RIP continued ....

Lauren Bacall (1924-2014), aged 89. Bacall often got a bad press as being "difficult" - she was though the woman who knew everyone (Angela Lansbury is merely the woman who worked with everyone) . Bacall popped up everywhere, like lighting up a cigarette next to Judy and Jack Warner at the premiere of A STAR IS BORN. I love that 1959 photo of her, Vivien Leigh and Kay Kendall (who died that year) out having late drinks with their gay best friend Noel Coward - imagine the gossip! - here it is again, below. She positively glared at me when signing books in London as it seemed she hated being there. I also saw her signing her later volume (bascally the same book with a new chapter) about a decade ago. Its a great tale - how Hawks and his wife discovered the teenage model Betty Perske from the Bronx, her visit to her idol Bette Davis, later in Africa with Bogart and Hepburn and Huston, and so much more .... as she became a Broadway star with WOMAN OF THE YEAR, GOODBYE CHARLIE, CACTUS FLOWER as well as APPLAUSE ... She was one legend who kept working: from Hawks and Huston to Lars Von Trier, not to mention Barbra Streisand, via Paul Schrader and Robert Altman.

I love TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, where she is Hawks' creation, but she grew a persona of her own in those '50s items I like: Minnelli's DESIGNING WOMAN (where she and Peck are an ideal couple), Sirk's WRITTEN ON THE WIND, Negulesco's WOMAN'S WORLD and her Schatze in HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, plus that evergreen rousing adventure NORTH WEST FRONTIER. She is touching too with Wayne in THE SHOOTIST, his last film in 1976, AND she visited Dirk Bogarde the day before he died. 
I did not care for APPLAUSE at all though, the worst stage version of a movie ever, and she had played the role too long by the time she brought it to London in 1973, as per my report at Bacall label. Her coffee commercials (available on YouTube) are a scream too ...

Robin Williams (1951-2014) aged 63, actor and comedian. Starting as a stand-up comedian he soon rose to fame as Mork in the TV series MORK & MINDY (1978–82). Williams went on to establish a successful career in both stand-up comedy and feature film acting, with giant comedy hits like MRS DOUBTFIRE (which we loved at the time) and those other era-defining films like THE FISHER KING, GOOD MORNING VIETNAM, DEAD POETS SOCIETY etc. as well as providing hilarious voices for animation like Disney's ALADDIN, he was hilarious in THE BIRDCAGE too. 
The newspapers here though have gone into overkill with pages and pages on him, as though he was the greatest star ever. He was of course a comic genius and left a great legacy, but his career had been in the doldrums of late, as like John Cleese and those Monty Pythons reforming purely for money, he worked harder and harder in lesser fare to pay off divorces. He was terrific in items like ONE HOUR PHOTO and INSOMNIA, so he did not have be funny all the time. Perhaps the press see it as a change from all the serious stuff going on - every bullletin brings more on the horrors in Iraq, Gaza, Ukraine, Syria etc. Like Tony Hancock ending his life back in the '60s, Williams shows us the dark side of being a comedian .... like Peter Sellers he could become so many characters even when being interviewed. Perhaps he wanted to get back to a simpler life rather than having to work harder and harder in films he did not want to make (it seems he did not want to do the proposed MRS DOUBTFIRE 2) to support a lavish lifestyle ... RIP indeed to a troubled genius.

(Regarding those current news stories and desperate situations in Iraq and elsewhere, Joni Mitchell's 1971 lyric (for "California") comes to mind: "Sitting in a park in Paris, France, reading the news and it sure looks bad, they won't give peace a chance, that was just a dream some of us had" ....

Kenny Ireland (1945-2014), aged 68. British TV viewers will be familiar with Kenny Ireland. The actor and comedian was a staple of the popular BENIDORM series since its first season, as part of the insatiable swingers couple Donald and Jacqueline, who had lots of comic moments. Kenny was also in films like LOCAL HERO and lots of other tv series like Victoria Wood's ACORN ANTIQUES. RIP to a fine comic talent. 

Noel Black (1937-2014), aged 77. Prolific  film and television director, screenwriter, and producer, best known to me for his dynamic 1968 film PRETTY POISON  (Anthony Perkins/Tuesday Weld labels).

Newman double: Rally round the sweet bird

After tacking some Brando films recently, here's a brace of Paul Newman ...

SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH. Handsome Chance Wayne never found the Hollywood stardom he craved, but he's always been a star with the ladies. Now back in his sleepy, sweaty Gulf Coast hometown, hes involved with two of them: a washed-up, drug-and-vodka-addled movie queen, and the girl he left behind - and in trouble. Paul Newman, Best Actress nominee Geraldine Page, Rip Torn and Madeline Sherwood recreate their stage roles and Ed Begley won Best Supporting Actor as the town's corrupt political boss in a bravura film version of Tennessee Williams' Broadway hit. Sex, money, hypocrisy, financial and emotional blackmail - familiar elements of Williams' literary realm combine powerfully as Chance battles his private demons in a desperate bid to redeem his wasted life and recapture his lost sweet bird of youth.   
That's the dvd blurb ...

I can't believe I never saw SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH until today - despite getting that Tennessee Williams boxset in 2006, and liking his texts and short stories, and seeing most of the films, I particuarly like NIGHT OF THE IGUANA and THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS STONE (see Williams label). . I had been meaning to watch it all week, and I am totally stunned by Geraldine Page all over again, her Alexandra Del Lago is on the same level as Leigh's Blanche or Taylor's Maggie the Cat. Ignored for stretches of the movie as Newman's Chance Wayne scenario plays out, he is tired of satisfying rich women in the hope that he can find fame in Hollywood. The film suddenly blazes into life with her astonishing telephone call scene when she realises she is a success and not the failure she imagined after taking refuge in vodka, hashish, oxygen masks and young studs… Chance is her latest, after she promises to get him a movie contract ...

Newman though just isn't that interesting here - maybe I only really like him as HUD - and Chance is quite despicable at first, tape-recording Alexandra's ramblings and trying to impress his old crowd with his Hollywood contacts;   we only really feel for him during his "me, me" reactions while Alexandra is on the phone to Winchell.  What was so touching about this SWEET BIRD was the 2006 documentary with the older Madeline Sherwood (excellent again as Begley's mistress) and Shirley Knight (so perfectly beautiful as Heavenly) talking about the film now, and it fills in how compromised the ending is with Heavenly and Chance driving off together after his face is injured - when of course in the original she has been left barren after a hysterectomy contacted via veneral disease from Chance, who is castrated by her family as their revenge - which certainly ends his career as a stud. Mildred Dunnock is also quietly perfect as ever, and Begley is ideal as the venal corrupt Big Daddy figure, with Rip Torn as his malevolent son.
The screen test with Page and Torn (included on the dvd) was fascinating too as they do the terrific phone scene - they were of course married.  I will now have to go back to Tessessee's SUMMER AND SMOKE with Page as Alma, and of course one could never forget her stunning moments in INTERIORS, and will be catching her role in that HAPPIEST MILLIONAIRE soon ... SWEET BIRD may be by Tennessee, but was "written for the screen" and directed by Richard Brooks, (how could he have been happy with this false ending imposed on the play?) and who helmed those other 'important' literary translations like Lewis's ELMER GANTRY, Tennessee's CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF,  Dostoevsky's THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV and went on to Capote's IN COLD BLOOD. I liked his early 1954 THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS when he tacked F Scott Fitzgerald, with the impossibly beautiful Elizabeth Taylor, Geraldine Page (1924-1987) here though is a whole fireworks display, and transforms herself into another stunning beauty - like Julie Harris or Kim Stanley she was one of America's greatest stage actresses who was also a movie star. SWEET BIRD may not be the best Williams, but is certainly a compendium of his themes, as like Arthur Miller and William Inge he returns to the same subjects time and time again and creates that recognisable Williams universe.

1962 might have been the best Actress line-up ever - I had Remick as my personal favourite, but now it could well be Page - and with Davis and Hepburn and Bancroft also in the mix, one could almost make it a 5-way win !  SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH was the Williams I did not really know, so its been good to finally see it, it is of course one of the great American dramas, and is currently enjoying a successful revival in London, with Kim Cattrall as 'The Princess'. It might be good to see the play as originally intended ....

RALLY ROUND THE FLAG BOYS. Leo McCarey’s 1958 comedy is another of those Fox movies that never get shown here, so I imagined it would be a treat seeing it again after 50 years or so – I was about 12 when I first saw it.  It’s a moderately amusing affair, not one of the better Newman-Woodward comedies – well, better than A NEW KIND OF LOVE at any rate; its the usual comedy of misunderstandings and poking fun at suburban living. He is a harassed husband trying to get a drink on the crowded commuter train - the men all wear hats - and she is involved in community affairs and leads a protest against a proposed army base in their suburban community, the site of a pilgrims' landing. 

Add in Joan Collins as Angela, the vamp next door who has designs on Newman, Jack Carson as a military man, and the teenage Tuesday Weld who has just discovered boys (Dwane Hickman). Its from a novel by Max Schulman and an uncredited George Axelrod had a hand in the script. Its interesting seeing the serious Newmans trying to do comedy in Rock and Doris or Jack Lemmon style, but much as they try comedy is just not their forte. Luckily Joan and Tuesday have the required light touch. Re-seeing RALLY ROUND THE FLAG BOYS again yesterday after a 50 year gap what seemed funny then was painfully tedious now. Jack Carson has a few funny moments though particularly when he is fired into space in that rocket, but on the whole, it all seems tediously slow. 

'60s comedy: The Loved One / Lord Love A Duck

Finally, Tony Richardsons's THE LOVED ONE - MGM's 1965 comedy "with something to offend everyone" that I never caught until now and I saw it on a Spanish dvd with Spanish sub-titles I could not remove. Fascinating stuff though - it may have opened briefly here in London at the time (it was reviewed in "Films & Filming" magazine) and then shoved out on release for a week,. but I somehow never saw it and it has never surfaced since as it seems MGM either forgot about it or locked it away.

Newly arrived in Hollywood from England, Dennis Barlow finds he has to arrange his uncle's interment at the highly-organised and very profitable Whispering Glades funeral parlour. His fancy is caught by one of their cosmeticians, Aimee Thanatogenos. But he has three problems - the strict rules of owner Blessed Reverand Glenworthy, the rivalry of embalmer Mr Joyboy, and the shame of now working himself at The Happy Hunting Ground pets' memorial home.

Richardson after the "kitchen sink" dramatics of LOOK BACK IN ANGER, A TASTE OF HONEY, THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER had that enormous success with TOM JONES in 1963 which (as per my previous post on him - that book on the Redgraves, Trash label, and the "Hollywood UK" tv series, TV label) gave him carte blanche for his next films. THE LOVED ONE has an impeccible pedigree: a Martin Ransohoff production, from Evelyn Waugh's novel satirising the American way of death, scripted by Terry Southern and Christopher Isherwood. Richardson, who despite being married to Vanessa Redgrave, was also gay or bi, juices it up with a great cast of cameos:

James Coburn, Roddy McDowell, Margaret Leighton, Dana Andrews, Tab Hunter as tour guide, Liberace as a casket salesman. We follow naive Englishman Robert Morse arriving in L A and staying with his actor uncle, John Gielgud (quietly hilarious), who is part of the English colony. We also get Robert Morley, Jonathan Winters in 2 roles and Rod Steiger does another outrageous turn as chief embalmer Mr Joyboy, looking after his grotesque elderly mother. Anjanette Comer is startlingly odd as the love intererst, the first lady embalmer with her unfinished home in 'the slide area'. If you are disturbed or offended by the funeral business, death in general, dead pets, or slightly veiled hints at necrophilia then you might want to give this one a miss. It is though a fascinating oddity now, and probably ahead of its time, as black comedy is much more acceptable now.

LORD LOVE A DUCK, 1966 - where writer George Axelrod treats one social sacred cow after another with amused disdain, skewering religion, motherhood, education, and matrimony, in gleaming monochrome images. Axelrod of course wrote plays like THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH and WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER, as well as scripting THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and BREAKFAST AT TIFFANYS, HOW TO MURDER YOUR WIFE among others, LORD LOVE A DUCK is his first as  director. Another under-rated '60s comedy then, this 1966 production was treated as a second feature here in the UK and also vanished without trace. I remember "Sight & Sound" raving about it though, particularly that scene where Tuesday Weld gets her father to buy her all those cashmere sweaters, its dizzylingly funny as she recites the names of the colours: 'Peach Put-On', 'Periwinkle Pussycat' etc, its a scene most actresses of her era just could not carry off . The following commentators describe it much better than I can:

Andrew Sarris in "The Village Voice" said:

"Tuesday Weld is Nabokov’s grown-up nymphet come to life in a cavalcade of cashmere sweaters, and closer to Nabokov’s original conception that Sue Lyon could ever be".

John Landis: 

"George Axelrod’s unclassifiable satire is one of the oddest Hollywood movies, which over the years has engendered passionate support and derision. For some it’s an incisively bizarre portrait of sixties America, for others it’s a sloppily made, undisciplined mess (with more boom mikes visible in full frame than even Play It Again Sam). However, nothing can dim the luster of the incredibly perverse scene where Tuesday Weld’s horny dad (Max Showalter) practically ejaculates while watching his sexy daughter try on sweaters."

Geoff Andrew (London):

"Axelrod’s patchy but often brilliant first attempt at direction: a kooky fantasy, very funny in its satire of contemporary teen morals and mores. McDowall plays a high school student of enormous IQ and fabulous powers, which he exercises in order to grant a pretty co-ed (Weld) her every heart’s desire, starting with the thirteen cashmere sweaters she requires to join an exclusive sorority, and ending with a husband whom he obligingly murders to leave her free to realise her true dream of movie stardom. Whereupon, realising he did it all for love, he ends up in the booby-hatch, happily dictating his memoirs. Taking in some delicious side-swipes at the ‘Beach Blanket’ cycle, Axelrod reveals much the same penchant (and talent) for cartoon-style sight gags as Tashlin, and coaxes a marvellous trio of variations on the American female from Tuesday Weld, Lola Albright and Ruth Gordon. Daniel Fapp’s stunningly cool, clear monochrome camerawork is also a distinct plus."

and Pauline Kael:

"This satire on teenage culture, modern education, psychoanalysis, and what have you was the best American comedy of its year, and yet it’s mostly terrible. The picture is bright and inventive, but it’s also a hate letter to America that selects the easiest, most grotesque targets and keeps screaming at us to enjoy how funny-awful everything is. Finally we’re preached at for our tiny minds and our family spray deodorants. Tuesday Weld has a wonderful blank, childlike quality as a Los Angeles high-school student who lusts after cashmere sweaters and wants everybody to love her. The director, George Axelrod, drew upon the novel Candy, which he beat to the movie post, as well as WHAT’S NEW, PUSSYCAT? and the Richard Lester movies; there is eating à la TOM JONES and there are other tidbits from all over, even from NIGHTS OF CABIRIA. Roddy McDowall plays a genie; Lola Albright is spectacularly effective as Tuesday’s cocktail-waitress mother; and Ruth Gordon does her special brand of dementia."

Quite a zany mid-60s double feature then - Tuesday is delightful and Lola Albright and Ruth Gordon are indeed formidable - and Martin West (above) as Tuesday's husband Roddy keeps trying to bump off, is eye-catching too. 

3 late '60s treats ...

Let's stay with the '60s a bit longer ... that late '60s era had some great little (often low-budget) movies, some of which are nowhere to be seen now. Movies did not have to open big then but often built up word of mouth (HAROLD AND MAUDE, SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE - review at gay interest label, or the delicious NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY - Lee Remick label, and the plethora of cinemas (busy local cinemas, revival houses) in that pre-video age meant there was a wide choice available. It was good for the actors too as they could move from movie to movie - big or small - (like Michael York for instance) without the risk of being associated with a flop.  Here are 3 I like:

PRETTY POISON

When a mentally disturbed young man new in town tells a pretty girl that he's a secret agent, she believes him, and murder and mayhem ensue. She turns out to be more psychotic than he is....

After PSYCHO Tony Perkins had a good stint in Europe - those films with Bergman, Mercouri, Loren, Bardot, Welles' THE TRIAL (there's one to re-see!) and some with Chabrol (review of GOODBYE AGAIN at Ingrid Bergman label). Back in America in 1968 PRETTY POISON is his single finest, gently nuanced and most sympathetic post-PSYCHO role, he plays a formerly institutionalized dreamer (or loony neurotic) who meets his match in Tuesday Weld’s secretly warped girl-next-door high school princess. Quickly engaging in spy games that are very real to him, and a fun small-town diversion for her, the two mesh into a heaven-sent couple — until the real world starts to encroach on a deadly scale. 

This brilliant post-noir study from 1968 directed by Noel Black, is a psychological black comedy featuring finely-tuned performances from every single member of its cast, from its small supporting players all the way to Weld’s iconic psychopath - we can see she too would have been an ideal Bonnie Parker (and had been the first choice for Beatty's film). There is that chilling scene where she gleefully shoots her mother (Beverely Garland) who has been spoiling her fun .... Perkins is ideal as the dreamer who is soon out of his depth. Tuesday has always been mesmerising ever since WILD IN THE COUNTRY with Elvis or even earlier ....

LAST SUMMER

During summer vacation on Fire Island, 3 teenagers - a girl and two guys in thrall to her - become so close that they form a sort-of threesome. When an uncool girl tries to infiltrate the trio's newly found relationship, they construct an elaborate plot that has violent results.

This 1969 drama from a novel by Evan Hunter is a vivid memory, though I have not seen it since then.  Frank and Eleanor Perry’s LAST SUMMER is surely one of the lost gems of American cinema, and a perfect 1969 film, which resonated a lot with me in my early 20s

Frank Perry is probably best known today as the helmer of that trash classic MOMMIE DEAREST but the first decade of his career – from DAVID AND LISA in 1962 to DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE in 1970 – in which he collaborated with his then-screenwriter-wife Eleanor, represents an amazing run of unusually sensitive, offbeat and mesmerizing films. 

LAST SUMMER is a coming-of-age film about three teenagers -- Sandy (Barbara Hershey), Peter (Richard Thomas), and Dan (Bruce Davison) – who befriend each other one summer in a beachside community, just as they’re discovering the awesome power of their own sexuality. The story plays out as a series of games these characters play with each other and with others; their made-up world of cruel games only reinforced by the isolation around them. Then Rhoda (Catherine Burns) arrives - a plump, precocious and troubled young girl who seems a lot wiser than these kids but also, perhaps, more trusting: when she chooses to play their truth game, she opens up in a way none of the others ever have. As in LORD OF THE FLIES with its cruel games, things move to a shocking climax, as Peter, the one we identify with, realises they have gone too far. The 4 leads are all astonishing - we should have seen a lot more of Catherine Burns. Barbara Hershey of course changed her name to Barbara Seagull, in tribute to the gull that gets killed here.  Davidson had some good later roles as in LONGTIME COMPANION, while Thomas went into THE WALTONS!

THE STERILE CUCKOO (POOKIE) 

Another perfectly 1969 movie, the first directed by Alan J Pakula, and Liza Minnelli's first leading role, for which she was nominated as best actress - if only for that stunning telephone scene. (She also did Otto Preminger's TELL ME YOU LOVE ME JUNIE MOON that year but that farrago quickly sank without trace). THE STERILE CUCKOO was titled POOKIE here, Liza plays Pookie Adams, another of those kooky, lonely misfits with no family and no place to go. She calls all those she does not like "weirdos," and clings to a quiet studious Jerry (Wendall Burton) at a nearly university; he though has the ability to make friends and has to decide whether to live in Pookie's private little world or be part of the society that Pookie rejects. She is one of those girls who do not let go ...
Pookie is of course another damaged girl (like Sally Bowles) needing her father's love but not getting it. Both leads are ideal here and there are some amusng scenes, like Pookie promising to be quiet for the weekend if she can stay with Jerry while he studies, but of course she is not able to. There is a terrific song too "Come Saturday Morning" penned I think by Dory Previn, which perfectly captures the mood and that late '60s feeling. Liza would have to wait for CABARET 3 years later in 1972 for her Award, 1969 was after all Maggie Smith's year. ... POOKIE (sorry, THE STERILE CUCKOO) is a fascinating discovery now. Pakula of course had astonishing rapport with his actresses - just think Jane Fonda in KLUTE. It is quite a timeless story really and would resonate just as much as teenagers today - as I see my own nephew setting off to start his University years ...

Soon: some other '60s oddities: LORD LOVE A DUCK (more Tuesday Weld!) and Tony Richardson's all-star THE LOVED ONE - both on their way to me - but where is Roz Russell's extravaganza OH DAD POOR DAD MAMMA'S HUNG YOU IN THE CLOSET AND I'M FEELING SO SAD ?