Back to 1957 with ....

When I was 11 in 1957, a favourite movie magazine - one of the American fan ones - was maybe called "Screen Stories", featuring stories and photos from the current movies. This particular issue featured RAINTREE COUNTY, THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL, TAMMY AND THE BACHELOR, LOVING YOU, FUNNY FACE and others -- I can still visualise it. This week two of these re-surfaced, the Marilyn and the Elizabeth saga. Of the two I think Marilyn came out the winner.

Both had been working hard throughout the early Fifties, Liz having four movies out in 1954, but once GIANT catapulted her into the  major league, she slowed down to one prestige film a year .... as did Marilyn, who had formed her own production company with Milton H Greene, after moving to New York and was seeking more important projects, than the fluff 20th Century Fox saw her in. Terence Rattigan's play, THE SLEEPING PRINCE, seemed the ideal choice, with Laurence Olivier directing and co-starring, and a good British cast, filmed in England in 1956. We have covered that in detail before here, particularly when the film MY WEEK WITH MARILYN came out. Looking at it again now it is utter delight.

It is a totally different Marilyn from her Fox movies, ace cameraman Jack Cardiff photographs her lovingly, she had never looked better and proves herself a delightful comedienne, holding her own with Olivier, whose sly portrayal is a joy too. Marilyn in that skintight white dress, with the white choker necklace, and the nice period detail. 
Good to see Richard Wattis in a good role for once, and Marilyn with Jean Kent, Maxine Audley, Gladys Henson, Vera Day and with that forgotten actor Jeremy Spenser as the young prince,  (All covered at labels). Of course the production was notoriously difficult with Marilyn's delays and insecurities, but none of it shows on the screen. Its a pleasure to sink into any time. 

RAINTREE COUNTY on the other hand is now a colossal bore and did Taylor no favours. Her damaged southern belle is no Scarlett O'Hara, and the film is a plod through the usual Civil War dramatics. 
Eva Marie Saint is wasted, but we get lots of the young Lee Marvin, Rod Taylor, Nigel Patrick. Montgomery Clift seems to stumble through it, We wonder which scenes were before and after his car accident. He and Taylor though did look great in Bob Willoughby's photos from the set, and seemed to be enjoying themselves, The film was never given the full dvd release initially, as though MGM did not want to bother with it. At least Liz had those Tennessee Williams roles lined up next: CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF and SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, while Marilyn went back to Billy Wilder and the immortal SOME LIKE IT HOT. Liz may have been the dramatic actress, but Marilyn could sing, do comedy and musicals, as well as dramatics, and seems to have endured better.

Monroe and Taylor would be in contention again five years later in 1962 when CLEOPATRA and MM's SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE where making the headlines .... 

RIP, continued ...

George Barris (1922-2016) at the grand age of 94. The uninitiated may wonder who, but Barris was maybe the last of those those great photo-journalists from the Golden Age - check Eve Arnold and Bob Willoughby, labels below, and like them he too took some amazing photographs of Marilyn Monroe. I have lived with Barris's pictures since the '60s, and had some good prints, and like Arnold he also did a book of them. He was also good friend with MM and captures her nicely in his writings on her, He later moved to Paris. 

He of course took those final pictures of her in July 1962 on the beach at Mailibu and also at a house, showing that new sleek radiant Marilyn - who only had a month more to live .... so here's one or two of them again .... 
(lots more at MM label).



Rod Temperton (1949-2016) aged 66. Surprisingly the British songwriter and musician from Cleethorpes wrote those massive hits for the Michael Jackson albums OFF THE WALL and THRILLER, due to his association with Quincy Jones, as Temperton was part the funk band Heatwave in the '70s. I particularly liked his "Love Is In Control" and others for Donna Summer in '82, and George Benson's "Give Me The Night", James Ingram's "Yah Mo B There" as well as hits for Patti Austin and Herbie Hancock, and Quincy's THE DUDE and BACK ON THE BLOCK albums. We need to replay them.

ANOTHER Marilyn exhibition ....

A new Marilyn Monroe exhibition is opening in London at The Little Black Gallery (http://www.thelittleblackgallery.com)

and yes it is billing it as showing some rarely-seen images of MM - but of course they are not. These images (available as framed prints at rather stunning prices) have been available for a long time - and featured heavily in Norman Mailer's 1973 iconic book on Monroe. My teenage niece even has this MM image by Greene on her bedroom wall ...

The photos here are by two of the main photographers who knew and worked with her: namely Milton Greene who look some of the best portraits of her in the mid-1950s (he had become her friend and they set up her production company which made THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL in 1956), and Douglas Kirkland who did those - yes, iconic - shots of her wrapped in that silk sheet, in 1961. (Other great MM photographers were - as mentoned before - Eve Arnold and Bob Willoughby, George Barris who did those great beach photos with her in 1962, and Bert Stern whose "Last Sitting" caught a darker Monroe ...

The Greene pictures though are marvellous and certainly worth looking at. 

ANOTHER Marilyn book ...

Its arrived - MARILYN IN THE FLASH - the ultimate Marilyn picture book, a nice hefty tome too, Lets read the blurb:

Marilyn Monroe had a unique relationship with the press—the photographers, journalists, and columnists who followed her every move, helped carefully craft her public image, and made her one of the greatest stars in Hollywood history.

Photographically, Marilyn was at her most electrifying at public events. She was as spectacular in the posed candids of press photographers as in studio portraits or on the movie screen. She made any news photo a work of art simply by being in it, and more than any other star lived up to the promise of her screen image.

One of the most publicized actresses of her time, Marilyn actively sought out the press—which included the famous journalists and columnists Walter Winchell, Edward R. Murrow, Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, Earl Wilson, Pete Martin, Sidney Skolsky, Elsa Maxwell, and Dorothy Kilgallen. It was a mutually beneficial relationship that lasted her entire career.

In Marilyn: In The Flash, acclaimed photographic preservationist David Wills brings together an unprecedented trove highlighting the work of some of the great press photographers and photojournalists of the twentieth century. This stunning collection includes many unpublished images (most beautifully restored from original prints, negatives, or transparencies), vintage magazine articles, original press clippings and press photo captions, behind-the-scenes notes, and photographic ephemera chronicling the media's lifelong love affair with Marilyn.

Featuring a foreword by Marilyn's friend and costar Robert J. Wagner, original interviews and recollections, retrospective quotes from key journalists, columnists, press agents, photographers, and others, this portfolio of images offers a fresh, indelible portrait of one of the most enduring icons in history and illuminates the special alliance she shared with the press as never before.

Lots of familiar stuff here, but some fascinating photos I had not seen before as well: MM with Judy Garland, MM with Maria Callas, MM with Isak Dinesen, MM with Dame Edith Sitwell etc. and, surprisingly, with Spanish director Luis Bunuel - she visited the set of his EXTERMINATING ANGEL during her visit to Mexico City in March '62.- lots of these have not been seen for decades. Theres also those photos with Rock, Ella, Marlene (not the one with Gina) and the one time she and Liz Taylor were snapped together, at that 1961 Sinatra concert ... 

Not a great analysis of the Monroe myth or career - there's plenty other tomes on those, but oodles of fabulous photographs.There are other good Marilyn picture books too. I still go for the 1962 George Barris photographs though, and the Eve Arnold and Bob Willoughby ones, who knew her well. The myth goes on - a perfect birthday present to myself. 

Lots more MM at labels .....

Some winter glamour ...

to brighten up a dull December day. Here's Sophia Loren - my Number One favourite - in Antigua back in 1979 - she was making a Michael Winner film there - FIREPOWER ?- which even I did not want to see. I did see her up-close that year though, when she promoted her first autobiography at Selfridges crowded department store in London, and got my copy of the book signed. 
She was still a star people wanted to see in the flesh so the store was mobbed, I had to fight my way to the front .... thanks for the smile Sophia. 

The photos are by ace photographer David Steen who died recently - like Bob Willoughby and Eve Arnold (see labels) in the '50s and '60s. Steen took some great showbiz photos in the '70s, you only have to google them.

Party people

A rare '60s shot of Antonioni with Vanessa Redgrave AND Monica Vitti, so rare I had not seen it before.. 

An end of year round-up of some of our favourite Showpeople, once again, for recent viewers. More on these at Showpeople label.   (Our favourite photo of Vivien Leigh, Kay Kendall and Lauren Bacall out on the town with their GBF (gay best friend) Noel Coward in 1959, is now at the right hand sidebar.)

Julie Christie, Catherine Deneuve and Ursula Andress, the hot girls around town in 1966, at that year's Royal Film Performance, where they are lined up to meet The Queen. Warren Beatty and Leslie Caron were also in the line-up (as per other photos here, Showpeople label) ....  are the girls comparing frocks or how to wear those long gloves ?

Our favourite pic of those 1962 Oscar winners Gregory Peck who got his from 1961's Sophia Loren, and Joan Crawford who graciously accepted for the missing Anne Bancroft (much to Bette Davis's chagrin, who had been nominated for their BABY JANE) with studly 1961 winner Maximilian Schell, who looks like Joan's hot date for the night. So there is Joan clutching an Oscar with the winners, while Bette fumes backstage ...

Rock with Gloria Swanson and Tallulah Bankhead at the premiere of PILLOW TALK ! Rock and Tallu must have had a gas .... and here again is Rock on location in Italy in 1957 as was Dirk Bogarde, I imagine the two heart-throbs are discussing the size of their respective closets ... between them Rock and Dirk must have known/met just about everybody.

Sophia Loren never met Marilyn Monroe, but Rock and Gina did, as Gina got to Hollywood before Loren. Here's Gina and MM in 1955 I imagine, maybe during the filming of THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH? Marlene also met Marilyn, as in this 1952 shot. In 1966 Marlene met Elizabeth Taylor, in this Bob Willoughby photograph, during WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF. one imagines Marlene must have known at least 4 of Taylor's husbands ...

Another odd Royal line-up: Barbra Streisand with James Caan (FUNNY LADY perhaps?) with James Stewart and Lee Remick (who had of course teamed in 1959's ANATOMY OF A MURDER) .... Barbra broke with protocol by asking the Queen why they had to wear gloves.

And a delicious shot of Romy Schneider and Horst Buchholz when they were young in MONPTI, way back in 1956. Love those swimming trunks ... 
 And again that car load of talent at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival: Loren, Delon, Schneider.

Jean Seberg: In the French style ....

A trio of Seberg's best ....

Nice to see - and get - a new edition of IN THE FRENCH STYLE, another of 1963's stylish romantic dramas, featuring that perennial - the American girl in Europe. I have done reports on this before here, see Jean Seberg label. I like the cover of this, showing part of Jean's goodbye speech to Stanley Baker at that bittersweet airport meeting.

She is now that brittle playgirl, as opposed to the naive young innocent who first arrives in Paris - to learn how to paint and study art! We get her father's disapproval, the young man she first gets involved with, men about town like Stanley Baker who loves his foreign correspondent job more than her, as she becomes a "Citizen of Paris" and "embraces its endless parties and jaded view of love." Then there is the doctor who adores her and whom she decides to marry and go back to America with (played by a favourite writer of mine, James Leo Herlihy), all based on two Irwin Shaw (TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN) stories which make up this Robert Parrish film. It has that early '60s black-and-white international jetset look in spades, as Jean refines her American Girl in Paris after of course BREATHLESS ...

It is always a pleasure too to go back to 1958's BONJOUR TRISTESSE, her second film with Otto Preminger, from - that word again - the bittersweet Francoise Sagan tale. More on this too at Seberg label, and photographer Bob Willoughby's photos from the set, as above left. More on that at Bonjour Tristesse label.  IN THE FRENCH STYLE, below.

 

Another favourite is the 1965 MOMENT TO MOMENT, a late Mervyn LeRoy romantic thriller which we like a lot, Jean as I said before is perfection here in that Yves St Laurent wardrobe (which would still be very chic today), driving around St Paul de Vence in her red sportscar and taking her naval officer lover to the Colombe D'Or restaurant, while her husband is away. Add in Honor Blackman  (just after

her GOLDFINGER stint) as the maneater next door, a missing body, a husband and suspicious detectives and the stage is set for a fabulous drama. A lot of it is studio bound but the South of France locations are enjoyable too .... as is that Henry Mancini score.

These were Jean's good years, after Rossen's LILITH (one to re-see), before those darker late ones - that Chabrol thriller THE ROUTE TO CORINTH in '67 was enjoyable too. 

More French stuff next: R-Patz as BEL AMI ! 

Montgomery Clift - London screenings & rarities

Montgomery is being celebrated this February as the BFI Southbank in London screen a season of his films. There are only 17, but the BFI in its wisdom is only screening 12 - the most well known ones:
RED RIVER, THE SEARCH, THE HEIRESS, I CONFESS, FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, RAINTREE COUNTY, THE YOUNG LIONS, SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, WILD RIVER, THE MISFITS, FREUD, and an extended run of 33 screenings of A PLACE IN THE SUN.
So they are ignoring THE BIG LIFT, the De Sica one with Jennifer Jones in '54 INDESCRETION OF AN AMERICAN WIFE, LONELYHEARTS, JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBURG and his final, the odd THE DEFECTOR.

The rather dull 1950 THE BIG LIFT (about the Berlin Airlift) got a few screenings on our TCM recently, I had not seen it before; we hardly ever get to see the De Sica now, and LONELYHEARTS is such a rare move here I had not even heard of it for a long time, but as luck would have it I got a copy a while back and just watched it, its certainly a very peculiar film but Robert Ryan, Myrna Loy and Maureen Stapleton all deliver as Monty seems rather vacant, like he is in SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, in those years after that car crash. I will now though finally see FREUD which should at least be interesting, even if Clift did not have a pleasant shooting experience with Huston here. THE DEFECTOR turned up on tv a few times over the years, but is hardly consequential, Monica Vitti was originally cast in the role played by Macha Meril. It is a pity he did not live to star in Huston's REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE which he was supposed to do, with Taylor again, but of course Brando replaced him ...

With Taylor during RAINTREE
by Bob Willoughby

It would be good though to see RAINTREE COUNTY (a key 1957 movie for me back then, when 11) and WILD RIVER again on the large screen ... Taylor and Remick are ideal co-stars for him, and I love that Kazan film, as per my other reviews on it here (Clift, Remick labels). Perhaps the new generation who may not have seen much of Clift will see Monty as part of that triumvirate of great American actors of the '50s, along with Brando and Dean, he is certainly as revered as they are ... and looked terrific in army outfits, which he wore quite a bit ...

WILD RIVER with Lee Remick

Hawks' RED RIVER, Stevens' A PLACE IN THE SUN and Zinnemann's FROM HERE TO ETERNITY are of course American classics, with Monty at his zenith. I CONFESS is a rather turgid Hitchcock but not without merit, and I used to be obsessed over THE MISFITS .... I like Wyler's THE HEIRESS a lot too, a key late '40s movie, and of course what can one say about SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER has hasn't been said already.... THE YOUNG LIONS is now a bit of a plod (as we follow Clift, Dean and Brando through WWII), and NUREMBURG is of course the all-star Kramer drama with special guest-star concentration camp victims (Monty and Judy Garland, both beyond compelling).  My pal Jerry is now going to lend me the Criterion issue of INDISCRETION (TERMINAL STATION) the 1954 De Sica, which has both the American (just 63 minutes after Selznick had finished with it) and longer Italian versions ...

The above is a thread of mine on the IMDB Classic Film Board, on the Clift season at the BFI in February. Monty has of course always been up there for me, with Dean and Monroe, and certainly more than Brando. The biographies on him are very revealing, not only about that car crash and his later dependancies, and also on that fascinating life cut short too early, at 45 in 1966.  I have now seen LONELYHEARTS and FREUD, so here are initiial comments on these: 

LONELYHEARTS: the book MISS LONELYHEARTS by Nathanael West is still of interest. This morning's newspaper carried this capsule review of it by writer Fay Weldon: "A black comedy but with nothing funny about it, a Depression (and depression) novel that is more apt today than ever, as a young (male) agony aunt takes on board the awfulness of life. Nothing changes. Once read, Miss Lonelyhearts is a book whic deserves to be rescued from its current obscurity". 

The film is more of the same, a downbeat tale, oddly paced, with long scenes of people just talking - Clift with Myrna Loy (who drinks a lot), her cynical husband newspaper editor Shrike (Robert Ryan at his brooding best as in Ophuls' CAUGHT, CLASH BY NIGHT or BILLY BUDD) who sets up would-be journalist Clift as the new Miss Lonelyhearts .... Monty is a tad too old for the part really and often has that dazed look he has in his next, SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER. These were his post-car accident years. Maureen Stapleton, in her debut, is powerful as the troubled woman who writes for advice, after seeing Clift with Ryan in a bar - she asks Ryan who Clift is and he tells her, so she knows who she is writing to. Would any advice columnist though set up a meeting with a person who writes for advice? This is a bad move as Stapleton's unhappy marriage to a crippled man leads to her take out her frustrations, including sexual, on the hapless Clift ..... an odd tale makes for an odd film, a Dore Schary production in 1958, directed by one Vincent J Donehue. One can see why it is has been so rarely seen since ... 

Also long unseen is John Huston's 1962 FREUD (it didnt get to London till '63 when I imagine it did not hang around long), which now comes across like a brooding drama where Clift at 42 delivers his last major role, he was suffering with eye catatacts and other problems here and it was a troubled shoot for him. Young Susannah York (before TOM JONES) is very impressive as the main case he works on, Susan Kohner has nothing to do as Mrs Freud, and Rosalie Crutchley is sterling as ever as his mother. It looks terrific in moody monochrome and all that black outfits and sets recall the later THE ELEPHANT MAN. This is another story of medical people and hospitals.  

This pseudo-biographical movie depicts 5 years from 1885 on in the life of the Viennan psychologist Freud (1856-1939). At this time, most of his colleagues refuse to cure hysteric patients, because they believe they're just simulating to gain attention. But Freud learns to use hypnosis to find out the reasons for the psychosis. His main patient is a young woman who refuses to drink water and is plagued by always the same nightmare.

It is of course the usual story of a girl loving her father too much, and the sexual hysteria of the time is nicely evoked, with its brothels and repression. An odd choice for Huston who was having a good run then in 1962 with popular well-regarded films we liked a lot (HEAVEN KNOWS MR ALLISON, THE UNFORGIVEN, THE MISFITS, he went on to THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA among others). Photograhed by Douglas Slocombe, with a soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith. Monty delivers a passionate, involving portrait in an ambitious biopic which Huston (who also narrates) described as an "intellectual suspense story". It seems Jean-Paul Sartre worked uncredited on the screenplay. It is not a standard biopic of Freud but concentrates on his work in examining the effect of the subconscious mind on conscious actions - an idea believed preposterous at the time. The film uses memories and dreams (like Freud's with his mother) to arrive at the truth. The version I have runs to 140 minutes, but the BFI's brochures lists a 2 hour running time, there may be various versions around, I understand a lot of the dream sequences were cut to shorten the rather long running time. A fascinating curio now, and a companion piece to Huston's film on Toulouse-Lautrec and the MOULIN ROUGE of that same era. LONELYHEARTS and FREUD are both very verbose films with the actors having to recite reams of dialogue to each other ... I wonder if FREUD was titled FREUD: THE SECRET PASSION to make it seem more risque?