The Confessional: The Chase {1966}

The Chase is one of those films nearly everyone loves to hate. Ridiculed upon its release in spring 1966, the film has been portrayed as a wild look inside a small Texas town on what seems like a typical Saturday night--a fancy dress-up party for the chief industrialist; the drunken near-orgies of the middle age, middle class crowd; secret and not-so-secret affairs of the body and the heart; beatings, misogyny, and racism. Just an average night. The thing that throws the town even further into chaos is the return of one Bubber Reeves (Robert Redford), newly escaped from prison and making his way back to his home town.

On paper the film seemed a sure-fire hit. The story originated as a book and play by Horton Foote. Oscar-winning producer Sam Spiegel (The African Queen; On the Waterfront; Suddenly, Last Summer; Lawrence of Arabia) bought the rights and hired playwright Lillian Hellman to adapt it. Marlon Brando was attached to the project practically from its inception. Brando was in the middle of his generally woeful 1960s period and had signed on for the cut rate of $750,000 (down from the $1 million he received for The Fugitive Kind, Sidney Lumet's 1960 adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending). The Chase cast was diverse, filled with a solid line-up of character actors--E.G. Marshall, Robert Duvall, Janice Rule, Henry Hull, Bruce Cabot, Miriam Hopkins--and young up-and-comers, including Jane Fonda, James Fox, and Robert Redford.

To direct, Spiegel considered some of the biggest names in the business: William Wyler; David Lean, an odd choice, given the material; Elia Kazan, likely due to the casting of Brando; and Fred Zinnemann. Joseph L. Mankiewicz was lined up but wanted Bubber and his wife, Anna, to be black, and Spiegel wouldn't comply. Ultimately, Arthur Penn was given the director's chair. Penn was a good choice. He had had tremendous success with actors (Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke won Oscars for Penn's The Miracle Worker, released in 1962), yet he was still considered a newcomer to the Hollywood establishment. Penn had just completed a rather avant-garde film, Mickey One, with Warren Beatty which failed miserably at the box office and befuddled much of the critical community. Further, in Hollywood, New Yorker Penn was committing the ultimate betrayal--he wouldn't move to the west coast permanently and didn't play by the town's rules. Nevertheless, he hoped The Chase would cement his position as an A-list director.

Screenwriter Lillian Hellman had worked on Broadway with Penn on the hit Toys in the Attic. "We were pretty good friends," says Penn. At this point, though, according to the director, "Lillian was pretty annoying and not really functioning very well." Fortunately, during pre-production, Penn enjoyed Spiegel's company, finding the producer elegant and cultured, and his suggestions on the screenplay helpful: "Sam was pretty good on construction."

Robert Duvall's Edwin Stewart meekly watches wife Emily (Janice Rule)
enjoy a motorcycle while playing to the camera in The Chase

But the screenplay seemed to be the main source of the production's problems. It's also what most critics pointed to as the most weakest aspect of the film. Ivan Moffat (A Place in the Sun, Giant, Bhowani Junction) and even Horton Foote were brought in to improve the story and dialogue, but the movie seemed to be stuck in Peyton Place mode. According to Penn, once filming began, Spiegel was nowhere to be found, though his minions were delivering scene rewrites to the set on a near-daily basis. "Once the film started shooting, there was no exchange between us," Penn stated. Then things went from bad to worse when Spiegel took control in the editing room. Panned by critics except for some in Europe, The Chase had cost $5.6 million. It did not make its money back in initial release.

Director Arthur Penn points out a thing or two to his star, Marlon Brando

I can't quite recall when I first saw The Chase, but I know I was in high school, that terrifically impressionable time. I was taken with it immediately in spite of its soapy elements. If it wasn't for my interest in Marlon Brando at that time, it probably would have taken longer for The Chase to appear on my radar. But as a teenager, I was determined to see all of Brando's films when they showed on television. The Chase was one of the earlier ones, along with The Men, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Wild One, and Guys and Dolls. In The Chase, his Sheriff Calder is low-key, making the nightly rounds of the small Texas town (actually the Warner's backlot in Burbank, California), trying to keep a lid on its citizens' overheated emotions and find escaped convict Bubber before an angry mob does. As mentioned, Robert Redford is Bubber Reeves, the escapee everyone in town is frightened of, fascinated by, or both. Jane Fonda plays Anna, Bubber's wife, who is having an affair with Bubber's best friend, Jake Rogers (James Fox), son of town tycoon, Val Rogers (E.G. Marshall).

Other folks in town include sexy Janice Rule as Emily Stewart, wife of a schlubby Edwin Stewart, played by Robert Duvall; Richard Bradford as town bully Damon Fuller, who is having one of those affairs of the body with Emily Stewart; Henry Hull as a racist landlord; Miriam Hopkins as Bubber's mother; and so on. From just this bit of character detail, you get a fair sense of the soapy, Peyton Place-style elements. As the critics opined, the plot is the main flaw in the film. It's overheated and overly simplistic. The characters are not well written, though there is some good dialogue, mostly spoken by Brando's Calder. A spot-on Clifton James, marvelously doing his good ol' boy routine says to Calder, "The taxes in this town pay your salary to protect the place," to which Brando shoots back, "Well, if anything happens to you, Lem, we'll give you a refund." Lusty Emily's outlook: "Shoot a man for sleeping with someone's wife? That's silly. Half the town'd be wiped out."  

Jane Fonda, torn between two lovers in The Chase: James Fox on the left
and an impossibly young Robert Redford on the right

The Chase has situations that still resonate, including the blatant racism of the town's whites towards all its people of color; the limitations of small-town life; and the unhappy marriages (only Calder and his wife, played by Angie Dickinson, appear to be happily married). The infidelity, anger, drunkenness, and violence still strike a nerve more than fifty years on. One of the film's most brutal--startlingly brutal even today--scenes is when Sheriff Calder is beaten by some of the townspeople, waiting for Bubber's return. That violence peaks (spoilers ahead) with the murder of Bubber, and it looks deliberately staged to evoke the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald. While I don't know what audiences of the day thought, today the exploitative style of the scene leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Yet the film is strangely prescient--Trump's MAGA, fifty years before it happened.

Richard Bradford and Janice Rule continue their acquaintance in The Chase

The Internet Movie Database gives The Chase a middling rating, but that's based on only six critics. If you give into it, though, The Chase provides many pleasures, in spite of its obvious faults. Funny that a movie that was a joke in 1966 feels so relevant today.

Sources

Books-
Sam Spiegel by Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni
Films of Marlon Brando  by Tony Thomas
Internet-
IMDB
Rotten Tomatoes
Wikipedia
Disc-
Blu Ray courtesy of Twilight Time 

The Mystery of "One-Take Woody" Van Dyke

One of the things I enjoy most about classic cinema is its total artificiality. The majority--like, 90% or more--of the Hollywood films from the 1920s to 1950s were photographed within the boundaries of Hollywood and its neighboring suburbs. Just going to Lone Pine, California, to film 1939's Gunga Din (set in India) was a huge deal in its day. Watching these films gives me a real sense of the craftsmanship and creativity used to overcome obstacles that today would seem ridiculously mundane--a non-issue. With a filmography that stretches from the dawn of Hollywood's silent days as assistant director to luminaries like D.W. Griffith to just after the outbreak of World War II with his last film, Journey for Margaret, Woodbridge Strong (a.k.a., W.S.; a.k.a, Woody) Van Dyke II holds a unique place as one of the most overlooked, underappreciated directors you likely have never heard of in the pantheon of classic Hollywood filmmakers. Van Dyke also holds the distinction of going off on long location film shoots thirty or forty years before it became a common cinematic practice.

Woodbridge Strong Van Dyke II a.k.a.,
"One-Take Woody" Van Dyke

Van Dyke's movies ranged from semi-documentaries like Eskimo (1933), which had a film cast and crew shooting in the Arctic to the exotic, erotic White Shadows in the South Seas (1928), filmed on location in Tahiti; the African safari adventure epic, Trader Horn, filmed at least partly in Africa; pre-code classics, Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932) and Night Court; the early disaster epic, San Francisco (1936); Norma Shearer's comeback vehicle, the lavish Marie Antoinette (1938); and five Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy popular operettas, including Naughty Marietta and Rose Marie (1935 and 1936, respectively). If Van Dyke is remembered at all today, it's mostly for his screwball comedies, particularly the films he made with William Powell and Myrna Loy--The Thin Man (1934), its first three sequels, and I Love You Again (1940). Other screwball offerings by Van Dyke are Forsaking All Others (1934) and the woefully underrated It's a Wonderful World (1939) with Claudette Colbert and Jimmy Stewart. Woody even directed an episode in the Andy Hardy series. All of this is to say, that the guy could direct anything and was truly one of Golden Era's most productive directors, helming over sixty movies in less than twenty-five years.

Comedy team supreme William Powell and Myrna Loy as
Nick and Nora Charles in 1934's The Thin Man

Of course the best known of Van Dyke's films has to be The Thin Man and its sequels. Based on the book by ace mystery scribe Dashiell Hammett, the film is probably my favorite Van Dyke, and one I can watch anytime. It's even admired by friends of mine who don't particularly like classic movies. It contains nearly everything a good screwball comedy should: a classic leading man--William Powell playing the suave and hilarious Nick Charles--quick with the one liners and even quicker with a martini shaker--and a beautiful leading lady in Myrna Loy as Nick's wise-cracking wife, Nora, who tries to keep up with Nick drink for drink and can give out with the one liners as good as he can. The cast, the writing, the mise-en-scène create the perfect cocktail of sophisticated comedy. The Thin Man is also a mystery with a murder plot and numerous suspects. But what really matters is the interplay between the two leads (Powell and Loy make marriage look fun), both experts in light comedy. Filmed in a speedy eighteen days, it was one of the first in a long line of what became known as "screwball" comedies. Along with such classics as Howard Hawks' Twentieth Century, Frank Capra's Best Picture Oscar winner, It Happened One Night, The Thin Man helped define the genre that flourished during the Great Depression.

Cheers! Nick and Nora indulge one of their favorite vices in The Thin Man

Van Dyke himself was married in 1909 to Zina Ashford, about whom little is known (Wikipedia says she was an actress). Robert C. Cannom's book, Van Dyke and the Mythical City Hollywood, the only bio written on Van Dyke, states that they met when Van Dyke was working in a lumber camp in Ashford, Washington, a town named after Zina's father, but makes no mention of her acting career. They separated around 1919 but didn't divorce until 1935. Cannom's book doesn't say when the divorce took place, but in 1935 Woody married Ruth Mannix, the niece of MGM studio's general manager and fixer, Eddie Mannix. Ruth and Woody eventually had three children before his death in 1943. Very little beyond generalities is known of Van Dyke's private life. Reportedly he was a devout follower of Christian Science, best known in Hollywood as the faith of Jean Harlow and her mother, and was the rumored reason for Harlow's death in 1937.

So little has been written about Van Dyke that even his working methods are a bit of a mystery. Signed by MGM in 1926, Woody was well known for getting the best from his cast while shooting fast and loose. The eighteen days it took to complete The Thin Man wasn't an exception; rather, more than likely, it was the rule on a Van Dyke set. Believing "everything must be done casually," 1939's It's a Wonderful World must have set a world speed record with its twelve-day shoot. Don't think that Van Dyke's speed-of-sound filming technique sacrificed quality, either. It's a Wonderful World is one of the forgotten gems of screwball comedy. In addition to speed, Van Dyke had a way with performers. William Powell, Myrna Loy, Robert Montgomery, Joan Crawford, and others give some of their least affected performances in Van Dyke's films. Even Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy were charming when working with "One-Take Woody," the nickname he'd acquired due to his ability to bring in a movie on schedule and under budget. This talent also endeared him to his boss Louis B. Mayer, the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios.

Van Dyke with star Norma Shearer as Marie Antoinette

 

1938's Marie Antoinette, which starred Norma Shearer in her first movie after husband and MGM production chief Irving Thalberg's untimely death in 1936 at the age of 37, is a film unlike any other in Van Dyke's filmography. According to Gavin Lambert, original director Sidney Franklin wanted to film in color with a ninety-day schedule. Feeling this extravagant, producer Hunt Stromberg went to MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer and requested a change of director. Mayer was worried that a methodical director like Franklin could drive up an already costly production, and suggested Van Dyke, well known not only for his speed but also his versatility. He was a last-minute replacement. Three days before shooting began Mayer informed Shearer that Van Dyke was the film's new director. The set was, at times, quite a tense atmosphere as differences arose between director and star. At one point, Norma demanded a second take; Van Dyke refused. Norma left the set. Uninterested in a stand-off, Van Dyke did too. He went home, poured a drink, and took his phone off the hook.

The next day, according to Lambert, "Norma listened without complaint to Van Dyke's instructions for the next shot. She nodded, walked proudly toward her mark--then caught her foot in the hoops of her crinoline, overbalanced, and fell flat on the floor of Versailles. A taut, embarrassed silence followed. It was broken by the Queen [Shearer], who kicked her legs in the air and laughed. Everyone joined in, and Van Dyke decided Norma was 'the sweetest damn woman in Hollywood.'" From that point forward, Norma thought Van Dyke was all right too, and they worked well together. Similarly, Van Dyke had his share of run-ins with Jeanette MacDonald on the films they made together. One way or other, though, they always made up and carried on. "We just seemed to think alike," she said.

Van Dyke, his wife Ruth, Jeanette MacDonald,
and Nelson Eddy during the making of Rose Marie

An odd thing about the success Van Dyke had with the Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy films is that he wasn't at all musical. But I guess that goes to show one doesn't have to be to make a good musical. While my taste in musicals leans more to the Judy Garland-Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers pairings in which dancing is just important as singing, the movies Woody made with MacDonald and Eddy are pretty entertaining. I find Ms. MacDonald quite fetching. Van Dyke also worked with MacDonald on what may be his best achievement--the 1936 blockbuster, San Francisco. Along with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy in the first of that pair's three films together (see also Test Pilot and Boom Town), San Francisco is the grandad of disaster epics, with the earthquake of 1906 serving as the centerpiece of the movie. The movie is still impressive today and was MGM's biggest moneymaker ($2.2 million dollars in profit, or $26 million in 2019 dollars) until Gone With the Wind surpassed it.

Myrna Loy, Van Dyke, unidentified woman,
and William Powell on the set of 1936's After The Thin Man

Van Dyke's career continued into the 1940s. With the United States finally entering World War II in late 1941, Woody found himself in uniform, convincing MGM stars Clark Gable, James Stewart, and Robert Taylor to become active in the war effort as well. Van Dyke himself was too old to become actively involved in the war, but that's not what prevented him from seeing action as contemporaries John Ford, Frank Capra, and others did. In 1942 while undergoing his physical examination for active duty, Van Dyke discovered he not only had a weak heart--no doubt due to excessive smoking and drinking--but he also had cancer. Being a Christian Scientist, Van Dyke rejected most forms of medical treatment and care during this time. Despite this setback, Van Dyke remained as busy as ever at MGM, making four features in 1942. The last, Journey for Margaret, unleashed the incredible child star Margaret O'Brien on moviegoers and was one of Metro's biggest hits of the year.

On February 4, 1943, Van Dyke summoned to his house MGM boss Louis B. Mayer along with Howard Strickling, the studio's head of publicity. Mayer told Van Dyke that the studio had any number of films lined up for him when he felt well enough to return. Later, Van Dyke contacted some old friends from the silent days to come over for a round or two of drinks, one last hurrah. According to Robert Cannom's book, Van Dyke called his wife, Ruth, who was at their ranch home, and asked how the children were (they had three by this time, two boys and a girl), then called his mother to assure her he was doing fine. Then he died. This is the mystery. Neither Cannom's book explains how Van Dyke died; nor does Alicia Mayer, Louis B. Mayer's great grandniece, in her blog about Hollywood and it's history; nor do many other books about the stars Van Dyke worked with. Charles Higham, never one to shy from scandal, in his book on Louis B Mayer, Merchant of Dreams, says only that Van Dyke died due to his bad heart and liver. Edward Baron Turk's book about Jeanette MacDonald, Hollywood Diva, states Van Dyke died in his sleep. Only Sharon Rich in her book about MacDonald and Eddy, Sweethearts, says that Van Dyke killed himself with sleeping pills. Why the mystery? Reportedly the suicide angle wasn't mentioned to save the family further grief or scandal. If so, it has to be the one under reported death in Hollywood history. I imagine that folks figured his illness killed him.

W.S. Van Dyke II was one-of-a-kind, and movies and the Hollywood community sorely missed him after he was gone. He made some of the most entertaining movies I've seen, and I re-visit them all the time. Some of my favorites include The Thin Man, After The Thin Man, San Francisco, White Shadows in the South Seas, Forsaking All Others, Marie Antoinette and It's a Wonderful World.

     

Sources:
              Books:
               Claudette Colbert, the Pyramid Illustrated History of the Movies by William K. Everson
               Hollywood Diva by Edward Baron Turk
               Sweethearts by Sharon Rich
               Norma Shearer by Gavin Lambert
               Van Dyke and the Mythical City of Hollywood by Robert C. Cannom
               Merchant of Dreams by Charles Higham
               Mayer and Thalberg by Samuel Marx

               Films: Turner Classic Movies
     
               Internet: Wikipedia

               Photos: Google Images

Sentimental Journey: Orson Welles' "The Magnificent Ambersons"

Wonderful opening narration married to sublime images.

Among cinephiles, that crazy, obsessed handful of barely human species for whom movies--no, cinema--is all, the career of Orson Welles is a puzzle and a paradox, an oeuvre maddeningly incomplete. Welles' first film, the exquisite and audacious--yet far from perfect--masterpiece, Citizen Kane, has been acknowledged as one of the greatest films of the Twentieth Century. Great and influential as that movie is, however, the remainder of the director's work suffered from interference from studio bosses, Welles' own bad judgement and bad luck. Until 1942, Welles had the best luck of almost any creature to walk the earth--or at least the studio lots of Hollywood. After that and through to his death in 1985, Welles suffered some of the worst luck of those same creatures.

The bad luck began with Welles' second feature at RKO Studios, The Magnificent Ambersons, a film that may be his most personal. Evidently, Ambersons' author Booth Tarkington knew, or at least had met Orson's inventor father, Richard Welles, and Orson, for the rest of his life, insisted the character of Eugene Morgan (played by Joseph Cotton in the film), whose invention and design of the automobile brings about the death of the Nineteenth Century in a small Indiana town, was based on his own father. Whether true or not, the important thing is that Welles believed it.

Welles' own life paralleled the story's main character, George Amberson Minafer (Tim Holt). Welles' first name was George, and he was called Georgie by his mother just as Isabel Minafer (Dolores Costello), George's mother, refers to him in the film. Like George, Welles was spoiled as a child and dreaded by his fellow classmates in school, much as Ambersons protagonist is despised by the townsfolk who cannot wait for the rich, spoiled brat to get his comeuppance. It is these comparisons that may have prevented Welles from taking on the role of George, a part he clearly understood but which may have been too close to him personally. Ambersons was the only production of Mercury Productions in which Welles would not play a substantial part.

A little backstory: Orson Welles' Citizen Kane opened in May 1941 to critical acclaim and public indifference. RKO Studios, which had courted Welles, wanted his second feature to be more commercial and less controversial. Welles was happy to give the studio masterworks, but they would not bring RKO what it craved more than artistic respect--financial solvency (RKO was a company seemingly always on the brink of monetary ruin). Kane wasn't particularly costly (final cost was $800,000), but considering all the hoopla and controversy the film caused related to its subject, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, RKO was hoping it would see a substantial profit from its investment. That did not come to pass. Consequently, with his second feature Welles was pressured by the studio boss, George Schaefer, to agree to film a more acceptable subject. RKO's agreement with the filmmaker did not include the all-important right to final cut, a clause that served as the agreement's most significant change as well as the single biggest factor in Welles' trouble with the studio's management during The Magnificent Ambersons’ production.

Welles with his photographer, Stanley Cortez.

The film's theme--the reason Welles was so drawn to the material--was that of progress squashing, stomping, and rolling over a more tranquil, slower, more civilized period of American history. The film lays out its intention from the opening scene with narrator Welles immediately establishing the film as a nostalgia piece: " The magnificence of the Ambersons began in 1873..." Welles once said that he was against his modern age, that progress could be taken as not progress at all, but a step back in civilization, which is precisely what Ambersons sets out to prove. Using the automobile as a device of destruction, Welles' shows how its invention brutally left behind the Nineteenth Century with its traditions of fancy dress balls, sleigh rides, and serenades. The Ambersons serve an illustration of the Nineteenth Century denizens who paid the price for progress.

The Magnificent Ambersons deals with the personal relationships of six main characters: Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotton), a widower, whose love for Isabel Amberson (Dolores Costello) sets the plot in motion. Early in the story, Iabel jilts Eugene and marries Wilbur Minafer whose only child, the spoiled George (Tim Holt), is a catalyst for the family's downfall. George's adverse reaction to Eugene's attentions to his mother after Wilbur dies that is the heart of the story. George's Aunt Fanny (Agnes Moorehead), Wilbur's spinster sister, also longs for Eugene. Lastly, there is Lucy (Anne Baxter) Eugene's only child, who George loves but cannot have him, and Jack Amberson (Ray Collins), Isabel's older brother and the most likable person in the film (and my favorite).

My favorite scene in Magnificent Ambersons : Jack's goodbye to George in the new train station

Filming on Ambersons began in late October 1941, some five months after Citizen Kane's premiere, and lasted three months, wrapping in late January 1942. (By this time Welles had been approached by the U.S.State Department and Nelson Rockefeller to film Carnival in Brazil as part of an effort to boost friendly relations with South America as part of the United States' Good Neighbor Policy. After the United States had joined World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, South America was seen as a country particularly vulnerable to Nazi take over.) World War II proved a significant factor in RKO's decision making once filming on Ambersons was completed and  unsuccessful previews were under way.

Filming began with high hopes and spirits soaring. Yet, according to Robert L. Carringer's definitive study on the film, The Magnificent Ambersons: A Reconstruction, as the filming of the scenes related to George's decidedly Oedipal relationship with his mother approached, Welles grew "increasingly moody and irritable." Welles had an intense relationship with his mother before she died when he was nine. It was at this moment that Nelson Rockefeller approached RKO and Welles with the South America project. According to Carringer, Welles accepted enthusiastically, both for the project and to distance himself from Ambersons. In February 1942, Welles headed down to Rio. While he was in South America, Orson Welles' luck took a permanent turn for the worse.

Orson rides again!

According to Welles, RKO was "to send a moviola (a machine used to edit film) and cutters (editors) to Rio. Never happened." Welles was in communication with his chief cutter, Robert Wise, who he had also worked with on Citizen Kane. Along with Jack Moss, Welles business manager, Wise was essentially given control of the film with Orson, of course, dictating his instructions via telegraph and sketchy phone connections. Eyeing an Easter opening in April, RKO decided to have hold a preview for the film in Pomona, California, an agricultural town east of Los Angeles in the San Bernardino Valley, on March 17, 1942. Ambersons  running time for that preview was 131 minutes. The main feature playing that night was a musical called The Fleet's In starring Dorothy Lamour, Betty Hutton, Eddie Bracken, and William Holden. The audience seems to have been made up mostly of youngsters seeking a good time, and they enjoyed the main feature. Then came Ambersons, which the audience nearly jeered Ambersons off the screen with walkouts aplenty. The preview cards the patrons filled out only confirmed the worst for Schaefer and the New York money men: Welles' brooding, complex, film was not what the good people of Pomona--or possibly anyone, anywhere--had bargained for. "More Chekhov than Tarkington," as Joseph Cotton wrote in a memo to Welles. Did Welles know what he had? Not being present to gauge the previews certainly didn't help matters. The next day RKO's executives were planning ways to cut the film to a more reasonable length, with whole scenes and character motivations left on the cutting room floor. Another preview was held in more hospitable Pasadena, California. The film was shorter--roughly 117 minutes, per studio documents--with cuts instructed by Welles when informed of the Pomona disaster.

Eugene and Isabel dance in the Ambersons mansion

RKO figured that with so much being cut extensive retakes would be needed. With Welles still in South America, editor Wise and assistant director Freddie Fleck re-shot some scenes mostly for the second half of the film. Additionally, previews were held in Inglewood, Pasadena, and Long Beach in April and May to a better, though still muted, response. At least we put "together a version that people would sit through and not walk out on," was the mindset of Wise, Fleck, Welles business manager Jack Moss, and others. The powers at RKO decided that it had the best version and released The Magnificent Ambersons in July 1942, playing on a double bill with a concoction named Mexican Spitfire Has a Baby. 


Orson Welles' fans often speak of The Magnificent Ambersons with reverence or solemness. With bravura direction, Welles reached a level of maturity, and, at times, a subtlety beyond his 26 years. Ambersons is nearly an old man's film, which is something I like best about the film. The film has sentimentality in the best sense of the word, for Welles was one of cinema's poets of lost worlds and past regrets in a society waiting for no one. As with his other, best known films, Welles presents Ambersons starkly, with truth and honest human emotion that downplay the gooey aspects that many directors cannot avoid, conveying a power and force that is often surprising.

Welles, on set with Tim Holt

The fate that befell Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons was as sad as the fate that befell its titular family. The story of a proud family teetering on the precipice of disaster was a prelude to the rest of Welles' life both professional and personal. If in 1942 Orson Welles was American cinema's Napoleon trying to conquer every aspect of theatricals, whether that be stage, motion pictures, or radio, then The Magnificent Ambersons was his Waterloo.

Sources
Books: The Magnifient Ambersons: A Reconstruction by Robert L. Carringer
           The Great Movies by William Bayer
           This Is Orson Welles by Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum
          Orson Welles, Volume Two: Hello Americans by Simon Callow

Photos: Web images
                               

Underrated Gem: Herbert Ross' Goodbye, Mr. Chips

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.

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.

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.

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            

The Confessional: Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)

Forgive me fellow film buffs, I'm a sinner. In movies many people fail to appreciate, I find my guiltiest pleasures. MGM's 1962 remake of its Oscar-winning 1935 success, Mutiny on the Bounty, has gone down in movie history as one of the most notorious productions of 1960's cinema. Alongside 20th Century-Fox's true disaster, Cleopatra, Bounty's primary claim to fame is as one of the films that killed Hollywood; picked the pocketbook of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; ended the career of an Oscar-winning veteran director; and stuck a dagger so deep in the heart of its star's image and prestige that it took a decade for his reputation to recover.

MGM's 1959 remake of Ben-Hur was the real culprit. That film was such a colossal hit, both financially and critically--it won an amazing eleven Oscars, including Best Picture--that its producers put into play a slew of remakes of the company's past hits: Cimarron, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and Mutiny on the Bounty. All of these films were costly and ran into budget problems. Bounty was, without a doubt, the most beloved of the bunch, mostly because Clark Gable, who played Fletcher Christian, the lead, in the 1935 original version, had passed away in early 1960, approximately the same time that Marlon Brando agreed to play the role in the remake. Famed British director Carol Reed (The Third Man, Fallen Idol, Odd Man Out) was tapped to helm the massive production. Noted thespians Trevor Howard as by-the-book Captain Bligh, Richard Harris, and Hugh Griffith also signed on.

The recreation of HMS Bounty

From the beginning, the remake of Mutiny on the Bounty was beset with problems. Filming was scheduled to begin in Tahiti on October 15, 1960; however, the full-scale replica of the HMS Bounty was not ready in time, and the script by famed writer Eric Ambler was a mess that pleased no one. Ambler eventually quit and was replaced by veteran screenwriter, Charles Lederer. Filming finally began in December, but by then the monsoon season had begun, so the entire company packed up and returned to the MGM studios in Culver City, California, to shoot interiors. Around this time, Carol Reed decided this Bounty was doomed to sink and, unlike a real captain, refused to go down with the ship, resigning as the film's director. He was replaced by the Oscar-winning Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front), and the Bounty was set to sail again.

One of the film's impressive action sequences

Interiors' filming began at MGM Studios in February 1961 with the company returning to Tahiti for location shooting in late March. Filming dragged on for months, with final scenes shot in October, nearly a full year after initial filming began. Problems with the script were the main concern, although many in the company pointed the finger at Brando and his unprofessional behavior as the real source of delays in filming. Reportedly, Bounty's lead did not get along with director Milestone (Milestone evidently told MGM studio chief Sol Siegel, "This guy Brando is going to ruin you"). According to Milestone's estimate, Brando's behavior cost the film $6 million beyond budget.

Brando was never really satisfied with the script, which was rewritten daily; the actor was more intrigued by the Pitcairn Island section of the film than the actual mutiny (veteran writer Ben Hecht was drafted for this section of the film). Off screen, Brando had an affair with Tarita Teriipia, the local Polyensian restaurant dishwasher selected to portray Maimiti, Fletcher Christian's love interest. The two married in August 1962 after Teriipia became pregnant. Along with his new wife, Brando also fell in love with Tahiti. He eventually purchased a cluster of islands near the film's location. Co-stars Trevor Howard and Richard Harris accused Brando of chronic lateness to the set, and his habit of changing his interpretation of Christian from scene to scene perplexed and irritated the other actors.

Upon completion, the film took the much of 1962 to edit, shape, and market in preparation for its premiere in November. Brando showed up at the film's premiere but left in a huff when his British accent was jeered by the audience. Reviews were pretty scathing, with critics saving most of their vitriol for Brando. While they admired the spectacle of the film, most reviewers felt Brando's unorthodox portrayal--the antithesis of Gable's robust, manly take on Christian--was an embarrassment. Brando tended to see Christian as a foppish--almost effeminate--character, which left audiences and critics bewildered.

Feeling sabotaged by Brando, MGM held him responsible for the movie's enormous cost overruns (final cost was $19 million ... on a $9 million budget). With Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra breaking the Fox studios, even casual moviegoers of the day were fed up with stories of overindulged stars. Brando's reputation had taken a big hit with the cost overruns on his directorial debut, One-Eyed Jacks, the year before (original budget $1.8 million, final cost $6 million), and to some he was an easy target to blame for the cost overruns. Although Mutiny on the Bounty nabbed six Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture, the movie, which grossed $13.6 million (more than $100 million in 2017 dollars), left the studio with roughly half that much. That huge final cost nearly sunk MGM. The studio reported a loss of $17 million the following year (though it was ultimately bailed out in 1965 with the enormous success of Dr. Zhivago).

"You remarkable pig!"
Fletcher Christian takes command of the HMS Bounty

My first encounter with Mutiny on the Bounty was an afternoon showing([s]--the movie showed over two days) complete with commercials and pan-and-scan on a 19-inch black and white TV. Despite these drawbacks--some of which I didn't realize at the time--I was enthralled by the movie, especially Brando's unique interpretation of Fletcher Christian. This seems to be the first of several movies (The Missouri Breaks, The Formula, Island of Dr. Moreau to name a few) in which the Method actor went over the top with a performance. In Bounty, while it's true that his British accent comes and goes at times, his performance is a real star turn. Whether battling Bligh, calming the crew, or enjoying Maimiti, for me, the performance is one of Brando's most entertaining. In spite of his entertaining style, however, Brando's reputation as an actor and as a bankable star took a serious hit with Bounty's poor box office and critical drubbing. It was the start of a long, brutal decade of flops (some of them quite good and still undervalued) for the one time red-hot star until 1972's The Godfather put Brando back in the good graces of the Hollywood establishment. Not that he cared. After more than twenty years as a film star, Brando recognized the shallowness of such public displays of affection, as his refusal to accept his Best Actor Oscar in 1973 showed.

Holding off the Bounty crew's desire for revenge,
Christian assures Bligh there will be no more bloodshed aboard ship.

In spite of its enduring reputation as a disaster, Mutiny on the Bounty is an extremely enjoyable film. It has scope in its filming and tension in its telling. I imagine that contemporary critics were commenting as much on the behind-the-scenes gossip as on the actual film. Robert Surtees' photography magnificently captures the Bounty's voyage to Tahiti while also framing the dramatic sequences superbly. Bronislaw Kaper provides a majestic film score, while the physical production, including the full scale recreation of the HMS Bounty, is first rate. The script and dialogue are fresh and memorable (Christian to Bligh: "You remarkable pig! You can thank whatever pig god you pray to you haven't turned me into a murderer") and at times witty, and Trevor Howard's Bligh is a worthy adversary. Surprisingly for a film with a three-hour running time that had more than one director, the movie doesn't feel long or sluggish, especially when compared to other epics of the day (Cleopatra, The Alamo, Fall of the Roman Empire). As an historical document I'm sure this version of Bounty, as well as the other two (the 1935 original starring Gable and one from 1984, starring Mel Gibson as Christian and Anthony Hopkins as Bligh are just as good) are lacking in actual fact. Like most films that depict an historical event, dramatic license is inevitable. Today, more than fifty-plus years after its premiere, Mutiny on the Bounty seems impressively well made and very entertaining. Don't believe the naysayers who compare it unfavorably with either the 1935 or the 1984 version; this Bounty sails on as one of my favorite guilty pleasures. 

Sources: IMDb
               Wikipedia
               The Films of Marlon Brando by Tony Thomas
               Senses of Cinema
               Images from the Internet

Blacklisted Westerns: Johnny Guitar and High Noon

2017 marks the 70th anniversary of the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which was the mechanism for Washington's investigation into Communism and its influence on the Hollywood and the movies. Two of the most famous films made during the era were High Noon and Johnny Guitar. While High Noon was an instant hit both critically and financially, Johnny Guitar was not, though it has acquired a cult following through the years.

Unleashed on movie theaters across America in 1954, Johnny Guitar is not only a blacklisted movie but also a feminist western, giving it a unique place in cinema history. Directed by cult favorite Nicholas Ray for B-movie studio Republic Pictures, Johnny Guitar is unlike any other western. In spite of its title, Johnny Guitar is dominated by its two female leads played by Mercedes McCambridge and Joan Crawford. And that's only the beginning of the gender role swapping that occurs throughout the story. Sterling Hayden, playing the title character and, ostensibly, the male lead, pines for Crawford's character, Vienna. Then there is McCambridge's Emma. Emma is angry and on edge from her first appearance, bitter over The Dancin' Kid's (played by Scott Brady) attraction to Vienna. Adding to the mix is Turkey, the youngest member of The Dancin' Kid's gang, who seeks Vienna's approval, if not more. These two women dominate the action and the men involved in it. Critics have suggested that Emma and Vienna may have had a lesbian affair prior to the movie's action and that Emma is jealous of Vienna's relationship with The Dancin' Kid because she wants Vienna for herself. Heaven knows what audiences made of it at the time.

Sterling Hayden as the title character

According to Wikipedia, Crawford and Ray had a production deal set up at Paramount for a project called Lisbon, which was rejected by the studio as too expensive. Crawford then took it to Republic Pictures and brought Ray along as associate producer. At the time, Republic was the biggest and best B-movie studio in town and had been trying to crack the A-list with films like its recent hit, John Ford's The Quiet Man. Republic Pictures specialized in westerns, and Crawford's package seemed ideal to Republic's chief, Herbert J. Yates. Besides the female slant on a traditionally male genre, what also makes Johnny Guitar notable is how the storyline about a group of powerful people--mostly men--that works to force Crawford's Vienna out of her successful business (a casino) parallels the tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his House Un-American Activities Committee.

Johnny Guitar released to middling critical and financial success. The film did garner, however, a cult following, especially with French critics of the day. Jean Luc Godard praised it, and Francois Truffaut admiringly called Johnny Guitar a "phony western." As for me, I also find a lot to admire in the movie. From its wonderfully descriptive dialog to Victor Young's magnificently emotional score and Harry Stradling's atmospheric, evocative color photography--the sandstorm near the movie's start is particularly memorable--I find Johnny Guitar original and entertaining. It is a unique "western" that looks better and better as the years pass.

The cast gathers

High Noon was an entirely different gunfight. Written by Carl Foreman, directed by Fred Zinnemann, and produced on a shoestring budget of approximately $750,000 (about $7 million in 2017 dollars) by independent filmmaker Stanley Kramer (Champion, The Men, The Wild One, The Defiant Ones), the film is considered an allegory of the blacklist. These three filmmakers, liberals all, were tested by the pressures of the blacklist, with Foreman moving to England in the middle of High Noon's production due to his HUAC testimony. Interestingly, the movie's star, Gary Cooper, who was a conservative and had testified in 1947 as a friendly witness, got along with his left-leaning colleagues, something his friends John Wayne and Howard Hawks couldn't abide.

The director with his leading man

High Noon is a more traditional western than Johnny Guitar, yet some see High Noon as less a western and more a message, or "social problem," movie. Some also view the movie as a suspense film in a western setting, which is a pretty apt description. The fact that High Noon can be classified as something other than a strict western is one thing detractors hold against it. Until the gunfight at the climax of the picture, High Noon also doesn't adhere to the conventional situations of the genre: no cattle drive or barroom brawl or pictureque landscape with wagon trains. Except for a brief segment in which Cooper's Marshal Will Kane attempts to leave town with his bride, Amy (Grace Kelly in her second feature), the entire movie takes place in the confined space of the town, Hadleyville.

High Noon pushed boundaries in other ways too. The community that Will Kane protects are basically cowards. Seeking help to back him up in his inevitable confrontation with Frank Miller and his gang, Cooper goes practically door to door asking his so-called friends for help only to be turned away. Even the church congregation turns on him. Will Kane's experience paralleled what many left-leaning actors, directors, and screenwriters faced during this era of fear and paranoia in Hollywood. People subpoenaed to testify before HUAC found themselves shunned by colleagues and friends, and blacklisted by the major film studios, making it impossible to find work if they didn't cooperate with HUAC. When Foreman was called to testify, he admitted he had been a member of the Communist Party until just after World War II. Because he refused to offer names of other Communist Party members, however, Foreman was blacklisted and could no longer find work in Hollywood.

Man alone: The iconic image 

When the Oscar nominations were announced early in 1953, High Noon led the way with seven nominations (alongside Moulin Rouge and The Quiet Man), including a nod for Best Picture, Best Actor, for which Gary Cooper won, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. The film took home three statues for Song, Score, and Editing.

The fallout from the success of High Noon was catastrophic for the filmmakers' personal relationships and challenging, at best, for their professional careers. Stanley Kramer and Carl Foreman's friendship and partnership ended when Foreman's associate producer credit was withdrawn from the film, and Kramer tried to get Foreman removed from the production. While Zinnemann, Cooper, and others came to Foreman's aid, the screenwriter eventually fled to England to seek work. After completing High Noon, the last picture of his United Artists deal, Kramer headed to Columbia, where he had a signed a lucrative contract. While he had some success with The Caine Mutiny and The Wild One, the Columbia contract did not bring the bounty of commercial or critical successes the studio hoped for. By 1955, Kramer was back with United Artists, though as a director rather than a producer. Fred Zinnemann won an Oscar for his direction of another classic, From Here to Eternity, the year after High Noon's release, starting a remarkable run of movies that lasted well into the 1970s. Gary Cooper emerged from High Noon bigger than ever. Cooper appeared and remained on the Top Ten Box Office Stars list until 1957, four years before his death from cancer at the age of 60 in 1961.

Carl Foreman survived, although his career was permanently damaged by the 1950s' Hollywood blacklist. In Europe, he wrote a few screenplays using an alias, including the colossal hit, The Bridge on the River Kwai. Because he was still on the blacklist, his name, along with co-writer and fellow blacklist victim, Michael Wilson, was not used. The author of the book on which the screenplay was based, Pierre Boulle, received sole authorship on the film, which won an Oscar for its screenplay.

Carl Foreman eventually broke free of the blacklist, forming his own production company, and writing and producing the classic World War II action film, The Guns of Navarone, in 1961. His company also made Born Free, a big financial hit, in 1966. His last credit was for the script of 1980's disaster film, When Time Ran Out, a dismal failure. Both Foreman and Michael Wilson's names were posthumously reinstated to the film of The Bridge on the River Kwai and the Best Screenplay Oscar in 1984, the same year Foreman died of cancer at the age of 69.

Sources: Wikipedia
               Stanley Kramer Film Maker by Donald Spoto
               Reel Facts by Cobbett Steinberg
               IMDb
               High Noon and Johnny Guitar DVD {Olive Films}

Edited by Susannah Northart
Written by Nick Patterson

The Confessional: Sex and the Single Girl

Confession is one of the best known sacraments of the Catholic Church. Though this is not a religious blog, per se, movies are certainly my religion of choice. Therefore, I have decided to embark on a new series to be used as often the mood strikes me. In The Confessional, I will discuss certain movies that I have come to embrace for strictly personal reasons. These movies are my guilty pleasures--ones I find entertaining, enlightening, and/or just plain fun that critics, scholars, and historians have neglected, forgotten, or perhaps never even seen. I hope you will allow me this indulgence. 

One of my first great memories of watching movies on television is the night my older sister and I stayed up late on a Saturday to watch Natalie Wood and Tony Curtis in the comedy, Sex and the Single Girl. We laughed and laughed at Henry Fonda and Lauren Bacall's funny dance (they were doing the Twist) in which nothing but their arms seemed to move; Larry Storch's bewildered CHP ("My motorcycle. My motorcycle!"); Rudy, Mel Ferrer's exasperating, shallow, wannabe gigolo co-worker of Wood's Dr. Helen Gurley Brown ("Oh, shut up, Rudy!"), and a myriad of other scene stealers. Coming home from a night out, my parents couldn't figure out what my sister and I found so amusing.

Poster art for the film

If I remember correctly, I saw the movie for the first time in the late 1960s when it was just a few years old. I'm sure it was my sister's idea to watch the movie; at ten, I was far too young to appreciate the finer points of pretty much any movie. Not that SatSG has finer points. The movie was a kind of mid-Sixties screwball comedy disguised as a sex romp before the sexual revolution took place. By today's standards, it is more than a little bit innocent (or, you know, retrograde) in its attitude toward its titular subjects.

After supposedly saving his life, Natalie Wood's Helen Brown brings Curtis' Bob Weston
back to her place to dry off in one of the film's sexiest scenes.

A little background: Sex and the Single Girl was a non-fiction, self-help book written by Helen Gurley Brown. Originally published in 1962, the book attempted to aid single girls who wish to explore the world, including being single, having a career, and sex without marriage. Brown's book tried to show single women that a life alternative to the standard one of love and marriage might be both possible and preferable.

Sex and the Single Girl, the book, was a bestseller, but when Warner Brothers acquired the film rights, the studio had no idea how to adapt it for the screen. Ultimately, Warners kept only the book's title and its author's name for the main character. The rest of it went in the trash can. The studio had to make something (fictional--a documentary wasn't even considered) out of nothing, so why not a sex farce? Push convention as far as the early 1960s would allow, mix the ingredients, throw it against the wall, and see what stuck.

Bob Weston, playboy extraordinaire, listens as his next door neighbor,
Frank Broderick (Henry Fonda), pours out his marital grief. 

What stuck was a sexy, occasionally raunchy, chauvinistic time capsule that was popular enough with audiences to land the film on Variety's list of the top twenty highest grossing movies of 1964. Though not popular today--seldom even remembered--Sex and the Single Girl does, indeed, transport me to a time when women in movies were still called girls (which never fails to knock me sideways), and the old (wink, wink) it's-ok-for-men-to-fool-around-but-women-cannot-even-look-at-a-man double standard still applied. The early-to-mid Sixties were rife with these kind of films, usually brought to America's movie screens with Doris Day, Rock Hudson, Sandra Dee, Cary Grant, Jack Lemmon, and Debbie Reynolds, among others. Some had a genuine wit or point of view (Some Like It Hot, The Apartment) or were disguised as something other than they were (How to Murder Your Wife, Breakfast at Tiffany's), yet they all amounted to the same thing: the virgin will not become a nun ... or stay single.

In spite of its deep roots in traditional boy-meets-girl storytelling, Sex and the Single Girl was ahead of its time in some respects. After all, Sex and the City basically navigated the same terrain thirty-plus years later, albeit with a more contemporary (i.e., liberated) perspective. Appreciation of Sex and the Single Girl may depend on the viewer's frame of mind. When I first saw it, the storyline of a hack journalist setting out to expose the virginity of a sex therapist was titillating to me in the extreme. No matter how tame it looks today, there is a pretty frisky scene in the film in which Wood and Curtis turn down the lights while clothed only in revealing robes. Racy!

The movie plays out a veritable potpourri of mid-Sixties angst and cultural cliches. Tony Curtis's playboy character, Bob Weston, writes for STOP, a "filthy rag" of a magazine run almost exclusively by white, middle-aged-to-old men (fact is, Curtis seems the youngest, and he was nearly forty at the time). The clinic where Natalie Wood's Dr. Helen Gurley Brown works is as sexist as the STOP staff. And Bob's neighbors, Frank and Sylvia Broderick (he's a sad sack; she's a shrew), hilariously played by Henry Fonda and Lauren Bacall, are crazy for each other yet do nothing but fight. When I watch the movie now, it's hard not to believe in that notion of the early Sixties as a more innocent time. I take joy in its extremely simple pleasures--broad comic farce played by an expert cast, the suggestion that a naked back is as sexy as a naked front, and a resolution in which they all live happily ever after.

If only life could be like this. <sigh>