions, sex drives, and depth. While most of Hollywood was falling over itself looking for the next fetishized male fantasy sex symbol, gay writers like Inge, Williams, and Coleman were creating dimensional roles for real women.

The often unglamorous women Shirley Booth portrayed were nevertheless
granted a sexuality and impassioned emotional life

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Wasn’t it Margo Channing who said, “I detest cheap sentiment”? Well, normally I do, too, but something about Hot Spell always gets the waterworks going come fade-out. That something is Shirley Booth and the breadth of emotions she brings to her almost stock character. It’s a memorable (albeit familiar) performance in a movie that’s far more enjoyable than it should be. A credit to the cast, to be sure.

I don’t know if Hot Spell is available on DVD yet, but it crops up on TCM from time to time and is definitely worth a watch. It’s not likely to make anyone forget Come Back Little Sheba or invite comparisons to O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, but it is a fine example of a once-popular dramatic genre, that (based on recent posts for The Stripper, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean) I can’t seem to get enough of.

"I guess the hot spell's over."

BONUS MATERIAL

Hot Spell: Margaret Whiting sings this promotional song for the film. Written by Burt Bacharach /Mack David.

I remember very well all the excitement surrounding the 1975 release of Barry Lyndon; director Stanley Kubrick’s highly anticipated follow-up to A Clockwork Orange. Four years had elapsed since Kubrick’s stylized vision of an all-too-imaginable future opened to controversy and equal parts critical acclaim / antipathy, and Barry Lyndon‒ shrouded in secrecy, costing $11-million, two-years-in-the-making, 3-hours long, and starring the eyebrow-raising choice of actor Ryan O’Neal in the lead ‒ augured no less.

Arriving on a wave of publicity crested by a lengthy Time magazine cover story declaring it “Kubrick’s Grandest Gamble,” Barry Lyndon was hyped as a painstakingly detailed 18^th century epic adapted from the little-known 19^th century novel: The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair). Shot in Ireland, England, and Germany over the course of a 300-day shooting schedule, next to nothing was known of the film’s storyline, save for it being a kind of inverse Pilgrim’s Progress chronicling the rise and fall of a handsome Irish rake. What was instead proffered at the forefront of all publicity, eclipsing references to either the actors’ performances or the general dramatic appeal of the story itself, was the fact that it was a Stanley Kubrick film.

Like Hitchcock, Kubrick and his reputation as an innovative perfectionist were the real stars of the film. In fact, the single most-discussed element about Barry Lyndonbeyond the cult of worship surrounding Kubrick himself was the film’s sumptuous cinematography. Much was made of how Kubrick & Co. eschewed the traditional use of artificial lighting to create a period-perfect look through the near-exclusive application of candles and natural night. Advance word was that it was Kubrick’s masterpiece; an epic historical spectacle with art house aesthetics.

Ryan O'Neal as Redmond Barry

Marisa Berenson as Lady Lyndon

Murray Melvin as Reverend Samuel Runt

Patrick Magee as The Chevalier du Balibari

Leon Vitali as Lord Bullington

Barry Lyndon opened on Christmas Day at San Francisco’s Northpoint Theater, advance buzz suggesting an event more than a motion picture. With all this buildup, you’d think I’d be chomping at the bit to see Barry Lyndon when it opened.

Not exactly.

While I loved Barry Lyndon’s Saul Bass-designed poster art (below), and was impressed by what little I’d seen in the way of movie stills, none of that translated into an interest in actually seeing the film itself.

Part of this is attributable to my not being much of a Kubrick enthusiast at the time. As a film buff, I knew I was “supposed” to like him, but being that in 1971 I was too young to see A Clockwork Orange, and only had an edited, commercial-interrupted TV broadcast of Lolita and a scratchy college campus print of 2001: A Space Odysseyto base an opinion on; I can’t say Kubrick was a director who loomed very large for me as a teen.

But the main reason for my disinterest was my (then) overall aversion to epic costume dramas in general. Sure, the Julie Christie factor was enough to entice me into seeing Far From The Madding Crowdand Doctor Zhivago, but for the most part I was of the opinion that any movie asking me to sit still longer than two and a half hours had better be a musical. Barry Lyndon looked to me like it was either going to be a somber, picturesque snooze like Lawrence of Arabia, or (based on how often the words “scoundrel” and “rascal” popped up in reviews) one of those tediously bawdy romps like Tom Jones or Lock Up Your Daughters. No thanks.

Barry Lyndon's lush spectacle is the deceptively sentimental backdrop for a tale whose events
and characters are themselves a subversive commentary on classic romantic tradition

So I didn’t see Barry Lyndon when it premiered that December, and I’m not sure I’d have seen it at all were not for my older sister who was attending an art school at the time where it was something of an art history mandate for students to check out Barry Lyndon for its cinematography redolent of the paintings of 18th century artists like John Constable and Thomas Gainsborough.

Like everyone else, my sister raved about the film’s visual splendor, but her going back to see Barry Lyndon two more times persuasively backed up her assertion of it being an irresistibly entertaining film. Something I’d yet to come across in any of the reviews I’d read. Hailing it as the perfect costume picture for people who didn’t like costume pictures (that would be me), she sold me on the film by alluding to Kubrick’s success - intentional or not - in fashioning an epic heroic romantic drama devoid of either a hero or romance. A film whose lush spectacle is the deceptively sentimental backdrop for a tale whose events and characters are a subversive commentary on classic Romance tradition.

I saw Barry Lyndon the next day.

That was 40 years ago. And since then I’ve seen all but three of Stanley Kubrick’s movies (Fear & Desire, Killer’s Kiss, & Paths of Glory), but my opinion of Barry Lyndon then hasn’t changed: it’s my absolute favorite of all his films.

Nominated for 7 Oscars, Barry Lyndon won 4
Cinematography, Costume, Art Direction, and Musical Score

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Film critic Andrew Sarris once described the stylization in Stanley Kubrick’s films as being a form of emotional evasion. I don’t think that was meant as a compliment, but as it pertains to Barry Lyndon, it defines why I this film strikes such a chord with me.

Barry Lyndonbegins in 1750 and tells the episodic story of a young, naïve Irish lad (O’Neal) of modest gentry status who aspires to aristocracy. As self-deluding as Flaubert’s Emma Bovary, as social-climbing as Clyde Griffiths, Redmond fancies himself a well-bred man of courage and honor out to claim his rightful position in the world. That his quest calls upon to temporarily assume the roles of gambler, cheat, deserter, spy, and adulterer, prove of little consequence.

Attempting to live his life as though he were the hero of a romantic novel, Redmond’s lack of self-awareness blinds him to the flaws in his character which, while successful in getting him where he wants, unfailingly stand in the way of getting him what he wants.

The loss of father figures is a recurring motif in Barry Lyndon.
Here, Redmond comforts longtime friend and protector, Captain Grogan (Godfrey Quigley)

The combined effect of Kubrick’s distancing camera and Michael Hordern’s subjective, coolly disdainful narration is that the chronicling of Redmond Barry’s ascendancy and decline becomes a doleful implosion of romantic myth. Dramatic irony replaces clichéd sentimentality, and the result is a film both moving and reflective. What looks like emotional evasion might well be a director not finding it necessary to tell the viewer what they should be feeling.

Marie Kean as Barry's headstrong mother

PERFORMANCES

I think Ryan O’Neal gives his best comedy performance in Peter Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon(1973) and the best dramatic performance of his career in Barry Lyndon. To my mind he’s really quite marvelous and I can’t imagine anyone else in the role. (Robert Redford was considered and turned it down. Sparing us from having to put up with a Barry Lyndon sporting the same layered Malibu beach boy shag haircut he’s had in every film he’s ever made.)

Barry Lyndon rests on our being able to see both the good and bad in Redmond, never being sure from scene to scene if he’s truly as bad or as good as he appears. I don’t know how he pulled it off, but O’Neal captures Redmond’s idealism, cowardice, cruelty, heart, with a depth that brings home the ultimate tragedy of the story.

Marisa Berenson, cast once again as a woman pursued by a fortune the hunter (Cabaret), has a role that's largely silent, yet her performance I find to be the film's most poignant. A former model, Berenson benefits from precisely the same subtle projection that makes models in fashion magazines appear to convey exactly what the observer seeks to find in their sphinxlike countenances. Certainly I'm moved by the corruption of beauty nuances at the core of her character arc, but I think there's a great deal more to Berenson's performance than being heartstoppingly beautiful in her period finery.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Certain critical buzzwords and phrases always raise red flags for me. Whenever I read that a stage performer “puts on a good show,” I take that to mean a meager talent is attempting to mask their shortcomings behind the bells and whistles of production values. Any fashion trend signified as “fun!” is sure to be a ghastly. So, similarly, whenever movie critics go on and on about how beautifully a film is shot, I can’t help but assume there’s precious little else about it to recommend.

In promoting Barry Lyndon stateside, Warner Bros, hamstrung both by the film’s largely unknown (in the US) cast of British character actors and perhaps an inability to extol the acting virtues of Ryan O’Neal and Marisa Berenson convincingly, centered its entire campaign on the beauty of its cinematography.

Like many, I took this to suggest Barry Lyndon had nothing to offer beyond its visual grandeur, when in fact it's merely an indication of the limitations inherent in marketing a film that fails to easily fit into a set genre category.

Barry Lyndon is without a doubt one of the most beautiful films ever made, and in 1975 on the big screen, it fairly took my breath away. But over the years I’ve come to better appreciate the film's visual magnificence as something more than just ornamental show. Its images have a poetic quality about them that has taken on a melancholy richness in this day of CGI fabrication.

When I watch Barry Lyndontoday, I’m aware of witnessing the recreation of a time and era that couldn’t be achieved today without digital manipulation. I actually respond emotionally to the fact that what I’m seeing has been painstakingly rendered in the real world. People, not computer-generated clones, occupy the crowded battle scenes; the stately landscapes vistas are actual locations; the immense interiors are authentic.

Even Barry Lyndon’s deliberate pacing and long-held static shots, once a source of much criticism, feel positively rapturous in today’s climate of I-don’t know-what-the-hell-I’m-looking-at rapid-fire editing.

Barry Lyndon's beautiful facade masks many somber truths. There is nothing heroic in death; war is absurd; pain endures; and what happens to us can't help but change us. And not always for the better.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Barry Lyndon didn't do very well during its initial release, but as so often happens when a talented director passes on and film fans are left to contemplate the meager talents still drawing breath; Barry Lyndon it has been reappraised, reassessed, and hailed by many as an overlooked masterpiece.
When those who once dismissed it as boring and sluggish now sing its praises, I try not to look too smug while suppressing a desire to jog their memories.

I won't say it's a romp, a crowd-pleaser, or a movie that'll tug at your heartstrings; but for those open to an epic scaled to human dimensions, Barry Lyndon contains a great deal of humor (mostly ironic) action and compelling drama. Exceedingly well cast, the film is full of many exceptional actors giving brief but spirited performances. In many ways Barry Lyndon is like Ken Russell with self-control: a feast for the eyes, heaven to listen to (the classical music score is gorgeous), and a cavalcade of brilliant supporting players with fascinating faces.

I'd be reluctant to label Stanley Kubrick a genius, but there's no doubt in my mind he was a true artist.

BONUS MATERIAL

Stanley Kubrick's long out of circulation first film, Fear & Desire (1953) is

available in its entirety on YouTube HERE

"Borey Lyndon"
Kubrick's masterpiece gets the Mad Magazine treatment

*Spoiler alert. This essay gives away key plot points

Much like the way Elmer Fudd seems compelled to use words teeming with the very Ls and Rs he can’t pronounce (his Owivia DeHaviwand being a particular favorite); Hollywood during the Production Code era (1934-1968) just couldn’t keep away from “adult”-themed projects it had no reasonable hope of adequately interpreting.

Dramatist and screenwriter Lillian Hellman had her first major theatrical success in 1934 with the banned-in-Boston stage hit, The Children’s Hour. A shocking-for-its-time play in which the two headmistresses of a fancy girls’ boarding school have their careers and lives ruined by the spread of a malicious rumor of their being illicit lovers in a lesbian relationship.

When William Wyler first adapted Hellman's play for the screen in 1936, the play’s scandalous reputation was such that not only was a title change mandated (The Children’s Hour became These Three), but the "lie with the ounce of truth" was changed from the whisper of lesbianism to the more socially palatable rumor of heteronormative adultery. Instead of an accusation of being in love with each other, the two women were now accused of (yawn) being in love with the same man. And lest one think this a Hollywood cop-out of the highest order, know that it was Lillian Hellman herself who approved and adapted the screenplay of this version for the screen.

Hellman's almost word-for-word-faithful adaptation of her play for Wyler confirmed her oft-repeated claim that The Children’s Hour was not really about lesbianism so much as the pernicious power of a lie. "The bigger the lie, the better," Hellman affirmed. A point of view she would gain a great deal of first-hand experience with when, in 1952 she was blacklisted in Hollywood for refusing to name names to the House Un-American Activities Committee; and later in 1979, charged with falsifying the details of her memoir, Pentimento. (Author Mary McCarthy [The Group] on Hellman: "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'!")

Mademoiselle de Maupin by Theophile Gautier
A salacious seed is planted when the schoolgirls read the scandalous 1834 French novel in
which a woman disguises herself as a man and has affairs with both sexes

In 1960, in an effort to rectify the compromises he felt imposed upon him by MGM and the Hays Code in 1936, William Wyler returned to The Children's Hour vowing to make a more faithful version of the play. Taking advantage of the permissive atmosphere of the times, Wyler even went so far as to say he’d be willing to release his film without the MPAA seal of approval if need be. (Many newspapers at the time refused to carry ads for films lacking the Production Code seal. Similarly, many theaters wouldn’t exhibit non-approved films.)

Whether it was Wyler’s pronouncement that his remake was to be “A clean film with a highly moral story!”,or the casting of ladylike Audrey Hepburn as the fem half of the whispered-about duo (Wyler:“We don’t want bosoms in this!”), but studio heads relented and The Children’s Hourwas green-lit for production. Provided of course that the word “lesbian” never be uttered, and that there would be no demonstrative sexual contact of any sort. Yep, certainly sounds like those 1936 compromises were put to rest by 1961.

Audrey Hepburn as Karen Wright

Shirley MacLaine as Martha Dobie

James Garner as Joe Cardin

Fay Bainter as Amelia Tilford

Miriam Hopkins as Lily Mortar

Coy as it seems today, The Children’s Hour was written at a time when it was illegal to even make mention of homosexuality in a Broadway play. The show’s ultimate success somehow surmounted public moral outrage, allowing for it to become one of the first Broadway plays to feature a homosexual character. Similar honors went to Wyler’s 1961 film adaptation, with Shirley MacLaine being one of the first major stars to play a gay character in a motion picture. Albeit just barely. Change was obviously in the air in 1961 as several other homosexual-themed films arrived in theaters within months of The Children’s Hour’s release: Dirk Bogarde’s Victim, Otto Preminger’s Advise & Consent, and Tony Richardson's A Taste of Honey with Brit fave Murray Melvin making his film debut as a gay teen.

The Hateful Eight...er, 12-year-old
Making her film debut, Karen Balkin as Mary Tilford

Karen Wright (Hepburn) and Martha Dobie (MacLaine) are two college chums now partnered in the ownership and running of a girls’ boarding school. After years of struggle, the school, catering to the adolescent daughters of well-to-do families, appears at last to be up on its feet. So much so that Karen, engaged for the last two years to local doctor, Joe Cardin (Garner), at last feels free to marry. A decision which doesn’t seem to set well with Martha, who outwardly expresses her displeasure as simply the fear that marriage and motherhood will lead to Karen’s abandonment of the school.

The pair’s heated discussions and platonic entreaties of love and loyalty on the topic are overhead and misinterpreted by Mary Tilford (Bakin), a troublemaking student whose compulsive lying and disobedience has made her the frequent object of discipline. In spiteful retaliation for one such upbraiding, Mary tells her grandmother (Bainter) that Miss Wright and Miss Dobie are lovers, and that she has seen them kissing and engaging in all manner of nocturnal hanky panky.

Before long, the lie concocted merely to avoid the consequences of a rule infraction mushrooms into a scandal which closes the school and makes a shamble of the lives of three innocent people.

These Three

Given the director, it comes as no surprise that The Children’s Hour is a handsome, well-crafted and finely-acted film of almost irresistible watchability (like All About Eve, The Children’s Houris one of those movies impossible to channel surf past, no matter how far along into the story I catch it). I don't know if there is such a thing as a "William Wyler movie" as he has always struck me as one of those industry professionals devoid of an identifiable style, yet noted for consistently quality work.
All I know is William Wyler movies occupy a lot of space on my DVD shelves: Roman Holiday, The Heiress, The Little Foxes, Funny Girl, The Letter, and of course, The Children’s Hour; a film whose every frame supports his reputation for vivid storytelling and extracting superior performances from his cast. The Children's Hour was the no-win recipient of five Academy Award nominations (supporting actress, cinematography, costume, art direction, sound).

Children Will Listen

For all its technical distinction (the lighting, editing, and shot compositions are really something to be applauded) and the high-drama content of its plot (as stated, the film is compellingly watchable), it's still difficult for me not to feel as though The Children's Hour suffers a bit from Wyler's very obvious efforts to deliver a “clean” and “highly moral” film about a sensational subject. In his well-intentioned desire to grant the story the solemnity and respect I'm sure he felt was its due; Wyler falls prey to adopting a tone of such unyielding good taste and decorum that it feels at times almost airless. The result is that The Children’s Hour vacillates between stagy soap opera and melodrama precisely during the moments calling for the raw intimacy of a genuine display of emotion.

At these times The Children’s Hour reminds me of that character Mary Tyler Moore played in Ordinary People - it becomes a film determined not to draw attention to itself by making a scene.

Veronica Cartwright as Rosalie Wells
one of the best criers in the business

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

“It is incredible that educated people living in an urban American community today would react as violently and cruelly to a questionable innuendo as they are made to do in this film.” - Bosley Crowther's New York Times review of The Children’s Hour March 1962

Obviously, movie critic Bosley Crowther needed to get out more. In the face of homophobia and bigotry, incredulity like Crowther’s is deceptive in that it has the surface appearance of giving people credit for being more civilized and intelligent than a film like this would suggest. But in reality, to ignore that lives are ruined every day in America by the very same rootless bigotry and baseless homophobia The Children’s Hour dramatizes, is merely a privileged means of refuting and denying the suffering that is the day-to-day reality for many homosexuals even today.

One of the contributing factors to my not having even seen The Children’s Houruntil recently is because most everything I’d read about the film in past years corroborated Mr. Crowther’s position. I avoided The Children’s Hour because I assumed it was going to be another dated Hollywood exercise in homosexual self-loathing masked as liberal discourse.

When I finally did see the film, I was happily surprised at how dated the surface trappings were, but how timeless the message. Remove the old-fashioned acting, starchy language, and that 60s censorship straitjacket (à la Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)necessitating characters verbally dance all around an issue without ever saying it plainly; and you’ve got a story that could happen today. Trade the boarding school for a Boy Scout troop – substitute Muslim for homosexuality…the particulars of theme (ignorance is deaf to truth) and what Lillian Hellman sought to convey remains (sadly) contemporary and unchanged.

Careless Whisper
In this her last film, Fay Bainter garnered The Children's Hour's sole acting Oscar nomination, and deservedly so. She is really dynamic in every scene. In the role that won Bonita Granville an Oscar nomination in 1936, Karen Balkin (who sometimes bears an unfortunate resemblance to Charles Laughton) gives an outsized performance that wouldn't be out of place in a comedy like The Trouble With Angels. Still, you can't say she's not fiendishly effective. She makes The Bad Seed's Rhoda Penmark look like Shirley Temple

If The Children’s Hour has a credibility problem at all, it lies not in its depiction of the swiftness with which the community condemns the women on baseless innuendo (these days, inciting the public to overreact to unsubstantiated hate-mongering has practically become an official GOP political platform); but in anybody not being able to see through little Mary’s broad-as-a-barn-door lying and bullying tactics. Barring this, I think The Children’s Hour presents one of the screen’s more accurate and cutting indictments of hysterical bigotry.

The ever-likable (pronounce that any way you wish) James Garner is solid as always,
but isn't called upon to do much more than stand around looking all heterosexual and stuff

PERFORMANCES

I have no idea how 1961 audiences responded to Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine appearing in this “daring” film, but these days when a straight actor takes on a gay role, the public practically awards them a medal of bravery. Everyone, gay and straight alike, carries on as though the actor had just crawled through the foxholes of war-torn Iwo Jima with an orphan on their back.

Nevertheless, back in 1961 it had to have been a big deal for two such big stars to appear in a film with a lesbian theme. But, and not to diminish the risk-taking of either actress, Hepburn had just played a prostitute (or Hollywood’s idea of a prostitute) in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and was eager to shed her ingénue image, while MacLaine had a bohemian “kook” reputation (yes, even as far back as that) which lent itself to character roles (aka, women outside the mainstream). And politically speaking, it certainly didn’t hurt that both women were at the time married with children. One source I read speculated on the unlikely chance of an unmarried actress at the time taking on either role.

Audrey Hepburn, who got her start and an Academy Award in Wyler’s Roman Holiday (1953), is a favorite, and her performance here, while not particularly showy, is one of the strongest of her early career. Obviously cast (at least in part) for her lack of an overtly sexual screen persona and her image's adherence to traditional notions of femininity, one can only imagine how provocative The Children's Hour would have been (something Wyler wasn't interested in, it seems) had she been cast in MacLaine’s role.
Miriam Hopkins, who actually did play the MacLaine role in These Three opposite Merle Oberon and Joel McCrea in 1936, is a hammy delight as Martha's affected, self-dramatizing aunt.

Playing an overly-theatrical B-level stage actress, Miriam Hopkins is seen here clutching the mementos of her career. In this instance a glamour portrait which is actually a publicity pic of Hopkins from the 1936 film, Becky Sharp.

As someone commented in an earlier post for the movie Hot Spell, Shirley MacLaine can come off a little shrill in scenes requiring displays of anxiety or excitability. But like many gifted comic actors, she can really deliver the dramatic goods when playing hostility and pique. In a film which codifies lesbianism as simply an absence of glamour, MacLaine is really very good and (this is where the film in its own small way is rather progressive) and grants her sympathetic character a depth and humanity devoid of caricature. She resorts to no gimmicks or tricks to signify Martha's latent homosexuality, playing the role honestly and without artifice. In recent interviews about The Children’s Hour, MacLaine likes to relate how Wyler got cold feet during the making of the film, resulting in several non-explicit scenes of Martha showing her affection for Karen (brushing Hepburn’s hair, ironing her clothes, and cooking) ending up on the cutting room floor.

I’m not altogether sure how the inclusion those sequences would have helped a film whose big dramatic payoff is an 11^th hour “self-realization” scene (which for my money MacLaine pulls off very well in spite of it being a tad overwritten). Besides, such demonstrativeness to me would appear redundant given how well she already successfully conveys her deep love for Hepburn’s character through a dozen subtle looks and gestures.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

The Children’s Hour has always been controversial for the part it played in kickstarting the tired movie trope of the doomed/suicidal homosexual; a worn cliché born of warped morality and show business savvy. In most cases, the introduction of gay characters in films tended to be either for sensation or a glib, short-cut bid towards demonstrating sophistication. From the start, studios and censors gleaned that the death of a gay character in the final reel not only satisfied the movie mandate requiring “sinners” pay for their transgressions, but presented, at fadeout, a symbolic “return to normalcy” designed to reassure audiences and send them on their way, secure in their faith in the the enduring indomitability of the status quo.

Problematic as the ending of The Children’s Hour is for many (MacLaine’s character hangs herself), anecdotally I’ve always felt it presented a situation more complex than mere homophobic self-loathing. In the scene precipitating her suicide, Karen comes out to Karen at precisely the same moment she comes out to herself. She falls apart in a stream of consciousness monologue in which she tries to sort out her feelings about herself amidst paralyzing confusion and guilt over the role her lack of self-awareness may or may not have played in the destruction of so many lives. Including her own.

It's arguable and certainly up for debate whether Martha's self-disgust ("Oh I feel so damn sick and dirty I can't stand it anymore!")is wholly related to her discovery of her true sexual identity, and not, at least in part, also attributable to genuine guilt-based self-recrimination. A result of feeling that her outbursts and displays of bad tempter (born of repression) were the catalyst for a chain of events resulting in the severest harm coming to the one individual she most loved.

So while there's no denying Martha's suicide is a severe response to her suffering from a particularly acute case of "gaynst" (gay-angst); it can also be said (non-politically) to be a the kind of final, selfless act of love her character intends it to be. Which is to say that within the confines of the narrative (the last we see of Martha alive, she's not brooding intently upon herself, she's looking lovingly at Karen from a window) Martha's love is such that she seeks to "liberate" Karen by letting her go.
Of course, she could have achieved the same thing by merely hopping on a train (which Martha actually does at the end of These Three), but as I said earlier, this is Hollywood, and it would be several more years before the movies would grant any gay character a happy ending (no pun intended).

BONUS MATERIAL

A production still of the libel suit courtroom sequence that was deleted from the final film.

The theatrical trailer for William Wyler's These Three (1936)

In this clip from the 1996 documentary, The Celluloid Closet, Shirley MacLaine talks about making The Children's Hour.

The Children's Hour had its title changed in the UK

Not a sequel, but like Valley of the Dolls, deals with the oft-times nightmarish world of Show Business

One of the advantages of being old enough to remember a cult film before it became a cult film is that it gives you a sense of perspective. Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (referred to hereafter also as BVD) is one of the most deliriously campy, quotable, contagiously musical, visually kinetic, laugh-out-loud bad/good films EVER. A top-ranking favorite of mine, BVD is a non-sexy sex comedy that’s also a surprisingly ingenious send-up of every show business cliché mined by movies since the days of What Price Hollywood? (1932).
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a caffeinated homage to glossy Hollywood soap operas like The Oscar, The Best of Everything and, of course, BVDs rootstock and inspiration: Jacqueline Susann’s immortal Valley of the Dolls (hereafter also referred to as VOD).

Although released in the summer of 1970, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a 60s movie down to its bellbottoms and sandals. Depicting a burlesque vision of a Swinging Sixties lifestyle that only existed between the tragically unhip pages of Playboy magazine; BVD is a groovy, never-a-dull-moment laugh-riot of eye-popping 60s pop culture. Directed with a manic combination of aplomb and amateurism by budget skin-flick impresario Russ Meyer collaborating with first-time screenwriter, Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert; BVD is a film so exhaustively steadfast in its desire to affront and entertain, it’s like a Tex Avery cartoon come to life.

Dolly Reed as Kelly MacNamara

Marcia McBroom as Petronella Danforth

Cynthia Myers as Casey Anderson

David Gurian as Harris Allsworth

Having now fully established the extent to which I lovingly clutch this carnival-colored trash classic to my negligible-by-Russ-Meyer-standards bosom, I can elaborate on what I mean when I say that having an actual recollection of 1970 and the atmosphere in which BVD was released, allows for a sense of perspective.
When a once-dismissed film is rediscovered by a new generation of fans, it's not uncommon for history to be rewritten a bit as a means of staking an up-to-date-claim on an older work. In the years it took for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls to morph from film reviled to film reveled, a somewhat rarified legend has developed among BVD cultists. One which contends 1970 film critics raked BVD over the coals because they didn't understand that Meyer's film was a satirical comedy (i.e., intentionally terrible), and therefore never meant to be taken seriously. Well, that's not entirely true.

John Lazar as Ronnie 'Z-Man' Barzell. He forgot that life has many levels

Granted, a few critics may have been confounded by what to make of a film that careened at breakneck speed from musical to melodrama to comedy to ultraviolence; but Russ Meyer and his oeuvre of the outrageous was fairly well-known commodity by the time he landed his contract with Fox. Having leapt from peep-show Orson Welles to being the darling of the college film circuit, Meyer's reputation as a sex parodist was well known to any 60s film critic worth their salt. Russ Meyer had never made a conventional or serious movie in his life. If anyone was apt to misunderstand the level of built-in sex mockery in Meyer's films. it was likely to be the trenchcoat set- those who, by nature, were inclined to approach their softcore T & A with the utmost solemnity.

Edy Williams as the infamous Ashley St. Ives. Men were toys for her amusement

From what I recall of reviews at the time, those critics who failed to respond favorably to Meyer’s first studio outing didn't do so out of an inability to understand or keep up with the film's sophomoric satire; they disliked it because they honestly didn't think it was very good.
But in thinking back to the poor reception 70s critics gave Russ Meyer's first major studio release, it's of no small significance to keep in mind that a great deal of what we currently find so howlingly funny about Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is connected to how absurd we find the look and sound of the late 60s. Today we laugh at everything from the hippie-dippie rock music, to the extreme fashions, oversized hairstyles, carnival-colored decor, and hooty slang idioms. Divest these things of their nostalgic camp value and you can see how, to critics at the time, these things were only slight exaggerations of everyday 70s pop culture.

Michael Blodgett as Lance Rock. He never gave of himself

For example: Z-Man's parties were only raunchier reenactments of those "penthouse party" sequences that kicked off every episode of TVs Laugh-In since it debuted in 1967. Edy Williams' enormous mane of hair and ever-present bikini was basically Raquel Welch's standard photo-op uniform at this time in her career. And comparable variations on Beyond the Valley of the Dolls outrageous crayon palette decor and outre fashions could be found in a plethora of way-out Mod Cinema releases (like Britain's Smashing Time -1967) as well as so-called "serious" films like Jacqueline Susann's The Love Machine (1971).

Phyllis Davis as Susan Lake
Excessive goodness can often blind us to the human failings of those less perfect

A lot of 70s film critics were predisposed to dislike Beyond the Valley of the Dolls on principle, finding abhorrent the very idea that the same studio that gave the world The Sound of Music had enlisted the services of a "nudie" director to make an X-rated exploitation film. And as the film's X-rating had as much to do with its violent finale as for its sexual content (and remember, graphic violence was still relatively new to films at the time), cries of "poor taste!" met BVD's bloody 3rd act massacre inspired by the less-than-one-year-old tragedy of Sharon Tate's death. (To make matters worse, the Manson Family murder trails began just two days before Beyond the Valley of the Dolls' July 17 release.)

Erica Gavin as the languid Roxanne

Meanwhile, serious cineaste factions, encouraged by the emergent New Hollywood and the ushering in of innovative, artistic films like Bonnie & Clyde, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Easy Rider, and Midnight Cowboy, felt strongly that the motion picture industry was ill-served by a film like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. A film which many felt, like the wholesale auctioning off of studio backlot land taking place at the time, symbolized Hollywood's desperation, decline, and imminent demise. As luck would have it, these very sentiments proved near-irresistible publicity in favor of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls in the anti-establishment, counterculture youth-centric marketplace of the late 60s and 70s.

Harrison Page as Emerson Thorne
Behind that friendly mask lies fermenting the unholy seed of a lawyer

The 60s were the age of the "put-on" and the "put-down." Movies that tore down tradition and poked fun at middle-class convention were popular with the youth market (and the swiftest way for a mainstream film to appear "hip"). Young people flocked to the underground films of Andy Warhol (Flesh - 1968, Lonesome Cowboys - 1968), the gonzo cinema of John Waters (Mondo Trasho – 1968), and Russ Meyer’s own string of grindhouse “nudies” (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! – 1965, Vixen 1968). When cinema scholars and film critics began to pay attention to these films, cash-strapped Hollywood jumped on the bandwagon with mainstream attempts to capture the campy, comic book zeitgeist with films like Casino Royale (1966), Barbarella (1968), and the popular Batman TV show (1966-1968).
The derisive send-up of pop culture grew to be such a popular mainstay, by 1970 America had fairly overdosed on irony and satire.

Duncan McLeod as Porter Hall
Used his profession to mask selfish interests...to betray the trust that should have been sacred

Released during the waning days of Psychedelic Cinema (druggy, youth-oriented films invariably made by middle-aged men), Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and its sister-in-sleaze, Myra Breckinridge (twin Fox releases opening within a week of one another) were last-ditch efforts to hitch a ride on the already steamrolling Youth Culture gravy train. Both films arrived at the tail-end of a veritable onslaught of look-alike outrageous psychedelic send-ups of the Flower Power generation. Oddities like Otto Preminger's Skidoo (1968), The Big Cube (1969), Head (1968), Angel, Angel Down We Go - (1969), The Gay Deceivers (1969), and a recent personal favorite, An American Hippie in Israel (1970).

James Iglehart as Randy Black
Randy's body: A cage for an animal

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - offering good, old-fashioned bare breasts over Myra Breckinridge's fenmdom anal rape - was the hands-down bigger hit of the two (it was also the better film); duplicating Valley of the Dolls' fate by being wildly popular with the public yet widely panned by the critics and regarded with disdain by the very studio that made it.
In 1971 when Russ Meyer tried his hand at his first straight dramatic film with the courtroom drama, The Seven Minutes, the results proved every bit as laughable and overdone as Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (and in lacking bare bosoms and backsides, it was a crashing bore, to boot). The ineptitude and financial failure of The Seven Minutes (Meyer's only flop) soured Fox's relationship with the director and laid to rest further debate regarding Meyer's "intentionally" clumsy way with actors, dialog, and editing in BVD.

Henry Rowland as Otto. The man with the benign, Germanic countenance

Initially signed to a 3-picture deal, Russ Meyer was let go following the failure of The Seven Minutes (his employers, Richard Zanuck & David Brown had been ousted in 1970), leaving him free to return to independently (re)making his trademark live-action breast fetish cartoons. The ones which earned him the title, “King of the Nudies.”

Valley Girls
Jacqueline Susann is credited with coming up with the title, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, for the two (rejected) screenplays she submitted to Fox for a legitimate sequel to her hit, Valley of the Dolls.
When a disgruntled Susann sold the rights to her next book, The Love Machine to another studio, Fox (forbidden to make a sequel without her permission) kept her title and made a satire instead. Lawsuits followed

I felt compelled to contextualize Beyond the Valley of the Dolls– a miraculous mess of a movie I’ve loved since the days it was primarily known as "20th Century Fox’s embarrassment"– because the revisionist narrative ascribing canny premeditation to everything risible and inept in BVD is just too pat. The whole "They knew what they were doing" scenario doesn't pay respect to the freakish, one-of-a-kind, lightening-in-a-bottle quality BVD possesses that makes watching it for the 50th time as much of a blast as the first. No one could have foreseen that a breast-fixated, one-trick-pony director; a newbie screenwriter; and a cast of Playboy pin-ups and hysterically diverse actors would produce a film so dementedly sublime.

The Carrie Nations
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls chronicles the exploits of an all-girl rock band coping with the toxic show business cocktail of quick success, easy sex, & plentiful drugs

The making of a completely satisfying, entertaining film is a major feat in itself, and Russ Meyer achieved this miracle twice (BVD and Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!), and in having the ratio of intentionally awful to inadvertently awful so well-balanced and impossible to discern, these films achieve a kind of ideal perfection. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is my idea of perfect trash art.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Being that I can't think of a single thing I DON'T love about this movie, here is my Top Ten List of favorite things in BVD:

1.Nobody blinks!

On the DVD commentary, we learn that Russ Meyer's rapid-fire editing style is at least in part the result of his determined resolve not to show his actors blinking (it breaks audience concentration). Consequently, the actors all look to be in a constant state of astonishment.

2. Boobies, boobies, boobies!

Russ Meyer's concept of the feminine ideal is mired inextricably in the full-figured, breast-fixated 1950s. The lean and lanky hippie silhouette typified by Peggy Lipton on The Mod Squad is nowhere to be found in Meyer's Playboy Pictorial vision of an abundantly well-fed and curvaceous 1970. "The-head-is-missing!" Dept: that's actress Veronica Ericson embraced by Michael Blodgett.

3. The fashions!

The 70s Peacock Revolution in men's fashion made it not only possible but acceptable for young men in their 20s to look like Norman Bates' mother.

4. The hair!

I guess those ginormous breasts have to be offset by something, so towering manes of real and synthetic Bobbie Gentry-sized hairdos abound in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

5. The cartoonish camera angles and sound effects!

Whether it be the sound of a dive-bomber accompanying a suicidal leap, the 20th Century Fox theme played over a beheading, or "Stranger in Paradise" heard during a male-on-male groping session; the sound effects, music cues, and wacky camera angles in BVD confirms Russ Meyer's claim that his films are basically "Superbly made cartoons."

6. Diversity!

Compared to what's going on in mainstream films today (I still can't get over that all-white Into the Woods), the high volume of black actors and PoC used in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is positively radical. Not only are the two most genuinely beautiful actresses in the film African-Americans - the striking Lavelle Roby (above) and Marcia McBroom - but the depiction of the intimate relationship between McBroom and Page is actually very progressive for its time.

7. That unexpectedly sweet lesbian relationship!

Gavin & Myers give two of the better performances and display the most chemistry of any couple in the film. That their scenes have a touching sweetness thoroughly absent elsewhere in the film is, by all accounts, attributable to Meyer staying out of their way.

8. The movie franchise missed opportunity!

I can never look at Russ Meyer stalwart, Charles Napier (as Baxter Wolfe), without thinking he would have made a wonderful Clutch Cargo in a series of live action features based on the 1959 cartoon TV series

9. The montages!

BVD is full of montages. Breakneck fast montages, slow-mo montages, and charmingly old-fashioned, up-the-ladder-of-success montages. This screencap from the Hollywood montage is of the very first place I lived when I moved to Los Angeles in 1978 (the brick building to the left is the Villa Elaine Apartments on Vine), and the Adm & Eve adult book store next door, the site of my very first LA job! (Stephen Sondheim collaborator, George Furth came in once and I got his autograph. As he signed he said, "This is equal parts flattering and demoralizing!")

10. That leopard-print bikini!

I don't think I need to say anything more.

PERFORMANCES
By any rational assessment, the performances in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls are not much worse than those found in (limiting the degree of awful to the Jacqueline Susann family) Valley of the Dolls, The Love Machine, or Once is Not Enough. The major difference being a matter of aptitude (can’t act vs. won’t act) and energy (there’s not a single lazy performance in BVD. Indeed, Meyer’s idea of pacing seems to be pitched somewhere at “fire drill”). And in that vein, Dolly Reed, David Gurian, Phyllis Davis, and Duncan McLeod are all pitch-perfect.

"What I see is beyond your dreaming."
Faster Pussycat star, Haji, whispers mystically in Z-Man's ear

Spouting an endless stream of ersatz-Shakespearean double talk, John Lazar as Phil Spector-ish music tycoon Z-Man Barzell (who looks uncannily like former husbands of both Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli) gives an unforgettable, appropriately bizarre, Frank N. Furter prototype performance.

Edy Williams (acting with her teeth) makes Ann-Margret's thesping in Kitten With a Whiplook nuanced. Although a campy, fun presence onscreen, Williams was apparently not very popular with many on the set, save for Russ Meyer, whom she later wed. And even he, according to Erica Gavin, "Couldn't stand her."

I harbored a crush on reptile-eyed Michael Blodgett for a long while, inducing me to subject myself to 1971s The Velvet Vampire (available on YouTube) because he has a few nude scenes in it.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
As a fan of all manner of 60s music, I love the soundtrack to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. As a fan of women’s prison films (Roger Corman's Swamp Women), girl’s reform school movies (Girls Town), and Andy Warhol’s BAD - a movie about an all-girl hit squad; there’s something irresistibly badass about the idea of an all-girl rock group.

"In the Long Run"& "Find It" are two songs on heavy rotation on my ipod

I was 12-years-old when Beyond the Valley of the Dolls came out, and I remember at that time television programming was chock full of rock groups. Real-life bands like The Beatles, The Jackson Five, and The Osmonds all had their own animated TV shows, and in addition, there was The Archies, Josie and Pussycats, The Groovie Goolies and The Cattanooga Cats. Live action had The Bugaloos, The Partridge Family and reruns of The Monkees. I guess rocks bands were then are what superheroes are now.

The big singing voice we hear coming out of Dolly Read's mouth belongs to Lynn Carey (shown above, right, giving grief to Tuesday Weld about her lack of cashmere sweaters in Lord Love a Duck). Carey also co-wrote two of the songs with composer Stu Phillips.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
No tribute to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls would be complete without a list of my favorite lines of dialog:

"I’ve already seen a display of your discretion. It’s reminiscent of a meat axe!"

"In a scene like this you get a contact high!"

"Who is it Emerson. The delivery...boy?"

"Have you ever been whipped by a willow until the blood came?"

"You’re a groovy boy. I'd like to strap you on sometime."

"And there's someone else inside, but I - I don't know who it is...THE HEAD IS MISSING!"

"But you said you were going to study!"

"Yes, I vow it; Ere this night does wane, you will drink the black sperm of my vengeance!"

"The cat swore up and down it was Acapulco Gold, so if we’re lucky, maybe it’s at least pot!"

"And how's she getting home?"

"Roxanne, will you watch out for me?"(not funny, just the sweetest line in the movie)

"Don’t Bogart the joint!"

BONUS MATERIAL

Listen to it HERE

From Z-Man to King Herod
That's Marcia McBroom behind those Foster Grants in 1973's Jesus Christ Superstar

The fey art director Haji locks in a cage in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls portrayed the mysterious Argyron Stavropoulos in Rosemary's Baby.

Although never seen onscreen, Pam Grier was cast as an extra in BVD. Marcia McBroom says she and Grier were roommates at the time, and both auditioned for the role of Petronella Danforth

Any BVD cultists or fans out there who know anything about the production stills featured on the DVD extras showing Dolly Read in old-age makeup? They accompany shots of her in a mod Union Jack outfit in a stylized church setting (there's even a shot of her in with the old-age makeup lying a coffin).

Bad Idea Dept: Slated for 2016, Will Ferrell & Josh Gad are set to star as Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert in a film about the making of BVD titled: "Russ & Roger Go Beyond"

EricaGavin.com

Sing out, Louise!

It’s not exactly a picnic being a movie buff who’s also a devotee of live musical theater. Those distinct yet inherently complimentary art forms have made such strange bedfellows over the years, I've found it necessary to put myself through a staggering array of mental acrobatics before I feel ready to commit to even the simple act of watching a film based on a favorite Broadway show.

Sometimes this means I have to ratchet down the kind of overeager anticipation that can only lead to disappointment (Nine, Dreamgirls). At others, I have to hold in check a guarded, over-protective attitude toward a beloved source material (to this day, I’m not entirely sure I hate the film version of Grease so much because I genuinely think it’s a lousy movie, or because its 70s-mandated disco-ification [Spandex in the 50s!] is so at odds with the original show’s satirically nostalgic charm). Occasionally, if the filmmaker is particularly clever, I find I can be surprisingly flexible and willing to surrender to reinterpretation and reinvention (Hair, The Wiz, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever). However, if I’m really committed to giving a movie based on a musical the benefit of the doubt, I know my chief hurdle is to refrain from engaging in that time-honored, fruitless pastime of all self-appointed musical theater “purists”: stockpiling comparisons and evaluating motion pictures by live theater standards.

When I let go of the desire for to-the-letter faithful transfers of Broadway shows to the screen and accept the fact that film and stage are two entirely different animals, I always enjoy myself so much more. in fact, of late I've come to appreciate how most of my favorite stage-to-screen musical adaptations have not always been those which have cleaved religiously to the stage production, but rather those which have discovered a way to translate the essence and excitement of a stage show into cinematic terms (Jesus Christ Superstar, Cabaret, Oliver!).

Happily, I was spared all this with Gypsy due to having discovered the movie version long before I ever knew anything about the well-regarded Broadway musical. Equally fortuitous was the fact that I fell in love with this movie while I was still too young to know I wasn’t supposed to.

Rosalind Russell as Rose Hovick

Natalie Wood as Louse Hovick / Gypsy Rose Lee

Karl Malden as Herbie Sommers

Directed and choreographed by West Side Story’s Jerome Robbins, written by Arthur Laurents (West Side Story, Anyone Can Whistle), music by Jule Styne (Funny Girl, Bells Are Ringing) and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (you name it), Gypsy, is the highly-fictionalized 1959 Broadway musical based on the memoirs of famed stripper, Gypsy Rose Lee. On the strength of Ethel Merman’s star turn and the show’s then-novel integration of song, narrative, and character, Gypsy was already being heralded as a theatrical milestone by the time Warner Bros turned it into a critically lambasted, Top-Ten boxoffice hit motion picture in 1962.

Gypsy was adapted for the screen by Leonard Spigelgass (Pepe, of all things) and directed by The Bad Seed’s Mervyn LeRoy (can you imagine pushy Mama Rose coming across Rhoda Penmark? Gypsy would have had a 10-minute running time).

A backstage musical set in the waning, transitional days of vaudeville, Gypsy is a family drama (some would say tragedy) about Rose Hovick’s stop-at-nothing efforts to make her daughter, blonde and talented “Baby” June, a star. There’s another daughter of course, the shy and talent-challenged Louise, but that’s a fact the thrice-married Rose makes the best of rather than rejoices in. As the family and their ragtag vaudeville act tour the country, Rose takes up with and secures the managing services of marriage-minded Herbie, a former kiddie talent show host. Meanwhile her daughters grow restless for another kind of life: June, for a solo career on Broadway, Louise, for a stable home and family.

Four characters, four different dreams, but in Gypsy, only Rose’s dreams matter, which we come to learn is Rose’s one talent. She has a gift for deluding herself into thinking the dogged pursuit of her own dreams is actually in the interest of others. Gypsy’s humor, heart, conflict, and drama derive from the sometimes ruthless lengths Rose is willing to go to make those dreams come true.

"Some People"

In spite of its impressive showing at the boxoffice, the movie version of Gypsy is widely regarded as a disappointment...if not an out-and-out failure. Citing everything from Mervyn LeRoy’s uninspired direction to Rosalind Russell’s notoriously “manipulated” vocals, Gypsy’s reputation as a respectable misfire is so pervasive, few tend to credit it with one of the things it gets absolutely right: it’s an atypically faithful movie adaptation of a stage hit.

Me, I place myself in the opposite camp. While far from what I’d consider a classic, Gypsy is nevertheless one of my favorite movie musicals. It’s tuneful (not a clunker in the bunch!), funny, well-acted (save for that dreadful young Louise and the chorus boy with the overdone Bowery Boys shtick), and one of those rare musicals with genuine dramatic heft. And as good as I think Natalie Wood is in this, the real jewel in Gypsy’s crown is Rosalind Russell. She’s the first Mama Rose I ever saw, and although the role has been better sung and more showily performed, after all these years I’ve never seen anyone come close to Russell in giving Rose Hovick the kind of depth and humanity necessary to make me care about this somewhat monstrous creature.

Rosalind Russell IS Mama Rose to me.

"You'll Never Get Away From Me"

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I couldn’t have been more than eight or nine when I saw Gypsy on TV for the first time. My older sister was a rabid Rosalind Russell fan, so watching Gypsy, a musical I knew absolutely nothing about, was not a choice, but a household edict. Viewed on the family’s living room console, Gypsy as first seen by me was in black & white, pan and scan, with commercial interruptions and edits for time. In fact, it wasn’t until many years later when Gypsy aired on cable that I even KNEW the "Little Lamb" number existed, let alone had the opportunity to see it (I can hear my partner saying that’s an opportunity he’d gladly pass up).

But even with these limitations, I thought Gypsywas something pretty special. Being a child myself, I was enthralled, in those pre-Annie/ Oliver!days, by a non-kiddie movie where kids played such an integral role in the plot, and similarly, the whole “family” thrust of the dramatic conflict was nicely within the scope of what I could understand. Although I must say, being at an age where concepts of good/bad - hero/villain were still pretty simplistic; the chilling vision of motherhood as represented by the charismatic, likable, yet overweeningly selfish Mama Rose was really quite a shock to the system.

Ann Jillian (age 11) as "Dainty" June Hovick with Caroline the Cow

I remember loving all the musical numbers (especially “You Gotta Get a Gimmick”), thinking Natalie Wood was really a knockout (something I dared not relay to my sisters, lest be teased unmercifully), and just being bowled over by Rosalind Russel’s powerhouse performance. Then, as now, she fairly eclipses everything else about the film for me.

Over the years, as my appreciation for Gypsy grew both in terms of concept and context, the film never stopped being a favorite; even if all those repeat viewings only made me more aware of the film’s many flaws and inadequacies.

When critics hail Gypsyfor its seamless integration of song, story, and character; the downbeat themes masked by its cheery vaudeville visage; and the emotional complexity of its lead character, you’ll get no argument from me.

If I have any complaints, it’s that the film’s innocuously cheery, prototypically 60s roadshow approach to the material seriously undercuts what’s so special about Gypsy.

There’s something disturbingly Eugene O’Neill-ish lurking beneath all that Hovick family dysfunction that the movie only touches upon.

"If Momma Was Married"

Because we’re a country that worships success and achievement, people tend to react to Gypsy Rose Lee’s ultimate attainment of wealth and fame as some kind of happy ending. As if Rose’s cutthroat determination is finally vindicated and Louise’s lonely childhood rewarded. But I always leave the film thinking that nobody’s won a damn thing. Louise winds up with a “dream” that was never hers; the anonymous adoration of “celebrity” a substitute for a heartbreakingly anonymous childhood. Rose, in spite of the reconciliatory tone of the fadeout, is, in spite of all of her efforts combating a lifetime of being abandoned, still alone.

Russell and Wood are both effective at accessing some of the darker corners of their characters (as much as the screenplay allows), but it would be years before Hollywood felt comfortable adapting the movie musical – a traditionally family oriented genre – to accommodate more serious themes (Sweeney Todd, Cabaret, All That Jazz, Into the Woods).

"Rose's Turn"

PERFORMANCES

Movie musicals were having a hard go of it in the 60s, and studios hedged their bets wherever they could. In Gypsy’s case, this meant turning a groundbreakingly complex, 4-character dysfunctional family musical drama into a splashy, $4 million, widescreen crowd-pleaser. It also meant ignoring the near-unanimous praise heaped on Ethel Merman’s head for what many considered to be her career-defining role and performance (vocally immortalized on the Original Broadway Cast album that seemed to be in every home, by law, when I was growing up), and going with a better actress with marquee value. An actress whose biggest drawback was that her voice wasn’t up to the demands of the written-specifically-with- Merman-in-mind musical score.

Bankable Rosalind Russell, adding a touch of Lavinia Mannon steeliness (Mourning Becomes Electra) to her Auntie Mame steamroller ebullience, controversially stepped into the made-to-order shoes of Ethel Merman in the iconic role of Mama Rose: stage mother to end all stage mothers.

Rosalind Russell's vocals were a largely handled by Lisa Kirk
A 2003 CD release of the Gypsy soundtrack included a few outtake samples
of Russell singing unassisted.

After seeing Ethel Merman in the movies Call Me Madam and There’s No Business Like Show Business, it’s hard for me not to appreciate the soundness of any decision designed to keep her off the screen (although I have to concede she’s pleasant and very un-Ethel Merman like in those early Eddie Cantor musicals). However, the by-product has been the fostering of an idealized “What if?” scenario regarding Merman recreating her greatest stage success onscreen that has followed Rosalind Russell’s Gypsy around like one of Madame Rose’s trunks.

But speculating about what was missed in not giving Merman the role she created neglects what a significant contribution an actress of Russell’s caliber (equally deft at playing comedy or drama) brings to a movie as stagey setbound as this.

"Everything's Coming Up Roses"

Natalie Wood, hot off of doing whatever she thought she was doing with that Puerto Rican accent in West Side Story (1961), was cast as late-blooming ecdysiast, Gypsy Rose Lee.

Natalie Wood has always held a lot of appeal for me, and her genuinely sweet persona is used to great effect during the film’s first half, just as her remarkable figure and striking looks provide a perfect contrast/payoff in the second half. I’m not sure how she does it (star quality alone?) but her Louise looms larger in the film than it does in any stage production of Gypsy I’ve ever seen. That Wood naturally has the ability to make you care about her is one of the reason’s I think her rather underwritten role carries so much poignancy.

Natalie Wood shines brightest in her quiet scenes, thus her big outburst moment is for me her weakest. But in delivering a few well-placed snarky lines to her meddlesome mom, Wood’s transformation from mouse to sardonic cat is a delight.

"Let Me Entertain You"
Gypsy afforded Natalie Wood a rare opportunity to do her own singing.
To help with her strip routines she visited a Sunset Blvd strip club where
strippers had names like Fran Sinatra and Natalie Should

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

In defense of "Little Lamb"

Maybe it’s because I was deprived of it for so many years. Maybe it’s because Natalie Wood’s vocals remind me of Audrey Hepburn singing “Moon River” in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Maybe it’s because all my taste is in my mouth. Whatever the reason, “Little Lamb,” a song so maudlin it would make Mother Teresa roll her eyes, is my favorite song in the film.
I love that it is the single, solitary moment afforded the pushed-to-the-sidelines Louise, and the first time we get to hear about what someone else feels besides Rose. This external internal monologue captures so perfectly a child’s loneliness (associating sadness with what should be a happy occasion) with the single lyric: “Little cat. Little cat. Oh, why do you look so blue? Did somebody paint you like that, or is it your birthday too?”

That just knocks me the hell out. Reduced to waterworks each and every time.

Most musicals have draggy second acts, but Act II of Gypsy has two wonderful numbers: The show-stopping “You Gotta Get a Gimmick” and that masterfully-constructed musical nervous breakdown, “Rose’s Turn.”

"You Gotta Get a Gimmick"
Roxanne Arlen as Electra, Betty Bruce as Tessie Tura, and Faith Dane as Mazeppa

The one number that's perfectly fine but that I could do without is "All I Need Is The Girl". But this likely has to do with the song being done to death on TV variety shows long before I ever saw Gypsy. But the rousing "Mr. Goldstone We Love You" is a number I could watch a hundred times.

"Mr. Goldstone, I Love You"
That's character actor Ben Lessy as Mr. Goldstone - dubbed Mervyn Goldstone in
inside-joke honor of director Mervyn LeRoy

It's a shame the cute "Together Wherever We Go" number was deleted from the film before its release. Karl Malden had all of his singing bits (he sang briefly in "You'll Never Get Away From Me") left on the cutting room floor. Happily, 16mm prints of both numbers appear as part of the extras on the Gypsy DVD.

"Together Wherever We Go"

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

One of the things I like most about Gypsy and why I think it’s so deserving of its status as one of the greatest American musicals, is that one could talk to fans and detractors of the show all day and never hear the exact same take on Mama Rose. In spite of her dominating presence in every scene of the musical, hers is a character influenced as much by a particular actress’s interpretation as by the audience’s response to her behavior.

"Don't you DARE answer that phone when I'm yelling at you!"
That's Jean Willes quaking in her boots as Mr. Grantzinger's secretary

I’m one of those who sees Mama Rose as (to quote Lewis Carroll on the topic of unicorns) a “fascinating monster.” She’s pitiable and perhaps sympathetic in that she’s a woman clearly driven by frustration (what outlets did a woman with her brains, drive, and ambition have in the 1920s?), selfish desire, and her own childhood abandonment; but her treatment of her daughters – all in the name of love – qualifies her as a largely detestable character.

And as a look at some of my favorite films with strong female characters will reveal (Blue Jasmine, Queen Bee, Mommie Dearest, Angel Face, The Day of the Locust, Darling, Hedda), I have a real affinity for fabulous monsters.

Rosalind Russell, in not shying away from Rose’s unpleasant side, gives a portrait of a woman of contradiction. Contradictions so keenly felt during the “Rose’s Turn” number, that by the time mother and daughter take a hesitant stab at reconciliation at the finale, the scene resonates with melancholy because (if you’re as old as I and your parents are no longer around) it seems to be the legacy of the adult child to always come to the realization that if we're lucky, our parents, even at their worst, are never more or less than human.

"Madame Rose and her daughter Gypsy!"

BONUS MATERIAL

The real-life Gypsy Rose Lee appeared onscreen opposite her motion picture mother,
Rosalind Russell in the 1966 comedy, The Trouble With Angels

"Mama's Talking Soft", a song composed by Styne & Sondheim for Gypsy that failed to make it into the production (it was to be a duet sung by June & Louise following "You'll Never Get Away From Me"). In 1959, pop star Petula Clark recorded a cover of the song for the B-side of her single, "Where Do I Go From Here?"

"Let Me Entertain You"

I don’t believe in perfection, but were someone to really press me to name what I consider to be the most perfect musical ever made, I wouldn’t hesitate a second before placing Vincente Minnelli’s Meet Me in St. Louis at the top of any list. An unpretentious gem of a movie small in scale, meager of plot, modest in ambition, and blissfully devoid of any of those so-called “sure fire” elements associated with most major movie musicals; Meet Me in St. Louis is nevertheless a nonstop, smile-from-ear-to-ear delight which features more moments of genuine magic than all eight Harry Potter movies, combined..

Judy Garland as Esther Smith

Margaret O'Brien as Tootie Smith

Lucille Bremer as Rose Smith

Meet Me in St. Louisis a nostalgically idealized little memory book of a musical chronicling a year in the life of a suburban family in turn-of- the-century St. Louis. Divided into a series of charming and delightfully idiosyncratic vignettes, each designated by a season of the year, Meet Me in St. Louis presents itself as slice-of-life Americana – circa 1904 – with nothing loftier on its mind than a desire to pay gentle tribute to the imperishable bonds of home and family.

What it ends up being is one of the few films I can recall which manages to strike a perfect balance between sentiment and sentimentality.

Setting a tone of lighthearted innocence and old-world charm that Minnelli captivatingly (not to mention, miraculously) manages to sustain throughout the film, Meet Me in St. Louisopens with an introduction to the members of the Smith household that’s ingenious in its economic conveyance of character info and narrative function. There’s level-headed lady of the house, Anna (Mary Astor); no-nonsense housekeeper, Katie (Marjorie Main); college-bound only son, Alonzo “Lon” Jr (Henry H. Daniels); next-to-youngest daughter, Agnes (Joan Carroll); grandpa (Harry Devenport), a collector of hats and firearms; Esther (Garland), the romantic pragmatist ; eldest daughter, Rose (Lucille Bremer); precocious (and downright weird) youngest daughter, Tootie (O’Brien): and, last but not least, Alonzo, the quintessential father figure (Leon Ames).

You and I
Mary Astor as Anna Smith / Leon Ames as Alonzo Smith

Director Vincente Minnelli, whose only third film this is, displays a remarkably sure hand with this opening sequence. For not only do we come away from it with a vividly distinct sense of each of the main characters, but the seamless manner in which the action and camerawork is interwoven with the impromptu singing/humming of the title tune is positively balletic. It’s a virtuoso bit of narrative filmmaking worthy of Kubrick or Hitchcock.

We accompany the Smith family throughout the year as they weather sundry domestic and romantic crises, the chief conflict, such as it is, being the zestful anticipation surrounding the opening of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition World’s Fair vs. the dispiriting news of the impending uprooting of the family to New York.

Boy Meets Girl
Tom Drake as John Truett / Henry J Daniels Jr. as Alonzo "Lon" Smith Jr

The uncluttered simplicity that is the screenplay by Irving Brecher & Fred F. Finklehoff, (the DVD commentary makes mention of the excising of a superfluous subplot) is based on the largely autobiographical stories of Sally Benson. Stories first serialized under the title, “5135 Kensington” in The New Yorker in 1941, expanded and novelized later in 1942 as “Meet Me in St Louis.”

I’ve never read the novel, but as a fan of Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (on whose screenplay Benson was a contributor) Benson seems to have a disarmingly quirky eye when it comes to family. Meet Me in St. Louis is funnier than most films of its ilk, largely due to a great many wonderful throwaway comic lines and the characters being afforded humanizing traits like vanity (“It would’ve been nice to be a brunette.” “You should have been. Nothing could’ve stopped us. Think how we’d look going out together, you with your raven black hair and me with my auburn.”), self-seriousness(“I hate, loathe, despise and abominate money!”“You also spend it.”), precocity (“You’re nothing less than a murderer! You might have killed dozens of people!”“Oh, Rose, you’re so stuck-up!”), and eccentricity (“The ice man saw a drunkard get shot last night and the blood squirted out three feet!”– That would be Tootie again).

All of this is tunefully buoyed by a lovely musical score comprised of period standards and originals songs, four of which are composed by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine.

I've seen it a million times, but Judy singing the Oscar-nominated
The Trolley Song is always such a thrill to watch

A treat for the eyes and ears, Meet Me in St. Louis never fails to win me over with its charm and heart, but I really get a kick out of its character-based comedy. And while many other films have tried to duplicate its formula (the rather dreadful Summer Holiday- 1948), they only wind up getting the material trappings right. Meet Me in St. Louis - from its talented cast and their inimitable chemistry, to the creative artists behind the scenes, to the degree of loving care lavished on this entire production by Vincente Minnelli and producer Arthur Freed (who co-wrote the lovely song "You and I" and voiced Leon Ames' voice) - is a film that remains in a class by itself.

Marjorie Main as Katie

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

From all this gushing praise you’d think Meet Me in St. Louis was a movie I’ve been in love with all my life. On the contrary, I saw the film in its entirety for the first time in 2007. My avoidance of Meet Me in St. Louis for so years stemmed from an assumption on my part that it was just another one of those aggressively quaint, synthetically folksy period musicals that tend to cause me to break out in hives (think The Music Man or Hello, Dolly!). Nothing wears me down faster than hardened show biz pros barnstorming their way through cloying depictions of homespun simplicity.

But of course, it’s within this very arena that most critics contend (and I agree) Vincent Minnelli scores his greatest triumph. In convincing the actors not to play down to the material, to treat the characters, dialog, and situations seriously, he infuses this gossamer-light fairy tale with genuine warmth of emotion. The result is a sincerely sweet and touching family movie devoid of the usual mawkishness sentimentality.

The entire "Long-Distance Phone Call" sequence is hilarious.
A favorite scene in a film comprised almost entirely of favorites

Considerable assist is given by the Oscar-nominated screenplay (Meet Me in St Louis was nominated for four, winning only a special juvenile Oscar from O'Brien) which consistently keeps clichés at bay by subverting anticipated payoffs with unexpected twists. Every time a scene threatens to become too sentimental or hackneyed, some bit of business or dialog is introduced that wrests the proceedings back to something honest. This is especially true of the two youngest Smith girls, Agnes and Tootie; angelic of face but mischievous and possessed of extravagantly gruesome imaginations (Agnes, after being told [in jest] that her pet cat has been harmed: “Oh, if you killed her I’ll kill you! I’ll stab you to death in your sleep, then I’ll tie your body to two wild horses until you’re pulled apart!”).

What I think appeals to me most is Meet Me in St. Louis’ refreshing lack of schmaltz. Where a less thoughtful film might have the characters express their feelings through manipulative emotional outbursts and maudlin displays designed to elicit a sentimental response from the audience, I’m impressed by the way the closeness of the Smith family is illustrated in the ways they treat one another.

This beautifully composed shot is a testament to Minnelli's painterly eye. The detailed production design and eye-popping Technicolor cinematography only add to Meet Me in St. Louis' enduring appeal

1) When Rose’s much-anticipated long-distant call turns out to be a bust, I’m always so charmed by how Ester rescues her sister from embarrassment by putting a new spin on the events.

2) Instead of having a tired subplot involving Rose and Ester vying for the same man, I adore how Rose is excited for Ester to go out on the porch and try to catch the eye of the boy next door.

3) The way Esther puts aside her feelings for John Truett and is ready to do battle with him in defense of Tootie.

4) Of course, the most touching (for me) is the tender way the mother, in spite of being upset by the news of moving to New York, kisses her husband and in effect plays a love song for him. Multiple viewings reveal all the little routines of family togetherness that play out in the background when everyone returns to the parlor. It’s no small wonder that so many people consider Meet Me in St. Louis’ Autumn sequence (comprising the Halloween and moving to New York announcement scenes) to be the strongest in the film.

Grandpa schools Tootie & Agnes on the finer points of flinging flour
into the faces of victims on Halloween

I have a bit of an aversion to the trite, artificial sentimentality of "wholesome" family programming like The Brady Bunch and Father Knows Best (Hazel is another matter...that Shirley Booth can reduce me to tears in an instant, even in a sitcom), and I flat-out reject the alternative trend which asks me to find snarky, wise-ass children to be adorable. That's why Meet Me in St. Louis is such a marvel. Minnelli & Co. found the magic formula to get me to care about a family that genuinely cares about one another.

I'm not sure I'd trust anyone immune to the absolute
adorableness of Esther's crush on neighbor John Truett

PERFORMANCES

The cast of Meet Me in St Louis could hardly be better. Ensemble acting at its finest, with the standout performances only serving to add luster to the already glowing efforts of the rest of the troupe. I’m partial to the delectably neurotic Margaret O’Brien (I always crack up when in one scene, out of the blue, apropos of nothing, Tootie announces plans to start digging a tunnel to a neighbor's terrace for the express purpose of grabbing her leg when she walks in her garden), but lovely Lucille Bremer has many fine moments (“The plans have been changed!”). Everybody's favorite dad, Leon Ames, the master of confounded exasperated, is solid as always. I’m citing these particulars, but the truth is that every single character int he film is exceptionally well-cast. The result is that we not only like the Smith family and care what happened to them, but we appreciate why they feel so strongly for their town and friends.

The Smith Family

Depending on the source, any number of people have claimed responsibility for casting the reluctant Judy Garland in this, my favorite of her non-Oz roles, but the who doesn't matter so much as trying to imagine what this film would be like without her. Even if everything remained exactly as it is, without Garland I'm 100% certain the result would merely be one of those disposably competent, workaday musicals MGM churned out with regularity in its time. Judy Garland is the element that makes this film magic, and it's amazing to me that she was overlooked come Oscar time. People don't tend to think of vocal performances as acting, but just check out the variance in Garland's singing of "The Boy Next Door" contrasted with the performance she gives during "The Trolley Song" and ultimately, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." Were one to regard each of these unforgettable moments as a dramatic scene, scenes Garland commands and puts over with touching sincerity and depth of feeling...well, Meryl Streep and Cate Blanchett would both have to concede they're not in her league.

Striking a perfect balance between spunk and youthful innocence ("I've worked all my life to be a senior!"), Judy Garland's Esther Smith is a testament to her uniquely accessible and likable star quality

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
I'm always taken a little aback when I realize just how few musical numbers there are in Meet Me in St Louis. It always feels like wall-to-wall music! One listen to the score of the 1989 Broadway adaptation of the film, expanded by at least eight more songs by the same composers (and in which we learn Tootie's name is Sarah), and you're likely to come away with a better appreciation for the virtues of brevity.

Under the Bamboo Tree

I've written before (in reference to the dull soirees in every version of The Great Gatsby I've ever seen) that parties in movies rarely ever look to be much fun. The going away house party the Smiths throw for brother Lon is the exception. This lively, well-staged sequence features a clever reworking of "Skip to My Lou" and of course, the cute Margaret O'Brien / Judy Garland duet, "Under the Bamboo Tree."

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Movie musical magic moments don't get much better than Judy Garland's sublime rendition of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." I love the song and the way Garland sings it, but it's truly how the song is used in dramatic context of the story (along with Margaret O'Brien's doleful performance) that makes it the memorably heartbreaking classic scene it is. As the pivotal event necessary to inspire the father to change his plans, this number delivers both narratively and emotionally.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Like the character of Lon Smith, I grew up as the only boy in a household of four sisters (hence my desire to escape to the movies every chance I got), only in the pecking order of age, I was where Agnes would be. My earliest memories of my family, before my parents divorced in 1967, have a veneer of nostalgia surrounding them takes on more and more of the shimmering Technicolor glow of Meet Me in St. Louis the older I get.

The youthful quirks of my sisters stand out in my mind: One had her room plastered with posters of the Beatles; another was part of a neighborhood girl's singing group, modeling themselves on The Supremes; one sister was drawn to anything artistic; and the youngest seemed to be in constant telepathic communication with the family dog. My parents stand out in my mind as these two perfect problem-solvers. It seems there was nothing you could come to them with that they couldn't fix, whether it be the strap on a roller skate, or the certainty there was a monster hiding in the bedroom closet when the lights went out.

When we were that young, it felt like we were indeed a unit, looking out for one another, the feelings of love, concern, and companionship all melding together under the instinctual, unexamined union called family.

Any sense of accuracy in my memories of Christmases, picnics, and birthday parties, is forever lost in the alchemic process which turns that which can no longer be retrieved into that which we need it to be. Both of my parents have since passed away, my sisters no longer speak to one another, and the success of my current (isolated) relationship with each of my siblings is firmly rooted in my living several hundred miles away from all of them.

The word "family" should appear in dictionaries right next to the word "imperfect" because that's what they are (even the Smith family left St. Louis for New York in real life). But growing older has shown me that familial love, equally imperfect, can be incredibly durable, flexible, forgiving, and remarkably impervious to time, distance, and the holding of grudges.

When I watch Meet Me in St Louis, I know I'm looking at a vision of family life that never existed anywhere, at any time, ever. But this movie, like a fairy tale or my own hazy, half-remembered, half-idealized, wish-fulfillment memories of my childhood and family; makes me believe, if only 113-minutes, perfection is possible. And that's what dreams are for.

"I can't believe it. Right here where we live. Right here in St. Louis."

BONUS MATERIAL
The one clear advantage to it taking me so long get around to seeing Meet Me in St. Louis is that it ultimately afforded me the unforgettable opportunity of seeing it for the first time in the presence of an audience at one of Los Angles' great restored movie houses. The Palace Theater in downtown Los Angeles was built in 1911.
Not only was it a thrill to see this classic on the big screen and experience the collective audience response (applause and huge laughs throughout, and not a dry eye in the house by fadeout) but getting to be inside this magnificent theater was a wholly unforgettable experience.

In 1989, Meet Me in St. Louis was (as is the trend these days) adapted for the Broadway stage. It was nominated for four Tony Awards and looks absolutely insufferable.

A photograph of the actual 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition

The Mommie Dearest Diary: Carol Ann Tells All by Rutanya Alda

For worshipers of the enduring camp classic Mommie Dearest (and that’s pretty much all of us, am I right?), actress Rutanya Alda has, for the last couple of years, been something of a battle-scarred, in-the-trenches, cult-film missionary doing the Lord’s work. The Lord in this case being the Great God of Inadvertent Camp. Ms. Alda’s sacred trust: to preserve the legacy and answer the gay community’s clarion call (and make no mistake, the LGBT community is solely responsible for Mommie Dearest not disappearing into oblivion) of “What were they thinking?”

As cult film fans and connoisseurs of delectable camp already know, Rutanya Alda plays Joan Crawford’s devoted, long-suffering, rapidly-aging secretary, Carol Ann, in Mommie Dearest. A now-iconic role in the iconically misguided 1981 biopic which contributed significantly (some might say exclusively) to derailing the A-list career of Oscar-winner Faye Dunaway.

Rutanya Alda as Carol Ann in Mommie Dearest

Alda’s own nearly 50-year career in films encompasses everything from being Mia Farrow’s stand-in in Rosemary’s Baby (and the voice of Dr. Hill’s answering service in that memorably tense phone booth scene) to co-starring opposite Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro in Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter. But unlike Dunaway and almost everyone else associated with Mommie Dearest, Alda is actually happy and proud to have been a part of a film once regarded as one of Hollywood’s biggest embarrassments, now a bonafide camp cult classic. She even accepts (with considerable grace and good humor) the fact that in spite of having more than 50 films to her credit, to a great many individuals she is and always will be Carol Ann.

Alda’s current status as the unofficial spokesperson for all things Mommie Dearest began in 2013 when she was the guest of honor at a special Mother’s Day screening at San Francisco’s Castro Theater. There she regaled the SRO audience with hilarious “Lived to tell the tale!” anecdotes about the making of Mommie Dearest: a major serious-minded major motion picture upon which many hopes and investments were pinned, held hostage and kept under siege by the demands and off-the-rails ego of its star.

Conceived as a serious dramatic adaptation of Christina Crawford's 1978 bombshell of tell-all memoir (Dunaway was certain she'd get an Oscar nomination), Mommie Dearest somehow became a quotable high cam comedy by the time it hit the theaters. Every highly-anticipated film that flops engenders a certain level of curiosity (Mommie Dearest was a critical flop, but made lots of money for Paramount...but for all the wrong reason), but the swift and total reversal of Mommie Dearest's fortunes created a great deal of curiosity among fans as to how so many things could go wrong so extravagantly. Alas, nobody was talking. Considerable blame was placed on the screenplay, but the lion's share of the shame spotlight fell on Faye Dunaway and her fiercely committed, brazenly unsubtle performance.

With Dunaway and the rest of the film's cast and crew reluctant to even acknowledge their participation on the project, details about what went into the making of one of the screen's most delectable disasters has largely been nil.
That is until Carol Ann finally broke her silence.

Carol Ann appeared to be on an accelerated aging program. The book explains why

Culled from the personal diary Alda kept throughout the entire ordeal…I mean, filming of Mommie Dearest, these deliciously dishy stories, related with chummy, “Can we talk?” candor, were the first behind-the-scenes accounts ever to emerge from beneath the cone of silence that seemed to envelope Mommie Dearest after its critically disastrous release. Needless to say, the audience lapped up every gossipy detail.

As Ms. Alda began making the reading of excerpts from her diary a regular part of her personal appearances celebrating Mommie Dearest, the outpour of interest from fans convinced her to publish them in book form.

Rutanya Alda’s The Mommie Dearest Diary: Carol Ann Tells All was published September 18, 2015 (just a few days shy of the film’s 34^th anniversary Los Angeles release date of September 25, 1981).
Although I was chomping at the bit to read Alda’s memoir hot off the presses, I nevertheless bided my time and had my prayers answered when I received the book for Christmas. By December 26^thI’d finished it. Not because the book is so brief (it’s a slim 166 pages) but because it’s that much fun to read. To use a cliché I’m sure that’s been overworked in every review of The Mommie Dearest Diary to date, but I really couldn’t put it down.

The Deer Hunter
Rutanya Alda played Angela, the pregnant bride in Michael Ciimino's 1978 film.
Here she's seen with (l. to r.) Christopher Walken, John Savage, and Meryl Streep

Being a smart woman who knows her audience, Rutanya Alda uses the first third of the book to supply us with only the briefest of personal and professional bio material before getting down to the good stuff. (Biggest personal epiphany: Rutanya Alda is NOT, as I'd always assumed, related to Alan!) Happily, this section proves surprisingly crammed with “good stuff” as well, for once the Latvian-born immigrant embarks on a career as an actress, we’re treated to stories about Alda’s early encounters with the likes of Brian De Palma, Joan Crawford, Robert Altman, Barbra Streisand, and even pre-Mommie Dearest Faye Dunaway. The cumulative effect is the desire for Ms. Alda to later write a more comprehensive autobiography, the span of her career and the many great directors and actors she’s worked with (and slept with) providing a ‘70s enthusiast like me with a vivid glimpse into the New Hollywood as it morphed into blockbutserland

Mommie Dearest opened in September, but by mid-October Paramount realized audiences weren't taking their drama seriously, and attempted to capitalize on the film's growing status as a camp cult film by posting this newspaper ad.
The ad was removed after the late producer, Frank Yablans, filed a $10 million lawsuit (a move he later claimed to regret given the inevitability of its camp reputation)

The actual Mommie Dearest diary begins with Alda’s audition for director Frank Perry (Diary of a Mad Housewife, Last Summer) in December of 1980, and ends on the last day of filming, April of 1981. In between, movie fans are given a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the hurry-up-and-wait world of filmmaking, and Mommie Dearest fans at last get to find out if there is anything going on behind the scenes that could possibly explain what wound up on the screen.

Since the diary was never intended for publication and used primarily as a meditative tool while the author sought to navigate both her troubled marriage and the difficult shoot, there’s a take-no-prisoners directness to Alda’s writing that makes The Mommie Dearest Diary something of a quidnunc’s wet dream. Nobody is spared (including Alda herself), and she leaves it to the reader to decide whether a bit of gossip to big or too small…she just reveals everything (which is exactly what one seeks in a tell all, but so seldom gets). In addition, she's also very fair-handed. Dunaway is revealed to be quite gracious and accommodating - on occasion.

Perhaps the best thing that can be said about The Mommie Dearest Diary is that it reads like the kind of commentary I wish accompanied the DVD.

Dunaway got future-husband, photographer Terry O'Neill, a producer's credit

I don't want to spoil anyone's fun by revealing anything more about the book, so here's a glimpse of some of the things you'll find out, some of the questions that will be answered, and a few tips on what to keep a lookout for:

I'll Be There For You - Except When It's Time To Feed You Lines For Your Closeup

What is the "Clear Away Club" and Who Were its Members?

The Hospital Scene: Who's Line is it, Anyway?

Did Carol Ann Skip The Wedding?

Who Designed This Dress? Dont' Axe!

After a Long Day, Carol Ann Gets a Chance to Put Her Feet Up

Dunaway and O'Neill Play "I 've Got A Secret"

(S)he Who Gets Slapped...three times, yet

Tonight's Episode: "Shear Dedication" or "Hacking at Hobel"

If you pick up The Mommie Dearest Diary: Carol Ann Tells All expecting the kind of dirt to make your hair stand on end, you're likely to be disappointed ( you won't discover anything you don't likely already suspect about La Dunaway, but it's fascinating having it confirmed!).

But if you're like me, a Mommie Dearest fan who has always marveled at the phenomenon of serious-minded films (like Valley of the Dolls, The Oscar) going so grievously astray they transmogrify into something nobody involved could have ever foreseen; then The Mommie Dearest Diary provides some eye-opening insight into the world of high-stakes Hollywood filmmaking.

A world where everybody starts out wanting to do something important, only to wind up compromising, placating egos, cutting corners, and ultimately counting the days waiting for the whole thing to be over.

The Mommie Dearest Diary: Carol Ann Tells All

Paperback

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

BONUS MATERIAL
Read my essay on Mommie Dearest HERE

See Rutanya Alda read her Mommie Dearest Diary at The Castro Theater in S.F. HERE

Read more about Mommie Dearest Diary at Angleman's Place

Faye Dunaway plays nice and lets Frank Perry have his turn directing Mommie Dearest

A movie comfortable in its own skin, about two men who weren’t.

Let’s see if I’ve got this straight (no pun intended): during its most repressed and puritanical years, Middle America, under the guise of “showman”, took to its heart a fey and outlandishly flamboyant, closeted gay man and kept him a star for over 50 years. Twenty-six years after his death, in the presumably more enlightened era of the 21^st century, a motion picture about the personal life of said showman is unable to find an American distributor because the subject matter is deemed “Too gay.” This from an industry that would greenlight Heaven’s Gate II if it contained ten seconds of girl-on-girl action.

What to take away from all this: 1. America prefers its gay men closeted, cartoonish, or nonthreateningly “other.” Preferably all three. 2. Unless viewed through the prism of the heteronormative gaze (where the prerequisites are shame, self-pity, and a tacit plea for acceptance) America is uncomfortable with anything remotely approaching an authentic depiction of gay life. 3. Hollywooddoesn’t acknowledge lesbians, only hot women having sex with each other (explaining, perhaps, why the phrase "too lesbian" has never been coined about a film).
But that’s not the whole story.

Steven Soderbergh’s gleefully impudent Liberace film, Behind the Candelabra, eventually found a home on cable television, cable and the Internet being the only frontiers of risk left in today’s landscape of cinematic follow-the-leader. As an HBO TV-movie Behind the Candelabra emerged a critical and ratings blockbuster, and a multi-award winner. A result confirming perhaps that the term “Too gay” is merely a signifier of a studio head being “Too ignorant.”

Michael Douglas as Liberace

Matt Damon as Scott Thorson

Debbie Reynolds as Frances Liberace

Rob Lowe as Dr. Jack Startz

With their built-in melodrama, potential for embarrassing celebrity impersonations, and cheesy reenactments of real-life events, celebrity bio films can be a lot of fun. They can also be fascinatingly revelatory mirrors of fame culture, revealing the disconnect between a star's public image and their private reality. But more often than not they’re formulaic dramatized chronologies of career milestones, akin to AV study aids for a class called Celebrity History 101.

Celebrity biopics have been around so long they’ve ceased being a classification and become their own genre. But since true-to-life events don’t automatically translate to dramatically compelling stories (or even stories that make sense or have a point), the fashioning of a workable narrative out of the often haphazard and random events of a public figure’s life has proved a hurdle not easily surmounted in the biopic game. Hence, writers tend to fall back on the reliable but grossly overused rags-to-riches trope: struggle, success, disenchantment, downward spiral, ultimate redemption. A format as fixed and set in concrete as the footprints outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

Cheyenne Jackson as Liberace protege Billy Leatherwood

I’m not crazy about movie bios hellbent on mythologizing their subjects by skirting unpleasant truths, and hatchet jobs come across as dishonest as hagiographies. I suppose one doesn't, or shouldn't, look to biographical films for encyclopedic accuracy - they're dramatizations after all, and on that score, documentaries do nicely; but what I get excited about is when a filmmaker, in chronicling the life of a public figure, is able to seize upon a unique perspective which casts the work and life of the individual in broader context. To comment upon the difference between art and artifice, or perhaps hold up a mirror in which we as a culture can see something of ourselves reflected in why we have made this person notable in the first place.

The late Ken Russell, whose rhapsodically operatic films about the lives of classical composers gloriously transcended the usual “and then they wrote….” clichés, was a master of this. One can only imagine what a field day he would have had with Liberace’s excessive, troubled, and sequined-encrusted life.

Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Erin Brockovich), wisely choosing to ignore the directive of Liberace’s “Too much of a good thing is wonderful!” paraphrase of Mae West’s famous line, avoids the potential for baroque overkill in favor of looking at Liberace’s life through the downsized prism of domestic drama. Behind the Candelabra, a serio-comic take on the last ten years in the life of the legendarily overdressed entertainer (adapted from the ghostwritten memoirs of former lover and current hot mess, Scott Thorson), is devoted to good-naturedly reducing Liberace’s grandiose public persona down to as close to human scale as the showman's outsized lifestyle and personality would allow.

In the process, both Liberace and Thorson are granted a depth of humanity which the more sordid details of their tabloid-ready association gave little hint of their being well-suited. And in the bargain, Liberace's larger-than-life persona and Thorson's all-too-common circumstances are handled with the kind of empathetic delicacy authors like Carson McCullers and Flannery O’Connor reserved for their Southern Gothic galleries of grotesques.
That may sound like faint praise, but one need only look at what happened with Mommie Dearest to appreciate what a considerable achievement it is for a film to render human, in however small a capacity, a public figure so tirelessly devoted and committed to turning themselves into a living caricature.

The Emmy Award-winning recreations of Liberace's beyond outrageous stage wardrobe are the work of
Ellen Mirojnick and Robert Q. Mathews

One of entertainment history’s great head-shakers is the fact that anyone with a functioning brain ever thought for a nanosecond that mononymous pianist/entertainer Liberace was straight. More fascinating still, if his fanbase was comprised exclusively of, as one critic put it “Teenage girls afraid of sex and middle-aged women no longer interested in it,” what does that say about the breadth and scope of his appeal?

At the start of Behind the Candelabra Liberace is 57-years-old, firmly ensconced in the Vegas glitz period of his career, and the successful plaintiff of several homosexuality libel suits. As the darling of the blue-haired set and with a stage show gayer than a Judy Garland convention, Liberace’s public disavowal of his true sexuality at this point was largely moot; just another ritualistically maintained aspect of his manufactured public image, no more authentic than the hair on his head or the diamonds in his lapels.

Blatantly “out” in his cloistered private life, Liberace, already on the ebb side of a relationship with prissy protégé Billy Leatherwood (Cheyenne Jackson), feels an instant attraction when introduced to 17-year-old veterinary trainee Scott Thorson (42-year-old Matt Damon) by mutual friend, Bob Black (Scott Bakula).

The Seduction
Watching Liberace perform at the Las Vegas Hilton, Scott Thorson is already hooked.
Scott Bakula, mustachioed and bescarfed, is one of Scott's pre-Liberace lovers

In the tradition of countless May/December romances the world over, one individual’s great wealth proves as equal and potent an aphrodisiac as the other individual’s great beauty, and ZIP!...bye, bye all obstacles otherwise posed by a 40-year age gap. Liberace and Scott Thorson embark upon a relationship that lasts six years. An affectionate and (by this film’s account, anyway) mutually loving cohabitation wherein the isolated entertainer and the teen with the history of being shuttled between foster homes, formed a marriage and became a family.

But Liberace and Scott Thorson were no Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, and their brief time together proved to be as toxic as it was intoxicating.

Given the circumstances, it’s not exactly surprising that the riches Liberace lavished upon his young paramour came with possessive strings. Nor was Liberace’s plan to adopt Thorson as far-fetched as it sounds; being rooted both in pragmatism (heterosexist laws still make this an option considered by many long-term gay couples seeking legal protection in cases of death and illness); and image control; Liberace could then pawn Thorson off as his biological son. (Sydney Guilaroff, the closeted gay hairdresser to the stars, did indeed adopt the adult male lover he’d publicly passed off as a grandson.)

No, where things take a turn for the bizarre is when Liberace has Thorson undergo extensive plastic surgery to resemble the pianist in his younger days. A peculiar request serving the dual purpose of feeding Liberace’s narcissism while further supporting the heterosexuality-reaffirming biological son gambit.

"I want you to make Scott look like this."
Liberace, whose private life and obsessions make him come across like the gay Hugh Hefner,
enlists a plastic surgeon to perform this oddball variant on the
rich-old-man-buys-bimbo-girlfriend-a-boob-job tradition

As drug use and petty jealousies escalated, and mutual sexual attraction waned, Thorson, at the ripe old age of 23, found himself the himbo soon to be put out to pasture to make way for the next “Blonde Adonis” on Liberace’s list. The latter part of Behind the Candelabra veers to the dark side as it recounts the painful circumstances precipitating the pair’s rancorous parting, and Liberace having greatest fears being realized when Thorson files a very public palimony suit against him to the tune of $113 million. The lengthy court battle lasted nearly as long as the relationship itself, ultimately being settled out of court for $75,000).

Liberace succumbed to AIDS in 1987, keeping that closet door shut (at least in his mind) to the last. Behind the Candelabra affords the estranged couple a deathbed reconciliation and Liberace a glittering, heaven-bound sendoff more fitting than the modest burial he was given in real life.

Paul Resier as Scott Thorson's attorney for the palimony suit he filed
after being evicted from Liberace's home. The ugly battle stretched out for four years

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I’ve never been a fan of Liberace nor much understood his appeal (although if you haven't already seen it, I recommend you run, don't walk, to get your hands on the hooty 1955 film Sincerely Yours). But he’s one of those old-fashioned show-biz “personalities” who has their act so down pat, they’re rather difficult to actually dislike. Check out any of his TV appearances on YouTube and you’ll see a man who has mastered the art of amiable subterfuge. Repeating the same self-deprecating jokes and anecdotes for what must be decades, Liberace skillfully hides behind witty patter and good-natured evasion. Like a politician, he’s able to speak sincerely and at great length without ever once approaching the truth or revealing anything about himself he hasn’t already calculated he wants you to know. All the while coming across as genuine, friendly, and accessible. It would be terrifying if it weren’t so entertaining. (Dolly Parton is the only star I know today to possess a similar quality.)

With nothing to go on in the way of recorded images of the showman just being himself, I'm impressed by how screenwriter Richard LaGravenese was able to forge so richly a dimensional representation of Liberace. One gets the impression of a gravely lonely man of not overwhelming depth-of-character who is simultaneously believable (and quite frightening) as both powerful and selfishly controlling.

Behind the Candelabra paints a portrait of a gay man who has learned (all too well) the lessons for survival taught to him by society (homosexuality was illegal much of Liberace's adult life) and the Church (he was devout Catholic). The lesson: you must learn to exist as two people – one for your private life, one for public consumption. And of course, Liberace’s extreme, schizophrenically dual existence is but a gold-plated, gilt-edged amplification of the day-to-day reality for millions of gay men living in a society which encourages masks and role-playing for those outside of the heteronormative standard.

By exploring the Liberace/Thorson relationship beyond the extremes of lifestyle and eccentricities of character, Behind the Candelabra draws provocative and amusing parallels between the roles the couple adopted in public (Liberace is a heterosexual, Thorson his chauffeur) and the roles they assumed in private (ironically, a realm where Liberace proved more comfortable in his sexuality than the prudish Thorson, who clung unconvincingly to his "bisexual" life preserver).

If Behind the Candelabra is to be believed, it must be said that for all his public artifice, Liberace was nothing if not his fully out and authentic self in his private life. And while I’ve never found anything admirable in his distancing himself from anything remotely connected to the gay community in his lifetime, it’s difficult not to acknowledge how the outrageousness of his stage persona couldn't help but expand the boundaries of what was acceptable for a male performer to be (and look like) onstage. And getting the Bible-belters to swallow it, yet! Liberace was definitely a product of his time, but as closeted as he was, it's somewhat miraculous that he never resorted to going through a sham heterosexual marriage like his heir-apparent in sequined crass, Elton John.

Lee & Scott, Fat and Happy
Behind the Candelabra has several remarkable scenes of banal domesticity in which
the Liberace and Thorson relationship is shown to have been a marriage in every sense of the word

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Whether true to the real-life circumstances or not, Behind the Candelabra is a love story...a marriage, in fact. And what I so admire about the film is that it tells this same-sexy love story in a language no different from what you’d see in any other film about dysfunctional romance (Closer, Blue Valentine). Unconcerned with the comfort levels of the audience or whether or not it will “play in Peoria,” Behind the Candelabra depicts two people in an intimate relationship as it should be: kissing, caressing, bickering, fucking, and going about their lives in the manner of countless couples the world over. It's a credit to the filmmakers that the extreme trappings of wealth what characterized Liberace's life never overwhelm the human element.

It’s wonderful to see a major motion picture about gay characters that is so unconcerned with mollifying the heterosexual gaze.

PERFORMANCES

I’ve seen Michael Douglas in a great many films since his debut in Hail, Hero! in 1969, but I honestly think his Liberace is the best work he’s ever done. He’s remarkable. Referencing Mommie Dearest yet again, Douglas was given a public figure every bit as over the top as Crawford (more, actually) and somehow found a way to access the human behind the image. And what range! He nails Liberace's vulnerable and gentle nature in the courtship scenes as adeptly as he lands the more hard-edged person we see toward the end.

Garrett M. Brown and Jane Morris are standouts as Scott's foster parents

Without looking exactly like him, Douglas captures the essence of the Liberace we know, embellishing this mini-impersonation of the stage personality with a well-conceived characterization of a Liberace away from the public glare. In an astoundingly vanity-free performance, Douglas achieves the impossible: he turns Liberace into a authentic human being. Michael Douglas surprised the hell out of me with this film and he deserved every one of the many awards his performance garnered.

In addition to the terrific character turns by Debbie Reynolds and Rob Lowe,
Dan Aykroyd lends solid support as Liberace's fix-it-all manager Seymour Heller

For all the issues I have with Matt Damon the man (occasionally he just needs to shut the fuck up) I like him a great deal as an actor. Playing a perhaps less guileful version of Scott Thorson than the real deal, Damon’s reactive performance is easier to overlook. But like a painter working with a blank canvas (and if you’ve ever seen one of the real-life Thorson's numerous television appearances, you'll know they don't come much blanker) Damon imbues the character with a survivor's willingness to please that becomes quite poignant in the latter third of the film when the relationship starts to sour (as good as they are in the film’s earlier scenes, both actors really shine in plumbing the darker sides of their characters).

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
With its gold-cast cinematography, impeccable eye for period detail in costuming and wigs, and painstaking recreation of Liberace's world of "palatial kitsch"; Behind the Candelabra is, as might be expected for a film about the life of one of show business's showiest showmen, a real visual treat. I loved the film's sharp and funny script and its stellar,top-drawer performances from everyone in the cast. As movie bios go, Behind the Candelabra doesn't rewrite the book, but for the depth and honesty of its depiction of a gay relationship, it gets a full four stars from me. Which, as we know, would be far too little glitz for Liberace, but will have to do in this instance.

BONUS MATERIAL

Seeing is believing: Liberace and Scott Thorson, Las Vegas 1981

Liberace's oddness is used to excellent effect in Tony Richardson's brilliant satire of California and the funeral business, The Loved One (1965). Cast as "Casket Specialist" Mr. Starker, Liberace pretty much only has to play himself, but he's hilarious and looks infinitely more at ease hawking coffins than he did in his love scenes with Dorothy Malone in Sincerely Yours.

Opened by Liberace himself in 1979, The Liberace Museum in Las Vegas was several buildings housing a collection of Liberace's performance costumes, automobiles, and pianos (not to mention the biggest rhinestone in the world) in a surprisingly unassuming mall which also contained one of his restaurants. My partner and I visited it back in 2005, and it was a blast. I've never seen so many mirrors, rhinestones and candelabras in all my life. You seriously could go glitter-blind in this place. The sheet music adorning the side of the building (below) is one of his performance staples, "The Beer Barrel Polka." The museum ultimately closed in 2013.

DEATH ON THE NILE 1978

SEXTETTE 1978

MAME 1974

THE LAST OF SHEILA 1973

COME BACK TO THE 5 & DIME JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN 1982

FOR LOVE OF IVY 1968

THE FAN 1981

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF 1958

THE STRIPPER 1963

MAGIC 1978

THE HIRELING 1973

SILENT MOVIE 1976

HOT SPELL 1958

BARRY LYNDON 1975

THE CHILDREN'S HOUR 1961

BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS 1970

GYPSY 1962

MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS 1944

BOOK REVIEW: The Mommie Dearest Diary

BEHIND THE CANDELABRA 2013