Werth: Howdy, Wise!
Wise: Shhhh! Not now, Werth. I'm trying to work on my juggling.
Werth: Auditioning for the Broadway revival of Pippin?
Wise: I'm trying to become a multi-hypenate. Right now, I think of myself as a baker-blogger and I'm hoping to add another accomplishment to the mix. All the big stars are doing it: Susan Sarandon, actress-activist-ping-pong-perveyor; Angelina Jolie, actress-ambassador-gossip-rag-staple; John Hamm, actor-comedian-trouser-enhancer.
Werth: And today's birthday boys show how much you can do with more than one talent. Both Dean Martin and Prince made their names as musicians before Hollywood came a-callin'. Martin went from Italian love songs to various Martin and Lewis comedies, to Some Came Running (1958) to Ocean's Eleven (1960).
Wise: And Prince's Purple Rain (1984) made the diminutive popstar a matinee idol... for at least two movies.
Werth: One of the biggest radio to movie stars would have to be Ol' Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra. Starting with musical roles in Anchors Aweigh (1945) and On The Town (1949) Sinatra cannily worked his crooner persona onto the silver screen. But after multiple hits, he tried to become more than just a song and dance man and segue into a leading dramatic actor in From Here to Eternity (1953). In 1954, Sinatra starred in the low-budget thriller, Suddenly. It was not the doobie-doobie-doo character the audience was familiar with.
Wise: Swinging tunes for homicidal lovers.
Werth: Suddenly takes part in the small, California town of Suddenly, where nothing ever happens. Sheriff Todd Shaw (Sterling Hayden) keeps after war-widow Ellen Benson (Nancy Gates) for a more serious relationship while Ellen is busy trying to make her chippy son, Pidge (Kim Charney) realize that guns killed his dad, so he ought to shut-up about getting a cap-gun.
Wise: Sounds like the grim beginnings of A Christmas Story (1983).
Werth: Ellen's conflict with guns manifests itself when Johnny Baron (Sinatra) and a couple of goons take Ellen, the Sheriff, Pidge and Ellen's father-in-law (old-timer James Gleason) hostage and commandeer the Benson house. The living room is the perfect spot for a killshot, and the President is secretly coming into town on the five o'clock train.
Sinatra was known for being a bit of an unlikeable hero, and that persona would work well for him in From Here to Eternity, Guys and Dolls (1955) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), but in Suddenly, Sinatra takes a chance and plays a character who is without any sympathy. Johnny Baron is looney tunes, and no matter how many times Sinatra flashes his smile, it only makes the character less likable, and scarier. It's a great acting choice.
Wise: And reminds me of another great Sinatra performance.
Werth: The rest of Suddenly looks like a TV movie. Noir enthusiasts would say it's grainy. I say it's cheap, and other than Sinatra, the performances are uniformly 1950's Americana. But the plot has some fun turns and without spoiling the ending, I can say, who knew TV repairmen were so useful in thwarting Presidential assassinations?
Wise: Labyrinth (1986) stars another music to movie star David Bowie as Jareth the King of the Goblins who kidnaps the baby brother of Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) after she wishes the cherub would disappear. Despite the seductive gifts Jareth offers her, Sarah is determined to retrieve her brother and sets off to find the baby at the center of the titular labyrinth that surrounds Jareth's castle. To further impede her progress, Jareth sends the ill-tempered Hoggle (a puppet voiced by Brian Henson)
to lay a series of traps, but Sarah's kindness and determination to find her brother gradually wins Hoggle over and her joins her quest along with a series of other odd and endearing creatures she meets along the way. Eventually, Sarah must confront Jareth one-on-one in order to realize her power and save the day.
Werth: After the scene in the Farting Bog, I think Gas-Ex is the only thing to save the day.
Wise: The film emerged from a collaboration between Jim Henson and Brian Froud, after their previous project The Dark Crystal (1982) fell short of expectations. Labyrinth was designed to have more humor and be more relatable than Crystal, and went through several screenwriters penning multiple drafts before Henson and Stroud found the plot and tone they were looking for.
Bowie's involvement also necessitated some major changes to the movie; originally Jareth had been conceived as a more elusive figure, but with Bowie on board, the role expanded to allow the singer to perform several numbers as well as becoming both more antagonistic and more alluring to Sarah.
Werth: And include crystal ball juggling.
Wise: The film was a failure at the box office, but like many oddball kids' films of the era, has grown into something of a cult hit. It's not hard to see why the film wasn't warmly received during its initial release: audiences expecting the zany warmth of Henson's Muppets must have been deeply confused by Labyrinth's black humor and the squirm-inducing seductions performed by the adult Bowie on the adolescent Connelly.
Fans of Bowie must have been equally confused by the dilution of the musical chameleon's charisma by the overwhelming supporting cast of puppets. Still, there are many pleasures to the film—even its weirdness is something of a recommendation—making it definitely worth a second look.
Werth: I'm going to turn on Bowie's Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust album.
Wise: Whatever you listen to, tune in next week for more sounds and sights for Film Gab.
Wise: Howdy, Werth. Have a piece of cake!
Werth: Is it already birthday time again at Film Gab? No wonder I can't fit into my Z. Cavaricci jeans.
Wise: Quit your bellyaching and put on these tap shoes. It's Ann Miller's birthday.
Werth: Why didn't you say so in the first place? Make it a big piece of cake and I'll break out my dancing fan.
Wise: Just be sure to leave some room for soup.
Werth: All that's missing from that number is a giant saltine.
Wise: Miller's career really took off in the late 40's when she landed at MGM. Her tough girl style and gorgeous gams injected a jolt of electricity into the sumptuous musicals produced by Arthur Freed, but few films take as full advantage of her talents as On the Town (1949). The film follows three sailors on shore leave—Gene Kelly as Gabey, Frank Sinatra as Chip, and Jules Munshin as Ozzie—as they sing, dance and find sweethearts while exploring New York City.
Miller plays Claire, an anthropologist with a penchant for prehistoric man, who eventually falls for Ozzie, while Chips falls for Hildy (Betty Garrett) and Gabey falls for the elusive Miss Turnstiles, Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen). This was the first movie that Gene Kelly co-directed with Stanley Donen, and his signature, muscular style of dancing infuses the film with the kind of aggressive exuberance that was so much a part of his persona.
Werth: You say aggressive exuberance, I say unrelenting ham.
Wise: At Kelly's insistence, a fair amount of the film was shot on location in New York—most notably the American Museum of Natural History, Rockefeller Center, the Statue of Liberty, and the Brooklyn Bridge—instead of recreating those landmarks in the studio, and, surprisingly, the juxtaposition of the real and the manufactured works incredibly well.
Cinematographer Harold Rossen makes the city look like a picture postcard, transforming the streets and avenues into a fantasy landscape that blends seamlessly with the Hollywood sets.
Werth: The one downside of shooting on location was the crowd of screaming fans that showed-up wherever Sinatra appeared.
Wise: The screenplay by Betty Comden and Adolph Green is full of zest and wit while highlighting each member of the leading sextet. Sinatra shares a duet with Betty Garrett that manages to be both funny and touching, and Kelly leads Vera-Ellen in one of the dream ballets that were rapidly becoming part of his movie signature.
But it's Ann Miller who steals scene after scene, not just with her top notch dancing skills, but with the incredible force of her personality as it bursts from the screen.
Werth: Before Miller was known for tap-dancing her way through scenery, she appeared in 1938's Best Picture Oscar-winner, You Can't Take It with You. Based on the Pulitzer prize-winning George S. Kaufman play of the same name, You Can't stars Jean Arthur as Alice Sycamore, a secretary who has a yen for her young boss, Tony Kirby (a pre-Mr. Smith James Stewart.) Their romance is running hot and heavy until Tony tries to introduce his upper-crust mother and father to Alice's bohemian family.
Wise: This is beginning to sound like the plot to a Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell flick.
Werth: Besides the fact that the Sycamore clan is a bunch of artistic, anarchist goofballs led by the folksy Grandpa Vanderhof (a usually seated Lionel Barrymore), their home is the last holdout on the block that Tony's dad (Edward Arnold) is attempting to buy out before demolishing it to make way for his new munitions plant.
This makes for an uncomfortable dinner, made even more uncomfortable by sister Essie's (Miller) clumsy attempts at ballet in the living room. According to her teacher, Kolenkhov, "Confidentially, it steenks."
Wise: I'm sure Ann Miller mostly smelled of Jean Naté and shoe polish.
Werth: Social stratum collide in a courtroom and love has to find a way to overcome the gap between the haves and the have-nots all while Essie twirls and falls on the carpet. The little man versus corporate greed story was one that director Frank Capra made his stock in trade.
He'd already won two Oscars for Best Director (It Happened One Night (1934) and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), and the Academy would add another one to his mantle for You Can't. Capra had a knack for kooky characters, like the denizens of the Sycamore home, and created supportive, tough communities on screen that resembled his ideal of America.
You Can't isn't as compelling as Mr. Deeds, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Meet John Doe (1941), or It's a Wonderful Life (1946), partly because it feels preachy in a way that those other films don't. But it's still a great example of the successful post-Depression/pre-WWII films that gave cinematic voice to the political struggle going on in America, all while audiences munched away on their popcorn.
Wise: And on that note, I think I'll try to hunt down a video of Ann Miller with Mickey Rooney in Sugar Babies.
Werth: You're welcome. Tune-in next week for more fancy footwork here at Film Gab.
Wise: Good day, Werth.
Werth: Good day, Wise. Have you finished signing our birthday card to Hillary Clinton?
Wise: I got distracted by one of those memes of her texting in sunglasses.
Werth: I really enjoy watching her strut through press conferences in her power pantsuits. But then I've always found women in politics exciting—especially if they are women in politics in the movies!
Take the role of Eleanor Shaw Iselin (Angela Lansbury) in the 1962 political thriller, The Manchurian Candidate. Eleanor's son Raymond (Laurence Harvey) has just returned from being a prisoner of war in Korea and she immediately turns his Medal of Honor arrival into a band-playing, banner-waving photo op for her husband, the McCarthy-esque Senator, John Iselin (James Gregory).
Wise: Wouldn't a pot roast have been easier?
Werth: Eleanor's political ambitions to be the wife of a Vice-President know no bounds and include trying to keep her son away from a left-wing politician's daughter who Raymond takes a fancy to.
But Raymond is acting very strangely and some of the men from his company have started having nightmares where they are having tea in a New Jersey garden club with the top brass of the Soviet and Chinese Communist Party who turn into little old ladies who tell Raymond to kill his own men.
Wise: That sounds like Bayonne to me.
Werth: Major Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra—who also produced) begins to investigate and soon discovers that he and his patrol are cards in a deadly game of solitaire. John Frankenheimer's taut direction and iconic visual punch make this film one of the great suspense classics of all time.
All the performances are first-rate—but Lansbury dominates this film. Her portrayal of Eleanor as a woman whose naked ambition is lightly clothed in good ol' American maternal sentiment as she icily barks orders at her son, her husband and anyone who stands in her way should have won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar that year. Patty Duke walked away with it for The Miracle Worker, but I've always felt that Landsbury was robbed... even if it was by Helen Keller.
Wise: The Young Victoria (2009) charts the political and personal growth of Queen Victoria (Emily Blunt) in the years just previous to and just following her ascension to the throne. Growing up sheltered by her mother The Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson) and her mother's adviser Sir John Conroy (Mark Strong), she finds herself struggling against the political machinations that surround her.
Her uncle King William IV (Jim Broadbent) wants to exert more influence upon her before passing on the throne while her other uncle King Leopold I of Belgium (Thomas Kretschmann) hopes to ally the two kingdoms with the marriage of his son Prince Albert (Rupert Friend) to Victoria. Meanwhile, the seductive Prime Minister Lord Melbourne (Paul Bettany) attempts to charm his way into Victoria's good graces, proving to be both friend and foe.
Werth: Sounds like a political gangbang.
Wise: The film is a surprising hybrid of women's picture and political thriller, almost as if Joan Crawford had been directed by Oliver Stone. It's not alone in that category (recent examples include Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette and The Duchess and reach at least as far back as Bette Davis in Juarez), but it is one of the few to take the affairs of state just as seriously as the romantic kind.
Werth: There must be a Hillary film in the works. Notting Hill-ary?
Wise: Part of the film's success in portraying the rigors of statecraft comes from the intelligence of the performances. Emily Blunt indulges in all the requisite bosom heaving and tempestuous dialogue, but makes Victoria as passionate about Parliament as she is about her prince.
And somehow Rupert Friend turns a buttoned up wonk into a dashing matinee idol who smolders while proposing social reforms. Both actors resemble their historical counterparts to an almost shocking degree, particularly Friend who studied contemporary accounts in order to capture Albert's somewhat prickly demeanor and awkward habits.
Werth: Hamburger Hill-ary.
Wise: Julian Fellowes's script artfully balances the personal and the political, cleverly highlighting the effect human desire (both petty and profound) plays in shaping public policy. Director Jean-Marc Vallée also performs a balancing act: giving each scene a contemporary dash while still lingering over the sumptuous period detail (particularly Sandy Powell's gorgeous and authentic costumes).
But perhaps the best example of how this film epitomizes the surprising union of seeming opposites is that its producers include Martin Scorsese and the Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson (who knows more than a little about the perils of being a princess).
Werth: The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill-ary But Came Down a Mountain.
Wise: Tune in to Film Gab next week when hopefully Werth will have run out of spoof Hillary movie titles.
Werth: The House on Haunted Hill-ary!
