Wednesday, December 14, 2011
My Week with Halle
By Eddie Selover
Nobody knows about this but me and her. The tabloids never suspected. It was private, just between us. I want to protect that. But on the other hand, several days have passed since it ended, so I guess it’s OK to finally talk about it.
I spent a week with Halle Berry. Yes, me, Eddie Selover! Just a nobody. Until now.
It happened in Spain. Halle’s over there making a movie with Tom Hanks. She’ll be there for a while longer, because she broke her leg chasing a goat. Spain, ay caramba…there are goats everywhere. And the ground is so rocky! You really have to be careful. Anyway, she’s on the mend now, that’s the important thing. Heal fast, Baby.
On the set of this picture, I was at the bottom of the food chain. The lowest of the low. I mean even lower than the screenwriter. But there must have been something about me. Maybe because we’re the same age. Well, I’m ten years older, but you know. It was a chemistry we had, and I’m not just talking about the physical, though that was certainly there on my part. We had an understanding; we knew it the minute we looked in each other’s eyes. I’ll always remember how hers narrowed when she first looked at me. And her first words.
“Could you get me a cup of tea? Right away…?”
Soon we were inseparable. A gentleman doesn’t reveal the details, but there is one thing I want to talk about, and that was the night we watched a movie together. It was that new one about how Marilyn Monroe went to England back in the 1950s to make a film with Laurence Olivier. As an Academy member, Halle had a screener from Harvey Weinstein, and she insisted on watching it in bed. With me!
Who was I to refuse? So I climbed in with her.
“Watch my leg.”
“I can’t take my eyes off it.”
“And stop with the James Bond impression. It’s getting old.”
“Someone’s in a bad mood.”
She gave me that look I’d come to know so well. And then the movie began.
So turns out it’s about this guy, Colin Clark, who wangled a job as an assistant to Olivier and then worked on The Prince and the Showgirl, a film version of a play Sir Laurence had done on stage. In it, the Showgirl was played by Marilyn Monroe, who had bought the property, and hired Olivier to co-star and direct. Here, Olivier is played by Kenneth Branagh and Monroe by Michelle Williams.
I’ve seen The Prince and the Showgirl, actually. The plot is very thin: it’s a little one-situation comedy about a middle-European prince who invites a showgirl up to his chambers with the intention of seducing her, and how she evades him through a combination of innocence and guile. Olivier plays it with a monocle and a Dracula accent, very stiff and formal, and no humor whatsoever. Monroe looks fantastic, maybe the best she ever looked, and she’s very charming. But they don’t get any chemistry going. Partly because the film is nothing more than a very long tease (the best thing about it is the original poster, which shows Olivier pinning a ribbon on Monroe’s barely-there dress, and the words “Some countries have a medal for everything!”). Partly too it’s the difference in their acting styles: his all cold surface detail and polish; hers warm, spontaneous and messy.
The new movie gets a lot of comedy, in fact most of its comedy, out of this clash. The movie’s Olivier is arrogant, egomaniacal and rude — Monroe thwarts and frustrates him at every turn, and he’s driven half mad by her lateness, her poor memory, her retinue of coaches and enablers. What finally drives him over the brink is his realization that despite her lack of formal acting training, she wipes him off the screen when they’re on it together. (This isn’t really accurate; they both come across vividly in The Prince and the Showgirl, but the film is like a gleaming gold-plated serving dish with a mackerel and a marshmallow sitting on it.) Branagh makes a very funny Olivier, biting down on every last syllable and modulating his voice from a whisper to a roar. He takes many of the Great Man’s mannerisms and gives them a campy spin, for example rolling his eyes toward heaven in supplication, then lowering them suddenly and pursing his lips. He portrays Olivier and sends him up at the same time, and he’s the best thing in the movie.
Michelle Williams is not so juicy. She does an effective, almost eerie job of evoking Monroe, both the wide-eyed mock-innocent dumbbell and the pouting, soulful little-girl-lost. But it’s all evocation. Marilyn Monroe was ferociously, incandescently alive on the screen. It’s not just that Williams doesn’t have Monroe's looks or her amazing body. She doesn’t have her feral quality, the intense aggressive sexuality that flashes out in moments that are still startling to watch. Like Elvis Presley, Monroe was an extraordinary personality who bypassed traditional notions of “acting.” At her best, as with Olivier, she made conventional acting look stilted and contrived, but at her worst (usually in drama), with no real technique or training to draw on, she could be repetitive, self-involved, and amateurish. Williams is just the opposite — she’s all brains and technique, but no fire. It’s an Indie performance, small and readable and finely wrought. But this is a movie about giants (it also includes portraits of Vivien Leigh, Arthur Miller, Sybil Thorndike) and you can’t help noticing there are no giants around to play them.
In any case, the main character isn’t really Monroe, or Olivier. Like I said, it’s about this guy Colin Clark. The movie is supposedly based on his true story, as recounted in his published diary and in his book The Prince, the Showgirl, and Me. In Clark’s account, as a fresh-faced 24 year old, he was the only one on the set Monroe could relate to, and after her new husband Miller deserted her to return to America, she turned to Clark for comfort. The only person with no agenda, it seems (though he later went on to write two books and sell them to the movies). The central part of the movie is about Colin and Marilyn’s very special week, after they sneak away from the set to go frolicking around the English countryside. They walk aimlessly through a park, they go skinny dipping, she’s turned on by his innocence, and they share a kiss. If this seems like a particularly puerile fantasy involving borrowed bits of The Misfits, Something’s Got to Give, and Bus Stop, that’s because it is. You get tired of watching Eddie Redmayne's Colin stare wonderingly at Monroe, wet eyed and open mouthed, or for variety, the other way around. She opens herself up to him and reveals her hurts, her fears and insecurities, and they fall for each other, sort of. Alas, she has to go back to being Marilyn Monroe and he has to go back to being…well, who cares, really? All they had was their one magical time together, but it’s a time that changed them both. In fact, the movie is named for it: My Week with Marilyn.
What a coincidence, right? Especially considering who I watched it with! When it was over, Halle shifted discontentedly under the covers.
“This thing is unbelievable.”
“Why thank you.”
“Cut it out, Mr. Bond. I was talking about the movie. Harvey may manage to snag Michelle an Oscar, but I don’t buy a word of it.”
She saw my expression, and gave me one of her enigmatic smiles. Then she put her face close. The eternal temptress.
“Could you go for some popcorn?”
“Great idea, I’m starving!”
“No, seriously, I can’t get out of bed. Go get me some popcorn. Now.”
It was a long week we had together, Halle and me. But I will never, ever forget it.
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Labels: 10s, Arthur Miller, Books, Branagh, Elvis, H. Weinstein, Marilyn, Michelle Williams, Nonfiction, Olivier, V. Leigh
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Wednesday, October 05, 2011
A Real Phony
By Damian Arlyn
What was it about Audrey Hepburn? She was beautiful. There's no doubt about that. She made being natural and vulnerable in front of the camera seem so effortless. She had grace, charm, poise, charisma, and could seem both earnestly innocent and incredibly sexy at the same time. Yet these qualities have all belonged to countless other actresses both before and after her, so what made her different? Having re-watched two of her movies recently, I was reminded of what a truly unique screen presence she was. The impression she managed to leave on audiences was far more than merely the sum of these parts. Regardless of the genre she was working in there was something strangely elusive and sparklingly radiant about her. As the cliché goes, one can't take one's eyes off her. She commanded attention not by doing a lot (as other actors tend to do) but by doing very little. It's easy to see how a whole industry has sprung up around her, and yet somehow (almost 20 years after her death) she even manages to rise above that. I mention all this because one of her most iconic films, Breakfast at Tiffany's, celebrates its 50th anniversary today and although it is one of my all-time favorite films, I can admit that whatever greatness it does possess comes mostly because of her immeasurable contribution, which is far more than purely an aesthetic one. Her presence alters the whole approach the filmmakers took to the material and her absence no doubt would've affected the film's now classic status. Without Audrey, Tiffany's still would've been a good movie, but with her, it's a terrific one.
The role Audrey played (famously known as Holly Golightly but, as the film elucidates, that's not her real name) first began as a character in a Truman Capote novella. While I have not personally read the book, my understanding is that it's much darker and more provocative than the Paramount's movie adaptation (the character of "Fred" is homosexual, there is no happy ending, etc). As it is, the film still deals with very adult subject matter but it handles it in a very restrained and accessible manner. Because of that approach, the casting of Audrey Hepburn as the naive but worldly "call girl" (called by Capote as an "American geisha") works. Capote apparently wanted the sluttier Marilyn Monroe for the part and although it might've made it closer in spirit to its gritty source material, that choice would've severely altered the alchemy of the finished film.
From the film's opening sequence where a gorgeous Audrey stands on a deserted street eating breakfast while gazing longingly at a Tiffany's store window to the emotionally wrenching climactic kiss in the rain, it is clear that Breakfast at Tiffany's is pure Hollywood fantasy. Only in a fantasy could such a scared, lonely and tragic character seem so elegant, so glamorous and so engaging. It surprises me (and my wife) how many women fantasize about being Audrey's Golightly character (wearing her outfits and so forth) presumably not realizing that within the context of the film, it's a facade. She is not stylish, she's pathetic. She's not strong, she's sad. As Martin Balsam states in the film: "She's a phony," but because she actually believes in the illusion "she's a real phony."
Surrounding Audrey is a very capable cast. A young, handsome George Peppard plays Paul Varjak, the down-on-his-luck writer currently being supported by his "decorator," with ease and confidence. The always reliable Patricia Neal was the classy (and deliciously frosty) Emily Failenson, Paul's married companion/benefactor. Buddy Ebsen turns in a brief, but heartbreaking, performance as Holly's former husband, Marty Balsam plays Holly's long-suffering agent and, in one of my all-time favorite "bit" parts of any movie, a memorable John McGiver shows up as a very understanding Tiffany's salesman who, in spite of his cold professionalism, pontificates wistfully about how the knowledge that Cracker Jack boxes still contain prizes "gives one a feeling of solidarity with the past."
The film's solitary sour note performance-wise comes from Mickey Rooney's buck-toothed, yellow-faced Japanese landlord, Mr. Yunioshi. Originally intended to provide hilarious "comic relief", the clumsy, bad-tempered character is the textbook example of a racist stereotype. Made all the more embarrassing by its sheer gratuitousness, many of the filmmakers have since apologized for the insensitive portrayal, though his scenes did make for a compelling sequence in the 1993 biopic Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story starring Jason Scott Lee. There are, however, other moments of comedy in the film that do work very well. When Holly throws a party in her apartment, for example, we are treated to some very funny vignettes (my favorite of which is the woman who's laughing at her own reflection in the mirror at one point and then when glimpsed later she's crying at it, mascara smearing down her face). Some have commented that these scenes are actually the best in the movie. I don't know that I'd go that far but they do demonstrate Blake Edwards' knack for staging comic set pieces, a talent that would be on full display two years later in his most famous film, The Pink Panther.
Despite Edwards' natural affinity for comedy, he was a competent director of drama as well. Breakfast at Tiffany's and Days of Wine and Roses prove this I think. Furthermore, there is a lightness of touch that Edwards brings to the whole proceedings. Not a subtlety necessarily because Edwards is admittedly not the most subtle of directors (he often paints in very broad strokes whatever genre he chooses to work in), but a nimbleness. Edwards may deal with heavy material, but he doesn't handle it heavily and that characteristic, combined with Audrey's effervescent influence, is what makes Breakfast at Tiffany's so airy and delightful (in contrast, consider that the film originally was going to be directed by John Frankenheimer and imagine what kind of finished product it would've ended up becoming). This is helped in no small way by Henry Mancini's lovely score (another plus of having Edwards as the director since he and Mancini always worked together). In addition to some bouncy jazz pieces and some appropriately emotional cues for the film's more dramatic moments, Mancini created one of the most unforgettable theme songs in the history of cinema in "Moon River." A simple little melody with somewhat corny lyrics and yet, like Audrey herself, somehow the tune manages to transcend its ingredients. The scene where Audrey sits in her window playing the guitar and singing helps to establish its immortality. By now it is almost common knowledge that the studio did not want to keep the song but Audrey forbade them from cutting it ("Over my dead body" were ostensibly her exact words).
When it was released in 1961, Breakfast at Tiffany's was very successful at the box office and relatively well received by critics. Whatever criticisms were aimed at the film, Audrey herself was highly praised for her performance. Nobody could've anticipated, however, the lasting effect the film and its protagonist could have on pop culture. Holly Golightly would become Audrey's most iconic character and the quintessential example of her onscreen appeal. I must confess that the film was my first introduction to Ms. Hepburn and, just as George Peppard did, I fell in love with her almost immediately. She was a true original and I doubt there will ever be another one like her. Her character might've been a "real phony," but she herself was the genuine article.
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Labels: 60s, A. Hepburn, Blake Edwards, Capote, Fiction, Marilyn, Movie Tributes, Patricia Neal
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Monday, September 26, 2011
All Things Being Equal
By Josh R
It would be comforting, if more than a little naïve, to imagine that we live in truly equitable society. Certain politicians insist that the existence of what is broadly outlined as “The Welfare State” robs people of the initiative to strive and achieve — an assertion that would only make sense if everyone started out at the same place, with identical advantages and without the kind of obstacles that apply only under given sets of circumstances. That’s a nice way of saying that most people’s futures are predetermined by factors completely beyond their control — for all but a select few, the future is less about choice than the choices that have been made for you.
The Help, based on the controversial best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett, is a film that examines the imbalances created by a society that insists on keeping all its members in their “proper place,” and the toll such casual dispensation of injustice can take on the human soul. Specifically, the film is dealing with racial inequality in the American South in the early 1960s — but the mere existence of this film testifies to another, perhaps even more startling imbalance of the type that Hollywood usually pretends not to notice. It isn’t difficult to reel off a list of films which not only feature predominantly male casts, but feature strong, complex roles for multiple cast members; I can think of at least five or six films released in the past year which gave as many male actors the chance to shine. There are certainly female-driven ensemble films being made — this summer alone, the vastly overrated Bridesmaids has seemingly tapped into a new market by proving that women can do lame-brained, frat-boy type humor just as successfully as men do — but how many films can you name that furnish fully realized, challenging and provocative female roles for all but a few of its members? How many films have ever featured not one, nor even two, but an entire gallery of great female performances? A handful of classics stand out — Stage Door and The Women remain the gold standard, more than 70 years after their initial releases — but for the most part, great female ensemble pieces have been few and far between. While there have been notable recent exceptions — the films of Rodrigo Garcia have showcased several of our best contemporary actresses to terrific effect — The Help may be the first big-budget, mass-market film in many a year that has made full and glorious use of a large, diverse and extremely talented collection of female performers. It is due to their efforts that The Help — a good film, if hardly a great one — transcends whatever limitations the material may have and provides an eminently satisfying, emotionally rewarding filmgoing experience.
The Help of the title are African-American women employed as domestic servants in the households of young, pampered white socialites in Jackson, Miss., at the dawning of the Civil Rights era. The mistresses — who seem mostly to regard things such as marriage and parenting as tiresome, unwelcome distractions from the unending cycle of events on the Junior League social calendar — regard their maids with equal measures of indifference and suspicion. Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone), a recent college graduate and aspiring journalist, returns to her childhood home in Jackson to work at a local newspaper. Returning to one’s roots inevitably entails reverting to old patterns; her social life is quickly commandeered by a circle of former high school friends, presided over with an iron fist by Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard), an unctuous queen bee who spends the bulk of her time cheerfully campaigning for the installation of separate toilets in households that employ black servants. Uncomfortable with the behaviors and attitudes she encounters, Skeeter decides to write an expose of Jackson society, as told from the point of view of the help. To that end, she persuades two domestic servants — the cautious, reserved Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) and feisty, indignant Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer) — to share their experiences working in various households, providing a glimpse into what happens behind closed doors, drawn curtains and the pretense of Southern gentility. Although the women are initially reluctant to participate, they eventually find a sense of purpose in revealing both the casual indignities and more harrowing instances of degradation and cruelty they witness and experience as second-class citizens in a segregated culture. When the book is published, it creates shockwaves felt both far and wide; once the truth has been dragged out in the open, no one is entirely prepared to deal with the repercussions.
The Help is directed by Tate Taylor, who also penned its screenplay. While the film represents a competent effort, it inevitably feels like the work of a novice filmmaker; it’s not particularly interesting from a visual standpoint, the tone is uncertain throughout (not all of its scenes seem to belong in the same film) and the pacing is slightly off, with certain scenes feeling oddly truncated while others seem hyper-extended. Many cast members have been coaxed in the direction of caricature — making it all the more remarkable how successfully they avoid the trap of existing on a one-dimensional level. There are exaggerated aspects to all but a handful of the performances, but the exaggeration doesn’t upset the balance of characterization — even when Spencer (a previously unheralded talent who is a delight from start to finish) is dispensing cantankerous sass in a manner which may bring to mind Hattie McDaniel, it doesn’t come across as stereotypical behavior — there’s still the sense of a real person behind the bulging eyes and grumbling retorts.
The well-meaning, conscientious Skeeter is the kind of role that almost never works; the character’s unvarying decency is like a salve for liberal guilt. Fortunately, Emma Stone is a creative, resourceful actress capable of projecting genuine personality even in less-than-ideal circumstances; she has some of Debra Winger’s off-the-cuff spontaneity, and invests the role with enough in the way of quirky intelligence to make you (mostly) forget how narrowly conceived the character is. On the other side of the spectrum, the vile, epithetic-spewing Hilly is writ so large, and in such a poisonous hand, that the easy choice for Bryce Dallas Howard would have been to render her as a vessel of pure, unadulterated evil — whereas Stone has to whip up something from nothing, Howard has to avoid the temptation to oversimplify matters. Thankfully, she doesn’t fall into that trap — her Hilly is suitably detestable, but not a cardboard villainess with a one-dimensional pathology. The audience has to want this Southern-fried witch, with her steely beauty-pageant smile and propensity for making people suffer, to get what’s coming to her; at the same time, Howard clues you in to where Hilly’s rottenness originates (racists are made, not born), and what it has cost her to preserve it. The hatred and fear that have been instilled in Hilly from birth, and that she carries around with her day after grinding day without reprieve or relief, is so corrosive that it’s eating her alive. The character may be rendered in very broad strokes, but she’s recognizably, pitiably human. The same holds true for the insecure blonde bombshell Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain), a social pariah who forms an unlikely bond with Minny. The ubiquitous Chastain — whose distant, ethereal quality works much more effectively in this context than in the suspense thriller The Debt — has the sweet, slightly dazed manner of Marilyn Monroe in her post-Strasberg years, and delivers a genuinely affecting performance that appeals to the audience’s sympathy without begging for it. Like Howard, she has a fine line to walk — Celia could easily come across as a pathetic dingaling, all curves and nervous giggles — but the performance, while exaggerated, never feels fake or forced.
The efforts of the younger cast members are nicely offset by the contributions of a trio of scene-stealing veterans. The redoubtable Sissy Spacek, who is no stranger to playing Southern eccentrics (but is usually pitch-perfect no matter what she’s doing), delivers a master class in how to play a smallish role for all it’s worth. As Hilly’s dotty mother, she has some choice bits of comic business, and handles the assignment with unflagging aplomb; so well-enshrined is Spacek’s reputation as a dramatic actress, it’s easy to forget how comfortably comedy falls into her wheelhouse. Allison Janney, who is given considerably more screen time, has a qualified success in the role of Skeeter’s evasive, cancer-riddled mother, a woman too image-conscious to act on the courage of her convictions. The performance is a bit more vivid than it needs to be — while all of the actors flirt dangerously with caricature, Janney is the only who takes it past the tipping point — but she handles the quieter moments well, and she and Stone strike up a crackling combative rhythm in their confrontation scenes. Cicely Tyson has a lovely, heart-rending cameo as Skeeter’s beloved childhood nanny, who is nowhere in evidence when her former charge returns to Jackson; her unexplained absence preys on Skeeter’s thoughts even as she trains her gaze on the goings-on in other peoples’ houses.
As strong as the ensemble work is, one performer deserves (at the very least) a paragraph all to herself. As Aibileen, Viola Davis pushes beyond the film’s comfort zone, bringing the hard, cold realities of its subject matter into razor-sharp focus. It isn’t a noisy, flashy performance; you have only to look in Aibileen’s sad, weary eyes to feel the crushing weight of her circumscribed, hardscrabble life of backbreaking labor and heartbreaking compromise, absorbing daily blows to her dignity in soul-killing silence. Without that anchoring presence, The Help would probably exist on the same level as Beaches or Steel Magnolias — a glossy, feel-good product that deals with big emotions in a facile, airbrushed manner, with swelling musical cues to signal when to reach for the Kleenex. The other actresses (all terrific) lend it tartness and sweetness, but Davis is the one who gives it gravity — she delves deep below the surface to unearth a rawness that feels at once both universal and intensely personal; the sense of hurt and suppressed anger she brings to the part cuts right to the bone. It remains to be seen whether Hollywood will afford her the chance to plumb these depths on a consistent basis — as stated previously, it would be foolish to assume that, even in The Age of Obama, the same range of opportunities are available to everyone. On the evidence of The Help, it is clear that Viola Davis is more than willing to go to those places — if she gets more parts like this, the results will be riveting.
On the merits of the performances, there can be little room for doubt; still, it is probably worth questioning whether an African-American author or filmmaker would have placed the character of Skeeter so firmly at the center of the narrative. For the record, The Help is not the story of a courageous, selfless white woman coming to the aid of helpless black people; nor is fair to say that Stockett and Taylor treat their subject matter with any lack of intelligence and sensitivity. Nevertheless, The Help isn’t really as tough-minded as it pretends to be — it cheats on the side of entertainment. I’m not enough of an authority to say whether or not it qualifies as good history; it certainly provides the occasion for some great ensemble acting. The women of The Help are totally invested in their roles, and thoroughly engaged with one another — that, in and of itself, provides cause for celebration.
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Labels: 10s, Debra Winger, Marilyn, Spacek, Viola Davis
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Thursday, March 03, 2011
Centennial Tributes: Jean Harlow
By Josh R
When one thinks of Jean Harlow — as anyone with a fondness for sex in cinema is bound to do at some point — the first thing that comes to mind is the hair. It was a phosphorescent blend of silver and ivory unlike any color found in nature, unthinkable as a genetic occurrence and impossible in the absence of strenuous chemical persuasion. Early in her career, it took the form of a soft, scalloped wave, framing her round,
dimpled face and giving her an eerie kind of glow; whether photographed in sun or shadow, Harlow always seemed to radiate light. Within a few years, and without losing any of their volume, the waves contracted into a tight knit of flaxen coils and curls; the effect was as elaborate as any advanced feat of neoclassical architecture. Whenever Harlow was in motion — whether slinking, strutting or just plain being batted around by some over-stimulated alpha male — the platinum coif never moved a fraction of an inch, as if stunned into a frozen state of shock by its own radioactive incandescence. It was artificial in every respect, the whimsical figment of an art-deco imagination; on anyone else, the effect would have been entirely implausible. It didn’t look fake on Harlow, because the lady herself was the genuine article. The pre-fabricated image the studios came up with was something she not only used, but owned. Like a glass diamond that shone as brightly as the real thing, she took what seemed artificial — the hard, lacquered visage of a dime-store china doll with a peroxide halo of spun polyurethane — and created an onscreen persona that felt visceral and authentic, generating all kinds of white heat in the process.Her cinematic alter ego was a hardened Depression-era dame from the wrong side of the tracks, educated in the school of hard knocks. In reality, Harlean Carpenter was born into an upper-middle-class family in Kansas City, and attended finishing school. She married young, but not to some ancient benefactor who could lift her out of poverty and obscurity — rather, to a dashing playboy who, while barely 20, was still heir to a vast fortune, and with whom she seemed genuinely smitten. The marriage failed shortly after the couple settled in fashionable Beverly Hills, but not before Harlean had established herself as a well-regarded socialite. The Jean Harlow of the movies would have set her sights on stardom, and slept her way to the top — Harlean Carpenter was generally well-behaved, preferred reading to bed-hopping, and had no intention of trying to make it in the movies.
The movies found her anyway, sitting in a car outside 20th Century Fox waiting for a girlfriend to emerge from a screen test — one look from a studio talent scout was all it took to get the ball rolling. She was initially
hesitant at the prospect of tossing her hat into the celluloid ring, but persistent studio executives, curiosity, and the tug of immortality eventually won out. After a year’s worth of negligible walk-ons, Howard Hughes featured her prominently in Hell’s Angels. She became a star on the strength of that film, much to the chagrin of critics, who had nothing nice (or even civil) to say about her acting ability. Reviewers continued to dog her rather mercilessly through The Public Enemy and Platinum Blonde — never has an icon-to-be been so thoroughly roasted in her formative years. In truth, the critical scorn was not unwarranted. Her early performances were stiff, tentative, and lacking a sense of purpose. It’s possible that, having become a star as if almost by accident, and with so little design on her part, she didn’t quite trust her own luck. Lack of confidence was certainly a problem, but of even greater concern to Hughes and her handlers was the seeming lack of conviction — Harlean Carpenter hadn’t fully bought into the idea of ‘Jean Harlow’ yet. Like so many stars who came before and after her, Jean Harlow — the real one, as opposed to the wan imitation staring listlessly past the camera in her early outings — was born at MGM. The studio gave her acting
lessons, refined her look as well as sharpened it (she always seemed a bit fuzzy and out-of-focus while under contract to Hughes), and gave her the confidence to emerge from her shell. More importantly, they gave her Clark Gable to play opposite, and the chemistry between them was palpable and electric — his gruff machismo emboldened her, and she developed a real sexual swagger in his presence. Red Dust was a heady mixture of pre-Code suggestiveness and exotic hokum set in the wilds of Indonesia, and a rip-roaring success. Harlow’s hooker on the lam was introduced posing coyly in an outdoor bathing stall, with just enough of her assets on display to convince many filmgoers that she had actually been nude at the time of shooting. In clothes or out of them, this Jean Harlow was much more spirited than the one audiences had been conditioned to expect — a combustible cocktail of sass and brass, she rolled her hips and flaunted her chassis like a woman who knew what good sex was, flirted as though she meant it, and delivered wisecracks with enough snap to elicit genuine laughs. 
The improvement in her delivery owed a lot to the eventual decision not to fight or conceal the nasality of her natural speaking voice; it was only after she’d abandoned the notion of trying to sound like a lady that she truly began to thrive. In Bombshell, she spoofed her own image, complete with a parody of the Red Dust bathing scene. She was brilliant as the truculent trophy wife in Dinner at Eight, swaddled in chiffon and munching bon-bons in bed when not worrying aloud about machines taking the place of every profession (to which Marie Dressler pointedly responded, “My dear, that’s something you need never worry about.”) By the mid-'30s, she’d come fully into her own in the realm of screwball comedy, standing toe-to-toe with MGM’s finest — Spencer Tracy, William Powell and Myrna Loy — and stealing Libeled Lady, an airy soufflé of mistaken identity and marital mix-ups, right out from under their noses.
For as much as she excelled at carnal humor, she could switch gears with surprising dexterity when called upon to do so. She was frequently cast as a prostitute — or at least as the type of shady lady who traded on sex in order to get along in life — but she played these roles without condescension, and without letting the
tawdriness of surface appearances obscure her humanity. Mae West was more risqué, and probably a lot ballsier than Harlow in terms of what she got away with, but her winking, leering bawds has less dimension than Harlow’s good-natured vixens; it’s much easier to make a case for West as a film personality than as an actress. Harlow could deliver off-color zingers just as well as Mae, but she wasn’t just vamping for the camera and exulting in the glories of forbidden sex — her women were essentially romantics at heart, no matter how tough they talked, with temperatures which ran both hot and cold. Thus, in China Seas — essentially Red Dust on a ship, again with Gable — there’s a sense of shame and longing behind the strident posturing and snazzy retorts, the bruised feelings of a hooker with a heart of gold who’s been made to feel cheap. Harlow had her limitations — she generally faltered when cast against type, and like most untrained actors, leaned too heavily on favored mannerisms — but she understood the rocky emotional terrain these scarlet women traveled, and how much it cost them to keep up at a pace with the men they’d pinned their hopes on. 
Red Dust and China Seas were top-of-the-line vehicles, but not all of her dramatic assignments were in the best of taste, and Harlow took part in more than her fair share of lurid enterprises. Her most controversial film was Red-Headed Woman, a departure from blondness and any pretense of scruple. The tale of a ruthless social climber who’d screw anyone and everyone in order to get ahead, the film gave fits to censors, and was instrumental in establishing the prohibitive codes that would govern standards and practices in Hollywood for the better part of three decades (the film was racy enough that it couldn’t even be shown in the UK for nearly 30 years after Harlow’s death.) There was something slightly exploitative in MGM’s handling of her — she was displayed in ways that were vaguely pornographic. Before the Production Code put the kibosh on such antics, it may have been part of her contract to be attired flimsily enough so that the outlines of her nipples could be clearly visible at all times.
Harlow was not entirely the victim in this scenario; once she’d learned the ropes, she may have become a willing party to her own exploitation. After her second husband committed suicide under rather mysterious circumstances — something to do with having been a bigamist — the studio publicity department attempted a cover-up; uncharacteristically, they botched the thing rather badly, and the story became a tabloid sensation. The scandal threatened to capsize Harlow’s career, until MGM made the decision to capitalize rather crudely on her private sorrows and public disgrace with Reckless, a film which played out almost like an act of penance. Her popularity didn’t suffer one iota; the incident somehow seemed in keeping with the onscreen bad-girl shenanigans that had endeared her to audiences in the first place.
Beyond the scandal, her offscreen life was not always a particularly happy one. She had a string of passionate affairs, but very little success in finding lasting love, and a controlling mother who created all sorts of problems for her, both personally and professionally. She barely made it through the filming of Saratoga, her face and body already visibly ravaged by the renal failure that would claim her life at the age of 26. Her death was greeted with shock in some quarters, and a grim sense of inevitability in others. It was assumed that she had lived hard and fast — it was conveniently forgotten that ‘Jean Harlow’ had been largely an act. Two rather salacious biopics — both released in 1965 and both entitled Harlow — offered scant insight into her life and work, little indication of the qualities that made her star, and still less in the way of actual entertainment value.
Her death served as a reminder that the most intense blazes of light can be very short-lived, if not impossible to sustain; I learned as much during my eighth grade science fair, trying to coax my carbon arc lamp to ignite for more than a few seconds at a time. Harlow never lived to see her 30s, and her period of genuine superstardom lasted just more than five years. The briefest impressions can sometimes be the most enduring, and the one she made has been more or less impossible to shake — 80 years later, her influence can still be seen everywhere. The careers of Marilyn Monroe, Madonna and a host of others would have been impossible without her — she was the original Blonde Bombshell, the one for whom the phrase had been coined, and the one against whom all others have been measured. The legend took shape in no small part as a result of marketing and the manipulation of image, but also as a consequence of her own
singularity — which was not something that had been manufactured or imposed upon her by Hollywood, but a quality that came from within. There was always something deliciously paradoxical about the contrast between her look and her voice; pull the string of the china dolly with the soft, curvy figure, and what came out was the harsh, nasal honk of a waitress from The Bronx. She looked as though she were meant to be photographed and strike the poses of a goddess — but she had real energy, both physical and emotional, and brought a crackling intensity to the type of flatly written scenes that needed her wounded, bristling toughness and kittenish sense of mischief in order to work. It is tempting — and intriguing — to consider how her particular charms and attributes, so specific to the pre-Code moviemaking of the 1930s, would have translated to the cinema of the 1940s and beyond. Contemplating her Belle Watling, Phyllis Dietrichson, Barbara Graham, even — dare I think it — her Ma Barker for Roger Corman, confirms the impression of a genuine trailblazer who left the party too early, and might have enlivened future eras of cheap thrills for decades to come. Tweet
Labels: Corman, Gable, Harlow, Howard Hughes, Loy, Marilyn, Tracy, William Powell
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Wednesday, October 13, 2010
All the world's a stage
By Edward Copeland
Many elements can contribute to a classic film: stylish or revolutionary direction, a unique or powerfully told tale, a performance so great it raises the quality of an entire production. While bits of most of those appear in All About Eve, in the end its status in the stratosphere of cinematic greatness gets set in cement by Joseph L. Mankiewicz's brilliant screenplay and, more specifically, its dialogue. You could close your eyes and just listen to it and be blown away by his work. Maybe it's because I worship the written word that it holds such appeal because All About Eve celebrates the witty rendering of language and does so through the vehicle of some of movie's most memorable characters.
No matter how different all my greatest (or favorite) films are, the singular thing they have in common is that each time I re-watch them, I discover something new. In the case of All About Eve, I put something together for the first time in this visit: several of my very favorite films not only contain voiceover narration but multiple voiceover narrators. Both Henry and Karen Hill narrate portions of Goodfellas. Rashomon tells its tale from several points of view. Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters offers the voices of the three sisters plus Allen and Michael Caine's characters. Citizen Kane's structure consists of interviews with different subjects and, in one case, the reporter reading a witness's papers. Here, in All About Eve, we alternate between the takes of theater star Margo Channing (Bette Davis), her good friend Karen (Celeste Holm) and acerbic theater critic/columnist Addison DeWitt (George Sanders). The technique is not a magic bullet, however, because it only made The Thin Red Line even more unbearable than it already was.
Addison, wonderful wry Addison, bats first in terms of the film's narration and who better to guide us into this backstage drama since he lives and breathes theater, though he does it through his writing, not through any actual participation in the theatrical arts himself. In a way, he's the theatrical version of the title of Howard Cosell's autobiography: I Never Played the Game. Of course, while DeWitt may not act in, write, direct or produce plays, he's definitely into gamesmanship. Toying with those who do contribute to theater, that is Addison's sport of choice.
As All About Eve opens, we watch as Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) receives the Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement in the theater. This event's description that Addison deciphers for us begins with an
introductory speech by an older actor of some renown. DeWitt explains, "Being an actor, he'll go on speaking for some time." The camera also pans down to show all the empty spaces where the evening's previous awards used to reside. Addison runs down the meaning of that for us as well as those awards' relative meaninglessness in comparison to the one Eve receives. "The minor awards are for such as the writer and director since their function is to merely construct a tower so the world can applaud a light which flashes on top of it," DeWitt tells us as we briefly see dour-looking playwright Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe) and sour-looking director Bill Simpson (Gary Merrill). That night that light belongs to Eve, who Addison informs us, has become the youngest person ever to win the Sarah Siddons honor. Also present in the audience, looking none too pleased at Eve's good fortune, is that great actress Margo. DeWitt informs us that she made her theatrical debut at the age of 4 as a fairy in A Midsummer Night's Dream when she strode on to the stage stark naked and she's been a star ever since.It's at the point where Mankiewicz's camera switches its focus to the audience, specifically to Karen Richards (Holm), wife of the playwright and best friend of Margo, that the voiceover narration gets handed over to let Karen tell the beginnings of the story, namely how she's responsible for bringing Eve Harrington into Margo's
life in the first place. Karen had noticed the poor, dowdy Eve hanging by the stage door night after night, performance after performance, during the run of Margo's latest hit play. The kind-hearted Karen finally takes it upon herself to ask Eve what she does during the beginning and end of each show and Eve tells her she goes and sees the show, that she hasn't missed a performance of the play yet. Karen finds this so impressive that she decides that Margo just must meet this woman who goes beyond the definition of a mere fan and takes her backstage to meet the star. Knowing how mercurial Margo can be at time, Karen enters alone at first where she finds Margo with her dresser Birdie (the sublime Thelma Ritter) and her husband Lloyd. She's currently haranguing the playwright about plays written about Southern women such as the one she's starring in right now. She wants to know why playwrights insist on depicting all these romantically challenged women in the South.
Coming from the region herself, Margo declares, "Love is the one thing we were never starved for in the South." Karen tries to ease in to her introduction of Eve by talking about fans in general, but this only launches Margo into a rant about the mobs waiting for autographs outside the stage door. "Autograph fiends — they're not people," Margo spits. "Those little beasts that run around in packs like coyotes." Karen tries to get Margo more charitable, but she's on a roll and can't be stopped. "They're nobodies! Fans! They're juvenile delinquents! They're mental deficients! They never see a play or movie. They're never inside long enough," Margo's monologue continues. Karen breaks in long enough to tell her there's one of those fans she wants her to meet. When she describes Eve and how she's always there and has seen every performance, Margo knows immediately who Karen is talking about and is game enough to allow her into the dressing room. Eve enters meekly and after prodding, shares her tale
about how she lived in San Francisco with her husband who was killed in the war, but she saw Margo give a performance and after a brief detour for a job at a midwest brewery, she came to New York with nothing, just to watch Margo perform. It's as if Channing is The Grateful Dead and Eve is a Deadhead. The entire room is touched except for the suspicious and cynical Birdie who adds at the end of Eve's story that it has "Everything but the bloodhounds snapping at her rear end." Margo makes Birdie apologize, though she's the only one whose instincts will be on the mark from the beginning. Unfortunately, at some point in the film, her character just sort of vanishes without explanation, which is too bad because I love Thelma Ritter and it denies Birdie her deserved moment of "I told you so." Sometime during this sequence, they are joined by Bill, who not only directed the play but is Margo's significant other. It also signals that soon we'll be switching to our third narrator, Margo herself. Something in Eve though appeals to Margo and she invites her to accompany them to dinner after they drop Bill at the airport for his flight to Hollywood to direct his first film. Interestingly enough, Darryl Zanuck, the producer of All About Eve, is named as the producer of Bill's fictional film as well. It's funny to listen to
successful Broadway director Bill discuss his shot at directing film as if he's abandoning a medium for the masses for a chance to make movies "which mean something." Was there ever this perception? It's also funny to remember how income tax rates used to be. They don't mention what Bill will make for directing his film, but presumably the salary was a lot lower than directors make today, but it still must have been a heady paycheck. So, the next time you hear a millionaire whining about possibly having to have his tax rate rise 3% to 39% show him All About Eve when Bill tells Eve that "80% of his salary" for directing the movie will go to taxes. Then they can shut the hell up. Since this is the portion of the film where Eve bends over backward to ingratiate herself with her newfound theater companions, she volunteers to check Bill's luggage and then bring his ticket to the gate so that he and Margo can have some private goodbye time. Bill comments that he "forgot they grew them that way." Eve has such a lack of pretense. Margo feels she must watch out for her as if she's "a loose lamb in the jungle." Margo continues to be the narrator and takes Eve under her wing as an all-purpose assistant, though Birdie still remains the sole person with qualms about this "lamb."
As I alluded to at the beginning of the piece, great actors delivering 40-karat dialogue powers my love for All About Eve. As many times as I've seen this film in whole or in part, if you asked me to name a particularly great shot or an interesting camera move than Mankiewicz employs to tell his story, I'd come up blank. This isn't a negative criticism: The film might be chock full of them but the words he wrote produce such magic that I'm mesmerized by them to the exclusion of the technical aspects. The only shot I can really recall is not a good one: it sticks out like a sore thumb. Late in the film, when Eve has landed the lead in a play written by Lloyd and directed by Bill, it's receiving an out-of-town tryout in New Haven, Conn. She and Addison go for a walk on the street from the theater and the marquee can be seen behind them in a horribly obvious back-projection shot that I can't understand the necessity of using. Couldn't the conversation have been staged elsewhere or the theater marquee set up simply somewhere? Still, a minor criticism for a film that's such a verbal masterpiece, even if it's not also the visual wonder that the bounty of other great 1950 releases are such as Wilder's Sunset Blvd., Reed's The Third Man or Huston's The Asphalt Jungle.
Having written about Sunset Blvd., so recently for its 60th anniversary, its interesting what it and All About Eve have in common. Though Bette Davis' Margo Channing isn't insane like Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond,
both are actresses involved with younger men worrying about their age. Granted, Margo's Bill is only eight years her junior and he's her willing love interest not part of a con that has turned into emotional blackmail such as William Holden's Joe Gillis. Also, Norma is 50, 10 years older than Margo and gave up working when sound came to the movies. Margo, being a creature of the stage, has kept working steadily, but having hit the dreaded 40, worries about her future, especially in regards to future employment. Karen tries to reassure Margo that eight years isn't that big a difference, but Margo tells her that, "Those years stretch as more years go by." It also can be an easy sore to puncture should there be a lovers' spat as when she and Bill fight once and he says, though in a tone indicating he means to be funny, that he always denies the rumor that she was starring in Our American Cousin the night Abraham Lincoln was shot.Speaking of age, writer Matt Zoller Seitz pointed out a flaw in All About Eve that I've always chosen to ignore, but that I really couldn't any longer once he wrote his piece "Trash-talking nine classic movies" for Salon. The article wasn't a contrarian view out to tear down classics of cinema — he admits he adores the movie — just that some of the greats bear significant flaws and he finds that Mankiewicz's movie's weakness turns out to be Eve herself. Seitz writes:
"The only weak spot, unfortunately, is the casting of the title character, Eve Harrington. Anne Baxter is a shade too old to be playing the 'girl' or 'kid' described in much of the dialogue (she was 26 when the film was shot), and more damagingly, she's simply not as compelling and imaginative as her fellow actors."
It's hard to argue with his judgment. When I watched the film again for this tribute, frequently stopping the movie to jot down yet another line of dialogue that I loved, not a single one was dialogue that sprang forth from Baxter's lips. Granted, Eve Harrington's scheming requires her to pretend to be mousy and meek, so it would be out of place for her to toss off one of the pithy bon mots that the other characters do with ease. At the same time, the film makes the point from the beginning that Birdie can smell the fraud, how does she so easily fool the rest? During the
initial scene where Karen takes Eve into Margo's dressing room, I scrawled the note, "Awfully accommodating to a stalker." Seitz writes further on this point that, "I don't believe that Baxter's version of the dewy-eyed foundling routine could fool so many battle-scarred showbiz veterans, except maybe Celeste Holm's kindhearted Karen." Actually, that is the truth because Karen is the one she ultimately tricks to get what she wants in terms of being Margo's understudy and delaying her on purpose so she'd miss a show and Eve would get her chance on stage. Later, when Eve has dropped the pretense of being the innocent, she uses that information to force Karen to make Lloyd give her the lead in his new play instead of Margo. Karen gets saved by the lucky timing of Margo passing on the part to spend time starting married life with Bill. Karen's relieved laughter is hilarious, even though none of her dining companions know why she's laughing, especially after returning from a meeting Eve had summoned her to in the restaurant's rest room.Of course, Birdie truthfully isn't the only one who has Eve's number early. Addison knows her game pretty much from the outset, but it's not in his professional interest as a columnist or his personal interest as an
asshole to warn anyone about her. Shakespeare said, "All the world's a stage" and that's how DeWitt views it. Who is he to interrupt the players before the final curtain falls? The movie's great centerpiece is a party that Margo holds to celebrate Bill's homecoming and a belated birthday bash, but which she really regrets having before it starts because of rising tensions between her and just about everyone. In Margo's narration, she says, "Even before the party started, I could smell disaster in the air." It's the scene where the film's most famous line appears: "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night." That is just but one of the priceless quotes that fly from the various characters, including an uninvited Addison squiring an aspring actress named Miss Caswell and played by Marilyn Monroe. Even Marilyn gets some laugh lines. When she wants another drink, she calls out, "Waiter!" Addison corrects her that the man is a butler, not a waiter. Miss Caswell suggests that someone could be named Butler and that might cause confusion. "You have a point," DeWitt responds, "an idiotic one — but a point nonetheless." Going back to Seitz's piece, I think another problem with Baxter/Eve comes from the fact that Mankiewicz's screenplay doesn't provide Eve with any levity. She's the film's only humorless character.
Then again, Eve isn't Hannibal Lecter, a villain who should come with his own set of drums to deliver rimshots after each of his lines, so perhaps that's OK because the rest of the cast provides such a bounty of well-delivered dialogue that you can listen to over and over again. As I mentioned before, most of my notes on the film consisted of lines from the film. Now, it would be fairly ridiculous if I just listed them all, especially for those out there who haven't experienced All About Eve. People get all bent out of shape about spoiling a movie's plot twists, but for me it's even a greater sin to ruin all of its magnificent lines, especially when you're dealing with a screenplay as sparkling and crackling with wit as Mankiewicz produced. Still, I'm compelled to single out a few otherwise how can I convince the uninitiated that I'm not selling them a bill of goods? I will list them by the characters who spoke them.
LLOYD: You knew when you came in that the audition was over, that Eve was your understudy, playing that childish little game of cat and mouse.
MARGO: Not mouse, never mouse. If anything rat!
LLOYD: I shall never understand the weird process by which a body with a voice suddenly fancies itself as a mind. Just when exactly does an actress decide they're HER words she's speaking and HER thoughts she's expressing?
MARGO: Usually at the point where she has to rewrite and rethink them, to keep the audience from leaving the theater!
LLOYD: What makes you think either Miller or Sherwood would stand for the nonsense I take from you? You'd better stick to Beaumont and Fletcher! They've been dead for three hundred years!
MARGO: ALL playwrights should be dead for three hundred years!
LLOYD: There comes a time that a piano realizes that it has not written a concerto.
Eve would ask Abbott to give her Costello.
The cynicism you refer to, I acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys!
You can always put that award where your heart ought to be.
(To Margo) Many of your guests have been wondering when they may be permitted to view the body. Where has it been laid out?
Every so often, some elder statesman of the theater or the cinema assures the public that actors and actress are just plain folks, ignoring the fact that their greatest attraction to the public istheir complete lack of resemblance to normal human beings.
(To Eve) Is it possible, even conceivable, that you've confused me with that gang of backward children you play tricks on, that you have the same contempt for me as you have for them?... Look closely, Eve. It's time you did. I am Addison DeWitt. I am nobody's fool, least of all yours.
That I should want you at all suddenly strikes me as the height of improbability. But that in itself is probably the reason: You're an improbable person, Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also our contempt for humanity and inability to love and be loved, insatiable ambition, and talent. We deserve each other.
There, I've said too much, but the words that flow from All About Eve are infectious, thanks in no small part to the stellar cast that delivers them. Bette Davis gives what may be her finest work and I'd still place her second that year to Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond. Two of the greatest performances by actresses in the
history of film and they both lost the Oscar to Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday. I don't mean to cast aspersions on Holliday, but let's be serious. Thankfully, George Sanders did win his most deserved supporting actor prize as Addison DeWitt, another of filmdom's all-time great characters. Thelma Ritter and Celeste Holm both earned nominations for supporting actress but I have to admit that Ritter had better parts (as in Pickup on South Street) and Holm already had an Oscar for being the best part of the terribly creaky Gentleman's Agreement, so I can't argue with Josephine Hull's win for her delightful turn in Harvey, which also turns 60 today. The most amazing achievement though belongs to Mankiewicz who won writing and directing Oscars for two years running, the previous year being for A Letter to Three Wives. There's no disputing the worthiness of that prize for writing, but as much as I love All About Eve, I question his directing win when he was competing against John Huston for The Asphalt Jungle, Billy Wilder for Sunset Blvd. and Carol Reed for The Third Man. Still, slight reservations aside, I always will worship All About Eve, today on its 60th anniversary and on all anniversaries yet to come.Tweet
Labels: 50s, Abbott and Costello, Arthur Miller, Bette, Caine, Carol Reed, D. Zanuck, Gloria Swanson, Hannibal Lecter, Holden, Huston, Mankiewicz, Marilyn, Movie Tributes, Sanders, Thelma Ritter, Wilder, Woody
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Thursday, September 30, 2010
Tony Curtis (1925-2010)
In a strange way, Tony Curtis resembled his great role (I'd argue his greatest) as Sidney Falco in 1957's Sweet Smell of Success. Not that he was overly ambitious to the point of having no scruples, but that for every bit of good fortune Curtis had in his career, it didn't quite seem to stick and now that he has died at the age of 85 though he leaves a legacy of many good performances and great films, somehow he didn't end up having the career that his talent deserved.
He made his film debut in a short film directed by Jerry Lewis in 1949 called How to Smuggle a Hernia Across the Border but, thankfully, features and real roles would come his way. The next year the former Bernard Schwartz got to join the Cavalry in a classic Western: Anthony Mann's Winchester '73 starring Jimmy Stewart, though his credit read Anthony Curtis.
Three years later, he showed his knack for escaping tight spots by taking on the title role in Houdini. Three years later, he teamed with Burt Lancaster in Carol Reed's colorful but silly circus melodrama Trapeze. The next year he and Lancaster teamed up again in what may be his best work, the wonderfully cynical Sweet Smell of Success. As a press agent in Alexander Mackendrick's masterwork, Curtis and Lancaster were a great acting twosome and they had that great Elmer Bernstein score and James Wong Howe cinematography that really brought 1950s Manhattan alive in glorious black-and-white.
In 1958, he and Kirk Douglas teamed up as The Vikings. The same year, he received his only Oscar nomination as an escaped prisoner chained to another inmate, Sidney Poitier, in Stanley Kramer's The Defiant Ones. As was the case with many Kramer films, the social messaging got ladeled on a bit too thickly, but Curtis and Poitier's realism helped to temper that aspect so the film went down a bit more smoothly.
1959 brought him the chance to work with Cary Grant twice in a way. He did it for real in Operation Petticoat. Then, in the film of his that will last the test of time most likely, Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot, he should have earned his second Oscar nomination for essentially playing three characters: Joe, the musician on the run from the mob with Jack Lemmon; Josephine, the female character he assumes in hiding; and Shell Oil Jr., the playboy who sounds suspiciously like Cary Grant as he tries to seduce Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe). He's a riot in all three personas. However, the Academy only nominated Lemmon for the film.
Two years later, he had a small role in Stanley Kubrick's largely disowned Spartacus, where his most famous scene, a bathing encounter full of sexual innuendo with Laurence Olivier, was lost on a cutting room floor for decades.
The rest of the 1960s saw Curtis still work steadily but in projects less worthy of his time. He got hidden under heavy makeup as did many others in John Huston's mystery The List of Adrian Messenger; he co-starred with Natalie Wood in the adaptation of Helen Gurley Brown's best seller Sex and the Single Girl; he showed off a killer instinct as The Boston Strangler; he got to joke around with Lemmon again in The Great Race; and without him in Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies.
Before The Simpsons made it a habit to have famous guest voices, Curtis' voice turned up on The Flintstones, which turned 50 today, as Stony Curtis.
His career really started to cool in the 1970s, thanks in no small part to a cocaine habit, and it led to bad film roles such as The Bad News Bears Go to Japan and lots of television, such as a regular role opposite Robert Urich on Vega$.
His last feature role of interest was probably Nicolas Roeg's 1985 film Insignificance, based on a play, where he played a fictionalized version of Sen. Joe McCarthy encountering Einstein, Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe in a hotel room.
He also appeared on a later episode of Roseanne as a frisky dance instructor who sparks jealousy between Jackie and her mother.
During his marriage to the actress Janet Leigh, they had a daughter who became an actress in her own right, Jamie Lee Curtis.
It's a shame that a career that started so strongly, sort of petered out, but Curtis left so much good material in those early years that he'll still be remembered.
RIP Mr. Curtis.
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Labels: Animation, Anthony Mann, Carol Reed, Cary, Huston, J. Stewart, Jerry Lewis, K. Douglas, Kubrick, Lancaster, Lemmon, Marilyn, Obituary, Olivier, Television, The Simpsons, Tony Curtis, Wilder
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Monday, June 21, 2010
That's the way it crumbles, cookie-wise
By Edward Copeland
When Oscar discussions turn to how rarely comedies take the best picture prize, one of the examples always cited is Billy Wilder's The Apartment, which marks its 50th anniversary today. While it's true that laughs are plentiful in The Apartment, the film isn't a flat-out comedy the way Wilder's Some Like It Hot was the year before. There is just as much, if not more, in the way of pathos in this best picture winner, but pure comedy or not, The Apartment remains a great film and one of Wilder's very best.
Over images of the New York skyline of Nov. 1, 1959, C.C. (C for Calvin, C for Clifford) Baxter (Jack Lemmon) informs us that the population of that wonderful city at that time is 8,042,783 and that if you
stretched all those people end to end, figuring an average height of 5 feet 6 1/2 inches tall, they'd stretch from Times Square to Karachi, Pakistan. Somewhat ironic considering a recent event involving that N.Y. landmark and that country. Baxter knows odd statistics such as this because of his work as one of the 31,259 Manhattan employees of Consolidated Life Insurance. The company's home office has more employees than the population of Natchez, Miss. Baxter works on the 19th floor and though he goes by his initials C.C., most people call him Bud. He makes $94.70 a week and has a second floor apartment at 51 W 67 near Central Park that costs him $85 a month and whose price probably makes most current New Yorkers experience minor strokes when they hear it and realize that was only 50 years ago. Bud is very popular with the executives at Consolidated Life for a very simple reason: When they need a safe locale for their philandering, the single Baxter lets them use that second floor apartment. It sometimes takes a toll on his own health and it makes his neighbors thinks he is the Don Juan of all time, but it's earning him brownie points at the company, and a single man in Manhattan will do whatever he can to help ascend the rungs of capitalism's ladder to what it defines as success.
Bud's apartment has become such a party central that when his doctor neighbor (Oscar nominee Jack Kruschen) sees him setting out dozens of empty liquor bottles for the trash, he suggests in all seriousness that he leave his body to a university for scientific study because he's amazed by his stamina and is certain he can't keep up this pace forever (since he isn't aware that it isn't one man carousing with all these women). Bud is looking forward to a rare evening with himself (He'd watch Grand Hotel if they'd stop showing the sponsors' ads and get to the movie) and his apartment when one of the execs, Joe Dobisch (Ray Walston), calls unexpectedly asking for emergency use of the pad because he's got a hot number who is a dead ringer for Marilyn Monroe (a very dead-on spoof of the troublesome star of Wilder's last film). Baxter tells him he's out of booze and snacks, but relents and lets him have the place anyway, even though that means getting stuck outside in a cold, pouring rain and getting sick.
The next day at work, Baxter is a bundle of coughs and sneezes. It seems not only was he left in the cold while Joe fooled around, Joe left the wrong key under the mat so Bud was locked out of his apartment all night. He laments his illness to the cute elevator operator, Miss Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) before proceeding to his desk to try to re-arrange the sexual schedules of the men who use his apartment (who also include David White, better known as Bewitched's Larry Tate and David Lewis, General Hospital's original Edward Quartermaine) so he can get much-needed bedrest. Unfortunately, this is the day the executives
come through with their favor and he meets with the company's top man, Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray). At first, Bud worries that he's about to get in trouble for being the arranger of such moral turpitude but he soon realizes that not only has he just earned a promotion, but Sheldrake wants in on the apartment, so much so that he wants to secure it for that very evening, giving Baxter two tickets to The Music Man on Broadway to keep him occupied. Suddenly, Baxter feels much better, so confident he asks Miss Kubelik if she'd accompany him to the show. She tells him she's meeting a friend for dinner, but if she can get away, she'll meet him in the lobby before the 8:30 p.m. curtain time. Once again, Wilder proves his knack for bringing out the darkness in Fred MacMurray, as he did in Double Indemnity in 1944, only this time in a film with a more comic bent. He almost couldn't get MacMurray to agree to the part this time, wrapped up as he was in Disney projects and beginning My Three Sons, but fortunately he did because Wilder's instincts were correct and the casting was perfect. (Then again, maybe it's something inherent about how MacMurray and/or Wilder feel about people who work in the insurance business.)Miss Kubelik never meets Baxter at the theater, much to his disappointment, but he doesn't realize it's because her dinner date is with Sheldrake. Fran plans it to be merely dinner, but she still has feelings for the
cheater and ends up going back with him to Baxter's apartment. Of all the many great things you can say about Billy Wilder (and his screenwriting partner I.A.L. "Izzy" Diamond, who was teaming with Wilder for the third of their 12 collaborations), what a gift they had for creating memorable names: C.C. Baxter, Fran Kubelik, Sheldrake. Just insert them into a nonmovie related conversation and if the other party has seen The Apartment, odds are, they'll know of whom you speak. It's inevitable watching this 1960 film, full of smoking, boozing and philandering in the Manhattan business world to not think of the current series Mad Men. The show's first season was set in 1960 and its characters referenced seeing The Apartment, though the brilliant John Slattery as Roger Sterling found fault because he found it unrealistic that any company would have female elevator operators. Still, despite his disappointment at being stood up, Sheldrake lives up to his word and the following day C.C. moves on up to his new office.
The excitement over the promotion doesn't deter Baxter from the idea that he's going to be able to date Miss Kubelik. As Bud is settling in to his new digs, his adulterous subletters come to visit en masse, wondering why
he's been ducking them. Baxter leaves Sheldrake's name out of it, but mentions that he's found himself a girl and would like to be able to use his apartment for himself. The men congratulate him for his conquest, but question his need to see her every night. When Baxter's called away to Sheldrake's office, the quartet can't believe how selfish Bud is being about his own apartment. When he thanks Mr. Sheldrake for the promotion, he also returns something he assumes his lady friend left behind: a compact with a cracked mirror. Yes, she threw it at him, Sheldrake explains. Women can get a bit irrational at times. Sometimes he wonders if they are worth the trouble.As the office's Christmas party arrives, Baxter takes it upon himself to remove Fran from her post at the elevator to join in the festivities. Everything is going well at first until Bud departs briefly to fetch some punch and Fran gets ambushed by Miss Olsen (Edie Adams), Sheldrake's secretary and his mistress several
women ago. She greets her as the branch manager from Kansas City, the line Sheldrake used the night before when giving Baxter the tickets to The Music Man. Then Miss Olsen goes on to recount Sheldrake's other chain of mistresses before telling her, "You haven't done anything. It's him — oh, what a salesman! Always the last booth in the Chinese restaurant — and the same pitch about divorcing his wife — and in the end, you wind up with egg foo yong on your face." Bud returns and spots the stricken look on Fran's face and whisks her off to his office. He tries to change the subject by showing her the new bowler hat he's bought. He asks if she has a mirror he could borrow and she hands over the compact. Bud's heart sinks when he spots the crack and realizes she is Sheldrake's mistress. He points out that her mirror is broken. "Yes, I know," Fran says. "I like it that way. Makes me look the way I feel." What follows shows Wilder and Diamond's perfect blending of the humor and the pathos dripping in their story. A devastated Baxter, who had already agreed to let Sheldrake have an evening rendezvous, heads to a bar, ready to get blotto now that he knows the mistress Sheldrake will be having his way with at his apartment is
the woman that Baxter desperately wants to make his own. The contrast between the two locations proves telling as Baxter's drunken depression definitely leans toward the comic thanks to the appearance of the great comic character Margie MacDougall (Hope Holiday). Last weekend, Katie Finneran won a Tony for her version of Margie in the Broadway revival of Promises, Promises, the musical version of The Apartment. At the apartment, things are tense, despite the planned exchange of gifts as Fran confronts Sheldrake about what Miss Olsen shared with her. The intercutting is masterful, keeping the tone perfect, never allowing the film to go too far into a dark or light direction. At the bar, Margie pursues Bud, first firing straw wrappers at him before going up to him personally and telling him about her husband who is being held in Cuba by that "jerk
Castro." At the apartment, as if Fran didn't feel bad enough already, after giving Sheldrake an album of the music played at their Chinese restaurant, Sheldrake obviously forgot to get her anything and just hands over $100 in cash, oblivious to the implication. A furious Fran makes it clear to him rather quickly, but Sheldrake insists he's not calling her cheap. "100 dollars. I wouldn't call that cheap," she replies. Sheldrake tries to calm her as she continues to demean herself and go back to what Miss Olsen was telling her. Seeing he's getting nowhere, Sheldrake tells her that he'll miss the last train home and better get going and makes a hasty exit. At the bar, Baxter and Margie continue to get drunker and dance until the owner kicks them out. Margie asks whose place they should go to. "Might as well go to mine. Everyone else does."
When Margie and Baxter stumble their way back into his apartment, Bud is quite annoyed to find Fran still there in his bed. He wants her gone, but he soon realizes that she's not napping — she's unconscious after swallowing his bottle of sleeping pills. This sobers Baxter up quickly who rushes an angry Margie on her way, who vows that he can't treat her like this and her husband will get even once he escapes Castro's clutches, but Cuban dictators and the spouses of drunken women are the furthest things from his mind at this moment. He heads next door to get Doc's help, which Doc gladly offers, though he's still assuming that Fran's suicide attempt came from
Bud's treatment of her and his neverending train of women. The doctor and Baxter spend the rest of the night trying to bring Fran around, pouring endless cups of coffee down her throat and parading her around the apartment to keep her awake and to try to get the sedatives out of her system. The doctor continues to subtly and not so subtly criticize Bud's behavior and Baxter does nothing to dissuade him of the notion that he's the man who pushed Fran to the edge, even going as far as trying to take the blame when Fran asks what he's doing there and rambles in a way that obviously indicates that he's not the man in her life. While there are laughs in this sequence, the suicide attempt is treated in a way that belies the film's rep as a pure comedy. It's not that laughs can't be found when suicide is the subject (see Heathers, a different type of movie, 29 years later), but The Apartment is not that film. Don't take this to mean I think Heathers and The Apartment are on the same level. I love both films, but I seriously doubt I will ever make a Top 100 list that Heathers will land on.
As the Christmas Eve crisis leads into Christmas Day, Baxter calls Sheldrake at home telling him what has transpired. Sheldrake, trapped with his family, has little interest in relieving Baxter of his Fran-sitting duties, so Bud and Fran get to spend the holidays and beyond together. They begin to open up to each other as Fran expresses regret about Sheldrake. "He's a liar and that's not the worst of it. The worst of it is that I still love him," she admits. Once everyone else has returned to work, Baxter calls Sheldrake again and begs him to at least talk to Fran. He reluctantly takes the call and tries to get her to be reasonable and think about how all of this will look. Fran assures him he has nothing to worry about and they can all pretend it never happened, just like Sheldrake wishes. "I never took those pills. I never loved you. We never even met," she tells him acidly. Along
the way, the beans are spilled about Miss Olsen's role in Fran's downward spiral. Sheldrake calls his secretary into his office and coldly tells her that she'll get two weeks severance pay. Miss Olsen doesn't leave without letting Sheldrake in on how he treats his women. "You let me go four years only you were cruel enough to let me sit out there and watch the new models pass by," she tells him. As she's clearing out her desk, she makes certain to set up a lunch date with Mrs. Sheldrake. The stage is set for all the players to resolve their situations and the movie to lead to its conclusion with, as so often happens in a Billy Wilder film, one of the classic closing film lines of all time.
The Apartment brought Wilder three Oscars in one night, a first for a single person, as writer, director and producer and each statuette was a deserved one. The idea for the film had been circulating in Wilder's head for decades. When he saw David Lean's Brief Encounter, his mind began wondering about the guy who provided the locale for the married lovers to meet, but the times weren't quite ready for that sort of material in the 1940s. When the real-life scandal broke in 1951 when film producer Walter Wanger shot agent Jennings Lang because he thought he was having an affair with Wanger's wife, actress Joan Bennett, it revived the idea in Wilder's head again. By the end of the decade, he and his new writing partner, I.A.L. Diamond had transformed those various strands into The Apartment.
All of the technical credits are top notch, particularly a nice underscore by Adolph Deutch, and it goes without saying that the casting is stellar from the supporting cast including Adams, Holiday, Kruschen, Walston and MacMurray. Lemmon perfectly blends the humor and tragedy in his role as the schnook and shows he can be a master of the doubletake. Still, the best work of the film, perhaps of her career, belongs to MacLaine as Fran Kubelik. Her performance gets better each time I see it. She's charming when she needs to be and heartbreaking when that's required. Most importantly, she never hits a false note. If not for Elizabeth Taylor's timely case of pneumonia and subsequent tracheotomy, perhaps she would have never won for the dreadful Butterfield 8 and MacLaine might have taken that Oscar. She certainly deserved it.
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Labels: 60s, Awards, Joan Bennett, John Slattery, Lean, Lemmon, Liz, MacLaine, MacMurray, Mad Men, Marilyn, Movie Tributes, Musicals, Oscars, Television, Theater, Wilder
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