Weekend treats ..... six from that fab year 1962

It should be in widescreen reallv....

Monty with .....

Marilyn in THE MISFITS / Elizabeth in A PLACE IN THE SUN / Lee Remick in WILD RIVER / Donna Reed in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, and visiting Jack and Tony on SOME LIKE IT HOT ...

Some Like It Hot in 1959

The June 1959 issue of "Films & Filming" (from that batch of 1950s British movie magazines I acquired recently, as per my other reports on them) has a delicious review of SOME LIKE IT HOT which is worth sharing. An acknowledged classic for ages (and for me the best and best scripted comedy ever, I also think Jack and Tony should have shared the Best Actor Award that year, sorry Charlton).- but what did they think of it at the time?  This is by Peter Baker, the then editor of the magazine:

"Oh, those mad, mad Roaring Twenties. The tango bands, the yachting millionaires, the sack look,. Valentino, prohibition, Chicago gangsters ... and Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as the flappiest flappers of them all. As you will gather, SOME LIKE IT HOT is all - and more - than its title implies (with Edward G Robinson's son sending up George Raft, Monroe sending up herself, Curtis and Lemmon sending up each other; and director Billy Wilder sending up everyone).  

The story - and who's really going to worry about a little thing like that? - concerns two band boys, witness of the St Valentine's Day Massacre, who escape the mobsters by becoming band girls on a jaunt to Florida. Josephine ("not tonight") - played by Curtis - plays the sax while Daphne (that's Lemmon) plays for sex. Marilyn ("and there I was sitting on my ukelele") plays sister to them both.

Its when millionaire playboy Osgood (Joe E. Brown, at 67, not looking a day over 40) falls for Daphne and, when he proposes, decides "she" prefers to remain a girl that the campery reaches its climax, if that is not too indelicate an expression, for so fey a confection. (Come to think of it, we are never told Daphne's final settlement as "she" disappears in the night in Osgood's motor launch protesting her manhood to his assurances that he does not expect perfection).

In between, Josephine has time to masquerade as an oil magnate and persuade Sugar (thats M.M. if you didn't guess) to stop playing her ukelele to go on a midnight cruise long enough to help him overcome his Freudian complexes about women. 

If one can be serious about so uninhibited a romp, it is that Wilder lets his joke run on a little too long, and there is not always sufficient edge to the satire. The sense of period is impeccable. It had to be. I doubt if the censor (who must have been driven frantic spotting the double entendres and, on my account, has missed at least six which I suspect would have been cut if he had spotted them!)  would have passed the film in any category if the story took place today, in San Francisco, Brighton, Amsterdam, Paris - anywhere in fact where boys will be boys - and sometimes girls". 

Yes quite fun, reading this from a rather jaded gay 1950s perspective, but no mention of the clockwork perfection of the script with its constant reversals or the great supporting work of Joan Shawlee as Sweet Sue, or Orry-Kelly's costumes, or its gleaming black and white photography (it just wouldn't work in colour) and so much more we love about the film still - and those great scenes and funny moments, 
no wonder Jack's Daphne had to shake those maraccas in the "why would a guy want to marry a guy?" - "Security!" scene (to give the audience time to recover from the last zinger), or the boys having lost their coats to a horse out in the blizzard, or the girls on the train to Florida with that joke about the one-legged jockey, or Sweet Sue's "I want to remind all your daddies out there that every girl in my band is a virtuoso and I want to keep it that way" or the eager bellhop with a pass-key and the hots for Josephine, or Sugar's comment that the diamonds must be worth their weight in gold (she always gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop), and her father being a conductor - on the Baltimore-Ohio! And those delicious musical numbers. Then the older guys guying themselves: George Raft, Pat O'Brien, Mike Mazurki, and Nehemiah Persoff ! 
SLIH used to be a constant television staple here, always screened over Christmas. Curtis and Lemmon in their later years dragged up again too of course for one of the "Vanity Fair" Hollywood issues . Right: Monty Clift visits the set. The young Jane Fonda did as well and remembers (as per her memoirs) seeing M.M. being prepared for a scene and isolated in her stardom. 
Of course 1959 (one of my favourite years) was a great year for movies with lots of classics but BEN HUR swept the board, so Wilder got his Awards next year for THE APARTMENT (which I don't rave about that much, I preferred his next: that zany, madcap ONE TWO THREE! ). SLIH will always be in my Top Ten, but a lot of the later Wilders I just had no interest in seeing - see Wilder label.
Its on television again here tomorrow, I will be looking in again of course. It is forever a gleaming Rolls Royce of a film where every component works perfectly. 
More on it at Monroe, Lemmon, Curtis and Wilder labels.

"They are not long, the days of wine and roses ...."

I have a vivid memory of being 16 and watching DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES at my local cinema in 1962, and being entranced by that young couple up there on the screen, as they stand and look out at the water, before their descent into alcoholism .....

My friend Daryl has now sent me some stills from the film, so its a pleasure to post them here, as they are too little seen. 

Joe Clay is a top-notch public relations man. Anything a client wants Joe can arrange for them, whether it be dancing girls or an article in a prominent magazine. Part of the job however is drinking and Joe's ability to consume alcohol seems boundless. When he meets the very pretty Kirsten Arnasen, she prefers chocolate to alcohol but Joe has a solution to that in the form of a Brandy Alexander (made up of brandy and creme de cocoa). They eventually marry but their love is insufficient to prevent them from the downward spiral that alcohol brings to them. They try desperately to break the habit but continually relapse until only one of them manages to break free...

Lee Remick has always been a particular favourite of mine (I met her in 1970 and saw her on the stage in BUS STOP in 1976, as per Remick label) and she excels here and for my money should have won the Oscar that year for best actress - but the competition was fierce: apart from Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis delivering iconic performances there were also those two powerhouse actresses Geraldine Page and Anne Bancroft (who won), 
but Lee captures perfectly the arc of the chocolate-loving secretary Karin who starts with Brandy Alexanders and is soon a hopeless drunk. Jack Lemmon matches her in one of his great performances - this and SOME LIKE IT HOT may be his best, I did not want to see a lot of his later stuff; whereas Lee Remick here and in ANATOMY OF A MURDER and WILD RIVER is at her best too. I have now seen most of her later work - she and Lemmon were re-united in 1980's TRIBUTE - 
see my review of a year or so ago at their labels, but that was a much lesser work. Charles Bickford is marvellous too as Karin's strict father, and that great scene of merrily drunk Lemmon looking for the hidden bottle and wrecking Bickford's greenhouse as he gets more and more out of control ..... Henry Mancini's great score sets the moods and that great theme song, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer is certainly a perennial. 

Blake Edwards was certainly on a roll in those early Sixties years, after dramas like MISTER CORY and comedies like THE PERFECT FURLOUGH (STRICTLY FOR PLEASURE) and OPERATION PETTICOAT, then the cult classic and popular perennial BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S he did that tense thriller EXPERIMENT IN TERROR, also with Lee Remick, in 1962 and followed that with THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES, and then the delicious first PINK PANTHER in 1963 ....

Cat people, or bewitched again ....

BELL BOOK AND CANDLE, 1958. A pleasure to see again yesterday. John Van Druten's play [the Harrisons - Rex and Lilli - had done it on the stage] is nicely transferred to screen in '58 by Richard Quine, with his muse of the time, Kim Novak at her zenith here as the witch who cannot fall in love - enter publisher James Stewart who has moved into the apartment above .... Its a lovely look at New York in the '50s, Stewart and Novak are teamed again right after Hitch's VERTIGO. The great supporting cast includes Jack Lemmon (just before SOME LIKE IT HOT) as her warlock brother, Ernie Kovacs as the writer on the lookout for witches, and Hermione Gingold as head witch, aided by Elsa Lanchester at her most ditzy, plus Janice Rule as Stewart's bitchy girlfriend, who it turns out was at college with Kim. Pyewacket the cat is super too. 

This is a great New York movie, and would be a terrific, if long, double bill with BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S -  which also has a great cat. 

Amusingly, this has now been seen in a gay context. Druten it seems was gay, and the coven of witches with their hidden culture and their own nightclub (presided over by la Gingold) could be read as coded for the secret life of gays in '50s New York. "They are all around us" Lemmon happily tells the bewildered Kovacs ... The Zodiac Club too is a great beat haven - in fact gays and beatniks are not too hard to find here in this Greenwich Village. It is tres amusing at the Club when Stewart and Janice turn up, and Kim causes a return of those thunderstorms which plagued Janice so, back at college. It was also Stewart's last as a romantic lead [he is 50 here], he really slipped into character parts with his next, the still terrific ANATOMY OF A MURDER, plus those father parts. [Nice to see him and Novak re-united handing out an award on one of those 80s Oscar shows].

Richard Quine directs with a light touch, ably assisted by James Wong Howe's lovely camerawork making New York at Christmas in the snow, positively enchanting. Daniel Taradash did the script (he also scripted FROM HERE TO ETERNITY) and the nice score is by George Duning. Kim makes a magical rather beatnik witch, always in black and that nice cape for the snow scene - with her shop of primitive art - then at the end when she is human she is in lavender and yellow and her shop is now "Flowers of the Sea" with sea shells - perhaps this, VERTIGO and STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET are her key roles. Pyewacket excels too ..... BB&C remains a welcome treat anytime. 

Showpeople: visiting colleagues ...

Never seen this shot before: Montgomery Clift with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon - presumably Monty was visiting the set of SOME LIKE IT HOT, shot in 1958, released early 1959. - and below, Tony Perkins dropping in on John Wayne and Sophia Loren on LEGEND OF THE LOST, Tony and Sophia were going to do DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS next ...

and that famous shot of Brando visiting EAST OF EDEN with a rapt Julie Harris and little boy lost James Dean ... 

A Hard Day's Night, 50 years on ... + SLIH

London's British Film Institute is celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Beatles first film A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, with an extended run of 34 screenings. I have the dvd but it would be nice to pop along and see it on the big screen again. It is very special to me. Prior to then, movies with pop stars were lame efforts like those early 60s Billy Fury and Cliff Richard vehicles (see music label), even the Elvis films were starting to look tired - then Richard Lester came along with Alun Owen's witty script and turned it all upside down. It was like a French New Wave zany comedy and not just to expoit the worldwide success of the Fab Four. It is both comedy and almost documentary showing the boys as prisoners of their success, and also some of those songs are staged and filmed like the first pop promos. 

It chronicles a few days in the life of the band, on trains, in the studio, trying to get some space for themselves as they are pursued by hysterical fans, clueless reporters, a fretful manager and Paul's grand-dad (Steptoe's Wilfrid Brambell) the essence of a "dirty old man" though they keep saying how clean he is here! The moptops are all individuals - we all had our favourites - and are all great here. The great Victor Spinetti (see label) is a scream as the neurotic tv studio director driven to distraction by the Boys. Add in that dry Scouse humour as the four lads ooze charisma and charm, and of course those songs!. Lester too keeps it all flying - it revolutionised screen musicals at a time when Hollywood was still churning out moribund embalmed versions of stage shows like MY FAIR LADY. Jacques Demy in France though was doing something similar with his UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG - and the later LES DEMOISELLES DE ROCHEFORT. 1965 saw Lester with The Beatles again and more pop promos but in colour this time, with HELP! I love that one even more ...

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT covers a very special moment for me, being 18 and new in London, and loving the Beatles and their music. That summer I had to stay out in London all night, as I went to see a late night French movie (at the old Academy in Oxford Street) and could not get home to the suburbs - no late night transport then! - so as dawn broke I was walking down Regent Street (where I would later spend over 20 years working) as the sun was rising over the old London Pavilion cinema where A HARD DAY'S NIGHT was playing, so the posters and pictures were everywhere. It suddenly felt good to be 18 and new in London as dawn was breaking .... its one of those moments that stay with one!  Richard Lester is introducing a screening on the 3rd July.

The BFI are also doing an extended run (34 more screenings) of "the best comedy ever made" SOME LIKE IT HOT - and I can only agree with that. Again, no matter how many times one has seen it - and I have a lot since its release in 1959 - it is always marvellous to see it on a cinema screen with an audience, as that impeccable well-constructed script plays out as played by that cast. SOME LIKE IT HOT will always be in my Top Ten. I will be going again ...

Good too to see the BFI screening that rarity I found a while ago - THE SQUEEZE, that terrific 1972 British thriller capturing the grubby, sleazy gangland in 1972 London with Hemmings and Boyd in great late roles.  

As they say: "If THE SQUEEZE plays like an amped-up, sexed-up feature length 70s TV crime show, its probably down to screenwriter Leon Griffiths ...... director Michael Apted makes maximum use of the London locations, and directs the proceedings with commendable energy by embracing the sleaze and grubbiness of the story. "

Jack's Tribute, Lee drops in

TRIBUTE, 1980. What to make of Jack Lemmon’s long and varied career? He did a lot of stage work too, including playing TRIBUTE over 200 times before the 1980 film, so the role must have appealed to him.  

A shallow Broadway press agent learns he is dying just as his son by his ex-wife arrives for a visit.

His character here, Scottie Templeton, is the kind of showbiz veteran to drive one screaming from the room, as Scottie has to be ‘on’ all the time, even when being told he has a terminal illness.
 Lemmon though whether dropping his pants or dressed in a chicken suit, is so annoying and unfunny. His ex-wife is Lee Remick who drops in for a few scenes, like visiting royalty, and is so wonderful and charistmatic as usual here (she said she took the small role to work again with Jack after their 1962 hit DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES – and they do have great rapport;  ironically, it was Lee who got the fatal illness, and died aged 55 in 1991, a decade before Jack in 2001). 

Second billed is Robbie Benson, who on this showing is a charisma-free zone, as the son who feels neglected and its all about Scottie trying to re-connect with his son. This is all glutinously sentimental, then there is Colleen Dewhurst as the doctor, and John Marley as Scottie’s old friend – and that scene at Joe Allen’s of which the less said the better. 
There is also a montage of Scottie back in hospital enduring his treatment which feels like the end, but no – there is more, as he gets that tribute from his peers and friends which goes on and on, as Scottie, wearing that silly hat, wears out his welcome. Kim Cattrall is also there, looking different from her later SEX AND THE CITY persona …. I loved Scottie’s palatial New York townhouse, but as an IMDB reviewer put it:  its a 'tribute' to phony emotions, bad acting, and a rotten script. Directed by Bob Clark. Lee did much better also in 1980 with that other small role in THE COMPETITION (as per review, Remick label.).

Ok, I only saw this for Lee Remick. Getting back to Jack, I liked his early ‘50s movies  (COWBOY, MY SISTER EILEEN, BELL BOOK & CANDLE) and his films with all those blondes (Marilyn, Doris, Kim, Janet, Judy) and I never tire of him in SOME LIKE IT HOT - the performance of the year - or THE APARTMENT, 

Jack & Romy

but after DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES not so much, though GOOD NEIGHBOUR SAM with Romy, THE ODD COUPLE with Mattheau, and THE OUT OF TOWNERS with Sandy Dennis were tolerably amusing, but wild horses couldn’t drag me to IRMA LA DOUCE, UNDER THE YUM YUM TREE or SAVE THE TIGER, and for every MISSING or CHINA SYNDROME or GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS there’s a glutinously schmaltzy  TRIBUTE or THAT’S LIFE or those GRUMPY OLD MEN …. Ugh ! while Billy’s 1972 AVANTI! is still polarizing – some love it, others hate it (as do I). Bizarre too seeing him turn up as Marcellus in the Branagh HAMLET ! How did he fit in those stage roles as well (like the demanding LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT)… despite some of those grating later roles we have a lot of affection for Jack's earlier work (and we will always have SOME LIKE IT HOT in our Top Ten) and he did become a beloved American institution like James Stewart or Henry Fonda.  Below: They are not long the DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES.

My Christmas treat: My Sister Eileen

Thats the 1955 Columbia version, not the 1942 original with Roz Russell, who also played it on Broadway as the show WONDERFUL TOWN, with a score by Leonard Bernstein and book by Comden and Green. This 1955 film though has a different score by Jule Style (GYPSY, FUNNY GIRL) and Leo Robin, and has choreography by young Bob Fosse who also plays the guy working in the diner smitten with Janet Leigh (Eileen). That other great dancer Tommy Rall plays the other brasher guy, also with the hots for Eileen, while Betty Garrett is the older sister, Betty of course was Brunhilde Esterhazy in ON THE TOWN. The material is based on Ruth McKenney's "New Yorker" stories about her pretty sister Eileen.

This MY SISTER EILEEN is another great 'New York in the Fifties' movie, with that Cinemascope screen unfolding a vibrant city as the Sherwood sisters - Ruth and Eileen - arrive from Ohio and rent that basement from Kurt Kasznar, with Dick York as the other tenant who keeps an eye on them. Ruth is a writer and tries to sell her stories to publisher Jack Lemmon - good here in one of his early roles - while Janet has to fight off the guys as she looks for work.

Director Richard Quine is a dab hand at using the widescreen (as was Anthony Mann, Nicholas Ray) even in that tiny basement apartment. Quine was a rising star at Columbia, and had just done that studio-bound SO THIS IS PARIS that year, where Janet's husband Tony Curtis learns to sing and dance, and wasn't too bad - review at Curtis label). Quine went on to those Kim Novak films and various comedies like PARIS WHEN IT SIZZLES and SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL before his suicide in 1989, aged 68, by gunshot).

Back to EILEEN - it is a treat from start to finish, Janet is adorable as usual, and Betty knows how to wring a laugh out of a line. Bob and Tommy (one of the SEVEN BROTHERS and ideal in KISS ME KATE, as was Fosse and Bobby Van, with Ann Miller) dance up a storm, Fosse was 28 at the time. The delirious climax includes a line of conga-dancing Portuguese sailors dressed in white. MY SISTER EILEEN often got overlooked among all those great '50s musicals, but thankfully is now restored on dvd to delight us all over again. 

Marilyn, 5th August 1962

51 years later and still new photos of Marilyn Monroe are being discovered, and a wealth of new books too.

I am getting a new one in tomorrow's post:  "Marilyn, the passion and the paradox" by Lois Banner, which seems to be highly recommended. (its a 500 page tome, with another trawl through that childhood in foster homes ...)

There are over 40 posts on MM here, here are 3 key ones:

http://osullivan60.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/marilyn.html

http://osullivan60.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-50th-anniversary-tribute-to-marilyn.html

http://osullivan60.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/marilyn-exhibition.html

The fuzzy end of the lollipop ? - its only the best comedy ever.

My first MM book, back in 1969 ...

Actors 2

A lovely still from Antonioni's L'ECLISSE, 1962, with Alain Delon. The link below, if you copy to your browser, features a terrific page of animated stills of this and other movies like TAXI DRIVER, BLADE RUNNER, 2001, LOLITA etc with brilliant animation of the stills. Enjoy!

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2011/09/cinematographs_living_breathin.html

10 great male performances: (or my favourites at any rate)

Robert De Niro - TAXI DRIVER & RAGING BULL (and his sax player in NEW YORK NEW YORK!)
Dirk Bogarde - THE SERVANT / MODESTY BLAISE / DEATH IN VENICE
James Mason - A STAR IS BORN 
Maurice Ronet - LE FEU FOLLET
Peter Finch - SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY / THE TRIALS OF OSCAR WILDE
Anton Walbrook - THE RED SHOES 
Ralph Richardson - THE HEIRESS
Montgomery Clift - WILD RIVER
David Hemmings - BLOW-UP
Cary Grant - NOTORIOUS
Gary Cooper - FRIENDLY PERSUASION
James Dean - EAST OF EDEN
and sneaking in Jack Lemmon as Daphne in SOME LIKE IT HOT - Tony ain't bad either!