DREAMS ARE WHAT LE CINEMA IS FOR...

This updated and expanded repost of an earlier essay is part of The Remembering Barbara Stanwyck Blogathon hosted by The Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood. Visit the site for more posts from participating blogs.

If prostitution didn’t exist, Hollywood most certainly would have had to invent it. How else to surmount the troubling obstacle presented to screenwriters required to develop female characters not defined by the label of wife, mother, or girlfriend? How else to include as much sex, salaciousness, and female objectification as possible while still tent-poling the dual hypocritical obligations of have-your-cake-and-eat-too moralizing necessary to keep one step ahead of the censors, and the proper amount of after the fact, self-righteous finger-wagging to placate audience guilt?

America loves its sex, violence, and debauchery, but never really lets itself enjoy the fun it has rolling around in the gutter unless also afforded the opportunity to give itself a good slap on the wrist after it’s all over. This need to have one’s "sensitive adult material" served up with a healthy dose of religious dogma goes a long way toward explaining why a moralizing piece of Hollywood sleaze like Walk on the Wild Side is such an enduringly entertaining hoot.

Laurence Harvey as Doug Linkhorn

Jane Fonda as Kitty Twist (nee Tristram)

Capucine as Hallie Gerard

Barbara Stanwyck as Jo Courtney

Ann Baxter as Teresina Vidaverri

Published in 1956, Algren’s anecdotal, relentlessly downbeat, essentially unfilmable (at least in 1962) Depression-era novel A Walk on the Wild Side bears little resemblance to the sanitized movie adapted from it, save for a few characters' names and the excision of the “A” from the title. The film version, rumored (rather remarkably) to be the result of no less than six writers, among them playwright Clifford Odets (The Country Girl) and screenwriter Ben Hecht (Spellbound), strives to be a tale of lost souls searching for redemption through love on the sordid side of the streets of New Orleans. But the strain of having to balance sexual candor and social uplift shows in nearly every scene and dialog exchange, ultimately proving far too unwieldy a burden for director Edward Dmytryk (Raintree County, Murder My Sweet) who it is rumored, stepped in when original director Blake Edwards was replaced. In the end, the movie promoted with the self-serving warning “This is an ADULT PICTURE - Parents should exercise discretion in permitting the immature to see it,” was no more than another teasing Hollywood soap opera.

The composition of this shot sums up Walk on the Wild Side's major dramatic conflict

The time is the 1930s (you’ll just have to take the film’s word for that). Following the death of his ailing father - an alcoholic, unordained preacher - Arroyo, Texas farm boy Dove Linkhorn (Lithuanian-born Laurence Harvey) travels to Louisiana on a quest to find his long lost love, Hallie (French-born Capucine), an amateur painter and sculptress. En route, he crosses paths with savvy runaway orphan Kitty Twist (Fonda) who teaches him the tricks of riding the rails and thumbing rides. Although Kitty has a few other tricks she’d like to teach him, Dove says no to hobo hanky-panky because his heart remains true to Hallie, whom he calls his religion.

After a brief stopover at the rundown café of Mexican head-turner Teresina Vidaverri (Baxter) brings out Kitty’s claws, resulting in her stealing form the proprietress out of jealousy, the morally offended dirt farmer sends her on her way and stays on at Teresina’s place as a hired-hand.

The composition of this shot sums of Walk on the Wild Side's OTHER dramatic conflict

Cut to New Orleans’ French Quarter and the popular bordello known as The Doll House. Run by no-nonsense man-hater (aka lesbian) Jo Courtney (Stanwyck) and given assist by her devoted but ineffectual husband, former carny strongman Achilles Schmidt (Karl Swenson), who lost his legs in a train accident, the Doll House is typical of most movie whorehouses in that it doesn't look like very much fun.. The big shocker (to the screenwriters perhaps, but certainly to no one with even a passing familiarity with soap opera plotting) is that Dove’s virginal and virtuous Hallie is the Doll House’s most desirable and sought-after prostitute… Jo categorically taking top honors as Hallie’s most persistent and ardent pursuer.

As Hallie Gerard, statuesque ex-model Capucine embodies the kind of regal, exotic glamour suited to a high-priced escort ("upscale and sophisticated enough to take anywhere!"). But breathtaking beauty aside, the woman comes off as the least-fun hooker you're likely to meet.

Of course, when Dove finally reunites with the wild Texas love with whom he shared his first kiss and more: “Afterwards, in the moonlight...we danced like we was celebrating a miracle. A crazy kind of dance. And then we sang and shouted...like it wasn't real!.” (a laughable reminiscence rendered all the more inconceivable once we set eyes on the high-cheekboned haughtiness of Capucine), the romantically idealistic hayseed is a tad slow in catching on as to how Hallie manages to afford all those expensive Pierre Cardin-designed frocks from 30 years in the future; but when he does, heartbroken disillusionment gives way to the usual macho proprietary protectiveness.

The dislike Capucine and Laurence Harvey had for one another is the stuff of legend

You see, since the film regards Hallie’s lost virtue as something which has been taken from Dove and that he's the principally wounded party in her taking up a life of prostitution, it’s thus up to him to take the necessary steps to secure and safeguard Hallie's soul and body. (As any pro-lifer will tell you, women just aren't capable of handling decisions about what they choose to do with their own bodies for themselves.)

Resorting to his father's bible-thumping ways, Dove proselytizes ... I mean, explains to an understandably exasperated Teresina (who's busy meanwhile dousing her torch) his philosophy and the film's narrative through-line :

“In the Bible, Hosea fell in love with Gomer. She was a harlot. They got married but she couldn't stay away from men. Hosea got mad and threw her out. Sold her into slavery. But he couldn't get her out of his mind, so he went looking for her. When he found her, he brought her back home. But it was no good. Before long, she was up to her old tricks again. But he loved her anyway and he couldn't give her up. So he took her into the wilderness...away from temptation. Away from other men. And that's what I have to do with Hallie.”

Sorry, but I'm supposed to believe that these two stunning, Continental-looking
creatures spent even one minute in dustbowl Texas?

The remaining bulk of Walk on the Wild Side occupies itself with being a romantic triangle-cum-spiritual tug-of-war between Dove (representing honest values and true love) and Jo (representing well-dressed depravity and perversion) with the magnificent but I’m-not-all-that-convinced-she’s-worth-all-this-trouble Hallie at the center.

Happily, by way of distraction we have the welcome reappearance of Kitty, the former boxcar good-time-girl transformed into garter-snapping sexpot, as the newest employee of The Doll House; chipper Southern belle, Miss Precious (the always terrific Joanna Moore, Tatum O’Neal’s mom), a Doll House resident who sleeps on a confederate flag pillow and punctuates even the shortest sentences with “The Colonel always said…” ; and sexy, short-tempered strong-arm-man, Oliver (Richard Rust of Homicidal) who has an eye for the ladies and suede gloves to keep his hands nice and unbruised when he roughs them up.

Richard Rust as Oliver Finnerty

Posters for Walk on the Wild Side proclaimed: “A side of life you never expected to see on the screen!” which is not altogether false given you've got a 4-time Oscar-nominee playing one of the screen’s first lesbians (who lives, yet!) and the daring-for-its-time setting of a New Orleans brothel. The rest, alas, is what Hollywood has always done: a) Offer up endless reworkings of the Madonna-whore dichotomy as soap opera and love story, b) attempt to shock and scandalize but only revealing a staunch conservatism and prudery.

Joanna Moore as Miss Precious

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
I'm not sure if the genre has been afforded a name beyond Southern Gothic, but I am a major fan of the overheated, sex and psychosis dramas of Tennessee Williams, William Inge, and Carson McCullers. When these southern-fried potboilers are crossed with a touch of the soap-opera overstatement associated with Harold Robbins, Jacqueline Susann, and Sidney Sheldon ...well, I'm in 7th Heaven. Walk on the Wild Side has all the luridness of Williams, the pretentiousness of Inge, plus all the unintentional humor of anything bearing the stamp of Susann.
There's dialog that sounds as though it were written by a robot; overearnest performances that are nevertheless as limp as a clothesline; the ever-present topic of sex that is hinted at and alluded to but never spoken of in even remotely direct terms; and clashing accents left and right: Texas drawl, Southern twang, Georgia singsong, French, British, Spanish (sort of).

Riding the Rails
Jane Fonda recalls her father Henry in The Grapes of Wrath in this shot of Dove and Kitty
catching a ride in a freight car

Fans of the by-now-anticipated unwillingness and inability of '60s films to remain faithful to the era they're depicting will have a field day with Walk on the Wild Side's interpretation of the Depression era South. Outside of a few automobiles and some distant dress extras, the look is 1961, through and through. A long time ago a friend of mine who once designed costumes for film told me that this is not an unintentional or careless phenomenon. It's an industry's appeal to the contemporary aesthetic tastes of their audience.
When a studio is forking over big bucks for a glamour actress, they want the audience to see her as glamorous. The concern is that the baggy fashions and severe makeup styles of the '30s (thin eyebrows, bow lips, thick stockings, figure-concealing frocks, etc) will look odd or comical to '60s audiences. A point well taken, I concede. but it doesn't address the jarring incongruity of seeing women with '60s bouffants and bullet bras stepping out of DeSotos.

Jaunita Moore as Mama

PERFORMANCES
Where to start? To say that I enjoy all the performances in Walk on the Wild Side is not at all saying that many of them are any good. If anyone emerges from the chaos with their dignity intact, it's Barbara Stanwyck. An actress virtually incapable of giving a false performance Stanwyck is not really called upon to deliver more than a professional, standard-issue, tough-broad performance; but she's nevertheless the most believably passionate person in the film for me. She wants Hallie and I don't doubt it for a minute.
In this her first film since 1957's Forty Guns, the very private Stanwyck was yet another classic-era star forced to embrace the burgeoning era of movie permissiveness and take on a role she at one time might have considered unsavory. Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons disapproved of Stanwyck taking on such a role, to which Stanwyck is said to have responded "What do you want them to do, get a real madam and a real lesbian?" On the bright side, at least she was playing a lesbian madam in a major motion picture, by 1964 Stanwyck would be following in Joan Crawford's B-movie footsteps and starring in a William Castle schlock thriller, The Night Walker.

The Glamorous Life, She Don't Need a Man's Touch

Barbara Stanwyck was outed as lesbian in two substandard books: The Sewing Circle by Axel Madsen, and the pull-no-punches Hollywood Lesbians by Boze Hadleigh. If they're to be believed, Walk on the Wild Side was a film set with more closets than a Feydeau farce: a closeted leading man (Harvey); a closeted lesbian, possibly bisexual leading woman (Capucine), and a closeted lesbian co-star (Stanwyck).

The strikingly beautiful Capucine may not be much of an actress, but she's not helped much by a script which calls for her to behave like a non-stop pill from the minute she's introduced. Male screenwriters unfamiliar with how women actually think are often guilty of writing about "beauty" as though it were an actual character trait rather than a physical attribute. In the case of Hallie Gerard, so little of the character's much-talked-about passion, restlessness, or joy is conveyed that we're left to imagine she's fought over by Dove and Jo simply because she's so outrageously pretty. If the Hallie we now see is supposed to represent a broken woman whose life-force has been drained out of her by her having "fallen down the well," all the backstory we're left to imagine requires an actress substantially more skilled than what we're given. You get about as much emotionally out of Capucine as a walking/ talking entity as from one of her model photo shoots from the '50s.

Star Cheekbone Wars
Capucine 1962 and Faye Dunaway The Towering Inferno 1974 rock
twin towers of hair and Grecian goddess gowns

For me, Jane Fonda gives the film's liveliest performance. Liberated from the lacquered, overly-mature look adopted for The Chapman Report and Period of Adjustment (both 1962), Fonda is sexier and looser here. Perhaps a little too loose in her early scenes. There's something about "earthy" that brings forth the inner ham in actors. Fonda in her early scenes can't seem to keep her finishing school refinement from creeping into her overly-mannered interpretation of Kitty Twist, railway ragamuffin. Parts of her performance have the feel of an over-coached acting school scene. But, unlike so me of her co stars, she's never a dull presence and really comes into her own in the sequences in the Doll House. She looks amazing as well. The cameraman obviously thought so too, for Fonda's shapely backside has arguably as many closeups as her face.

Nine years later, Jane Fonda would win an Oscar for playing another prostitute inKlute(1971)

Laurence Harvey has always been a favorite of mine (owing at least in part to my tendency to develop matinee crushes on birdlike, Tony Perkins types), but he really seems out of his element here. The thoroughly engaging (and sexy) energy he brought to I Am a Camera (1955), or 1959's Expresso Bongo is nowhere to be seen in his tediously virtuous Dove Linkhorn.

Ann Baxter's Mexican accent "Wha Hoppen?" is so bad it's close to being offensive

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Is there an axiom that says the cooler the opening credits sequence, the more likely one is apt to be let down with the film? Outside of the brilliant and stylish art-deco title sequence for Mame which got me all hyped-up only to then lead me down a path of soft-focus croaking; Saul Bass' snazzy, jazz-tinged title sequence for Walk on the Wild Side (assisted immeasurably by the Oscar-nominated Elmer Bernstein, Mack David theme music) sets one up for a film that never materializes.

Edward Dmytryk would go on to direct Richard Burton and Joey Heatherton in Bluebeard.

For those who've seen the film, the question that immediately comes to mind is, who took that photo on the left?

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Walk on the Wild Side is, like the 1976 US/USSR collaboration that resulted in the dreadful musical mistake that was The Bluebird, a film whose backstory is infinitely more interesting than the motion picture released. Conflict-of-interest deals were behind much of Walk on the Wild Side's grab-bag casting (Laurence Harvey was being pushed by the wife of the head of Columbia Studios, while Capucine was being promoted by producer Charles K. Feldman). The film was plagued by constant rewrites, deleted scenes (the internet is full of rumors regarding a curiously missing-in-action hairbrush spanking scene between Stanwyck and Capucine ... be still my heart), costly delays, and a cast that was often openly antagonistic to one another as well as to the director.

Character actress actress Kathryn Card, best remembered as Mrs. Magillicuddy,
Lucille Ball's ditsy mother on TV's I Love Lucy

The end result is a film that is a disappointment as both drama and love story, but a bonanza of unintentional humor and delicious badness. And you'd be hard pressed to find a more enjoyably watchable film. Easy on the eyes and no strain on the brain, your biggest concern will be stomach cramps from laughing aloud at the dialog.Woefully tame and coy by today's standards, Walk on the Wild Side maintains its historical notoriety as one of the earliest major motion pictures to feature a lesbian character. As the years have passed, the film has revealed itself as a movie with a pretty high behind-the-scenes LGBT pedigree as well. In addition to Laurence Harvey, Capucine, and Barbara Stanwyck all having been been mentioned in various celebrity memoirs as being gay or bisexual, Jane Fonda has written in her own autobiography about participating in bisexual three-ways with her husband Roger Vadim.

One would think a little bit of all that sexual democracy might have wound up on the screen, but no. At best, Walk on the Wild Side remains an entertaining but tame timepiece and cultural curio for those interested in seeing what kind of film Hollywood thought it was ready to tackle during the early days of the abandonment of the Motion Picture Production Code.

Barbara Stanwyck would make only two other films after Walk on the Wild Side:
Roustabout with Elvis Presley, of all people, and The Night Walker, both 1964

As Oscar time rolls around, my thoughts invariably go to all the movies I absolutely adore which never got the time of day from The Academy. But being that this blog is in itself already something of a chronicle of what a personal "Best Picture" nominees roster would look like if I were to hand out my own film awards (I'd call them The ANDYs, but that's already taken); I decided instead to list the Top 20 Songs from motion pictures I'd nominate in my own personal "Best Song" category. In this instance, not songs that didn't win, but songs that weren't even nominated.

I'm intentionally leaving out more well-known omissions like Kander & Ebb's "New York, New York" (New York, New York), "Pure Imagination" (Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory), "Staying Alive" (Saturday Night Fever), and "To Sir, With Love" (To Sir, With Love), choosing, as is my wont, to concentrate on oddities and obscurities I've loved since the first time I heard them. All personal, wholly subjective, all-time favorites currently on my iPod.

Songs are not listed in order of preference.

Click on song title captions to listen on YouTube.

Film: Such Good Friends (1971) Song: "Suddenly It's All Tomorrow"

Words & music - Thomas Z. Shephard and Robert Brittan. Sung by O.C. Smith

Played over the end credits of Otto Preminger’s overstated comedy-drama about a Manhattan wife who discovers her dying husband has had numerous extramarital affairs; this lovely, wistful song succinctly captures the feeling of dark clouds parting and the contemplation of a brighter future.

Film: Ziegfeld Follies (1945) Song: "This Heart of Mine"

Words & music - Harry Warren & Arthur Freed. Sung by Fred Astaire

This song wins out due to a confluence of reasons. It’s an entrancingly beautiful melody, Fred Astaire’s vocals are flawless, and it contains a lyric line which turns the waterworks on for me unfailingly (“As long as life endures, it yours this heart of mine”). They really don't write 'em like this anymore. The song begins at the four minute point on this video, but check out the 8-minute point to see what I call the “goosebump moment” wherein Vincente Minnelli’s eye for baroque romanticism and the heavenly dancing of Astaire and Lucille Bremer confirm just why dreams are what Le Cinema is for.

Film: Xanadu (1980) Song: "Xanadu"

Words & music - Jeff Lynne. Sung by Olivia Newton-John & Electric Light Orchestra

Olivia Newton-John and ELO is the most inspired musical pairing since The Pet Shop Boys recruited and retooled Liza Minnelli. Livvy’s heavenly vocals are a perfect blend with Jeff Lynne’s soaring orchestrations, the result: a pulsatingly infectious, smile-inducing title tune that ranks among my favorite songs of all time.

Film: Raintree County (1957) Song: "The Song of Raintree County"

Words & music - Johnny Green & Paul Francis Webster. Sung by Nat King Cole

I think I would like the melody of this touching, old-fashioned love song anyway, but Nat King Cole’s stirring vocals (that voice!) really make this delicate tune such a dreamy delight.

Film: Freaky Friday (1976) Song: "I'd Like To Be You For a Day"

Words & music - Al Kasha & Joel Hirschhorn. Sung by NOT Barbara Harris & Jodie Foster

Nominated for a Golden Globe but ignored by Oscar, this cute mother-daughter duet combines the catchy rhythms of classic TV sitcom theme songs with the lyric playfulness of nursery rhymes. A thoroughly charming arrangement and appealing harmonizing mystery vocals (they’re too smooth for Barbara Harris, too high-pitched for Jodie Foster) work in concert with clever cut-out title animation of the sort that was at one time a Disney trademark.

Film: Emmanuelle IV (1984) Song; "Oh, Ma Belle Emmanuelle"

Words & music - David Rose / Sergio Renucci / Marie Claude Calvet. Sung by The Performers Band

OK, this one is a bit of a cheat. On two counts. First, Emmanuelle IV is a French film and would never be considered for a Best Song Oscar nomination, but I’m including it here because …well, the ANDYs are just like Emmanuelle herself: capricious, easy, and a little tacky. Which brings me to point number two; I love the this title tune, sung over the film’s opening credits (which also serves up a Penthouse magazine-worthy montage of actress Sylvia Kristel) because it is a sensational slice of French cheese. It’s actually rather sublime, really. Romantically lush orchestrations blend with an '80's Kenny G-like saxophone accompaniment, all in service of a vaguely Euro vocalist crooning an anthem of love to “new” Emmanuelle (don’t ask). Like a Serge Gainsbourg composition, it manages to be sexy, sleazy and romantic all at the same time!

Film: Shanghai Surprise (1986) Song: "Shanghai Surprise"

Words & music - George Harrison. Sung by George Harrison & Vicki Brown

Nothing even remotely associated with this film got any love back in 1986 when Madonna and then-husband Sean Penn were successors to Barbra Streisand and Jon Peters as Hollywood’s most obnoxious couple. Too bad, for while I couldn’t stand the film myself, I’ve always been crazy about this title song: a cleverly rhyme-happy duet that's the equivalent of a musical flirtation.

Film: Macon County Line (1974) Song: "Another Day, Another Time"

Words & music - Bobbi Gentry. Sung by Bobbi Gentry

A lyrical, rather haunting melody distinguished by Bobbi Gentry’s easygoing way with lyrics that paint vivid pictures and tell a story. Considerably more graceful and affecting than the redneck exploitation film it was written for, I’m particularly fond of Gentry’s melancholy vocals.

Film: Sparkle (1976) Song: "Hooked on Your Love"

Words & music - Curtis Mayfield. Sung by Lonette McKee, Irene Cara & Dwan Smith

It’s doubtful the old coots representing the music branch of the Motion Picture Academy even knew who Curtis Mayfield was, let alone receptive to the outstanding R & B score he composed for the low-budget musical, Sparkle. The Motown-influenced score is pure 70s soul (it takes place in the ‘60s) and of the many songs I like, my favorite is this silky- smooth number with a pulsing backbeat. Aretha Franklin sang all the film’s songs on the soundtrack album, but check out the YouTube video - not only to hear the smoking-hot, girl-group vocals of Irene Cara, Lonette McKee, and Dwan Smith, but to check out the slinky choreography.

10.

Film: The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart (1970) Song: "Sweet Gingerbread Man"

Words & music - Michel Legrand, Marilyn & Alan Bergman. Sung by The Mike Curb Congregation

The late-‘60s sound no one ever talks about is the easy-listening, inoffensive pop of The Ray Coniff Singers, The Jerry Ross Symposium, The Bob Crew Generation, and, the folks behind this sunshine pop ditty, The Mike Curb Congregation. While a whole lot of hard rock and rollin’ was going on, bands like these (often just studio singers) gently introduced older folks (and clean-cut young ones) to the New Sound.

Michel LeGrand was all over the place in the 60s, and this sugary pop gm was covered by Sarah Vaughn, Jack Jones, Bobby Sherman, and many others.

Almost unbearably cutesy and bubblegummy for most tastes, it practically screams “Sixties!” to me, and I have a decided soft spot in my heart (and most likely, my head) for this song.

11.

Film: From Noon Till Three (1976) Song: "Hello and Goodbye"

Words & music - Elmer Bernstein / Marilyn & Alan Bergman. Sung by Jill Ireland

An elegant, lilting music box love song whose sentimental lyrics are simple but very touching to an old softie like me. Although just a little over 90 seconds long, it too, never fails to get the waterworks flowing. An instrumental version plays under the opening credits, the song itself is later sung by a character in the film.

12.

Film: There's A Girl In My Soup (1970) Song: "Miss Me in The Morning"

Words & music - Mike D'Abo & Nicolas Chinn. Sung by Mike D'Abo

This perfectly irresistible and utterly groovy bit of ‘60s fluff crosses Burt Bacharach with Herb Alpert and delivers a bouncy tune that feels as stylishly mod and British as walk down Carnaby Street.

13.

Film: Across 110th Street (1972) Song: "Across 110th Street"

Words & music - Bobby Womack & J.J. Johnson. Sung by Bobby Womack

1970’s sophisticated soul doesn’t get much better than this. Womack’s hard-edged vocals work in discordant concert with the sweeping orchestral arrangement and funky downbeats reminiscent of the Philadelphia soul sound. A criminally infectious title song with a memorable musical hook.

14.

Film: Something Big (1971) Song: "Something Big"

Words & music - Hal David & Burt Bacharach. Sung by Mark Lindsay

As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to film composers, the 60s sun rose and set with Burt Bacharach. I am mad about all of his work, but this smooth title song to a perfectly terrible western swings with a bossa nova beat and Bacharach’s trademark syncopation and shifts in meter. Truly putting this song over for me are mark Lindsay (of Paul Revere and the Raiders) vocals, which really play up Bacharach’s amusing (and tres-groovy) habit of ending musical phrases on an “up” that sound like a question being asked. A really good song.

15.

Film: Popeye (1980) Song: "See'Pea's Lullaby"

Words & music - Harry Nilsson. Sung by Robin Williams

One of Robert Altman’s most financially successful films is also one of his most unwieldy, the copious amount of drugs ingested by cast and crew while filming no doubt contributing to the effect. Harry Nilsson contributed many witty, albeit repetitive tunes, the best, as far as I’m concerned, being this winsome, genuinely stirring lullaby. An oasis of quiet in a chaotic film.

16.

Film: Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) Song: "In The Long Run"

Words & music - Rob Stone & Stu Phillips. Sung by Lynn Carey
The very first time I saw BVD, even as I was sitting staring in open-mouthed amazement at what was unfolding before me, I seized upon this song as a standout. From those killer chords that precede the vocals to the overall MOR psychedelic vibe of the arrangement, this song is a winner. All-girl rock groups rule!

17.

Film: Carbon Copy (1981) Song" I'm Gonna Get Closer To You"

Words & music - Paul Williams & Bill Conti. Sung by England Dan Seals
I place Paul Williams up there with Burt Bacharach and Charles Fox as one of my favorite composers for the movies. The song played over the closing credits of this largely forgotten comedy, notable only for being Denzel Washington's film debut, and it hooked me immediately. Hook being the operative word. Like a commercial jingle, the bouncy arrangement, cleverly-rhymed lyrics, and light-as-a-feather vocals single-handledly elevated a so-so film into one I never forgot. Primarily because I liked this song so much.

18.

Film: Star Spangled Girl (1971) Song: "Girl"

Words & music - Charles Fox & Norman Gimbel. Sung by Davy Jones
Any fan of The Brady Bunch knows this song, but few know it as the theme to a flop Neil Simon comedy. Composed by fave-rave Charles Fox (Barbarella, Goodbye Columbus) to my ear it seemed exactly the kind of movie theme song that should have been a shoo-in had the 70s not been such an awkward transitional period for the Academy.
As it stands, Fox and Gimbel deliver a catchy confection of musical candy floss with this song, aided immeasurably by Jones' pronunciation of the oft-repeated central word, "girl."

19.

Film: Shock Treatment (1981) Song: "Shock Treatment"

Words & music - Richard O'Brien & Richard Hartley. Sung by Cast
This not-really sequel to the insanely successful The Rocky Horror Picture Show has grown on me a bit lately (especially in these reality TV times), but I thought it was a huge disappointment when I first saw it. I did however love much of the music, most favorably the title tune which rocks, harmonizes, is catchy as hell, and a great deal of fun. A rollicking ensemble song punctuated by the "Shock Treatment" lyric pause/hook.

20.

Film: The Touchables (1968) Song: "All of Us"

Words & music - Alex Spyropoulous & Patrick Campbell-Lyons. Sung by Nirvana (not that Nirvana)
I end my list with a song from a film made in 1968, the first year I actually started to pay attention to movies. It's also the year when hippies, flower children, and psychedelia flooded pop culture, making this trippy British import of a theme song a stand-out favorite because it couldn't have been written at any other time. This dreamy, slightly hallucinatory song plays over the film's equally far-out, James-Bondian/Maurice Binder inspired title sequence. Fabulous British '60s sound.

Everyone assumes the classic theme from Goldfinger (1964) was a Best Song nominee.
It wasn't even nominated!
"Chim Chim Cher- ee" from Marry Poppins was the winner that year

Do you have a favorite song from a film? One which failed to win or even garner an Oscar nomination? Would love to hear about it!

Copyright © Ken Anderson

Before my recent posts on Mommie Dearest and Behind the Candelabra got me thinking about the form and function of the biographical movie as a genre, I don’t know that I’d ever given much thought to what I personally look for in a biopic.

While I know I’m comfortable relinquishing a certain level of historical fidelity for the sake of dramatization and a filmmaker’s vision (for example, I don’t mind the glamorization and historical inaccuracies in 1967’s Bonnie & Clyde); I do find I lose patience with complete whitewash jobs that alter historical fact in an effort to sanitize the subject and adhere to a standardized Hollywood format (the 1946 Cole Porto biopic Night & Day turned the life of the homosexual composer into just another conventional heterosexual love story).

I guess when I’m really out to learn something about the life of a historical figure, I tend to go to a documentary or a book; but when it comes to biopics, I don’t mind if a filmmaker plays fast and loose with the “facts” if what they ultimately deliver is some kind of “truth.”

And by that I mean, rather than simply chronicling the events of an individual’s life, I prefer when the director and writer of a biopic find a way to use the life story of a public figure to say something broader about humanity, art, the creative process, cultural myths, or the pernicious lure of fame and the American success ethic. In such instances I gladly surrender encyclopedic accuracy to creative interpretation.

Ken Russell claimed his film was less the story of Tchaikovsky and more a
commentary on the destructive force of dreams on reality

If I’m going to invest time watching a fictional reenactment of a real-life narrative (something to which even the most meticulous biopic must ultimately lay claim), I’m of a mind to look to the filmmaker who is capable of creating order out of chaos; able to find poetry within the banal; and willing to unearth something universal and profound in the neutral, haphazard events which make up a human life. Especially a life deemed exceptional enough to biographize.
So often biopics hide behind the “based on true events” excuse to justify the overuse of clichés and coincidence, choppy storytelling, and flat characterizations which would never pass muster in the construction of a purely fictional screenplay. I prefer when biographical films attempt to find the unique dramatic thrust of a story while still hewing somewhat closely to real-life events. A good biopic is one I can enjoy as a stand-alone film. One which holds up as effective drama and solid entertainment independent of my foreknowledge of the subject personality or alleged veracity of events depicted.

Tchaikovsky Triumphant
What Price Success?

Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980) is an excellent example of a biographical film transcending its subject material. The film works whether or not one has an interest in boxing or aware that Jake LaMotta is a real person. It's an emotionally and dramatically credible story buoyed (not reliant) by being based on true events.

By way of contrast, Alan Parker's 1996 musical Evita (a project to which Ken Russell was briefly attached) has a fascinating and incredibly complex individual at its center, but the movie is so lacking in point of view or perspective about its subject (due more perhaps to the flaws inherent in Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice's treatment) the entire film - which seems comprised exclusively of processions and marches - has no narrative thrust beyond "it actually happened" historical regurgitation.

The one director whom I consider to be the one of the screen’s most gifted fictional documentarians is Ken Russell, a director whose biopics lean to the wildly subjective, daringly interpretive and highly stylized. His films and BBC TV plays about the lives of Rudolph Valentino, Franz Liszt, Gustav Mahler, Henri Gaudier, Isadora Duncan, and Claude Debussy, are splendid paradoxes: they are simultaneously fruitless sources of biographical fact, yet they're bountiful vessels of emotional honesty.

Richard Chamberlain as Peter IlyichTchaikovsky

Glenda Jackson as Antonina Milyukova

Christopher Gable as Count Anton Chiluvsky

Izabella Telezynska as Madame Nadejda von Meck

Sabina Maydelle as Sasha Tchaikovsky

Ken Russell first became known to American audiences (this American audience, anyway) by way of his second film, the soporific 1967 Michael Caine spy thriller Billion Dollar Brain(his first feature film French Dressing – 1964, I’ve yet to see). While he indisputably hit his artistic stride with the poetic and well-received adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love(1969), Ken Russell, the babyfaced enfant terrible of cinematic excess who scandalized sensibilities and drove Pauline Kael to distraction, didn’t really show his face until his fourth film, the controversial and polarizing The Music Lovers.

Based on the 1937 book Beloved Friend: The Story of Tchaikovsky and Nadejda von Meck, The Music Lovers is Ken Russell’s fever-dream vision of the life of the famed 19^th century Russian composer. And I’m not just using fever-dream as an easy expression. At times The Music Lovers looks exactly like the kind of overheated dream one would have after falling asleep listening to Tchaikovsky while pulling an all-nighter studying for an exam on the composer.

Kenneth Colley as Modeste Tchaikovsky

Originally titled The Lonely Heart, the film’s full title: Ken Russell's Film on Tchaikovsky and The Music Lovers clues us in that this is to be Ken Russell’s uniquely personal, subjectively emotional (some would say hysterical) look at the tortured life of the artist.

To the frenetic accompaniment of The Nutcracker’s “Dance of the Clowns” the film’s first frames thrust us directly into the center of the joyous revelries of a Moscow winter carnival. This moment is important to savor, for it is one of the last times genuine happiness makes an appearance in the film outside of idealized images in impossible fantasies.

As he would do in his next film The Boy Friend (1971), Ken Russell uses the opening sequence of The Music Lovers to introduce all the film's major characters in context of their personalities and interrelationships – present and future – before we actually know who they are. This not only has the effect of heightening our visual alertness (we are in asked to absorb and store store narrative information we will draw upon later), but it invites us to surrender from the start to what Russell will later demand: that we experience his film as pure sensation and emotion…just as one might experience Tchaikovsky’s compositions.

Born This Way
The Music Lovers presents Tchaikovsky's denial of his homosexuality as the source of his greatest torment. Our first glimpse of the composer, cavorting with his lover (Christopher Gable) at a winter fair, culminating in the pair collapsing drunk and contentedly in bed - is also the last time we ever see him happy

The full themes of The Music Lovers are revealed in the next sequence, which has all the individuals from the opening scene reassembled at the Moscow Conservatory on the occasion of Tchaikovsky’s debut of his Piano Concerto no.1 in B-flat Minor. Again utilizing a device employed to similar effect in The Boy Friend, Russell familiarizes us with the main players in his drama by granting us access to their fantasies and innermost desires. It is here that Tchaikovsky and each of his “loves” – his impassioned music; his sister Sasha, for whom he has a quasi-incestuous attachment; melancholy patron of the arts, Madame von Meck; the mentally unstable fantasist (and future wife of convenience) Nina; and his real but forbidden love, the foppish Count Chiluvsky – all reveal themselves to share a similar susceptibility and responsiveness to Romanticism and the Romantic Ideal.

The inherent unattainability of said ideal suggested by the extravagant-bordering-on-absurd visual extremes of each fantasy; its anguish reflected in the real-life self-contradiction that has nearly everyone in question falling desperately in love with precisely the person least capable of returning it.

Max Adrian as Nicholas Rubinstein

With desire charting the path of the conjoined destinies of these individuals, The Music Loverstakes the position that Tchaikovsky, a gay man tortured by his homosexuality and his inability to lead a life of emotional truth, poured all of his impassioned fantasies and romantic dreams into his music. In centering his film on an artist who struggled to create artistic truth while being untrue to himself, Russell provocatively posits whether an inauthentic life can ever produce authentic art.

Portrait of the Artist as a Babe
In photographing Tchaikovsky in a manner redolent of Hollywood's glamorized biographies of historical figures, Ken Russell mocks the romantic myth of artists nobly suffering for their craft

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I didn’t see The Music Lovers when it was first released, but following on the heels of the comparatively restrained Women in Love, I can only imagine what a shock to the system Russell's horrorshow take on the life of Tchaikovsky was to 1970 audiences. After all these years I think The Music Lovers' brash imagery, feverish performances and bold disregard for conventional storytelling (and historical accuracy) still has the power to astonish.

Phallic Frenzy
Ken Russell's signature penis-themed imagery appears in this fantasy sequence in which Modeste, Tchaikovsky's pragmatic brother, vanquishes the parasitic "music lovers" in the composer's life

In no way, shape, or form is this a movie for all tastes. And indeed, I would agree with those who say it is fairly valueless as biography (although it did serve to spark my interest in the composer and led me to seek out the more traditional – but arguably as false – Russian film on Tchaikovsky released in 1972) .

However, speaking as a confirmed dreamer, fantasist, and head-in-the-clouds romantic, I can’t praise Ken Russell enough for dramatizing in The Music Lovers precisely the conundrum that has always intrigued me about the arts, creativity, and the role of fantasy in our lives.

A spirited inner life is the common byproduct when restrictions are placed on the free expression and development of one’s true nature. So by framing the film’s central conflict around Tchaikovsky’s well-founded inability to come to terms with his homosexuality (it was illegal in Russia) and subsequent need to suppress his natural romantic desires in order to pursue his art (something Richard Chamberlain knew a thing or two about); The Music Lovers effectively explores fantasy from both sides of the issue.

Fear of scandal and a denial of self inspires Tchaikovsky to shun the affections his lover, preferring instead to hide behind his sham marriage and his long-distance infatuation with benefactress, Madame von Meck

The beauty of Tchaikovsky’s music alone is evidence of the redemptive power of fantasy. But Russell, in holding the composer’s life in contrast to his art, asks us to contemplate how it is that the same dreamy nature capable of bringing forth "Swan Lake" and "The Nutcracker" could also foster such a propensity for self-deception and (in his unfeeling use of Nina as a shield against gossip and his own fears about himself) selfishness. Tchaikovsky's infatuation with a Romantic Ideal gave the world great music, but in his personal life it marred perception and inhibited his ability to connect at all with any of the "music lovers" in his life in a realistic manner.

Bad Romance
Following an established pattern, Nina works herself into a romantic delirium over
an unprepossessing Russian hussar she's never met

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

It's really saying something to note that in a strongly emotional movie about a man who wrote strongly emotional music, the central relationship between Tchaikovsky and Antonina “Nina” Milyukova stands out as one of the most impassioned. Tchaikovsky, against the wishes of his family and in an effort to conform to societal pressure, did in fact impulsively marry a woman he barely knew, a young music student from his conservatory. Their marriage was disastrous, the composer remaining married (the better to deflect rumors of his homosexuality) but deserting his wife within weeks of their wedding.

As envisioned by Russell, Tchaikovsky marries out of rebellious self-denial and romantic self-delusion, while Nina (Jackson) is depicted as just another dreamy fantasist. A mentally and emotionally unstable woman given to reckless romantic infatuations who sets her sights on wooing the composer because of his fame and stature. (I personally reject the nymphomaniac label, even in Russell's vision, simply because I’m weary of it being the lazy go-to word used by men who don’t know what else to call a woman with a sex drive.)

Nina Meets Her Rival
Costume designer Shirley Russell uses color to emphasize the connection between
Tchaikovsky's actual and illusory loves

Biographers don’t tend to devote much space to the marriage, but Russell depicts Nina, and Tchaikovsky's cruel treatment of her, as a symbol of the film's theme. She's a tragic figure representing the destructive side of reality avoidance, her mental and emotional deterioration a hysterical indictment of Tchaikovsky's weakness of character and the false promises held forth by his unabashedly romantic compositions.

The Music Lovers'most controversial scene (of many, I assure you) is the honeymoon train journey that finds the visibly repulsed Tchaikovsky trapped in a tiny carriage car with his drunk, sexually rapacious bride. As the car jostles violently back and forth, Nina, now nude and unconscious, rolls about on the floor as Tchaikovsky literally climbs the walls in horror and disgust.

None of it should work (it's practically a parody of a gay man's reaction to seeing a vagina) but somehow it does.

And that the sexually-conflicted composer should be portrayed by a sexually-conflicted actor (Richard Chamberlain came out in 2003 when he was 68-years old) adds heaps of unexpected subtext to the already over-the-top proceedings.

In this scene from Russell's Women in Love, Gudrun Brangwen (Glenda Jackson) and the artist Loerke (Vladek Sheybal) engage in a bit of play-acting, assuming the roles of Nina and Tchaikovsky during their honeymoon journey on the Trans-Siberian Express

PERFORMANCES

Although my childhood is full of memories of my sister's major crush on Richard Chamberlain during his Dr. Kildare days, I can't say that I've actually seen him in very much. Certainly not enough to know how successful he was in his bid to shed his teen heartthrob image and be taken seriously as an actor. I do know that as leading men go, he's very easy on the eyes, and that I can find no fault with his performance here. It feels very committed and appropriately tortured.

Nina Ends Her Days In An Insane Asylum

It's Glenda Jackson, already a personal favorite, who stands out most in my memory. Delivering a sensitive performance that can also be as broad as a barn when required, she's just a marvel to behold. Her showier scenes got all the critical notice (and lambasting), but it's her smaller moments (like the range of emotions that play across her face when she meets Tchaikovsky for the first time) that make her Nina a rivetingly sympathetic, pitiable, unpleasant character.

I don't have the space to pay tribute to them all, but the entire cast of The Music Lovers is uniformly top notch. Fans of Ken Russell will recognize his familiar band of repertory players, each contributing invaluably to the whole.

Beloved Friend
In love with both the man and his music, wealthy widow Madame von Meck (here with her twin sons) supports Tchaikovsky for thirteen years and is content to love him from afar

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Ken Russell is known for being a visual director, and on that score The Music Lovers doesn't disappoint. The lush imagery and sumptuous costumes are more than a match for Tchaikovsky's colorful compositions. But because Russell's films are such an assault on the senses, I often think the soundness of the ideas behind his films get shortchanged.
My appreciation of The Music Lovers is rooted not in its status as biography, but in its thought-provoking themes examining the origins of artistic creativity and the heavy price that's often extracted.

When Richard Chamberlain came out as gay in his 2003 memoir Shattered Love, one of the things he was fond of saying during his media tour was that after a lifetime of living in fear, how liberating it was to finally be himself. Yet one of his strongest epiphanies was the realization that his being gay was the least interesting, most benign thing about him.

While I've no doubt of this being Chamberlain's reality, his observation fascinated me. It fascinated me because of its failure to recognize (or accept) that if one's sexuality prompts one to spend an entire life "in the closet" and engaged in the non-stop denial of one's true nature, it can hardly be called a benign issue because a lifetime of self-rejection HAS to shape personality, perception, and reality.
In context of what Ken Russell explores in The Music Lovers, it's inconceivable to me that a life lived in total denial of who one actually is would fail to lave a mark on the soul of any sensitive individual...on the soul of an artist, most acutely.

In all its frenetic hysteria, The Music Lovers asks us to entertain the possibility that Peter Tchaikovsky, a romantic prohibited from freely expressing love as he would choose, was forced, because of his homosexuality, to channel all of his tortured emotions, suppressed pain, and unexpressed passion into his music. Russell doesn't use Tchaikovsky's homosexuality for shock value or fodder for gossip; he makes a case for the artist's socially-unacceptable sexuality being the very source of his creative genius. In Russell's vision, Tchaikovsky's homosexuality is neither benign nor unimportant...it is the defining aspect in the shaping of the man's character and the cause of his heartfelt romantic longing.

Leave it to Ken Russell - instead of just another biopic heralding the achievements of a famed composer, he constructed a sensual think-piece that invites me to contemplate the art as well as the artist.

BONUS MATERIAL
The reason for this film's windy full title: Ken Russell's Film on Tchaikovsky and The Music Lovers, was so as not to be confused with the 1970 Russian film Tchaikovsky by Igor Talankin. (Released in the U.S. in 1972).

Innokenty Smoktunovsky as Tchaikovsky

This beautiful, more traditional recounting of the life of Tchaikovsky cost $20 million (to The Music Lovers' $3 million) was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar and is available for viewing on YouTube HERE.

The Pettet Principle: The face that launched a thousand fantasies

For the unversed (or those who’ve left the seventies back in the ‘70s where they belong), Rod Serling’s Night Gallery is a suspense anthology TV series which ran Wednesday evenings (final season: Sundays) on NBC from 1970 to 1973. A more supernatural / horror follow-up to Serling’s sci-fi driven The Twilight Zone (1959 -1964) – still in heavy rerun rotation at the time, Night Gallery most definitely had its moments, but I remember it largely as an exercise in protracted fizzle.

In an effort to build suspense in stories whose narrative trajectory was telegraphed within minutes of its setup; it was common for even the briefest of segments to be drawn out to almost comic effect. Episodes typically featured characters speaking in needlessly vague, cryptic, language (“You don’t mean…!”) while assiduously avoiding any and all action that might bring about a resolution to their problem. Unfortunately, when it came time for the payoff, it always seemed like the slower the buildup, the more unsatisfying the final twist or frustratingly ambiguous the fade-out.

But as one does with SNL these days – suffer through 95% of ho-hum in hopes of the occasional 5% brilliant – Night Gallery was my Wednesday night ritual; fueled in part by a pre-cable paucity of bedtime-stalling TV options, and that still-mysterious-to-me adolescent fascination with horror and wanting to be frightened. Besides, whether good or bad, each Night Gallery episode was certain to be the water fountain topic of conversation at school on Thursday mornings, so one had to be up on such things.

That being said, it’s still likely the entire Night Gallery series would be just another dimly-remembered blip on my post-pubertal pop-culture chart had it not been for the four profoundly memorable appearances made by London-born actress Joanna Pettet during the program's three-season run. Holding what I believe is the record for Night Gallery appearances, Pettet starred in four mesmerizingly eerie segments that, due to their spectral eroticism and Pettet’s mythic dream-girl persona, really captured my imagination and burned an indelible tattoo on my teen-age psyche. Even now, some 40+ years later, I still find these episodes to be as hypnotically effective as ever.

As Mata Bond in the James Bond spy spoof Casino Royale

Initially, I’d only known Joanna Pettet from The Group (1966, her film debut) and Casino Royale (1967), two films with ensemble casts in which Pettet distinguished herself splendidly as both a talented dramatic actress and appealing light comedienne. But by the time she made her first Night Gallery appearance in 1970, the accessible, dimpled ingénue had been replaced by the slinky, strikingly beautiful, irrefutably dangerous, ‘70s equivalent of the classic film noir Woman of Mystery.

As detailed in the marvelous book Rod Serling’s Night Gallery: An After Hours Tour by Scott Skelton and Jim Benson, Pettet consciously used her Night Gallery appearances to cultivate a mysterious, ethereal screen persona for herself. Adopting a contemporary “look” every bit as smoldering and distinctive in the '70s as Lauren Bacall’s was in the ‘40s; Pettet offset the aloof quality of her rail thin physique, long hair, and angular features, with soft, gauzy “boho gypsy” “hippie chic” outfits from her own wardrobe. The combined effect was that of a modern seductress/enchantress: welcoming but unapproachable, a preternatural being more than human yet slightly less than real.

The dramatic landscape of early '70s television was largely male-centric, with women primarily occupying roles of wife and girlfriend (Wonder Woman, The Bionic Woman, and Charlie’s Angels would come along later). One of the reasons Pettet’s Night Gallery episodes stood out so strongly in my mind is that she broke the mold. This was no girl, this was a woman. She wasn't pliable, she wasn't agreeable, she wasn't even attainable. She was a distinct feminine force operating from a place of her own needs and desires. Provocative in her mysteriousness, the men in these narratives were drawn into HER orbit, not the other way around. The characters she played were enigmas – entities perhaps, more than real women – but they exuded elegance, romance, sex and danger. All contributing to Joanna Pettet being the perfect neo-noir femme fatale.

The House - 1st Season : Air date December 30, 1970

Everything Jonna Pettet would build upon to great effect in future episodes of Night Gallery appear for the first time in “The House,” a legitimately haunting ghost story that pivots 100% on Pettet’s wispy, wraithlike persona. In “The House,” directed by John Astin (Gomez of TV’s The Addam’s Family) and adapted by Rod Serling from a (very) short story by Andre Maurois, Pettet plays Elaine Latimer, a somewhat chimerical former sanitarium patient – “She’s dreamy…Never walked. Just sort of wafted along like a wood sprite. Never put her two feet on the ground.” – plagued by a recurring dream. Not a nightmare, but a tranquil, languorous dream in which she sees herself driving up to a secluded country house, knocking on its door, but always leaving just before the inhabitant answers.

The dream, a sun-dappled, slow-mo symphony of flowing hair and gossamer garments billowing in the wind, replays over and over in this episode, creating a truly hypnotic effect once the events of the story (she finds the dream house in real-life, only to discover it is haunted...but by whom?) call into question the very nature of reality and illusion.

When a dream comes true, is it then a premonition? And when dream and reality merge, can one truly know where one ends and the other begins?

Chasing Ghosts

Whenever anyone mentions Night Gallery, unfailingly, this is the episode that comes to mind. Embodying as it does every one of the qualities/liabilities listed above, “The House” is perhaps quintessential Night Gallery, but in this instance, all that evasive dialog and narrative ambiguity really pays off with an unforgettable episode that perhaps makes not a lick of sense, but captures precisely the strange, floating quality of dreams and the way they never quite seem to hold together in the bright light of day.

I was just 13-years-old when this episode premiered in 1970, and trust me in this, you can have no idea the effect it had on me. To use the vernacular of the time, it was mind-blowing. It wasn’t any one particular thing about the episode but rather all elements combined to make it a uniquely unsettling experience for me. One I never forgot, and one I revisited every chance I could when the episode aired again. (In those pre-DVD days, anticipation played a great part in the development of pop-culture obsessions. Once a show aired, one had to content oneself with memory until the summer reruns came along.)

The use of slow motion photography, already an overused cliche in TV commercials and counterculture films of the day, feels oddly innovative and fresh in this episode's dream sequences

Looking at the episode today, I still feel its fundamental appeal for me lies in its mood and atmosphere - something I’ll attribute to its director - but equally clear is the fact that none of it would have worked with another actress. In all these years I’ve never quite been able to put my finger on exactly what quality Pettet brings to this story, but it essential and, rather appropriately, confoundingly elusive.

NightGallery.net

Keep In Touch- We'll Think Of Something: 2nd Season: Air date Nov. 24, 1971

In this nifty Night Gallery outing, real-life couple Joanna Pettet and Alex Cord team up (for the first and only time in their 21-year marriage) in this supernatural update of the old film noir trope of the man who thinks he has all the answers, only to cross paths with a woman who’s rewritten the book.

Directed and penned by Gene R. Kearney, screenwriter of one my favorite underrated Diabolique-inspired thrillers: Games (1967), “Keep in Touch - We’ll Think of Something” casts Cord as Erik Sutton, a musician who concocts elaborate, ever-escalating schemes in an effort to meet his dream-girl. That is to say, a woman he has only seen in his dreams…he really has no idea if she is a real person or even exits. However, Sutton doesn’t let the fact that she may be only a figment of his imagination dissuade him from exhausting and even harming himself in her pursuit.

Mr. Groovy
Long, styled hair; sideburns; porn-stache; rugged features; and a form-fitting
wardrobe of leather and suede. Alex Cord threw my adolescent hormones into overdrive

When he at last discovers the vision haunting his dreams is an actual, flesh-and blood being – an unhappily-married woman of mystery named Claire Foster – we realize in an instant just why his search for her has been so fervent; for she comes in the exquisitely beautiful, vaguely celestial form of Joanna Pettet.

But if the visual compatibility of these two near-perfect physical specimens augers a fated meeting of two kindred spirits, a twist revealing Sutton’s object of obsession harbors an obsession or two of her own paints these dream lovers in a decidedly darker palette.

“Keep in Touch” successfully builds upon the enigmatic dream-girl persona Joanna Pettet established so unforgettably in “The House.” In fact, “Keep in Touch” feels in many ways like an “answer” episode to “House”; incorporating as it does a similar, dreams vs. reality narrative with a cherchez le femme overlay which has Alex Cord’s character acting as the surrogate for every individual left intrigued by Pettet and that earlier segment’s ambiguous ending.

As a supernatural noir pair, Pettet and Cord make an outrageously sexy couple (in a über-hip,‘70s way), their palpable chemistry placing one in the position of rooting for the couple’s hookup even while sensing there to be something a tad duplicitous in the mystery woman's sympathetic manner.

And, in the tradition of the best film noirs, the ostensibly objectified female turns out to be the more complex character as well as the one holding all the cards. Once again Joanna Pettet acquits herself nicely and easily steals every scene she’s in with a persuasive performance and her unique presence.

NightGallery.net

The Girl With The Hungry Eyes - 3rd Season: Air date October 1, 1972

This episode is actually Joanna Pettet’s fourth and final appearance on Night Gallery,but it’s listed here because it completes what I consider to be Pettet’s Dream Girl Trilogy. A rather exceptional episode titled “The Caterpillar” precedes this one, but it’s the sole Night Gallery outing that casts Pettet in the role of the traditional wife. Though useful to the plot as a credible object of desire, her strictly ornamental character has no objectives and does nothing to advance the plot.

“The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” on the other hand, is an answer to an adolescent fanboy’s prayers. Adapted from a 1949 short story by Fritz Leiber and directed by John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, Reflections of Murder) “Hungry Eyes” is another updated nourish tale featuring an icy femme fatale; this time out, a soul vampire who lures men to their doom out of desire for her.

James Farentino plays David Faulkner, a down-on-his-luck photographer whose fortunes change (but luck runs out) when a nameless woman (Pettet, known simply as The Girl) wanders into his office wanting to be a model. Although lacking in experience or even a personal history, The Girl proves a natural in front of the camera, skyrocketing Faulkner to fame as the sole photographer of the woman who has become, practically overnight, the hottest face in advertising.

Photographer to the stars Harry Langdon is credited with all the photos attributed to James Farentino

But new-found success brings with it the nagging sense that he has unwittingly entered into some kind of Faustian bargain. Fearing that in exchange for riches, his photographs of The Girl - which seem to inflame an obsessive, trancelike desire in men - has unleashed a kind of vampiric scourge on the world, Faulkner seeks to unearth the mystery behind “the look” he’s convinced sends men to their doom.

John Astin, director of "The House" episode of Night Gallery appears as Brewery magnate Mr. Munsch

Serving almost as meta-commentary on my own obsession with Joanna Pettet’s Night Gallerycareer, “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” builds a solid, very sexy supernatural suspenser around that indefinable something we seek in (and project onto) those idealized creatures we deify in the name of fandom. And as a fitting vehicle for Pettet’s final Night Gallery appearance, “Hungry Eyes” provides her with the opportunity to be the most forceful she’s ever been.

Her character is fully in charge in this episode, and there’s no small level of eroticism in the tug-of-war byplay she has with Farentino, and in seeing Pettet playing someone so assertive and self-assured. This episode best showcases the actress's unique ability to appear to inhabit both the ethereal and corporeal worlds simultaneously.

NightGallery.net

The Caterpillar - 2nd Season: Air date March 1, 1972

My strong feelings for the episodes which make up the unofficial Joanna Pettet Dream Girl Trilogy are so deeply rooted in my adolescence and associated with my decades-long crush on Ms. Pettet, I claim absolutely no objectivity in my assessment of their quality. I have no idea how anyone else may respond to them, I only know they represent the my absolute favorite episodes of the entire series.
The episode titled “The Caterpillar” is one I’m comfortable in recommending as one of Night Gallery’s best and likely the one those least Pettet-infatuated might list as their favorite of her four Night Gallery outings.

Directed by Jeannot Szwarc (helmer of the marvelous TV movie A Summer Without Boys) this episode is another Rod Serling teleplay, adapted and significantly retooled from a short story by Oscar Cook titled Boomerang. A macabre Victorian era love triangle set in a tobacco plantation in Borneo, “The Catepillar” is a revenge-tale with a nasty twist about a man (Laurence Harvey) who devises a diabolical plan to win the beautiful wife (Pettet) of his elderly business partner (Tom Helmore). Laurence Harvey and character actor Don Knight are the stars and walk off with the honors of this atmospheric piece which I recall finding extremely creepy when I was young.

Joanna Pettet is once again the object of obsessive affection, but her role is so slight one imagines that, overall quality of the script and production notwithstanding, her longtime friendship with Laurence Harvey played a significant part in her accepting it. (She would co-star with Harvey in his final film – which he also directed – the oddball cannibal horror feature Welcome to Arrow Beach -1974.)

While Pettet is photographed lovingly and offers a not-unpleasant change of pace as the reserved, principled wife of a man old enough to be her father; for me it just feels like a waste of natural resources. Old Hollywood always seemed to know how to showcase their glamour stars (did Hedy Lamarr or Marlene Dietrich ever play a housewife?), not so much Hollywood in the ‘70s.

in my opinion Joanna Pettet wasn't particularly well-used by either television or films following her Night Gallery years. She remained a near-constant figure on episodic TV and Movies of the Week during the 70s, but her roles were like casting a diamond to play a Zircon. Appearing in things that muted rather than emphasized her unique appeal, she just always struck me as so much better than a lot of her latter-career material.

In 1967, Shirley MacLaine starred in an anthology film titled Woman Times Seven. Because I think these Night Gallery episodes represent some of Joanna Pettet's best work, AND because this is a film blog, I've taken the liberty of visualizing Pettet's four TV excursions into the macabre as a single, four-episode anthology film; Woman Times Four, if you will. A tribute to one of my favorite unsung actresses of the 70s.

Unforgettable.

All Night Gallery paintings by Thomas J Knight

“I’m sure you recognize this lovely melody as ‘Stranger in Paradise.’ But did you know that the original theme is from the ‘Polovtsian Dance No. 2’ by Borodin? So many of the melodies of well-known popular songs were actually written by the great masters….”

Thus began the TV commercial for 120 Music Masterpieces, a four-LP set of classical music selections offered by Columbia House and Vista Marketing from 1971 to 1984. This ubiquitous and long-running commercial featured British character actor John Williams (famous for the Hitchcock films Dial M for Murder and To Catch a Thief, but known in our household as the “fake Mr. French” from the sitcom Family Affair) touting the joys of discovering how many classical melodies were appropriated for contemporary pop songs.

This commercial and Williams’ cultured English accent unfailingly come to mind whenever I watch The Heiress. The reason being that The Heiress’ oft-repeated love theme —the 1784 Jean-Paul-Egide Martini classical composition Plaisir d’Amour (The Joys of Love)—had its melody borrowed for the popular ballad Can’t Help Falling in Love in the 1961 film Blue Hawaii. The unfortunate result of all this is that every time the melody is played in the movie (and that’s quite a lot) it evokes for me not Victorian-era romance, but Vegas-era Elvis Presley.

Ever the Method actor, Clift learned to play the piano for this scene
in which Morris sings The Joys of Love to Catherine

Others feel differently I'm sure, but this pop music cross-referencing has always only had the effect of cheapening the original compositions for me. Coming as it did a full 12-years before Elvis serenaded Joan Blackman in Blue Hawaii, it’s not The Heiress’s fault Elvis’s version (never a favorite) is so hotwired into my brain that I fairly wince every time Plaisir d’Amour swells on the soundtrack, wrenching me out of the The Heiress' scrupulously rendered 19^th century New York, and thrusting me onto some kind of Gilligan’s Island vision of Hawaii. (I have a similar reaction to the now-distracting use of 1939’s Somewhere Over The Rainbow in the 1941 film noir I Wake Up Screaming.) Happily, my personal aversion to the song Plaisir d’Amour and its use in the film's score (something I might share with the film's Oscar-winning/Oscar-disowning composer Aaron Copland) is the sole complaint I have with William Wyler’s classic romantic melodrama, The Heiress.

Olivia de Havilland as Catherine Sloper

Montgomery Clift as Morris Townsend

Ralph Richardson as Dr. Austin Sloper

Miriam Hopkins as Lavinia Penniman

The Heiress is one of my favorite popcorn movies. And that’s “popcorn movie” in the old-fashioned sense: an enjoyably entertaining film, well-acted, with a good story intelligently told, no heavy message. Not the current definition signifying a check-your-brain-at-the-door exercise in sophomoric cretinism (cue my usual Adam Sandler, Fast & Furious wisecracks).

Based on the 1947 Broadway play by Ruth & Augustus Goetz, which itself was adapted from Henry James’ 1880 novel Washington Square, The Heiress is a serious drama to be sure. But anything deeper to be found in its subtext regarding the emotionally stifling social class system, or the lingering imprint of love lost (The Heiress overflows with widows and widowers who live in the memory of the departed, never entertaining the thought of finding someone new), remains in service of a not-unfamiliar “Poor Little Rich Girl” romantic melodrama.

As a motion picture adapted from an esteemed literary work, The Heiress was Paramount’s “prestige film” for the year, its pre-release publicity suggesting a Grand Romance between fated-to-be lovers kept apart by some shadowy adverse obstacle. In truth, the film is really a rather severe, withering rumination on love (familial love, romantic love, self-love) and the injurious cost of its absence.

Three is the Magic Number
The Heiress was Montgomery Clift's 3rd film, and his co-star was three years older

Catherine Sloper (de Havilland) is an unprepossessing, socially awkward young woman whose very existence is a source of nagging disappointment to her widowed father, physician Austin Sloper (Richardson). Dr. Sloper’s beloved wife died giving birth to Catherine, yet lives on as an idealized, phantom presence in Dr. Sloper's heart and in the household he shares with his daughter. A presence to whom Catherine, in her failure to live up to even a modicum of her mother’s beauty or social graces, is ceaselessly compared and judged. Forced to grow up in the shade of her father’s barely contained reproach and resentment, Catherine’s natural virtues (visible to us in private moments where she reveals herself to have brains and a winning sense of humor) have understandably failed to flower.

Sharing their home in Washington Square is Dr. Sloper’s sister, Lavinia (Hopkins) a somewhat frivolous but prototypical example of the kind of aimless social butterfly women were expected to be in Victorian times. Given to silly flights of romantic fantasy and hyperbole, yet well-versed in the dos and don’ts of society protocol, Lavinia is tolerated for her ability to assist Catherine in developing her social graces. Supportive of her niece and devoted to not seeing her drift heedlessly into spinsterhood with only her embroidery to keep her company; Lavinia is nevertheless one more pitying voice reminding Catherine of her lack.

Miriam Hopkins is the queen of the silly and superficial busybody.
No matter how extremely her character is written, she finds both the humor and the humanity

Although Dr. Sloper and Lavinia are both of the mind that Catherine’s failings in looks and charm are significantly mitigated by her being an heiress with a considerable fortune; Lavinia is too much of a romantic to ever admit to such base pragmatism, while Dr. Sloper regards the assessment as indisputable fact…like a medical diagnosis.

Curious then that when an outside party is suspected of appraising Catherine on much the same terms – the outside party being the dashing, obscenely handsome and penniless young suitor Morris Townsend (Clift) – it is only Dr. Sloper who objects.

What I like about The Heiress is that it does a remarkable job of putting us in the middle of the film's dramatic/romantic conflict without specifically telling us how we should feel about it. At times it appears as though Dr. Sloper is unnecessarily brusque in his assessment of his daughter, but he isn't entirely wrong. At the same time we also see that there is more to Catherine than her retiring demeanor belies, making us hope that "someone" comes along and sees in her what those around her fail to recognize.
When that someone comes in the form of Montgomery Clift, playing a man in possession everything that Catherine lacks except money; we can't help but feel (hope) that at least in some ways, this pair is well-suited. Certainly the superficial attractions of physical beauty are no more a barrier to true love than the superficial allure of wealth?

Playboy After Dark
Does our distrust of Morris come from the reversal of the beauty ethic (women are supposed to be the pretty ones), or the reversal of the patriarchal tradition (men are expected to support women)?

The Heiress deviates from the play in that it never makes the honorableness of Morris' attentions entirely clear. At least not initially. As the film progresses we are manipulated back and forth, forced to view Morris' whirlwind courtship of Catherine through the alternating perspective of Dr. Sloper's suspicious eyes, or Lavinia’s willfully rose-colored glasses.
Provocatively, we’re placed in the position of preferring to be right rather than see Catherine happy (her father, again), or hoping…perhaps beyond reason…that Townsend is not really what he seems and merely a penniless suitor genuinely seeing in Catherine that which we ourselves have been witness to: her very real charms have just not been given the opportunity to develop in the loveless home she shares with her father in Washington Square.

The film tugs at our beauty biases, our belief in Cinderella fantasies, and our weakness for ugly duckling myths. It also, in providing an emotionally and dramatically satisfying ending which deviates from the novel, taps into the kind of visceral revenge scenario beloved of any individual who has ever felt undervalued or underestimated.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Popular Hollywood movies all tap into common fantasies. There's clearly a market out there for romantic comedies about cloddish, schlubby boy-men who win impossibly beautiful women simply because they possess an ounce of the most basic human decency. There must be. I'm just happy I don't know that market personally.

Because of the laundry list of my adolescence: shy, one of the few African-Americans in a largely white Catholic school, gay in an all-boys high-school - I'm drawn to stories about outsiders. Those who are habitually overlooked because they don't conform to established norms.

"I'd never contradict him."

I'm afraid my attitude about those times are reflected in the brand of "outsider" films which have become my favorites over the years: Carrie (shy teen kills entire senior class), That Cold Day in the Park(shy spinster kills for and imprisons sex slave); 3 Women(shy enigma engages in personality theft - deaths to follow)...you get the picture. Revenge fantasies rate rather high among disenfranchised groups, while those high on the status quo curve seem to enjoy "Hey! I'm not a total creep so reward me with my mandatory supermodel!"

The Heiress is my kind of tragic pop fairy-tale in that it tells the story of a woman duped into believing her happiness lies in having someone (a male) deem her to be worthy of love. Though her path one both cruel and life-alteringly painful, she arrives at a place of self-discovery, self-acceptance and, ultimately strength.

And, conforming to the ambiguous tone of all that went before it, the ending of The Heiress can be viewed as either tragic or triumphant with no loss to the film's overall effectiveness and power.

"That's right Father. You never will know, will you?"

Olivia de Havilland's thorough and complete transformation from doting daughter to embittered adversary is as chilling as it is heartbreaking.

PERFORMANCES

When writing this essay, it came as something of a surprise to me to discover that I've only seen Olivia de Havilland in six films; four of them from her less-than-stellar, post- Lady in a Cage period. But this is more a reflection of the type of movies she appeared in (westerns, period adventure films...none particular favorites) than a reaction to the actress herself, who is still with us at age 99.

The Heiress represents Olivia de Havilland's 5th (and final) Oscar nomination
and 2nd win in the Best Actress category

Within my admittedly narrow sphere of exposure, I have nothing but admiration for her work in The Heiress. It cannot be an easy feat to imbue an outwardly plain, reactive character like Catherine with as much depth and feeling as de Havilland achieves. Perhaps a flaw in the play's structure is that it is impossible to adapt it in a way in which Catherine can ever be seen in a light reflective of how her father sees her (Wyler encourages us to identify and like Catherine.
Her comic resilience in the face of humiliation after humiliation wins us over). In our being able to so readily appraise and recognize Catherine's worth, her father becomes a villain before he gets a chance to show the sympathetic side of his case.(Marginally sympathetic, anyway. One can empathize with a man missing his wife, but to withhold affection from a motherless child due to repressed resentment or blame is cruel and tragic.). But as I've stated, the narrative tipping point falls to the casting of Morris, and whether or not the actor cast in the role is able to conceivably play sincerity and knavishness with equal credibility.

Recreating the role he played on the London stage, Ralph Richardson (knighted Sir in 1947)
is remarkable as the over-assured and unyielding Austin Sloper. The sureness of his performance
serves as the virtual touchstone for everyone else in the film

I like Montgomery Clift great deal, but if reports are true that he was deeply dissatisfied with his performance in The Heiress, I can't say his feelings are entirely unfounded. Simply put, he seems to be outclassed and a tad out of his depth when it comes to to the performances of de Havilland, Richardson, and Hopkins. To be sure, this could merely be an instance of clashing acting styles, his co-stars representing a more formal, old-guard style of acting to his more relaxed contemporary technique, but occasionally both Clift and his line readings have a tendency to come across as stiff an uncomfortable.

However, in his defense, Clift's very "otherness" in manner and speech (whether intentional or not) works marvelously within the context of the story. He's a character of whom we know not where the real person ends and artifice begins. The purpose his character serves in the story is to introduce impulse into the world of strict formality. Clift's awkwardness adds ambiguity.

Sizing Up The Interloper

Montgomery Clift's Method-era naturalness comes from somewhere so genuine, you don't entertain for a minute that he is not as he seems. His beauty is suspicious, but his behavior is not. He seems ill-suited to a certain level of showy artifice, so his scenes with de Havilland have a warmth that has you rooting for their union even as you sense it is ultimately impossible.
I like him a great deal in the film, even while recognizing his Morris Townsend is perhaps not one of his strongest performances.

As Audrey Hepburn did in Two for the Road, Olivia de Havilland is able to convey very distinct stages in the emotional maturation of her character simply through her facial expressions, body language, and voice modulation. Here, Catherine Sloper has grown into a woman at peace with herself

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
The Heiress garnered a whopping eight Academy Award nominations in 1949: Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (Richardson), Cinematography - winning in the categories of Best Actress (de Havilland), Music (Aaron Copland..a matter of contention), Art Direction (J. Meehan, H. Horner, E. Kuri), and Costume Design (Edith head, Gile Steele).
I'm particularly fond of the costume design and art direction in The Heiress, which is truly gorgeous. Even more so with today's digital restorations and HD TV screens.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Adapted from a Broadway production, The Heiress shows its stage roots in being a somewhat stagy and talky motion picture more reliant on dialog, performance, and characterization than action. In this instance I wouldn't have it any other way, for The Heiress has such marvelous, quotable dialog.

"No child could compete with this image you have of her mother. You've idealized that poor dead woman beyond all human recognition."

"Headaches! They strike like a thief in the night! Permit me to retire, of course. It's not like me to give in, dear, but sometimes fortitude is folly!"

"He must come. He must take me away. He must love me. He must!...Morris will love me, for all those who didn't."

"How is it possible to protect such a willing victim?"

"Yes, I can be very cruel. I have been taught by masters."

"I can tell you now what you have done. You have cheated me. You thought that any handsome, clever man would be as bored with me as you were. It was not love that made you protect me. It was contempt."

BONUS MATERIAL

Composer Aaron Copland's original music theme for The Heiress, before it was controversially reworked by Nathan Van Cleve under director William Wyler's orders.

Washington Square (1997): Agnieszka Holland - the director of the 2014 TV-movie remake of Rosemary's Baby - helmed this impressive-looking adaptation of Henry James' short novel starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Albert Finney, and Maggie Smith. It's truer to the book than the either the play or the 1949 film, play, so purists should be happy. But in spite of the good performances and lovely cinematography, the film failed to stay with me very long after seeing it. Some are sure to prefer it to the William Wyler film, but it reminded me of the kind of faithful movie adaptation you're required to watch in a high school English class after having read the book.

The legendary 120 Music Masterpieces TV commercial

My not exactly unfounded opinion of gimmick-driven showman/producer/director William Castle is that he was the man with the Copper Touch. The genial, bargain basement horror schlockmeister had the uncanny talent for making everything he came into contact with feel somehow cheap and derivative.

Take I Saw What You Did, Castle’s teen-targeted follow-up to the poorly-received Barbara Stanwyck feature The Night Walker (a film which, in nabbing the big-name star, he’d hoped would duplicate the success of Joan Crawford’s Strait-Jacket). Its clever, harmless-prank-gone-wrong premise—which seemed to also anticipate the 80s trend in teen horror films— is actually a pretty nifty and original idea for a suspense thriller. But in its execution it comes off as The World of Henry Orient meets “The Telephone Hour” number from Bye Bye Birdie, envisioned as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Joan Crawford as Amy Nelson

Andi Garrett as Libby Mannering

Sara Lane as Kit Austin

John Ireland as Steve Marak

Seventeen -year-old Libby Mannering (Garrett) lives way out in the fog-bound boonies with her parents (Leif Erickson and Patricia Breslin), kid sister Tess (Sheryl Locke), and a menagerie of dogs, ducks, ponies, and goats. While her parents are away on an overnight trip, Libby invites best friend Kit (Lane) over and the girls amuse themselves – as teenagers are wont to do – by making prank phone calls to strangers.

Picking random numbers from the phone book, they pretend to be mysterious “other women,” children abandoned at movie theaters, or merely poke fun at people with names “asking for it” names like John Hamburger and Donald I. Leak. What sets the suspense plot in motion is when they start calling people and whispering cryptically into the mouthpiece: “I saw what you did, and I know who you are.” A harmless enough, all-purpose head game which blows up in their faces when it just so happens one of their phone-victims (Ireland) has just killed his wife and takes the call seriously. Dead seriously.

I Saw What You Did marks the acting debut of high-schoolers Andi Garrett (17) & Sara Lane (15).
Making 9-year old Sharyl Locke (as Tess Mannering) the show business veteran in this shot

Where does top-billed Joan Crawford fit into all this? Joan plays John Ireland’s 50-something neighbor with the pre-teen babysitter name of Amy Nelson. Amy, with whom Ireland has been carrying on behind his wife’s now knife-perforated back, is part Gladys Kravitz, part Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, so small wonder he’s beginning to show signs of having second-thoughts before the film even clues us in on the nature of their relationship.

Crawford’s role is really a high-profile cameo, but, Crawford being Crawford, she makes every onscreen second count by giving each of her scenes at least ten times the emotion required.

I Saw What You Did reunited real-life (clandestine) lovers and co-stars Joan Crawford and John Ireland, who appeared together in 1955's Queen Bee.

I Saw What You Didwas adapted from the 1964 novel Out of the Dark by Ursula Curtiss. I’ve never read the book, but I have a hard time imagining it having as much trouble establishing a sustained and consistent tone as Castle does with his film. Sabotaged at every turn by a distracting (and annoying) musical score better suited to a family sitcom or Hanna-Barbera cartoon, I Saw What You Did is a pleasant enough diversion, working in fits and starts as a light comedy and taut suspenser. That being said, the film rarely ever seems to be of a single mind and comes off mostly like three TV programs spliced together to make a feature film.

Show #1 is a pleasant teen comedy of the Gidget/The Patty Duke stripe, comically exploring the social habits of ‘60s teens. Show #2 is one of those twisty noir thrillers in which lovers with secrets to hide keep playing one-upmanship games on one another. Show #3—the core premise of the film and most effective element (when it’s allowed to be)—the harmless prank that’s taken too far and goes dangerously awry.

Although 60-something Joan Crawford had no problem portraying a woman 30 years her junior when she subbed for her daughter in the soap opera Secret Storm in 1968, she is said to have balked at the idea of 25-year-old Christina Crawford campaigning for one of the teenage roles in I Saw What You Did. Three years later, Christina's desire to play the daughter in Berserk was met with similar disinterest.

For all his faults as a director, William Castle, thanks largely to his eye for bizarre material and his naïve genius for mining unintentional camp in every performance and line reading, makes entertaining movies that remain watchable almost in parallel proportion to one’s awareness that they’re not really very good.

I Saw What You Didbenefits from an engaging cast of youngsters and a genuinely suspenseful premise all of us of a certain age can relate to (with today’s caller ID technology, I don’t suppose kids make crank calls anymore…not with the joys of cyberbullying to distract them). Though conspicuously padded out and sorely lacking in as much Joan Crawford “realness” as I’d like, I Saw What You Did is situated somewhere between being one of Castle’s best (Homicidal, Strait-Jacket) and his worst (Zotz, The Old Dark House, The Busy Body).

Leif Erickson and Patricia Breslin as Dave and Ellie Mannering
Both are William Castle alumni. Erickson appeared in Strait-Jacket, and Breslin starred in Homicidal

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

As much as I’m entertained by I Saw What You Did, there’s no denying that for me, frustration is as defining a characteristic of the William Castle viewing experience as a cheesy promotional gimmick. Frustration born of seeing one promising story idea after another given the blandest, flattest treatment possible.

I don’t know whether it was ego or ambition that led Castle to invest his meager talents toward trying to emulate the careers of his idols Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, but whatever it was had the curious effect of moving him to where he was most accomplished (producing and promotion) and blinding him to where he was least (directing).

As I’ve stated before, William Castle isn’t a bad director in the Ed Wood vein, he’s mostly just artless and mediocre. In fact, had Castle not been so consumed with wanting to be one of the big players in motion pictures, I’m sure he would have found much more success (and considerably more respect) in television; a realm where mediocrity is not only encouraged but in most cases required.

William Castle - Master of Composition and Framing
This kind of pedestrian, line 'em up, nail the camera to the floor shot would look right at home on 1965 television. Indeed, shorn of about 20 minutes of its running time, I Saw What You Did would probably have played better as a 1-hour episode of one of those suspense anthology TV programs so popular at the time

That being said, I’d be lying if I inferred that I don’t find some of Castle’s movies to be a great deal of fun. And by fun I mean disposably watchable fun in the way that B-movies and Drive-In exploitation films are fun. One enjoys them because, by virtue of their wholesale inconsequence, they give us permission to indulge the junk-food side of the cineaste appetite.

PERFORMANCES

The stars of I Saw What You Did are the two teenage “discoveries” making their film debuts: Andi Garrett and Sara Lane. Speaking perhaps volumes about Castle’s directorial skills, the observable amateurism of these neophytes blends seamlessly with the caliber of performance typical of a William Castle production. In fact, both girls are engagingly natural in their roles, and awkward in ways both appropriate and believable to their characters. Little 9-year old Sharyl Locke, however, poses no immediate threat to the memory of Margaret O’Brien.

An interesting angle centering around adolescent sexual precocity is introduced when the girls,
intrigued by Steve Marak's voice on the phone, stake out his house in hopes of
getting a glimpse of the "sexy" older man.

After hitting pay dirt with Joan Crawford in Strait-Jacket, William Castle hoped to corral her for The Night Walker, but she declined, having already signed to reteam with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? co-star Bette Davis in Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte. When Crawford got sick during the making of that film (sick of Bette Davis) and had to drop out, Castle offered the uninsurable health-risk star top-billing and a $50,000 paycheck for a 4-day cameo in this little opus.

Ever the style-icon, Joan Crawford's elaborate bouffant looks to have inspired
the coiffure adopted by Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

In her forays into low-budget cinema, Crawford took to wearing clothes from her own closet.
This extreme example of suburban glamour (outsized hair, scoop-necked frock, and ginormous necklace) calls to mind the Afrocentric glamour getup of another diva favorite: Diana Ross in Mahogany

Crawford’s character and story arc is not the major focus of I Saw What You Did; but judging by the intensity of her performance, you’d probably have had trouble convincing Crawford of that fact. Because I’m such a Crawford fan, I think she’s wonderful in that camp, overarching way that typified so many her late-career performances. I can never tell if she outacts the others or merely overacts, but every one of her scenes is charged with a tension and electricity noticeably absent elsewhere in the film.

"I'm going to give you a nice, stiff drink."
(followed by the most superfluous sentence in movie history)
"I'm going to have one myself!"

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Did I mention how much I disliked this film’s musical score? Oh, I did?…well, when the music isn’t doing its best to undercut the action onscreen, I Saw What You Did mines a pretty fair amount of suspense out of the mounting trouble the girls unwittingly get themselves into with their silly phone prank and follow-up activities to get a look at the guy on the other end of the line.

There’s a brutal Psycho-inspired murder early on that could have been very disturbing had it not been shot so incompetently (thanks, Mr. Castle, I guess). And since Castle has such a reputation for derivative homages, a “surprise” murder in the third act feels instead like it was merely just a long time in coming.

Luckily, Joan Crawford is on hand to provide the one truly chilling moment of the film.

Catching Libby peering into Steve's window and jumping to the conclusion that the gray-curious teen has designs on her man, Joan (ahem, Amy) launches into a memorably violent assault and slurred-speech tirade that brings those "night raids" passages in Christina Crawford's Mommie Dearest to vivid life.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
I grew up as the only boy among four sisters, so the rare occurrence of a movie with a teenage girl as the protagonist was well-nigh a must-see TV occasion in our house. I Saw What You Did, The World of Henry Orient (1964), and The Trouble With Angels (1966) are all a kind of happy blur in my mind because each was such a favorite of my sisters when we were young. I cannot even count how often I've seen these films, yet every time brings back memories of the times my sisters and I would sit around the family B&W television set and laugh.

Of course, I Saw What You Did holds a special place in our hearts because when our parents were away, my sisters and I played similar silly phone pranks. Nothing as provocative as what's said in the film - and mind you, I'm not the least bit proud of this - but we'd call up pizza and take-out joints and and place party-sized orders for addresses we got out of the phone book. The only variance I recall was to call strangers and pretend to be a radio DJ offering a chance to win a prize if they could answer a simple question (Q: Who's the sexiest male recording artist today? A: Tom Jones). I have no idea what prize we offered or how the hell we even got away with it, what with our kiddie-sounding voices. Ah, youth!

If I Saw What You Did ultimately fails to live up to the level of thrills promised on this high-strung poster, it is, thanks largely to the deeply-in-earnest contributions of Joan Crawford and William Castle's determination to keep things moving (even at the cost of a sustained tone), a movie I enjoy a great deal. Like one of those not-very-scary house of horrors at small town amusement parks.

BONUS MATERIAL

Sara Lane & Sharyl Lock pose with one of the oversized phones William Castle arranged to have placed outside select theaters to promote the film. According to his memoirs, when the movie resulted in a rash of crank calls in the cities showing the film, the phone company had the prop phones removed

ZombosCloset.com

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I really hate the musical score for I Saw What You Did. Oh, I did? Well, wouldn't you know it; in addition to to the usual William Castle gimmicks: intended but never used - seat belts for the prevention of you being shocked out of your seat; there was an actual 45 single of the vocal version of the I Saw What You Did theme song sung by a girl-group calling themselves The Telltales. Music by longtime William Castle composer Van Alexander, lyrics by Jerry Keller, a singer/songwriter who had a pop hit in 1959 "Here Comes Summer" (which is actually pretty good).

I Saw What You Did was updated and remade as a TV movie in 1988 (cue the fried perms and shoulder pads) with Shawnee Smith and Tammy Lauren as the phone-loving teens. Brothers Robert and David Carradine co-star. You can watch it in its entirety (for now) on YouTube HERE

I Saw What You Did, And I Know Who You Are

My family moved around a lot when I was young, so new cities and new schools were a commonplace part of my upbringing. But commonplace doesn't mean easy. Having to always adapt to new people and new surroundings contributed to my being very a very quiet and shy young man who kept to himself and didn't make friends easily.

At home, I retreated into watching movies on TV. But during lunch hours, after school, and on weekends (when I wasn't sitting for hours in a darkened moviehouse) I haunted the bookstalls at the local library. For as long as I can remember I've loved reading books about Hollywood, filmmaking, and the movie industry. So much so that in every public library in each new city and at every used and new bookstore in each town, my first question of inquiry was always: "Where's your film section?" - and there I'd literally spend hours engrossed in a world which seemed as distant and fantastic as any sci-fi adventure or futuristic fantasy.

My love of reading about film continues to this day, my home bookcases bulging with so many volumes it looks like the film reference section of a research library (I can't really get into e-books - I still like the heft and feel of hardcover books).

At the request of a reader of this blog, I thought I'd list a few of my favorite Hollywood/film-related books. Not a comprehensive list by a longshot, and not a list to be taken as "recommended reading." Merely a few of the titles that come fondly to mind when asked about books I've enjoyed over the years. (The one restriction I've applied is that I've limited my list exclusively to books I own.)

Since my partner shares my love of exploring the few used bookstores still in existence in the LA area, I'm hoping some of you might perhaps share the names of some of your some of your favorite film-related books. One never can tell what gems will be unearthed!

The Nashville Chronicles: The Making of Robert Altman’s Masterpiece by Jan Stuart / 2000 — Since it looks like the once-proposed 10-hour miniseries version of NashvilleABC-TV was at one time interested in will never see the light of day (made up of all the unused footage from Robert Altman's 1975 opus), this impressively comprehensive behind-the-scenes account of the making of one of my favorite films is an invaluable substitute. A vision of personal filmmaking I can only imagine is long gone in this day of the corporate franchise.

Hitchcock -Truffaut by François Truffaut Francois Truffaut / 1966 — I have yet to see the 2015 documentary based on the legendary eight-day interview French director François Truffaut had with Alfred Hitchcock in 1962, but when I read this book in 1970, it was my very first in-depth glimpse into what had heretofore been something we regular folks could only guess at: the job of the director. I know I said none of the books in my list could be called "recommended reading," but if you love film at all, I'd call this book mandatory reading.

Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters Edited by John Coldstream / 2008 — Academic film study is all well and good for understanding the nuts-and-bolts side of filmmaking; but nothing beats a book where a celebrity lets their hair down and exposes the mundanity behind the art. This massive collection of letters written by actor Dirk Bogarde between 1969 and 1999 (a period when he eased into becoming an author of six novels and eight guarded autobiographies) is enjoyable in direct proportion to your fondness for the actor (I adore him) and love of casual bitchery ( I plead the Fifth). Bogarde refers to Glenda Jackson as "Tits Jackson," thinks Michael Caine has "the ugliest voice in the business," and had this to say about the stars of 1976s Logan's Run: "...even (Tyrone) Power was better than the homogenized sexlessness of (Michael) York or Fawcett Major...she sounds like a Public School or some village in green Wilshire. Is she?"

For Keeps by Pauline Kael / 1994 — Perhaps because there were so many films I wanted to see that wasn't allowed to, when I was young I developed a passion for reading film criticism. I pored over collections of the writings of Stanley Kauffmann and John Simon, but I credit Pauline Kael exclusively with really teaching me how to look at movies and for introducing me to the still-revolutionary notion that we don't love a film because it's "good"; we love a film because it speaks to us. Happily I've been able to find her earlier books on Ebay, but this career collection of more than 275 of her reviews and essays is pure bliss. Even when she goes off in directions I don't agree with, I always related to her passion and way with words.

Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger by William J. Mann / 2005 — The life and career of the magnificent director of Darling, Midnight Cowboy, and The Day of the Locust are examined in this thorough and thoroughly engaging biography written with the participation and co-operation of Schlesinger himself. Outrageously informative and insightful in its conveyance of artistic genius in a modest man who rarely saw himself as a trailblazer and creator of some of the most enduring works in cinema.

The Busby Berkeley Book by Tony Thomas / 1973 — The occasion of my getting this book is a particularly happy memory. It was my 16th birthday, and my family indulged me by allowing me to pick the film we would all see together: François Truffaut's Day for Night. The line for the movie extended quite a distance and we were situated in front of a bookstore. Staring at the window displays, I carried on to one of my sisters about the various movie books that had just come out. Clearly lost in my fascination, I didn't pay much heed when my mom sent my eldest sister off to check on our parking meter. As it turns, out, my mom actually gave my sister money to go into the bookstore to purchase this book on Busby Berkeley for me. A book I lusted after but seemed too grand and costly a purchase (a whopping $15) to seriously entertain.
As any adolescent is likely to attest; when a parent gives even the slightest sign of knowing what is of importance to their child, it feels like the most extravagantly heartwarming acknowledgement and validation. I've never forgotten the way this terribly sweet gesture made me feel that day, and I forever associate my mom (an avid reader) with instilling in me a love of books.
The Busby Berkeley Book itself?...an exhaustive, photo-crammed, film-by-film look at how Berkeley achieved all those dazzling musical panoramas and kaleidoscopes. They don't make 'em like this anymore.
.

The Richard Burton Diaries Edited by Chris Williams / 2012 — I'm not a huge fan of Richard Burton, but I grew up during the whole Liz/Burton thing, so a book like this is irresistible. It seems Richard Burton, in addition to being an avid reader who devoured books like Neely O'Hara devoured pills, was a lifelong diarist. Encompassing the years 1939 to 1983, this collection of Burton's jotted down thoughts is every bit as juicy as you'd think it would be. Sure it's fun to read him laying into stars like Lucille Ball, Joey Heatherton, and Eddie Fisher; but for guys like me - who's childhood memories are filled with Taylor and Burton as movie magazine staples - it's entertaining and enlightening to get a private glimpse into a very public relationship.

Ken Russell's Films by Ken Hanke / 1984 — More an academic monograph than a book geared to the casual fan, Ken Hanke's book analyzes and critiques Ken Russell's entire body of work up to 1980 (ending on a Ken Russell high-note with Altered States, so we're spared the years of decline). For the true Ken Russell aficionado, the level of research and study here is sublime.

The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West / 1939 — Got this paperback in 1975 after seeing the film, and to this day it stands as one of the most scathing indictments of Hollywood I've ever read. Like a grimly surreal allegory, the timeless The Day of the Locust"gets" the strange, hungry symbiosis that exists between the dreamers and the dream machine. Even when one thinks about the Hollywood of today, it's difficult to know who's tune is being danced to. Is it the ones without hope, demanding that movies lie to them and feed them fantasies that can never be fulfilled; or is it the dreammakers who intentionally create want and desire out of the valueless, guaranteeing an endless supply of lack and resentment?
As one who has found in movies a level of comfort and release, I can't help but wonder to what extent I may also use film as a means of escape. I don't have any answers as to it's potential harmfulness (although my instinct leans toward whether films help us to engage in life or encourage us to avoid it) I'm impressed by how artfully Nathanael West turned Hollywood into a state of mind.

The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (And How They Got That Way) by Harry Medved and Randy Dreyfuss / 1978 — One of the great things about coming from a big family is that watching movies on TV together becomes a kind of impromptu MST3K episode. Growing up, my sisters and I all harbored a taste for bad movies and loved riffing on them as we watched, so we actually sought out B-movies and loved cheapo horror programs like Bay Area's KTVU Creature Features (then the only program I knew of to poke fun at movies).
When this book came out, it felt like it could have been a family collaboration. Poking fun at films as diverse as Airport 1975 to Alain Resnais'Last Year at Marienbad, it's more than just easy potshots taken at questionable filmmaking. The book offers a lot of background info on the films in question, and the critiques are more grounded in legitimate structural and contextual gripes than later copycat books could lay claim. A laugh out loud funny book with sharp observations.

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind / 1998 — Fan of the 60s and 70s as I am, this book was heaven for me. Especially since - in profiling directors like Altman, Bogdanovich, Spielberg and everyone in between - the author isn't really of a mind to build a shrine to anyone. Gossip monger that I am, I prefer my film history behind-the-scenes anecdotes with a certain amount of irreverent candor. This book doesn't disappoint.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Horace McCoy / 1935 — As with The Day of the Locust, I can't imagine compiling a list of Hollywood/film industry books without including this dark companion piece to West's brilliant nightmare. McCoy's novel, set in a marathon dance during the Depression, is more an existential parable, but it's Hollywood backdrop, populated by wannabes and hangers on, is the flip side of the sunny "those were the good old days" nostalgia that was so popular when this paperback edition was published in 1969. If you can get your hands on one of these it's worth it, for in addition to the novel they've included the screenplay to the Sydney Pollack film.

(Honorable Mention: Pictures at a Revolution- Mark Harris, The Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers Book- Arlene Croce, Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark -Brian Kellow, Jane Fonda: The Private Life of a Public Woman- Patricia Bosworth, Robert Altman: An Oral Biography - Mitchell Zuckoff, Roman Polanski -F.X. Feeny, Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell & His Films -Joseph Lanza, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock-Donald Spoto,Twiggy In Black & White: An Autobiography-Penelope Dening & Twiggy Lawson, Mommie Dearest- Christina Crawford)

THE BARGAIN BIN
Not every film-related book can be a winner. Here are a few I'd put at the bottom of the pile.

Crowning Glory: Reflections of Hollywood's Favorite Confidant by Sydney Guilaroff & Cathy Griffin / 1996 — The prospect of the chief hairdresser at MGM for more than 50 years writing his memoirs certainly sounds like a can't miss book. He met all the great stars in his time, and lasted through the Golden Age into the '60s. Listen, I like a good show-biz fish story as much as anybody, but most of Mr.Sydney Guilaroff's "I was there!" memories are called into question when he asks the reader to accept the rather outlandish notion that he is a heterosexual male (he was for all practical purposes outed by Esther Williams in her autobiography) romantically involved with some of his famous female clients. Meaning no disrespect, but if he was seriously trying to carry off this Liberace-esque charade, he should have left out the precious early photo of himself looking like Norma Shearer with his two adopted sons, and most CERTAINLY a later photo with his hunky adopted "grandson" at his side (said grandson being a full grown man when adopted). When an author lies about the single most glaring fact about his life, the book may be 100% fact, but with the author so determined to nail the door shut on this very obvious closet, I can't trust anything in the book to be reliable.

Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage by Raquel Welch / 2010 — As one of the last of the old-fashioned studio-created sex symbols, one would think Raquel Welch would have a lot to talk about. She's a survivor with a legendary temperament who's worked with some of the biggest names in the business. Unfortunately, Miss Welch (whom I adore) decided that what her fans most needed from her are beauty, diet and wig-buying tips. She glosses over her questionable film resume (all the more reason I wanted to know more about them) and turns her book into a tedious episode of The View.

The Elephant To Hollywood by Michael Caine 2010 — This is Caine's second autobiography (his first, What's It All About? was published in 1992) and I guess by this time he was a little talked out. The lack of anything substantive to relate about a late career sustained by accepting any and everything that's laid on your doorstep becomes apparent as we are treated to chapter after chapter in which he recounts how much he loves his birthday. Hoping for at least a mirror into what it's like to go from heartthrob to Batman's butler, the best that can be said is reading this book is like being seated at a dinner next to an amiable chap well versed in inoffensive, unenlightening small talk.

Undiscovered by Debra Winger / 2008 — Back in the early 90s Debra Winger used to take my dance class (because she couldn't relate to "perky"- a word she used to describe the other instructors). I've been called many things, but since perky isn't one of them, we developed a friendly rapport, even sharing a tuna sandwich at a diner on her birthday while she talked about her aversion to Hollywood.

Anyhow, when this memoir came out I was very excited because I knew Winger to be a straightforward, pull-no-punches type and I thought she'd use this opportunity to dispel some of the many myths surrounding her tumultuous career.

No such luck. At this point in her life the talented actress must have been going through some kind of self-exploration journey, for Undiscovered is almost hostile in its refusal to be what anyone picking up a celebrity might expect. Want to know about Terms of Endearment/ Tough. She's got several pages of poetry for you. Want to know how the hell she was chosen to replace the fired Raquel Welch in the ill-fated Cannery Row (1982)? Sorry, but prepare to read about her garden.

At the end of it all you wonder if she just wanted to screw with the publishers (which sounds more like the real Debra Winger than most parts of this book).

Tony Curtis: American Prince by Tony Curtis and Peter Golenbock / 2008 — Perhaps because I was never really a Tony Curtis fan to begin with (the book was a gift) but I found there to be a huge ick factor attendant to reading this. Curtis was 80 or so when this memoir was published, but it reads like something that would sound puerile coming from a 16-year-old.

To grow older without wisdom or insight is a sad thing, and as Curtis recounts love affairs, sexual flings, and his oddball double-standards when it comes to infidelity (he, a man could sleep with as many co-stars as he wished...the height of insults was to find his wife may have tried the same...once!) is to to stare into a pretty void. For me, all that came off of the page was ego, self-justification, and a pathetic cloaking off of sexual conquests as though it actually meant something.

I had the same reaction when I read Eddie Fisher's 1999 autobiography Been there, Done That. Ick!

So what are your favorite books about Hollywood, celebrity, or the film industry? Any you want to recommend or warn others about? Let me know! In the meantime...see you around the book stalls!

Copyright © Ken Anderson

To some extent, mid-‘70s Hollywood was a bit of a boys’ club sandbox overrun with buddy films and disaster movies in which women were required to do little more than support the dreams of the hero or sit around waiting to be rescued. Jane Fonda, Karen Black, and Faye Dunaway divvied up the few plum non-“clinging girlfriend” roles to be found (Liza Minnelli & Barbara Streisand being not-quite-human feminine entities unto themselves); while Glenda Jackson remained in demand for parts requiring the kind of accessible, high-toned hauteur American actresses tend to look ridiculous trying to carry off outside of TV soap operas.

But even a two-time Oscar winner like Jackson must have found it tough going, for in order to play something other than co-starring roles opposite then-bankable stars like George Segal and Walter Matthau —roles for which she was grossly overqualified—financing for her films had to come from unusual places. An independent patron of the arts (Ely Landau: The Maids), a cosmetics company (Brut: Hedda), and a magazine publisher (Reader’s Digest: The Incredible Sarah).

Readers Digest. I can’t even look at those words without picturing the stacks of unappealing-looking mini-magazines which seemed to grow like weeds in the corners of my grandmother’s living room. And don’t get me started on those volumes of Reader’s Digest condensed books. Condensed books…what was up with that?

But I digress. For a time in the ‘70s Reader’s Digest was in the movie business, producing a string of “Family Classics” (often musicals) based on works of literature: Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer (1973) and Huckleberry Finn (1974), and an adaptation of Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop titled Mr. Quilp (1975). The British arm of Reader’s Digest deviated from G-rated kiddie fare and produced this PG-rated biographical drama about the life of French actress Sarah Bernhardt. Certainly the notion of the woman many considered to be the greatest actress of the 20^thcentury portraying the greatest actress of the 19^th century was an appealing one (Ken Russell entertained the idea of making a Bernhardt bio-pic with Glenda Jackson back in 1971 after first-choice Barbra Streisand[!] failed to follow through).

But alas, Glenda Jackson, in spite of having garnered an Oscar nomination the previous year for Hedda, was in a bit of a career slump, having not appeared in a hit film since 1973's A Touch of Class; a slump not reversed until House Calls in 1978. The modestly-budgeted The Incredible Sarah was released in November of 1976, just when the studios were going full bore (pun intended) with its saturation promotion of the high-profile Christmas releases of Streisand's A Star is Born remake, and Dino De Laurentiis'King Kong reboot.
With Bernhardt neither a household name nor familiar face (a star of the stage, Bernhardt nevertheless made a few silents and talkies) and only lukewarm reviews to assist it, The Incredible Sarah came and went without much notice or fanfare.

Glenda Jackson as Sarah Bernhardt

Daniel Massey as Victorien Sardou

John Castle as Aristides Damala

Douglas Wilmer as Adolphe Montigny

Bridget Armstrong as Marie

The Incredible Sarah has occupied a spot on my list of holy grail films (out-of-print or hard-to-find movies I’ve always wanted to see) for a whopping 40-years now. The initial San Francisco Bay Area run The Incredible Sarah in 1976 was so brief; it seemed to disappear from theaters before I even knew it had opened. In the ensuing years, I’ve no recollection of it appearing on either broadcast television or cable TV, and its release on VHS in 1992 was one of the best-kept secrets in the video rental business.

So it was with no small degree of excitement when—that after all these years— I discovered it on YouTube just a month ago and was finally afforded the opportunity to watch personal fave Glenda Jackson in what was to be one of the last of her major “star” vehicles. (Always a critical and Academy Award favorite, Jackson was never a really a populist favorite in the States; her biggest successes coming from being paired with likable, light comedy male co-stars capable of who “softening” her somewhat remote, intellectual image.)

Well, there’s no denying that merely seeing The Incredible Sarah after such a long period of anticipation is gratifying in and of itself, and certainly the remarkable Glenda Jackson doesn’t disappoint. However, no amount of fandom, expectancy, or nostalgia can make this wholly undistinguished, startlingly old-fashioned bio-pic into anything more than a fabulous Glenda Jackson showcase (she's had better) and well-intentioned, honorable misfire.

I don’t know much about the life of Sarah Bernhardt—which, under the circumstances proved a distinct and decided advantage. But I do know a thing or two about show biz biographical movie clichés; an awareness which turned large segments of The Incredible Sarah into a bordering-on-camp laundry list of hoary bio-pic tropes.

King Lear - 1866

The Incredible Sarah chronicles the life of acclaimed French actress Sarah Bernhardt (born Rosine Bernardt) between the years 1863 to1890 (taking her from age 19 to roughly 45; something it helps to know since the only person to visibly age in this film is her illegitimate child). From her inauspicious beginnings at the Comédie Française through her gradual emergence as one of the principal players at the Odéon Theatre, Bernhardt is depicted as a headstrong individualist and rebel, drawn to the calling of acting simply because…well, that’s never quite explained beyond her stating its “Something I have to do!”—which could well be applied to getting one’s unibrow tweezed.

On her path to becoming hailed as an international star and earning the name “The Divine Sarah,” Bernhardt is briefly shown appearing in several of her classic roles (King Lear, Le Passant, Phaedra, The Lady of the Camellias, & Joan of Arc). Meanwhile her offstage life rivals her stage performances in theatricality and excess. There’s the aforementioned illegitimate child born of a Belgian prince; her household menagerie of animals; her habit of sleeping in a coffin; her many lovers; her interest in sculpting; her legendary temperament; her stage fright; and her unpropitious marriage to a handsome Greek attaché. Lest we get the impression Bernhardt’s life was one rosy romp of self-interest and accolades, we’re also shown how she selflessly turned the Odéon Theatre into an infirmary during the Franco-German War, and battled an unsympathetic public judgmental of her wicked, wicked ways.

The Incredible Sarah ends on a high note—some 33-years before Bernhard’s death at age 78—with her triumphant portrayal of Joan of Arc. As the film faded to black, I was left with the dual sensations of feeling how much I really missed Glenda Jackson and wondering (like Bacharach’s Alfie), what’s it all about?

Le Passant - 1869

I was entertained, but save for a scene in the impromptu theatrical infirmary, strangely unmoved by anything that transpired between the characters. I loved the elaborate costumes, hairstyles, ornate art direction, and, here and there, even a performance that wasn’t Jackson’s; but I never got a sense of the film having anything particular to say about its subject. I thought I'd certainly I’d come away with more knowledge of Sarah Bernhardt than when I arrived, but given that the film began with the disclaimer: “This motion picture is a free portrayal of events in her tempestuous early career,” could I even say that?

I’m too much of a fan of the freewheeling liberties of Ken Russell’s biographical films to hew to the notion that historical accuracy and chronological fealty equal a good bio-pic. That The Incredible Sarah plays fast and loose with the facts doesn’t trouble me so much as the fact it has (for me, anyway) no point of view, perspective, or motivation beyond Bernhardt being a notable person whose life deserves recording.

The closest thing I could glean, and perhaps this was more obvious in ’76, is that The Incredible Sarah, in being a film produced and written by women (Helen M. Strauss & Ruth Wolff, respectively) sought to present a notable historical female figure in a feminist light. And indeed, it is refreshing to see a woman deciding for herself what is important in her life and not having her femininity or value as a person called into question because she chooses the career path. But this theory is undermined a bit by the script making Bernhardt's chief adversary a woman jealous of Sarah stealing her man.

On the whole, The Incredible Sarah ranks as the perfect kind of historical film to show in school history classes or something. As a stand-alone entertainment with no lessons to impart to impressionable minds, I’m afraid The Incredible Sarah measured up as being a must-see vehicle for Glenda Jackson enthusiasts like myself, but an easy pass for the general film fan.

Phaedra - 1879

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Liking Glenda Jackson as much as I do, it’s very rewarding to see her in a film where not only is she front and center (and given very little in the way of competition), but she’s photographed flatteringly and made to look movie-star glamorous in a multitude of sumptuous, Oscar-nominated costumes by Anthony Mendelson (Macbeth, Young Winston).

The film is handsomely mounted (its only other Oscar nomination came for Art Direction: Elliot Scott & Norman Reynolds) and it's something of a feast to see Jackson in every single scene, playing the classics, hamming it up, being funny...basically being given free rein in a film designed to showcase her talents. But alas, I’m aware of clinging to these particular joys - all centered around the film's star -because the very weak screenplay gives Jackson quite a lot to do but not very much she can to sink her teeth into. When she's not reciting the words of the Masters, Jackson is saddled with some of the most mundane dialogue imaginable.

Simon Williams portrays Henri de Ligne, a Belgian prince with whom Bernhardt has a child out of wedlock

Directed by Richard Fleischer (whose skills run the gamut from the outstanding 10 Rillington Place-1971 to the laugh-a-minute vulgarity that is Mandingo-1975) The Incredible Sarah is so old-fashioned in its construction and execution, it feels as though it were made at least a decade earlier. Had someone told me it had been made some time before Jackson gained fame for Women in Love and released in 1976 as means of capitalizing on her notoriety, only her more mature appearance would cause me to doubt it.

Joan of Arc - 1890

PERFORMANCES

A film about the world’s greatest actress would be terribly embarrassing without an actress about whom those words could be uttered onscreen without inciting laughter, so the casting of Glenda Jackson is perfection on that score. Where things get a little dicey is that, for all her ability as an actress, Glenda Jackson is something like the embodiment of common sense, intelligence, and reason. Therefore the scenes attempting to convey Bernhardt’s flamboyance and fiery nature don’t really cut it for me. Jackson doesn’t have a frivolous bone in her body. And so while it’s fun when she gets to run amok in not one but two rip-and-tear temper tantrum scenes, the effort in trying to appear unreasonable shows.

Taking solace in the odds-on likelihood that not many people ever saw it, Daniel Massey essentially recreates the exact same role that won him a Golden Globe (and Oscar nomination) in the 1968 Julie Andrews flop, Star! Massey had co-starred with Glenda Jackson in 1971's Mary, Queen of Scots

It's a casting phenomenon reminiscent of what I commented upon in reference to Anthony Hopkins being cast in the 1978 film Magic: he's great at the loony-tunes stuff, but he lacks any of the hammy exhibitionism to make him believable as a Borscht Belt ventriloquist. Glenda Jackson is an ideal fit for Sarah Bernhardt the brilliant actress; but as an eccentric narcissist, she has both feet a little too firmly planted on the ground.

Sarah Bernhardt relaxes in the coffin she traveled with

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

The Incredible Sarah and the show business bio film cliché checklist:

Scene in which the artist conveniently declares her life’s ambition (Funny Girl, Sparkle, The Loves of Isadora, Star!).

Scene depicting the artist’s unbridled, unsubstantiated self-confidence (Funny Girl, Sparkle, The Loves of Isadora, Star!)

Scene where artist makes amusingly disastrous performing stage debut (Funny Girl, The Loves of Isadora, Lady Sings the Blues, Love Me or Leave Me, Star!)

The confidant to whom the artist can give voice to her inner yearnings and provide plot exposition (Funny Lady, The Loves of Isadora, Lady Sings the Blues, Star!)
The bad marriage trope (Funny Girl, Star!,Sparkle, The Loves of Isadora)

The scene depicting Sarah Bernhardt's first time on the stage could have been
lifted directly from an episode of That Girl

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I've watched The Incredible Sarah twice. The first time I was just too taken with the pleasure of at last seeing it to be able to access it with any objectivity. On the second go-round, its script flaws stood out a great deal more (events happen in biographical films because "they really happened"...screenwriters don't always concern themselves with making sure the events and character motivations fit a narrative logic. Real life is haphazard; I tend to like a little more structure in my drama. Even biographical drama); but I was happily surprised by how much the film is buoyed and made pleasurable by Glenda Jackson alone.

It isn't one of her best performances (as stated earlier, I was largely left unmoved) but it's a good one. Much better in my opinion than her Oscar-winning turn in A Touch of Class (1973). The Incredible Sarah didn't live up to my expectations, but I have to say Glenda Jackson, even with weak material, is still the personification of incredible.

BONUS MATERIAL

Watch The Incredible Sarah on YouTube HERE

The Incredible Sarah concerns itself with the actress' early career. Sarah Bernhardt was one of the first stage actresses to appear in film. Here is a clip of the real Sarah Bernhardt playing Hamlet in her 1900 film debut.
She made several other films and continued to tour and perform onstage even after the amputation of a leg in 1915. In addition to acting, she managed and directed her own theater company, sculpted, and published a novel and a memoir of questionable veracity. She passed away in 1922 at the age of 78.

“This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.” - T.S. Eliot

It can’t be easy maintaining a film career. The practical side of the motion picture business doesn’t readily correspond with an artist's desire to work well and consistently while trying to hold onto whatever faint vestiges of integrity and self-respect are left intact after one is deemed no longer young or the pop-culture “flavor of the month.” Fans, critics, and rear-view-mirror biographers tend to speak of an actor’s career and body of work as though they are things strategically orchestrated and mapped out. Perhaps in some cases this is true, but for the most part, the cold realities of the business of fame suggests an actor’s lingering legacy is often the result of nothing more premeditated than the serendipitous meeting of talent, luck, ambition, and tenacity.

A film career of any length is bound to have its ups and downs, but if an actor is lucky, the ups outnumber (or outweigh) the bad to sufficient degree as to have little impact on time’s overall evaluation of a actor's merits. Because Hollywood films ween us on happy endings and tidy conclusions, perhaps this breeds in us an expectation (or hope) that the careers of our favorite stars culminate in films and performances worthy and emblematic of their lifetime achievements, in toto.

Occasionally it works out: as in John Wayne, dying of cancer in real-life, portraying an aging gunman dying of cancer in his last film The Shootist (1976); or Sammy Davis Jr. appearing as a revered, aging tap-dancer in Tap (1989) his final film. But all too often stars with illustrious early careers bow out in vehicles severely at odds with their cumulative talent, reputations, and dignity.
So here's a list of the less-than-celebrated last films of a few of my favorite actors. An unlucky list of 13 movies - indicative of nothing deeper than a movie fan's wish that these talented stars had been shown to better advantage in their final movie roles.

1. Mae West — Last Film: Sextette (1978)

The final film of screen legend Mae West turned out to be something of a good news/bad news affair. The good news being that the self-enchanted octogenarian ended her four-decade movie career in a name-above-the title star vehicle (vanity project) designed as a tribute to her image and career. The bad news, of course, is that I’m referring to Sextette: an ill-advised, fan-produced exercise in celebrity exploitation so unflattering to its leading lady, it essentially ends up being a 90-minute exercise in character assassination and idol-smashing...set to a disco beat.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: My Little Chickadee (1940)

*****

2. Laurence Harvey — Last Film: Welcome to Arrow Beach (1974)

Speaking in terms of equal opportunity, it’s nice to know that late-career leading men are as susceptible to the beckoning charms of the B-grade horror film as the cadre of older actresses populating that subgenre known as Grand Dame Guignol. On the heels of appearing with gal pal Joanna Pettet in a 1972 episode of TVs Night Gallery, and co-starring with longtime friend Elizabeth Taylor in Night Watch(1973); Oscar nominee Laurence Harvey (Room at the Top - 1959) went the full slasher route in the rarely-seen cheapie Welcome to Arrow Beach. Appearing again with (VERY) good friend Joanna Pettet, Harvey underplays a military vet with a cannibalistic taste for hitchhiking hippie chicks and blowsy booze hounds. Looking gaunt from the stomach cancer that would claim his life before this film was released, Harvey also directed this bloody exploitationer which rode a short-lived 70s trend of cannibalism-themed horror movies. I remember seeing this as a teen (under the alternate title, Tender Flesh) on a double bill with the another cannibal horror film, The Folks at Red Wolf Inn (1972). I guess we all have our low moments. View trailer HERE

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Night Watch (1973)

*****

3. Joan Crawford — Last Film: Trog (1970)

As a journalist once noted, the boon and bane of every Crawford fan has always been the actress’s dogged professionalism. No matter how low she'd fallen (and Trog is about as low as it gets) Crawford always emoted as though Louis B. Mayer were still breathing down her neck. Crawford’s co-star in Trog is a professional wrestler in a rubbery Halloween mask (Joe Cornelius), but by the level of her intensity and commitment, you’d think she was acting opposite Franhcot Tone. And while this trait is certainly admirable, it has the unfortunate effect of making Joan appear to be performing in a vacuum; acting her ass off independent of the tone and timbre of the scene, not really relating to her co-stars. In Trog, Joan – looking tiny and occasionally pretty well-oiled – plays an anthropologist who attempts to tame a "Kill-crazy fiend from hell!” amidst public outcry and resistance. As always, Joan is the best thing in it (on my personal Camp-o-meter, anyway), but this B-horror movie programmer is so beneath her talents it makes the schlock she made for William Castle look dignified.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Berserk(1967)

*****

4. Gene Kelly — Last Film: Xanadu (1980)

A curious inclusion given how much I love this film and how, considering what he had to work with, I actually think Gene Kelly acquits himself rather nicely.
But I have to admit I've always found my enjoyment of Kelly in this musical to be running neck and neck with a sense of missed opportunities an a disappointment in how poorly he’s served by this charming but rather weak vehicle as a whole. Xanadu is nothing if not respectful of the influential actor / singer / dancer / director /choreographer who helped shape the face of the modern movie musical; it’s just that he’s let down by an insipid script, sabotaged by editing and camerawork which fails to understand the rhythms of dance (or rollerskating...they cut off his feet!), and is left to play third-fiddle to two low-wattage leads who fail to possess even a fraction of his screen charisma. So while Xanadu is not exactly a career embarrassment (I'd say that honor goes to his direction of Hello, Dolly!& The Guide for the Married Man), it ranks as a poor representation and send off for the genius that was Gene Kelly.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)

*****

5. Gloria Swanson — Last Film: Airport ’75 (1974)

In this loopy sequel (of sorts) to 1970’s Airport, silent screen star Gloria Swanson appears as herself and makes up for all those mute years by never shutting up. Swanson’s not onscreen a lot ‒ although it feels like she is since, in a film overrun with nuns (Helen Reddy, for one), Swanson makes the curious choice to dress exactly like a nun who’s been to a couturier ‒ but when she is onscreen you can bet she’s talking about herself. Ostensibly under the guise of dictating her memoirs to her long-suffering secretary (Planet of the Apes’ Linda Harrison or Augusta Summerland, who knows a thing or two about keeping quiet), Swanson, who it’s said wrote her own dialog, captures perfectly what it’s like to be in the company of an actor: they are always their own favorite topic of discussion.

Overlooking the suspense-killing casting of having Swanson playing herself in a fictional narrative (what are they gonna do, have her get sucked out a window?), her role feels like a far-in-advance infomercial for her 1980 memoir Swanson on Swanson. A title describing the entire thrust of Swanson's self-enamored characterization here.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Sunset Blvd. (1950)

*****

6. Dean Martin / Frank Sinatra — Last Film: Cannonball Run II (1984)

Although I tend to consider myself a child of the 60s & 70s, and therefore lay no claim to the cinema atrocities committed in the 80s; the next time I go on a jeremiad about the craptastic bros-flick oeuvre of Adam Sandler and Kevin James, someone needs to remind me that Burt Reynolds – an actor from my generation – pretty much originated the lazy comedy movie genre. That's when you find someone to pay for you and your buddies to get together and have a good time, hand somebody a camera, film it, slap a title on it, and then call it a movie.

I never saw the original The Cannonball Run (1981) but the appeal of having the 60s Rat Pack reunited onscreen in this movie (Sinatra, Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. & Shirley MacLaine) got the better me, and so I watched it one night film on cable TV. With this movie (and I use the term loosely) I discovered that nostalgia is no match for a film that clearly holds its audience in low regard. The level of contempt this movie has for the intelligence of its audience is palpable. Dean Martin dares you to call him on the fact that he really doesn’t give a shit, and Frank Sinatra looks exactly like someone dutifully following through on a favor/obligation. Dreadful. An unspeakably depressing last film for two of my favorites.
Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Airport (1970) / The First Deadly Sin (1980)

*****

7. Elizabeth Taylor — Last Film: The Flintstones (1994)

Beyond the garden-variety complaint that Hollywood never seems to know how to properly showcase stars once they cease to be young, I’ve no objection to an actress of Elizabeth Taylor’s magnitude and reputation being cast as Fred Flintstone’s harridan of a mother-in-law (one Pearl Slaghoople) in a live-action version of the enduring 60s primetime TV cartoon show (inspired by the live-action The Honeymooners). Indeed, given Taylor’s sense of humor about herself, lack of pretension, and past success in playing shrews and shrill, fishwife types, it’s actually a pretty cool idea.
My problem lies with how dismal a comedy The Flintstones turned out to be. Taylor's role is little more than an extended walk-on, but in it she's saddled with some strenuously unfunny material which she doesn't handle particularly well. There's so little to The Flintstones beyond the wittily prehistoric costumes, sets, and special effects (it's all concept, no content), that one is left with too much time to contemplate why the only laughs the film earns derive from how accurately the production team has captured some device or creature we recognize from the cartoon. Taylor (sporting that awful Jose Eber feathered helmet hairdo she adopted at the time) has definitely been better, was capable of better, and I only wish she had been given better.
Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: The Mirror Crack’d (1980)

*****

8. Peter Sellers — Last Film: The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980)

It’s anybody’s guess how this flat, misguided comedy ever got beyond the planning stages, but avarice likely played a role in this unsuitable-for-release trainwreck ever seeing the light of day (it was released weeks after Sellers’ death). Fandom fuels a desire to see the last professional efforts of any favored celebrity, but it’s hard to imagine any Peter Sellers fan deriving much joy from this slogging crime comedy. A film which also served as the last screen role for Mary Poppins’ David Tomlinson and features Helen Mirren impersonating Queen Mary, the grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II, whom Mirren would win an Oscar portraying 26-years later. Sellers was a comic genius who made a career out of disappearing behind impersonation, but by the 80s his extended yellowface Fu Manchu shtick was strictly cringe material. Matters aren’t helped much by Sellers (ill at the time) playing dual roles: bored & tired.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Being There (1979)

*****

9. Tallulah Bankhead — Last Film: Die! Die! My Darling! (1965)

This one’s a bit of an academic call. A call resting both on the awareness of Tallulah Bankhead being an esteemed stage actress whose motion picture appearances were rare (thus branding this Z-grade exercise in Hag Horror as a film far beneath her talents); and the full understanding that no one in their right mind would care to deprive the world of Bankhead’s mesmerizingly over-the-top performance in said Psycho-Biddy gothic. Bankhead is too fine an actor for a title like Die! Die! My Darling! to stand as the representative coda to her brief film career, but as a longstanding connoisseur of camp, I can’t deny that I’m forever grateful to her for having undertaken it.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: A Royal Scandal (1945)

*****

10. Bette Davis — Last Film: Wicked Stepmother (1989)

It’s kind of a good thing this chaotic comedy about a homewrecking witch (Davis) is so aggressively unfunny, for the sight of the frail, reed-thin, surgically tightened, post-stroke, eerily animatronic Bette Davis croaking out her lines while chain-smoking like a madwoman is a bonafide laugh-killer. A problem-plagued production that had the ailing, dissatisfied Davis deserting the film shortly after shooting began (resulting in her onscreen time amounting to slightly less than 15-minutes), Wicked Stepmother may have brought Davis a hefty paycheck and yet another opportunity to work – something obviously very important to her – but beyond the curiosity value of seeing one of Hollywood's greats in her last film roe, the whole affair has a ghoulish feel to it.
The only joke in the film that works is a brief sight gag revealing the late wife of Davis' new husband (Lionel Stander) was Joan Crawford.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: The Whales of August (1987)

*****

11. Charles Boyer — Last Film: A Matter of Time (1976)

Charles Boyer is an interesting case. He dodged having to be shackled with Ross Hunter’s Lost Horizon (1973) as his last film by following up that misstep with the stylish Alan Resnais film Stavisky…; a fine and suitably distinguished movie to end his career. Unfortunately, Boyer dodged the Ross Hunter bullet only to jump into the firing line of Vincente Minnelli’s calamitous A Matter of Time (1976). A film which not only reunited Boyer with the director of two of his earlier films (The Cobweb and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse), but reunited him with his Arch of Triumph and Gaslight co-star, Ingrid Bergman.

Hopes couldn’t have been higher when it was announced Vincente Minnelli (making his first film since 1970s On a Clear Day You Can See Forever) was going to direct daughter Liza (in need of a hit after Lucky Lady) in a lavish costume drama. Without going into the ugly details behind a problem-plagued production, suffice it to say A Matter of Time didn’t do anybody’s resumés any favors. Buyer, as the husband of dotty Contessa Bergman, is really rather good. It’s the film that’s such a mess.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Stavisky…(1974)

*****

12. Lucille Ball — Last Film: Mame(1974)

Mame was released with a ton of hoopla and cheery smiles all around, but once the smoke cleared (and a few years had passed) what were we left with? A star who claimed making the film “was about as much fun as watching your house burn down”; a costar (Bea Arthur) who went on record stating, “It was a tremendous embarrassment. I’m so sorry I did it,” and that the leading lady was “terribly miscast”; a discontented composer (Jerry Herman); and a marriage dissolved (according to Arthur, her husband – Gene Saks, Mame’s director – used emotional blackmail to get her to do the movie“As my wife you owe it to me to play this part.”).

Mame was to be TV legend Lucille Ball’s return to the silver screen, but reviews and reception to the film were so harsh, this $12-million misstep was her swan song. Well, maybe it’s not polite to bring up singing in this context.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: The Long Long Trailer (1953)

*****

13. Barbara Stanwyck — Last Film: The Night Walker(1964)

After playing a bordello madam (Walk on the Wild Side) and appearing opposite Elvis Presley movie (Roustabout), I guess Barbara Stanwyck decided to make her degradation complete by working for William Castle. The Night Walker is a somewhat listless, surprisingly gimmick-free William Castle melodrama that, while not doing much for Stanwyck’s career, at least reunited her with former hubby and co-star Robert Taylor.

As always, Stanwyck and her trademark intensity are fascinating to watch and the only worthwhile elements in a film that really would have been just fine as an episode of one of those suspense anthology TV programs (although the really creepy music by Vic Mizzy is effective as hell).
Happily, with the movies treating her so shabbily, it's nice to know television provided Stanwyck with some of her finest latter-career moments (I'm crazy about her performance in The Thorn Birds).

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Walk on the Wild Side (1962)

"I am big! It's the pictures that got small."

Norma Desmond - Sunset Blvd.

This essay is part of The Bette Davis Blogathon hosted by The Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood.

Visit the site for more posts from participating blogs!

Warning: Spoiler Alert. This is a critical essay not a review, therefore many crucial plot points are revealed for the purpose of discussion.

In earlier posts on The Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby, I wrote about how, as a youngster, I was drawn to horror films and scary movies; this in spite of everything in my personal and psychological makeup only reinforcing how ill-suited I was to the genre. A self-serious kid given to over-thinking everything, I was too literal-minded and took things far too much to heart to appreciate the cathartic benefits of what felt to me to be the casual sadism at the core of so many horror films and scary movies.

It’s not like I was immune to the escapist fun of being frightened by a movie – the rollercoaster thrill-ride of jump cuts and shock effects – but that’s what B-movies were for. Cheaply made, poorly-acted programmers featuring creatures with visible zippers in their costumes were so artificial, their frights were reassuring. Once the genre started attracting Oscar-winning actresses and high production values, and ghouls and monsters were replaced by cruel behavior and criminally dangerous people with mental illnesses…well, cathartic escapism gave way to inappropriate-for-the-genre empathy.

I grew up at a time when TV violence was full of bloodless bloodletting. Whether it be westerns, spy thrillers or sci-fi dramas, death on television was impersonal and at a remove. When people were killed, they simply fell: no visible wounds, eyes closed. The same held true of those B horror movies from the 40s and 50s screened on TV programs like “Creature Features” ‒ death was just part of the drama and nothing to take seriously.

I don’t know how old I was when What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) first aired on TV, but I couldn’t have been more than eight or nine. I remember watching it expecting to be scared out of my wits (in a fun way), but by the end all I remember is trying to conceal from my sisters the fact that I was crying. Anything I might have been scared by in the earlier part of this Davis/Crawford horrorshow of grotesques came in second to how heartbreakingly sad it made me when Davis said to Crawford at the end, “You mean all this time we could have been friends?’’

And indeed, until I grew older and the film took on the mercifully distancing attributes of camp, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? has always been for me less a shocker than a very sad melodrama populated with pitiable characters. Some fun I was on scary movie nights.

I had a similar reaction to Robert Aldrich’s follow-up film, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Only with gore levels ratcheted up (as is the wont of horror films cashing in on a previous success) there was enough genuine fright to go around, too.

Bette Davis as Charlotte Hollis

Olivia de Havilland as Miriam Deering

Joseph Cotten as Drew Bayliss

Agnes Moorehead as Velma Cruther

Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, in reuniting the director, production team, writers, and many of the actors from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, stops just a hair short (make that a big bouffant wig, short) of being an actual sequel to the Bette Davis / Joan Crawford starrer whose surprise success kicked off the whole Grand Dame Guignol horror film trend. Director Robert Aldrich had initially succeeded in convincing Crawford and Davis to appear together again as co-stars, but after roughly ten days of shooting, Crawford bailed and/or was fired (details below*) and was replaced by frequent Davis co-star Olivia de Havilland.

Substituting the Hollywood decay of Baby Jane for dilapidated southern-fried gothic, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte tells the story of Charlotte Hollis (Davis) an eccentric, Delta Dawn-like southern belle (is there any other kind?) who has holed herself up inside her late father’s Louisiana plantation following a scandalous, horrific night in 1927 whose secret she must guard. An unsolved secret involving a daddy’s girl, an illicit affair, a married man, a domineering father (Victor Buono), and an unattended meat cleaver.

Mary Astor (in her last film role) as Jewel Mayhew

Jump ahead to 1963. The demure Charlotte has grown into a loudmouthed, hot-tempered, pistol-packin’ plantation proprietress a few mint juleps shy of full pitcher. With the home she shares with her slovenly housekeeper (Moorehead) now threatened with demolition by a highway commission, Charlotte enlists the aid of her level-headed cousin, Miriam (de Havilland). Unfortunately Miriam’s arrival triggers all manner of past rivalries and resentments, not to mention elaborate psychotic episodes in Charlotte that the family doctor (Cotton) barely has time to tend to before the next one erupts. What's the secret Charlotte is guarding, and who is it she's trying to protect? Is Charlotte really off her southern rocker as everyone in town seems to think, or is she getting a little assist off the deep end from seeming well-wishers?

As thrillers go, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte is certainly not one lacking for secrets, suspects, and suspicious characters; so there’s a great deal of creepy fun to be had in trying to figure out just who is doing what to whom, and why. And while it’s been many, many years since the first time I saw it, I recall that after I thought I’d figured everything out, I was blown away how many more surprises the film had up its sleeve.

Victor Buono as Samuel Eugene Hollis ("Big Sam")
Only 26-years old and portraying 56-year-old Bette Davis' father

Benefiting from a larger budget (nearly $2.5 million to Baby Jane’s $980 thousand), name cast, a Top Ten theme song (Patti Page’s version on vinyl, Al Martino sung it in the film), and Davis’ tireless promotion of the movie (she was an unbilled associate producer with profit points); Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte garnered seven academy award nominations (best supporting actress [Moorehead], B&W cinematography, score, song, art direction, costume design, editing), largely favorable critical response, and emerged a boxoffice hit. Although not quite as big a hit as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Cecil Kellaway as Harry Willis

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Ranking Baby Jane and Charlotte on the basis of entertainment value alone, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? comes out on top as the most original and conceptually daring of the two. There’s something audacious in both the premise and casting of a story about two washed-up movie actresses making their golden years hell for one another that makes Baby Jane feel like a lost chapter from The Day of the Locust. Horror credentials aside, Baby Jane succeeds in being an ingeniously grotesque Hollywood black comedy with a campy/bitchy bite.

Bruce Dern as John Mayhew

Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, on the other hand, has two ghosts hovering over it: John Mayhew and Joan Crawford. As good as Olivia de Havilland is, there’s no way I can watch the film without wondering what might have come from the re-teaming of Davis & Crawford. They were a dynamite pair in spite of - most likely specifically due to - their shared animosity. But in comparing Baby Jane & Charlotteas they stand and on their own terms, I find Charlotte to be the better film overall: better written, better acted, more solidly structured, and less of a one-woman-show. It’s a genuinely riveting melodrama which loses points only for its too-traditional gothic structure (the movie tests one’s tolerance for dark shadows, long staircases, and women in long, flowing nightgowns), and over-reliance on familiar haunted house/woman in peril tropes (Thunder! Lightning! Gale-force winds! Weather is never as unpredictable as it is in a horror film).

But being a longtime fan of the whole crazy-in-the-heat southern gothic tradition, what I enjoy most about Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte is how it feels like the explicit, pulp novel recounting of one of those dark, family-related secrets poetically alluded to or whispered about in the works of Tennessee Williams and Carson McCullers.

Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte was adapted from the unpublished short story What Ever Happened to Cousin Charlotte?by What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?author Henry Farrell (who obviously had a thing for these kinds of titles: What’s The Matter With Helen?How Awful About Alan).

PERFORMANCES

Although I’m never quite sure what to make of everyone’s southern accents (I have no ear for their authenticity, only the giggles they sometimes inspire), I like all of the performances in Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte a great deal. The very capable cast of classic Hollywood stars appear to be enjoying themselves in roles which capitalize on and play off of past performances (both Cotten and de Havilland are likable personalities with screen experience showing their darker side). None more so than the Oscar-nominated Agnes Moorehead, who pulls off the amazing feat of making an over-the-top, very funny characterization, if not necessarily believable, certainly sympathetic. No one kids themselves that they're appearing in Eugene O’Neill, but neither do they condescend to the material.

As de Havilland demonstrated in The Heiress (1949), few people can
play the flip side of sweetness and light to such chilling effect

However, it’s Bette Davis as the titular Charlotte in need of hushing who serves as the film’s center and driving force. Make that tour de force. Playing another pitiable, mentally fragile woman haunted by the past, Davis achieves moments of surprising sensitivity and subtlety of emotion almost simultaneously with instances of full-blown, drag-queen-level histrionics. It’s precisely what the role calls for, and Davis, clearly giving it her all, must have been disappointed when she was overlooked for an Oscar nomination.

Cecil Kellaway plays an insurance investigator looking into the unsolved Mayhew murder case
Davis & Kellaway's scenes are my favorite

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

If my book of favorite movies were a ledger, Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte would occupy a double-entry column marked “loss of innocence.” There, alongside such titles as The Birds, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, The Bad Seed, and Valley of the Dolls; Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlottewould represent yet another film I enjoyed in my youth as dead-serious, straight drama; now, well into adulthood-bordering-on-dotage, I appreciate mostly for its camp value and unintentional humor.

Tact....Tact, Sweet Charlotte

I was a child when Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte had its broadcast TV premiere - a night which stands out as an evening of traumatic firsts: 1) It was my first exposure to gory bloodshed: the meat cleaver murder in the film’s prologue was bad enough, but the sight of blood splattering on the statue of a cherub fueled more childhood nightmares than I’d care to count; 2) It was the first time I ever saw anyone die with their eyes open. Yikes!

Add to all this the fact that I had yet to see the influential French thriller Les Diaboliques (1955), so Charlotte’s borrowed denouement twist was nearly as terrifying for me as it was for poor, put-upon Bette Davis.

So while Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte did a superb job of scaring me to death (which was no picnic, but at least was a jolt), like its predecessor, it was also a movie my younger self found to be very sad. Honestly, I must be the biggest softie around, but even today Bette Davis' crestfallen demeanor and wounded eyes can fairly make my heart break. But as a child I was just worn out by all the film put her character through...and as it turns out, unnecessarily. So once again, as the credits rolled, I had to conceal from my sisters that I had been reduced to waterworks by the thought of a life spent in misery for nothing.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

These days, my memory of Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte as a scary film has fallen prey to too many years of Bette Davis impersonators, too much quotable dialog, a 2015 drag spoof titled Hush Up, Sweet Charlotte, and too many laugh-filled evenings with my partner cracking up at this, his favorite line (and line reading):

Truth be told, I would have given Bette Davis an Oscar for this bit alone.

Happily, none of this has lessened my affection for this film or for Davis' memorable (to say the least) performance. My camp appreciation for Bette Davis - the rabid scenery-chewer with the yo-yo-ing southern accent and forceful screen presence - is matched by my genuine admiration for Bette Davis the talented actress, and the nuances she brings to a role (at least in the film's quieter moments) written in such broad strokes.

Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte is a watchable, fun, atmospheric old-style escapist movie (still a little sad for me in parts, but in a nice way) featuring a cast of good actors giving solid performances (Moorehead is a scene-stealing hoot, but it's Olivia de Havilland who winds up being the film's Most Valuable Player. She grounds it). A viewing pleasure too rarefied and full of surprises to ever be considered "guilty."

BONUS MATERIAL

Who needs Patti Page's willowy-soft vocals singing the Oscar-nominated song Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte when you can listen to Bette Davis' smoky rendition (literally, it sounds like she just smoked a pack) HERE. With a full orchestra, yet.

Olivia de Havilland & Agnes Moorehead (r.) recreating a scene first filmed with Joan Crawford.
Although nothing alike, de Havilland replaced Joan Crawford in
1964s Lady in a Cage as well as Airport '77

*I intentionally didn't go much into the details of the whole Bette Davis / Joan Crawford feud during the making of Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte because not only is the internet full of info, but YouTube has these great "making of" featurettes:
AMC Backstory: The Making of Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte
Wizard Work: a 1964 featurette narrated by Joseph Cotten
Hush...Hush, Sweet Joan: The Making of 'Charlotte'

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” Edgar Allen Poe 1849

I love motion pictures for their storytelling, spectacle, entertainment, and escapism. But for as long as I can remember, the primary, fundamental appeal of movies has always been their ability to capture the ethereal, ofttimes rapturous quality of dreams and fantasies (as this blog’s title would suggest).

When I think of the moments when dreams and reality collided in movies for me, I think of the God’s-eye-view kaleidoscopic dance patterns of Busby Berkeley; the feverish surrealism of Ken Russell; the sound of Jane Fonda’s voice; the gravity-defying dancing of Astaire & Rogers; the consummate dignity in Woody Strode’s eyes in Spartacus; Polanski’s poetic evocation of dream logic in so many of his films; the way cinematographer Nicolas Roeg makes Julie Christie look in Petulia; the nightmarish, slow-motion demise of Beatty & Dunaway at the end of Bonnie & Clyde.

All of these moments—and moments like them—epitomize film’s miraculous capacity to both meet and exceed one’s fantasies while simultaneously inspiring new ones. Not every movie has to do this, but the fact that films possess the potential to render corporeal those very aspects of existence we ascribe to the ethereal is what made me fall in love with them.

For this very reason sports films, westerns, war movies, and action / adventures have never held a particularly strong interest for me. All that aggressive competition and combat – even when represented as heroic – just brings to mind the nature vs. the material sentiments of Wordsworth’s The World is Too Much With Us: these films feel like products of the material (masculine) world, intent on exalting that which is singularly mortal, and therefore minimal.
Movies that awaken me to what is beautiful and mysterious in the world, that inspire me to pay more attention, feel more deeply, recognize the poetry in the unique and absurd...I like that. When I'm lucky enough to recall them, my dreams always feel like hyper-aware versions of reality. In their way, a truer vision of the magic and mystery in the world (and within myself) than my rational mind sometimes allows during what can be jokingly referred to as my "conscious" life.

One of the more hypnotically exhilarating films to capture this sense of “movies as dreams/dreams as movies” (one I rate right up there with Robert Altman’s 3 Women) is Australian director Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Rachel Roberts as Mrs. Appleyard

Anne-Louise Lambert as Miranda St. Clare

Margaret Nelson as Sara Waybourne

Helen Morse as Mlle. Dianne de Poitiers

Dominic Guard as Michael Fitzhubert

John Jarratt as Albert Crundall

The enigmatic tale of Picnic at Hanging Rock, condensed on the teasing “based on a true story or not?” poster copy used to promote the film, concerns a fateful Valentine’s Day in 1900 when, during a school outing to Hanging Rock, a mystically foreboding rock formation in Victoria, Australia, two schoolgirls and a teacher disappear, never to be seen again.

From this deceptively simple mystery plot is suspended a host of enticing themes ‒ practical as well as metaphysical ‒ from which can be drawn entirely different (yet peculiarly complementary) interpretations of not only the event itself, but the lingering, escalatingly tragic effect it has on all the individuals whose lives were irrevocably changed by it.

Vivean Gray as Miss Greta McCraw

The enigmatic tale of Picnic at Hanging Rock, condensed on the teasing “based on a true story or not?” poster used to promote the film, concerns a fateful Valentine’s Day in 1900 when, during a school outing to Hanging Rock, a mystically foreboding rock formation in Victoria, Australia, two schoolgirls and a teacher disappear, never to be seen again.

Sensitively adapted for the screen by Cliff Green from the 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay, it was established long ago that Picnic at Hanging Rock was not based on an actual event. But the intentional obfuscation of this fact by Lindsay throughout her life ideally suits a story in which the attempt to arrive at logical explanations through pragmatic means proves, in this instance, a futile pursuit at best.

Flanked by French teacher Mille. de Portiers on the left and match instructor Miss McCraw on the right, the girls are formally briefed before they depart on their picnic by headmistress Mrs. Appleyard. A briefing which can be summed up as: enjoy yourselves but make sure you don't have a good time.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Establishing a mood of hazy paradox from the outset, Peter Weir’s ushers us into his film—which is, in effect, a waking dream—with the image of its most ethereal character, Miranda, waking up from a dream. It is Valentine’s Day at Appleyard College; a rigidly formal, upper-class English all-girls boarding school plopped smack in the middle of the Australian bush, and the girls are all caught up in a flurry of romantic preoccupation.

"Meet me love, when day is ending..."
The romantic valentines the girls share with one another express
a depth of emotion largely stifled by their surroundings

And just as the surrounding barren landscape contrasts with the school’s lush gardens, and Hanging Rock’s organic asymmetry silently defies the illusion of order presented by stark traditionalism of the school’s architecture; the sensual stirrings within Mrs. Appleyard’s adolescent charges bristle against the stern repressiveness of Victorian era British Colonialism.

These contrasts soon establish themselves as a motif in Picnic at Hanging Rock, the subtle discord between nature (encompassing both the supernatural and preternatural) and the desire to control it (as exemplified by the staunch dominance of school headmistress Mrs. Appleyard), are put to the test by the unexplained disappearance of the aforementioned students and teacher.

Little Girls Lost
The disappearance of Miranda (Lambert), Marion (Jane Vallis), and Irma (Karen Robson)
is depicted as an act of mystical somnambulism

Because the film begins with a title card already informing us of the girls’ disappearance, the early scenes, for all their soft-focus sensuality (makes me wonder if Brian DePalma caught this film at a festival before he shot Carrie’s memorable slow-motion girls’ locker room scene) carry a sense of menace and foreboding.

Natural emotions and actions are thwarted at every turn. Miranda, the school free spirit, is the object of a girlhood crush by her lonely roommate Sara. Sara’s overtures of love are accepted, yet frustrated by Miranda’s cryptic premonition: “You must learn to love someone else apart from me, Sara. I won’t be here much longer.”

In addition, after witnessing the girls binding themselves up with corsets (apparently a picnic doesn’t require comfort), we’re given scene after scene where teachers attempt to quiet and suppress the natural ebullience of girls anticipating an outing.

All this has the effect of creating an atmosphere redolent of an emotional pressure-cooker (a feeling enhanced by the strenuously non-romantic math instructor as she pragmatically demystifies the miracle of Hanging Rock by going on about its formation being the result of earthly eruptions).

(After posting the above screencap, my partner told me its painterly composition and use of light reminded him of George Seurat's pointillist masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte - completed in 1886.) Beautiful.

By the time the three more developmentally inquisitive girls traipse off to explore (the naïf Edith [Christine Schuler] tagging along) their eventual disappearance into the almost beckoning columns of the rock feels like a date with destiny.

Two local boys also on the rock that day – Michael, a high-born Englishman, and Albert, an Australian coachman – find their lives touched (profoundly) by the disappearances.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

If the first part of the film feels like a deceptively pastoral rumination on Victorian ethos imposed upon Australian culture (vis a vis British Colonialism); then the second part, structured as a crime mystery shrouded in a psychological melodrama, feels like a battle royale between nature’s enigmatic indomitability and man’s arrogant faith in all being comprehensible and tractable.

Among the townsfolk, the urgency to discover the fate of the missing girls (compounded when one is found unharmed, but lacking any memory of what occurred) arises as much out of the fear of uncertainty as concern for their welfare. At the school, Mrs. Appleyard frets over how the heedlessness of the event will color public perception of her institution, her inefficacy in the matter fueling a need to exert her will over the staff and pupils. Particularly the rebellious but emotionally vulnerable Sara. Sara is an orphan, abandoned by parents, Miranda, her caretaker, and her longed-for, absent brother (the latter, another lovely metaphysical quirk in a story overflowing with them).

Mrs. Appleyard, intent on breaking the stubborn will of the student with the least social stature

The sum effect of all these emotional and psychological upheavals is that the disappearance of the schoolgirls comes to erode everything everyone has come to know and rely on. This discord and disruption dramatized in the contrasting images of Australia’s resilient-looking fauna juxtaposed against the fragile white swans introduced to Australia by the British settlers (only black swans are indigenous). Similarly, the vaguely threatening sounds of nature on the film’s soundtrack feel like an angry response to the near-constant sound of ticking of clocks indoors.

Picnic at Hanging Rock ends on a note of compound human tragedies. But true to the film's thematic responsiveness to the instinctual, sensual, and constant; nature seems to triumph and prevail. Hanging Rock remains as it has for millions of years: unchanged, unyielding, and the conclusive guardian of its mysteries.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
I find it somewhat remarkable to consider that outside of the mystical Australia vs Colonialism angle I described above (the particular thrust of the film that spoke to me most fervently), Picnic at Hanging Rock actually operates on about fifty other levels simultaneously. Whether the themes relate to spiritualism, sexual awakening, death and loss, existential mystery, the birth of the Edwardian era in Australia, romantic idealism, etc. There are just so many fascinating and diverse ways to look at this movie.

Hanging Rock - Appleyard College / A precipice vs. an edifice
One exalts the natural spirit, the other seeks to suppress it

Visually it is as sumptuous as they come. The almost otherworldly cinematography by Russell Boyd (Starstruck) renders Australia a continent of the mind. The seductively lush, yet mystifyingly ominous exteriors are pointedly offset by the meticulous (and spectacularly fine) art direction (David Copping, Martin Sharp, and I'm sure many others) which fills Appleyard College and the home of Col. Fitzhubert with determined Victorian overkill. It's clear the Colonialists intend to counter rugged Australia by bringing every stitch of orderly Great Britain with them.

It's impossible to speak of Picnic at Hanging Rock without giving credit to the invaluable contribution made by its haunting musical score. Composer Bruce Smeaton and pan flutist Gheorghe Zamfir (with some additional assist by Beethoven) imbue each dreamily-evoked scene with just the right tone of languorous unease.

PERFORMANCES
Welsh actress Rachel Roberts (stepping in for the last-minute departure of originally cast Vivien Merchant (The Maids) is the rock against which all the characters in Picnic at Hanging Rock must collide. Backing up her startling hairdo, severe manner, and clipped, precise diction with a forcefulness that knocks everyone else off the screen, Mrs. Appleyard is an even more memorable entity than the character of Miranda.
Peter Weir gets splendid performances out of the entirety of his cast. I have nothing but praise for the ensemble work in Picnic at Hanging Rock, with special kudos going to personal favorites Helen Morse (who I honestly thought was French), Anne-Louise Lambert, Margaret Nelson, and John Jarratt.

Tony Llewellyn-Jones and Jackie Weaver as Appleyard College's handyman and maid, are so very good as two grounded characters lacking a certain dreaminess, but instead possessing a true gentleness of heart

I saw Picnic at Hanging Rock for the first time in 1979. Then, unfamiliar with the plot or Peter Weir's trance-like, atmospheric style, it felt like the most elegant horror film I'd ever seen. Very unsettling and disturbing in a compellingly subtle way. Since that then, I've seen this movie more times than I can count. Each time finding more to marvel at and discover. However, the best thing about it is that it has ceased feeling like a dream remembered. Even a little bit like a remembered nightmare: that's when you're no longer unsettled or frightened, but it's fun being reminded that you were.

A terrific scene of Polanski-level tension is when Irma, the only girl to be rescued of the
missing three, visits the gymnasium before departing for home

BONUS MATERIAL

Watch the two-hour "making of" documentary - Picnic at Hanging Rock: A Dream Within A Dream

No evening of TV watching in the early '80s was complete without at least one sighting of this record collection commercial for Zamfir: Master of the Pan Flute. Warning, if you're a fan of the delicate and stirring way Gheorghe Zamfir's music is used in Picnic at Hanging Rock, I strongly suggest you skip the commercial. Otherwise it's available on YouTube HERE

“Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place.”

The Last Drive In

This essay is dedicated to Phil Gips and the late Stephen O. Frankfurt. Two legendary trailblazers in the field of motion picture advertising / marketing who collaborated on some of the most innovative and enduring campaigns and poster designs of all time.

I’ve loved movie posters and have been fascinated by the marketing side of the motion picture business for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest movie ad memories is of being about 8 or 9 years-old sitting in the back of the family station wagon and being thunderstruck when we drive by a naked man, three-stories-high and draped halfway around the side of a building.
What I saw as a wraparound billboard above a major movie theater advertising The Bible, John Huston's 1966 John Huston epic which prominently featured a nude Michael Parks (as Adam at the moment of creation, rising out of the dust of the earth with a strategically raised knee) in all its advertising.

This New York mega-billboard is similar to the one I recall gracing a movie palace in
Denver, Colorado in 1966

When my sisters and I were small, my mother used to take us downtown with her when she went shopping on Saturdays. Back then, all the big department stores were along San Francisco’s Market Street, which was also the site of scores of those big, old-fashioned movie palaces. Grabbing the pedestrian's eye was the goal of these theaters, so a full day of shopping invariably turned into an impromptu art walk centered around some of the most arresting graphic design and illustration imaginable. I was forever lagging behind distractedly staring at one beckoning movie poster after another, begging for brief detours through the open outdoor theater lobbies, enthralled by the glass display cases overflowing with posters, stills, and lobby cards advertising current features and coming attractions.

My first job: usher at the Alhambra Theater on Polk Street in S.F.
Tuesdays were my favorite days because I got to change the marquees and put up the poster displays.
Can't even tell you what a kick it was getting to see the publicity materials and pressbooks.
Occasionally, the manager would gift me with a poster for a film I particularly liked (Night Moves)
or ones National Screen Service wouldn't miss (The Happy Hooker)

On Sunday mornings, when other more well-adjusted kids clamored for the expanded color comics in the newspaper, I hogged the San Francisco Chronicle’s entertainment pages (called DateBook, but due to the distinctive color of the paper, known to us locals as “the pink section”). I relished poring over the many movie ads, and even kept a clippings scrapbook of those of my favorites.

This was the late '60s, so pop-art poster stores (part head-shop, part record store) proliferated in the Haight-Ashbury district where we lived. Occasionally my older sister would allow me to tag along when she’d go to these teen hangouts where they sold t-shirts, candles, blacklight posters, and all manner of hippie-influenced, pop-culture novelties. This was at the start of the youth wave in nostalgia and camp, and a company known as Personality Posters Mfg Co. specialized in blow-up portraits of classic Hollywood stars. My sister's room was full of one-dollar posters of Bogart, Monroe, Fields, Harlow, and Gable. As a gift she bought me twin posters of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton in Taming of the Shrew, and with my own money I bought poster #30 from the chart below: Peter Fonda as Captain America astride his Easy Rider chopper- a BW image highlighted with yellow-tinted glasses and Old Glory gas tank and helmet. Too groovy for words!

Later, when we moved across the bay to Berkeley and I was old enough to walk to and from school alone; my after-school route was always a good half-hour longer and more serpentine than it needed to be, for it was my habit to stroll by and malinger in front of the many movie theaters peppering the UC Berkeley campus streets leading home.

In the days before 24-hour entertainment reporting and minute-by-minute behind-the-scenes production updates, movie posters were pretty much the means by which I first came to know of any of the films that would go on to become my favorites. Because this was when TV news was actually about the news (not the corporate subsidiary cross-promotion disguised as news we have today), I knew nothing about the movies beforehand and had to rely on these posters to give me an inkling of what was in store.
Sure, I looked at movie magazines (with names like Movie Mirror, Modern Screen, or my personal fave, Rona Barrett’s Hollywood), but they were primarily gossip rags. Movie posters had it all. They were glamorous, colorful, evocative...some were beautiful, and the best of them simultaneously caught my eye and fired up my imagination. Capturing the essence of a movie in a single image; revealing just enough, but not too much. They were part of the chain of anticipation that formed the whole moviegoing experience for me.

My profusely-postered bedroom of my first apartment
The Villa Elaine Apartments on Vine St in Hollywood -1980

It was during my freshman high school year that I made the “How long has this been going on?” discovery of there actually being stores (one store to be exact, a tiny shop tucked away in SF’s Castro/Mission District) which sell genuine, bonafide, National Screen Service movie posters to us lowly civilians. Who knew? Looking back, it surprises me to think how, during all my time spent newspaper scrapbooking and gazing longingly at theater display cases, I hadn’t allowed myself to even entertain the possibility of such a thing.
The first day I visited the store I easily spent more than an hour there - the veritable kid in a candy store - leaving with my very first authentic movie posture purchase: an original 1968 Barbarella one-sheet. This kicked off a near-lifelong collecting hobby which lasted until the mid-90s (when movie posters entered that dismal, artless stage of excessively airbrushed big celebrity heads).

I've since sold off or donated all but the most favored posters in my collection, the top tier examples I'll cite below. This list of favorite movie posters is limited to those which are still in my possession adhere to no particular criteria beyond my own personal tastes, aesthetics, and sentimental attachment. Omissions (of which there are bound to be many) don't signify a lack of quality, more than likely just a lower position on a much longer list.

(click on any image to see full size)

MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE MOVIE POSTERS

Rosemary's Baby- 1968
One of the classiest poster's I've ever seen, as far as I'm concerned, the gold-standard in poster design.

Stephen O. Frankfurt and Phil Gips are the New York admen responsible for the poster and ad campaign created for Rosemary’s Baby. A pivotal work not only in its artistic and commercial innovation but because it was also the first motion picture assignment for the two veteran advertising men who would go on to collaborate on more than 150 film campaigns over three decades of motion picture advertising.
Treating the film as they would any other account, they assembled a team of Madison Avenue ad artists, photographers (George Eliot-he photographed the baby carriage on one of the mounts in Central Park) and copy writers (Steve Gordon is widely credited with coming up with the tagline "Pray for Rosemary's Baby") to assist them in devising a suitable campaign. The image of Mia Farrow is credited to production still photographer Bob Willoughby.

I had the opportunity to interview these two industry giants back in 2005 (separately, they weren't on the best terms by then), both proud of what they achieved and aware of its influence on movie poster design.
In discussing the idea behind Rosemary's Baby's initial concept, Gips explained, “What we were trying to do with Rosemary’s Baby was create a sophisticated ad. A sophisticated ad conveys a mood or idea without providing too much information, while busy, or “schmear” ads, as they are sometimes referred to, appeal to the senses or emotions and often tell too much or try to show too much. We set out to create an ad that appealed to the imagination.”

The Day of the Locust - 1975
This advance poster hangs above my writing desk. The work of illustrator David Edward Byrd, this poster is drama with a capital "D." Totemic Hollywood symbols (palm trees, movie marquee with period lettering, klieg lights piercing the purple darkness) direct the eye to a super-sized, hyper-glam Karen Black, oblivious to the nightmarish chaos below her. It's an image that manages to capture the feel and thrust of the film in a single unforgettable image.

Barbarella - 1968

Artwork by Robert McGinnis, this Barbarella poster has always appealed to me because of its very period look and its evocation of a comic book. The heroic image of a very leggy image of Fonda with her mane of hair flying in the space-wind is too cool for school. I love the space-age lettering font and most of all I love the tagline "See Barbarella Do Her Thing!" which, after nearly 50 years, still brings a smile to my face.

The Fox - 1967
The aesthetics of this poster and my fondness for it betrays my '60s-sympathetic sensibilities. The work of poster designer Bill Gold, This kind of sensuous, pseudo-psychdelic imagery was all the rage in the 60s, so the simple yet bold graphic got me from the start. As a kid I loved the clever way the figures of woman/man/woman/fox were so blended; today I really appreciate the visual economy.

Shampoo - 1975
If any one thing can be cited as to being the reason I fell so hard for this poster in '75, I'd say the reason was sexual effrontery. The aforementioned "big celebrity heads" wave in movie poster design was still a couple of decades off, so it wasn't particularly common to see such achingly gorgeous faces staring out at one from a movie poster. Indeed, the directness of the gazes (and warm brown tones of the photography) is brazenly sexy, hip, and stylish at the same time. This is a poster so sure of itself, it doesn't have to DO anything. Goldie Hawn never looked better, but I have to admit when the film first came out and I saw the poster, I didn't recognize Julie Christie at all. I actually thought they left Christie off and put Carrie Fisher front and center.

The Getaway - 1972
I'm not sure who designed this poster, but it with its use of a simple, dynamic image coupled with the mnemonic pairing of the last names of its stars, it feels like the work of Frankfurt/Gips. in any event, I loved the poster the moment I saw it. It's like someone asked for a photo that read "tough" image and the designer miraculously complied.

Bonnie & Clyde - 1967
This iconic poster is another Bill Gold poster design. In my essay on this film, I related how this poster's graphic was quite unsettling for me as a child. Now it hangs above my bed. It still stands as a provocatively commanding image - violence and laughter juxtaposed - but these days I think I've come to better appreciate its gracefulness.

Just Tell Me What You Want - 1980
When I moved to Los Angeles, three of the strongest impressions the women here made on me were: berets, white wine, and slit skirts. The popularity of the latter comes to mind whenever I look at this smile-inducing poster featuring a exquisitely long-limbed Ali MacGraw pulling a Gladys Ormphby on comedian Alan King. Though this poster may look like your typical rom-com style ad, what gave it its kick in 1980 was how it played against Ali MacGraw's somewhat stiff image. She was more more animated in this still photo than she'd ever been onscreen.

Images -1972
The poster for this psychological thriller grabbed me with its simple directness (why is that camera pointed at ME, yet reflecting Susannah York in the lens?), ambiguity (Why are there two Susannah Yorks in that lens?), and suggestion of violence. Kind of a perfect way to create curiosity and interest without revealing anything.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? - 1969
If capturing attention and keeping it is the goal of a movie poster, small wonder this striking yet agonized study in anguish still hangs on my walls. I think this might have been the third poster I ever purchased...right after Rosemary's Baby.

Reflections in a Golden Eye - 1967
If there's any kind of pattern to emerge in the kind of posters I gravitate toward, I guess I have to cop to being a sucker for its negative space when its used to draw your eye to a strong image. Here we come dangerously close to the "big celebrity head" thing, but that riding crop and the dissimilar countenances of the stars (stern/seductive) really makes this late acquisition (I purchased it in 1990) a hard-to-find fave.

Saturday Night Fever - 1977
This poster has the distinction of being the only one in my collection representing a film I largely despise. I really can't stand Saturday Night Fever for any number of reasons (although I do enjoy it when I can see only the dancing clips), but the poster is really something else. I have a sentimental attachment to it because it recalls my disco-crazy days (yes, I had a T-shirt with those exact words blazoned across it), and because I still can recall how excited I was by this now rather silly-looking poster when I first saw it.
There's a reason why so many things about this poster have become cliche and the stuff of parody, but I feel lucky to have my memories of that brief moment in time when everything you see here - from the white suit to the disco-lit floor) was part of a exhilarating wave of change.
Today, what has become the most dazzling aspect of this poster is its total lack of irony.

These posters round out my Top 20 - Winners all!

LEAST FAVORITE MOVIE POSTER

What's The Matter With Helen? -1971
"I know...let's get people interested in our film by showing them how it ends!"

If any of you out there have a particular favorite movie poster, have ever wanted to own or collect them, or been persuaded to see a film because of one, please share it with us.

No discussion of movie posters would be complete without at least a tip of the hat to Saul Bass
The great granddaddy of motion picture graphic design

Warning: Spoiler Alert. This is a critical essay, not a review, so plot points are revealed for the purpose of discussion.

She’s at that awkward age. Seventies-era Elizabeth Taylor, that is. Starting out as an exceptionally pretty child actress, Taylor grew into a breathtakingly beautiful movie star who then became (with the assist of Eddie Fisher, Richard Burton, and “le scandale”) a world-class homewrecker and tabloid darling. Over time came the respect and legitimacy of two Academy Award wins (Butterfield 8, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), too soon supplanted by the undesired notoriety as the star of several costly, eccentric flops. Come the ‘70s, Taylor seemed to settle into a kind of teetering-on-the-edge-of-irrelevance fame which cast her as the walking embodiment of movie star excess, symbol of fishbowl-celebrity victimization, and the near-obsessive object of keyhole journalism. She was a public figure noted more for her jewels, illnesses, and fluctuating waistline than for her talent as an actress.

Elizabeth Taylor as Zee Blakeley

Michael Caine as Robert Blakeley

Susannah York as Stella

I was 15 in 1972, and had you asked me then to name an actress, I would have named Glenda Jackson, Jane Fonda, or Faye Dunaway. If you’d asked me to name a movie star, in a heartbeat I’d have said Elizabeth Taylor. She was in a different category, altogether. Why? Certainly not because I was so familiar with her work. No, at age fifteen I had only seen Taylor in a couple of movies on The Late Late Show and only Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Secret Ceremony in theaters. The reason Elizabeth Taylor represented and defined movie stardom for me was because, for as long as I could remember and as far back as memory served, there had not been a single month in the entirety of my childhood that didn’t find Elizabeth Taylor’s face gracing the cover of a magazine, newspaper, or scandal-sheet. She was famous to me before I even knew what famous was.

But by 1972 Elizabeth Taylor had become an in-betweener. An eminent member of old-guard Hollywood too young to be nostalgically “hip” like Alexis Smith and Ruby Keeler (both of whom enjoyed brief career resurgences on Broadway in 1971: Follies and No, No Nanette, respectively); too big a star to go the put-out-to-pasture, weekly TV series route taken by Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, and Shirley MacLaine (all starring in short-lived TV shows during the 1971-1972 season); and yet too old to be taken seriously in the "New Hollywood" which cast her (preposterously) as a mini-skirted Las Vegas showgirl(!) carrying on an affair with 5-years-younger Warren Beatty in The Only Game in Town (1970).

Granted far too little screen time (but making the most of it in a see-through frock) the fabulous Margaret Leighton plays party-giving socialite, Gladys. She could be the prototype for Ab Fab's Patsy

One of Taylor’s biggest drawbacks was that she looked like a movie star in an era valuing gritty naturalism and actors who more resembled regular folks. In a time when roles were written for people who looked like Karen Black, Elliot Gould, and Dustin Hoffman, Elizabeth Taylor stood out for all the wrong reasons. A de-glamorized Taylor tended to look matronly (something both her fans and detractors never let her forget), while an in-step-with-the-times Taylor (she was only 38 when X, Y & Zee began filming) came across like a trying-too-hard fashion trainwreck (something evident in most every frame of X, Y & Zee).

Seventies youth-oriented fashions were unique in that they seemed to come with built-in lie-detectors; they invariably made those who sought to appropriate the look of the “now” generation look infinitely older, not younger. Elizabeth Taylor’s short-stature and curvy figure (so fetching in the hourglass silhouettes of the ‘50s and ‘60s) was ill-served by the bright colors and form-fitting cut of mod and hippie chic. When she wasn’t looking like a Technicolor butterfly in blowsy caftans and height-reducing ponchos, she was encased and cocooned in trendy synthetics that appeared as uncomfortable as they were unflattering.

As for her film career: the all-encompassing scope of Taylor’s tabloid notoriety, spate of ill-advised self-referential movie roles (audiences treated every Taylor/Burton film pairing as a dramatized glimpse into the couple’s real life), and stunt-like TV guest appearances (on the daytime soap All My Children and Here’s Lucy ‒both in 1970), all conspired to make it next to impossible for audiences to accept her in a movie as anybody but herself.

What was a contemporary cinema demi-goddess to do?

Well, one solution – especially if one was as in need of a hit as Taylor at the time – was to give ‘em what they wanted. And to a large degree that’s exactly what X, Y & Zee does. Author Edna O’Brien’s original screenplay about a toxic romantic triangle among London’s tony set (originally titled Zee & Co.), is an acerbic black comedy-drama which appears to have been whittled and shaped to suit the talents and persona of its star. (O'Brien contends that as many as four writers tinkered with her script...even changing her original ending - reportedly involving a ménage à trois - to a lesbian conquest.)

Elizabeth Taylor portrays Zee Blakeley, the coarse, overdressed vulgarian wife of shout-talk architect, Robert Blakeley (Michael Caine). Theirs is a sophisticated open marriage. A decidedly rocky one, however, sustained by constant bickering, wicked parry and thrust verbal matches, and relentless game-playing of the sexual one-upsmanship sort. This dysfunctional breakup-to-makeup cycle is disrupted when Robert meets and instantly falls in love with the serene Stella (the lovely Susannah York sporting the most astoundingly-constructed 70s shag), a widowed dress designer (who's boutique is named...appropriately enough...Kaftan) with twin little boys.

As the younger other woman who has caught both Robert’s eye and exceedingly fickle heart, Stella exudes an intelligence and sensitivity making it difficult to understand what she sees in the lizard-eyed lothario beyond the flattery of the ardency of his pursuit. As for Robert, it’s clear Stella represents an opportunity for a little quiet and a little less fashion eye-strain.

"I think she looks like a bag of bones."
Zee and best friend Gordon (John Standing) size up the competition

What ensues I can only speculate was intended to be a three-pronged war of wills in which everyone’s desires are ultimately revealed to be selfish in nature and motivated by rescue, dependency, or escape. What is actually served up is a one-woman battle and full-on frontal assault waged by Zee against Robert and Stella (both hopelessly outmatched) as she resorts to every trick in the book—and a few no one had yet dared think of—to keep her man and assure that things remain as they are.

Screenwriter O’Brien, having fairly exhausted the whole "modern marriage under stress" topic in 1969’s dramatically more satisfying Three Into Two Won’t Go(where Rod Steiger’s uncooked pastry dough countenance strains the credibility of his being cast as the apex of a triangle) strives for a tone of sophisticated cynicism and candor in X, Y & Zee, a note or two of which is occasionally hit. But for the most part, Taylor & Co. seem content to merely capitalize on and exploit every ounce of self-referential humor and drama possible.

The result: Elizabeth Taylor’s Zee, balancing on the brink self-parody and frequently leaping headlong into camp, is less a character than a burlesque amalgam of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’s Martha; Leonora, the scatterbrained chatterbox from Reflections in a Golden Eye; the claws-out Maggie from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; and snatch-and-grab bits culled from years of Taylor’s press clippings.

Taylor makes knowing, self-aware jokes about her weight-

Zee: “Real men don’t like skinny women. They only think they do because they’re supposed to look better in clothes. But what happens when the clothes come off and you climb between the sheets on a cold winter night? Then they like to know they’re with a real woman.”

Taylor turns critical barbs into self-directed comedy-
Robert: “She (Stella) suggests you open a fish store.”

Taylor indulges her well-documented bawdy sense of humor-
Zee: "Frankly Scarlett, I don't give a shit!"

Taylor reprises Maggie the Cat-

Zee: (On phone to Stella)“Is my husband in your skinny, chicken-like arms?”

Taylor reprises Virginia Woolf's Martha-

Zee: “Come back here, you! I haven’t dismissed you yet!”

And, of course, with each scene of Taylor and Caine whaling on and wailing at one another between bouts of heated make-up sex, the tumultuous real-life Taylor/Burton union (which had about two more years to go) is evoked and (the audience hopes) reenacted.

Taylor, while balancing an enormous mane of Medusa hair, drowning in a fashion-parade of gaudy, sail-like caftans, and risking violet eye-shadow poisoning, gives a performance that is by turns unsubtle, nuanced, hilarious, knowing, touching, and assured

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I imagine the mental calisthenics a writer must perform in order to come up with something new to say about the romantic triangle are considerable. Edna O’Brien’s tack seems to be to examine what binds people together in an atmosphere of unbridled license. The Beautiful People populating X, Y & Zee are a rarefied set. Unlike the penniless, free-love hippies espousing freedom and “doing your own thing” in the atmosphere of the sexual revolution, the hedonistic individuals at the center of the film have both the wealth and autonomy to be truly free. And therein lies the problem.

Without the need to be tethered or tied to anyone, the whole idea of marriage and morality becomes confoundingly fluid. No one can be accused of cheating because cheating first presumes the existence of rules. And from what little we glean from this couple's past (Zee can’t have children and pets die on them with tragic regularity), like Albee's George and Martha, game-playing replaced rules for Zee and Robert long ago.

The introduction of Stella into the middle of this duo is significant. Stella, unlike Zee, is a working woman, and Robert, a self-made man, is wealthy but proud of his humble beginnings. Stella — calm in the face of Zee’s excitability, soft-spoken to Zee’s shrillness—also wears around her neck a Quran case amulet (an Islamic protective talisman which plays an important but subtle role in the film’s conclusion) suggesting a spirituality and connection to something outside of herself…another attribute lacking in Zee. Add to this the fact that Stella also has two children with whom Robert immediately develops a rapport, and we come to understand why Zee recognizes that Stella is no ordinary rival.

Both Susannah York and Michael Caine give noteworthy performances

This is the core conflict in X, Y & Zee, and while not earth shatteringly profound stuff, it makes for compelling human drama and (in the film's quieter moments) is exceptionally well-played by the cast

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Alas, quiet moments in X, Y & Zee are pretty hard to come by. As directed by Brian G. Hutton (Night Watch) X, Y & Zee is a crudely funny, visually flashy, magnificently photographed, and exceedingly noisy movie. Perhaps in an effort to better fashion O’Brien’s 3-character story into a star vehicle, X, Y & Zee not only tells the story from Zee’s perspective (which I can understand), but allows Zee’s aesthetics (loud music, loud clothing, and shrieking whenever possible) to become the film’s defining motif.

I'm aware that the '70s presents its own unique challenges if one's intention is to depict a character as vulgar and coarse, and it’s a great deal of campy fun having Elizabeth Taylor run full-throttle diva roughshod over every and all; but it does tend to unbalance the narrative, making it difficult for the dramatic sequences to hit their stride. As a huge fan of Mike Nichols’ poorly-received 2004 comedy-drama Closer (about two sets of couples endlessly circling one another), I think X, Y & Zeecould have benefited from a similarly deft balancing of the serio with the comic.

PERFORMANCES

As stated in previous posts, my respect for and appreciation of Elizabeth Taylor was rather late in coming, making me wonder what I would have made of X, Y & Zee had I seen it when it was released to theaters in January of 1972. Because it plays so strongly to what I once thought were her weaknesses (her voice, her sometimes too-knowing camp appeal) I don’t think I would have rated it very highly.

Today is a different story. Maybe it’s my own age (I’m 20 years older than Taylor in this film), maybe it’s nostalgia for the era (the ‘70’s never looked more Austin Powers-like), and most definitely it’s the dawning awareness that her like is nowhere to be found on movie screens today; but I think Taylor is damn good in this movie. As funny as she is in the first part (a broad performance not likely to win over detractors) she truly shines and is quite moving in the second half. I’ve seen X, Y and Zee several times, and while I find it to be uneven (I can understand Edna O'Brien's dissatisfaction with the script) I can't deny that I have - to quote the poster - an absolute ball watching it.

In Richard Burton's published diary he wrote of how there was a genuine belief that X, Y and Zee would be the much-needed boxoffice hit for Elizabeth. Alas, it proved to be just another in a string of underperforming films which characterized her latter-day career. Taylor never stopped being a star, but she never again rose to the heights of her '60s film popularity.

I especially like Susannah York. Her character doesn’t fully make sense to me, but York's performance is so natural and seems to come from a place of clear understanding on her part, I feel I'm always struggling to get up to speed. She draws me into her character in search of what I'm positive I'm missing. The scenes between Taylor and York are my favorites. The hospital scene being a real standout...both are just tremendously affecting together. In the buddy-film atmosphere of the ‘70s, not many big female stars were cast opposite other women, and I forever bemoan what was potentially lost in not having any women’s films comparable to the pairings of Redford and Newman.

X, Y and Zee's meta credentials don't stop with allusions to Taylor's previous roles as overbearing shrews. Susannah York's casting (her part was said to have first been offered to Julie Christie) harkens back to her controversial role in 1968s The Killing of Sister George

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Couldn't sign off on X, Y and Zee without commenting on two non-Elizabeth Taylor-related favorite things about the film. One is the luminous cinematography of Billy Williams (Women in Love, Night Watch). Maybe it's the pristine quality of the DVD, but I never noticed before how burnished everything (and everyone) looks. The garish '70s decor and fashions pop off the screen creating a glitzy world of numbing sensual overkill.

X, Y and Zee goes for every "sophisticated" and "adult" credit it can get by having two featured gay characters. Michael Cashman is Gavin, an employee at Stella's shop. Cashman, whose character Zee mordantly describes as a "poncy little fag" is, in real life, currently a member of British Parliament and the Labour Party's special envoy on LGBT issues worldwide. So shove it, Zee!

Second is the film's musical theme, the eloquent ballad, "Going in Circles" by Ted Myers & Jaianada. The lovely lyrical version played under the film's opening credits sets the tone for a film which doesn't arrive until about 45-minutes in, and the closing vocal version I can't reliably attribute to a singer. Internet sources cite Three Dog Night, but they recorded a cover version on an album which sounds nothing like the one in the film. Someone once told me it's Three Dog Night producer Richard (Harry) Podolor. Further confusing the issue, a friend who claims to have seen the film when it was originally released says that Three Dog Night sang over the closing credits originally, but when the film came to VHS and DVD they replaced their version (copyright issues?) with the one we now hear (who that is I still don't know). In any event, it's a graceful song and curiously ideal for this not very well-regarded little film that has become one of my favorite Elizabeth Taylor vehicles.

Zee: "He loves his little games. Do you play?"

Stella: "I’m afraid I don’t."

Zee: "Nor do I."

BONUS MATERIAL

As a possible solution to the above quandary, I found this poster image online which contains a sticker promoting Three Dog Night singing "Going in Circles" in the film. (click on poster to enlarge)

One of my favorite Elizabeth Taylor clips: Taylor presenting at the 1981 Tony Awards. She's really adorable and infectiously hilarious.

Copyright © Ken Anderson

Warning: Spoiler Alert. This is a critical essay, not a review, so key plot points are revealed for the purpose of discussion.

The success of The Exorcist(1973) left Hollywood scrambling to grab up the rights to any and all novels even remotely related to the occult and the supernatural. Having perhaps exhausted the whole demonic possession thing (and with indestructible serial killers still a few years off), studios, spurred by the burgeoning 70s New Age movement and Me-Generation interest in navel-gazing mysticism, turned to the relatively benign philosophy of reincarnation as the next hoped-for trend in cinema scares.

Employing the same, questioning, nosy-parker tact in its ad copy as The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, Audrey Rose (released in 1977) was a classier, more pedigreed big studio reincarnation release, but it too fared poorly at the boxoffice

With its case-history title reminiscent of 1972s The Possession of Joel Delaney, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, a popular 1973 supernatural suspense novel by TV-writer Max Ehrlich (Star Trek, The Untouchables, Suspense) was snapped up by Bing Crosby Productions (of all things) to be made into a film for release in 1975. This independent television production company (Ben Casey, Hogan’s Heroes) had recently branched out into motion pictures and enjoyed a string of sleeper successes with the low-budget thrillers Willard (1971) and You’ll Like My Mother (1972), and the redneck vigilante opus Walking Tall(1973).

The Reincarnation of Peter Proud was BCPs ambitious move into the mainstream. Ehrlich was hired to adapt his book for the screenplay (misstep #1), and directing chores were handed over (promisingly) to Hollywood vet and Hitchcock fan, J. Lee Thompson. Thompson had been nominated for an Academy Award for The Guns of Navarone back in 1961, but what augured well for Peter Proud was his direction of the shocking (for its time) and intense thriller Cape Fear (1962). He also directed a wonderfully atmospheric but little-seen suspense drama titled Return from the Ashes in 1965.

But alas, in order for one to consider the hiring of this 60-year-old director a boon to the making of The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, you had to conveniently overlook the TV-level mediocrity of his most recent output, specifically: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes(1972) and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973).

Still, there was the lure of the film’s talented and attractive cast. No top-tier A-listers, but a definite step-up from the unknowns and TV-Q talent usually associated with BCP films. And all at intriguingly varied stages of stardom/relevance in their respective careers.

Cast in the title role was Michael Sarrazin, having stumbled a bit in his career after They Shoot Horses,Don’t They? (1969), things were looking up after landing this title role on the heels of a co-starring gig opposite Barbra Streisand in For Pete’s Sake (1974).

Michael Sarrazin as Peter Proud

Former Cover Girl model Jennifer O’Neill, who’d made such a splash as the dream girl in 1971s The Summer ’42, was perilously close to having Hollywood invoke its unspoken three-flops-you’re-out law (Such Good Friends, The Carey Treatment, Lady Ice) when cast as the male fantasy-object in The Reincarnation of Peter Proud. Her prominent billing, despite making her entrance nearly 60 minutes into the film, a fair indication that her leading lady marquee gold hadn’t completely tarnished.

Jennifer O'Neill as Ann Curtis

Margot Kidder, still three years away from global superstardom as Lois Lane in Superman: The Movie(1978) was still something of a promising up-and-comer after her attention-getting turn in Brian DePalma’s cult hit Sisters (1973). Small but attention-getting roles in Black Christmas (1974) and The Great Waldo Pepper (1975) gave her unique casting in The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (coeval costars Kidder & O'Neill play mother and daughter) an emerging star-of-tomorrow feel.

Margot Kidder as Marcia Curtis

Rounding out this feminine trifecta of talent was Cornelia Sharpe, a name sure to inspire a lot of “Who?” these days, but back in the ‘70s she was the new blonde on the block; heavily touted for her Faye Dunaway cheekbones (minus the acting chops) and malleability in any number of underwritten “girlfriend” roles (most famously, Serpico-1973) so prevalent during the male-dominated decade. Sharpe’s part in The Reincarnation of Peter Proud doesn’t buck this trend, her presence in the largely female cast merely adding to the hopeful speculation that the R-rated suspenser was going to have a sizable overlay of ticket-selling sex and nudity with its supernatural shocks.

Cornelia Sharpe as Nora Hayes

Heterosexually speaking, if Peter Proud’s prominently publicized passel of pulchritudinous performers primed potential patrons with the prospect of a little T&A with their ESP; the film’s provocatively homoerotic poster worked wonders for drawing the attention of the gay contingent.

The memorable ad campaign and sole identifying graphic for the promotion of The Reincarnation of Peter Proud was this lava-lamp soaked image of muscled, heavily-striated, and (most significantly) naked actor/model Tony Stephano screaming in pain after (as we come to learn) being hit in the schnuts with a wooden boat oar. A fashion model for Givenchy seen frequently on the pages of GQ magazine at the time, Stephano makes his film debut in The Reincarnation of Peter Proud as Jeff Curtis, Peter Proud's earlier, not-so-nice incarnation.
A common promotional practice of the day was for a film with a racy theme to appear in the pages of Playboy magazine or similar skin rag as part of an advance-publicity pictorial (my eyes still burn from the sight of a naked Robert Culp in the Penthouse magazine pictorial for the forgotten 1973 haunted house flick, A Name for Evil). However, in the age of Women's Lib, Playgirl magazine, and the advent of equal-opportunity flesh-peddling, two-months before the release of The Reincarnation of Peter Proud , Stephano promoted the film and his chiseled assets by gracing the cover and centerfold spread of the short-lived Foxylady magazine (below, albeit sans the oar - that's just my addition in the twin interests of providing modesty and a helpful visual-aid for those who haven't seen the film).

I’ve no idea of the production budget for The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (it has that underpopulated, TV-movie look, so my guess is minimal) but the impact its publicity machine had on me was considerable. Intriguing radio and TV spots (“Who are you Peter Proud?”); a paperback book tie-in; pervasive newspaper ads; and an R-rating which hinted at the possibility of a return to Exorcist-style shake-‘em-up explicit horror (back then I considered the recently-released PG-rated The Stepford Wives far too tame) ‒ I was stoked.

All except for two red flags:

1. It didn't bode well for the quality of The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (also known hereafter as TROPP) that it was being distributed through American International Pictures; the self-proclaimed “Woolworth’s of the movie industry” known for exploitation cheapies and bungling its rare stabs at legitimacy (Merchant/Ivory’s The Wild Party- 1975).

2. TROPP was slated to open at the movie theater where I worked. By rights this news should have thrilled me to the core, but the theater where I was employed as an usher, The Alhambra Theater on Polk Street in San Francisco, was the sister-theater to the ritzier Regency Cinema on Van Ness. Both were first-run theaters, but the mid-town Regency got all the anticipated sure-fire hits while the Alhambra (viewed as a neighborhood theater) was given the leftovers. There was the occasional miscalculation (like when no one expected Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore to perform, and it opened at the Alhambra to consistently sold-out business), but for the most part, if we got it, industry buzz on the film tended to be mild.

Nora (described in the film's press material as "a sensuous grad student") attempts to awaken
Peter from one of his violent recurring nightmares. Sensually, mind you.

Reincarnation hasn’t had a particularly good track record on film. Whether played for smarmy laughs (Goodbye Charlie -1964), set to music (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever-1970), or staged as romantic melodrama (Dead Again - 1991); reincarnation may intrigue in real-life, but in the assumed identity, anything can happen, make-believe world of film, it has credibility issues.

Peter Proud (Sarrazin), a University of California Professor of Anthropology, is plagued by vivid recurring dreams he comes to learn are actually past-life memories. In his dreams he is inhabiting the body of another man—a man who is murdered by an unknown woman while he swims in an icy lake. Curiosity turns to obsession as Proud ventures to Springfield, Massachusetts, the city in his dreams, on a quest to discover who he was in an earlier life and unearth the circumstances surrounding his violent death.

With the help of old newspapers and his own dream-recognition of specific locations, Proud uncovers evidence that he once existed as Jeff Cutis (Stephano), a former war hero married unhappily to banker’s daughter Marcia Buckley (Kidder). Three months after the birth of their daughter Ann, Jeff is found dead in the local lake, cause of death unknown. Only it isn’t—not for Peter Proud. He knows that Jeff was an abusive husband and serial womanizer killed by his wife that cold dark night out on the lake 35 years ago.

Getting To Know You

Intrigued by the thought of meeting both the wife and daughter of his former self, Proud (recklessly) insinuates himself into the lives of the now-grown Ann (O’Neill), a vivacious, sweet-natured divorcee with sad eyes, and 60-year-old widow Marcia, the pretty, smiling brunette in his dreams who’s become something of a morose, guilt-ridden sot.

Before long, Proud’s fevered obsession with his past life is supplanted by a desire to build a future of his own as he finds himself falling in love with Ann, who is, metaphysically speaking, his daughter. Meanwhile, Proud’s subconscious similarities to her late husband arouse mounting suspicions (and a few other things) in Marcia, leading to a violent reenactment of a past tragedy that was perhaps always fated to be.

With its not-uninteresting premise, combining elements of the psychological suspense film with the supernatural thriller and crime/detective mystery; The Reincarnation of Peter Proudhad the potential to mine some of the same dreamy, eerily perverse terrain of erotic fixation as Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) or Brian De Palma’s 1977 Obsession. Unfortunately, Ehrlich’s plot-driven, exposition-heavy script and Thompson’s lacking-in-nuance, indifferent direction give TROPPthe feel of a dramatically compelling TV Movie of the Week. With lots of nudity.

What Did I Have That I Don't Have?

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
In a film as promising, but ultimately lacking, as The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, it’s difficult to pinpoint just where, among so many gross miscalculations, things went most wrong. But for me, problems with the script seemed evident from the film’s first frames. Max Ehrlich (often taking sizable chunks of dialog from his novel) shows no flair for the rhythms and tones of natural conversation. Revealing his TV-based roots, nearly word spoken is designed either to propel the plot forward or provide expository information.

Character development (helpful in getting audiences invested in the emotional stakes behind Proud’s obsessive quest) takes a backseat to the writer’s efforts to propel the story forward along its inexorable path. The result is what often befalls rote disaster films and poorly-made horror movies: the characters’ actions and motivations are solely in service of plot machinations and rarely seem to emanate from personality or normal human behavior patterns.

After driving throughout Massachusetts in search of the unknown city he sees in his dreams,
Peter finally comes upon a recognizable landmark

For example, given that the whole reincarnation is angle is known by audiences before the film even begins, Ehrlich seems to think there is no need to waste time having the characters consider any other explanation (like demonic possession or schizophrenia) for Proud speaking in another man’s voice, suffering phantom pain attacks, and detailed visions of a life imagined or remembered. The abrupt and unquestioning acceptance of reincarnation turns what could have been an ambiguous journey of discovery into a protracted lecture on New Age mysticism. In short, a more creative adapter of the material might have strove to make the film's title potentially ambiguous, with Peter Proud a perhaps unreliable narrator (something Roman Polanski did beautifully with the literal-minded novel that became his ambiguous screen adaptation of Rosemary's Baby).

The premise of The Reincarnation of Peter Proud is already fairly fascinating fodder for a suspense thriller, I just wish someone had thought it worth the effort to supplement the story with more fleshed-out characterizations.

In the novel, the whole metaphysical incest angle is skirted by having Peter remain chastely in love with Ann. The film version controversially has Peter and Ann consummate their love in a sequence that intercuts shots of Jeffrey and Marcia making love on the same spot 35 years hence.

PERFORMANCES

Which brings up the film's other problem. In spite of what I might have hoped from the ads and advance publicity, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud is an exploitation movie and as such, the sensational aspects of its plot are the film’s real stars.

Still, that doesn’t excuse what passes for acting by a large portion of the film’s cast. Michael Sarrazin, always a rather likable but vague screen presence (which is perhaps why the amorphous Robert of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? remained the most memorable work of his career) fails to capture any of the dark nuances of a character fixated on knowing his former self yet willing to have sex with the daughter of the man he knows he once was.

The appealing Jennifer O’Neill is mostly cast and used for her beauty and blank-slate personality (she’s like Mary-Ann on Gilligan’s Island; the perfect, non-threatening, girlfriend male fantasy).

Mother & Child Reunion

Margot Kidder, in what might be called a double role (although her 1940’s persona is sliced and diced to snippets) gives the film’s best performance. Although never once physically convincing as a 60-year-old woman (makeup is a little too junior college theater dept.), Kidder emotionally inhabits her character in a way which renders realistic the toll taken on a broken woman weary from carrying around a burdensome secret for too many years. Her scenes with same-age O'Neill (both 26) are particularly interesting to watch.

Worst performance is an overcrowded category finding the lovely but tone-deaf Cornelia Sharpe (she sounds as though she learned her dialog phonetically) outpacing both pipe-smoking parapsychologist Paul Hecht (saying his lines and hitting his marks with nothing else able to come through that mound of hair on his face), and the ever-nude Tony Stephano, whose Arrow Collar Man profile is perfect for the era, but whose voice I suspect is dubbed.

If you didn't grow up in the hair-helmet '70s, you're forgiven for assuming actor Paul Hecht
(as parapsychologist/sleep-researcher Samuel Goodman)
is wearing one of these crochet bearded-beanies

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
The Reincarnation of Peter Proud sought to distinguish itself in the horror/supernatural movie market by being explicit, but not in the head-spinning, vomit-spewing way. TROPP promoted itself as an erotic thriller, and its many controversial scenes were geared for maximum shock effect.

Marcia masturbates while remembering her sexual assault at the hands of her husband

A tiresome 70s trope (Peckinpah's Straw Dogs) was the rape that somehow morphs into sex

Reflecting perhaps the film's lack of a cohesive point of view, Peter's essentially incestual relationship with Ann is depicted in almost romantic terms. The film appears unaware (or it remains undeveloped) that the act comes across like Jeffrey Curtis' amoral soul has taken over nice-guy Peter Proud

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

The Reincarnation of Peter Proud is one of those curious movies from my past where, after the initial disappointment of unrealized potential has settled (taking years to do so), nostalgia turns flaws into assets, and the film’s ability to perfectly evoke a particular time and place overrides its general weakness.

I can’t fully separate my reaction to The Reincarnation of Peter Proud– the movie – from my memories of life in 1975. Nor do I want to. TROPP is, in my eyes, is a film not wholly successful as either an erotic thriller or supernatural suspenser. Yet it can't be denied that the film does seem to strike a certain chord with those who were of a certain age when they saw it (adolescent to late teens). Maybe one better suited to a Night Gallery or Twilight Zone episode, but the film obviously works on some level. Certainly for me that's true.
There’s plenty of ‘70s weirdness about it, which I like, but it suffers because it lacks the kind of crazy you find in the dark corners of the works of Hitchcock, Polanski, and other directors with demons they use film to exorcise. And a movie as offbeat as this NEEDS that kind of crazy.

One of the film's more eerily effective scenes is when Peter accompanies Ann to the convalescent home to visit her paternal grandmother. The woman, who hasn't spoken or acknowledged another person for years, suddenly sees Peter and recognizes her son, Jeffrey.

The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, with its pedestrian direction and bland cinematography (surprising given that its cinematographer is Victor J. Kemper, the man who shot Xanadu and the stylish Eyes of Laura Mars) flattens out what really is a pretty loopy yarn that could have been an eerily sexy, metaphysical mind-bender. It’s not the film it could have been, but when I look at it now, I find myself increasingly grateful to it for being what it is.

Everything about its look just screams 1975 (the fashions, color scheme, washed-out appearance), as does its sober approach to the material (the dead-serious attitude about reincarnation is naively preachy), and the slightly-off feeling of the performances (on par with what you’d see on 70s TV or in big-screen genre films Earthquake).

So I look at The Reincarnation of Peter Proud and marvel at the things mainstream movies wouldn’t think of trying to get away with today, poke fun at the risible dialog and plot contrivances, and allow myself to be taken back to my teenage years by the abstract, almost metaphysical concept that the enjoyment derived from certain movies is sometimes miraculously untethered to the particulars of said film’s quality, but wholly connected to the nostalgic desire to revisit the past.

Warning: Spoiler Alert. This is a critical essay, not a review, so key plot points are revealed for the purpose of discussion.

“There’s no such thing as a bad girl.”– Mother Veronica, head nun and CEO of Girls Town

Well, happily for me and producers of low-budget “girls reform school” exploitation flicks, that’s not altogether true.

When I was growing up, late-night and weekend afternoon TV overflowed with 1950s juvenile delinquency movies (“black-&-white-shoe pictures” as they were known in our house, in reference to the two-tone saddle oxfords favored by bobbysoxers of the time). With their jazz/bop musical scores, sound-alike titles, and interchangeable casts of superannuated teenagers; these films were near-identical in their faux, anti-social emphasis—faux because no matter how extreme the civic insubordination, by fade-out you could be sure yet another blow had been struck for conformity and middle-class conservativism— and preoccupation with drag racing, leather jackets, tight sweaters, rock & roll, switchblade skirmishes, and beat generation slang.

Mainstream movies only occasionally touched on the phenomenon of 1950s youth culture. A time when population (the sheer number of teenagers), rock & roll music (anarchy with a beat), physical autonomy (car culture), and economic independence (postwar prosperity) all converged into a marketable and exploitable social force. In those rare instances when mainstream films paid attention to teen culture at all (1956s The Girl Can’t Help It, for example) young people and their distractions were either satirized or held in derision. Only independent B-movies and exploitation films actually celebrated the teenage revolution.

Ain't No Party Like A Girls Town Party

But even these films made middle-of-the-road concessions to propriety. Almost as a public service, these films took it upon themselves to prove that the national surge in juvenile delinquency was merely due to a few bad apples, and that outside of the need to occasionally blow off a little steam (growing up in the shadow of the Bomb and the Cold War was stressful, man), American teenagers were basically good, decent kids.

Marlon Brando’s The Wild One (1953) and Blackboard Jungle (1955) launched a spate of male-centric juvenile delinquent knockoffs. But given the fact that movies about gangs of lawless teenage boys have been around since at least 1938 (the year Spencer Tracy sought to prove to Mickey Rooney “There’s no such thing as a bad boy” in Boys Town),I always found the B-movies about girl gangs and female reprobates (Women in Prison films) to be a lot more fun. In fact, given the narrow image of womanhood promoted in the ‘50s (girlfriends, mothers, or housewives), the emergence of the tough-talking, no-nonsense gang girl: choosing to live life on their own terms – flouting both authority and social mores – seemed to me to be the only social archetype to genuinely embody the characteristics of the rebel.
I saw many of these women in prison / reform school girls flicks growing up (I was raised in a household with one TV and four sisters, all of whom delighted in the feminist subtext of these movies), but perhaps my favorite in a genre overflowing with low-rent gems, is Girls Town.

Mamie Van Doren as Silver Morgan

Paul Anka as Jimmy Parlow

Margaret Hayes as Mother Veronica

Gigi Perreau as Serafina Garcia

Mel Torme as Fred Alger

Elinor Donahue as Mary Lee Morgan

After being falsely accused of the accidental death of a former boyfriend (a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him appearance by Harold Lloyd Jr.), overdeveloped and underachieving high school senior Silver Morgan (the name a gender-switch tip of the hat to Mickey Rooney’s Whitey March), a peroxide punk-ette with attitude to spare, is sent to Girls Town, a youth correctional facility run by stern but tender-hearted nuns.

Silver, precariously balancing a mountain of platinum hair and prodigious curves on a pair of high-heeled, open-toes mules, is a gum-popping, slang-spewing hellcat who doesn’t take well to authority figures or being told what to do. But even though she resists rehabilitation and frequently butts heads with the nuns and the other, surprisingly compliant, Girls Town detainees, we all know that Silver is more a hard-luck case and victim of circumstance than a genuinely "bad" girl.

Hulking, Big Ethel-ish Peggy Moffitt and B-movie queen Gloria Talbott play Flo and Vida,
the inseparable pair who maintain Girls Town order

Personally, I’d have been perfectly content were the film to consist solely of scenes devoted to Silver cooling her well-shaped heels at Girls Town, mouthing off to any and all, showering suggestively, getting into cat-fights, and instigating confrontations with the nuns (a la Hayley Mills in The Trouble With Angels); but the makers of Girls Town all-too-frequently shift the spotlight from Mamie van Doren (never a good idea) to follow through on a couple of subplots.

Subplot #1 has Silver’s restless 15-year-old sister Mary Lee (Father Knows Best’s Elinor Donahue, decked out in a blond wig, tight sweater, and behaving in a very un-“Princess”-like fashion) blackmailed and potentially shipped off to Tijuana for her part in and knowledge of the real circumstances surrounding the death of Silver’s ex. Preposterously, these threats come from “The Velvet Fog” himself, diminutive, elder hot rod gang member Mel Tormé (whose character, despite looking well into his 30s, lives in fear of his father taking his car away).

Carrying on in the Family Tradition (click on photo to enlarge)
Although difficult to make out, that's Harold Lloyd Jr on the left clinging to a mountain cliffside in a pose recalling the iconic skyscraper sequence from his father's 1923 silent film Safety Last!

The other subplot—superfluous, but by far the most campily entertaining of the two— features another crooner, Paul Anka, as pop star Jimmy Parlow, upon whom Serafina, a lonely Girls Town orphan, is delusionally fixated. Teen sensation Paul Anka makes his film debut in Girls Town, singing almost as many songs as Olivia Newton-John did during the finale of Xanadu, and serving in practically the same magical capacity in this film’s plot. Indeed, Anka’s character swoops in to save the day so often, one wonders where he finds time to cut one of his many, sound-alike, loneliness-themed records.

Popular singing group The Platters make an appearance in a sequence set in a smart supper club (to which Silver wears the most laughably inappropriate outfit imaginable). The Platters was my father's favorite singing group so I practically grew up on their smooth sound. The group was known for its frequent changes of personnel, so perhaps that's why the face of the lead singer is never shown

Meanwhile, as Silver manages to sneak in a date with a 36-year-old delivery boy (bandleader Ray Anthony, Van Doren’s husband at the time), Girls Town shoehorns nepotistic “guest star” appearances by: Harold Lloyd Jr, Charlie Chaplin Jr, Jim Mitchum (eldest son of Robert), Cathy Crosby (Bing’s niece), and pseudo-star cameos by the likes of Dick “Daddy-O” Contino, Hollywood gossip columnist Sheilah Graham, and martial arts pioneer, Bruce Tegner.

In addition to all this, time is set aside for an attempted rape, a suicide attempt, potential human trafficking, social commentary, and the standard juvenile delinquent movie staples consisting of:

Make-Out Sessions

Cat Fights

Drag Races

Remarkably, all of these labyrinthine plot entanglements wind up being neatly resolved and expeditiously dispensed with by fade-out. Silver, while still maintaining her ostentatiously lewd clothing sense, learns respect for authority and finds religious redemption (of sorts) after Jimmy subjects her to a grueling rendition of “Ave Maria.” Mary Lee is saved from an involuntary run for the border, and lonely Serafina gives up stalking Canadian pop singers with hero complexes and becomes a Fangirl for Jesus. By all appearances, Girls Town ends with the scourge of teenage delinquency well and soundly vanquished.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

When I was a kid, afterschool TV consisted of reruns of programs like The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show, and Leave it to Beaver. Although I enjoyed them all, each suffered from what felt like an unrelenting, almost propagandistic endorsement of a kind of bland suburban conformity so artificial it seemed beamed in from another planet. The one welcome deviation from this plastic norm was Leave it to Beaver’s Eddie Haskell, a delightfully candid, wise-guy anarchist whose appearance on the show was almost subversive in its ability to make the program's promoted standards of middle-class “good citizenship” look absurd.

All Revved Up
Fred corrals Mary Lee into taking part in a drag race. Jim Mitchum stands looking into the camera center frame in the dark clothing and glasses, Charles Chaplin Jr stands with his arms folded, and that's accordion maestro Dick Contino dressed like Tom Slick.

It's that quality of defiance of the norm that I most love in ‘50s juvenile delinquency movies, and Girls Town is one of the most enjoyable of the lot. Lighter in approach than the social commentary JD movies like The Cool and the Crazy or High School Hellcats, Girls Town’s inconsequentiality (it exists primarily to showcase Van Doren’s assets and Anka’s music) makes it easy to be enjoyed purely as a camp timepiece.

I have no idea what teenagers thought of the film at the time, but it’s a laugh-riot from start to finish (even without the uproarious running commentary provided by the Mystery Science Theater 3000 team in the edited, but most-available version of the film).

Vida & Flo share a secret glance (how did this get past the censors?) as Jimmy Parlow
croons a love song to the wayward girls of Girls Town

William Claxton 1964

In a movie full of actors on the cusp of transition (Paul Anka soon underwent a nose job and Mamie Van Doren split from husband Ray Anthony the following year) none is as startling as that of 18-year-old Peggy Moffitt. Cast as Flo, a girl sent to Girls Town because she was so unattractive she stole money to pay for cosmetics and fancy hairdos, Moffitt would go on; as muse to futuristic fashion designer Rudi Gernreich, to become one of the most famous and iconic models of the 60s.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Silver?
Mother Veronica (Margaret Hayes, the teacher in Blackboard Jungle) and Sister Grace (gossip columnist and F. Scott Fitzgerald mistress Sheilah Graham) discuss the pros and cons of giving Silver Morgan a "poke in the kisser."

PERFORMANCES

As one of the platinum blonde 3-Ms of the ‘50s (Monroe, Mansfield, and Mamie) Mamie Van Doren carved out a niche for herself as the bad girl of B-movies. I haven’t seen enough of her films to access her talent as an actress (she seems a good light comedienne), but I can tell you that in Girl’s Town she has a vivacity and presence that makes you not want to watch anyone else when she’s onscreen. The performance Van Doren gives may not be considered "good" by any objective standard, but she's ideal for both the subject matter and genre (although neither she nor any of the other major players are believable as teenagers), and the film slows down and drops several degrees Fahrenheit whenever the story veers away from her.

Infinitely more convincing as a tough-cookie troublemaker than Ann-Margret was in Kitten With a Whip, Van Doren possesses a tongue-in-cheek sexiness and sass that suggests Mae West more to than Monroe.

Silver (certainly one of the screen's most energetic listeners) steps out with
delivery boy / Private Investigator Dick Culdane (Ray Anthony)

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
At least 75% of the screenplay of Girls Town must be composed of slang. Until I got to see this film again recently in its uncut, non-MST3K version (all over the TV when I was young, it seemed to disappear before those guys rediscovered it) I'd thought Kitten with a Whip held the crown for strenuous slang overuse. I was wrong.

All quotes attributable to Silver Morgan:

"You’ve gotta let me out of here! There’s nobody to take care of her but Aunt Scrooge...and she’s cracked!"

"Aw, Don’t flip your wig… I got your signal"

“Big deal. King Groovy comes to Dungeonsville to make with a song for po’ little ol’ us. What do you want me to do, kiss your foot?”

"Hey, who are them apples, the Junior WACs?"

"Go flap your plates!"

“I got tired of you cats with the fast cars and slow heads. You give me a pain in the ears”

“Ok if I use the Alexander Graham?”

"Stop draggin’ your axel!"

"What’s my crime, dad? For not having as much moola as this jerk? Or my old lady wasn’t in the social register?"

“You’re in queersville, man. You’ve flipped.”

"Go bingle your bongle!"

Lovely Cathy Crosby (whose character isn't even given a name) pops up out of nowhere to serenade The Dragons - rival hot rod gang to The Jaguars - at a "crazy weenie roast" with a Paul Anka composition titled "I Love You" (but you''ll never be able shake all those "Ya ya ya"s out of your head) only to disappear, never to be seen again

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

If the male juvenile delinquent movies of the ‘50s owed more than a passing nod to the Warner Bros. gangster films of the ’30s, then the exploitation movie bad girls of the era were simply a gum-popping, teenage iteration of the ‘40s film noir femme fatale. What gives this particular incarnation its ginger and snap is the percussive beat of rock and roll, and the restless hum of Youth Culture.

Girls Town, free of any (serious) overlay of social commentary is a hooty collaboration of good intentions and bad dialog. A shining specimen of time capsule camp. Mamie Van Doren rocks!

BONUS MATERIAL

In a movie whose 90-min. running time is excessively padded out with musical numbers which somehow manage to be both brief and interminable, not affording the well-padded Mamie van Doren a solo feels like a particularly egregious omission. We do get to hear Miss Van Doren sing (in that flat, rocker-chick style later adopted by Debbie Harry of Blondie) a verse of the film's theme song during the opening credits, but as everyone knows, as a vocalist, Van Doren is strictly a visual act.

Apparently '50s censors thought so too, for it seems Anka penned a swingin' rock and roll ditty for Van Doren that was shot and later cut from the film for being too suggestive. Not the lyrics, the setting: Silver Morgan sings the song "Hey Mama" while wriggling around in the shower as she prepares for her date with the 36-year-old delivery boy.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, here's that heretofore unseen Mamie Van Doren number in all its glory. "Hey Mama" has the same melody as the film's terrific theme song and is as catchy as hell. And as you might expect from Miss Van Doren, her performance of the song is nothing short of crazy, cool, and fantabulous!

Not a success during its initial release, when Girls Town was re-released in 1964, its dated, Drive-In-friendly title was changed to the bland and nondescript The Innocent and the Damned

In a first for Le Cinema Dreams, I’ve handed this week’s post over to a guest blogger! I’m pleased to introduce Roberta Steve of Steel Town Girl. A marvelous writer and ‘70s film enthusiast after my own heart. I hope you enjoy as Roberta steps into the ring with the 1976 Best Picture Academy-Award winner, Rocky.

Growing up in a small, dying mill town in western Pennsylvania didn’t afford us many luxuries, so family night at the movies was a real treat. My dad was a steelworker, and a rather eclectic movie fan. He cheered for John Wayne in True Grit, and grieved with Sophia Loren in Two Women. He loved discussing the movies we saw and prodding my sisters and me for our opinions.
Throughout the 60s, the boom years for steel towns throughout the region, there were lots of movies aimed at the family audience. But by the 1970s, movies were changing. Swear words, nudity, and violence were things my devout Catholic parents were not going to pay for us to see. Especially with layoffs looming and money becoming tight. Paying for five people to see a movie meant not paying for something else.

One night my mother suggested we go to see Cabaret. It was a musical, so I’m sure mom thought it must be wholesome family entertainment. We piled in the car and went off to the movie theater at the mall. I remember sensing my dad’s uneasiness early on in the movie. My sisters and I grew even more uncomfortable with the decadence and sexuality, eventually slinking down in our seats. My mom was silently praying for Julie Andrews and singing nuns to somehow show up in the Kit Kat Club in Berlin.
The ride home was stony silence. My dad shooting “what were you thinking” glances at my mom in the front seat, my sisters and I trying to figure out what we had just seen in the back. I had nightmares of Joel Grey’s false eyelashes for months.

It would be years before we saw another movie all together.

One day, at the dinner table, my dad commented that he’d read about a little movie that sounded interesting. “It’s about a boxer,” he explained. “It’s called Rocky and I think I want to see it.” Apparently Newsweek magazine had run a blurb about its word of mouth momentum.
The movie hadn’t yet caught on nationally so it wasn’t playing at the big theater at the mall. Instead, one frigid night, we drove to a deserted downtown to see it. The small theater was not quite half full. I was wearing my fake rabbit fur winter jacket with my black and gold Steeler pom pom hat. I remember being annoyed that my mom wouldn’t buy me Milk Duds or Ju Ju Bees because they’d get stuck in my braces.

After the Cabaret disaster, I was especially tense about whether or not my dad would sit through the movie, let alone like it. I spent the first part of the movie watching it out of one eye and my dad out of the other. I was monitoring his reactions, waiting for the first f-bomb or naked breast that would cause him to pull us out of our seats and take us home in disgust. He not only settled in; he was watching intently.
I relaxed and turned my full attention to the screen. Rocky was sitting in the fight promoter’s office, with people urging him to accept Apollo Creed’s unbelievable offer for an unknown boxer to fight the champ. The camera stayed on Rocky’s face. I felt how he was both afraid to take it and afraid not to.
I never looked away from the screen again.

My favorite scene in the film. Perhaps the last time we saw Stallone underplay until Creed.

Rocky is not a great film. It is a very, very good one. There’s a reason it became a box office smash and a modern classic. It is hands down the most memorable and exciting movie going experience of my life.

The story is simple. A down on his luck, no-name boxer in Philadelphia is given the chance of a lifetime to fight the flamboyant World Heavyweight Champion. At the same time he is starting a tentative, tender romance with the introverted sister of his best friend. He discovers his dignity and realizes he finally has something to fight for.

When the film came out, many sophisticated critics ridiculed it as a derivative fairy tale, some sort of rehash of a lesser Frank Capra movie. Sylvester Stallone, who starred as Rocky, wrote the screenplay and took the brunt of the criticism. They had a point. It was 1976, and compared to the cynicism of Network, the paranoia of All the President’s Men and the nihilism of Taxi Driver, this little movie seemed like a naïve fantasy.

But Rocky is full of anger, grittiness and sadness. The story’s innate sentimentality is grounded in drab, raw realness. Nothing is “pretty” in Rocky. The movie looks lived in. Characters wear clothes, not costumes. People yell at each other. A lot.

The street where Rocky lives. He may have been from Philadelphia, but his story
echoed with working class folks on the western part of Pennsylvania too

Because he was an unknown, and his script had made the rounds in Hollywood for a while, Stallone had to fight to get Rocky made and fight to star in it. The trade-off was the studio insisted on a low budget and quick filming schedule. The entire movie was shot in 28 days.
Perhaps the two best things that happened to the movie were the budget restrictions and the studio bringing in a journeyman director, John G. Avildsen. One reviewer called Avildsen “lazy.” He wasn’t. He simply got out of the way of a great story and cast the movie with actors who were either unknown or barely known to audiences. It’s telling that the biggest “name” in the cast was Burgess Meredith. (“Well he’s always good in movies, isn’t he? He wouldn’t be in a dirty movie, would he?” my mom sweetly asked my dad on the way to the theater.)

There is a plainness and lack of self-consciousness in the performances that made me feel I wasn’t watching actors, I was somehow eavesdropping on real people at the most dramatic moment of their lives. Stallone is undeniably appealing. He wasn’t handsome, and in truth, he looks meaty, lumpy and pale. You can believe he is a third-rate fighter. Rocky was his creation, and he brings genuine humility, humor and heart to the role. One wonders how Avildsen was able to reign in the self-reverential preening that Stallone displayed starting with the first sequel and perfected over his 40 year career.

The Rocky who won our hearts, before faux tan, hair mousse
and plastic surgery turned him into a robotic imitation

Rocky’s love interest, Adrian, is the repressed, frightened, old maid sister of his best friend, Pauly. Talia Shire, who was cast after Carrie Snodgrass turned the part down, brought both sensitivity and ferociousness to a woman who had never been valued in her life. Her bitter confrontation with Pauly is achingly painful to watch. Even her “makeover” is believable. It looks like a prettier, younger cousin took her to the beauty counter at Wannamaker’s in downtown Philly and then bought her some new clothes. The pantsuit she wears at the end of the film doesn’t even fit her properly. Similar to Bette Davis’ brilliant transformation in Now, Voyager, Shire’s Adrian blooms from within.

Talia Shire was one of the last principals cast.
Susan Sarandon was screen tested but deemed “too attractive.”

Burt Young, as her loser brother Pauly, is used mainly for comic relief, until jealousy of his friend’s luck begins eating him alive. He knows he may soon be abandoned by both Rocky and Adrian, and erupts from years of frustration, loneliness and hurt.

Burt Young's Pauly ruins the holiday.
I can still hear my mother muttering "poor Pauly" for days after the movie
every time she passed the Christmas tree

A former professional football player turned actor, Carl Weathers, plays the champion Apollo Creed, who Stallone obviously based on Muhammed Ali. Weathers’ handsomeness, athleticism and crisp diction make him not only Rocky’s opponent, but his better in every way – he looks better, fights better and sounds better. Rocky knows he’s outclassed not just in the ring, but in life too. Creed could have easily been a “villain” of sorts, but Stallone and Weathers make Apollo smart, savvy and completely in control of the “spin” surrounding the fight.

Apollo Creed looks for a small time fighter to face in an exhibition bout. He finds "The Italian Stallion."
Real life boxer Ken Norton turned the Apollo role down.

If there is any false note in the film, it’s the veteran Meredith as Rocky’s trainer, Mickey. Maybe it was because he was the biggest “name” in the film that the familiarity makes him seem less “authentic” compared to the revelatory turns by Stallone, Shire, Young and Weathers. When he first appeared in the film, my sister was waiting to hear him do the Penguin laugh from Batman. It’s the one performance in the film that, well, feels like a performance.

The producers wanted Lee Strasberg for the role of Mickey but couldn't meet his asking price.

Avildsen cast the supporting roles with meat and potato character actors who looked like he grabbed them off the street in Philadelphia. He generously gives Thayer David (the fight promoter), Tony Burton (Apollo’s manager) and Joe Spinell (Rocky’s small time gangster boss) moments that do much to create the gritty, small, ordinary world where Rocky knows his place. It’s a harsh, grimy place, as are the people who populate it.

Spinell had an asthma attack shooting his first scene, and used his inhaler.
Avildsen used that take in the final cut.

Rocky was just the second film to use a Steadicam, which enabled the breathtaking shot of Rocky mounting the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as the climatic fight scene. For the famous training sequence, much of the footage, including Rocky’s run through the street market and on the quay by the boat, were shot on the fly – Avildsen and crew couldn’t afford to pay for the film permits. Instead, they drove around in a van filming Stallone in improvised locations. That type of montage is now such a staple in movies, it’s hard to remember how fresh it was in Rocky. So many post-Rocky“underdog” films have copied it (including Avildsen’s own Karate Kid) that you can’t believe it was never a cliché.

The inventor of the Steadicam first tested it with his girlfriend running up the steps of the Philadelphia
Museum of Art. Avildsen saw the footage and it inspired the movie's most famous image.

Many film critics grumbled when Avildsen won the Oscar over other more well-regarded directors. They blamed the win on the out-of-touch Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (sound familiar?) The fact is, though, that the hipper Directors Guild gave their prize to Avildsen too.

Avildsen collects his Oscar.
He beat Ingmar Bergman, Sidney Lumet, Alan J. Pakula and Lina Wertmuller

Whenever I talk movies with fellow movie buffs, I see them roll their eyes when I bring up Rocky. Their perspective of the original film is skewed by its association with the sequels that followed. If only the story of Rocky ended when the film ended, with Rocky and Adrian frozen in a triumphant embrace. Instead, Stallone, the producers, and the studio cashed in and pimped the characters out. The newly trim, bronzed and blow-dried Stallone made Rocky into a cartoon, and threw the supporting characters to the side. The sequels were overacted, overproduced, overblown, yet strangely underpopulated. Rocky now lived in a vacuum. He was the only character that mattered. And don’t even get me started on the red sweat band in Rocky II. It’s more frightening than Joel Grey’s false eyelashes.

Just all kinds of wrong.

It’s a shame that the sequels exploited and cheapened what made the original so stunning, and such a visceral experience 40 years ago.

It was deep in the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, Jimmy Carter administration malaise. We were worn down by inflation and oil embargos. In small towns like mine, an entire industry was collapsing.
Steel mills, coal mines and manufacturing plants were lumbering dinosaurs on their way to extinction. Anti-heroes and emancipated women were the darlings at the box office. Hard-working, decent guys like my dad were just looking for a break. They weren’t seeing who they were – or who they wanted to be – on the screen.

The night before the fight, Rocky sees that a banner has the color of his trunks wrong.
(An actual mistake made by the props department.)

"Does it matter?"says the fight promoter, in a line that Stallone wrote on the spot.

Back to my parents and my sisters and I in a small theater on a freezing western Pennsylvania night. My dad and mom likely entered the theater that night with lots on their minds – car payments, mortgages, saving to send three girls to college, the nasty chronic cough my dad had from smoking too many cigarettes. They were probably prepared to have another movie disappoint them, and embarrass their daughters.

With Rocky clutching Adrian in freeze-frame (it was the 70s) and the strains of Bill Conti’s iconic score playing over the final credits, someone in the audience began clapping. Soon everyone was on their feet applauding, which then turned into cheering. I heard the man behind me tell his date “I feel like I could lift this theater on my shoulders right now!” I did too. More importantly so did my dad. He was literally out of breath and invigorated when the movie ended.
Walking to the car, my family was excitedly replaying scenes and dialogue. They were already planning on telling others at work, at church and at school to be sure to see Rocky. I wasn’t. In some strange way, I didn’t want Rocky to be a hit. I wanted it to remain something special that had happened just to us. No one will ever know or love these people like we did, I thought. Somehow, keeping the movie a secret meant being able to hold onto the joy forever. One of my sisters suggested that we come back the next night and see it again. For a moment my dad considered it. I’m glad we didn’t. While I’ve enjoyed seeing the movie again over the years, nothing will ever top that first time.

As we were driving home, my mom, sisters and I were arguing about whether or not Rocky had actually won the fight. “What difference does it make?” my dad said from the front seat. “He was a winner either way. All I know is when he ran up those stairs, I was right there with him. What a movie!”
Yo, dad, you were right. Rocky was a winner. And a knockout.

Roberta Steve is a writer and blogger. A native of Pittsburgh, her Steel Town Girl blog details coming of age in the 1970s. She is also writing her first play and advocates for mental health awareness. A film buff, sports fan, fashionista, and sometime actress, you can find her on Facebook at Steel Town Girl, or follow her on Twitter @Bertie913.

This essay is part of the Animals in Film Blogathon hosted by The Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood.

Visit the site for more posts from participating blogs!

Warning: Spoiler Alert. This is a critical essay not a review, therefore many crucial plot points are revealed for the purpose of discussion and analysis.

Films that attempt to dramatize (and in so doing, comment upon) distasteful aspects of the human condition, set a difficult course for themselves. Storyteller directors—desperate not to give the appearance of endorsing that which they seek to condemn, devoted to making the complex unequivocal, and nervous about offending anyone— become, in their oversimplification and moralizing, less filmmakers than politicians, proselytizers, and propagandists. Though well-intentioned and right-headed, these films are the sort that reward viewers for never having their preconceptions challenged and seem to exist solely to reassure audiences of the “rightness” of good, the triumph of order, and confirm life's eventual parity.

By way of contrast, artful directors—those more interested in examining than explaining, committed to emotional honesty rather than easy answers, and respectful of an audience’s intelligence— in refusing to spell everything out, willingly take the risk of being misunderstood and misinterpreted. Even reviled.

Ellen: "No, I tried. I tried, and I couldn't shoot."

Paul: "Then you didn't want its life."

Ellen: "Yes...yes, I did!"

I can’t vouch for movie audiences around the world, but we Americans have earned the reputation for liking films which tell us how we should think and feel about a topic. Otherwise we seem to get easily confused. Take, for example, when Bryan Forbes’ feminist horror film The Stepford Wives (1975) was thought by many to be sexist chiefly because the women don’t “win” in the end, and the chauvinistic behavior of the men was depicted in a blackly comic, satiric manner. Similarly, Samuel Fuller’s powerful anti-racism film, White Dog (1982) was practically yanked from theaters because many mistook this dramatic parable about hatred being taught (it’s about a dog trained by white supremacists to attack black people), for actually being racist itself.

The depiction of objectionable behavior (especially in the absence of punishment or retribution) is not necessarily an endorsement of it. Often, as in the case of the predatory male character in The Fox, a man whose motives and actions can be read as despicable, it is a means of provocation. A sly method of exposing us to the unpleasant things within ourselves we fail to recognize because it doesn't flatter our self-image.

I’m no fan of morally dubious movies that glorify selfish instincts or try to normalize evil (we have reality TV and our current Presidential election to do that); but I do admire films that aren’t afraid of ambiguity, are open to interpretation, and resist the impulse to explain the complex.

Sandy Dennis as Jill Banford

Anne Heywood as Ellen Marsh

Keir Dullea as Paul Renfield

As relationships go, few are more emotionally and psychologically complicated as the triangular one at the center of The Fox, director Mark Rydell’s (The Rose, On Golden Pond) 1967 adaptation of D. H. Lawrence’s 1922 novella.

Jill and Ellen are two college friends living a life of isolated independence on a remote farm in Canada (Lawrence’s story took place in WW I England, the film updates to ‘60s Ontario). Jill (Dennis) is the domestic type, forever fretting over her stove and household accounts (“You and your mixing bowl and your muffin tray have conquered the elements”), while Ellen (Heywood) stomps about in work boots handing the entirety of the farm’s manual labor.

One blonde, one dark, this kind of easy, heavy-handed symbolism is something of a motif in The Fox, one I don't particularly mind since the cues are taken from Lawrence’s heavily-Freudian short novel. Both are younger than portrayed in the novel, and the film presents the pair’s adoption of traditionally feminine/masculine roles as arising as much out of practicality as personality: Jill’s verbose excitability, physical weakness, and pragmatic temperament contrasting with Jill’s athleticism, protectiveness, and taciturn malleability (her standard response to any questions is “It makes no difference to me”).

But if Jill’s obvious contentment with their domestic arrangement suggests the fulfillment of a desire to cloister herself away from the male (even the animals are mostly female: Edwina the hen, Eurydice the cow- and in a monologue I don’t believe is in the book, she recounts a college date-rape incident); Ellen’s distracted restlessness hints at something suppressed rising to the surface. Her waking hours are dazed by a kind of sensual reawakening, while in her dreams she is simultaneously haunted and hypnotized by the fox that has been raiding their henhouse.

In spite of their sharing a bed (never even touching or kissing goodnight until a distraught conciliation scene near the end) and evince the relaxed affection of a long-married couple, like the book, the film leaves ambiguous the degree of Jill and Ellen’s intimacy (although the notion of a platonic “Boston Marriage” was easier to accept in 1920 England than in the sexually liberated ‘60s).

This ambiguity, as maddening as one might find it or as much of a cop-out as it may appear, genuinely serves to make what might otherwise be just another romantic triangle more provocative, in addition to intensifying the film's dramatic conflict considerably. Especially once the women’s peace is invaded by the fox-like Paul (Dullea), the merchant seaman grandson of the farm’s deceased former owner.

The initial effect of the screenplay’s refusal to define the particulars of Jill & Ellen’s relationship (or the women’s sexuality) is that the audience is placed in the unwanted but self-reflexive position of identifying with the townspeople and Paul. We're forced to ask ourselves, is our desire to KNOW what these women are to one another just part of a need to define them, explain them, and assign roles to their behavior…indeed, to subject the characters to the confining, socially-imposed definitions they seek independence from?

Secondarily, once Paul makes the shift from welcome guest to predatory intruder, the motives for his actions become less obvious when we don’t really know exactly what it is he has imposed himself into the middle of. Depending on the scene, Paul comes across convincingly as either harmless or sinister.

The Fox, a three-character drama, set, pointedly, in the chilly dead of winter, is something of a war movie. It’s vast battlefield encompassing everything from sexuality, gender roles, masculinity, femininity, love, violence, passion, and independence. The weapons of choice: nature (human and animal), instinct (masculine and feminine), self-preservation, domination, possession.

The catalyst for it all, the fox (the male); an animal functioning out of a natural, violent instinct to dominate, or an animal of cunning?

Ellen: “You know, you do resemble him (the fox), Mr. Renfield. It’s remarkable."

The Fox is one of the few “adult” films from my childhood I was unsuccessful in persuading my mom I was mature enough (at 10-years-old) to see. Though crushed at the time, in retrospect I’m glad she didn’t relent, for not only wouldn’t I have understood it, but I would have been sorely disappointed that the intelligent, psychologically complex film wasn’t the risqué lesbian romp its ad campaign (and I pre-teen imagination) led me to expect.

When I ultimately got around to seeing The Fox in 1979 or so, I remember enjoying it, but somehow feeling afterward that I’d been the victim of a bait-and-switch. Over the years the film had developed a reputation as a LGBT favorite, but when it was all over—with Jill dead by murder/accident, and Ellen whisked away by the domineering Paul—I knew what I’d just watched wasn’t a film depicting lesbianism so much as another Hollywood movie using the sensationalistic lure of homosexuality to merely: (quoting Karen Hollinger’s book Feminist Film Studies) “validate the superiority and desirability of heterosexuality.” A feeling I also got from a similar triangular tug-of-war in the 1984 film adaptation of Henry James’ The Bostonians.

It’s an opinion I still hold about The Fox, but having read the book and lived a good deal more of life since then, it’s now just one of many opinions and impressions I’m left with regarding this fascinating and compelling movie.

Female & Male: Natural Enemies?

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I began this essay citing how difficult it is for films to dramatize distasteful behavior without audiences (me, in this instance) resorting to the knee-jerk response of disapproving of a film because they disapprove of the behavior depicted.

That’s precisely what happened the first time I saw The Fox. The character of Paul (his being a fox and all) is supposed to be a disruptive force in the relationship of Jill and Ellen. Instinctively, without malice and without even knowing why, his male sense of superiority compels him to seek dominance over these women; in particular, a need to possess the life of Ellen, the woman most threateningly “masculine” and self-possessed.

His marriage proposal (the least romantic on record, and underscored with ominous music) is more an act of hypnosis and submission than a declaration of love.

Paul, locking his prey in his gaze

Because I so strongly resented the negative subtext (the “weak” women being easily overpowered, the sexual pliancy of Ellen, the nagging femininity of Jill) and was preoccupied with my expectation of the film offering a conclusive, pro-individualism message; it went entirely over my head how Paul’s assumptive, force-of-will-dominance in the narrative (and seeming victory in the end) is depicted as an ultimately negative destructive force that tragically results in none of the characters getting what they want.

The Fox turned out to be exactly the anti-machismo declaration I wanted it to be - an intelligent look of the predatory nature of man in the face of the vulnerable; but because it took the subtle, roundabout route, it took me several years and many viewings to catch it.

Of course, this is just my personal take on a film among whose many virtues lies its ability to be appreciated, interpreted...and even reviled...in many different ways.

Ellen "What is there here for me, Jill?"
Jill: "Yourself. Something I could never take from you."

"And when he holds me, I feel I'm seeping into his flesh...and there's no more me."

PERFORMANCES

No matter how one ultimately feels about The Fox as a film, it’s hard not to credit its three stars with giving vividly realized performances. Anne Heywood - whose honest-to-god real name of Violet Pretty(!) makes me want to hug her - is sensational. I've never seen a single one of her other films, but I think I'd have a hard time seeing her as anyone but Ellen Marsh. Playing the most complex, yet least communicative character, Heywood somehow manages to make us feel Ellen’s strength as well as her doubtfulness. In the marvelous scene in which she reveals to Jill that she has always felt responsible for taking care of her, Heywood says it with such tender weariness it just breaks your heart.

The beautiful Keir Dullea (I'll do it for you now, so you won't have to: "Keir Dullea, gone tomorrow" - Noel Coward) is well-cast as the living embodiment of the fox. Facially, he's not the most expressive actor, but he's been blessed with the most astounding eyes, and it's they that do all the emotional heavy-lifting.

Shot in a manner to best emphasize his vulpine features,
Dullea gives an appropriately sly performance

Coming as a surprise to no one, Sandy Dennis (long-rumored to be lesbian in real life, I certainly hope she was) is my favorite in the film. She's the warmth the film needs in the early scenes, but when she turns chilly, she's really excellent...the excitable Jill reveals an unexpected sturdiness. Dennis' Jill Banford is one of her least-mannered performances, but given her high annoyance ratio among film lovers, one can't help but feel she serves a purpose in The Fox not dissimilar to what Stanley Kubrick said the casting of Shelley Duvall served in The Shining: "Well, you gotta have somebody in that part that maybe the audience would also like to kill a little bit."

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Lalo Schifrin’s beautiful Oscar and Grammy-nominated musical score.

William Fraker’s (Rosemary’s Baby, Looking for Mr. Goodbar) breathtaking cinematography.

Paul wields his phallic ax

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

For movies to work for me, they don't have to always be about the truth, I can find something to respond to if (as is the case of The Fox) they are just about atruth.
The Fox is not the triumphant feminist/LGBT love story I thought it would be. But what it is I've seen played out countless times in my life.

You see it in the "mansplaining" phenomenon (which is nothing new). You see it in the way men like Donald Trump can only relate to women by trying to exert power over them; either through sexual objectification or, when feeling threatened, trying to belittle or destroy them in some way.
I see it in gyms I've worked in, where men feel the need to exert a subtle superiority over women by being "helpful" and offering unsolicited workout tips.

You see it in the paradox of male fantasy fetishizing of girl-on-girl sex existing side by side with a real-world hatred and fear of lesbians and bisexuals.

The Fox Explores How Just The Idea Of Women With No Need For A Man
Can Ignite A Primal Fear in Some Men

I've personally listened as scores of bright, accomplished, self-reliant women tell me they're looking for a man who'll boss them around or take control. I've been around when women with loyal cores of loving girlfriends dropped them all like hot potatoes when a fascinating man came along and consumed all their attentions.

These things are neither admirable nor desirable, and not even indicative of most people's relationships; but here, some 90 years after D.H. Lawrence put pen to paper, the contradictory and cruel power plays between men and women seem to have changed little.
For me, The Fox is an allegory about a particular kind of male/female dynamic, with the suggestion that what is primitive is not necessarily natural.

Bill Gold

Warning: Spoiler Alert. This is a critical essay not a review. Therefore, many crucial plot points are revealed for the purpose of discussion and analysis.

“I’m just an outmoded character, nothing more. You know, the beautiful stranger, slightly sad, slightly… mysterious…that haunts one place after another.”

In spite of their vast number and long history, I’m not sure I can name even five vampire movies I like. There’s Andy Warhol’s Dracula (1974), Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), The Hunger (1983), and… OK, looks like I hit the wall at three. Well, make that four; for topping this very short list and ranking #1 as my absolute favorite vampire movie of all time is Belgian director Harry Kümel’ssleek, sexy, and exceedingly stylish Daughters of Darkness.

A Belgian / French / Italian/ U.S. co-production, Daughters of Darkness combines—with wit and flair—‘70s arthouse sophistication with good ol’ grindhouse exploitation in the telling of a modern-day Countess Dracula myth set in a desolate, cavernous hotel in Belgium. Conceived as a strictly commercial venture contingent on the internationally market-friendly ingredients of bosoms and bloodshed; in the hands of Harry Kümel (whose work I’m unfamiliar with) Daughters of Darkness undergoes a kind of alchemic transformation. One wherein the alternatively limiting factors of a low budget, brief shooting schedule, somewhat trashy material, and minimal cast of unevenly-skilled actors with clashing accents—become the very elements, when combined, contributing most significantly to the film’s offbeat allure and eerie fascination.

Delphine Seyrig as Countess Elizabeth Bathory

John Karlen as Stefan Chilton

Danielle Ouimet as Valerie Chilton

Andrea Rau as Ilona Harczy

Paul Esser as Pierre

When the train of a honeymooning couple jumps the track (that’s not a metaphor, I mean an actual railroad mishap), the pair, having wed in Switzerland just three hours hence and now en route to England, is temporarily waylaid in Ostend, Belgium. The groom, Stefan (Karlen), curiously reluctant to reach their destination and have his new bride Valerie (Ouimet) meet his aristocratic mother, suggests a brief stay at an off-season beach resort—“It’s rather dead around here this time of the year,” guilelessly intones Pierre (Paul Esser) the concierge—where they are the only guests.

That is, until night falls and an exquisite, 1940s vintage Bristol motorcar arrives at the hotel and from which emerge a mysterious, vaguely predatory, smoky-voiced Hungarian countess (Seyrig) and her exotically overripe “secretary” Ilona (Rau). Descending upon the establishment like a couple of, well...vampire bats, upon catching sight of our unwitting honeymooners (who, given the degree of duplicity and discord already manifest between the two, appear to have met and married in haste) our chichi new guests immediately lay claim.

"...both so perfect. So good-looking. So sweet."
The concierge recognizes the unchanged Countess from 40-years earlier,
when he was just a young bellboy at the hotel

Veiling steely determination behind a charming smile and the kind of languid savior faire only the very rich and well-traveled can successfully pull off, the glamorously debauched countess wastes no time insinuating herself into the lives of the newlyweds (think Eva Gabor as Marlene Dietrich cast as a lesbian Auntie Mame). Corruption of the innocent is the goal, possession of that which must be had is the objective, but the path to seduction is not smooth and not without its obstructions.

There’s the obvious interference of the puzzled hotel concierge who always seems to materialize on the periphery of the action (“He’s already up…when does he sleep?” snaps the countess at one point). And then there’s that other figure from the countess’ past, a retired policeman (Georges Jamin), engaged in the amateur investigation of a recent rash of murders of young women.

But it is Stefan, the not-quite better half of our virtuous couple, who may not be all that he seems. Sharing with the countess an unsettlingly simpatico affinity for brutality, violence, and the sensually hypnotic sway of decadence, Stephan is the film noir male protagonist to the countess’ femme fatale. And like those characters, he is another self-assured male who thinks he holds all the cards, but it is to a game which women, over generations, have been forced to rewrite the rules.

The Happy Couple
Both Roman Polanski (Bitter Moon) & Paul Schrader (The Comfort of Strangers ) have made
interesting films about debauched couples seducing unsuspecting couples

Daughters of Darknessis a knowing (and sometimes winking) take on the vampire film, alternately paying homage to and gently sending up the genre. In the process, it becomes a film which ‒ not unlike the countess herself ‒ exists tantalizingly between two worlds. It’s both a deliberately leisurely, aesthetic horror film and an amusingly camp Eurotrash skin flick. The unified benefit to each is that the arty side never has the chance to become pretentious, and the exploitation side is surprisingly, refreshingly restrained and imbued with a great deal of cleverness and sly wit.

Stylistically, Daughters of Darkness is a knockout, making subtle visual reference to other films and cinema in general: Hitchcock’s Psycho, Garbo, Louise Brooks, the horror tropes of F. W. Murnau and Tod Browning, and Dietrich’s von Sternberg collaborations. Self-referencing enough to have a scene wherein a character (the detective) looks directly into the camera, breaking the fourth wall, and essentially sets us up for what kind of ride we’re in for:

Georges Jamin as the Retired Policeman reminds us not to take what is to follow too seriously

“The kind of thing you read about in medieval manuscripts. You know, silly tales about ghosts chased away by garlic…and vampires shrinking from crosses and running water and daylight. Satan’s ritual under a full moon.”

The neoclassic opulence of the desolate Belgian sea resort makes for a picturesque alternative to the usual gothic vampire castle, the tale taking place during the bleakness of winter predating Nicolas Roeg’s similar use of Venice, Italy in the 1974 supernatural thriller Don’t Look Now (especially the scene where Stefan & Valerie explore the canals of Bruges only to come upon the discovery of a dead body).

I can’t attest as to what a horror/vampire film fan makes of Daughters of Darkness (my sense is that it’s too slow and lacking in scares and gore to be satisfying); but everything about this movie is as suited to my tastes as a Ken Russell-Roman Polanski film festival.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

There’s a kind of predictable, to-be-expected sameness to the form and structure of genre movies which filmmakers deviate from at their own risk. As a film fan, I can’t help but give appropriate credit to horror films in general for their vast historical influence on the art form, as such. But as a non-fan of vampire films, I think it helped a great deal that I came to Daughters of Darkness with no expectations to be met or hopes to be dashed. I only hoped it wouldn’t live up to its limp US ad campaign and cheesy title, which sounds like a made-for-TV movie starring Donna Mills and Kay Lenz.

To my delight, Daughters of Darkness proved to be one happy surprise after another; in fact, I fell in love with it the minute Delphine Seyrig’s elegant vampire made her appearance.

"I want to be loved. I want everybody to love me."

Aside from the irresistible plot (simply put, female vampires are just waaaay cooler than male vampires), the above reference to Polanski and Russell is truly apt in this case. Kümel, who has stated he was influenced a great deal by surreal and expressionist cinema in devising a look for the film, gives Daughters of Darkness a cinematic theatricality reminiscent of Ken Russell. Vivid use of color abounds (pointedly, red, black, and white) and the compositions are arresting in their beauty and effectiveness.

The similarities to Polanski arise out of the film’s measured pacing, claustrophobic atmosphere, and emphasis on psycho-sexual conflict. Manipulation is indistinguishable from seduction. Evasion is revelatory. Pain is pleasure. Harry Kümel has taken stock characters and commercial themes and created one of the most gleefully sleek, consistently surprising, intriguingly stylish horror films I’ve ever seen.

Worthy of Polanski
A nightmarish shot of the pre-dawn disposal of a dead body as two figures
(looking like winged creatures in black & white) retreat into the distance

PERFORMANCES

Successful casting is always a result of a great deal more than hiring capable actors. Many a wonderful film has been populated with folks who couldn’t act their way out of a broom closet (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) while many a stinker has been made with casts who have to move their Oscar & Tony Awards out of the way to get to the door (August: Osage County).

French film star Delphine Seyrig (Last Year at Marienbad) is not only the main reason Daughters of Darkness secured financing; she’s also the main reason to see the film at all. Everything in the film – from décor, cinematography, screenplay, and supporting cast – feels as though it is in service of and silent acquiescence to, her extraordinary presence and canny performance. She’s really that good, and so fascinating to watch.

Things That make You Go Hmmm
Stefan is brought to a state of ecstasy recounting the bloody atrocities of Elizabeth's ancestor

Possessing an unforgettably seductive voice, Seyrig conducts herself with a kind of otherworldly regal aplomb making plausible the film’s conceit that her character is not (as she claims) the ancestor of Countess Elizabeth Bathory (a notorious true-life 15^th century serial killer) but the genuine, ageless article.

Best of all, Seyrig’s characterization is a refreshing interpretation of the female vampire. She dispenses with the clichés of the predatory vamp or femme fatale (no dark, sultry gazes or feline stalking); rather, she plays Countess Bathory as though she were a pampered cinema queen: eager to please, desperate to be liked, all disarming smiles and solicitous attentions, yet underneath it all a selfish monster.

"I wish I could die."

Another personal fave in the film is Ilona, the countess' pouty companion with the sexy 3-D lips. As embodied by German pinup model/actress Andrea Rau (who lends camp appeal by resembling a kewpie-doll Sally Bowles) her limitations as an actress are more than compensated for by her striking presence, appealing screen charisma, and a vague "otherness" in her stilted line readings befitting her being an alluring member of the undead.

My general antipathy toward vampires accounts for my not recognizing - until fairly recently - actor John Karlen as Willie Loomis of Dark Shadows,the popular mid-60s vampire TV soap opera (I was practically the only kid in school who didn't watch it). As Stefan, Brooklyn-born Karlen, the only American in the cast, oozes so much Eurotrash skeeviness, I always assumed he was European. So on that score he certainly succeeds, and he gives a solid, tensely mercurial performance.

Though it pains me to say so, hands-down prizes for the worst performance go to former Miss Quebec, Danielle Ouimet. It pains me because Ms. Ouiment’s barely discernible acting ability (she’s singularly inexpressive of voice and face) strangely works to her advantage in the context of the film. Surrounded by the morally desiccated people in a surreal environment under fantastic circumstances, Ouimet’s somewhat dazed countenance comes off as stylized and subtextural; as though the sole character in the film in possession of a soul is the one least able to express emotion.

"Be sure to tell the young woman 'Mother' sends regards."
Stefan is revealed to be the kept "Ilona" in a homosexual May/December pairing.
The feared "Mother" is portrayed by Dutch film director Fons Rademakers

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Whether considered an arty trash film or a trashy art film (I personally think it’s a special kind of high-style pop masterpiece), Daughters of Darknessis a great deal of campy fun. I know next to nothing about Harry Kümel, but were I to go by the way this film makes me feel and how it engages me with its visuals, its sharp screenplay (credited to Kümel, Jean Ferry, Pierre Druot, and Manfred R. Köhler), and Seyrig’s knowing evocation of the film sirens of yesteryear; I would say he is a man who not only loves movies but understands them. It’s evident in every frame.

I'm a sucker (Hee hee!) for thematic a visual duality in movies

Les Lèvres Rouges (Red Lips) is just one of Daughter of Darkness' 14 international titles

Ever the illusionist, Elizabeth carries a mirrored compact in spite of not being able to see her reflection

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Apropos of the timeless beauty of Seyrig's Countess Bathory herself, Daughters of Darkness is a film that looks better to me with each passing year. Save for a rather harrowing shower scene and a still-creepy nighttime burial sequence, the sex and violence that once seemed so sensational is now rather tame. Similarly, with movies now becoming faster and busier, yet saying less, the deliberate pacing of Daughters of Darkness feels like a welcome extravagance.
Even the film's camp elements, in this age of overkill and overdetermination, sparkles on a far more ingenious plane than what I seem to remember ("Good day to be alive, eh?" remarks the countess in forced jocularity after committing a particularly dastardly deed).

It's Not Easy Having A Good Time

In the end, you've got to hand it to a director told to go out and make a commercial film with plenty of sex and violence, and he comes back with an erotic expressionist feminist lesbian arthouse camp vampire horror movie.

BONUS MATERIAL

Director Harry Kümel talks about Daughters of Darkness in the excellent BBC documentary Horror Europa (2012) by Mark Gattis. He's the first director interviewed, and he sheds fascinating light on the reasons behind his choices for the look of the countess and the dominance of the colors red, black, and white. Available on YouTube HERE.

I also understand that the DVD release is loaded with commentaries and extras.

I will dream a gentle dream

a soft dream.

I am at peace in this dream.

I am safe...

Dream Lover is a not-uninteresting Freudian psychological thriller from the director of Klute, derailed by a too-clinical fascination with the sterile, simultaneously uncinematic and exposition-reliant world of dream therapy.

In the mid-‘80s, erstwhile child star and ‘70s teen idol Kristy McNichol made a tantalizing bid for adult credibility when cast against type in Alan J. Pakula’s visually persuasive psychosexual thriller Dream Lover. At age twenty-three, the two-time Emmy Award-winning actress (Family) with the easygoing smile and tomboy image was cast in her first truly adult role as Kathy Gardner, an emotionally and sexually repressed music student plagued by recurring nightmares.

Kristy McNichol as Kathy Gardner

Paul Shenar as Benjamin Gardner

Ben Masters as Dr. Michael Hansen

Justin Deas as Kevin McCann

Kathy is a talented and gifted jazz flutist (you’ll just have to take the movie’s word for that) living in a state of infantilized, vaguely incestuous arrested-development under the dictatorial thumb of her overbearing father (Paul Shenar), a prominent D.C. attorney.
After winning a scholarship at a New York music academy, Kathy, in an uncharacteristic show of independence and in strict defiance of her father, sublets an apartment in Greenwich Village, and, in short order, becomes romantically involved with her jazz improv instructor (Justin Deas). But before she even has a chance to adjust to her newfound freedom, Freudian guilt and paternal retribution comes swiftly and brutally in the form of an "I warned you it wasn't safe away from Daddy" apartment break-in and assault, resulting in Kathy killing her assailant with his own knife.
Now haunted by recurring nightmares in which she is forced to relive the attack, Kathy submits to an unorthodox, experimental sleep therapy. A treatment which, while proving to be successful in quelling her nightmares, may have the unforeseen side-effect of inducing, in her waking moments, the compulsion to act out and upon emotions heretofore confined solely (and safely) to her dream world.

As a fan of psychological thrillers, I recall at the time hoping that Dream Lover - with its themes of violence, sex, dreams, and repression (redolent of Marnie, Spellbound, and Vertigo) - was Pakula picking up the Hitchcock mantle after serial Hitchcock homagist Brian De Palma at last appeared ready to set it aside following the flop reception of his Rear Window-inspired Body Double (1984). If so, I was beyond excited at the prospect of what a director of Pakula's skill and sensitivity with actors could bring to the genre.
Thus, I turned a blind eye to anything negative portended by Dream Lover being released in the dump month of January (a traditionally low-attendance time), and remained blissfully ignorant to the fact that I was one of the few (the very few, as it turns out) enthusiastically anticipating the opening of this, Alan J. Pakula’s first film in four years…since 1982's Sophie’s Choice.
My imagination was tweaked by Dream Lover’s striking, pulpy poster art (at the time my work commute took me past MGM’s Culver City studio, so for over a month I got to gawk at the sight of an enormous billboard featuring America’s teen sweetheart brandishing a switchblade). I was sent thoroughly over-the-top the first time I saw the theatrical trailer—all fast cuts, Psycho-strings, and ominous voice-over: “Imagine the terror of living a nightmare every time you sleep. Every... time… you sleep….” And I was unaccountably taken with the intriguing notion of seeing squeaky-clean Kristy McNichol in a role that promised to be a dramatic departure.

But what excited me most was the return of Alan J. Pakula (one of my ab fab favorite ‘70s directors) to the suspense thriller genre. To me, Klute (1971): a character drama disguised as a detective story, and The Parallax View (1974): a truly terrifying political paranoia suspenser, are two of the most stylish, distinctive, and chillingly effective thrillers of the decade. Pakula knew how to tell a story and go for the effect, but never at the expense of character. Indeed, he seemed to have the magic touch when it came to actors, often extracting unexpectedly fresh and authentic performances out of long-established stars. In The Parallax View Paula Prentiss, known for her light-comedy roles, gives a nakedly intense dramatic performance, while, conversely, Pakula’s comedy Starting Over(1979) single-handedly reinvented Candice Bergen’s career by unearthing the self-effacing comedienne beneath the ice-princess veneer.

It’s this latter directorial alchemy I anticipated Pakula working on Kristy McNichol, a talented actress I’d always liked (even in the wretched-but-oddly enjoyable The Pirate Movie), but who, when not busy being the only good thing in a string of mediocre films, appeared headed on a career collision-course that threatened to turn her into Marie Osmond’s answer to Erin Moran.

Kathy, Scat Singing With a Jazz Combo
Remarkably, this is NOT the reason someone tries to kill her a few moments later.
(McNichol also played a flutist in 1984's Just The Way You Are)

However, when I say Alan J. Pakula is one of my favorite ‘70s directors, I say it with an emphasis on the “70s” part, for I tend to be a tad less fond of the late director’s post-1979 output (Pakula died in 1998). Starting with the soporific financial thriller Rollover (1981), Pakula's work during this period vacillated between ambitious (Sophie's Choice), banal (See You in the Morning - 1989), conventional (The Pelican Brief -1993), and, in the case of Dream Lover, fascinating but flawed.

Kathy's dreams are affected by the repressed, conflicted feelings
she has about her love-hate relationship with her controlling father

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

As contemporary psychological thrillers go, Dream Lover is very much up my alley. Yet, due to reasons easily attributable to its script (a first effort by one-time Pakula assistant and co-producer Jon Boorstin) and less verifiably ascribed to Pakula’s directorial choices, Dream Lover proves itself to be one of those high-concept, high-style thrillers that starts out promisingly, only to later develop serious problems sustaining suspense and maintaining a consistent tone.

To Kathy's growing roster of father-related hang-ups, add male trust issues and sexual anxiety.
"Someday your father's gonna have to find out you're a woman."
"Not today."

Before its script gets hijacked by the self-serious contributions of a phalanx of sleep-research technical advisers (presented with the kind of grave earnestness guaranteed to make it sound absolutely crackpot), Dream Lover at least has the benefit of a marvelous setup. From the outset the central conflict is established as one both emotionally subjective (Kathy’s unresolved feelings about her father) and psychologically reactive (resultant of the discrepancy between Kathy’s dream reality – aka her desires - and her actual existence). In being made privy to the content of Kathy’s dreams, we’re made aware of her rather vague daily persona as a dutiful daughter contrasts significantly with her vivid and active dream life.

In her nocturnal life, Kathy variably casts herself as a child; her own late mother (dressed, significantly, in red); and as an imprisoned figure capable of escape only through means of literal flight. Meanwhile, her father, for whom Kathy in real-life serves as a combination surrogate wife figure and eternal child, appears in alternately as an idealized figure of warmth and acceptance, or a threatening, faceless specter.

In her peaceful dreams, Kathy places herself within the pastoral scene depicted
in a painting that hangs (significantly, again) over her father's bed.

Since Dream Lover is presented from the exclusive perspective of Kathy’s reality—the perspective of a repressed-bordering-on-regressed grown woman with serious daddy issues; the film makes an interesting case of positing Kathy’s attack (though psychologically scarred, she comes to no physical harm due to unleashed pent-up rage) as being a physical manifestation of guilt - she defied her father, and sexual panic - the attack occurs moments after what may have been her first sexual encounter.

"I stabbed him...he dropped his knife, so I picked it up and I stabbed him!
And...I never felt so good as when I stuck that knife in him!"

Dream Lover’s Freudian overlays are metered out with such style; its intensifying cycle of recurrence and repetition so measured and deliberately paced…it’s a little too bad that the gripping psychological thriller we’ve been primed for never actually shows up. The introduction of the sleep therapy angle (precisely when things should accelerate) takes what had heretofore been a fairly gripping, fun/trash psychological melodrama and tries to turn it into a serious exploration of the scientific advancements made in the area dream research. Zzzzzz.

Movies themselves are dreams. If a director wins over an audience’s confidence, he/she can make them believe and accept almost anything, no explanations necessary. Thrillers grind to a pedantic halt the minute they find it necessary to try to ground the primarily emotional pleasures of the genre in sober factualism (especially when, in order to accommodate a patently preposterous climax, you later choose to jettison all laws of physics and common sense). Hitchcock had the good sense to leave all the psychological mumbo jumbo to the end of Psycho, and even then it still comes across like the most superfluous scene in the movie.

Top: The red-walled apartment Kathy sublets is festooned with vivid animal prints, patterned drapes, and nude artworks hanging on the wall. It's like someone's libido has exploded all over the room. Below: Once moved in, uptight Kathy substitutes virginal whites for the blazing reds and patterns, has taken down the artwork, and covers the animal-print furniture with sheets. Here we have the mysterious stranger (Joseph Culp) in search of the whereabouts of the unknown "Maggie."

Throughout the film, Kathy's surroundings consistently reflect her emotional conflicts, reinforcing the theme of Kathy's dream reality having an increasing influence on her real life.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
From a literal standpoint, the phrase “Dreams are what le cinema is for” is no idle claim. Dreams have been depicted in motion pictures since their Inception (a little dream-related film-geek joke there…heh, heh) dating as far back as the early 1900s.
If asked to cite directors whose visual sense best captures what my own dreams look like, I’d have to say Ken Russell and Roman Polanski (making musical room for Busby Berkeley and Vincente Minnelli), but such baroque theatricality isn’t always necessary to make the fantasy world of dreams feel authentic to me.

Dream Lover presents dreams in a relatively straightforward, decidedly Freudian manner. All corridors, portals, vivid reds, and symbolism, one could likely reference any of the film’s images in a dream interpretation manual and arrive at precisely the intention Pakula is going for. Dream Lover was lensed by longtime Ingmar Bergman cinematographer Sven Nykvist (Fanny and Alexander) and he gives Kathy’s dreams an austere luster of atmospheric dread.
Unfortunately, Dream Lover came out just around the time of MTV over-saturation. Freudian symbolism had become such a clichéd overused staple of music videos at this point that Dream Lover’s imagery (as beautiful and fitting to the plot as it is) was met with a lot of been-there, done that.

Taking Flight

PERFORMANCES

I know a great many people don’t care for Kristy McNichol in this film (if the words “great many” can be used in reference to a film as obscure as Dream Lover), but I find her to be absolutely riveting. Given what I consider to be the low to marginal quality of most of her films (Only When I Laugh and White Dog being the exceptions) it’s perhaps not saying much to credit this as my favorite of her screen performances, but it really is…she absolutely makes the film for me.

It must be quite the challenge for actors to portray individuals who are emotionally shut-down, but McNichol gets under the skin of her character, infusing Kathy’s low-flame jitteriness with a great deal of emotional poignancy. McNichol has several really remarkable scenes, one of my favorites being when she is afraid to go to sleep and is asked by the empathetic sleep therapist to relate a sleep ritual from her childhood. Just absolutely marvelous work.

All of the performances in Dream Lover are uniformly fine, some suffering at the hand of their utilitarian service to the machinations of plot more than others. But I particularly like Ben Masters as the sleep researcher. He shares an easy rapport with McNichol, and his genuine seemingly nice-guy vibe plays terrifically to the elements of the story centering on Kathy's suppressed distrust of (and impaired judgment regarding) men.

Gayle Hunnicutt & John McMartin appear in brief roles as family friends

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Dream Lover embodies two of my favorite things in off-beat films: 1) So-called "serious" directors tacking genre material. 2) Actors cast against type.
Alan J. Pakula can't help but bring a lot of technical skill and intelligence to this thriller (in spite of a screenplay that too often has intelligent characters engaging in dumb behavior in order to keep the plot moving), but Dream Lover has the feel of a melodrama too proud to revel in its own enjoyably schlocky premise, and instead keeps trying to convince us of its seriousness of purpose. Too bad, because for at least 60 of its 104 minutes, Pakula looks like he's willing to go for broke and serve up a tasty, low-calorie thrill-ride. It only falls apart when he tries to shoehorn in the substance.
As for Kristy McNichol in the lead, she was a major draw for me back in 1986, and her subtle and affecting performance only looks better to me 30-years later. Not so much the 80s fashions and Kenny G-type sax musical interludes.

The 80s were not kind

BONUS MATERIAL

The theatrical trailer that got my pulse racing back in 1986

“You finally made it, Frankie. Oscar Night!. And here you sit, on top of a glass mountain called ‘success.’ You’re one of the chosen five, and the whole town’s holding its breath to see who won it. It’s been quite a climb, hasn’t it, Frankie? Down at the bottom, scuffling for dimes in those smokers, all the way to the top. Magic Hollywood! Ever think about it? I do, friend Frankie, I do….”

And thus begins one of the most sublimely terrible movies ever to grace the screen. Rife with overelaborate hyperbole (even in the 60s, few took the Oscars as seriously as this potboiler suggests), labored clichés, and the name “Frankie” repeated three times in a brief paragraph (the three, count ‘em three, screenwriters responsible for this gilt-edged burlesque must have thought they were writing for the radio. Characters keep repeating the name of the very person to whom they're speaking.)

With nary an ironic or self-aware bone in its overfamiliar, moth-eaten body, The Oscar is the kind of pandering-yet-earnest, self-serious Hollywood trash no one has the tragically unhip, old-school, out-of-touch naiveté + clueless moxie to know how to make anymore. A 1966 film that would have felt warmed-over in 1960 (the year Ocean’s Eleven and Sinatra’s Rat Pack made this kind of clean-cut, pomaded, sharkskin suited, ring-a-ding-ding brand of cool into a veritable brand), The Oscar is from the Joseph E. Levine (The Carpetbaggers, Harlow) school of overlit, elephantine artifice. Every interior looks like a soundstage, everyone’s clothes look as though they’d never been worn before, and the characters are so lacquered and lovingly photographed, they resemble department store mannequins. As though encouraged to get into the spirit of things, The Oscars’ flirting-with-obsolescence “all-star cast” (eight Oscar winners in all) gleefully comply with the latter by giving hyperactive, yet mannequin-stiff, performances wholly unacquainted with the psychology, movement patterns, or vocal rhythms of normal human behavior.
With each viewing of this unrelentingly unconvincing take on what I assume was intend to be a cautionary tale on the dangers of unbridled ambition, I grow less and less surprised that one of its screenwriters (Harlan Ellison) is known principally for his work in science fiction.

Stephen Boyd as Frankie Fane
"I'm fighting for my life! And there's a spiked boot for anyone who gets in my way!"

Elke Sommer as Kay Bergdahl
"It's that seed of rot inside of you which makes you what you are that
you can't change. You just dress it better!"

Tony Bennett as Hymie Kelly
"You lie down with pigs, you come up smelling like garbage!"

Eleanor Parker as Sophie Cantaro
"You go after what you want. In some men it's admirable, in you it's...unclean!"

Milton Berle as Arthur "Kappy" Kapstetter
"You never know you're on the way out until you suddenly
realize it would take a ticket to get back in."

The Oscar, subtitled: Memoirs of a Hollywood Louse, is an unabashed laundry list of every show biz/Hollywood cliché handed down since What Price Hollywood? (1932). A beyond-camp, glossy soap opera which stands as a reminder that when it comes to churning out overripe and overwrought melodrama, the Dolls of the Valley and Beyond sometimes can’t hold a candle to the hilariously hirsute histrionics of hardier sex.

Stephen Boyd, he of the narrow frame and chiseled, Tom of Finland profile, is Frankie Fane; your garden-variety ruthless user with a suitable-for-movie-marquees alliterative name (I don't recommend anyone try playing a drinking game in which you take a shot every time someone in the film says Frankie’s name, you'll be rushed to the hospital with alcohol poisoning by the 20-minute mark).

As this told-in-flashback opus begins, Frankie and longtime buddy Hymie Kelly (Tony Bennett, making his film debut / swansong and looking like he wished he were back in San Francisco with his heart) are eking out a living largely thanks to the bump and grind efforts of Frankie’s stripper girlfriend, Laurel Scott (Jill St. John).

Jill St. John as Laurel Scott
"What does he think I am, dirt? Every morning I'd get the feeling
he was gonna leave two dollars on the dresser for me!"

After a nasty run-in with a crooked sheriff—a bulldoggish Broderick Crawford playing the flip side of his Highway Patrol TV character (1955-1959)—the vagabond trio thumb a ride to NYC where breadwinner Laurel (who’s, of course, basically a nice, decent girl who just wants “a kid”) soon tires of Frankie's freeloading. This in spite of the fact that Hymie, the perennial 3^rd wheel, appears to be living with them and shows no sign of being any more gainfully employed than his pal.

As audiences wait in vain for Hymie to happen upon a microphone and solve everyone’s problems by discovering a latent talent for singing (and in the bargain provide a much-needed respite from the film’s ceaseless stream of risible dialog and ‘60s slang); Frankie the hound dog decides to accompany Hymie to “a swingin’ party in the village…lots of chicks” where he meets aspiring costume designer Kay Bergdahl (Sommer). In no time Frankie makes his move:

“You a tourist or a native?”

“Take one from column A and two from column B and get an egg roll either way.”

On the strength of that doozy, one would be forgiven for leaping to the conclusion that Kay might perhaps be suffering a stroke-related episode and in need of immediate medical attention, but not our Frankie. Clearly smitten by Kay’s pouting accent, silk-awning bangs, and mink eyelashes, our smarmy antihero instead continues to engage the comely blond in more Haiku-inspired small talk. Kay, hewing close to the film’s theme, has a way of making everything she says sound like excerpts from an Academy Award acceptance speech:

“I am the end result of everything I’ve ever learned… all I ever hope to be,

and all the experiences I’ve ever had.”

Oh...O.K., if you say so.

In a too-little / too-late display of backbone, Laurel—that hip-switchin’, nice-walkin’, bundle of loveliness—gets wind of Frankie’s nocturnal knavery and lays down the law:

“If you think I’m gonna work my tail off so you can run around with the village chicks…oh, stop spreadin’ the pollen around, Frankie...or else!”

Unfortunately, after having spent an evening with hard-to-get Bergdahl, round-heeled Scott’s ultimatum doesn’t exactly have the desired effect on Frankie, and the village pollen-spreader soon beats a hasty retreat. So hasty he misses the joyous news that Laurel is pregnant.

In much the same way Willy Wonka’s shiftless Grandpa Joe miraculously finds the energy to haul his wrinkled carcass out of bed once the prospect of a candy factory tour looms; the heretofore serially unemployed Frankie promptly lands a job in the garment district when it affords the opportunity to see more of the glacial good looks of lovely Miss Bergdahl. But it isn’t long before Kay’s middle-European cool proves no match for Frankie’s hotheaded, borderline sociopathic personality.

Koo koo Frankie shows a wise-guy actor (Jan Merlin) what it's like
to be on "the business end of a knife."

Frankie expends so much abusive energy exorcising inner demons (“The way he sees it, no woman’s any better than his mother,” intones Hymie, deep-thinker) that Kay scarcely has time to examine her own Bad Boy issues (“Sometimes I get the feeling, Frankie, that you ought to be chained up with a ring in your nose!”), before their relationship comes to take on all the dysfunctional sparring rhythms of Robert De Niro & Liza Minnelli in NewYork, New York…minus the warmth & mutual respect.

One particularly theatrical outburst of Frankie’s captures the slightly rapacious eye of roving talent scout Sophie Cantaro (Parker), who sees in Frankie’s mercurial mood swings the makings of a star (Charlie Sheen, no doubt). Faster than you can say “Bye bye, Bergdahl! Hello, Cougar Town!” Frankie is whisked off to Hollywood and becomes exactly the kind of noxious nightmare of a movie star you’d expect. Think Neely O’Hara crossed with Helen Lawson combined with every ego-out-of-control rumor you’ve ever heard about Jerry Lewis, and you get the idea.

Joseph Cotten as Kenneth Regan, head of Galaxy Pictures
"I find myself repelled and repulsed by you."

Of course, this is precisely when the already dizzying lunacy of The Oscar really swings into high gear. Cue the laughably garish sets meant to signify high-style glamour, the tired visual short-cuts (EVERY scene in a studio backlot features strolling cowboys, gladiators, and showgirls in headdresses), and the standard-issue What Makes Sammy Run?rise and fall of a an unscrupulous schnook scenario.

Yes, whether it be the simile-laden narration (“Man, he wanted to swallow Hollywood like a cat with a canary.”); the rote, claws-his-way-to-the-top conflicts (“The fact is my 10% before taxes is paying your office overhead. And you stop earning it when you stop giving me what I want.”); or clumsy, tin-eared metaphors (“Have you ever seen a moth smashed against a window? It leaves the dust of its wings. You’re like that Frankie, you leave a powder of dirt everywhere you touch.”), The Oscar leaves nary a cliché unturned and untouched. And for that we should all give thanks.

Ernest Borgnine & Edie Adams as Barney and Trina Yale

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

The Oscar is artificiality as motif. Without actually intending to, director Russell Rouse (who made the must-see Wicked Woman -1953) has crafted a film so phony and plastic, it winds up saying a great deal more about the real Hollywood than this contrived, self-serving fairy tale that would have us believe Hollywoodis comprised of basically decent, principled, hard-working folks, and unscrupulous bad apples like Frankie are the rotten exception.

When I watch The Oscar I always wonder: was this a movie pandering to star-struck yokels and serving up a patently false, fan-magazine / press agent image of tinseltown because it believed that’s what they wanted to see; or had years of lying to itself deluded “The Industry” into believing its own publicity? This can’t be how ‘60s Hollywood actually saw itself, could it?

In the film's most blatantly parodic role, Jean Hale is hilariously spot-on as the self-absorbed Cheryl Barker, an obvious and rather mean-spirited swipe at Carroll Baker that must have been included at Joseph E. Levine's behest. (Baker & Levine clashed famously during the making of Harlow, leading to her ultimately suing the producer).

It’s not as though nobody knew what a good film about Hollywood looked like (Sunset Boulevard -1950, The Bad & the Beautiful -1952, A Lonely Place -1950, Stand-In -1937), so I’d like to think everyone involved in The Oscar knew exactly what kind of trash they were making (Bennett doesn’t recall the experience fondly in his memoirs). But given the expense, effort, and the fact that many similarly fake-looking, questionably-acted, poorly written, overstuffed ‘60s films had found acceptance (The Carpetbaggers comes to mind); I can only imagine that the eventual awfulness of The Oscarwasn’t as much of a surprise to those involved as was the public’s total indifference to it.

Exteriors of The Oscar were shot at the 37th Academy Awards in 1965. Bob Hope hosted that year, but as the interior sets don't match, I've no idea when or where they were shot. In 1967 The Oscar was nominated for but two Academy Awards (art direction and Edith Head's costume design) losing both.

PERFORMANCES

It’s an overcrowded, competitive field, but Stephen Boyd walks away with the honors for The Oscar’s most exaggerated, artificial performance. In a film of parody-worthy acting, Boyd's bellowing, bombastic over-emoting (much like Faye Dunaway's in Mommie Dearest) sets the bar and serves as the rudder for this Titanic testament to overstatement. It's a performance that towers over the rest. And while one might argue he’s no worse than anyone else (certainly not Bennett) and only as good as the knuckleheaded screenplay allows; when there’s this much collateral damage, every offender has to be held accountable for their fair share of the carnage.

Frankie's cutthroat efforts to win an Oscar make up the bulk of the 1963 Richard Sale novel
upon which the film is adapted, but comprise only the last half hour of the film

Indeed, in a reversal of my usual standard in camp movies I adore, the women don’t really dominate in The Oscar. In spite of their towering hairdos and colorful wardrobes, Elke Sommer, Eleanor Parker, Jill St. John, and a woefully over-rehearsed Edie Adams have their work cut out for them in trying to keep pace with the hambone scenery-chewing of Boyd on one side, and the Boo Boo Bear blandness of mono-expression crooner Tony Bennett on the other (whose raspy voiceover narration is almost as annoying as Joe Pesci's in 1995s Casino).

The Dynamic Duo
Hope you like Tony Bennett's expression here, 'cause that's all you're getting for two hours

Add to this, schticky comedian Milton Berle as another one of those saintly talent agents that only seem to exist in Joseph E. Levine films (Red Buttons, another face-pulling comic, played a similar role in Levine’s Harlow). Berle’s approach to serious drama is something out of an SCTV Bobby Bittman sketch: go so low-wattage as to barely register any vitality at all.

Not really sure the last time I saw a character in a movie resort to
knuckle-biting to convey distress, but in The Oscar, it happens twice!

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
As hard as it is to believe that the Motion Picture Academy actually endorsed this sordid melodrama, one has to wonder about the many drop-in guest appearances of so many "stars" adding verisimilitude and unintentional comic relief. Were they contractual, or were they simply prohibited from reading the entire script?

Edith Head (or an amimatronic copy) as herself

Columnist Hedda Hopper balancing several pounds of hair and a Joan Crawford necklace

A puffy Peter Lawford portrays a has-been actor (a little too convincingly)

Jack Soo as Sam, Frankie's live-in valet

A beaming Frank Sinatra and daughter Nancy, in her brunette phase

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

The bad film delights of The Oscar are so myriad, I can only speculate that its relative unavailability is to blame for its not having risen in camp stature equal to Valley of the Dolls or Mommie Dearest over the years (it’s not on DVD and pops up on TV only sporadically). That perhaps, and its lack of an ostentatious drag queen aesthetic or even compelling roles for women. I’m not sure why, but a lot of the best camp is rooted in seeing women presented in the traditional “drag” of ornamental allure (big hair, theatrical makeup, elaborate costumes), only behaving in the aggressive, assertive, ambitious manner we habitually ascribe to male characters (Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!).

The incongruity is a pleasant surprise and welcome change of pace, and often accounts for why a nasty piece of work like Neely O’Hara tends to remain in one’s memory longer than the passive Jennifer North.

The women in The Oscarare, despite giving lip-service to the contrary, a pretty passive bunch and more or less serve a traditional, reactive function in the plot. Pointedly, one of the film's two exceptions (the other being the blowsy but street-smart Trina Yale), the poised and elegant Sophie Cantaro is presented as both sexually desperate (“You, you’re 42. There are many good minutes left for you,” a well-meaning, tactless friend tells her) and unable to prevent her feminine emotions from playing havoc with professional decision-making.
I'm not sure if this preponderance of masochistic females has anything to do with The Oscar falling short of becoming the midnight screening hoot-fest its entertaining awfulness suggests; but such wrong-headed thinking prevails throughout The Oscar, making it one of the best of the worst, the apex of the nadir, and unequivocally one for the books. A book titled: " What The Hell Were They Thinking?"

BONUS MATERIAL

Elke Sommer wore the same Edith Head gown to the real 1966 Academy Awards she wears in the fake ceremony that bookends The Oscar (top photo). Here's a clip of a somewhat botched dual acceptance speech with Connie Stevens for Doctor Zhivago's absent costume designer, Julie Harris. Watch HERE

Although only an instrumental version plays in the film, Tony Bennett sang the Muzak-ready theme song from The Oscar (titled, "Come September" ) on the soundtrack album. This 45rpm single was an opening day giveaway at many first-run theaters. Listen HERE

WALK ON THE WILD SIDE 1962

MY TOP 20 FAVORITE OSCAR-ELIGIBLE MOVIE SONGS (That Didn't Even Get a Nomination)

THE MUSIC LOVERS 1970

NIGHT GALLERY: The Joanna Pettet Episodes

THE HEIRESS 1949

I SAW WHAT YOU DID 1965

"WHERE'S YOUR FILM SECTION?" A Movie Lover's Bookshelf

THE INCREDIBLE SARAH 1976

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HUSH...HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE 1964

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK 1975

THE SHOW BEGAN ON THE SIDEWALK: TOP 20 Favorite Movie Posters

X, Y & ZEE 1972

THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD 1975

GIRLS TOWN 1959

ROCKY 1976

THE FOX 1967

DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS 1971

DREAM LOVER 1986

THE OSCAR 1966