Monday, May 07, 2012
Love Story
— Orson Welles on Make Way for Tomorrow
By John Cochrane
No one film dominated the 1937 Academy Awards, but with the country still in the grips of the Great Depression and slowly realizing Europe’s inevitable march back into war, the subtle theme of the evening in early 1938 seemed to be distant escapism — anything to help people forget the troubled times at home. The Life of Emile Zola, a period biopic set in France, won best picture. Spencer Tracy received his first best actor Oscar, playing a Portuguese sailor in Captains Courageous, and Luise Rainer was named best actress for a second year in a row, playing the wife of a struggling Chinese farmer in the morality tale The Good Earth.
Best director that year went to Hollywood veteran Leo McCarey for The Awful Truth. McCarey’s resume was impressive. He paired Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy together as a team, and he had directed, supervised or helped write much of their best silent work. He had collaborated with W.C. Fields, Charley Chase, Eddie Cantor, Mae West, Harold Lloyd, George Burns and Gracie Allen — almost an early Hollywood Comedy Hall of Fame. He had also directed the Marx Brothers in the freewheeling political satire Duck Soup (1933) — generally now considered their best film. The Awful Truth was a screwball comedy about an affluent couple whose romantic chemistry constantly sabotages their impending divorce that starred Irene Dunne, Ralph Bellamy — and a breakout performance by a handsome leading man named Cary Grant — who supposedly had based a lot of his on-screen persona on the personality of his witty and elegant director. Addressing the Academy, the affable McCarey said “Thank you for this wonderful award. But you gave it to me for the wrong picture.”
The picture that McCarey was referring to was his earlier production from 1937, titled Make Way for Tomorrow — an often tough and unsentimental drama about an elderly couple who loses their home to foreclosure and must separate when none of their children are able or willing to take them both in. The film opened to stellar reviews and promptly died at the box office — being unknown to most people for decades. Fortunately, recent events have begun to rectify this oversight as this buried American cinematic gem turns 75 years old.
Based on Josephine Lawrence’s novel The Years Are So Long, the film opens at the cozy home of Barkley and Lucy Cooper (Victor Moore, Beulah Bondi), who have been married for 50 years. Four of their five children have arrived for what they believe will be a joyous family dinner — until Bark breaks the news that he hasn’t been able to keep up with the
mortgage payments since being out of work and that the bank will repossess the property within days. Bark and Lucy insist that they will stay together, regardless of what happens. With little time to plan, the family decides that, for the time being, Lucy will move to New York to live with their eldest son George’s family in their apartment, while Bark will be 360 miles away — sleeping on the couch at the home of their daughter Cora (Elisabeth Risdon) and her unemployed husband Bill (Ralph Remley). For the film's first hour or so, we see Bark and Lucy trying to adjust to their new surroundings. While George (an excellent Thomas Mitchell) tries to be as pleasant and accommodating to his mother as possible, his wife Anita (Fay Bainter) and daughter Rhoda (Barbara Read) display little patience and dislike the disruption of their routines. Meanwhile, Bark spends his time walking around his new hometown, looking for a job and visiting a new friend, a local shopkeeper named Max Rubens (Maurice Moscowitz).Many filmmakers develop a visual signature that dominates their work, but McCarey employs a fairly basic and straightforward style, using group and reaction shots as well as perceptive editing that places the emphasis on the actors and the story. Working with screenwriter Vina Delmar, McCarey creates set pieces that blend touches of light comedy and everyday drama that feel so correct and truthful that audiences likely feel a sometimes uncomfortable recognition with them. Often, this stems from McCarey's use of improvisation to sharpen his scenes before filming them. If short on ideas, he would play a nearby piano on the set until he figured out what to do. This practice creates a freshness that, as Peter Bogdanovich points out, gives the impression that what you’re watching wasn't planned but just happened. A large part of the film’s greatness also comes from the cast, headed by Moore and Bondi as Bark and Lucy. Both theatrically trained actors, vaudeville star Moore (age 61) and future Emmy winner Bondi (age 48), through the wonders of make-up and black and white photography prove completely convincing as an elderly couple in their 70s.
Moore performs terrifically as the blunt, but loving Bark. Bondi gives an even better turn as Lucy. In one scene, representative of McCarey’s direction and Bondi’s performance, Lucy inadvertently interrupts a bridge-playing class being taught by her daughter-in-law at the apartment by making small talk and noticing the cards in players’ hands. She’s an intrusion, but by the end of the evening, after being abandoned by her granddaughter at the movies and returning home, she takes a phone call in the living room from her husband. Critic Gary Giddins notes that as the class listens in to her side of the conversation, she becomes highly sympathetic — and the scene now flips with the card students visibly moved and feeling invasive of her space and privacy. Then there’s the crucial scene where Lucy sees the writing on the wall and offers to move out of the apartment and into a nursing home without Bark’s knowledge, before her family can commit her — so as not to be a burden to them anymore. She shares a loving moment with her guilt-ridden son George. (“You were always my favorite child,” she sincerely tells him.) His disappointment in himself in the scene’s coda resonates deeply. Lucy’s character seems meek and easily taken advantage of when we first meet her, but she’s really the strongest person in the story. It’s her love and sacrifice for her husband and family that give the movie much of its emotional weight, and the unforgettable final shot belongs to her.
McCarey and Delmar create totally believable characters and it should be pointed out that while friendly, decent people, Bark and Lucy, by no means, lack flaws. Bark doesn't make a particularly good patient when sick in bed two-thirds of the way through the story, and Lucy stands firm in her ways and beliefs — traits that can annoy, but people can be that way. Even the children aren’t bad — they have reasons that the audience can understand — even if we don’t agree with their often seemingly selfish or preoccupied behavior. This delicate skill of observation was not lost on McCarey’s good friend, the great French director Jean Renoir, who once said, “McCarey understands people better than anyone in Hollywood.”
As memorable a first hour as Make Way for Tomorrow delivers, McCarey saves the best moments for the film’s third act. Bark and Lucy meet one last time in New York, hours before his train departure for California to live with their unseen daughter Addie for health reasons. For the first time since the opening scene, the couple finally reunites. The last 20 minutes of the picture overflows with what Roger Ebert refers to in his Great Movies essay on the film as mono no aware — which roughly translated means “a bittersweet sadness at the passing of all things.” Regrets, but nothing that Bark and Lucy really would change if they had to do everything over again.
Throughout the story, the Coopers often have been humiliated or brushed off by their children. When a car salesman (Dell Henderson) mistakes them for a wealthy couple and takes them for a ride in a fancy car, the audience cringes — expecting another uncomfortable moment — but then something interesting happens. As they arrive at their destination and an embarrassed Bark and Lucy explain that there’s been a misunderstanding, the salesman tactfully assuages their concerns. He allows them to save face, by saying his pride in the car made him want to show it off. Walking into The Vogard Hotel where they honeymooned 50 years ago, the Coopers get treated like friends or VIPs — first by a hat check girl (Louise Seidel) and then by the hotel manager (Paul Stanton), who happily takes his time talking to them and comps their bar tab. Bark and Lucy's children expect their parents at George’s apartment for dinner, but Bark phones them to say that they won't be coming.
At one point, we see the couple from behind as they sit together, sharing a loving moment of intimate conversation. As Lucy leans toward her husband to kiss him, she seems to notice the camera and demurely stops herself from such a public display of affection. It’s an extraordinary sequence that’s followed by another one when Bark and Lucy get up to dance. As they arrive on the dance floor, the orchestra breaks into a rumba and the Coopers seem lost and out of place. The watchful bandleader notices them, without a word, quickly instructs the musicians to switch to the love song “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” Bark gratefully acknowledges the conductor as he waltzes Lucy around the room. Then the clock strikes 9, and Bark and Lucy rush off to the train station for the film’s closing scene.
Paramount studio head Adolph Zukor reportedly visited the set several times, pleading with his producer-director to change the ending, but McCarey — who saw the movie as a labor of love and a personal tribute to his recently deceased father — wouldn’t budge. The film was released to rave reviews, though at least one reviewer couldn’t recommend it because it would “ruin your day.” Industry friends and colleagues such as John Ford and Frank Capra were deeply impressed. McCarey even received an enthusiastic letter from legendary British playwright George Bernard Shaw, but the Paramount marketing department didn’t know what to do with the picture. Audiences, still facing a tough economy, didn’t want to see a movie about losing your home and being marginalized in old age. They stayed away, while the Motion Picture Academy didn’t seem to notice. McCarey was fired from his contract at Paramount (later rebounding that year at Columbia with the unqualified success of The Awful Truth), and the film seemed to disappear from view for many years.
The movie never was forgotten completely though. Screenwriter Kogo Noda, who wrote frequently with the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, saw the film and used it as an inspiration for Ozu’s masterpiece Tokyo Story (1953), in which an elderly couple journey to the big city to visit their adult children and quietly realize that their offspring don’t have time for them in their busy lives — only temporarily getting their full attention when one of the parents unexpectedly dies during the trip home. Ironically, Ozu’s film also would be unknown to most of the world for decades, until exported in the early 1970s, almost 10 years after the master filmmaker’s death. Tokyo Story, with its sublime simplicity and quiet insight into human nature now is considered by many critics and filmmakers to be one of the greatest movies ever made — placing high in the Sight & Sound polls of 1992 and 2002. In the meantime, Make Way for Tomorrow slowly started getting more attention in its own right, probably sometime in the mid- to late 1960s. Although the movie never was released on VHS, it occasionally was shown enough on television to garner a devoted underground following. More recently, the movie played at the Telluride Film Festival, where audiences at sold out screenings were stunned by its undeniable quality and its powerful, timeless message. Make Way for Tomorrow was finally was released on DVD by The Criterion Collection and was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress on the National Film Registry in 2010.
The funny phenomenon of how audiences in general dislike unhappy endings, and yet somehow our psyches depend on them always proves puzzling. Classics such as Casablanca (1942), Vertigo (1958), The Third Man (1949 U.K.; 1950 U.S.) and even the fictional romance in a more contemporary hit such as Titanic (1997) wouldn't carry the same stature or mystique in popular culture if they somehow had been pleasantly resolved. Life often disappoints and turns out unpredictably, messy and frequently filled with loss. Even though many people claim they don’t like sad stories, it comforts somehow to know that we aren’t alone — that others understand and feel similarly as we do about life’s experiences. It’s what makes us human.
Make Way for Tomorrow serves as many things. It’s a movie about family dynamics and the Fifth Commandment. Gary Giddins points out that it’s also a message film about the need for a safety net such as Social Security — which hadn't been fully implemented when the
picture was released. It’s a plea for treating each other with more kindness — in a culture that increasingly pushes the old aside to embrace the young and the new, and it’s one of the saddest movies ever made. At its most basic level, it’s a tender love story between two people who have spent most of their lives together — knowing each other so well that words often seem unnecessary. However you choose to look at it, Make Way for Tomorrow remains one of the greatest American films — certainly a strong contender for the best classic Hollywood movie that most people have never heard of. Leo McCarey would create highly successful hits that were more sentimental later on in his career — including the enjoyable romance Love Affair (1939) and its subsequent color remake An Affair to Remember (1957), starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. He also would direct Bing Crosby as a charismatic priest in 1944’s Going My Way (7 Oscars — including picture, director, actor) and its superior sequel, 1945’s The Bells of St. Mary’s (8 nominations, 1 win), co-starring Ingrid Bergman, but he never forgot about Make Way for Tomorrow, which remained a personal favorite until the day he died from emphysema in 1969. Leo McCarey did not live to see his masterpiece fully appreciated, but that wasn't necessary. In 1938, he knew the film’s value.It’s a marvelous picture. Bring plenty of Kleenex.
Tweet
Labels: 30s, Bellamy, Bogdanovich, Capra, Cary, Deborah Kerr, Ebert, Fields, Ingrid Bergman, Irene Dunne, John Ford, Luise Rainer, Marx Brothers, McCarey, Movie Tributes, Oscars, Renoir, T. Mitchell, Tracy, Welles
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Saturday, November 12, 2011
“It’s all perfectly clear to me — that adorable young thing is an unholy terror on wheels…”
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
Beginning with Leathernecking, her feature film debut in 1930, actress Irene Dunne staked out a lengthy career in motion pictures starting out as the epitome of the noble, long-suffering heroine in “four-hanky” films such as Back Street, Magnificent Obsession and The Age of Innocence. She also brought with her extensive experience in musical theater. Her initial foray into movies resulted, as it were, from her successful turn as Magnolia Hawks in the 1929 touring production of Show Boat (a role she later reprised in a 1936 film adaptation, considered by many to be the most faithful) — she was spotted by a Hollywood talent scout during her Chicago stop with the show — and her fine voice was marvelously utilized in vehicles such as Stingaree, Sweet Adeline and the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical Roberta in which Dunne croons the now-standard “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”
In 1936, Dunne was ready to tackle her first feature film comedy, something that made her apprehensive at the time and, even though she proved in movies such as The Awful Truth and My Favorite Wife (both directed by Leo McCarey), that she was a first-rate screen comedienne, she acquiesced later that “comedy is more difficult than drama,” adding: “An actress who can do comedy can do drama, but the vice versa isn’t necessarily true. Big emotional scenes are much easier to play than comedy. An onion can bring tears to your eyes, but what vegetable can make you laugh?” At the risk of being facetious and suggesting “zucchini” (it just sounds funny), none of this really matters in the long run…because 75 years ago on this date, Dunne and co-star Melvyn Douglas brought forth tears of laughter in a screwball comedy classic that seamlessly blends satire with romance: Theodora Goes Wild.
Lynnfield, Conn., brags that it’s “The Biggest Little Town in Connecticut” — but if you’ve ever spent time living in such a burg, you know that “everyone knows when the neighbors cough,” to quote a lyric from a song by the female country music duo Sweethearts of the Rodeo. Jed Waterbury, editor of The Lynnfield Bugle, has arranged for his paper to serialize the risqué (and best-selling) novel The Sinner, penned by mysterious authoress Caroline Adams and the local contingent of bluenoses — collectively known as the Lynnfield Literary Circle — is predictably up in arms at this development. Spinster sisters Mary (Elisabeth Risdon) and Elsie Lynn (Margaret McWade) marshal forces with town gossip Rebecca Perry (Spring Byington) to force Waterbury into ceasing publication; Perry even going so far as sending the book’s publisher, Arthur Stevenson (Thurston Hall), a scathing telegram (“Fewer and stronger words, I always say”). Rebecca also asks Mary and Elsie’s niece, Theodora Lynn (Dunne), to take some cookies to Rebecca’s daughter Adelaide (Rosalind Keith) when Theo announces her intention to pay her Uncle John (Robert Greig) a visit in New York City.
The trip to the Big Apple proves revelatory in two ways: first, Adelaide is staying with “wicked” Uncle John because her husband left her (her mother does not know she’s married) and she’s great with child. Second, the novelist known as “Caroline Adams” is none other than Theodora herself! She’s quite upset that Stevenson sold the serialized rights of her latest book to Waterbury and, worried that the town will discover the truth, she declares that her writing days are over. Stevenson tries to assuage her fears about her secret getting out, but the two are interrupted by the arrival of his wife Ethel (Nana Bryant) and Michael Grant (Douglas), the illustrator of “Caroline’s” novel. Ethel and Michael pressure Arthur into convincing Theo to spend the evening with them and after dinner, drinks (Theo orders straight whiskey when Michael challenges her strait-laced demeanor) and dancing, both Ethel and Theo end up spiffed. Stevenson must escort his wife home so he reluctantly entrusts Michael with the responsibility of putting Theo back on the train to Lynnfield. Instead, Theo is brought back to Michael’s Park Avenue apartment and when he tries to put the moves on her, she flees in terror.
Back home in the comfort food-environs of Lynnfield, Theo gets a surprise when Michael turns up unannounced and lands a position as her aunts’ unconventional gardener (threatening to blackmail her with Mary and Elsie by his presence). Michael’s involvement with and courtship of Theodora starts the town’s tongues wagging but after spending a good deal of time with him, Theo realizes she’s in love. She screws up the courage to reveal this to the Literary Circle (who are naturally scandalized by this news) but when she confesses her feelings to her would-be boyfriend he is far from enthused. As a matter of fact, he takes the first bus out of that biggest little town the next morning. Theodora chases after him, heading back to New York, where she learns that in his efforts to get her to shake off the stifling conformity that is small-town Lynnfield he has forgotten to “heal thyself.” Michael, though equally enamored of our heroine, is trapped in a loveless marriage with wife Agnes (Leona Maricle) — they are estranged but keep up the pretense in order to avoid creating a scandal that could torpedo his father’s political career (Pop, played by Henry Kolker, is New York’s lieutenant governor).
Theodora believes that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander: revealing that she is the Caroline Adams, she plays the role of the scandalized novelist and hints to an anxious press corps that she is more than just a houseguest in Michael’s apartment. Not only is Lynnfield’s populace traumatized by this turn of events, but Michael’s family is equally stunned, particularly when it is intimated that Theo will be named co-respondent in divorce proceedings involving Arthur and Ethel Stevenson. Things comes to a boil when Theodora crashes the Governor’s Ball and Michael, upset by her presence, orders her to go back home and stop making a fool of herself. (Embracing Michael one last time, the press gets a juicy photo of Theodora in the bargain, prompting wife Agnes to announce she wants a divorce.) Returning to Lynnfield, Theo is surprised to see that instead of being ostracized she is now welcomed by all as a celebrity — until she steps off the train cradling a newborn infant in her arms. The baby, of course, belongs to Adelaide Perry (who sneaks off the train with her husband in tow) but it puts a hilarious scare into the now-divorced Michael until Theo reveals the truth.
To my shame, I don’t always tout the charms of Irene Dunne as loudly as I do other film actresses and Theodora Goes Wild is a glaring example of my slackitude. Dunne is positively captivating as the small-town caterpillar who transforms into a gorgeous butterfly; every moment she’s onscreen it’s impossible to take your eyes off of her. Among the highlights of Theodora is her delightful drunk scene (rhumbaing with co-star Douglas) that’s a precursor to a similar sequence in the later Truth, and the moment she finally “goes wild,” sporting an eye-popping wardrobe (the outfit she has on when she sits at the piano in Douglas’ apartment is breathtaking) and giving the news hounds an earful about her life story while previewing her salacious “new book.” My favorite moment from Dunne is an admittedly quiet one when she’s visiting Uncle John and young mother-to-be Adelaide, apologizing for the state of the baked goods she brought from Adelaide’s mother: “Oh…by the way, your mother made some cookies for me…but I met a hungry man and he ate them all up.”
I’m on the record at my home base of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear as admitting that I’m not particularly a fan of Melvyn Douglas’ work (though it’s mostly his early films; he had a callowness that he later outgrew, becoming a first-rate character thesp in films such as Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Hud and The Candidate); in Theodora, however, he’s not too intolerable, apart from several scenes when he annoys everyone within earshot (both on and off-screen) with his incessant whistling. He gets in a funny line now and then; a real beaut is when he’s settling in to his new quarters in the Lynn family’s tool shed and, annoyed by the presence of Mary and Elsie, puns “Say, this place is crawling with aunts.” My reservations about Douglas aside, I think he acquits himself nicely in this one — his romance with Dunne is endearingly sweet and very believable, an attribute not always present in a majority of screwball comedies.
The believability of the romance against the background of spirited farce is the work of scenarist Sidney Buchman, who adapted Mary McCarthy’s original story and showcased an affinity for small-town life in such films as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and The Talk of the Town. (The notion of individuals trying to escape being smothered by conformity also is touched upon in Buchman’s screenplay for
1938’s Holiday.) Author Hal Erickson has argued that Theodora doesn’t quite play as funny as it once did “only because most of its satirical targets (notably the shocked spinster aunts) have ceased to exist.” I take exception to that: I grew up in a town very similar to the one in the film and recognized all of its archetypes, particularly the uptight prude (a great performance from December Bride's Spring Byington) who’s got a few skeletons in a closet of her own. (It’s like how the “preacher’s daughter” always turned out to be the wildest in your group of high school friends.) Complimenting Buchman’s screenplay is the polished direction of Polish émigré Richard Boleslawski, who had a brief Hollywood career helming notable films such as Rasputin and the Empress, Les Miserables and Three Godfathers until his life was cut short at the age of 48 in 1937. Theodora Goes Wild remains one of his best pictures; he has a splendid way of punctuating the comedy with cinematic devices such as intercutting close-ups of Lynnfield’s old biddies discussing the scandal that is Theodora with shots of cats licking their chops. The laugh-out-loud scene in Theodora for me is when the town’s resident bluenoses are discussing Theodora’s return to Lynnfield, decreeing that the townsfolk won’t “step foot in that depot” and then we fade in to a SRO crowd at the station, complete with signs (“Caroline Adams — We Welcome You” and “Welcome Theodora”) and a brass band.
The performances of Dunne and Douglas are complimented by a splendid array of character actors at a time in films when supporting players were the “glue” of any successful picture. Thomas Mitchell is super as the sarcastic editor Waterbury (I love when he tells off Byington in the depot scene that he’s responsible for the brass band: “Now you get a lawyer and try to stop me from spending my own money any way I like!”), Thurston Hall is solid as Dunne’s slightly shady publisher, and Robert Greig as the “black sheep” of the respectable Lynn family, Uncle John. I've already mentioned that Byington is a delight (her fainting reaction to the news that she’s a grandma is hilarious) but I really enjoyed the performances of veterans Elizabeth Risdon and Margaret McWade as Aunts Mary and Elsie. Prim, proper and ever-so-cautious about besmirching the family name, they eventually begin to thaw (and you can literally see this happening as they ride through Lynnfield with Theodora and the baby, with Elsie snapping "You'd think they'd never seen a baby before" and Mary returning “So help me Hannah…this town gets more narrow-minded everyday…”) because while nobody invites a “scandal,” families close ranks and stick together when the chips are down.
With the success of Theodora Goes Wild, Irene Dunne embarked on a new career in motion picture comedy (though she did continue in dramatic roles as well), and her utterly beguiling performance in Theodora nabbed her an Academy Award nomination as best actress, her second following her heralded turn in 1931’s Cimarron. Dunne is considered by many to be the best actress never to win an Oscar. She’d follow her Theodora accolades with three additional nominations for The Awful Truth (1937 — the film for which she should have won), Love Affair (1939) and I Remember Mama (1948). Theodora also picked up a best film editing nomination for Otto Meyer, who also was shut out from ever receiving an Academy trophy, receiving a second nomination for Talk of the Town. Meyer also worked on three additional pictures with Dunne — Penny Serenade, Together Again and Over 21.) Biographer Wes D. Gehring, author of Irene Dunne: First Lady of Hollywood, once remarked in a USA Today article: “I would be especially happy to join her in the screwball world of Theodora Goes Wild…and never come back…” That’s as fine a diamond anniversary tribute to a superlative example of the screwball comedy genre as could ever be, and I welcome readers to follow suit.
Tweet
Labels: 30s, Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Irene Dunne, McCarey, Movie Tributes, Musicals, Oscars, T. Mitchell, Theater
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Make Believe
By Eddie Selover
The landmark musicals of theater history haven’t fared very well on film. Usually, they’ve had their scores trashed (such as Lady in the Dark and Pal Joey), suffered from big-movie-star miscasting (such as Guys and Dolls, Gypsy and Chicago) or been presented intact but with such fussy over-fidelity that they’re dead on the screen (such as South Pacific and My Fair Lady).
So it’s something of a miracle that 75 years ago today, the first great musical, maybe the greatest stage musical of all — Show Boat, by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein — reached movie theaters with its beautiful score intact, with the best and most legendary cast members playing their original roles, and filmed with cinematic intelligence by a great director. And most miraculously of all, the movie Show Boat came from the cheapest, blandest and most mediocre studio in Hollywood history — Universal Pictures.
Universal had tried before in 1929. They had bought the film rights to Edna Ferber’s 1926 novel, which had been a big best seller, and were filming a silent version when lightning struck twice. First, Ferber sold the stage rights to Florenz Ziegfeld and the resulting musical became Broadway’s biggest hit and a groundbreaking leap forward in terms of seriousness of story and theme. Second, the movies were swept by the craze for talking pictures. So here was Universal, having just finished making a silent version of a book for a public that wanted to see a famous musical. The solution was to add a talking prologue, with songs performed by a few original cast members, like a variety show, and shoehorn a couple of songs by other composers into the movie randomly. Though it was a financial success, the result was widely regarded as a hodgepodge and an artistic failure, as it is today.
I’d be hard pressed to think of another time in the history of movies that something like this happened, but Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal, decided to try again and do it right. Only seven years after the first film, he hired Oscar Hammerstein, who had written Show Boat’s libretto, to write a screenplay with story and songs true to the original. The score was largely retained; a couple of fine new Hammerstein/Kern songs were added (in fact the two went on adding and subtracting songs to Show Boat into the 1940s). Paul Robeson and Helen Morgan were signed to repeat their stage performances, which was very brave of the studio — Robeson was a pariah due to his left wing politics and refusal to kowtow to anyone; Morgan was on a career slide due to alcoholism, and Hollywood had long since washed its hands of her. The decision to include them shows how serious Laemmle was about rectifying his earlier error. And so Show Boat offers the opportunity to see two of the most legendary performances in the history of American musical theater in one film.
Laemmle also put his best director on the project. James Whale is famous for a quartet of Universal monster movies (Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Old Dark House and The Invisible Man), so much so that horror has taken over his resume. But what makes his horror films among the best, if not the best, is the
kinetic aliveness of his direction (which sometimes meant that his shots don’t match; the film’s only flaw is that it’s choppy in places). Show Boat could have been a static record of a famous stage production, but in Whale’s hands, it’s a movie. There’s so much going on in every frame that it almost feels like 3-D, and you’re always aware of the characters watching each other and reacting to each other. When Helen Morgan sings her great torch song “Bill,” with its famous lyric by P.G. Wodehouse, chorus girls, janitors and washerwomen slowly stop their work and gather at the edges of the room; one discreetly wipes away a tear with her apron. When Paul Robeson sits on a dock and sings “Ol' Man River,” maybe the most famous performance of the most famous song in theater history, Whale’s camera circles him ecstatically, finally ending on a sustained closeup that you hope will never end. Sadly, it does: someone foolishly intercut scenes of Robeson acting out the lyric (toting barges, lifting bales, getting a little drunk and landing in jail). But then we go back to Robeson singing, and it’s one of the most beautiful, stirring sights anyone ever saw.The leads are great as well. It can’t be the easiest thing in the world to play Magnolia Hawkes and Gaylord Ravenal, Southern belle and riverboat gambler, and not look just a little bit ridiculous. And singing, yet. I’m not a big fan of operetta, with its stilted and formal performance style, but Irene Dunne and Allan Jones are the two best performers who ever attempted it. Dunne is particularly skillful, convincingly aging from innocent late teens to worldly wise 50s (she was about 38) without hitting a single false note. She does a crazy, eye-rolling shuffle to “Can’t Help Lovin' Dat Man” and performs “Gallivantin' Around” in blackface, and manages to keep her dignity as an actress and keep you focused on Magnolia, not on Irene Dunne. And it must be said that she never looked more girlish or more radiantly beautiful than in this film.
If Jones is remembered at all today, it’s as the only bearable male lead in the Marx Brothers’ film career (in A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races). In Show Boat, he has a tricky role, as a riverboat dandy who’s dashing and charming but also weak and irresponsible. He’s a gambler who loses spectacularly, and losing doesn’t bring out the best in him. He’s much softer than Magnolia, who turns out to be the strong and resilient one. Late in the movie, he takes a menial position just to be around his grown daughter, who doesn’t know him. You accept this melodramatic, masochistic turn of events largely because of the gentleness and simplicity Jones brings to it. His daughter is his legacy; she’s all he has. He makes you understand that Ravenal is a sensitive man who doesn’t like himself very much and clings to a dignity he doesn’t really feel; it’s a terrific, subtle performance.
But everybody in Show Boat is great. As Magnolia’s parents Captain Andy and Parthenia, Charles Winninger and Helen Westley bring out all the comedy and pathos in their parts without overdoing it. Not easy: in the MGM remake from 1951, it’s hard to even look at Joe E. Brown and Agnes Moorehead thrashing around in the same roles. Winninger is particularly outstanding in a scene near the end where he saves his daughter’s singing career by coaching her from the footlights, and his emotion is so full that he can only express it by leading the entire audience in a sing-along reprise. All through the movie, song is a vehicle for emotion rather than an excuse to wow you with a big production number. “Make Believe,” the gorgeous love song that brings Magnolia and Ravenal together, also is a brilliant foreshadowing of their self-delusion and ultimate missed connection.
Maybe the most remarkable thing about Show Boat is the relationships between the black and white characters. In no other '30s movie, and maybe no other movie before the 1970s, do blacks and whites mingle so freely and with so much ease. Though the movie shows you a world in which African Americans are subservient, poor and ignorant, it’s not trafficking in stereotypes or endorsing prejudice. Far from it. The most sympathetic character is Julie (Morgan), who has mixed blood and loses her job and her husband after being hounded by the law. The movie, like the show, is suffused with the idea that racism is evil, ugly, and ruinous. The characters, living in the post-Civil War South, can’t change the world around them but nonetheless treat each other like human beings. When Irene Dunne does her shuffle and her blackface number, it isn’t condescending — Magnolia has been brought up and nurtured by African Americans; she’s one of them.
Quite a progressive movie for 1936, and for a minor studio in some financial trouble. Laemmle had a lot riding on Show Boat. Like Ravenal, he was a gambler. And he lost: the movie was a hit, but due to the time and care he’d invested, it was so expensive that it failed to turn a profit. As a result, the receivers moved in and he was ousted from the studio he had founded. But again, like Ravenal, he left quite a legacy. Show Boat is many things… an irreplaceable record of a key moment in theatrical history, a high point in classical Hollywood filmmaking, a moving bit of make believe, and an eloquent understated plea for tolerance and decency. And for all its antiquated technique and performing style, maybe the finest movie musical ever made.
Tweet
Labels: 30s, Agnes M., Hammerstein, Irene Dunne, Marx Brothers, Movie Tributes, Musicals, Theater, Whale
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Friday, December 12, 2008
Van Johnson (1916-2008)
rotate and revolve"
Those words may seem an odd way to begin a tribute to the long and distinguished career of Van Johnson, but that was my first exposure to him as a child, playing the special guest villain The Minstrel on the 1960s Batman while the Caped Crusaders cooked on a rotisserie. It was only later that I discovered Mr. Johnson's other works. He has passed away at 92.
Often he got leads, other times, Johnson was relegated to the role of sidekick or second banana, where he excelled even better.
He was the World War II pilot a ghostly Spencer Tracy tried to turn in to a new mate for his widow Irene Dunne in A Guy Named Joe, which Spielberg later remade as Always. He had his other fill of war films such as Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and Battleground.
In 1948, Frank Capra thrust him in the middle of the Tracy and Hepburn political dramedy State of the Union. 1954 brought him roles as one of the "mutineers" in The Caine Mutiny, as Gene Kelly's cynical buddy in the musical Brigadoon and gave him a chance to romance Elizabeth Taylor in The Last Time I Saw Paris.
He worked steadily through the 1970s on both the big screen and especially the small, landing where many early movie stars did, on both The Love Boat and Fantasy Island.
His last notable appearance was as one of the cast of the movie within the movie in Woody Allen's masterpiece The Purple Rose of Cairo in 1985. Appropriately, Allen's film allowed him to appear in black and white one last time.
RIP Mr. Johnson.
Tweet
Labels: Capra, Gene Kelly, Irene Dunne, K. Hepburn, Liz, Obituary, Spielberg, Television, Tracy, Woody
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Monday, June 04, 2007
Centennial Tributes: Rosalind Russell
By Josh R
The casting of the female lead in His Girl Friday represented a compromise, and one which director Howard Hawks was initially loath to make. Everyone on the filmmaker’s wish list was either uninterested or unavailable — Jean Arthur was the first choice, followed by Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Claudette Colbert, Irene Dunne and Ginger Rogers. Rosalind Russell would have been well at the bottom of the list — that is, if it had even occurred to Hawks to put her there in the first place. The actress had made a modest name for herself playing elegant ladies and frigid bitches in turgid melodramas — usually in support of another female star. The Women, another film the actress had to fight to be cast in and the first to challenge the industry’s perception of her, was still awaiting release, and there was little indication from her other work that she had the chops to meet the demands of screwball comedy.
Needless to say, Hawks was in a bad temper when filming commenced in the summer of 1939, and regarded his leading lady, who’d been forced upon him by the studio in a last ditch effort to get the film made on schedule, with no small amount of resentment. Picking up on his hostility, Russell took the director aside and told him, “I know you didn’t want me, but we’re stuck with each other.” The tension was alleviated, and Hawks would later insist that no one — not Hepburn, Lombard or any of the others — could have brought as much verve, style and wit to the part as Russell did. Viewing the finished product, no one would challenge that appraisal.
Hawks can hardly be blamed for harboring some early doubts — from the very beginning, Rosalind Russell was an unlikely candidate for stardom. The Connecticut-bred lawyer’s daughter, the product of a scrupulous Catholic upbringing, was a tall, almost ungainly woman with a raspy contralto voice and plain, sensible features. Her no-nonsense appearance, which was smart and well-tailored without being austere, suggested both a practical outlook and a bemused sense of irony. No one would ever mistake her for an ingénue or a sex goddess — which probably suited Russell just fine. Never beautiful in the conventional sense, she could generate more heat with an arched eyebrow and a deadpan retort than any of the glamour girls could with smoldering looks and coy displays of their natural assets. She could be side-splittingly funny in films that tapped into the zanier side of her nature, but made surprisingly few comedies during her four decades as a cinema fixture. It’s a testament to the impact she had in the handful of films that allowed her to cut loose that she is remembered first and foremost as a comedienne.
After making her film debut in 1934’s Evelyn Prentice, the next five years of her career proceeded without incident. Hollywood wasn’t quite sure what it had on its hands, or exactly what to do with her — she didn’t fit comfortably into any easy category, and seemed slightly embarrassed as a result. More often than not, she wound up playing patrician ladies in fussy costumes which tried to minimize her height. Typical of the period was China Seas, where she was cast as a romantic rival to Jean Harlow for the affections of Clark Gable. The cool brunette didn’t stand a chance — Harlow’s curvy, hip-swinging brashness made the lanky interloper seem like even more of a stiff than she actually was.
When the actress graduated to leads, the results were initially less than rewarding. As the title character in Craig’s Wife, she was a domestic dictator and an evil oppressor of men — somewhat surprisingly, this study in
misogyny was the work of a female director, Dorothy Arzner. From an acting standpoint, Russell failed conspicuously in a role that, as thinly conceived as it was, would seem to call for an element of shamelessness — Joan Crawford, never one to shy away from playing brass-knuckled bitches, did much better by the same material in Harriet Craig 14 years later. To be fair, no one could have brought much in the way of human dimension to the character, a soulless martinet with an only slightly more complex pathology than The Wicked Witch of the West. As someone less interested in the subtleties of film acting, Crawford probably responded to something in the material Russell didn’t — Mommie Dearest’s late-career philosophy might be best described as “when in doubt, bare fangs.” Russell fared somewhat better in her next two films, Night Must Fall and The Citadel — box office hits which helped to solidify her position, but not affording her the opportunity to do much more than adopt a reactive stance while her male co-stars delivered star turns. Roberts Montgomery and Donat were nominated for Oscars, while their leading lady remained largely an afterthought — in both outings, she affected an earnest wholesomeness which gave little indication of an arresting personality.
If her prospects looked dim, the actress remained undaunted — she had some of Hepburn’s can-do Yankee feistiness, and an intelligence to match. She lobbied for the role of Sylvia Fowler, the loose-lipped socialite who views the dissemination of gossip as something akin to a higher calling, in George Cukor’s star-studded screen adaptation of Clare Booth Luce’s The Women. It was apparent that after years of playing it safe and fading into the scenery, she’d learned her lesson — the deliriously uninhibited comic brio that she exhibited in the role gave lie to the presumption that refinement and restraint were her salient characteristics as a performer. With her peerless talent for physical and verbal slapstick, she stole the film right out from under Crawford, Norma Shearer, Paulette Goddard and a gallery of others. It was as if someone had let loose a fox in a henhouse — untrammeled malice has never been more sublimely ridiculous.
Having finally broken out of her shell, she hit her stride. The role of Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday was originally written for a man, and in its transmogrified incarnation could have easily come across as a shrill, insulting parody of the tough-minded career woman as a masculine (or worse still, asexual) entity, but Russell was much too smart, and far too inventive, to fall into that trap — her Hildy was one of the boys, alright, but more woman
than ever. For the first time in motion pictures, here was a truly modern woman — not only the professional equal of her male counterparts, but with a quickness and creativity that left them in the dust. The pride of The Morning Star is an ace reporter who can outtalk, outthink and out-maneuver every man in the room, and rather than resent her for it, her colleagues can only peer out from under their porkpie hats and newsman’s visors with a mixture of awe and respect as she runs circles around the rest of them. The actress was a whirling dervish of energy, sprinting through entire pages of dialogue at warp speed without missing a beat, and her inflections throughout were priceless. She threw herself into the part with the same kind of edgy, go-for-broke tenacity that the character exhibited when chasing headlines, and made it clear that, for Hildy Johnson, no other kind of life is possible. She needs the thrill of the chase, and a guy like Walter Burns who can not only keep up with her, but is only too happy to let her run with the wolves. That’s why nice, bland Ralph Bellamy had to be sent packing at the end of the picture — there’s no way he could avoid being blown away by this sonic boom in heels.
Her resounding success in the Hawks entry dramatically altered her career trajectory, and the next five years saw
her playing a series of variations on the same character. She was very good in Take a Letter, Darling opposite Fred MacMurray — one of the few leading men, other than Cary Grant, with whom she managed a genuine chemistry — but My Sister Eileen was a bigger hit with audiences. Her neophyte journalist braving the wilds of the urban jungle was sort of a country cousin to Hildy Johnson, and showed how fully she’d come into her own in the realm of screwball comedy. If the film itself was an inferior showcase, it nonetheless provided her with a welcome opportunity to hone her talent for slapstick — she earned the first of her four Oscar nominations for her efforts. Her best vehicle of the 1940s, after His Girl Friday, was the comedy-drama Roughly Speaking, which revealed an element of defensiveness as a component of the super-competent, overachieving persona. Wary of being typecast, she shifted her focus to drama, to somewhat disappointing effect. Sister Kenny, concerning the heroics of an Australian bush nurse who pioneers a revolutionary treatment for polio, was a Greer Garson film with crippled children standing in for illegitimate babies and the isolation of radium. She carried the film with dignity, but no amount of solid professionalism could keep it from seeming like a step backward. The marathon theatrics of Mourning Becomes Electra, Eugene O’Neill’s Civil-War-era riff on the precepts of Greek Tragedy, made for a creaky, ponderous affair — the play was not an ideal candidate for cinematic adaptation, especially at a time when its Oedipal undertones had to be tiptoed around in order to pass muster with the censors. Russell was rather badly miscast in a role that required more volatile nervous energy than she could muster — Bette Davis would have been more appropriate — but she made a brave try nonetheless. The Velvet Touch went so far as to cast her as a sweaty murderess; the entire enterprise seemed badly in need of Hitchcock.
The New York stage paved the way for career revitalization, and the actress took Broadway by storm with her star turn in Wonderful Town, Leonard Bernstein’s musical treatment of My Sister Eileen. If her singing skills posed no threat to the likes of Martin and Merman, she could still fire off Comden and Green’s custom-crafted zingers like a champ, and earned a Tony Award for her efforts. Since Hollywood had nothing better
to offer than a supporting stint as a boozy spinster in the sodden mess of Picnic, she returned to the theater to take on the title role in Auntie Mame, a performance she repeated for the film version. The character of a madcap nonconformist, whose personality is expansive and irrepressible as her hair color is changeable, was a seven-course meal of a part, and the actress made the most of it. Everything about the globe-trotting, gin-swilling, convention-flouting Mame was writ larger than life, and Russell attacked the role with such giddy abandon as to make the entire mixed-up universe, from the Heart of Dixie to the Himalayas, seem like her own personal playground. It was her most unabashedly silly performance, and ultimately her most iconic; by thumbing her nose at conservatism, with behavior as outrageous as her wardrobe, both Mame and the actress playing her inadvertently kicked off the drag queen movement.
If Russell never again soared to Mame or Hildy-like heights, she continued to work steadily, and not without acclaim. The Majority of One cast her as a Jewish widow being romanced by Alec Guinness’ Japanese businessman — it was as bizarre as it sounds. If the actress had gotten by in Wonderful Town, it was clear
that for the purposes of Gypsy, Styne and Sondheim’s backstage musical about the stage mother to end all others, her singing would have to be dubbed. While her acting as Mama Rose was credible, it was painfully apparent that a key element of the performance was being faked; as Ethel Merman’s participation in the original stage production testified, the role needed a great singer more than it required a great actress. For both of these late-career performances, she was recognized with citations from The Hollywood Foreign Press Association — it’s worth noting that a performer who never won a competitive acting Oscar still holds the record for most Golden Globe victories by an actress (her other three came for Kenny, Mourning and Mame). In a shame-faced apology for its habitual neglectfulness, The Academy presented her with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1973 — Russell pursued an active interest in philanthropy long before it became fashionable for movie stars to do so.
If the remainder of her film work failed to capture the spark of her earlier triumphs, she never lost the affection of her audience. The silly The Trouble with Angels was profitable enough to merit a sequel, Where Angels Go — Trouble Follows. In both films, she returned to her Catholic school roots as a tough-but-tender Mother Superior presiding over the likes of Hayley Mills and Susan Saint James — the material was beneath her, but she played it for what it was worth. Looking back over her career, it’s startling to realize how few of the films that she participated in were genuine classics — and fewer still were those that really allowed her to shine. Nevertheless, the performances for which she is cherished — His Girl Friday, Auntie Mame and The Women — when taken out of context, would individually stand as the highlights of any career. It took only one to encompass all three.
Tweet
Labels: Bellamy, Bette, Cary, Comden and Green, Crawford, Cukor, Gable, Garson, Ginger Rogers, Guinness, Harlow, Hawks, Irene Dunne, Jean Arthur, K. Hepburn, Lombard, MacMurray, O'Neill, Paulette Goddard, Sondheim
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Alright, who was she sleeping with?
By Edward Copeland
Last night, I finally caught up with 1937's The Good Earth. Setting aside the fact that it is an overlong bore and is more evidence of old Hollywood's tendency to have non-Asian actors play Asians, I am more befuddled than ever by the fact that Luise Rainer is a two-time Oscar winner.
Few multiple Oscar winners have perfect records, i.e. they won each time they were nominated. Vivien Leigh deservingly did it. Hilary Swank has now joined their ranks. Helen Hayes also pulled off the same trick. (Any others escape me at the moment, but I'm sure Josh R will chime in if I've missed somebody). To see that Rainer is in this rarefied company for what was essentially a supporting role in The Great Ziegfeld and her less-than-stellar work in The Good Earth is bizarre — especially since she managed the feat in two straight years.
In 1936, her only competitor I haven't seen is Gladys George in Valiant Is the Word for Carrie, so I can't stack Rainer up against her — but look at the rest of the field she beat.
Irene Dunne in one of her very best performances in Theodora Goes Wild — and Dunne never won an Oscar.
The sublime Carole Lombard in the classic My Man Godfrey.
Norma Shearer in Romeo and Juliet. (OK — Shearer was way too old to be Juliet and I've always been lukewarm on her in general, but she's a damn sight better than Rainer).
Then, in 1937 the field she beat is even more stunning.
Dunne loses to her again, this time for The Awful Truth. (I guess this makes her the 1930s's Annette Bening to Rainer's Hilary Swank)
Greta Garbo coughs up one of her most famous performances in Camille. She never won an Oscar either.
Janet Gaynor excels in A Star Is Born, which is still my favorite version of the story. Gaynor at least already had an Oscar for best actress (the first one as a matter of fact).
The amazing Barbara Stanwyck — another Oscar shutout — in Stella Dallas. Though the movie is way too melodramatic and it's not among my favorite Stanwyck performances, it still was a helluva lot better than Rainer's Chinese peasant.
Oscar is and has always been a mysterious wench.
Tweet
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Last night, I finally caught up with 1937's The Good Earth. Setting aside the fact that it is an overlong bore and is more evidence of old Hollywood's tendency to have non-Asian actors play Asians, I am more befuddled than ever by the fact that Luise Rainer is a two-time Oscar winner.
Few multiple Oscar winners have perfect records, i.e. they won each time they were nominated. Vivien Leigh deservingly did it. Hilary Swank has now joined their ranks. Helen Hayes also pulled off the same trick. (Any others escape me at the moment, but I'm sure Josh R will chime in if I've missed somebody). To see that Rainer is in this rarefied company for what was essentially a supporting role in The Great Ziegfeld and her less-than-stellar work in The Good Earth is bizarre — especially since she managed the feat in two straight years.
In 1936, her only competitor I haven't seen is Gladys George in Valiant Is the Word for Carrie, so I can't stack Rainer up against her — but look at the rest of the field she beat.
Irene Dunne in one of her very best performances in Theodora Goes Wild — and Dunne never won an Oscar.
The sublime Carole Lombard in the classic My Man Godfrey.
Norma Shearer in Romeo and Juliet. (OK — Shearer was way too old to be Juliet and I've always been lukewarm on her in general, but she's a damn sight better than Rainer).
Then, in 1937 the field she beat is even more stunning.
Dunne loses to her again, this time for The Awful Truth. (I guess this makes her the 1930s's Annette Bening to Rainer's Hilary Swank)
Greta Garbo coughs up one of her most famous performances in Camille. She never won an Oscar either.
Janet Gaynor excels in A Star Is Born, which is still my favorite version of the story. Gaynor at least already had an Oscar for best actress (the first one as a matter of fact).
The amazing Barbara Stanwyck — another Oscar shutout — in Stella Dallas. Though the movie is way too melodramatic and it's not among my favorite Stanwyck performances, it still was a helluva lot better than Rainer's Chinese peasant.
Oscar is and has always been a mysterious wench.
Tweet
Labels: Garbo, Irene Dunne, Lombard, Luise Rainer, Stanwyck, V. Leigh
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
