Julie, Julie

Julie (and the other one) in the Swinging Sixties... some rare shots we have not seen before,

That 1966 Royal Film Performance of BORN FREE, with Julie, Leslie Caron, Warren Beatty, Catherine Deneuve, Ursula Andress, Raquel Welch, Christopher Lee all lined-up. Perhaps the first time Warren met Julie .....

Something for the weekend (2): Le Jazz Hot

Rory loved this .... from VICTOR/VICTORIA, 1982. One of Julie's best numbers.

End of summer repeats: Millie, Pulp Fiction, Aviator ...

"In the Ritz elevator you just go up and down"

It seems like the end of summer here in the UK, as we face our second day of incessant rain, washing out a bank holiday yesterday, and much cooler weather - we were moaning about the heatwave the other week, but the nice thing about UK weather is that it changes all the time .... it may be a warm September and late autumn ... meanwhile, those tv repeats keep coming. It was bliss to chillax once again yesterday, with THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE, 

a favourite musical ever since my best friend Stanley and I saw it during its first run, at the old (then new) Odeon in St Martins Lane, London, in 1967 - as per my other reports on it here .... its certainly my favourite Julie Andrews film, I love the look of it, the great pastiche of the 1920s, Julie, Mary Tyler Moore, Bea Lillie as Mrs Meers with all those great lines we loved and repeated all the time ("Just a restless girl", "sad to be all along in the world", "please go, enjoy yourself", "I bet its juicy" etc). and then there is Carol Channing as jazz-baby Muzzy etc. The guys are fun too - John Gavin as Trevor Graydon guying himself and cute young James Fox's Jimmy (now a senior actor here, good to see him last year at the 50th anniversary screening of THE SERVANT - as per my posts on that - Fox label) as he launches the friendship dance into doing "The Tapioca" or in drag to trap white slaver Mrs Meers who thinks he will be alright for "a dark corner of the late shift" ..... George Roy Hill directs it all with a sure touch, its produced by Ross Hunter, and lensed by the great Russell Metty (THE MISFITS etc) and then theres Elmer Bernstein and Andre Previn sorting out the score and the songs ... whats not to love?

All I need to say about PULP FICTION is: was it really 20 years ago it blew us away - still does now, as does INGLORIOUS BASTERDS and KILL BILL .... they repay frequent (or at least annual) re-visits. 

THE AVIATOR, 2004. I liked Scorsese’s Howard Hughes film a lot more now than I did back in 2004. One is bowled over by so many things, not least Cate Blanchett’s vivid cartoon portrayal of Katharine Hepburn – its audacious, but it works (Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner certainly doesn’t). Add in Jude Law for a minute or two as Errol Flynn and the film soars, just like Hughes does in his plane as takes Hepburn airborne in his plane and lets her fly it. Scorsese only shows us Hughes from the 1920s to the 1940s, with all that HELLS ANGELS movie-making, with Jean Harlow (Gwen Stefani). Leonardo Di Caprio captures the spendthrift madness of Hughes in his early prime, as he spends, spends and spends more to get his vision on screen. 

Nobody it seems can say no to him, as we watch his staff and companions like Noah Dietrich (John C. Reilly), and later his deadly foes like Alec Baldwin as Juan Trippe, CEO of Pan-American Airways, and Alan Alda as that very devious, corrupt politician. 
The basic facts about Hughes are present and correct, his unstoppable will and inner demons, including that Spruce Goose saga, and having starlets squirreled away all over town, as we see his growing obsession and OCD about health and germs and how he cannot open that washroom door … It is all vivid film-making, as the running time flies by, with Scorsese in his element, and all those fantastic planes and amazing set-pieces, and it has set me up to finally put on THE WOLF OF WALL STREET. It makes one wonder what Scorsese’s proposed Sinatra biopic would be like. 

Julie hits town

Like Sophia Loren at Cannes, below, another living legend has been doing the rounds. We have been following Dame Julie Andrews as she progressed from one talk show to another on her current visit to London - three shows so far. 

Pharrall, Julie, Jonah and Channing

She was amusing on both Graham Norton's show and Paul O'Grady's and she and Sir Ian McKellen made a great double act on the BBC flagship The One Show. Julie (a mere 78) has been here to promote her tour, where she talks about her career.

Back in the '70s we used to go almost every Sunday afternoon to our BFI's National Film Theatre where all the then great names were doing these personal appearances and Q&A's as a one-off and for no more than the price of the usual ticket - where we got to hear and meet the likes of Dirk Bogarde, Lee Remick, Angela Lansbury, Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Olivia De Havilland, Rex Harrison, James Mason, David Niven, Charlton Heston, John Huston, Spielberg, Terence Rattigan and more. This was the first time Bette had done this and that was so popular - as per my post, NFT label - that she began touring with it. Recently Joan Collins had the same idea. Now its Dame Julie ... 

"In the Ritz elevator one just goes up and down"

Of course all the tv hosts wanted to talk about MARY POPPINS and THE SOUND OF MUSIC - cue obligatory clips from 50 years ago, and the whole BBC studio took part in a singalong to "Do Ray Me". Well I never thought POPPINS that wonderful, and resisted seeing SOM until the 1st of January 1996, when I quite liked it. In a way they must  have been millstones as nothing else could equal those early successes. The Julies I like are THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE and most of VICTOR/VICTORIA. 

Incidentally, Sir Ian disclosed that he and Julie could have worked together back in the Sixties - he spent a day testing for the role of Noel Coward in Julie's STAR! but the part went to Daniel Massey, who was Coward's godson. Its all made me realise I need to see Millie Dillmount and her pals again ....

All that jazz all night long + a funny lady !

ALL THAT JAZZ floored us back in 1979. I had not seen it since so it was a revelation all over again, from that stunning opening audition sequence timed to George Benson’s “On Broadway” one sits mesmerised as our hero heel says “Its showtime” … and off we go on that rollercoaster with Roy Scheider as the Bob Fosse type director, putting on a show, editing his film about a famous comedian (as Fosse did with LENNY) and then all those women in his life … It is practically a semi-autobiographical, Fellini-esque, account of the life of Fosse himself who writes, choreographs and directs. 

Part tragic, part comic, this “outrageous look at life in the fast lane” is all about Fosse’s excessive life in show-business, starting with him as a dancing kid back in burlesque. Scheider has the role of his life as depicts the perils of pushing himself too hard, imagining Death to be a beautiful blonde (Jessica Lange) who teases and waits … I had forgotten how marvellous that Peter Allen number “Everything Old Is New Again” is, as danced here by sensational Ann Reinking and our hero’s daughter, and that sexy “Take Off With Us” number, we had seen nothing like it then. Cliff Gorman, Ben Vereen and John Lithgow are all terrific too, as it all builds to that stunning climax with "Bye Bye Life". ALL THAT JAZZ and Paul Schrader's  AMERICAN GIGOLO defined movies for me just then. I can’t wait to see it again now. 

FUNNY LADY. I actually enjoyed FUNNY LADY back in 1975 and may have even got the soundtrack album - the one number in the Brice style "Blind Date" is still hilarious, over the credits. We still liked Streisand then, it was not until the next year with her take on A STAR IS BORN (or A STAR IS BORING) that one recoiled in horror. Seeing FUNNY LADY again now on tv, it is an absolute hoot - the preening self-regard of the star, as Herbert Ross’s film delivers every cliche in the book. The only people in it really are Babs and James Caan (at his attractive best here but of course all wrong for Billy Rose), and Roddy McDowell as ‘Bobby’ her gay friend/assistant ("Who's the pansy?" Caan's Billy Rose asks). 
Omar Sharif looks in twice too, like visiting royalty (as Pauline Kael said, if I recall right). Barbra/Fanny berates him for not asking about their daughter, but we never see her with the child either. It has some almost good moments – like "How Lucky Can You Get" (the real Brice presumably never looked as stunning as Barbra in that backless Bob Mackie gown), but that reprise of "Dont Rain On My Parade" - "Lets Hear it for me" here - had me almost falling off the sofa in hysterics, especially when she takes off in that little yellow plane. 

Producer Ray Stark makes more money out of his mother-in-law Fanny Brice, and there are a few snatched moments from the superior FUNNY GIRL. Barbra to her credit didn't want to do the sequel, but Stark had her under contract and insisted. The ending is a scream, set presumably in the 1940s, as Fanny and Billy meet again – both are made up to look old, but it doesn’t quite work – though not as bad as Caan and Midler made up to look ancient in FOR THE BOYS! This of course was wildly out of fashion back in 1975 and is even more so now. Odd that they thought shows about 2 forgotten '30s figures - Brice and Gertrude Lawrence - would be successful in the '60s, well they were on the right track with Fanny! (Julie's STAR! review at Andrews label).

 
I have though relented about Barbra and have got her new cd/concert dvd put aside for the holidays. At least I saw the original FUNNY GIRL on stage in London in 1966 and from the front row, when I was a mere 20!

ALL NIGHT LONG. Patrick McGoohan stars in this hip, cool reworking of OTHELLO, set among the London jazz clubs of the early Sixties. A steamy tale of jealousy, passion and brooding menace, McGoohan gives a strong performance as the manipulative, treacherous Johnny Cousin, a talented drummer who wields music as a weapon in his quest to draw a jazz diva out of retirement. Directed by Basil Dearden, and with strong support from Keith Michell, Betsy Blair and Richard Attenborough, ALL NIGHT LONG showcases premiere jazz musicians of the '50s and '60s including Dave Brubeck, Johnny Dankworth, Tubby Hayes and the legendary Charles Mingus. In London's East End the high, blank walls of warehouses tower on either side, giving the street an anir of menace Bu from one warehouse comes the cool sounds of jazz, the clink of glasses and the buzz of intelligent conversation. Its a party for the first wedding anniversary of jazzman Aurelius Rex and his wife Delia who gave up a highly sucessful singing career - but our demon drummer has plans of his own ... 

  A fascinating movie then on many levels, not only with the jazzmen of the time, and a great cast - McGoohan and Mitchell and Betsy Blair are always never less than compulsive, Marti Stevens is a glamourous addition, and that busy man Basil Dearden directs - in those late '50s/early '60s years he also turned out SAPPHIRE, THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN, VICTIM, LIFE FOR RUTH - as well as those early '50s classics we like here: POOL OF LONDON, THE BLUE LAMP. A PLACE TO GO, and then more international movies like WOMAN OF STRAW and KHARTOUM (where Olivier is terrific as the Madhi). Dearden died in a car crash in 1971, aged 60.  

ALL NIGHT LONG is a fascinating discovery now, and unlike similar jazz movies of the time, such as PARIS BLUES, black and white relationships are treated matter of factly here, just as the '60s began. 

'30s classics: First a girl .... then Victor/Victoria

The British Film Institute (BFI) has a very interesting webpage on gay (or, as they say, queer) cinema ...

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-british-gay-films?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20130614-queer-cinema&utm_content=20130614-queer-cinema+CID_470c016045417fea6cdd50482c758272&utm_source=cm&utm_term=Nighthawks%201978

They also have some fascinting lists: 10 Japanese gangster films / 10 films about childhood / 10 films set in the roaring twenties / 10 films set on the Mediterranean - which annoyingly includes THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY but not its original PLEIN SOLEIL ....  Here is their 10 British gay films:

BORDERLINE – 1930

FIRST A GIRL – 1935 

VICTIM – 1961

THE LEATHER BOYS – 1964 

SEBASTIANE – 1976

NIGHTHAWKS – 1978 

MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE – 1985

YOUNG SOUL REBELS – 1991 

BEAUTIFUL THING – 1996

WEEKEND – 2011. - more on these at the BFI link above, with comment and photo on each.

I would also have to include: 

SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY 1971, MAURICE 1987, and those gay undercurrents in THE SERVANT, the mad camp of MODESTY BLAISE / Orton's ENTERTAINING MR SLOANE  and that '60s camp in HERE WE GO ROUND MULBERRY BUSH and SMASHING TIME... as well as ground-breaking (for their time) TV productions like THE LOST LANGUAGE OF CRANES, THE HOUSE ON THE HILL (SOMETHING FOR THE BOYS - Gay interest label) and THE LINE OF BEAUTY, no, not VICIOUS! I will return to THE LEATHER BOYS soon, but had an enjoyable look at FIRST A GIRL yesterday. 

Here is what the BFI resident queer expert has to say:

One of the first spottings of the GBF (Gay Best Friend), a creature maligned and adored in equal measure. Here it’s  Sonnie Hale serving up sardonic asides and platonic friendship to Jessie Matthew's down-on-her-luck showgirl. Although made at a time when homosexuality was unmentionable on screen, Hale’s gestures and waspish delivery clearly code the character as not the marrying kind.

In this zingy comedy, based on the 1933 German film Viktor Und Viktoria, Matthews plays a woman who earns her coin pretending to be a man who masquerades as a female impersonator. Matthews is fantastic, but Hale matches her as her supportive mentor, himself a drag queen, who at last gets his moment in the spotlight in an unforgettable final number. The story was adapted again in 1982 as  VICTOR/VICTORIA starring Julie Andrews in the lead.

Well yes, its a delirious farrago with some marvellous dance sequences and so mid-1930s like Hitch's THE 39 STEPS and his early British films, with dancing to match Fred and Ginger or a Busby Berkeley spectacular. We first see Jessie toiling in the salon of dress designer Madame Serafina (Martita Hunt, nice to see her a decade before her Miss Havisham). The plot is nicely worked out, Sonnie Hale (actually married to Matthews then) scores too.  There is of course no mention of anything gay or queer in FIRST A GIRL, being a female impersonator seems a jolly good entertainment job for a chap to have - why, Hale even romances that knowing Princess whose boyfriend makes a play for our hero/heroine.

I have a memory of sometime in the '60s of being on the London underground and noticing a plumb middle-aged woman sitting down and realising it was Jessie Matthews who was well-known then too in her late middle-age as, being the trouper she was, for playing Mrs Dale in MRS DALE'S DIARY on the radio. She was one of the greatest British stars of the time, like Gracie Fields, and her career continued to 1980. Jessie Matthews: 1907-1981. The disk I watched also included some of I THANK YOU, a 1941 comedy featuring that other great British original Arthur Askey, who used to feature in my "Radio Fun" comics. Delicious.

Julie Andews too makes that androgynous quality of hers work perfectly for her turn as VICTOR VICTORIA in '82, with Robert Preston as usual firing on all cylinders as Toddy, her drag queen mentor.  Their scenes together are a joy, I particularly like the restaurant scene where the starving Victoria has the cockroach to put in the salad so she can get a free meal, particularly the moment when the snooty head waiter turns to Toddy and says "But there was no cockroach in YOUR salad"!. But after Julie's terrific "Le Jazz Hot" number it gets rather dull in the second half after James Garner has spied on her and knows she is a girl. It all seemed so much more innocent back in the 1930s and FIRST A GIRL. I would imagine though that director Victor Saville and those who made FIRST A GIRL would be surprised now to see their saucy musical comedy (which has no mention of anything gay) described as a great British gay film! 

Millie again !

"In the Ritz elevator you just go up and down"

It was on television, I recorded it (one has the dvd of course), its bliss watching it once again .... this may well be the only Julie Andrews film I love (apart from the first half of VICTOR/VICTORIA). I remember its opening in London in 1967 at that swanky new cinema The Odeon in St Martin's Lane - my best pal Stan and I went and loved it, we practically danced out of the cinema. It was one we returned to several times and used to quote those lines: "just a restless girl", "ARE you?", "sad to be all alone in the world", "please go, enjoy yourselves", "first that interfering Dillmount girl", "shooo show shooo show", "and her beads hang straight" etc - most of these uttered by the beyond words fabulous Beatrice Lillie as Mrs Meers the white slaver. The movie is a delicious pastiche of the 1920s - Millie trying to be a vamp and going out to interview bosses - "I'm in demand, I can typewrite 40 words a minute", then Millie's "first date" with Trevor Graydon (John Gavin spoofing his romantic leading man era), Julie is a delight as is Mary Tyler Moore as Miss Dorothy - the orphan with the chequebook - and James Fox scores again as Jimmy Smith, who invents that mad new dance The Tapioca and gamely drags up to trap Mrs Meers .... we had the soundtrack album. Ross Hunter produced, Russell Metty photographed, Jean Louis did the costumes, Elmer Bernstein did the score, Andre Previn was also involved, George Roy Hill directed it perfectly as he did THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT and THE STING. A class act then, and of course a camp delight.

Jimmy in drag with Millie ...

This is the movie that introduced us to Bea Lillie and we just had to find out more about her and collect her rare movie appearances (EXIT SMILING, ON APPROVAL, DR RHYTHM etc). There was somebody else also in the cast ... oh yes, Muzzy Van Hossmere, or Carol Channing who is delirious and had some terrific moments like her show-stopping "I'm a jazz baby" and "Do it again" - 
I saw Carol Channing in a solo performance at Drury Lane in 1968, I must dig out the programme, Throw in a Jewish wedding, high society Long Island parties, some dangling from skyscrapers, aeroplanes, and a fantastic finale in Chinatown.... 

Its A Movie I Love then, and a musical I cherish as much as A STAR IS BORN (1954) or THE BANDWAGON or GYPSY or SOUTH PACIFIC or ... 
If its the 1920s you want, forget the overblown  GREAT GATSBY and go back to MILLIE !Terrif !  
Later in the '80s, Rory loved it as well ...

Thoroughly modern star!

After the '50s golden age the rise and fall of musicals in the '60s seems curious now: WEST SIDE STORY was huge, as was GYPSY and there was FLOWER DRUM SONG, THE MUSIC MAN, JUMBO and the French (Jacques Demy) got in on the act with UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG and '67's YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT, and of course those Beatles films A HARD DAYS NIGHT and HELP!.. and then of course there was the behemoth that was THE SOUND OF MUSIC - [in that pre-video age it was the best-selling soundtrack of the decade] which I never wanted to see (and didn't until New Year's Day 1996 when it was the ideal afternoon choice with Rory and Helen) BUT I absolutely loved THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE and it remains a firm favourite now, my pal Stan loved it too - we knew most of the lines and quoted them along with Mrs Meers, Miss Dorothy and Muzzy not to mention Trevor Graydon and Jimmy. Then though came flops like STAR!, DOCTOR DOOLITTLE and DARLING LILI and somehow musicals were no longer popular - SWEET CHARITY had to struggle to find an audience. The exception though of course was the arrival of Barbra Streisand on screen: we loved her early albums and tv specials, I saw FUNNY GIRL on the stage in London in 1966, when I was 20, and we rushed to the movie and were not disappointed. I even liked HELLO DOLLY and like it a lot more now, it was curiously old fashioned at the time (as well as Streisand being too young of course...) and ON A CLEAR DAY was ok too, despite Yves Montand's atrocious English accent, but Barbra, Beaton and Minnelli gave the Regency flashbacks the required oomph. After that Barbra wisely got modern and turned to comedy with the brilliant OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT and WHAT'S UP DOC, as she reigned supreme ... 

Julie Andrews though is a curious case: she was a great Broadway star of course in the original MY FAIR LADY (the original cast album was one of the first records I bought as a teen) and CAMELOT, and MARY POPPINS established her as a screen favourite, though it never did much for me, hence my having no interest in SOUND OF MUSIC, one of the first hits people returned to over and over. They didn't though really want to see Julie in TORN CURTAIN (the only Hitch I never wanted to see..), HAWAII though was popular, and then the divine MILLIE. Robert Wise who could turn his hand to any genre (editing CITIZEN KANE and directed films as diverse as THE HAUNTING, I WANT TO LIVE, HELEN OF TROY, WEST SIDE STORY) decided to do another musical with Julie and they decided to do the story of Broadway star Gertrude Lawrence, and structured it as a film within a film with Gertrude/Julie looking at and commenting on the film being made about her ....it seemed they wanted to deconstruct a great star and show us the truth behind the glossy facade, but in 1968 nobody was interested much in Gertrude Lawrence any more and young people such as myself barely knew who she was.  The woman they present here is an absolute nightmare - she comes across early on as a more strident insensitive Auntie Mame with gay best friend Noel Coward (Daniel Massey (below on stage with Julie) is a delight here and was Noel's godson) as her Vera Charles with a quip for every situation.

It is amusing now reading Pauline Kael's review of STAR! (in her "Going Steady" collection of reviews) where she says Andrews lacks the required glamour: Gertrude Lawrence wasn't much of a singer and she was an odd, limited sort of actress. What made her a star was not something that can be taught, even to as good a pupil as Julie Andrews ... she does her duties efficiently but mechanically, like an airline hostess; she's pert and cheerful in some professional way that is finally cheerless. Their version of Lawrence is a hard, ruthless, self-centred, almost detestable woman who is only interested in rich bankers, who ignores her child who then ignores her ... some of the best Noel Coward, Cole Porter and Kurt Weill and the Gershwins are mangled while one sits there wishing Vincente Minnelli would magically take over and save it all. 

The many songs are staged as musical show numbers which don't advance the plot; the set designs and ugly, unflattering clothes add to the sense of disaster - Michael Craig (who was Streisand's Nicky Arnstein in the London production of FUNNY GIRL) is Lawrence's main beau, Richard Crenna is the man who finally understands her, Bruce Forsyth (playing her father) and Beryl Reid are wasted in a early music hall scene, Jenny Agutter is the daughter. Some songs though like "Parisian Pierrot", "Limehouse Blues", "My Ship" and "The Saga of Jenny" sound better with the passage of time ...pity though they didn't finish their story with Lawrence expiring during the stage run of THE KING AND I ... or would that be a too downbeat ending ?

Let Kael have the last word: The movie suggests that those who made it wanted a big popular project (with a pre-sold box-office star) and at the same time wanted to feel they were showing people what they really thought of Miss Lawrence. From the evidence of this movie, they don't have enough talent to know what to think. Their hostility to the subject just adds unpleasantness to the incompetence. 

Amusing footnote: the the DVD I have has a 25th anniversary reunion feature where the cast and crew assemble (including Andrews and Wise) and the general impression is that they had created a lost masterpiece that was and remains misunderstood!

I have grown to like Julie more over the years - her Millie Dillmount (below) is a perennial favourite - and thankfully introduced me to Bea Lillie. Julie too is really super in SOUND OF MUSIC which I can enjoy more now, and I simply love the first half of VICTOR/VICTORIA where her looks and inflections and double act with Robert Preston are all ideal - "Le Jazz Hot"!.  Like Barbra and Liza she remains a copper-bottomed legend; amusing too seeing her now in films like RELATIVE VALUES or that '80s AIDS drama OUR SONS.

Millie Dillmount becomes a "modern"