Thursday, February 16, 2012

 

The waiting isn't the hardest part


By Edward Copeland
Glenn Close's fascination with the story of Albert Nobbs began in 1982, the same year she made her film debut in The World According to Garp where she vividly brought John Irving's character of Jenny Fields to cinematic life and was robbed of an Oscar for her efforts by Jessica Lange's win for Tootsie, when Lange wasn't even the best supporting actress in Tootsie. Before I watched the film of Albert Nobbs, I hadn't heard many complimentary things about the movie but it surprised me. Much of Albert Nobbs, especially in the earlygoing, plays more as a comedy and a solid ensemble brings its canvas of characters to entertaining life, most notably Oscar nominee Janet McTeer. To be sure, Albert Nobbs contains flaws and, ironically, its biggest weakness lies in the performance of the actress whose perseverance got the film made in the first place.

For those unfamiliar with the story of Albert Nobbs, it began life as a short story by Irish novelist George Moore called "The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs" in 1918 about a woman who lives disguised as a man for 30 years in 19th century Ireland in order to find work. Nobbs finds employment as a waiter at an upscale Dublin hotel and hopes to save enough money to open his/her own shop. A chance meeting with a painter leads Albert to discover another woman who lives as a man and has taken a wife as well, giving Albert the idea that perhaps she should take a bride when she makes her escape as well, setting her sights on a young maid who is having a torrid affair with another worker with plans to escape to America.

Simone Benmussa adapted the short story into a play and directed Close in the starring role in the summer of 1982 in a production presented by the Manhattan Theatre Club at Stage I of New York's City Center. Close won an Obie Award for her performance. In the nearly 30 years that followed, Close made it her mission to play the part on film. Close met one of her co-producers, Bonnie Curtis, on the film The Chumscrubber where Close handed Curtis a draft of a screenplay for Albert Nobbs and told her, "I must play this part on the big screen before I die." Now that she finally has achieved that dream, she not only plays Nobbs, Close also co-produced and co-wrote the film as well as the lyrics for an original song sung by Sinead O'Connor over the film's credits.

Albert Nobbs almost came to the screen first under the guidance of Hungary's great director Istvan Szabo (Mephisto) who directed Close in the 1991 film Meeting Venus. She gave Szabo a copy of Moore's short story and soon he handed her the first treatment for an Albert Nobbs movie so he still receives screen credit (though not on the Inaccurate Movie Database) for the treatment along with Moore for his story and Close, John Banville and Gabriella Prekop for screenplay.

In the majority of her duties on Albert Nobbs, Close seems to have performed well. She earned an Oscar nomination for best actress, but a lot of mediocre performances have been nominated (and won) before. Close's take on Albert Nobbs comes off as so stilted and mannered when compared to the performances of everyone else in the cast that she acts as if she's in a different movie. It's only accentuated because the actors and actresses that surround her carry themselves with such ease and that goes for seasoned vets such as Pauline Collins as the hotel's owner, Brenda Fricker as on, Brendan Gleeson, Phyllida Law and newer discoveries such as Mia Wasikowska and Aaron Johnson (the young John Lennon in 2010's Nowhere Boy).

Now, it isn't merely because Close portrays a woman pretending to be a man in the 19th century and Albert Nobbs isn't a comedy, though it does contain a fair amount of humor in it, because Janet McTeer also plays a woman pretending to be a man and she's brilliant. I was fortunate enough to see McTeer live on Broadway as Nora in the 1997 revival of A Doll's House and she was spectacular (and deservedly won the Tony). She wowed again when she earned a lead actress Oscar nomination for her role in the 1999 film Tumbleweeds directed by Gavin O'Connor when he made interesting movies before he turned to junk such as Warrior.

In the lead paragraph, I brought up Tootsie (in a different context admittedly) but Dustin Hoffman's work as Dorothy Michaels in that film is so great because after awhile, you not only forget that it's Hoffman, you believe it's a woman. I wouldn't go that far with McTeer, but I find it more believable that her character of Hubert Page could pass for a man in 19th century Dublin than I could Close's Albert Nobbs. Hell, I'm not sure Nobbs would pass for a human.

You would think when the main character turns out to be a film's major deficit, the film itself would be doomed, but miraculously I enjoyed Albert Nobbs in spite of Albert Nobbs. Somehow, the rest of the cast, the script and the surefooted direction by Rodrigo Garcia (Mother and Child) more than compensate for Close's performance. (It's somewhat ironic because Close gave the only great performance in Bille August's awful 1993 all-star adaptation of Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits that featured the rare bad Meryl Streep performance and a cast that also included Jeremy Irons, Winona Ryder and Vanessa Redgrave.)

I do sense that significant sections of the film were edited out based on the presence of actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers. He plays a viscount who checks into the hotel with his wife. We see one brief scene that shows a naked man waking up in his bed in the morning and then we don't see him again until he and his wife check out. Something must have been left on the cutting room floor. It didn't add anything, so they might as well have cut out all those scenes.

Much of the behind-the-scenes work succeeds at a high level including cinematography by Michael McDonough (Winter's Bone), production design by Patrizia von Brandenstein (Oscar winner for Amadeus) and costumes by Pierre-Yves Gayraud.

Albert Nobbs always will mystify me. I can think of major problems with the film, but I can't dispute the fact that I enjoyed it anyway. In a way, it's sort of a corollary to my idea that the purest test as to whether a movie works for you or not is if your mind wanders and you get bored. Albert Nobbs held my interest and I didn't have an unpleasant time watching it, even if a lot of Glenn Close's acting choices made me cringe. It's sad. I'm surprised that no one has mentioned that when Close loses come Oscar night, that will make her 0 for 6, tying her with Deborah Kerr and Thelma Ritter among actresses with the most nominations without winning (though Kerr's were all in lead and Ritter's were all in supporting while Close splits hers evenly three in each category).

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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

 

When Hazel says hello


By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
Theodore Keyser — recognized under his professional handle, Ted Key — spent most of his 95-year lifespan as a prolific illustrator and cartoonist. He also was talented enough to dabble in many media beyond cartooning — several of the children’s books he wrote and illustrated, for example, were adapted into movies produced by the Walt Disney Studio: The Million Dollar Duck (1971), Gus (1976) and The Cat from Outer Space (1978). He even was responsible for creating one of the famous animated segments of Rocky and His Friends/The Bullwinkle Show: the time-traveling adventures of canine inventor Mr. Peabody and his faithful boy Sherman that we know as “Peabody’s Improbable History.” (Jay Ward, whose studio produced the adventures of Moose and Squirrel and Company, was a good friend of Ted’s brother Leonard.)

But Key’s most lasting creation came to him in the form of a dream: one night in 1943, he woke up and jotted down an idea about a bossy maid on a pad by his bedside…and picking the name “Hazel” out of the air, drew a cartoon the following morning and submitted it to The Saturday Evening Post. The Post started publishing Key’s one-panel cartoons and continued to do so until 1969 when the famed magazine faded out of existence…and then the King Features Syndication took over distribution of the strip, offering it to newspapers until the artist retired in 1993. His invention of the take-charge domestic who called the shots in the Baxter household won him the Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award from the National Cartoonists’ Society in 1977…but he was to receive an even loftier accolade when a television sitcom based on his creation, Hazel, debuted on NBC 50 years ago today.

Screen Gems, the television arm of Columbia Pictures, had scored a successful boob tube hit in 1959 with another one-panel comic strip in Dennis the Menace…and since Fred Allen once observed that “Imitation is the sincerest form of television,” the company decided to try and capture lightning in a bottle a second time two years later with a TV version of Key’s meddlesome maid. Cast in the starring role was no doubt the most unlikely actress to headline a sitcom: Shirley Booth, who was best known for her extensive stage work (Tony Award wins for Goodbye, My Fancy and The Time of the Cuckoo) and occasional appearances in dramatic feature films — notably Come Back, Little Sheba (1952)…in which she duplicated her Tony Award win as tortured wife Lola Delaney with an Oscar statuette as well. With her accomplishments onscreen and her lengthy, distinguished stage career…could she really do a weekly comedy series every week?

The answer to that question was yes…and in fact, she had already done so. Booth was at one time married to writer-comedian Ed Gardner (they tied the knot in 1929), whose half-hour comedy creation Duffy’s Tavern had become a smash on radio…and Gardner had been able to talk his wife into taking on the role of one of Tavern’s characters, the dizzy, man-chasing Miss Duffy (the daughter of the drinking establishment’s owner). Gardner and Booth divorced in 1942 (supposedly he was jealous of her stage career…which seems a little petty since he himself was receiving wealth and fame as a result of Duffy’s) and she continued on the series for a little longer, finally leaving in 1943. Booth took her “homely spinster” and renamed her “Dottie Mahoney,” then began making the rounds of other network comedy shows afterward. She had even been the first choice of producer Harry Ackerman to play the lead role in the radio sitcom Our Miss Brooks — but because Booth had difficulty finding the lighter side of the tart-tongued, love-starved schoolteacher her loss turned out to be Eve Arden’s gain. Since Ackerman later became the vice president of production at Screen Gems from 1958 to 1974, it’s a reasonably safe bet that he recognized Hazel would be the perfect vehicle for Booth’s decision to get into television (although the story also goes that Thelma Ritter had originally been approached to play the part before she took a pass). Burt Lancaster, Booth’s co-star in Sheba, warned her off Hazel, telling her that the experience would “cheapen” her. “Time will tell if it cheapens me,” she told him in response, “and if it does, I hope to be as cheapened as Lucy (Lucille Ball).”

As Hazel Burke, a maid employed by George Baxter and his family, Booth infused the character created by Key with a great deal of warmth and likability. Hazel was a flawed individual — she could be quite pushy and overbearing, and she harbored a stubborn streak…once she had decided she was right there was no detouring her from any course of action on which she’d set her mind. But the actress was able to temper all that with a genuine tenderness that kept Hazel from being too obnoxious; she had a deep and abiding affection for her employers, and really functioned as an extended member of the Baxter clan (sort of a busybody aunt). An episode that beautifully illustrates the sentiment present between Hazel and the Baxters is “Hazel’s Famous Recipes,” in which Hazel’s employer George Baxter (Don DeFore) convinces a publisher to market a cookbook containing Hazel’s mouth-watering gastronomical delights. Both Hazel and the family are crushed when they learn that publication of the book will mean that Hazel will be on the road for six months plugging her tome — but when the publisher discovers that her recipes were culled from an earlier cookbook (still under copyright) she and the Baxters are overjoyed by the news.

George, a successful partner in the law firm of Butterworth, Noll, Hatch & Baxter, had no idea that when he married his wife Dorothy (Whitney Blake) he would get Hazel as the dowry. Hazel had worked for Dorothy’s family since she was 8 (she also doubled as nanny to “Missy,” as Hazel affectionately called her) and now was running things in the Baxter household — doing the cooking, cleaning, etc. and keeping an eye on the Baxter’s son, Harold (Bobby Buntrock), whom she usually referred to as “Sport.” To Hazel, George was “Mr. B” — and though he may have been king of the corporation lawyers once he arrived at his office on weekday mornings, upon his return trip to his castle he had to reconcile himself to the fact that he was now in Hazel’s domain. George and Hazel had a love-hate relationship (she often drove him to thoughts of homicide…and I don’t think a jury would have convicted him) and many of the show’s plots centered round the contest of wills between the Yale-educated attorney and his whip-smart “domestic engineer.”

The unavoidable reality of the matter is that Hazel’s unshakable devotion to the Baxters also made her television’s most famous “buttinsky”; the first episode of the series, “Hazel and the Playground,” details our heroine’s attempts to get a playground built in the neighborhood so that the children (particularly “Sport”) will have a place to play. She suggests that it be built on the site of a botanical garden that was dedicated to the city by the grandfather of one of George’s clients who becomes so incensed at Hazel’s meddling that he threatens to take his business elsewhere (naturally, he comes around by episode’s end). Another outing, “Hazel Plays Nurse,” introduces a semi-regular character in Harvey Griffin (Howard Smith); a client of George’s that Mr. B has nicknamed “The Steamroller” in deference to his no-nonsense iron will. Griffin’s hurricane temper soon becomes merely a pesky squall once he comes into contact with Hazel, who decrees that Mr. B’s health is more important than seeing his client. It wouldn’t be the first nor last time Griffith would lock horns with the maid though he could usually be pacified with one of her wondrous home-cooked meals.

Other supporting characters seen on the series at various times included her best bud Rosie Hammaker (Maudie Prickett) — also a maid and a member in good standing in The Sunshine Girls, a sort of sorority for domestics — and postman Barney Hatfield (Robert Williams), who not only delivered the mail through rain, sleet and snow but could double as Hazel’s escort if she needed a date for a dance. The Baxters also had neighbors in well-to-do Herbert and Harriet Johnson (Donald Foster, Norma Varden), who frequently called upon Hazel to assist them with some complicated task from time to time. George’s snobbish sister Deirdre Thompson (Cathy Lewis) also turned up in a few episodes, forever being put in her place by the down-to-earth Hazel; in “George’s Niece,” Deirdre informs the Baxters that she and her husband will be moving into their neck of the woods and that she and her daughter Nancy (Davey Davison) will be arriving for a visit in order to scope out a house, check on schools, etc. Nancy and Deirdre don’t get along too well, and when Nancy discovers boys she confides not in her mum but in a middle-age housekeeper (yes, you-know-who).

Hazel Burke compensated for her meddlesome manner by being a refreshing, unpretentious soul who didn’t always use proper grammar (“Ain’t he a doozy?” and “You’re darn tootin’” were just two of her pet expressions) but whose life was dictated by old-fashioned values and plain common sense. She was the gal (who was “everybody’s pal,” as the theme song’s lyrics informed us) the kids wanted to play on their football or baseball teams; she spoke her mind and wasn’t bashful about doing so; and she basically treated everyone in the manner that she herself wanted to be treated. An episode entitled “Hazel’s Secret Wish” provides a telling glimpse into Hazel’s character: offered the opportunity to spend a two-week vacation at a ritzy health spa, Hazel meets with disapproval from a pair of bluenoses (one of which is played by veteran radio/voice actress Betty Lou Gerson) and even is asked by the resort’s owner to downplay her housekeeping occupation. When the two snobs start giving Hazel grief about befriending one of the maids at the resort, Hazel lets fly with how she really feels about them and reveals that she herself is a maid in the process. Hazel apologizes to the spa owner for this little indiscretion, but she’s interrupted by a third high-society dame (Kathryn Givney) who demands that she have meals served in her room during the rest of her stay…and that Hazel be her personal guest during those meals.

When Hazel premiered in the fall of 1961, critics weren’t too impressed with the show (calling it “contrived” and “repetitive”) but audiences loved it — it ranked No. 4 among all prime time network programming in its debut season, and Shirley Booth received back-to-back Emmy Awards as outstanding actress for her work (she was nominated a total of three times on the show). Despite being an audience favorite, NBC canceled Hazel after four seasons, but CBS believed enough in Booth’s star power to pick up the show after its Peacock rival had set it outside at the curb. They did not, however, believe in co-stars Don DeFore and Whitney Blake; in seeking a “younger demographic” they asked the producers to ship “Mr. B” and “Missy” off to Saudi Arabia (CBS stated that Blake was unable to commit to the show after NBC’s cancellation; DeFore noted that he found out about the change while reading the newspaper) leaving Harold in Hazel’s charge (something that seriously disturbed me as a rerun-watching kid) as she went to work for George’s younger brother Steve (Ray Fulmer) and his adorable wife Barbara (Lynn Borden, a former Miss Arizona tabbed by Booth personally to play the role because Shirl owned a chunk of the sitcom) and cute daughter Susie (Julia Benjamin). Steve could never figure out just why George let himself be steamrolled by the dominating Hazel, but it didn’t take him too long to learn. The show came to an end in 1966 — not due to declining ratings, but because of Booth’s ill health (she suffered from chronic bursitis).

At the height of Hazel's popularity in 1963, Booth told an AP reporter: “I liked playing Hazel the first time I read one of the scripts, and I could see all the possibilities of the character — the comedy would take care of itself. My job was to give her heart. Hazel never bores me. Besides, she's my insurance policy.” Because Booth was fortunate enough to own a piece of the series it paid off like a slot machine when the program was sold to syndication — I remember watching the show constantly as a kid growing up in West Virginia, where it seemed to run like tap water. Hazel was a staple of TBS’ morning lineup during the early 1980s; it also turned up briefly on WGN and TV Land and currently has found a home at the newest contender for the classic television audience, Antenna TV. Sony Pictures Entertainment released Hazel's inaugural season to DVD in 2006 (the 35 episodes that year included one experimental color outing entitled “What’ll We Watch Tonight?” which amusingly enough, deals with Hazel’s efforts to wangle a color TV out of George) and after a long dry spell (something that I railed about quite a bit at my home base at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear) it was announced that Shout! Factory had acquired the DVD distribution rights to the show, with the second season scheduled for release in 2011.

With Hazel making inroads with a new TV generation 50 years later — does the show continue to wear well or has time “cheapened” Hazel, as Burt Lancaster forewarned? I think the comic chemistry between Shirley and Don still works beautifully, though I can’t deny that DeFore’s George Baxter is a bit of a chauvinist (which wasn’t unusual for the times) and an inattentive father on occasion. The producers were smart to cast DeFore (he’d already established his TV bona fides as the Nelson’s jovial next-door neighbor, “Thorny” Thornberry, on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet) because in the hands of another actor George Baxter wouldn’t have come off too well — DeFore has a goodnaturedness about him that’s endearing to the audience (he even laughs out loud at himself after he’s continually bested by his considerably brainier maid). Psychology students also might be interested in how dysfunctional George’s family can be: a textbook example is “Everybody’s Thankful But Us Turkeys,” in which George’s other sister Phyllis (Beverly Tyler) and her husband Bob (Charles Cooper) are feudin’, fussin’ and a-fightin’ and seem headed on the road to divorce — while George’s ma (Harriet MacGibbon of The Beverly Hillbillies) is depressed because she feels unneeded by her family. Hazel’s solution? She asks Mother Baxter to help out with the Thanksgiving dinner (no Prozac for you!) and when Phyllis comes into the kitchen as well it’s decided that what she needs to hold onto her man is…cooking lessons. (Well, I never denied the show wasn’t chauvinistic.)

George Baxter may also have been the first chunky sitcom husband (in the tradition of the schlubby heads of households on The King of Queens, Still Standing and According to Jim) to have a far more attractive wife in Dorothy; sure, you could argue that we owe Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) of The Honeymooners that debt but I think that depends on whether or not you consider Alice (Audrey Meadows) a “hottie.” As for Hazel…she laid the foundation for future sassier and/or sarcastic domestics (Florida on Maude, Florence on The Jeffersons, Geoffrey on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air) who knew they ruled the roost in the households that employed them because despite whoever was the king (or queen) of the castle they’re the ones who cleaned it. Fifty years after we were first invited in for some of Hazel Burke’s homemade cookies…she’s still a “doozy.”

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Saturday, July 23, 2011

 

Tom Aldredge (1928-2011)


When I was just beginning my years of obsessive New York theatergoing, the second Broadway show I took in was the last new Stephen Sondheim musical to premiere on Broadway, Passion, in 1994. I was still an amateur as far as theatergoing went so I got to the Longacre Theatre for the 2 p.m. Saturday matinee very early. Seated on the sidewalk by the stage door in a T-shirt and jeans wearing a baseball cap creased to the point it resembled a duck bill, was the actor Tom Aldredge. Throughout my theatergoing years, which basically ran from 1994 until 1999 with a handful later before ending permanently in 2002, I saw Aldredge, not by design, in more shows than any other actor. Readers who haven't attended New York theater regularly since Aldredge made his Broadway debut in 1959 probably know him best from his television work, be it as Carmela's father Hugh DeAngelis on The Sopranos, Patty Hewes' Uncle Pete on Damages or Nucky Thompson's bitter father Ethan on Boardwalk Empire. Aldredge died Friday after a long battle with cancer. He was 83.

As I said, I saw him more on stage than any other actor (not that it took much) seeing him in four shows between 1994-97. In addition to Passion, I saw Aldredge as Rev. Jeremiah Brown in the revival of Inherit the Wind with George C. Scott and Charles Durning. I got to see him perform Solyony (the Captain) in Chekhov's The Three Sisters, replacing Jerry Stiller in the role. Finally, I saw him play Stephen Hopkins in the revival of the musical 1776 with Brent Spiner and the late Pat Hingle.

Aldredge was born Feb. 28, 1928, in Dayton, Ohio. He attended the Goodman School of Drama at DePaul University. He married his wife Theoni V. Aldredge in 1953, a union that lasted until her death in January of this year. Theoni was an acclaimed costume designer for theater and movies who won three Tonys for her work (Annie, Barnum and La Cage Aux Folles ) out of a total 14 nominations and won an Oscar for her costumes for 1974's The Great Gatsby.

The first time I recall seeing Tom Aldredge actually combined theater and television. It was when PBS aired a filmed version of Sondheim's great Broadway musical Into the Woods in 1991. Aldredge played the dual role of the narrator and the Mysterious Man. Given Aldredge's prolific output in television and movies, I'm certain I ran across him before that, but it certainly was the first time he left an impression on me. The second time came courtesy of HBO, but not on the more celebrated series he's probably most recognizable from, but from what may be the first really good made-for-HBO movie: 1993's Barbarians at the Gate. Aldredge's part wasn't huge, but I remembered him in that great Larry Gelbart-scripted account of the takeover battle for RJR Nabisco starring James Garner and Jonathan Pryce. After that, most of my Aldredge performances were seen on stage.

Tom Aldredge's New York stage career began in 1957 and he landed his first Broadway show in 1959 in the musical comedy The Nervous Set which also featured Larry Hagman in its cast. It took seven years to land another Broadway role but when he did, what a cast he got to work alongside. The original comedy UTBU was directed by Nancy Walker and had an ensemble featuring Cathryn Damon (Mary Campbell on Soap), Margaret Hamilton, Tony Randall and Thelma Ritter. Alas, it only lasted 15 previews and seven performances. Fortunately, Aldredge was back on Broadway the next month in Slapstick Tragedy, which was an evening of two new Tennessee Williams' one-act plays. Aldredge appeared in the first, The Mutilated. The second one-act was The Gnadiges Fraulein.

In the seven year interim between his Broadway debut in 1959 and his return in 1966, Aldredge was by no means idle. He made his television debut in 1961 as part of The Premise Players on a Paul Anka special called The Seasons of Youth where Anka discusses a long-lost crush and the actors perform skits about young love. In 1963, Aldredge made his film debut in The Mouse on the Moon, the sequel to The Mouse That Roared. In 1964, many of the same members of The Premise Players, which now included Buck Henry who co-wrote the script, made The Troublemaker about a New Jersey chicken farmer who moves to Greenwich Village to open a coffee shop. Aldredge had a role in 1965's Who Killed Teddy Bear?, whose plot, as described by IMDb, is "A busboy at a disco has sexual problems related to events in his childhood. He becomes obsessed with a disc jockey at the club, leading to obscene phone calls, voyeurism, trips to the porn shop and adult movie palace, and more!" The unusual cast includes Sal Mineo, Juliet Prowse, Jan Murray, Elaine Stritch and Daniel J. Travanti. Aired on TV in 1966 after Aldredge had returned to New York was a movie adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Ten Blocks on the Camino Real which Williams wrote and which starred Martin Sheen.

Back in New York, before he returned to Broadway, Aldredge took part in two of Joseph Papp's Shakespeare in the Park productions in the summer of 1965. First, he played Boyet in Love's Labors Lost. Then he played Nestor in Troilus and Cressida, whose cast included James Earl Jones, Michael Moriarty and John Vernon. Throughout his career he would return to the Delacorte and Shakespeare. He played Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet in 1968, Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night in 1969, the title role in Cymbeline in 1971, the 2nd Gravedigger in Hamlet in 1972, Lear's Fool in King Lear in 1973 and John of Gaunt in Richard II in 1987. Ironically, the only time Aldredge received an Emmy nomination, it was a Daytime Emmy nomination (which he won) for playing Shakespeare in a 1973 episode of The CBS Festival of Lively Arts for Young People titled "Henry Winkler Meets William Shakespeare." Aldredge appeared in many off-Broadway productions but two to take note of are his role of Emory in the original production of the landmark play The Boys in the Band and the Joseph Papp production of David Rabe's Sticks and Bones, which transferred to Broadway and earned Aldredge the first of his five Tony nominations.

His 1972 nomination for lead actor in a play for Sticks and Bones, which won best play, was Aldredge's only in the lead category. His other nominations came for the revival of the musical Where's Charley? in 1975, the revival of The Little Foxes opposite Elizabeth Taylor in 1981, in the original musical Passion in 1994 and in the revival of the play Twentieth Century in 2004.

Throughout his Broadway career, he performed the works of O'Neill (The Iceman Cometh, Strange Interlude), George Bernard Shaw (Saint Joan) and Arthur Miller (The Crucible) and created the role of Norman Thayer Jr. in the original production of On Golden Pond. His final Broadway show was a revival of Twelve Angry Men that closed in May 2005.

His many film credits include Coppola's The Rain People, a 1973 film version of his stage success Sticks and Bones directed by Robert Downey Sr., Lawn Dogs, Rounders, Intolerable Cruelty, Cold Mountain, the remake of All the King's Men, What About Bob? and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

He appeared in lots of episodic television and some notable TV movies including the miniseries The Adams Chronicles, Great Performances' Heartbreak House, playing Justice Hugo Black in Separate But Equal and O Pioneers!

Aldredge was a talented and prolific actor who needs to be remembered for more than playing Carmela Soprano's dad, but for Sopranos trivia buffs I'll toss in that Hugh and Carmela's mother Mary (Suzanne Shepherd) didn't appear until Livia was banned from the Soprano home. Who can forget him ripping into Livia at her wake? I wish YouTube had the actual clip of "Ever After" that Aldredge starts the cast singing at the end of Act I of Into the Woods, for I feel it's a fitting close. Click here and listen anyway,

RIP Mr. Aldredge.


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Friday, April 22, 2011

 

When that line started getting fuzzy


By Edward Copeland
As you idly flip past ads for TV shows with shrieking housewives, young Jerseyites, the home lives of aging rock stars and countless other forms of grotesqueries labeled "reality TV," it's hard to believe the genre began as a noble experiment aired on PBS nearly 40 years ago. The excellent new HBO film Cinéma Vérité, which debuts Saturday night, details the behind-the-scenes story that put the Loud family of Santa Barbara, Calif., in U.S. living rooms on the landmark series An American Family, turned them into national pariahs and created a truly pivotal pop culture moment.

All my life, I've pretty much been an information vacuum, sucking up trivia and being able to spend it like currency, even if it was something I'd never seen. Since I was just 4 when An American Family aired in 1973, I never actually saw the series, yet I always knew what people were talking about when they brought up the Loud family (not to be confused with the skit from the original Saturday Night Live cast). With Cinéma Vérité, I feel even more secure in my knowledge of this media milestone.

With co-directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini at the helm, Cinéma Vérité has precisely the right filmmakers steering the ship since they are the team who made the great and unusual biopic of Harvey Pekar, American Splendor. It also doesn't hurt that they're filming a sharp script by David Seltzer whose unusual resume of writing credits includes Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, The Omen, Lucas and many others I'll omit so as not to embarrass him. The directors' greatest assets though happen to be its talented cast led by Diane Lane, Tim Robbins and James Gandolfini.

Gandolfini plays Craig Gilbert, a documentary filmmaker whose most recent work had been on the anthropologist Margaret Mead. He gets the idea to really look inside an American family, to get beyond the TV depictions such as The Partridge Family or The Brady Bunch. After talking to a friend (Kathleen Quinlan) who brings him some possible Santa Barbara families to try to talk into the project, Gilbert settles on the Louds, approaching Pat Loud (Lane) first. The two seem to have an immediate connection as Gilbert explains that he wants to observe an American family the way Margaret Mead did a primitive one by placing a camera crew within their home. Pat's marriage with her husband Bill (Robbins) isn't in the best shape, but she's game anyway and Gilbert tries to sell the idea to the whole family, who mostly seem willing, though Bill asks what they get out of it if they aren't being paid.

The married camera team Alan and Susan Raymond (Patrick Fugit, Shanna Collins) become attached to the Loud family, since they see first-hand things that are ripping them apart, causing conflict with Gilbert who grows angry at times when the Raymonds refuse to film the most dramatic stuff, and the financial backers in New York are on his back over the lack of high drama, amount of film used and rising costs. Eventually, the secrets and tensions do spill out in front of the camera such as when Pat tires of ignoring Bill's adultery and asks him for a divorce on camera and when they film oldest son Lance (Thomas Dekker), who is openly gay (except with his in-denial, Nixon-backing father). When the camera crew follows Pat to New York to visit Lance, he tells her that a girl named Candy proposed to him and takes Pat to see Candy — at her drag show. "She's a man," Pat says to her son. "I haven't accepted anything," Lance reassures his mother. Since it was the first time a proud, openly gay man appeared on TV, Cinéma Vérité could have spent a bit more time on Lance's role in the impact the series had.

The real fallout happens once the 12-part series airs and the Louds see what a difference editing can make and cringe at the promotional ads asking what viewers would do if their son was gay or if Pat should leave Bill. The nation turns on them, wondering why they would allow their lives to be public like that, discounting the fact that the American viewers were the ones eating it up. Why is that "If you don't like it, turn it off" concept so hard to understand, particularly for Americans? Of course, nearly 20 years before An American Family aired Thelma Ritter's Stella nailed our country's problem in Hitchcock's Rear Window long before a reality TV show aired: "We've become a race of peeping toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change."

As they did in American Splendor, the directors employ unique techniques to tell this story, techniques that prove even more appropriate to Cinéma Vérité, since this movie recounts the merging of real life with entertainment and frequently in the film, especially during the opening credits, Berman and Pulcini mix footage of the real Patricia and Bill Loud with re-creations of Diane Lane and Tim Robbins playing their roles. Throughout the movie, Berman and Pulcini keep their tale flowing efficiently and though they do use many great shots, aided by editing by Sarah Flack and Pulcini, but rarely ones overly showy to the point of drawing attention to the direction and away from the story. One exception comes late in the film and proves well worth it. After An American Family has hit the airwaves and become a national phenomenon, an image of Diane Lane on a TV set keeps multiplying into innumerable TVs which then become the lit windows of a building. It's a very nice shot, even if the beginning resembles Gus Van Sant's of Alison Folland's in To Die For when she describes her character's media fame.

The cast all perform well, but by far Diane Lane turns out to be the standout, giving some of the other players, especially Robbins, a bit of short shrift. Coming this soon after seeing Kate Winslet's brilliant work in Mildred Pierce, I didn't think there could be any serious contenders, but I've never seen Lane turn in a better performance than she does here. She's touching, frustrating, brutally honest and damn funny at times.

Those adjectives describe Cinéma Vérité as well. It's only 90 minutes long, but it's incredible how many levels it's successfully working on simultaneously: historical account, satire, commentary, entertainment. So many films wear out their welcome, it's rare to find one that leaves you wanting more, especially from what happens after American Family airs. I could have used more of when the Louds took the offensive to defend their honor (and set the stage for future reality TV stars by perpetuating their fame through books, music and other projects). That reservation aside, it shouldn't be missed. Cinéma Vérité debuts Saturday night on HBO at 9 p.m. EDT/PDT and 8 p.m. CDT.


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Wednesday, October 13, 2010

 

All the world's a stage

NOTE: Ranked No. 30 on my all-time top 100 of 2012


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 AND MARGO

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.

KAREN

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!

MARGO

You can always put that award where your heart ought to be.

BILL

(To Margo) Many of your guests have been wondering when they may be permitted to view the body. Where has it been laid out?

ADDISON

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 is their 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.


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Wednesday, March 26, 2008

 

Richard Widmark (1914-2008)


By Edward Copeland
Tommy Udo is one helluva way to announce yourself to movie audiences and Richard Widmark got such a debut in 1947's Kiss of Death, earning an Oscar nomination and stardom as a result. Widmark has passed away at the age of 93.

When I wrote the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences several years ago, suggesting a list of honorary Oscar possibilities after years of rewarding people who had already won, Widmark was near the top of my list. Alas, the Academy never got around to giving Widmark the richly deserved honor.

For as prolific a career as Widmark had, somehow he seemed to be a star easily neglected and forgot. In fact, I can already hear people reacting to news of his death with "I didn't know he was still alive." Widmark excelled as a tough guy or a streetwise man who liked to make himself out as smarter and tougher than he really was such as in 1950's Night and the City.

My personal favorite role of his may be in Samuel Fuller's great Pickup on South Street with another Oscar orphan, Thelma Ritter, giving one of her very best turns. He could be an out-and-out villain such as Spencer Tracy's no good son in the Western Broken Lance. He could also be heroic, such as Jim Bowie in John Wayne's bloated telling of The Alamo, or as a simple military prosecutor as in Judgment at Nuremberg. He played a man so reprehensible in Murder on the Orient Express that Agatha Christie's Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot was willing to let his murder go unpunished. In his later years, he was often a staple in 1970s disaster films or would appear playing a tough type in a light (read bad) comedy such as Hanky Panky or used as a connection to Hollywood's Golden Age such as Taylor Hackford's remake of Out of the Past, Against All Odds.

RIP Mr. Widmark.


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Tuesday, December 25, 2007

 

I Believe. It's Silly, but I Believe

By Odienator
Long before he directed Airport, George Seaton wrote and directed a more believable tale about a man who thought he was Santa Claus. 1947's Miracle on 34th Street may not be most people's idea of a favorite Christmas movie, but it is mine and I look forward to watching it every year. Like the Christmas film that occupies the hearts of most of my generation (It's a Wonderful Life), Miracle was nominated for best picture at the Oscars, and like Capra's film, it lost. However, Miracle was honored for its clever script by Seaton, its story by Valentine Davies, and for one of the best supporting performances ever to grace a movie, Edmund Gwenn.

Santa Claus has assumed many guises in the cinema. Last year, I wrote about some of his naughtier instances. This Christmas, in order to avoid another year of coal in my stocking, I thought I'd talk about one of his nicer incarnations. After all, the only thing good about coal in your socks is that it stops your feet from stinking. I'd rather let Dr. Scholls take care of that. So here's a nice story about how Jolly Old St. Nick came to the greatest city in the world and taught it, 22 years before the New York Mets, that "You Gotta Believe."

Doris Walker (Maureen O'Hotty, I mean O'Hara) is in charge of handling the holiday events at Macy's, starting with the famous Thanksgiving Day Parade. When the Santa she hired shows up for work in worse condition than Amy Winehouse, Doris panics. Santa Claus makes his first appearance in New York at the Macy's parade, and her actor can barely stand up. Before she can kiss her job goodbye, however, Doris meets Kris (Edmund Gwenn), a jovial old man with a real Claus-like beard. He takes over the reins at the parade and is such a success that Doris hires him to be the store's resident Santa Claus. But all is not perfect: When Doris asks Kris his full name so she can pay him for his services, he tells her it's Kris Kringle, the alias of Santa Claus. Doris thinks he's nuttier than a fruitcake, but he also seems harmless enough. Her daughter Susan (Natalie Wood) likes Kris too, but when he tries to tell her he's really Santa Claus, she informs him that there is no such person. "My mother told me," she says. Doris explains that, since her divorce, she's been trying to raise Susan to "accept reality," and not have a vivid imagination. Kris sees this as detrimental, and plans to find some way to get Susan to dream like a kid again.

Once Kris starts taking requests from the kids who sit on his lap, things get troublesome. After one mother (the great Thelma Ritter, uncredited) chews Kris out for promising her kid a toy she can't find at Macy's, Kris tells her it's available at Macy's competitor store, Gimbel's. Mr. Macy, the owner of the eponymous store, hits the roof. How dare one of his employees send a customer to the Great Satan of department stores?! That Kris guy must be out of his damn mind! The shrink on Macy's payroll (a department store has a resident psychiatrist?!) thinks so too. When the customers return to Macy's, pledging their loyalty because the store puts customer satisfaction over profit, Mr. Macy backs down. His shrink does not, however. He thinks Kris Kringle is Krazy and wants him Kommitted.

Even more troublesome for Doris is that Kris is starting to give Susan some doubt about her prior notion that Santa doesn't exist. After hearing him sing a Dutch song to a little girl from Holland, Susan wonders if Kris is really on the level. "But when he spoke Dutch to that little girl," she begins. "Susan, I speak French," Doris says, "but that doesn't make me Joan of Arc." To cover her bases, Susan asks Kris to prove he's Santa by bringing her a special present on Christmas. "If you're really Santa Claus," she tells him, "you can get it for me. And if you can't, you're only a nice man with a white beard like mother says." Kris tells her he'll try.

Kris has an ally in the war for Susan's heart and mind: Doris' lawyer boyfriend, Fred Gailey (John Payne). He also believes that Doris' no-fantasy policy does Susan a disservice. His conversations with Susan play much like Kris'. He tries to inject an aspect of wonder, and Susan very politely shoots him down. "You must have forgotten your fairy tales," Fred says after she draws a blank on Jack and the Beanstalk. Susan replies "Oh ... one of those. I don't know any of those. My mother thinks they're silly."

Kris and Fred become fast friends and roommates, and then, thanks to that overzealous Macy's shrink, attorney and client. After Kris is committed by the shrink to Bellevue, Fred decides to defend his sanity in court. To prove Kris' sanity is to prove that which Kris believes. In other words, Fred has to prove that Kris is really Santa Claus.

This is when the movie really starts to shine, becoming a satire on parent-child relationships, attorney-client privilege, legal loopholes, consumerism, business, self-identity and whether the government has the definitive word on anything. Fred brings his case to court and, like any good lawyer, does anything and everything to get his client off the hook, including calling his opponent's son to the stand as a witness. "Hello, Daddy!" he says as he passes the prosecutor. "Goodbye, Daddy," he says after his damning testimony. Doris starts to soften her stance on Kris, and even tells Susan that perhaps she should believe in Kris.

So, is Kris Kringle really Santa Claus? I wouldn't dream of spoiling that, especially since the movie leaves the answer rather ambiguous. That's the biggest strength of the movie and why its screenplay deserved its Oscar. It's a smart, knowing piece of writing full of great lines and sentiment without being overly saccharine. The characters are allowed to develop and to change. Susan becomes more imaginative and optimistic (when she senses she won't get what she wanted for Christmas, she convinces herself to have faith: "I believe. It's silly but I believe."). Doris starts to trust again, and Fred's relationship with Doris warms up as she does. The other characters realize the Catch-22 of the situation of disproving the existence of Santa Claus, and the screenplay humorously deals with that as well.

Fine work is turned in by all the actors. O'Hara is quite credible as the hardened single Mom trying to shield her daughter from having her illusions shattered by life. Payne plays his lawyer with the right mix of practicality and optimism. His easy-going nature is a nice contrast to O'Hara's pessimism. Gene Lockhart is amusing as the judge presiding over the case, and this remains the best thing Natalie Wood ever did. The entire cast is funny and believable, but Gwenn is the glue that holds the film together. There is something magical about his presence that forces you to at least acknowledge he might be the real deal. The filmmakers leave it up to you to decide, though the way Gwenn plays him, he doesn't leave much doubt to the answer.

"Faith is believing when common sense tells you not to," Fred tells Doris. The real miracle is that this film works as well as it does, even today. (Note: Avoid the horrendous Richard Attenborough remake. The 1973 David Hartman remake is so-so, but nothing bests the original.)


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Monday, March 19, 2007

 

A race of peeping toms

NOTE: Ranked No. 9 on my all-time top 100 of 2012


"We've become a race of peeping toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change."
Stella (Thelma Ritter) in Rear Window

By Edward Copeland
Sometimes, offhand statements can hit you like a ton of bricks, as if something you've always held to be true suddenly is revealed not to be the universal fact you always believed. This happened in the past week or so as several people, whose opinions I respect, suddenly (and not all in the same place) expressed beliefs that Rear Window is one of Alfred Hitchcock's weakest efforts. I was shocked because I honestly don't ever remember anyone ever saying much against this film, which I consider a masterpiece and which has long held a spot on my all-time Top 10 list. In his great and legendary book of interviews with Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut said that Notorious and Rear Window were his two favorite Hitchcock movies. I re-watched Rear Window to see if I'd missed something and to bolster my case for this as my top Hitchcock achievement.

"I love Hitchcock. Rear Window is a film that makes me crazy, in a good way. There's such a coziness with James Stewart in one room, and it's such a cool room, and the people who come into this room — Grace Kelly, for instance, and Thelma Ritter — it's just so fantastic that they're all in on a mystery that's unfolding out their window. It's magical and everybody who sees it feels that. It's so nice to go back and visit that place."
David Lynch in Catching the Big Fish

I'm pleased to report that Rear Window riveted me as much as always and I even found new things to admire in what I still insist is Hitchcock's greatest film. Rear Window plunges you into its mood immediately with its memorable credit sequence set to Franz Waxman's jazzy score, raising the shades to allow the viewer to gaze at one of the best sets ever built for a movie. We get glimpses of most of the stories taking place across the courtyard before we even meet a sleeping L.B. Jefferies (Jimmy Stewart), making us complicit in his voyeurism and invasion of privacy before he even takes up the hobby. Of course, we also get Hitch's great wordless opening that explains Jeff's broken leg and lets us know that he makes his living as a photographer. One thing that I always forget about Rear Window until I watch it again is how the bulk of its suspense is packed into its last half-hour. This isn't to say it doesn't hold your attention until then, but it's more domestic comedy and an exploration of ethics until that point.
"She's too perfect, she's too talented, she's too beautiful, she's too sophisticated, she's too everything but what I want."
Jeff talking about Lisa (Grace Kelly)


Part of the brilliance of John Michael Hayes' screenplay is that nearly every story that Jeff spies on through his window presents some aspect of his ambivalence toward marriage and toward Lisa. Before he even suspects that Lars Thorvald (Raymond Burr) has killed his wife, Jeff is resisting constant entreaties that he should wed: From his nurse Stella, from his editor and, eventually, from his police detective friend Lt. Doyle (Wendell Corey). Even though the laid-up Jeff exists in "a swamp of boredom" thanks to his injury, he still seems to prefer it to giving up his freedom and privacy for Lisa or for anyone. In his phone conversation with his unseen editor, Jeff expresses misgivings about life after marriage that will eventually be a possible motive for Thorvald.
Editor: It's about time you got married, before you turn into a lonesome and bitter old man.
Jeff: Yeah, can't you just see me, rushing home to a hot apartment to listen to the automatic laundry and the electric dishwasher and the garbage disposal and the nagging wife...
Editor: Jeff, wives don't nag anymore. They discuss.
Jeff: Oh, is that so, is that so? Well, maybe in the high-rent district they discuss. In my neighborhood they still nag.


As Jeff's boredom turns to outright peeping, he can see part of his life in nearly every story: His inability to work is expressed by the frustrated musician, the Thorvalds squabble, two newlyweds indulge in the bliss of their new beginning and another married couple live for their baby, who happens to be a dog. He also spots Miss Torso, who parades an endless series of men through her apartment, something Jeff fears Lisa would do if they got hitched and he was constantly away on photography assignments. Last, there is Miss Lonelyhearts, who represents a sad singlehood, though Jeff doesn't seem to see himself in her, though Lisa finds more to identify there than with Miss Torso, though neither woman seems an exact match for the gorgeous and cultured Lisa. In fact, you have to ask what Lisa sees in Jeff in the first place. As pointed out in Hitchcock/Truffaut, the film sets up real symmetry between the Thorvalds and Jeff and Lisa in that Jeff is an invalid and Lisa can move about while Mrs. Thorvald is an invalid and it's her husband who has the freedom of movement.
"Intelligence. Nothing has caused the human race more trouble than intelligence."
Stella


Stella isn't talking about WMDs or attempts to acquire uranium from Niger. She's referring to Jeff's tendency to overthink things, especially related to Lisa and marriage. Soon, his tendency to overanalyze starts the engine on the film's main thread as he suspects that Thorvald has killed Mrs. Thorvald. (He hears an unidentified scream 30 minutes in). Hitchcock actually makes his requisite cameo around the same time, appearing in the musician's apartment winding a clock, as if he's manually starting the plot. In that same opening shot where we first meet the sleeping Jeff, we see the thermometer indicating that it's an extremely hot summer day in New York, giving rise to the idea that heat could be allowing his imagination to get carried away just as 35 years later a hot summer day in Brooklyn would give rise to the tensions that propel Spike Lee's great Do the Right Thing. In fact, before Jeff convinces Lisa and Stella that Thorvald might have offed his wife, even the audience is led to think that perhaps it's all in Jeff's head. Hitchcock shows us Thorvald leaving the apartment with a woman presumed to be Mrs. Thorvald, but only the audience sees it because it happens while Jeff sleeps.
"People do a lot of things in private they couldn't possibly explain in public."
Lt. Thomas Doyle

Of course, Jeff isn't alone with his suspicions about Thorvald for long. Soon, Stella and Lisa are eager participants in his window sleuthing. He gets Doyle curious enough to do some leg work, but not enough to sell him on the idea that the sudden disappearance of the wife, the saws, the late night trips, etc. add up to proof that Lars Thorvald is a wife killer. Doyle even returns with witnesses who claim to have seen Mrs. Thorvald get on a train and a postcard from the wife telling Lars she'd arrived safely. For a moment, Jeff and Lisa think they've been wrong and are, as Lisa asks, "Jeff, you know if someone came in here, they wouldn't believe what they'd see? You and me with long faces plunged into despair because we find out a man didn't kill his wife. We're two of the most frightening ghouls I've ever known." It even gives Jeff pause to question his own ethics. "I wonder if it's ethical to watch a man with binoculars and a long focus lens. Do you, do you suppose it's ethical even if you prove that he didn't commit a crime?" Jeff wonders. However, when the couple across the way finds their cute little dog strangled to death after it had been poking around Thorvald's garden, they are certain they were right before, especially as the mourning woman accuses everyone of not knowing how to be good neighbors and not caring if anyone even lives or dies, even a poor friendly pooch, and everyone comes to their windows to look except Thorvald. Jeff and Lisa decide to be more proactive. Jeff scribbles a note to Thorvald asking where his wife is and Lisa slides it under his door prompting Thorvald to give the "kind of look a man makes when he thinks someone might be watching him." Joined by Stella, the trio get more daring, deciding to trick Thorvald out of the apartment so they can see what was buried under that plant. From this point out, the movie's tension tightens like a vise as Lisa decides to go further (after Jeff makes an anonymous phone call to lure Thorvald to a hotel) and climbs into his apartment to search for clues. Stella returns to Jeff in his apartment and Lisa gets trapped as Thorvald returns as Stella gets distracted by noticing that Miss Lonelyhearts appears to be about to kill herself. Thankfully, the police arrive before Thorvald can throttle Lisa (but not before she discovers his wife's wedding ring and spots Jeff across the way). As for Miss Lonelyhearts, she hears the composer's music coming from his apartment and decides to live. Ah, the healing power of art.
"Nobody ever invented a polite word for a killin' yet."
Stella

though the peepers do end up sending a murderer to jail and escape from their own fates, they still pay a price for their privacy invasions. Jeff's encounter with Thorvald leaves him with two broken legs instead of one and it looks certain that Lisa is in his life to stay whether he wants her or not (or whether marriage is in the offing). A return glance at the thermometer shows that the temperature has cooled down and every life and apartment has changed: Painters fix up the Thorvalds' apartment for the next tenants, Miss Torso welcomes back her true love, a nebbishy-looking enlisted man, the married couple get a new pet, Miss Lonelyhearts and the musician unite, the honeymoon appears to be over for the newlyweds as the young bride begins to nag her husband (Or are they discussing?) and Lisa makes certain to pull the shades down as Jeff naps and she secretly pulls out a fashion magazine.

"It was the possibility of doing a purely cinematic film. You have an immobilized man looking out. That's one part of the film. The second part shows what he sees and the third part shows how he reacts. This is actually the purest expression of a cinematic idea."
Alfred Hitchcock to Francois Truffaut

Truffaut wrote in his book The Films in My Life, "...I am convinced that this film is one of the most important of all the 17 Hitchcock made in Hollywood, one of those rare films without imperfection or weakness, which concedes nothing." I concur. For me, Rear Window nearly is perfect and revisiting it only strengthened my resolve on the matter. It is the ultimate exploration of film as voyeurism and the most triumphant example of Hitchcock's attempts to use a confined setting for a movie as he tried in Lifeboat and Rope. He truly was in control of his full faculties as a director in terms of pacing and just about everything else you can imagine. On top of that, there is always the great sequence of the kiss. I'm as puzzled now as I was when I first heard the naysayers express their lack of love for this masterpiece.




"Rear Window is a film about indiscretion, about intimacy violated and taken by surprise at its most wretched moments; a film about the impossibility of happiness, about dirty linen that gets washed in the courtyard; a film about moral solitude, an extraordinary symphony of daily life and ruined dreams."
Francois Truffaut from The Films in My Life


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# posted by Edward Copeland @ 2:01 AM 18 comments

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