When I think of musical films from 1960 to 1972, some have been praised to the sky and back--some deservedly so (Cabaret), some less so (The Sound of Music). Other, however, are forgotten not quite so deservedly. Some of these movies are written off as prime examples of what was wrong with Hollywood in the 1960s. To many, Tinseltown was out of step and out of fashion with the tenor of the time--the Vietnam War and its related protests, assassinations, race riots, civil rights movements, free speech, and the general anti-establishment vibe of many young people.
In spite of all this cultural upheaval, Hollywood was still turning out limp Doris Day romantic comedies, ordinary westerns, and flat dramas that audiences were no longer interested in seeing. Every once in a while, however, the studios managed to extract a diamond from the increasingly dusty coalmine of old Hollywood One such understated, underrated gem is 1969's musical remake of the 1939 Robert Donat-Greer Garson classic, Goodbye, Mr. Chips.
Based on that popular, Oscar-winning 1939 film (that I find dull and extremely difficult to watch from start to finish) and adapted from James Hilton's novel, the 1969 version of Chips was a long time in the making. It started around 1962 with film composer, Andre Previn, approaching MGM studio heads with an idea of transforming one of the studio's beloved classics into a musical. Metro gave Previn the green light, though musicals of the early Sixties were risky. Despite a recent slew of successfully filmed Broadway adaptations, including West Side Story, The Music Man, and Gypsy, there were just as many flops or disappointments (Porgy and Bess; Can-Can; Flower Drum Song) to offset them. At the time, if audiences named the best known musical movie actor, it probably was Elvis Presley.
With the release of Warner Brothers' mega-budgeted My Fair Lady in 1964--an enormous money maker ($34 million rentals, $72 million gross) that won eight Oscars--a musical onslaught that properly caught fire with the unforeseen bonanza of Rodgers & Hammerstein's The Sound of Music began. The Sound of Music (1965) became an absolute phenomenon, supplanting Gone with the Wind's twenty-six year run as the most financially successful movie ever made. At this point every studio in town was searching for the next Sound of Music. Columbia came up with the big hit, Funny Girl (1968), which unleashed Barbra Streisand on the world, and Columbia had another big winner with Oliver! (1968's Oscar winner for Best Picture), a musical based on Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist. On tap across the valley at Universal was a splashy Ross Hunter extravaganza that was very popular, Thoroughly Modern Millie, with (again) Julie Andrews as a 1920's flapper.
In this mad scramble for musical success, however, more than a few duds were released. Fox, which should have known better, tried topping the success of Sound of Music with some ultra-budgeted failures like Star!, the film that reunited Julie Andrews with her Sound of Music director, Robert Wise; Doctor Dolittle, with Rex Harrison as the title character who talked to the animals; and the biggest of them all, a $24 million production of Hello, Dolly!, with a miscast Streisand, far too young for the role of matchmaker Dolly Levi, in an exceedingly lavish production. Sweet Charity, with Bob Fosse getting his big-time break as choreographer and film director after years working on Broadway and as an actor in small roles in film, was nevertheless a box office failure with just $8 million return on a $20 million budget. Warners struck out with the inflated Camelot and an interesting attempt at Finian's Rainbow made by an up-and-coming Francis Ford Coppola, starring Fred Astaire in his first film musical since 1957's Silk Stockings. Similarly, Paramount came up with a trio of not uninteresting financial losers: Lerner and Loewe's Paint Your Wagon; Blake Edwards' Darling Lili starring his wife, Julie Andrews, and Rock Hudson; and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, with Vincente Minnelli directing the ubiquitous Barbra Streisand through the rigors of time travel and ESP.
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| Together again : Rex and Julie, the reunion that almost was |
With all that activity going on around town, MGM's slate for its latest musical was remarkably low key. When first announced in late 1964, Goodbye, Mr. Chips' original plan was to have Vincente Minnelli directing the musical, with music and lyrics by Andre and Dory Previn, and playwright Terence Rattigan taking on the adaptation and making it relevant to a contemporary Sixties audience. Former agent, the ambitious Arthur P. Jacobs, produced, a task he also performed at Fox with Dolittle. MGM was trying hard for a reunion of Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews, the co-stars of My Fair Lady on Broadway, as Chipping and his young vivacious wife, Katherine. Harrison was announced as the lead in January 1965.Then just as suddenly Harrison was out. Richard Burton then became the role's front runner. Then Burton was out, too. Andrews, by this time, had cooled on the idea of playing second fiddle to either Harrison or Burton. Sophia Loren let MGM know she was interested. Also up for the part of Mrs. Chipping was Samantha Eggar and Audrey Hepburn. Meanwhile, Minnelli was replaced by Gower Champion, who, in turn, bowed out. Finally, Herbert Ross, choreographer on Funny Girl and Doctor Dolittle was named to the director's chair. When Peter O'Toole, lured by the Rattigan script, signed on to play Chipping, with pop singer Petula Clark, fresh from Finian's Rainbow, to play Katherine, Goodbye, Mr. Chips was ready to begin filming at last.
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| Make no mistake: Chips is O'Toole's movie |
With a budget of $9 million, the musical Chips, although pricey, pales in comparison to other roadshow production costs like Paint Your Wagon ($20 million), Hello, Dolly! ($24 million), Darling Lili ($25 million), and Star! ($14 million). The production was an exquisitely crafted work that was underappreciated upon release in 1969. And that neglected attitude persists to this day. Critics trashed the film, calling Goodbye, Mr. Chips a travesty to the memory of the original {Clive Hirschhorn in his book, The Hollywood Musical called O'Toole's performance "unconvincing and unappealing"}. Critics particularly took issue with the updates made to the story: While the original took place from the 1870s to the early 1930s, the remake spanned the 1920s to the 1960s. The story of Chipping's wife Katherine was another point of departure, with her character changing from a suffragette who dies in child birth to a musical comedy star of the London stage who (spoilers!) is killed during a World War II air raid. Then there was the problem of O'Toole's inability to sing the musical score of Leslie Bricusse. O'Toole wisely plays his musical moments with a talk/sing style that works at least as well as Rex Harrison's in My Fair Lady. Petula Clark is given the tough job of keeping Katherine modern and vivacious to contemporary audiences, yet touching enough for us to see what Chipping sees in her. That she didn't go on to have a successful movie career says more about Petula Clark being at the wrong place at the wrong time than it does about her talent, which is considerable. She would have to be to keep up with her co-star.
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| Peter O'Toole here with real-life wife, Sian Phillips, as the outrageously flamboyant Ursula Mossbank, though I swear she's Tallulah Bankhead. Phillips steals every scene in which she appears. |
After the larger-than-life characters he had portrayed since 1962's Lawrence of Arabia, here O'Toole seems to relish the ordinariness of Chipping's orderly life. When Chipping meets Clark's music hall performer, he doesn't know what to do; rather, Katherine makes the first move, inviting Chipping to a party and demonstrating what different worlds each comes from. It also demonstrates that those differences are what will also hold them together later in the story. Few aspects of Goodbye, Mr. Chips indicate that this is Herbert Ross's directorial debut. The film wasn't an easy shoot, and the director pulls it off with the style and ease of a veteran helmer. Ross was clearly born to be a film director, and Chips set him on the path to other first rate entertainments, including Funny Lady, The Last of Sheila, The Goodbye Girl, and The Turning Point. And that is only some of his output from the Seventies.
It isn't surprising that this remake of Goodbye, Mr. Chips wasn't a hit with the public or the critics. In movies, 1969 was possibly the peak for youth culture, with releases like Easy Rider and Woodstock competing successfully against more traditional fare. O'Toole's Oscar nomination for Best Actor is seen as something of a miracle, yet it is much deserved. He won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical. Unfortunately, nearly all the rest of the movie was forgotten come awards time, with the lone exception being the film's musical score. That Sian Phillips was over looked was especially disappointing. These days the film has its share of champions (including myself): IMDb has a 7 rating of 10, and Rotten Tomatoes ranks the film as "Fresh" with a 70%.
Sources
Books: Road-Show: The Fall of Musicals in the 1960s by Matthew Kennedy
The MGM Story by John Douglas Eames
The Hollywood Musicals by Clive Hirschhorn
Peter O'Toole: The Definitive Biography by Robert Sellers
Internet: IMDb
Wikipedia
Rotten Tomatoes
Production photos
Video : Turner Classic Movies
