Music Gone Movies Double Birthday!

 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.

Punch and Gabby

Werth: Hey, Wise, what's with the pearls and pig ears?  

Wise: I'm celebrating the return of Miss Piggy, Kermit, Gonzo, Scooter and the rest of the Muppet gang to the multiplex.  They've been languishing since the death of their creator Jim Henson in 1990, and it's great to see their zany, furry faces back on the big screen.

Werth: While the Muppets have produced some great cinematic moments, they're not the first puppets to make their mark on Hollywood. I'm referring of course to the dapper Edgar Bergen and his wooden sidekick, Charlie McCarthy.

Wise: Bergen and McCarthy had cameos in The Muppet Movie (1979) because Jim Henson was such a longtime fan.

Werth: And if you watch the closing credits, you'll see the movie's dedicated to him. It's no surprise, because for about 20 years starting in the late 30's Bergen and monocled Charlie brought puppets and ventriloquism to a mass American audience. Starting off in radio—

Wise:  A ventriloquist on a radio show?


Werth: It sounds counter-intuitive, but the listeners loved the sharp-tongued character of Charlie McCarthy more than they cared to see whether Bergen's lips moved—which consequently they did. Bergen was a terrible ventriloquist which Charlie was quick to point out. 

Wise: Nothing like your own dummy pointing out your faults.

Werth: But in 1938 Bergen took his act to the silver screen in The Goldwyn Follies and watching the pair worked as well as listening to them, so a year later Bergen and Charlie were paired with W.C. Fields in the silly, slight comedy You Can't Cheat an Honest Man.

Wise: Which is also the film Fields cited repeatedly during failed negotiations with MGM to cast him as the title role in The Wizard of Oz. 

Werth: You Can't Cheat is a bit of a rehash of what worked in Bergen and Fields' live acts. Fields is Larson E. (get it?) Whipsnade, the owner of the Whipsnade Circus Giganticus. Stumbling around drunk, flim-flamming audience members and despising children was a stock act for Fields, one he did with such skill that it never got old. With his flowery and witty dialogue Fields created a sort of sympathetic, rude clown who was born with a gin ladle in his mouth when it might have been a silver spoon.

Wise: Sometimes it seems that the only boozy comedian we have left is Lindsay Lohan. 

Werth: Bergen and Charlie give Fields a run for his money in the ham department, though. Fields had been a frequent visitor to the radio show, so the "Quiet or I'll throw a woodpecker at you!" animosity towards Charlie was a comfortable shoe for the whole cast to put on. Bergen and Charlie throw verbal barbs at Fields as fast as he can dodge them—that is of course when Charlie isn't busy trying to get a dame's phone number or ruin The Great Bergen's magic act. 

The movie is a strange mix of pratfalls, puns, double entendres, cross-dressing, lion-taming, and even a scene where Charlie does black-face, so the whole ridiculous affair feels a little dated. But there's just something about watching a bunch of grown actors having to deal with a precocious puppet.

Wise: Return to Oz (1985) doesn't use tuxedo-clad dummies as madcap sidekicks, but it does employ a host of animatronic creatures, marionettes, and puppets to fill out the majority of its cast.  Director Walter Murch (who began his career as a sound designer for Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas) wanted to create a vision of Oz closer to L. Frank Baum's books rather than copy MGM's strategy of actors costumed rather obviously in funny suits.  

Werth: I liked the funny suits on the flying monkeys.

Wise: A strange hybrid of a sequel to the emotional afterglow of MGM's classic The Wizard of Oz and a concerted attempt to recreate Baum's Oz onscreen, Return to Oz follows confused, frustrated Dorothy (Fairuza Balk) as she is swept from a quack doctor's mental clinic in Kansas to an unfamiliar Oz.  

In order to save her friends and restore the Emerald City, she must battle howling Wheelers, a princess with thirty beautiful heads, and the nefarious Nome King who has turned everyone to stone.  

Werth: Sounds like the Saturday night crowd at Marie's Crisis.  

Wise: Working with production designer Norman Reynolds, who had created the look for The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Murch made Dorothy's companions—magically animated dummy Jack Pumpkinhead; Billina, the yellow hen; and loyal robot soldier Tik-Tok—look like John R. Neill's original illustrations: comical and impossible characters drawn in a style influenced by both newspaper comics and Art Nouveau.  

For long stretches of the film, Dorothy is the only human character onscreen, but even though Balk was a ten-year-old novice actor, her performance imbues her mechanical friends with life.  Of course, this has a lot to do with the skill of puppeteers (including many veterans of Jim Henson projects), but this combination of acting, puppet design and some of Baum's most indelible characters makes this motley crew come alive.  

Werth: All this talk of puppets will probably give me nightmares along the lines of 1978's Magic.  

Wise: Tune in to next week's Film Gab to see who's pulling the strings.

In the Gab Old Summertime

It's a quiet week here in Film Gab's spacious Manhattan digs.  Werth is off gallivanting through Europe doing his best Henry James impersonation, although with all his hair and none of the digestive complaints (we hope).  The less picaresque half of Film Gab stuck around the city to get a little work done and dream of foreign shores.  The combination of the two brings to mind those great Hollywood flicks where even those who stay at home get to take an incredible journey. 

Marking the end of her reign as kiddie box office champ, The Little Princess (1939) is one of Shirley Temple's most unusual films.  Based on the book by Frances Hodgson Burnett, the movie follows Sara Crew (Temple), who is sent to boarding school by her doting father (Ian Hunter), only to run afoul of the mean-spirited headmistress Miss Minchin (Mary Nash) when her father and his fortune are lost in the Boer War.  Even though Miss Minchin forces her to become a scullery maid, Sara never loses her good spirits, making friends with the other domestics and finding an ally in Ram Dass (Cesar Romero), the servant of a powerful lord next door.  Refusing to give up hope, Sara continues to search army hospitals for her father until she gets a royal assist from Queen Victoria (Beryl Mercer).   

The film is at times slavishly faithful to its source material while it also packs in all the usual bits from previous Temple films: a dance number with a comedian, young lovers reunited, and a confrontation with an old crank.  These changes never violate Burnett's creation, in fact, they seem to honor the story's muddled past: originally a magazine serial, Burnett revised Princess into a novella, adapted it to stage play with distinct versions running in London and New York, and eventually incorporated bits from all those incarnations into the final novel.  (And to add to the blurry history, when Alfonso Cuarón made his adaption in 1995, he included elements from the Shirley Temple film that had never appeared in print.)

Of course the most famous scene is the dream sequence that takes place after Sara has been banished to the garret by Miss Minchin and she dreams of being a princess in a storybook land that looks like it sprang directly from a Maxfield Parrish illustration.  Inside the dream, Sara meets fantasy versions of her real-life friends, plus she is able to dispatch cruel Miss Minchin and to assert the importance of generosity and kindness over the petty cruelties favored by the headmistress.  

Another film that uses dreams as an escape from the drudgery of the everyday world is Dreamchild (1985), a hallucinatory mediation on the later years of Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's literary heroine.  Journeying to New York City in 1932, Alice, now a very elderly and snappish Mrs. Hargreaves (Coral Browne), is preparing to make a speech at Columbia University in celebration of the centenary of Lewis Carroll's birth.  

The trip and the occasion dredge up troubling memories of stuttering clergyman Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Ian Holm) whose infatuation with her transformed him into a literary giant and her into the beloved heroine of millions of readers.  Never comfortable with the acclaim, Alice has grown into a dour adult, but the trip forces her to confront her past, both her actual past at Oxford University among her family, and the imagined past in Carroll's fantasy land.  

The creatures of Wonderland were created by the Jim Henson workshop, and they are startlingly lifelike realizations of  Sir John Tenniel's famous illustrations.  But their function within the movie is to force Alice to re-evaluate her memories and to accept her strange double history.  

The film is a fantasia of odd juxtapositions with deep emotional undercurrents, and while it definitely shows traces of screenwriter Dennis Potter's 1965 stage play, director Gavin Millar skillfully manages the transitions between Victorian England and Great Depression era New York.  Part of that success emerges from the fine performances by Browne and Holm, and even Peter Gallagher's take on a raffish tabloid reporter adds a certain panache.

Both these films leave us pleasantly bewildered, full of imaginary landscapes, and ready to dream of our next journey abroad.  Just make sure we all make it back in time for next week's Film Gab.