The Godfather : An American Epic at 40

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In March of 1972 The Godfather had it's world premiere in New York City. It's making  was long, at times painful and fraught with difficulties. Starting with the source, the book written by Mario Puzo and published in 1969 was an instant best seller. The term " Godfather " was a relatively new one. Per wikipedia, in 1963 mobster Joe Valachi  gave testimony before a congressional hearing [ not unlike the one portrayed in Part II ] using the word " Godfather " to describe the head of a crime " family ". The words Cosa Nostra , consiglieri and others were mentioned in english for the first time in Puzo's book.

Vito and his son's 

Paramount Pictures, who bought the book with the thought of making a quick $2 million dollar modern adaptation, had been in financial difficulty [ as had all of the majors studios in the late 60's ], though in the last couple of years, under production head Robert Evans, they had released some major successes: Rosemary's Baby,  Franco Zeiffirelli's Romeo & Juliet, The Odd Couple, True Grit and others, the studio was also besieged by big budget losers such as : Paint Your Wagon, Darling Lili, Waterloo, Catch 22 and more. So the idea of making a quickie, almost exploitation film of the Godfather was tantalizing indeed.                                                                                                                                                

Writer/director Richard Brooks  [ Blackboard Jungle, Brothers Karamazov, Elmer Gantry ] was the first man offered the job. Brooks passed on it. After that practically a whose who of Hollywood A-list directors were offered it: Elia Kazan, Arthur Penn, Fred Zinnemann, Peter Yates and others all said no thanks. Production Chief Evans, feeling the story needed authenticity, asked Coppola to direct because Evans wanted the" smell of spaghetti ", he felt only an Italian could bring to the picture. Only problem is that Coppola also turned Paramount and Evans down.  Though in desperate need of funds at the time and with a young family to support, Coppola did not want to make a film that would glamorize the dark side of his Italian heritage. Eventually, Coppola agreed to make the film but with one stipulation : It would be the story of a family. A family who's business happens to be organized crime. He also talked Evans and Paramount to up the budget somewhat and make the film in the period the novel takes place, 1945-1955.     

                                                                                                                                                                     

Brothers

                                                                                                                                                                                        The production of The Godfather was battle all the way. The studio and Evans wanting their say in script, casting and cutting. Coppola, getting inspired by the potential of the project, had his own very definite ideas of how he wanted the film to be. Evans wanted big names in the cast [ or at least established ones ] while Coppola wanted actors whom he thought best for the part, generally unknowns which also would help keep the budget down. For  Don Vito Corleone, Coppola wanted Marlon Brando. There was never another serious contender for it after Brando agreed to do a make-up/screen test and it was shown to the Evans and the Paramount brass. Burt Lancaster wanted to play The Don and he lobbied hard for the part. Laurence Olivier was mentioned. There were good reasons the studio didn't want Brando. The last film he made at Paramount, the only Brando directed film One-Eyed Jacks, ran way over schedule and over budget and ended up losing money. Brando's subsequent 9 or 10 films since Jacks had all lost money with the seriously over budget [ by anywhere from $10-20 million, depending on the source ] 1962 epic remake of Mutiny on the Bounty. Naturally the studio execs felt Brando, despite his talent, wasn't worth the trouble. But in the end Coppola had his way and Brando was the Don, though he was paid peanuts for the part, only $50,000. Today it's impossible to imagine another actor playing the role. As for the other parts, the biggest obstacle was the casting of Al Pacino as Michael, the Don's favorite, youngest son. All the execs and Gulf & Western [ they owed Paramount ] Chairman Charles Bluhdorn said no to Pacino. They felt he was to short. Evans said they didn't want " a runt " playing Michael. Execs threw out names like Ryan O' Neal, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford. An unknown Robert DeNiro was tested for the part. Coppola held firm on Pacino, who had only appeared in a 2  films up to that point in his career the most recent being 1971's Panic in Needle Park, and eventually got his way. Besides the casting of  Don Vito, the casting of Michael was a key to the film's success. It made Pacino a star and earned him his first Oscar nomination.

Michael's revenge

                                  

As the filming got underway on March 29, 1971, Coppola was besieged on all sides of the production; stories have come down though the years of Coppola feeling insecure of his job, surrounded by a crew who didn't believe he had the stuff to get the job on the screen, hearing rumors that he would be replaced any day by Elia Kazan, who had directed Brando memorably in A Streetcar Named Desire and On The Waterfront back in the 50's. Legend has it that Brando went to Evans, said he thought Coppola was doing  fine, if the studio would just leave him alone, stay off his back and let him do his job. The original Godfather film editor told Evans that the restaurant scene, where Michael guns down gang rival Sollozzo and police chief McCluskey, " wouldn't cut " and that Coppola had " no idea about continuity ". Rather than fire Coppola, Evans had veteran editor Peter Zinner look as the footage. Zinner thought it looked fine, so Evans fired the first editor and hired Zinner to replace him. 

Coppola and Brando at work

The production also encountered protests from the Italian American Civil Rights League [ founded by Joe Colombo head of one of the Five Families of New York ]. The organization didn't want the words mafia and Cosa Nostra used in the film. And according to the film's producer Al Ruddy's assistant, the filmmakers started to receive threats, parked cars in front of houses getting shot with bullets, as a warning not to proceed with the filming. That kinda thing.

" Look how they massacred my boy "

During filming, the cast who idolized Brando, bonded around each other, practically taking on the aspects of a real family, with Brando and Coppola as the heads. There were Italian dinners with pasta, wine, bread, attended by the entire cast. Brando, who didn't cotton to all the reverential treatment, was a notorious practical joker. In the scene in which Vito comes home from hospital on a stretcher after being gunned down by a rival gang and had to be lifted by some real life teamsters up the stairs, Brando put extra weights under the blankets so the big, beefy teamsters were left huffing and puffing and couldn't figure out why the 190 pound Brando was so heavy to carry.  The real clowns of the bunch were Robert Duvall and James Caan, each of whom took to " mooning " each other. When Brando caught sight of this he too joined in on the fun at one point " mooning " Caan and Duvall from his limo on the way home from location one day.

" I never wanted this for you ". Michael and his father talk business

Post production was another battle between Evans and Coppola. Coppola's first cut ran about 2 1/2 hours. Evans wanted more [ rare for a studio head; they usually want movies to run 2 hours or less. Reason being: more show times per day ]. According to Evans, Coppola cut out the guts of the films. Per Coppola, the extra half hour he added were only cuts Evans had originally insisted on. Whatever the truth, the picture was the winner. 175 minutes long when released, The Godfather was a huge hit. I mean huge. The release pattern was unusual, opening in only 6 theaters in New York City, with a Los Angeles opening the next week. The film opened on 323 screens on March 29,1972, still a low theater count even then. It earned over $86 million in film rentals [ rentals is the amount of money returned to the studio whereas gross, which is what is reported after every weekend in today's world, is the total income it takes from the theaters. A movie's gross is approximately double the rental amount ] which if translated to 2012 dollars amounts to over $472 million dollars. And if we double that as the film's gross then The Godfather made almost $1 billion dollars. Tremendous, especially for a serious movie. The film is speckled sub-titles to boot! The Godfather  is dark not only in theme but literally. Gordon Willis' photography is thick with shadows and blacks, the film also has a luster and sheen that is intoxicating. The acting in the film is top of the line from the leads to the smallest part. The movie has some of the best known lines ever:" Leave the gun. Take the cannoli." " A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man." " I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse ". " Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes." Never tell anyone outside the family what you're thinking again." The Godfather is about as far as one can get to today's blockbusters, yet it saved Paramount Pictures and the industry in general which had been in the doldrums for at least the last 10 to 12 years, the last 5 or 6 being particularly rough as many studios were taken over by conglomerates like Gulf & Western. Some like MGM and Fox sold off major portions, if not all, of their backlots. Century City was once 20th Century-Fox' back lot. The Godfather was nominated for 11 Oscars, winning just 3. The awards it did win were big ones: Best Adapted Screenplay by Puzo & Coppola, Best Actor Marlon Brando [ who infamously refused the award by sending up an American Indian girl named Sasheen Littlefeather, to protest Native Americans portrayals in Hollywood movies. Talk about biting the hand ] and Best Picture. The other big winner that Oscar night was Bob Fosse's Cabaret which won 7 awards including Fosse for Best Director over Coppola. By the time the Oscars were presented a slight backlash over the film had begun. Some critics and Hollywood veterans were not crazy over the violence in the film and some felt The Godfather, with all that money, was overrated, hence the light haul on Hollywood's biggest night of the year.

The film's reputation over the years, however, has soared coming in 21st this year in the Sight & Sound 2012 magazine poll [ Hitchcock's Vertigo was # 1 ]. It ranked 2nd in American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Movies [ 10th anniversary edition. Welles' Citizen Kane being # 1 ] And the film has had magnificent influence. Films about the mafia became a sub-genre all it's own. Such films as The Don is Dead, Black Caesar, Crazy Joe,  The Valachi Papers, Mean Streets all came fast on the heels of the film's success. Martin Scorsese has made a career with gangster films. And of course, Coppola's own Godfather II in 1974. The Godfather, like Vito's three sons in the film, has three different chapters. Godfather II is also an acknowledged classic, but 1990's Godfather III is generally thought of as a bastard child, not worthy of the first two films. I feel differently about that, but I'm not going into that now. Another post, hopefully next year will address that subject. So Happy New Year everyone. I'm gonna spend it with " The Family ".

Sources : The Godfather Wars- Vanity Fair magazine
                BFI film classics: The Godfather by Jon Lewis
                Wikipedia

Crush of the Week : Birthday Girl Ava Gardner

As Victoria Jones in Cukor's Bhowani Junction

A force of nature. The last goddess. The barefoot contessa. Whatever name one chooses to apply, crush of the week Ava Gardner was one the greatest sex symbols of the 20th century.

Resting during filming of 1956's Bhowani Junction

Ava Gardner, born December 24, 1922 in Smithfield, North Carolina was from a family of dirt poor  cotton and tobacco farmers. How she came to Hollywood is kismet. Fate. Visiting older sister Beatrice [ Bappie, to family and friends ] in New York City, Bappie's husband Larry Tarr, who was a photographer, took her portrait. So pleased with the results, Tarr put the picture in the window of his studio on 5th Avenue. A Loews Theater employee saw the picture went inside the Tarr studio and impressed with the girl in the picture said " somebody should send that picture to MGM " or words to that effect [Loews Inc; was and still is a movie theater company and in 1924 founder Marcus Loew started a movie company called MGM. The rest is history ] Tarr did just that and MGM sent for Gardner, who had since went back home to North Carolina, to be interviewed and screen tested. In the test Gardner didn't do much, walked around a bit, arranged some flowers etc. She did not speak because her southern accent made it near impossible to understand a word Ava said. On screen, she was magical and highly photogenic. Somehow MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer saw the test, thought Ava magnificent and sent for her. She was offered the standard studio contract and was given speech and acting lessons. She arrived in Hollywood with sister Bappie on August 23, 1941. Her life was about to change forever. She was 18.

At the bullfights. Doesn't she look like she could just eat you alive?

 6 months after arriving at the fabled studio, Ava Gardner married #1 box office star and perennial teenager Mickey Rooney. Born in 1920, Rooney had been a big box office name when he portrayed Andy Hardy in the 1937 film A Family Affair and 1939's Babes In Arms, one of 9 films Rooney would make with Judy Garland. The union was a bust and they divorced in 1943 as Rooney would rather gamble and chase after other women rather than be domestic with the gorgeous Gardner. Ava was growing up fast. As for her career at MGM, Gardner was cast in a series of small and bit parts in several movies, many uncredited, more like extra work: Shadow of the Thin Man, Babes on Broadway, Calling Dr. Gillespie, This Time For Keeps and so on. Ava's first credited film was on loan out in the Poverty Row quickie Ghosts on the Loose starring Bela Lugosi and the East Side Kids, in 1943. It would take Ava a long time to develop and feel natural in front of the camera.

Beautiful

 Meanwhile, Ava had a life to live and she was learning to live it up to the fullest. In 1945, Ava married band leader Artie Shaw becoming the 5th of his 8 wives. They divorced in 1946, yet Shaw had a tremendous influence in regard to her social and educational life. Going out to nightclubs and drinking with the likes of Lana Turner or Ann Sheridan was also one of Ava's frequent activities. Gardner found she had quite a capacity for alcohol. At first it helped to calm her nerves at the studio or ease her in social situations, premieres. Sometimes the effect had a tendency to turn the shy, southern country girl into a fiery, man-eating, angry, paranoid, at times violent, woman. It was a Jekyll and Hyde personality that many friends and co-workers would comment on and it would get worse with age.

Publicity for The Killers, 1946

1946 brought big changes to Ava. At MGM Gardner's career had pretty much ground to a halt. She's been at the studio for nearly 5 years with not a lot to show for it. So when indy producer Seymour Nebenzal borrowed her to play opposite George Raft and Victor McLaglen the studio said yes. A noir B-picture, Whistle Stop was her biggest part to date. Based on a book by Maritta Wolff  in which the main characters were brother and sister who had an incestuous relationship, Whistle Stop had to be changed considerably for the screen as industry censors wouldn't allow such stuff in the 1940's, however the fact that Mary, Gardner's character, had supported herself as a prostitute, before returning to her small town home after living in the big city, was more or less retained. The film was a precursor to her real break, the noir classic The Killers, based on an Ernest Hemingway short story. In it Ava played Kitty, the girlfriend of the swede a muscular, not -to-bright boxer played by Burt Lancaster, in his film debut. Ava's casting was the direct result of Killers producer Mark Hellinger viewing Whistle Stop and realizing he had his femme fatale, the girl for whom men would do anything to be with. With direction by noir specialist Robert Siodmak [ Phantom Lady, Criss-Cross, Spiral Staircase ], moody, shadowy camera work by Elwood Bredell and a terrific score by Miklos Rosza [ Spellbound, Double Indemnity, Lost Weekend ], and a screenplay by newcomer Richard Brooks [ with an uncredited assist from John Huston ]  The Killers was an instant hit when released on August 28, 1946 and has strong reputation to this day as a prime example of  classic film noir.

Looking like one of the most dangerous women in the world

Around the time of The Killers, Ava met and became friends with billionaire Howard Hughes. The two have been linked romantically thru the years yet Ava always maintained they were only friends, not lovers. In the films she made at this time it seems MGM still wasn't quite sure what to do with their new star. Since she was now a star thanks to The Killers, a film far from the MGM tradition, Mayer and Company decided cast her in : The Hucksters her first with " The King " Clark Gable, East Side, West Side, The Bribe with Robert Taylor, The Great Sinner along side Gregory Peck. In these films from 1947-1951 Ava was usually the other woman or the second lead to the main actress. They also loaned her out again this tim to indy producer Albert Lewin for Pandora and the Flying Dutchman  looking transplendent in color with James Mason and with Robert Mitchum in My Forbidden Past.  She was also partying hard, staying out late, drinking and carousing til all hours of the night. And she was never alone. In 1949, she fell hard for the biggest singer the country had ever seen at that time, bobby sox idol and movie star Frank Sinatra. The love affair was doomed from the start: Catholic, married, family man Frank and hot headed, free spirit Ava were not a match made in heaven. There was a long, scandalous two year affair before they finally tied the knot on November 7, 1951.

With Frank in what Ava described as that " sad picture ". The morning after their wedding, 1951

1951 was significant for Ava in the movies too as she starred in Showboat Arthur Freed's production of the classic Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II musical. Though not known for her singing ability, Ava recorded all of her own songs for the movie but the MGM higher-ups thought her voice not strong and professional enough. Outtakes exist that prove Ava could handle the songs fine, but they were dubbed over by a professional singer. Ava became bitter over the issue and it was one of the things that drove a wedge between her and the studio. However, Ava is wonderful as Julie the half white/half black star of Captain Andy's river boat show.

Spending some down time with Frank and friends

However the marriage to Sinatra was showing strain. His career was in disarray which added tension to the couple. Add the fact that both were extremely jealous types, their domestic bliss interrupted with fights, the work that separated them and the union was bound to snap under the pressure. In 1953 Ava, with Frank along for the ride, went to Africa to begin filming Mogambo the remake of 1932's Red Dust, with Gable recreating his role from the earlier film and Grace Kelly as the married woman he falls for. Ava  played 'Honey Bear' Kelly a stranded showgirl trying to make the best of the situation but also falling for Gable. The John Ford directed film was one of the top ten moneymaking films of year with Ava pulling down her one and only Oscar nomination for Best Actress [ she lost to Audrey Hepburn ].

With Frank at a Stevenson rally in the early 50's

Despite the professional success, Ava and Frank's marriage was over. Later in 1953 they formally separated, though the divorce wasn't final until 1957. Sinatra would marry twice more [ in 1966 when Sinatra wed Mia Farrow, her hair recently cut ultra-short and with a figure reed-thin, Ava quipped that she always knew Frank would end up in bed with a boy ]. Ava would never marry again. They were the love of each others lives, but they couldn't live together. Gardner could never love again, not like that. As she once said, " I don't trust love anymore. It has led me astray."                                                                                                                                                

With Errol Flynn in The Sun Also Rises, 1957

Being playful

 In 1954 Ava was off to Spain to film Joseph L. Mankiewicz' Barefoot Contessa opposite a pal of Sinatra's Humphrey Bogart. Ava was at the very top of her profession, finding that once she reached the peak, there was no where to go but down. Contessa was hit, although just barely as most critics found it a bit on the talkie side. For the remainder of the 50's Gardner went from one movie to another in one country after another. George Cukor's Bhowani Junction in 1956, The Sun Also Rises from 1957, On The Beach in 1959, all filmed in European or exotic locales. In the late 50's Ava settled in Spain. She loved bullfights and the spanish custom's and way of life. As the 50's turned into the 60's her appearance was changing. The years of booze, cigarettes and late nights, along with just the natural process of aging, were beginning to take a toll on her looks, yet just slightly. She was still being offered starring parts in big budget productions but she didn't care anymore. She never considered herself an "Actress " and she had grown distant and bitter about her job and profession. Taking the money and then causing trouble on set like in 1963's 55 Days at Peking with Charlton Heston. In one instance a script conference turned ugly when Ava started commenting on the " fucking script " and lousy dialogue. Heston snuck away after Ava went on for nearly an hour. In his diary he commented " A macabre evening ". Then things got worse. Ava objected to cameramen taking candids on set, though it was their job to do so for publicity. The movie's writer Phillip Yordan who years ago had penned Ava's 1946 film Whistle Stop, felt she " really didn't want to work ". There were rumors of drinking before noon. Director Nicholas Ray had a heart attack and had to be replaced. And at 40 Ava was starting to worry about something she had never given a second thought about: her looks. Or her specifically, her face. The production finally wrapped, limped into release and did ok, but was never the blockbuster it was suppose to be. Luckily Ava still had friends and some of those friends thought she still had it. John Huston had known Ava since their work on The Killers back in 1946 and gave her a good terrific part in a good film, Night of the Iguana based on Tennessee Williams play. Filming took place in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico with Richard Burton, Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon in the cast. Elizabeth Taylor was also on the scene, her affair with Burton still front page news and the world's press was on the scene, taking bets who would kill whom first. Prankster that he was, Huston presented each of his lead's with gold plated derringers on first day of filming. He also gave each one five bullets with the others name on them. No one was killed but the movie was a hit and a good presentation of the Williams play. Ava got strong notices and may have given the performance of her career. It is my favorite performance of hers.

With Paul Newman on set of Judge Roy Bean

Despite the threats to quit the movies Ava was semi-active until 1986. She did disaster movies like Earthquake, went horror with The Sentinel, cameos in Life & Times of Judge Roy Bean and Mayerling. The last 5 or 6 years she was on television with mini-series, TV movies and some guest spots on Falcon Crest, a popular nighttime soap along the lines of the mega-ratings magnet Dallas. She made occasional headlines like the time she had a stormy affair with George C. Scott [ including physical fights and threatened suicide attempts by the unstable Scott ] in the mid-60's during the making of The Bible, again under the direction of Huston. But her real impact as a sex symbol and movie star was from 1946 to 1964. Though only 42 when she was in Iguana, after that her best movies were behind her. Hollywood can be a cruel town and when an actress is at a certain age or loses it's money making power Hollywood can cut her loose faster than a shooting star falling from the sky. And the world had moved on. On to the 60's, other actress' ready to claim the title Goddess. Ava never asked for the fame and glory she was given, it was offered to her and she took it without knowing the personal sacrifice she was making until it was too late. She died at her London home on January 25, 1990. She was only 67.

Sinatra : A Celebration, A Memoir

For me THE  iconic image: In concert, cigarette in hand, the late 50's

In 1980 my two best friends left town. One to go to college, the other had a job opportunity. As a result I was starting to feel a bit disconnected with things. Being a young guy, unattached, kinda drifting without a real goal or purpose at that time, I made a great discovery : Frank Sinatra. He quickly became my new best friend. I knew this guy but Sinatra was exactly what my generation wasn't : boozy, misogynistic, cocky. Called women broads or dames. Made in bad taste racial jokes at Sammy's expense [ no matter that Frank and his friends were the least prejudiced folks in America at the time ]. He had just had a big hit on the air waves the previous year with " New York, New York " from his " Trilogy " album that proved to the world that at age 64 Sinatra was not going to go into that long, dark night easily or gently. The Voice still had a few tricks up his sleeve. I was not of Frank's generation, being only 20 or 21 at the time of my great discovery of his music. B.F., or before Frank, I generally preferred music of my own generation or a close proximity there of : The Beatles were and are still an all-time fave, Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, Steve Miller Band, Paul Simon etc; you know the drill. It was the late 70's and that was the music of the time.To listen to Sinatra at such a time was like visiting a time machine, and being ridiculed for it. Retro wasn't cool yet. It was just old fashioned, something to be made fun of. There was no Swingers movie or Big Bad Voodoo Daddy to re-examine the era, no Rod Stewart or Michael Buble to introduce listeners to what has come to be known as the Great American Songbook, no swing dance classes at the local recreation center. I was by myself and this was a discovery I made on my own.

One of my favorite Sinatra performances: The Joker is Wild, 1957

One afternoon, pretty much a whim, I went to a record store [ yeah, that long ago ] and got two Sinatra albums: " The Best of Frank Sinatra " which featured hits from his 1950's Capitol Record's period and Columbia's " Frank Sinatra's Greatest Hits: The Early Years ", which highlighted his popular output of the 1940's when Frank was fresh with fame and a bobby-soxer sensation. Two different Frank's, the Capitol Record period was the height of his ring-a-ding years with songs that reflected that time: "High Hopes", "Young at Heart", "Come Dance With Me", "Witchcraft", with mostly upbeat tempo's and a killer horn section, most of the charts arranged by the magnificent Nelson Riddle. The Columbia sessions were from a more romantic era of music: "I've Got a Crush On You", "If You Are But A Dream", "Nancy [ with the laughing face ]", "The House I Live In" and "Dream", all backed up with lush strings, put together by Frank's main man at that time, Axel Stordahl. These albums hit me on a purely emotional level. Considering my state of mind at the time I'm surprised the music didn't kill me. I took the lyrics Frank sang with more conviction than I'd ever heard before, and wove them into my own life experience to devastating results.

This same picture was on the cover of Time magazine the week after he died.

If I had known better I may have left well enough alone, but when I like something and am as moved as I was by those initial records, there was nothing and no one to hold me back from the industry known as Sinatra-mania. Suddenly I sought out books on Frank, books that not only informed me on his manic life but also books that informed me on his best recordings. As for the films there were some I was already familiar with like From Here to Eternity , Pal Joey, Guys & Dolls but not much beyond those. I was a Sinatra novice, ripe and ready for Frank's special brand of brash hijinks and suicidal lows.

One of my favorite pictures ever: Sammy with the man he called ' My Leader ', sometime in the 60's

It's kind of a miracle I found him. Neither of my folks liked him, their musical tastes were more along the lines of Kenny Rogers or Anne Murray for my mom. My dad had a different appreciation of music. He liked Elton John, The Beatles, Merle Haggard, or his own barbershop quartet album he made in the early 60's. My older sis, who worshiped Streisand, influenced my tastes in culture a lot and in music she was fairly eclectic : In addition to Babs she liked Crosby, Stills and Nash, Carly Simon, The Beatles, Elvis but also jazz and the classical music of Gershwin, Beethoven, Mozart and the like. But no one in our family liked Sinatra or owned one of his albums when he hooked me in 1980.                                              

Capitalizing on Sinatra's playboy image

                                                                                                  
                                                                                                                                                                     The best of Sinatra's albums perfectly capture his up-one-moment-down-the-next personality. Albums like " Only The Lonely ", " Songs For Swingin' Lovers ",  " Sinatra & Strings ", " Come Fly With Me ", " In the Wee Small Hours " to name just a few favorites of the man's nearly 60 studio albums. Featuring songs like the torchy " All Or Nothing At All ", " Come Rain or Come Shine ", " I Can't Get Started ", etc; set the tone for the that melancholy 3AM feeling, when one has had too much to drink, thinking bad thoughts, and better off passed out in bed. For every " One For My Baby " that he's recorded there is the equally exuberant " I've Got The World On A String ", " I Get a Kick Out of You " and " The Lady is a Tramp " or " New York, New York ". That was one of the things that drew me to Sinatra's music: emotionally he was all over the place and never in any one place for very long.

In the 1950's Frank's lonely guy image gave his love songs more poignancy

Knowing about the basics of Sinatra's life helped to deepen my appreciation of his music and some of his films.The loves [ Ava Gardner, Juliet Prowse, Mia Farrow and Lauren Bacall are among the wives/girlfriends ], the movie career, the private side with it's hints of bad tempers, mafia rumors, the comebacks, the drinking and the games the Rat Pack played, all on the world's stage. But also there was the quiet side, the side he tried so hard to hide. Sinatra, for all his hangers-on and cronies, was a loner. Biographer James Kaplan wrote that it was in his emotional make-up, that as long as Sinatra lived he was the loneliest bastard he ever knew. I understood that, too. I have reacted to things with strong emotion a lot in my life, as a youth it was something I was told I would have to overcome. As a young adult I have been told I am angry or immature. Maybe I do live on the emotional edge, but at times it feels right.  

You wouldn't know from this photo but they weren't crazy about each other. With Marlon for Guys & Dolls, 1955

Frank's movie career took on an added dimension as well. I made sure I saw as many of his films that I could, if they interested me. I must say, most of them did. From the early MGM days of On The Town or Take Me Out To The Ballgame to his major comeback in 1953's Oscar winner From Here To Eternity, Man With The Golden Arm, The Tender Trap, High Society, The Joker is Wild, Pal Joey, Some Came Running,  A Hole in the Head, Manchurian Candidate; I did my best to see them all. Sinatra did movies, recordings and club dates, he worked continuously, especially in the 1950's and 60's. Vegas is the swingers paradise it is today because of Frank and his bad boy friends. People may go to Vegas without this conscious realization, but what they are trying to recapture is the wild party days of Sinatra and his Rat Pack.   

Originally there were four of them, five if you count Joey Bishop. Peter Lawford, President Kennedy's brother-in-law and the forgotten Rat, is on the far left. He was the one who brought the Ocean's Eleven script to Frank.

              I saw Sinatra perform twice. The first time was in 1983 at the Universal Amphitheater. I went with a friend's wife because I couldn't get a date for myself. Can you believe that? Well, it's true. No one close to my age wanted to see Sinatra in 1983.The second time I saw him was in 1986 at the Irvine Meadows with my wife at the time. I do think the 1983 show was the best, but I think I would have enjoyed it so much more if I had someone special to share it with. Despite that setback, it is one of the great night's in my life. I do however regret not being able to see him in his prime, from about 1955 to around 1966. Sometimes, I think I was born too late.

I have gotten thru some dark times with Sinatra's music as the soundtrack. I have a keener appreciation of  the dark side of the genius that he represented and still represents today. Other singers may have better voices, other actors have a better range, but the total package of talent, style, danger, humility, arrogance, humor, conceit and romance make Sinatra one of the 2 or 3 most popular and emulated singers of the 20th century and beyond. You know, I find it kind of perverse when people say they listen to and admire Michael Buble, a 21st Century Sinatra-wanna-be. His voice is okay, but the depth of feeling that Sinatra gave to the same songs, sometimes with the same arrangements Buble uses, is far superior. So my question to these people is why listen to an imitation when the original is so much better and just as accessible? When in doubt, always go to the source. That is where real genius lives. December 12th would have been his 97th birthday, but he's not here to blow out the candles. Happy birthday anyway, all the way. 

Crush of the Week : Cyd Charisse

From the "Two Faced Woman " number in The BandWagon, deleted before film's release.

Another still from The BandWagon

 Fred Astaire once called her beautiful dynamite and a more apt description of Cyd Charisse would be hard to find. Charisse was a main stay of the fabled Freed Unit at MGM in the 1940's and 1950's, appearing in such musicals as Singin' in the Rain, The Band Wagon, Brigadoon, Silk Stockings and many others.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Born Tula Ellice Finklea [ what a name, right ? ] in Amarillo, Texas in 1922,  her nick name was " Sid " because a family member had trouble pronouncing " Sis ". A frail girl, Cyd took up dancing after she had contracted polio, to help build up her strength. At 14, she studied ballet under Nijinsky in Los Angeles . In 1939 Cyd married fellow dance Nico Charisse while on a tour of Europe. They had one son born in 1942. Her film debut came in 1943's Something to Shout About, in which she was billed as Lily Norwood. As result of that film she came to the attention of choreographer Robert Alton who worked at MGM. She was signed up by that studio in 1943, her first film for them being Mission To Moscow. Her first few roles were as a dancer only, her first speaking part was in 1946's The Harvey Girls opposite Judy Garland. For the next 3 to 4 years Charisse danced away in such films as Ziegfeld Follies, Till the Clouds Roll By, Fiesta, The Unfinished Dance and Words & Music. In addition to musical films MGM tried her out in straight dramatic parts in 1949's East Side, West Side which was based on a big best selling book by Marcia Davenport, low budget but high quality noir sleeper Tension, playing the good girl along side Audrey Totter's bad girl with hapless Richard Basehart in between the two.

With bad girl Audrey Totter, Tension 1950

Need I tell you?

 Cyd divorced Nico in 1947 and married singer Tony Martin in 1948. That union produced a son also, and Tony and Cyd were married until Cyd's death in 2008.By 1952, Cyd had appeared in over a dozen films in supporting parts and " guest " bits in several of them one of the most memorable routines she performed was with Gene Kelly in the " Broadway Melody " section from 1952's Singin' In The Rain. In the only portion of the film she appears in, Cyd is all vamp, tramp and gangster moll to Kelly's eager young hoofer ready to make it big on Broadway which morphs into a ballet with Cyd looking angelic and virginal in white. It was a showcase number and Kelly & Charisse pull it off beautifully.  By this time in her career Cyd was 30, not an easy age for an actress or a dancer. No one accused her of being an actress before, yet she was about to become just that and a star too, not just a featured player and not just in musicals. 

Again, shouldn't have to tell you, but I will: With Fred in The BandWagon, the Girl Hunt ballet

Look at those legs

MGM in the 40's and 50's had a fondness for making films of the lives of the Great Musical Theatre composers : Words & Music about the songwriting partnership of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, Till The Clouds Roll By about Jerome Kern were two producer Arthur Freed served up. An American in Paris  though not a bio of either George nor Ira, fairly drips as an homage to them, Singin' in the Rain used nothing but the Nacio Herb Brown/Arthur Freed songbook, and now The BandWagon in 1953 celebrated the New York theatre with backlog of songs by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz. The film starred Cyd with Fred Astaire for the first time, though they danced together in films before with adequite results, in BandWagon they are in kind of trance of dance and movement. The acting in the majority of musicals are kind of beside the point, it's what the performer conveys while singing  a song or twirling on a Hollywood soundstage that matters. The BandWagon meets that test. The " Dancing in the Dark " sequence, repeatedly parodied in the 70's and 80's, it a magnificent moment when two radically different performers and personalities can indeed work together. With an added adventure of romance between the two lead. But for me, the" Girl Hunt " ballet is the show stopper. Running almost 15 minutes the ballet follows Astaire in a parody of noir, Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane. He encounters Cyd as two different people.

Isn't it romantic? ' Dancing in the Dark ' with Fred from BandWagon

Directed with a sureness of time and place by Vincente Minnelli, The BandWagon has gone down as one of the last of the great original musicals, though the music was as old as dirt as most of the catalog used was  Schwartz & Dietz in the 20's & 30's Broadway, with notable exception of " That's Entertainment " a song that is still known today if only because of the 3 movies that share the name: That's Entertainment Parts 1,2 & 3 and became a sort of anthem for show folk movie folk in particular.

The BandWagon

The film, which hit theaters in August 1953 it did strong business and drew stellar reviews. With her first lead a hit MGM sensed that maybe they had been undervaluing Cyd's talent. She never was a good actress yet she had a presence on screen and when she danced? Forget it. Nobody is looking at anyone else on screen when Cyd also occupies it. In 1954 MGM and the Freed Unit cast her in a big lavish production of Lerner & Lowe's Brigadoon, a somewhat lackluster affair with Gene Kelly and Minnelli again taking the reigns as director. Everyone expected big things from this film but it failed to materialize. Critics and moviegoers yawed. Next up was Deep in My Heart a featured dance number, It's Always Fair Weather with Kelly again but Charisse has only one dance scene, Baby You Knock Me Out, and none with Kelly which seems to me a almost fatal flaw in the picture.

With Kelly, Brigadoon 1954

Time was running out. Age was not the only thing encroaching, there was television keeping people away from the the movie palaces, the popularity of musicals had peaked. The form was beginning to lose the interest of the average movie watcher. By 1956 when Cyd made the silly yet entertaining Meet Me in Las Vegas with Dan Dailey, the MGM studios was also facing tough economic times, times that eventually caught up with the studio and devoured it. The great stars were leaving MGM by 1954 so by 56 there weren't alot left except Robert Taylor, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Sinatra, and many more had left to take their chances free-lancing.  Mgm had bought the rights to Cole Porter's new Broadway musical smash " Silk Stockings " which was based on the 1939 Garbo film Ninotchka . No one would mistake Cyd for Greta, but the Freed Unit cast her in the part Garbo had made famous nearly 20 years previous. The resulting film, directed by master craftsman Rouben Mamoulian, was one of the last great MGM musicals along with George Cukor's Les Girls also from 1957 with original songs by Cole Porter.                

Captivating : Silk Stockings 1957

                                                                                                                                         
Silk Stockings represents what is probably Cyd Charisse's most substantial role in film. She is dominate in it to the point that one almost forgets her partner is the incomparable Fred Astaire. Unlike The BandWagon, Silk Stockings belongs to Cyd Charisse. Although no Garbo in the dramatic end, Cyd more than holds her own with her estimated co-star. Unlike so many other films she appeared in, Silk Stockings is one of the few films Charisse made that revolves around her character. So Cyd gets to do more acting [ not really her strong suit ] and puts on a phoney Russian accent that is thick as molasses. Like many of Charisse's other films Silk Stockings is saved by her dancing. Her transformation from all-business operative to lovely young woman is positively intoxicating in it's sensuousness. It may be the best example of a catapiller-to-butterfly I've  ever seen. 
                                                                                              

L:ikewise, the 'Red Blues' number is an exhilarating piece of syncopation and movement of a different kind.

Despite it's well crafted production, Silk Stockings wasn't a tremendous money spinner when it opened back in July 1957, though no bomb it wasn't a B.O. bellringer either. The Golden Globes did  nominate it for Best Film and Charisse got nominated in the Best Actress in Musical/Comedy department, so that must have been nice for her. Her last film at Metro was 1958's Party Girl with our gal in the title role and Robert Taylor, also approaching the end at MGM after 23 years, as a mob lawyer who Cyd falls for, helps escape the clutches of the mob and go into a straight law practice. Oh, Cyd also helps Taylor with his gimpy leg [  no jokes, please ]. She is a showgirl in Chicago in the late 20's who moonlights as a party favor for Lee J. Cobb's gangster friends on the side for the extra loot. Cyd has a couple of dance routines but the Nicholas Ray directed film is a straight dramatic one and colorful, with Cobb shooting out a framed picture of Jean Harlow because she got married and it wasn't to him, bad guy John Ireland calling Cyd's character 'puss' and Charisse's roommate committing suicide. Whether due to Ray's influence or an identification with the part, it's probably her finest hour as a dramatic actress.

Party Girl, 1958

But that was it. As far as MGM was concerned she was on her own to free-lance, something most movie stars were doing by the late 50's, so Party Girl was the swan song, under her original contract, for the studio she had toiled in for over a decade. I have seen alot of  interviews from the Metro stars of the 40's and 50's about this perilous time in the the film industry, most express a fear, an anxiety, about their future in film. After being protected and nurtured by a studio when an actor is released of their contract how could they feel otherwise? So it was  for Charisse. After her departure Charisse played in a  few movies: Twilight for the Gods with Rock Hudson,  which must have seemed a good opportunity at the time as Hudson had been a voted number one box office star of 1957 and was riding a crest of popularity that would last until the mid-60's, didn't generate any wave of popularity and today is rarely seen [ I have never seen it ].Terence Young's Black Tights from 1960 is four stories performed in ballet, Minnelli's Two Weeks in Another Town co-starring Kirk Douglas, fresh from freeing the slaves as Spartacus was near the peak of his popularity, but the film failed as a moneymaker for MGM, though Cyd did have a juice part in it as Douglas' evil ex-wife. Later that year she would sign up for Something's Got To Give which was the movie Marilyn was making when she died. In 1966's The Silencers, the first of four Matt Helm spy movies, was made for the money by Dean Martin and company, bringing a slow fade to the ring-a-ding years. In the revealing part of a stripper, Cyd was allowed  to show another side of her talent

Hubba-hubba! Stripper Cyd in The Silencers, 1966

Cyd Charisse passed in June 2008, she seemed to have a good, stabile life in semi-retirement with hubby Tony Martin and occasionally appear on a TV show or host a documentary. But when she was at the top of her game from somewhere around1952 to 1958 she was awesome.