Ever have a Charlie Chaplin New Year's celebration? Didn't think so. I have.
Ever find your self voted designated driver for the night when you least expected it? Me too.
Ever celebrate with four of your best mates? Me too.
Ever have a Italian sex-bomb get on your table to dance? Me neither.
Ever have your brother kiss you on the lips at midnight on New Year's ? If so, it's the kiss of death.
Ever party like it's 1924, with hip-hop?? Didn't think so.
Ever see a beautiful girl sitting by herself at a party looking so forlorn that you couldn't help but go up to her and try to make her laugh? Try it sometime.
Ever been invited to one of Holly Golightly's toga parties? Me neither, but I did go to a toga party once. But Holly wasn't there.
That's it. Goodbye 2013. Been nice knowing you, but your expiration date has past. Cheers!!!!
I thought my first encounter with screen siren Gloria Grahame was in the movie The Bad & The Beautiful, Vincente Minnelli's inside view of Hollywood circa 1952. In it she plays southern belle/flirt/wife of Dick Powell. The role is not really typical Gloria Grahame for generally in the movies { and in life? } she was the bad girl par excellence. In B & B, Gloria is a coquette, not really bad. No, I was wrong. I first saw her, without knowing anything of her or her filmography, in 1946's It's A Wonderful Life. Not knowing what I had stumbled upon { the film was about half way in }, It's A Wonderful Life and George Bailey's story captured my imagination from that first accidental viewing long ago. I thought Donna Reed was a babe, but that Gloria Grahame was the kinda doll I couldn't take home to momma and I wouldn't want to, but I would want to take her to bed. Even, or especially, in that film's environment, there was something lethal about her attitude, strut, and the way she was ready to go with George on a wild ride, but wasn't ready to go up to the falls and watch the sun rise. Not her idea of a scandal, probably because it wouldn't be scandalous or, to be more specific, sleazy enough. By the time. Because Gloria Grahame knew all about sleaze.
With hubby number two, Nicholas Ray.
Born in 1924, Gloria Grahame began her film career in 1944 at MGM. Even with her success with Wonderful Life, Metro didn't see much potential in her and sold her contract to RKO in 1947. What at the time must have seemed to be a setback to her became one of the most important moves of her life and career, for RKO was the home of film noir with talents like stars Robert Mitchum, Dick Powell, Robert Ryan and up and coming directors like Edward Dmytryk and Nicholas Ray. Ray, who would become her second husband, would make two films with her. 1949's A Woman's Secret and 1950's noir classic In A Lonely Place. Gloria would gain prominence and her first Oscar nomination for Dmytryk's classic noir Crossfire made in 1947 at her new studio. While making A Woman's Secret Nick Ray and Grahame, who had both been married before { Ray had a son from wife number one }, had a whirlwind romance and were wed about six weeks into the filming. They had a son born in November 1948. By the time they started Lonely Place in late 1949, Ray and Grahame's marriage was on the brink of collapse, due in no small part to Gloria's teasing and pushing Ray's jealousy button's. Patrick McGilligan's biography on Ray, sites how " many of those who knew Grahame considered her a nymphomaniac who lusted after multiple sex partners." According to actress Jeff Donnell, Grahame expected Ray to be " possessive and temperamental, and when he wasn't she would create situations to make that happen." McGilligan's book goes on to say "at one point in their relationship Gloria pulled a gun out of her handbag and ordered him to fuck or die." The couple separated for a time, reconciled, only to divorce in 1952 after Nick Ray caught Gloria in bed with his 13 year old son, Anthony, shortly after her turn in C.B. DeMille's circus epic, 1952's Best Picture Oscar winner The Greatest Show On Earth.
Gloria, no doubt leaving town on a rail, in Fritz Lang's Human Desire.
At the time of this scandal, which was generally known in Hollywood but discussed only in hushed terms, Gloria's career was riding the crest of a huge wave. In 1952 alone her credits included not only the DeMille and Minnelli films, but also the Joan Crawford thriller Sudden Fear and a small bit in Josef Von Sternberg's farewell to Hollywood filmmaking Macao opposite Jane Russell and noir icon { and former brother-in-law }, Robert Mitchum. Gloria nabbed the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Bad & The Beautiful, but the award was something of a career win for her stellar work that year.
1953, 1954 and 1955 would bring even more outstanding turns in such films as Elia Kazan's Man On A Tightrope as Fredric March's slutty wife; getting a coffee pot full of experience from Lee Marvin in Fritz Lang's crime classic The Big Heat and Lang's 1954 noir on infidelity Human Desire; Naked Alibi, playing a bar singer; back to Minnelli-land for the The Cobweb as shrink Richard Widmark's meddling wife; lost among the many stars in Stanley Kramer's maiden directing effort, the dismal, yet popular Not As A Stranger; and as Ado Annie in Fred Zinnemann's uneven adaptation of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma!
After this slew of A-status films and performances, Grahame's film career took a dive. She would appear in only four more films over the next fifteen years, the best of the bunch being a return to noir with Odds Against Tomorrow for director Robert Wise in 1959. Over the years Grahame, besides addicted to sex, was obsessed with her looks, particularly her lips, which she would have surgery after surgery on to help achieve just the right pouty look she wanted to express. Grahame would have so many of these operations, mainly to her upper lip, that according to Wikipedia it left her mouth partially immobile and made speech difficult at times. After leaving Nicholas Ray, Grahame would marry two more times, in 1954 to Cy Howard which ended in divorce in 1957 and in 1960 to Anthony Ray, so in a way she kind of married her son. They were to have two sons before divorcing in 1974.
Great poster art for the Minnelli melo about the doctors, patients and significant others of a mental institution.
In the 1970's Grahame began working in film and television with more frequency, though mostly in low-budget affairs. One of the more high profile parts for Gloria was the mini-series Rich Man, Poor Man and the Howard Hughes-Melvin Dumar comedy Melvin & Howard directed with a deft hand by Jonathan Demme. While working in England in 1981, Grahame under went surgery for fluid that had developed in her abdomen. During the procedure the doctor accidentally punctured her bowel and she came down with peritonitis and died on October 5, 1981, age 57.
Gloria and her gun.
Gloria Grahame's life was without a doubt a bumpy ride, but with the rediscovery of film noir and the various websites and film festivals around the world, Gloria and here siren-sisters of the silver screen like Marie Windsor, Audrey Totter and Lizbeth Scott { to name just a few } have been rediscovered by millions of new fans and their work will continue to live on movie screens, big and small, of cineaste's the world over.
Sources : Media : Wikipedia page on Gloria Grahame
Turner Classic Movies
Books : Nicholas Ray : The Glorious Failure of an American Director by Patrick McGilligan
Prologue : Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck. { Taken from one of three suicide notes George Sanders left before he killed himself. }
On April 25, 1972, Oscar winning actor George Sanders took his own life in a hotel room near Barcelona. Sanders was only 65, but the nature of his death seems completely in keeping true to the screen character he had perfected for nearly 40 years; that of an absolute total cad. One of the Golden Age of Cinema's most exquisite character actors, Sanders career in the movies began in earnest in the mid-1930's and lasted to his death, though the quality of his roles had diminished considerably the last ten or so years of his life.
George in 1945's Picture of Dorian Gray.
It's a career that peaked with his turn as Addison DeWitt in the 1950 classic All About Eve, directed by Joseph L.Mankiewicz {The Barefoot Contessa; Suddenly, Last Summer}, Eve was also 1950's Best Picture Oscar winner and had been pegged with a total 14 nominations. Let that sink in for a moment. 14 Oscar nominations. No film in history had ever received that many, not even Gone With The Wind, and only one film has had as many since, 1997's Titanic, but All About Eve did it without a lot of technical nominations, too. Of the 14, 8 of them were in the top 7 categories, while Titanic racked up only 4 in the upper echelon.
Cast photo, Marilyn included, from the great All About Eve, 1950
Eve, along with his performance in Portrait of Dorian Gray, are my favorite Sanders creations. His cynical, sarcastic, biting line readings are among the finest in all of cinema. Only Claude Rains could equal Sanders ability to project that snarling, yet suave quality. A versatile actor, Sanders played in a variety of parts, from lavish costume drama's such as Fritz Lang's Moonfleet, Cecil B.DeMille's Samson and Delilah, The King's Thief, Ivanhoe, and King Vidor's Solomon and Sheba [ Sanders was on set when Tyrone Power suffered his fatal heart attack } to suspense thrillers like Rebecca, Foreign Corespondent and Witness To Murder to comedies such as Her Cardboard Lover and A Shot In The Dark. Besides Lang, Vidor and DeMille, Sanders also collaborated with such top flight filmmakers as Hitchcock, Sidney Lumet, Roberto Rossellini, Douglas Sirk, Huston, Friedkin and Cukor. Sanders was the Saint in a series of popular films based on the books by Leslie Charteris, after that he played a detective named The Falcon in four films before Sanders brother, Tom Conway { Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie } took over that role. In 1967 Sanders provided his perfect voice to the character Shere Khan in the Disney version of The Jungle Book. Based on the novel by Rudyard Kipling, the film has gone on to become one of Disney's beloved animated classics. One of Sanders less known talents was music, both singing and piano playing and he recorded a couple of albums. On occasion Sanders also appeared on TV. A couple of his more memorable "Guest Appearances" included a spot on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Batman, in the role of Mr.Freeze { take THAT Arnold! }, both childhood favorites of mine.
As the voice of Shere Khan in Disney's The Jungle Book
By most accounts Sanders in 1972 had come to the end of his rope. His third wife Benita Hume, the widow of Ronald Colman, who Sanders married in 1959, passed away from bone cancer in 1967 { his brother died the same year }. According to sources her death left Sanders devastated and adrift. In 1970, he married Magda Gabor, the eldest sister of second wife ZsaZsa, but the union only lasted a few weeks. In 1972 Sanders had been dating a girl about half his age and she somehow convinced him to sell his home in Majorca, Spain a home he adorned and regretted selling ever after. According to Wikipedia, in his last years Sanders was in poor health, including dementia, and fell into a prolonged depression. With nothing left to live for Sanders swallowed five bottles of Nembutal, essentially enough to kill a horse. Obviously George was leaving nothing to chance for only a truly desperate, despondent, self centered person takes his own life and this description fits Sanders pretty well. Anyone with Sanders gifts should have found something, anything, worth carrying on for, worth living for. Yet he had received some major body blows the last few years of his life. Exhausted, death must have seemed like the ultimate release from the life of purgatory he had been subjected to since 1967.From George Sanders point of view suicide must have made perfect sense and held a relaxing permanence that proved irresistible.
The romantic side of George saw the light of day with this album
Billy Wilder directed many a great film : Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, Sabrina and among others. As for me, I love all the previously mentioned and more, but I would have to offer up his Oscar-winning 1960 film The Apartment as perhaps my favorite. A sentimental choice, I initially saw The Apartment on KTLA Channel 5, an independent Los Angeles station, in 1971. When we see a film at an impressionable age it's impact is all the greater. I was only 12, but the theme of the film, that a man is not what he seems, that people will use others to get what they want, resonated within me and still does.
Miss Kubelik and Mr. Baxter
Jack Lemmon, in what has to be one of his two or three defining performances, plays C.C.Baxter { "C for Calvin, C for Clifford, however most people just call me Bud "} an employee in a large insurance company called Consolidated Life of New York. Along with the other 31,259 employees Baxter slaves away at his job in " ordinary policy department, premium accounting division, section w, desk #861 ". Baxter learned long ago that doing favors for executives in high places doesn't hurt one's chances at a promotion, so he lends his apartment out two or three times a week to four men who are married but fool around on the side. Eventually Baxter's boss, Mr. Sheldrake the President of the company { a perfectly reptilian Fred MacMurray }, finds out what has been going on and arranges for Baxter to get promotions in exchange for use of the apartment. Complications ensue when Baxter learns that Sheldrake has been taking Fran Kubelik { an absolutely irresistible, never more appealing Shirley MacLaine }, an elevator girl who Baxter has a huge crush on, to his apartment for a little " ring-a-ding-ding ". So we are in Man In The Gray Flannel Suit, The Best of Everything, Executive Suite-land. Mad Men before there was such a show, but also Rat Pack territory, which comes thru in the dialogue, martini's, the portrayal of women { no feminine execs here } and the cheating executives who have absolutely no shame or remorse in their philandering. Grown men behaving like boys. Still not that uncommon today I would venture, though perhaps more subtle.
Sheldrake sweet talks Fran back into his bed for a little "ring-a-ding-ding"
In the 1940's Wilder saw David Lean's Brief Encounter, a rather chaste film about an extramarital affair, and the idea occurred to him : what about a " movie about the guy who climbs into the warm bed left by two lovers ". The idea was ahead of it's time, but by the late 50's Hollywood's production Code had been showing the strain and the cracks were starting to break through that antiquated system, so Wilder, along with writing partner I.A.L { Izzy } Diamond , dusted off the idea and came up with The Apartment. Upon release some critics found the story line and it's characters morally reprehensible. Today the film looks both fresh and dated. Many things have been rendered obsolete such as elevator girls, { itself a rather crude reference to women being in charge things going up and going down } onlymale executives, no people of color are seen except for a black janitor, and so on. What I do find fresh is the prevalent use of Jewish and Eastern Europeans and their ancestors. Dobisch, Kirkeby, Matuschka, Kubelik, Eichelberger, Vanderhof, Dreyfuss; I love these names and the lingo of Baxter's landlady Mrs. Lieberman { who references " all that mishigas at Cape Canaveral " }, his neighbor Dr. Dreyfuss, who perceives Baxter to be a playboy { " Live now, pay later, Diners Club!" } because of the loud music and female giggling he and Mrs. Dreyfuss hear next door night after night. This, of course, this is not Baxter, but the execs and companions he loans his place to. It is the good Doctor who tells Baxter to be a mensch { " What is that, Doc?" , " A mensch! A human being.!! " }
Dr. Dreyfuss and Baxter try to revive Fran after her suicide attempt.
The music in the film By Adolph Deutsch deserves a big shout out and in this establishing scene it is especially spot on. Deutsch had worked with Wilder the year before on Some Like It Hot, he was one of many Wilder had worked with on previous films, for like most of the great filmmakers both past and present, they have a team of regular collaborators they try to corral together on every film : Diamond had worked with Wilder since 1957's Love in the Afternoon and would continue to co-script every Wilder film to his last one, the abysmal Buddy, Buddy; cinematographer Joseph LaShelle's work on the film was his first for TeamWilder, and would continue with Irma LaDouce; Kiss Me, Stupid and The Fortune Cookie. LaShelle had lensed several film noir's in the 1940's { Laura; Fallen Angel; Road House } and The Apartment is shot in a noir-like style, which suits the film perfectly because, though it's a Rom-Com, it has a dark sensibility with a pessimistic outlook on mankind. Alexander Trauner, a legend of art direction, worked on several Wilder films. Besides The Apartment, Trauner contributed to Love in the Afternoon; Witness For The Prosecution; One,Two,Three; The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and the underrated Fedora. These men, and so many others, helped Wilder achieve the effect and perfection he desired.
Baxter, unaware that Fran has taken almost fatal dose of sleeping pills, wants her to get up and "o-u-t. OUT!!" of his home and bed.
My identification with the film comes in the form of Baxter. The quintessential "lonely guy", Baxter is everything I have perceived myself to be, and more. He is a decent person, the mensch Dr. Dreyfuss exclaims he should be, not the no good lady-killer without a conscious he is perceived to be, with a deep sense of honor and chivalry. Baxter has a personal code, yet it is a code he has corrupted. Unlucky in love, Baxter has put all his focus and energies on getting ahead in the world of big business. By lending out his bachelor pad as a place for married men to tryst with their lovers, Baxter has become a pimp, essentially pimping out himself, and his self-disgust is palpable. His loneliness is made painfully aware to us at the film's beginning as he prepares his typical night at home, after Mr. Kirkeby and his phone operator mistress, Sylvia, have vacated Baxter's place. Alone with his TV dinner and old movie , which keeps getting postponed by the film's host who keeps hawking his wares { " Friends, do you have wobbly dentures? " }, Wilder paints a portrait of Baxter we can't help but sympathize with. He is the poster boy for loneliness. Along the way we also get suicide attempts which is fairly heavy waters for any romantic comedy to dive into but is precisely what gives the film it's timeless quality. Though technology has changed and people of color and gender have come a long ways since this film's release, The Apartment gets the basic human needs and emotions perfect; this is romantic comedy of the highest order. Along with Double Indemnity; The Lost Weekend; Sunset Blvd and Some Like It Hot, The Apartment is Billy Wilder at his caustic, cynical, yet humane, best. I leave you with one question : Why can't life be more like a romantic comedy?? Maybe I should just " shut up and deal ".
Sources : Books - On Sunset Boulevard by Ed Sikov
Conversations With Wilder by Cameron Crowe
Internet : Wikipedia
IMDB
YouTube
Viewing : Blu-ray disc of the film
" Roll on thunder, shine on lightening The days are long and the nights are frightening Nothing matters away and that's the hell of it" Lyrics for closing song of Phantom of the Paradise Words and Music by Paul Williams
Brian DePalma has had a most interesting career. Like the other movie brats Coppola, Scorsese and Spielberg, DePalma cinematically came of age in the 70's. Today DePalma's best known films to the casual moviegoer would be his gangster epics Scarface and The Untouchables, with the first Mission : Impossible movie probably figuring in the mix as well. Prior to Phantom, DePalma caught the eye of critics with his 1973 release Sisters, in which he indulged what several critics called his fondness for imitation-Hitchcock. Phantom of the Paradise was another kind of rip-off, this one being a spoof/homage to those Phantom of the Opera films {by 1974 there had officially been three previous versions in 1925 with Lon Chaney, 1943 with Claude Rains and 1962 with Herbert Lom}. DePalma's version was the first to have a tongue-in-cheek approach with a mash-up of both the music and the mood of the story. This Phantom, coming nearly a full year earlier than the renown cult fave The Rocky Horror Picture Show, was a mid-70's glitter/glam rock version of the famous original book by Gaston Leroux, chock full of reference's to other horror films, with the rock music world as a backdrop also having it's share of skewering and references to the Faust and Beauty and the Beast legends, the tale of Frankenstein as well.
William Finley as Winslow Leach aka The Phantom, composing his "rock cantata" in Swan's studio.
Along with William Finley, who previously had been in Sisters, as Winslow Leach/The Phantom, and newcomer Jessica Harper as his muse Phoenix , DePalma made an inspired choice in the casting of the evil Swan character: composer Paul Williams. By the early 70's Williams had been much in demand as a songwriter with well-known hits like Three Dog Night's An Old Fashioned Love Song, The Carpenters' hit song and wedding favorite We've Only Just Begun, and the melancholic Rainy Days and Mondays among others. But Williams, a multi-talented individual, had also appeared in some bit parts in films such as 1965's The Loved One and 1966's The Chase, and he was trying to build his acting resume. DePalma had brought Williams aboard to do the songs for Phantom but upon meeting and liking Williams, DePalma insisted that he play the diabolical Swan.Other standouts are Gerrit Graham, stealing every scene he appears in, as Beef the Alice Cooper/David Bowie-like rock star selected by Swan to bring The Phantom's songs to life {at last}.
When I first encountered Phantom it was on a thing called Channel 100, a precursor to HBO, SHOWTIME and the like. Channel 100 would show movies that had been in theaters the previous year, with no cuts or censorship {then rare and big thing back in the day, but no letterboxing}. This was a huge deal in 1975 when the most we got was Channel's 2 thru 13, and one of those was the Spanish channel {channel 8, as I recall}, that seemed to show nothing but bullfights. I don't know if Channel 100 was a local channel or what, but being only 15 or so and finally having access to all these movies just as my spark in movies was being lit, was a divine intervention. Watching diverse fare, things like Rafferty and The Gold Dust Twins, Freebie and the Bean, The Way We Were, The Last Detail, Blazing Saddles, Bang The Drums Slowly, Cinderella Liberty, Mean Streets, and on and on and on, it became my personal screening room to films I either didn't have the opportunity to see or were shown in theaters before I much cared about film {other than Planet of the Apes and it's spawn}. So I used the channel to catch up on what I had only heard about. If memory serves {and it has been nearly 40 years} Channel 100 was on the air from 5PM until the wee hours of maybe 3 or 4 in the morn and they only played one movie, continuously, all night. It was here that I saw Phantom. I can only think I watched it because of the Phantom of the Opera connection since the type of movies I related to early on were the Universal Horror films, and this seemed a perfect fit for my off-beat, loner, misunderstood-youth mentality.
The Phantom swoops down from the balcony to unmask Swan. A variation on the famous unmasking scene that is in every Phantom of the Opera film, all with differing degrees of success.
The movie made a big impression on me. I purchased the soundtrack album, played it all the time. I don't know how many times I saw the thing on Channel 100, but it became ingrained in my memory bank. I was much captivated by the pale, waif-like Jessica Harper. She never made a lot of films and the one's she did {Suspiria, Inserts, Shock Treatment, Pennies From Heaven, etc} were of the cult, off-beat, midnight matinee variety. Her one real mainstream movie, in which she played a nice, mainstream person, was 1982's My Favorite Year with Peter O'Toole as Alan Swann , an Errol Flynn-like alcoholic movie star. In Phantom, Harper projected an almost plain sexiness, along with a naive, innocent, sweet, though not quite virginal quality that had me enamored and was the type I wished for back in my high school years.A very talented performer who never got the really big break she deserved in her career, Harper also sang her own songs in the film. I would follow her career up to the early 1980's when she seemed to slip through the cracks and disappeared from the movies.
Jessica Harper as Phoenix, the waif-like muse to William Finley's Phantom. I had a big crush on her back in the day.
Released on October 31, 1974 Phantom Of The Paradise bombed in the U.S., the only successful country it played was in "Winnipeg, Canada, where the film played for four months and in one theater non-continuously until 1976", according to Wikipedia. Some fun facts : actress Sissy Spacek was the film's set dresser, helping her then-boyfriend- now husband, Jack Fisk, who was the film's production designer. Twilight Zone narrator and creator Rod Serling does the voice-over intro. Paul Williams would receive an Oscar nom for Best Original Song Score and would win a Golden Globe for Best Original Score. De Palma was to follow up Phantom in 1976 with Obsession, a Hitchcock/Vertigo-type film with Cliff Robertson and Genevieve Bujold, and the big hit that really put him on the map Carrie, based on the book by Stephen King novel with Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie and featuring up-and-comers John Travolta and DePalma's future wife and muse, Nancy Allen.
The Phantom's revenge on Swan.
Though a failure in it's day, like Rocky Horror Picture Show, Phantom of the Paradise has enjoyed a cinematic afterlife as a cult favorite. In 2005 a "Phantompalooza" was organized in Winnipeg with William Finley and Gerrit Graham making appearances and a second one in 2006 with a concert by Paul Williams. I myself have yet to run into anyone who shares the enthusiasm for Phantom that I do, however I have daily contact with someone who thinks it's a pretty lame movie. That would be my girlfriend and she's a horror movie fan! Maybe she likes her horror films straight with no chaser. Go figure. I will continue to champion the film. I find it wicked fun, with some wonderfully adroit performances, with a biting satire, a great score by Williams and the sure handed direction of Brian DePalma, who was just beginning to feel his way around the labyrinth of cinema.
" I suppose it's fair to say that infidelity made me what I am today. I know lots of investigators won't handle divorce work. The truth is, not that many guys are good at matrimonial work. It takes finesse and experience. Hell, everybody makes mistakes, but if you marry one, they expect you to pay for it for the rest of your life. I don't care whose fault it is, his, hers or the milkman's. If one of them comes to me, it means they're both miserable, and that's my job, putting people out of their misery." - Jack Nicholson's opening voice-over narration for The Two Jakes
Opening shot,with Peggy Lee singing the classic, "Don't Smoke in Bed", over the credits. Great directorial touch.
In 1990 Paramount Pictures released The Two Jakes, the much anticipated sequel to 1974's neo-noir classic Chinatown. It was dumped on the marketplace in August, usually the dead zone for summer movies, which shows that Paramount didn't have much faith in the film's box office potentialor it's strength as an awards-type of film. If Paramount had been smart they would have released the film in the fall when more serious minded movies with Oscar potential start to see the light of day.The late 80's and early 90's was an curious time to revive interest in sequels to great movie's from the 70's. Texasville, Peter Bogdanovich's follow-up to his landmark film, 1971's The Last Picture Show and Francis Ford Coppola's second sequel to The Godfather, The Godfather III, were both made in 1990. The bad thing is despite the many good things about these undertakings is that there was no way in hell they could possibly top their predecessors. Consequently all of these sequels to seminal one-of-a-kind movies-for a variety of reasons-fell flat at the nation's box office. I liked them all, yet the originals were impossible to top, like catching lightning in a bottle. The scenario couldn't have played out differently.
The poster, like the film, was good but not quite up to the standards of the first.
Nicholson's The Two Jakes {it's the last of three films he has directed to date} has an obsession with the past that is one of it's major virtues. The past of detective J.J Gittes {Nicholson} haunts him in ways he probably hadn't given much thought to in the previous few years. The film opens in 1948, right before Halloween. Post-war business is booming and no where is it exploding more than in the City of Angels. Gittes is also profiting. With a beautiful, young and chic fiancee, an impressive golf handicap-he owns the building his detective agency operates from-Gittes seems to have it all. As he tells his associate Lawrence Walsh {Joe Mantell reprising his part from the first film}, " I'm the leper with the most fingers." That doesn't mean he is invincible, far from it, for J.J Gitttes' past life hangs over him like a thick layer of the L.A. smog that hovers over the city. This private eye who specializes in divorce cases is hired by another Jake - Berman - because his wife Kitty is fooling around on him. What J.J doesn't know is that Berman's wife will plunge him back into his past, back to Evelyn Mulwray {Faye Dunaway from Chinatown supplies a crucial voice over here}, and back to "... old secrets, family, property and a guy doing his partner dirt. Memories are like that, as unpredictable as nitro, and you never know what's gonna set one off. "
Meg Tilly as Kitty Berman, the shy, adulterous wife of the other Jake.
That The Two Jakes failed at the box office is a matter of record. Why it did is another matter entirely. One could say the ghost of the first film was too great to overcome, or that director Nicholson assumed his audience would be paying close attention to the plot and subtleties and nuances of the characters and the actors playing them, or that if they didn't it wasn't anyone's fault but their own, or that cinema-goers in 1990 didn't really care about asequel to a movie sixteen years old {unlike, say, a cinephile like moi}. At 137 minutes long, the film is at times ponderous with a dense plot, but not that difficult to follow or guess the final outcome of the mystery. The film has many virtues, but I wouldn't say pacing is one of them. If "Captain" Jack gets a demerit for this film, the pacing would be the main suspect. What The Two Jakes does have is an impressive attention to period detail in it's production design; warm, glowing cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond, a master; an excellent cast willing to give all for their director; among the standouts are Harvey Keitel as the other Jake, Meg Tilly as Berman's wife the mysterious Kitty and Madeline Stowe, in a rather thankless, mostly comedic role, as wife of the man Berman kills. The return of some of Chinatown's originalcast, besides Jack and the aforementioned Joe Mantell, are quite welcome and a nice touch, with Perry Lopez as Lt. Escobar and James Hong as Khan, formerly Evelyn Mulwray's servant and apparently living a not bad post-war life,all return to the scene of the crime. The stellar cast also includes Richard Farnsworth as an aging, crafty, good-ol'-boy oilman, Fredric Forest as his lawyer Chuck Newty, Eli Wallach as Berman's counselor Cotton Weinberger, and Ruben Blades as Jewish gangster Michael 'Mickey Nice' Weisskopf {a knock-off on L.A gangster Mickey Cohen}. The script is by Chinatown's writer, Robert Towne, but rumors through the years have persisted that the old fashioned voice-over narration {which contain some of the film's best lines} was written by everyone from legendary writer/director Billy Wilder to Jack himself. Towne originally wanted Gittes character to be the main thrust of a trilogy on L.A : Chinatown dealt with water, Jakes with oil, and the third film - so far unmade - would be about air and the smog that has affected that city for at least 60 years. The third film would also have J.J embroiled in his own divorce case and was set in 1968.
Jack in charge. In an interview years later Jack, usually a soothing presence on set, claims to have yelled a lot and been short tempered during the filming of Two Jakes, due to the pressures of production.
It is not common for a writer to fashion a work to a particular actor, yet Towne penned Chinatown for Nicholson. Watching The Two Jakes for the umpteenth time, I can't help but feel it's personal project for Nicholson. All the talk of the past is vital to the story, obviously, but also to Jack himself. Nicholson has some interesting revelation's regarding his own family life, like the reported fact that the woman he thought was his mother was really his grandmother, and June, who he thought was his older-by-seventeen-years-sister, was his real mother. Jack learned of his family's duplicity just as Chinatown was being set for release with Jack giving a round of interviews to newspapers and magazines. The evidence, dug up by a Time magazine reporter, flabbergasted Jack as he apparently had no idea of his murky parental history. That June was his mother is pretty much fact, the father however, is publicly still up in the air. Perhaps Nicholson is unsure as well. All this is a reminder of how The Two Jakes and it's predecessor delve into the Mulwray/Cross family tree. I suppose every family has a tale or two and some may be messier than others, but these films deal with a family of power, wealth, greed and incest. Incest. That's one family secret that no one ever wants found out. But in Chinatown {*spoilers, folks, spoilers*} Jake discovers that Evelyn's daughter, Katherine, is the product of a liaison between Evelyn and her father, Noah Cross. That J.J feels responsible for Katherine in Two Jakes is quite touching and completely in keeping the faith with Gittes' character from the original film in trying to set things right, Gittes' rewriting of the past.
Gittes goes to visit Khan, Evelyn Mulwray's butler from Chinatown, with a picturesque view of the Pacific.
During Khan's conversation about Evelyn's daughter, Khan says J.J is a prisoner of the past, that he would do the young woman more harm than good, to which Gittes replies " I don't want to live in the past Kahn. I just don't want to lose it. " The past, how it affects the people who inhabit the movie's universe and the production's faithful re-creation of a post-war Los Angeles is one of the things I like best about the film. Gittes' voice over narration, seemingly an old fashioned way of storytelling, fits perfectly to the era Nicholson is trying to capture. From the Pontiac car ads and 'The Whistler' radio program that plays from Gittes' car to the vocabulary of the voice over {using the term 'filling station' in place of 'gas station' goes a long way with me}, to Gittes visiting a gay nightclub while conducting his investigation and it's world that is underground, a sub-culture that was victim of prejudice and hate and could only exist in the shadows. Also the costumes, hair, and production design, the visual element that any film worth it's salt will provide, is almost a given. Hollywood, with it's vast technical resources at it's disposal, can lend any film a recreation of a particular era. All I have mentioned and more give the film an acute feel and sense of atmosphere.
The two Jakes.
In an interview Nicholson once stated he is a biographical actor, and I believe his J.J Gittes character holds a big place in his heart. I earlier wrote Gittes was written with Jack in mind. Let's look at the name, J.J. Nicholson's birth name is John Joseph Nicholson. Hence the J.J. Jack arrived in Hollywood shortly after his high school graduation in 1954. At that time Hollywood was still a place of dreams and make believe. One of his first jobs was in the cartoon department at the old MGM Studios in Culver City. All gone now. No Pussycat Theaters back then {or now, even}, no homeless folks shuffling up and down Hollywood Boulevard, little senseless crime and gang violence. Gangs in 1948 meant Mafia, not Bloods and Crips. The world was still widescreen, color and CinemaScope. Two Jakes opens in 1948, not exactly when the young Jack arrived in SoCal, but a close enough approximation. Jack remembers what the town was like and how much it has changed and Two Jakes is not only about people but a time and place that doesn't exist anymore and the film winds up being a sad, reflective movie, not one of the characteristics usually associated with Nicholson or his movies, nor of film noir or neo-noir, but he is Irish after all, and if you ever see his acceptance speech at the 1994 American Film Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony, when he was it's youngest recipient {at age 57} of that once prodigious award, you will witness a man who is emotional and reflective with a deep sense of where he came from and the journey he has traveled. Two Jakes is not a perfect film. It doesn't have the jaw-dropping "My sister, my daughter" scene or intensity of it's older film brother, but viewed with an open mind and no expectations, is quite entertaining, though not in a mindless X-Men or Iron Man kind of way. Our appreciation of film is based on the past we have experienced. Everyone has a past, good or bad. We all have regrets and deeds we would like to forget. The way we view our past through a deluded prism of our minds eye is what keeps us together, keeps us sane, keeps us going. Without our illusions we might as well quit before we start. The Two Jakes reminds us that it isn't always so easy. It takes a lot of work to remake the past in our own image and that there are three versions to every story : yours, mine, and the truth. Like Gittes tells Katherine 'Kitty' Berman about the past and it's haunting presence, it never goes away.
Sources : Jack's Life by Patrick McGilligan
IMDB on Chinatown and Two Jakes
Wikipedia on Jack Nicholson, Chinatown and Two Jakes
...and the viewing of the two films on disc.
The Freed Unit was a select group of talented individuals, the best in their field, who worked at MetroGoldwynMayer in the 1940's and 1950's, for a man named Arthur Freed. Freed was a producer of {mostly} musicals at MGM, an association that started back in 1929 when Freed and his partner, the lyricist Nacio Herb Brown, wrote songs for the Oscar winning Broadway Melody of 1929. By the late 30's Freed, who by this time had ingratiated himself with studio chief Louis B.Mayer, had ambitions to produce. Freed was instrumental in signing Judy Garland to a long term contract in 1935 and was a key player in the making of The Wizard of Oz, on which he was an associate producer { albeit uncredited }. His first solo producer credit was later that year with the first Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland {"hey kids, let's build ourselves a barn and put on our own show!"} musical, Babes in Arms. The tremendous success of Babes led to a series of Mickey/Judy musicals: 1940's Strike Up The Band; 1941's Babes on Broadway and 1943's Girl Crazy, all made by Freed and all very popular with the vast { weekly cinema attendance in 1940 : 80 million. Average price of ticket : $.25 cents } movie going public.
The start of something big: Freed on the left, Garland and Edens, sometime in the late 30's
From the start, Roger Edens was an integral part of 'The Unit', or as Hugh Fordin states in his magnificent book on the Freed Unit, Edens was "the cornerstone". Born in Hillsboro, Texas in 1905, Edens, a tall lanky gent with a slow, southern drawl, went east to New York City in the 1920's. By 1930 Edens was playing piano in the pit for the Gershwin's musical comedy show Girl Crazy, along with some other rising musicians like Gene Krupa, Benny Goodman, the Dorseys, Glenn Miller and Red Nichols. Also in the show was Ethel Merman and Girl Crazy made her a star of the first magnitude along the 'Great White Way'. When movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn signed Merman to a contract, her first picture for him being 1934's Kid Millions opposite Eddie Cantor, Merman brought Edens, by this time her friend and protege, along as her uncredited music and vocal arranger. Being an independent, Goldwyn didn't make a lot of movies per year and he made even fewer that were musicals. Edens, exiting the Goldwyn studios, was free-lancing for awhile until, thanks to Freed, he soon had a job at the biggest studio of them all, MetroGoldwynMayer. His first assignment was as musical supervisor on the Jean Harlow film, Reckless. Other films followed, usually as musical supervisor or vocal arranger : Broadway Melody of 1936, Rosalie, Born to Dance, Love Finds Andy Hardy, Honolulu, and others. Edens was also responsible for the 'Dear Mr. Gable' segment of Broadway Melody of 1938, in which a star struck, teenaged Judy Garland sings about her devotion to her favorite movie star. Edens was there with Freed right from the beginning, and after Babes in Arms, he was the first major player of the Freed Unit.
Rehearsing with the young Judy. Roger Edens was both friend and musical mentor to her, all her life.
Or the "Fairy Unit" as some called it, due to the high amount of gay talent the Freed Unit attracted. Edens was married to a woman named Martha LaPrelle before he came to Hollywood, but the marriage didn't last long. His good friend and birthday buddy { both were born on November 9 } Kay Thompson claims to have met Martha only once. By the time he met Garland and was working at MGM, Edens was living the life of a gay man. Whatever the case - either straight or gay, married or not - Edens was very comfortable in California as many of his New York friends also found themselves out west; names like Claudette Colbert, Margaret Sullivan, Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn and James Stewart, to drop just a few, were all young, talented and starting off on marvelous careers. Edens seems to have been everyone's friend. "Just peaches and cream", is the way Thompson described him. Leonard Gershe who would write Edens best known credit as a producer, 1957's Funny Face, says "Roger was responsible for the 'class' of the Freed Unit, and the Freed Unit was the Rolls-Royce of Hollywood". Why Edens rarely received the credit that was coming to him may have something to do with doing too much, but doing it well, for as Gershe also said,"No one was ever quite sure what Roger did, but whatever he did was crucial to the picture". It also appears that Edens was the only one who intimidated Freed. According to director Stanley Donen, "All Roger had to do was raise an eyebrow over an element in a scene that Arthur was trying to put in, and it would disappear". By 1946 with the release of The Harvey Girls, Edens was finally getting some credit on the silver screen for his contributions and had an associate producer credit for the first time on that film. Other associate producer credits would follow, as the Freed Unit and the Hollywood musical went into it's 'Golden Age' : Good News in 1947, The Barkleys of Broadway and On The Town both in 1949 and The Band Wagon from 1953. As Adolph Green said of him, "Roger was indispensable to Arthur. He worked on the scripts, the music, he coached Garland, wrote for her - Roger did it all". One of his best contributions, and one he did get credit for along with Kay Thompson, was Judy Garland's number, "A Great Lady Has An Interview" from Ziegfeld Follies of 1946, a lively, witty send-up of a Greer Garson diva-type movie star who takes her own reputation far too seriously.
Edens with best pal Kay Thompson, in the mid-40's, in a picture they presented to Arthur Freed.
Roger also liked to have fun. "Southern, polite, adored what he was doing, and loved to play and drink", says Kay Thompson." Roger was my best friend". Their annual birthday bashes for each other were legendary. Garland would perform, Lena Horne too. Ann Southern, Ray Bolger, Danny Kaye, Charles Walters, Cole Porter, all the best and brightest would be there. For one such party songwriter Ralph Blane composed something called, "Roger de Coverly" and Garland and Peter Lawford performed it, after rehearsing in private for weeks. Roger just sat there, listening. And crying.
Edens supervising a recording session with Betty Hutton and Howard Keel for Annie Get Your Gun, 1950
Edens was nominated for 8 Academy Awards from 1939 to 1950 and went on to win 3 for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture { a category long since gone } on Easter Parade in 1948, On The Town in 1949 and Annie Get Your Gun in 1950. Roger was also a guiding force behind the 1951 version of Showboat, and discovered William Warfield after reading a rave review of a song recital Warfield gave in New York. Edens also supervised the cutting of the "Ol' Man River" sequence, in what is a highlight of the picture.
By 1954, Freed wanted Edens to produce his own film. It was time. Deep in My Heart from 1954, was that film. The movie, directed by Stanley Donen { "Roger was my biggest promoter" }, is biopic of operetta songwriter Sigmund Romberg, played by Jose Ferrer. It started under the Freed Unit but Arthur turned it over to Edens. Donen has said, "I would have run from that picture like crazy except for Roger. I told him I would direct anything for him". Hard to sit through, in it's day the film was popular enough and turned a small profit. However, the Hollywood musical, or specifically the original Hollywood musical, was a dying breed and studio execs didn't want to take a chance on anything unless it was a proven hit, like Broadway's West Side Story, Damn Yankees, Silk Stockings, and so on. On occasion, Roger would do side jobs for friends. In 1954, Garland, having been fired from MGM after 15 years and millions of box office dollars, set up an independent company with new hubby Sid Luft at Warner Brothers to bring a musical version of A Star is Born to the screen as Judy's big comeback and her first celluloid effort in 4 years. Edens, always at the ready, came up with the "Born in a Trunk" sequence for the film, which was added after director George Cukor had left the production to go to India and start Bhowani Junction. It's the big production number in the film, and to some it unnecessarily slows down an already long movie {it runs three hours}. However, most Garland fans love it, as Judy really shines in this sequence. Due to Edens contractual obligation to MGM, however, he could not take credit for his contribution. Also uncredited around this time was Edens work on some of the decade's biggest, best musicals; 1951's Best Picture winner An American in Paris, and all-time favorite, 1952's Singin' in the Rain. By 1955, 'The Unit' was running down, and Edens last for Freed would be the underrated It's Always Fair Weather which also marked the last collaboration between Donen, Freed and Gene Kelly. A flop in it's day, Fair Weather has been rediscovered and is considered a neglected gem and a bittersweet farewell to the original musical genre.
1957's Funny Face is a Roger Edens production all the way, from concept to execution. Completely captivating, with songs from the Gershwins' catalog of classics, it started life as an MGM production called Wedding Day. Edens wanted Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire to star in it from the outset, but at the time they were both under contract to rival Paramount studios, and that studio refused to loan the two stars to MGM. So in a bit of maneuvering, MGM { no doubt with the influence of Freed } decided to sell the entire package to Paramount. Call it 'The Freed Unit' on Marathon Street or the only MGM movie not made in Culver City, MGM's home. In Funny Face, Audrey does her own singing { helped more than slightly by Kay Thompson's vocal coaching } not dubbed like in 1964's My Fair Lady, and though her vocal range is limited, she can carry tune and has great charm and a wistful quality to her voice, especially in the 'How Long Has This Been Going On' number. Astaire is Astaire which, as always, means perfection. Despite the fact that Fred is 30 years Audrey's senior, it really doesn't matter, for as director Donen states, "Fred Astaire has no age". And in Funny Face, Fred and Audrey have a great chemistry and age vanishes before one's eyes. Set in the world of high fashion, Fred plays photographer Dick Avery, Hepburn is a mousey Greenwich Village book store employee named Jo Stockton and all but stealing the picture is Kay Thompson, as fashion magazine editor Maggie Prescott, who sets the whole plot in motion by needing a new face for her magazine, Quality. The film's visual consultant was photographer Richard Avedon, the photos in the opening of the film are his and the plot, a Pygmalion-type scenario, is loosely based on his marriage to Doe Avedon who became a fashion model at her husband's urging.
Released in the spring of 1957, critically acclaimed, though something of a disappointment at the box office, Funny Face did garner 4 Oscar noms, one for Best Writing for Leonard Gershe, Best Costumes for Edith Head and Hubert de Givenchy, Best Color Cinematography for Ray June and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration. It won none of these, but it has quite a following among lovers of Astaire, Audrey, fashion, musicals, and remains stylish filmmaking, the likes of which we will probably never see again. Most of the credit for this belongs to Edens who recognized the casting of Fred and Audrey was just perfect, helped guide Gershe through his rewrites of the script, and knew that Donen was the right man to get the story on film. It would be Edens last as sole producer.
His last film credits as associate producer would be on 1962's Billy Rose's Jumbo with Doris Day, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, a 1964 adaptation of the Broadway hit, and 1969's Hello, Dolly!, which was directed by Freed associate and musical icon, Gene Kelly. A chain smoker nearly all his life, Roger Edens would die on July 13, 1970 of cancer, only 64 years old, and pretty much unknown by movie goers. Yet for anyone who has ever been touched by the Smith family in St. Louis, trotted down a rain-drenched Hollywood street with Don Lockwood or gone on the town with Chip, Gabey and Ozzie, to name just a few, Edens massive contributions to the film musical should never be forgotten.
Sources : Dancing on the Ceiling : Stanley Donen and his films by Stephen M.Silverman, The World of Entertainment : The Freed Unit at MGM By Hugh Fordin, Judy Garland : The Secret Life of an American Legend by David Shipman
Video : Musicals Great Musicals : The Freed Unit at MGM
Internet : Wikipedia page on Roger Edens
IMDB page on Roger Edens
