Wise: Howdy, Werth.
Werth: Good evening, sir. May I offer you a cocktail?
Wise: I'll take the booze, but what's with the penguin suit?
Werth: Lee Daniels' The Butler opens today and I'm getting ready for the juggernaut of Hollywood talent that plays presidential dress-up in a fictionalized version of the life of White House domestic Eugene Allen. Alan Rickman plays Reagan, James Marsden plays Kennedy, Jane Fonda plays Nancy Reagan—
Wise: But will any of them be as good as Oprah?
Werth: Not if she has a scene where she marches through a cornfield. Hollywood realized the scratch to be made by lumping together their top stars early on, and when the silents turned to talkies, MGM tried the tactic to beat its competitors to the musical punch with The Hollywood Revue of 1929. It's one of those cases where the title says it all. Mimicking the Broadway and vaudeville stage shows of the time, MGM put together a group of musical numbers, comedy sketches, and dance routines using a "galaxy of stars" both known and relatively unknown.
Wise: It's one way to keep idle stars off the skids.
Werth: Master of Ceremonies Jack Benny had been a vaudeville regular, but his violin-toting, deadpan act was still in its infancy for Revue. Benny mugs and puns as he introduces the acts, including then matinee idol Conrad Nagel as the evening's Interlocutor.
Wise: Evidence of Nagel's long and successful career in film, television and radio can be seen in his three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Werth: Fame seemed to haunt Revue. Buster Keaton shimmies as an Egyptian dancer in "The Dance of the Sea" but the stoic-faced comic's most notable years were behind him. Meanwhile Laurel and Hardy perform a magic act complete with a cake-in-the-face pratfall while they were moving from silent short stars to feature-length comedy stars.
Other silent luminaries who transitioned to sound successfully in Revue are Norma Shearer, William Randolph Hearst's main squeeze Marion Davies, and a young Joan Crawford who dances and sings like her life depended on it. But some counted Revue as the sunset of their careers with both dashing William Haines and handsome but prissy-throated John Gilbert ending their careers by 1936.
Marie Dressler's career was supposedly over by 1929, but a year later this vaudeville veteran would be seeing a career re-birth by starring with Garbo in Anna Christie and getting an Oscar for Min and Bill.
Wise: Nothing like a little song and dance to jumpstart a comeback.
Werth: Revue is one of those early sound films that's best watched like it's a filmic cave drawing. Sound was only two years young at this point, and many directors, including Revue's, were unskilled at moving the camera. The dialogue is stilted, numbers seem to go on interminably and most scenes are shot with a static camera facing the stage as if you were sitting in the audience of George White's Scandals.
But cinematic touches appear in a couple numbers with a strange film negative minstrel show, a special effects shot of dancer/singer Bessie Love miniaturized (twice), the use of two-strip Technicolor for a couple scenes, and kaleidoscopic, overhead shots of the not-so-precise dancers dancing in fear to "Lon Chaney's Gonna Get You If You Don't Watch Out."
These shots must have been informed by choreographer Busby Berkeley's earlier Broadway work, but he was not involved with the filming. He would start revolutionizing film a year later when he staged the dances for Samuel Goldwyn's Whoopee!
Whatever the primitive flaws of Revue, it was a hit and earned an Oscar nomination that year garnering a lot of attention for the song, "Singin' in the Rain," and its lyricist, future musical mogul Arthur Freed.
Wise: The success of Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and its long list of La-La-Land luminaries prompted a surge in adaptions of Agatha Christie penned mysteries, and one of the most enjoyable is The Mirror Crack'd (1980). Elizabeth Taylor and Kim Novak play Marina Rudd and Lola Brewster, two long-time rival actresses who descend on a tiny English village to film a lavish costume picture based on contretemps between Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots.
Adding to the pressure cooker atmosphere is Marina's husband Jason (Rock Hudson), the director of the film, and Lola's husband Marty (Tony Curtis), who's the producer. At a village reception, a gushing fan brags about her devotion to Marina, only to wind up dead after sipping from her idol's cocktail.
Marina spirals out of control after this attempt on her life, and order is only restored upon the arrival of Angela Lansbury as Christie's beloved Miss Jane Marple in sensible shoes and a tightly curled wig.
Werth: From Miss Marple to Jessica Fletcher. No one should commit a crime around Angela Lansbury.
Wise: Part of the pleasure of these big ensemble films is the opportunity they give big stars to play outsized versions of themselves. Taylor as Marina gets to be both more extravagantly beautiful (she arrives on screen wearing a helmet made of lilacs) and more dramatic (the hysterics of her breakdown would have sunk a less starry film).
She and Novak trade a few delicious barbs whenever they're in the same scene, taking full advantage of the public's endless appetite for the kind of cooked up, bitchy antagonism that sells a lot of movie magazines even to this day. Tony Curtis plays a seedier version of his character in The Sweet Smell of Success (1957).
Only Rock Hudson seems a little subdued; his supportive husband lacks the winking charm that made him so great in so many films.
Werth: For a second, I read that last line as if Rock Hudson had a supportive husband... which he should have.
Wise: Lansbury's performance is a little less broad than her co-stars' efforts, but she still gets to have a lot of sly fun as Christie's grandmotherly know-it-all. She always has a bit of business to perform—knitting, cooking, pulling a Mackintosh more securely about her shoulders—that distracts both the audience and the criminals from observing her deductive powers at work. Like the most satisfying whodunnits, the identity of the murderer is the least likely suspect, but the pleasure of the revelation comes from the clever, cat-like way that Lansbury's Marple unravels the mystery in the final reel.
Werth: Well, Wise, I guess we should reveal that this is something of the final reel for Film Gab.
Wise: Right. After almost three years and several hundred movie recommendations, we're going to be taking a little break from our weekly updates.
Werth: But fear not, loyal Gabbers. We'll be popping in from time to time comment on new films, Hollywood trends, and to salute the passing of our Tinsel Town heroes.
Wise: In the meantime, why not take a sentimental journey back to the beginning of Film Gab and catch up on any of the flicks you may have missed?
Werth: And if you ever need a little live Film Gab in your life, just remember that our extensive love of Hollywood lore can be had for the price of a couple drinks. Cheers!
Werth: Hello, Wise...
Wise: Should I be more scared of the ax you're holding or the blouse and skirt combo you're wearing?
Werth: Women with axes are scary. Just ask today's birthday gal, Lizzie Borden.
Wise: Old L.B. is about to get the Lifetime treatment care of Christina Ricci.
Werth: Lizzie got some small screen attention care of Elizabeth Montgomery in 1975, but she's never sliced up the big screen like some other axe-totin' gals. In 1964, Joan Crawford "brought out the ax" in William Castle's chopped ham-fest, Strait-Jacket.
Wise: Which, unfortunately, did not feature Adrian-designed shoulder pads.
Werth: Crawford is Lucy Harbin, a woman who has just been let out of an insane asylum after a twenty year sentence for chopping off the heads of her two-timing husband (a barely glimpsed Lee Majors) and his chippie.
Lucy's young daughter Carol (a pre-Silence of the Lambs Diane "Love your suit" Baker) is anxious to help the mother she never knew and moves Lucy into the country home of her aunt and uncle. Carol hopes that surrounding her mother with a loving family and a bunch of chickens, will help her start a new life—one free of brutal ax-murders.
Wise: I have a feeling that's not going to end so well.
Werth: Lucy seems tame enough at first, but once Carol gives her a makeover which consists of a form-fitting dress, a stylish wig, and a set of bracelets that can be heard a mile off, Lucy begins to not act her age. When Lucy practically dry humps Carol's fiance over cocktails, it's clear that Lucy might need a little extra time in the booby hatch. And once a shadowy figure starts taking the heads off of a nosy doctor and a lecherous handyman (George Kennedy) it's clear that this family needs to hide their sharp implements.
Wise: Except for the shovel.
Werth: Crawford by this point was enjoying a career resurgence thanks to her role in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962), but the roles she was being offered gave her little opportunity for serious acting. Films like Strait-Jacket, I Saw What You Did (1965), Berserk (1967), and Trog (1970) were B-Level schlock at best, and are best viewed with a camp sensibility.
But with all the outrageousness of the script and Crawford's bigger-than-the-part persona there is a tinge of sadness. Crawford refuses to be in on the joke of how bad Strait-Jacket is. Her sense of professionalism (or obsession?) made her work just as diligently portraying Lucy Harbin inching her way from fragility to sanity, as when she played Mildred Pierce clawing her way through social classes and motherhood.
The scene where Lucy flirts with Carol's beau could describe Crawford's cinematic existence—an older woman fighting to be young and relevant, seducing men and an audience in the same determined way she always had. Crawford never stopped giving her audience the best she had, even if Hollywood had axed her long ago.
Wise: Women on the verge of a homicidal breakdown also feature prominently in So I Married an Axe Murderer (19993), the first film project for Saturday Night Live alum Mike Myers after the success of Wayne's World (1992). The role of latter-day beat poet Charlie Mackenzie landed in Myers' lap only after the role had been circled by Woody Allen, Chevy Chase, Albert Brooks and Martin Short.
Once Myers was on board, the script underwent heavy revisions was tailored to his abilities, becoming more broadly comic and less about paranoia. Afraid of commitment, Charley nevertheless falls for the demure Harriet (Nancy Travis), a butcher with a sister, Rose (Amanda Plummer), who's clearly off her rocker.
Werth: Never date a butcher with a screwy sister.
Wise: Everything seems perfect until Charley begins to suspect that Harriet is actually an axe murderer. His best friend Tony (Anthony LaPaglia), a bumbling cop with aspirations to be Serpico, tries to convince him that he's just getting cold feet. His doubts barely assuaged, Charley goes through with the marriage only to face his worst fears on his wedding night.
Werth: His worst fears? Imagine having to sleep with Mike Myers.
Wise: The film is full of flannel and Doc Martens, plaid skirts, coffee houses, bad music, and the kind of asinine humor audiences have come to expect from a particular kind of mid-90's SNL flick. But even with all the one-liners and sight gags (including an hilarious Phil Hartman cameo), there's still something deeply charming about the film.
Myers is awkward and sweet as a twentysomething looking for love, yet still able to launch himself into the over-the-top funny in the dual role of Charley's booming Scottish father.
Nancy Travis makes a lovely ingenue, but is sill twitchy enough to make the audience wonder if she might really be the wielder of the titular axe.
The film was a flop at the box office, but gained a following once it was released on video because, one suspects, of the affectionate fun it pokes at the excesses of Generation X, who feared adulthood almost as much as Charley feared that axe.
Werth: I fear my skirt is riding up. Hold my ax while I adjust myself.
Wise: Tune in next week for more cinematic slicing and dicing with Film Gab.
Werth: Twenty-three Skidoo, Wise. Have some bathtub gin and let's toast the opening of Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby by gabbing about literary adaptations from page to screen.
Wise: Um, don't you mean, let's put on old bathrobes and have lumpy pancakes in bed?
Werth: Are you hungover?
Wise: It's Mother's Day on Sunday, and shouldn't we be celebrating the ladies who make it all possible?
Werth: Let's compromise and do literary mothers on the big screen.
Wise: I'm all for that, as long as it doesn't turn into a glam rock disco anthem.
Werth: This means I will have to discuss the biggest mommie book turned into a movie of all time. Yes, that day has come. I will gab about Mommie Dearest (1981).
Wise: I've already fastened my seatbelt.
Werth: I'll be blunt. I think Christina Crawford's hit tell-all 1978 book Mommie Dearest is opportunistic exaggeration. It and the subsequent movie have supplanted an image of Joan Crawford in the public's mind that has eclipsed the talents of this hard-working, dedicated actress.
But let me be clear, Joan Crawford was no saint. She was a control freak, a mean drunk, obsessively strict with her children and so invested in her image that it's likely there was no difference between Joan Crawford movie star and Joan Crawford human being. That's one of the reasons it is so much fun to watch Faye Dunaway "become" Joan Crawford.
Wise: It takes a lot of eyebrow pencil and even more cojones.
Werth: Like the book, Mommie Dearest the movie tells the story of how Golden Age Hollywood movie star Joan Crawford adopted Christina (played as a teen and older adult by Diana Scarwid) and the subsequent wire-hanger-inspired abuse that followed. And as with the book, the scenes without Joan are a snooze.
Dunaway is literally possessed by Crawford and translates Crawford's larger than life screen persona into her portrayal. Crawford doing something as simple as taking a shower or putting on elbow lotion becomes a full-scale MGM production. Almost everything in this movie looks like it's from a movie. There is no sense of reality... with the exception of one scene where Joan confesses to Chrisitna that she's broke. Dunaway tones down the makeup and the gestures to become what might be a glimpse of what Crawford was really like. 
Dunaway's physical resemblance to Crawford is eerie, especially when you add-in that Dunaway was the same age as Crawford at this time, was dealing with the same career issues, and had even just adopted a child—although Dunaway lied to the press for years and claimed to have given birth to her son.
Wise: Art imitating life channeling crazy.
Werth: Dunaway's unearthly connection to Crawford produces a portrayal that is so monstrous you can't take your eyes off it. The eyebrows, the lips, the held-back shoulders and perfectly timed puffs of smoke fill the screen. Unfortunately that over-the-top performance also turned what was supposed to be a dramatic treatment of child abuse into a camp classic that had gay men around the country shouting the lines back at the screen.
In the end, no less than Christina Crawford herself denied that her mother acted like that. I don't like Mommie Dearest for what it did to Crawford's image, but I do have to give props to Dunaway, whose dedication to the part is something Joan Crawford would appreciate.
Wise: Little Children (2006) focuses on another bad mommy in an extreme situation. Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet) is a young suburban mother with a daughter she doesn't understand and an older husband who's become hooked on internet porn. At the park one day she meets former college football star Brad Adamson (Patrick Wilson) who's supposed to be studying for the bar, but wastes his hours daydreaming about former glory.
They begin a flirtation that quickly escalates into an affair, igniting a domestic firestorm when Brad's wife Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) catches on to their dalliance. During all this, Brad's buddy Larry, a former cop, has a begun a campaign to expose and harass recently released sex offender Ronny McGorvey (Jackie Earle Haley).
Werth: Sex offender, dead guy who kills you in your dreams, a super hero with a bag on his head. Jackie Earle Haley better be careful of typecasting.
Wise: Director Todd Field adapted Tom Perrotta's novel with the help of the author, and it's interesting to see how the book and the film diverge. Most of the plot points are the same, but the leap from page to screen erased some of the author's black humor while heightening the interconnectedness of the characters. A scene at the local pool, for example, contrasts Sarah and Brad's growing romance with Ronny's own conflicting desires to become a regular member of society while indulging in his squirmy desires.
The juxtaposition not only points out the risk that Sarah and Brad are taking, it also suggests the longings that all three characters have that can never be fulfilled.
Werth: Seeing Wilson's rear end was fulfillment enough for me.
Wise: Winslet, who has made a career of great performances, is particularly good here, if a bit more subtle than in other films. Her Sarah begins frumpy, shoulders hunched as if she is still poring over the feminist texts she studied in college.
As the affair progresses, she becomes more golden, her body less lumpy and more voluptuous, while her speaking voice becomes less nasal and more direct. This is no typical movie makeover scene, instead it's a carefully calibrated depiction of a woman discovering both what she wants and what she doesn't need.
Wilson has a bit less to do, but manages to cast off his somewhat effete persona and play a believable jock plagued by regret.
But it's Haley who's the real stunner here, transforming himself from a washed-up kid star to a character actor with incredible depth. His Ronny is both poignant and tragic, slyly comic, and well deserving of his Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
Werth: I hope you're satisfied that we covered both literature and motherhood in one fell gab.
Wise: Indeed we have, now let's get to those pancakes.
Werth: Tune in next week for more light and fluffy Film Gab!
_01.jpg)
_01.jpg)
.jpg)
