Happy Birthday Radio City!

Werth: How do, Wise?

Wise: I do well, Werth. I see you're baking another cake. Who's the lucky star? Rod Taylor?

Werth: While it is the dashing Aussie actor's 83rd birthday, today also marks the 80th Anniversary of the first movie shown at what was once New York's most famous movie theater, Radio City Music Hall. It's hard to believe what with all the concerts and Cirque de Soleil antics that currently go into Radio City, that until 1979 you could actually watch movies at the opulent landmark.

Wise: Did the Rockettes sell jujubes between showings of Burt Reynolds flicks?

Werth: The first film shown was The Bitter Tea of General Yen starring Barbara Stanwyck and it was an auspicious start to 1933 for the budding actress. In July of the same year, Stanwyck starred in what would become one of her most notorious classics, Baby Face. Stanwyck plays Lily, a girl from the mining town side of Erie, PA, who works in her father's rundown speakeasy slinging drinks and dodging come-ons from the sometimes shirtless clientele. 

After her father tries to pimp her out for police protection and is karmically blown-up by his own still, Lily hikes up her garters and heads to New York City to use her feminine charms to get everything she never had.

Wise: You mean a gay best friend and Louis Vuitton bag?

Werth: A very clever cinematic device is used to show how Lily climbs the corporate ladder man by man (including a young, un-western John Wayne) until she is using her sexy gaze to woo the president of the bank and living high on the hog. But like the stock market crash that haunted the era, Lily's success doesn't last and she is forced to face the consequences of using love to manipulate people. 

Stanwyck's ability to play hard-edged dames that were eminently likable made her the perfect actress for Lily. Stanwyck played Lily's sexuality like a cat, aggressive when she sees something she wants, but reluctant once she is finished to do anything other than curl up in a ball and lap at her milkbowl. It's the kind of multi-layered performance that she became legendary for, with explosive outbursts of anger and tenderness that exposed the human side to this hard-edged tramp. 

But in case you thought Stanwyck was all smart-mouth and come hither glances, Orry-Kelly's posterior-hugging gowns also remind us that Stanwyck was a beautiful woman. In one particular scene she is given the Garbo-look, with swept back hair and penciled eyebrows that show this spunky gal from Brooklyn was one of Hollywood's great lookers as well as one its best actresses.

Wise: I know a few Brooklyn gals who could use a little Orry-Kelly in their lives. 

Werth: Baby Face became a lightening rod for controversy due to its explicit display of immoral character and was altered after its initial release to include strange German moralizing from a cobbler (Alphonse Ethier) and a new ending. Once the Production Code began being enforced by Joseph I. Breen and Company in 1934, the likes of Baby Face would not be seen again in American film until the dismantling of the Hays Code in the mid-1960's.

Wise: 1933 also saw the premiere of Paramount's all-star film extravaganza of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.  An amalgam of both Alice books, the film was adapted by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and was based in part on the successful stage version of the Carroll's classic by Eva LaGallienne and Florida Friebus.  In our contemporary world where fantasy has become box office bread and butter, it's strange to see the filmmakers struggling to bring Great Britain's classic fairy tale to the screen.  

Werth: Looking at some of the stock photos, I'm actually terrified of these characters. 

Wise: The film scrupulously tries to recreate Sir John Tenniel's famous illustrations through clever use of sets, make-up and costumes, and lifts dialogue wholesale from Carroll's text, but despite this fidelity to the source material, the film lacks the sourball pleasure of the original.  

The all-star cast—including W.C. Fields as Humpty Dumpty, Gary Cooper as the White Knight, Edna May Oliver as the Red Queen and May Robeson as the Queen of Hearts—works hard to capture the book's absurdity, but are hampered by Norman McLeod's static direction and utter lack of pace.  Part of the problem also lies with Charlotte Henry's Alice: she looks the part, but is completely unable to summon the occasional prickly impatience of Carroll's heroine. 

Werth: I'm often described as prickily impatient.

Wise: There have been many claims over the years that the film's failure at the box office was caused by audiences unable to recognize their favorite stars under the heavy character make-up, but it seems to me that the real problem wasn't so much Wally Westmore's cleverly designed prosthetics as it was the entire production's effort to be laboriously faithful to the books without injecting the kind of madcap zip that Depression era films were capturing so well.  

There are plenty of moments just aching to leap off the screen—particularly Fields' cantankerous turn and the always genius Edward Everett Horton's Mad Hatter—but just never make it.  It was a film carefully studied by the powers at MGM as they began production on The Wizard of Oz, 

and it's probably no coincidence that the latter movie eschewed Baum's turn of the century setting and plainspoken dialogue in favor of contemporary Kansas and the zing of Tin Pan Alley swing.  


Werth: It's nice to see how you always bring it back to Judy.  

Wise: As long as we both bring it back for next week's Film Gab.

  

Brand New Gab

Werth: Happy New Year, Wise!   

Wise: Happy New Year, Werth!  

Werth: The New Year is all about new beginnings, and some of the best movies are about characters who start new lives as new people.  





Wise: Are we talking about identity theft?  Because my parents are obsessed with that.
 

Werth: Not exactly, although theft and identity are part of my "new beginnings" classic, 1969's Midnight Cowboy. John Schlesinger's controversial film starts off with a shot of a mostly deserted Texas drive-in with the prairie and the sky stretching off into the distance. It's the perfect image for Joe Buck's (Jon Voight) Hollywood-style fantasy of moving out of his one-horse town to New York City to become a successful gigolo.

Wise: It must have been a much more glamorous career path before the advent of Craig's List. 

Werth: Dressed in his fringe jacket, green shirt and black cowboy hat and boots, Joe Buck packs up his cowhide suitcase with western shirts and a picture of Paul Newman from the movie Hud and rides a Greyhound to New York City only to find his new beginning as a "stud" is fraught with wake-up calls. 

After being swindled by a blousy penthouse-frau (don't-ask-me-why Academy Award-nominated Sylvia Miles), Joe meets skanky cripple Rico "Ratso" Rizzo (a post-Graduate Dustin Hoffman) and these two outsiders forge an uncomfortable, yet touching bond.  

They hatch scheme after scheme, exhausting themselves and the chances around them, until they have no other choice but to leave New York City for good. Sadly, as Nilsson croons "Everybody's Talkin'", we know that the movie-inspired dreams of these luckless scavengers are doomed whether they are in a condemned apartment building in Manhattan or on the sunny beaches of Florida.

Wise: At least the fresh orange juice will keep scurvy at bay. 

Werth: Many film-folk like to point to Easy Rider (1969) as the movie that ushered in a new era for Hollywood, but I think a better case can be made for Midnight Cowboy dragging Tinseltown into the '70's. 

Even with an initial X-Rating due to the nudity, sex, drag queens, drug use and a gay blowjob courtesy of a young Bob Balaban, Midnight Cowboy earned seven Academy Award noms and won three—including Best Picture and Best Director. 

It was the first time that the Old Guard handed its highest accolade to such edgy, raw material. Schelsinger's use of montage editing was fresh and impactful in visualizing the crossroads of daydreams, nightmares, and real life—and helped define a cinematic style, making Midnight Cowboy a new beginning for Hollywood film.

Wise: In Now, Voyager (1942), Bette Davis plays Charlotte Vale, a dowdy Boston spinster suffering under her dictatorial mother (Gladys Cooper who made a career of playing judgmental society matrons).  A kind psychiatrist, Dr. Jaquith (Claude Rains) admits her to his sanitarium where Charlotte transforms into a self-possessed woman; fearing relapse if she returns to her mother's house, Charlotte instead embarks on a cruise to South America where she meets a handsome (and married) stranger Jeremiah Duvaux Durrance (Paul Henreid).  

An accident during a sightseeing excursion, separates them from the ship and while stranded, they fall in love.  

Werth: Stuck together in a cabin after their Portugese taxi driver nearly takes them off a mountain cliff is reason enough for anyone to fall in love.
 

Wise: Unwilling to break up her lover's marriage, Charlotte returns to Boston heartbroken, but full of a strength she never knew she had.  She takes control of her relationship with her mother and gets engaged to a handsome widower from one of the most prominent Boston Brahmin families, but when a fierce argument with her mother results in her mother's sudden death, Charlotte returns to the sanitarium where she attempts to forge a new life for the second time.  

Werth: The scene of Charlotte sassing her mother to death is one of my all-time favorites.

Wise: Davis, who had always struggled against the confines of the studio system, found new independence in Now, Voyager both onscreen and off.  Because producer Hal B. Wallace developed the film as an independent production within Warner Bros., Davis was able to exert her influence on costumes, casting, and even her director Irving Rapper who found the collaboration both rewarding and exhausting.  

But it's onscreen that Davis makes her biggest transformation, not just within the film by trading dowdy foulard dresses for sleek Orry-Kelly designs, but by putting aside the snarling independence of her earlier roles and taking on a new fortitude grounded in moral certainty.  It's shocking to see Davis this tender, yet just as ferocious as she had ever been.  

Werth: And even more shocking to see her with those eyebrows.

Wise: Tune in to next week's Film Gab when we pluck out more classic films!

 

Peck 'n Bette Birthday Spectacular!

Wise: Hello, Werth.

Werth: Hello, Wise. I see you brought a belated Happy Birthday cake for Gregory Peck with you today.

Wise: No, I brought a belated Happy Birthday cake for Bette Davis.

Werth: What? Both of these celluloid big-wigs had birthdays yesterday? No way!

Wise: Apparently way. Good Queen Bette would have turned 104.

Werth: And Gorgeous Greg would have been 96. Ironic that they shared a birthday but never screentime in a movie.

Wise: Bette would have made a marvelous Boo Radley.

Werth: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) is usually the first Peck movie that people think of, but he had a wonderfully long and prolific movie career. One of my favorites is the William Wyler romantic comedy Roman Holiday (1953). Peck is American journalist Joe Bradley who lucks out on his way home from a poker game when he finds an unconscious runaway royal princess.

Wise: Happens in the West Village all the time.

Werth: Only this doped-up princess is played by then newcomer, Audrey Hepburn. Much ado has been made of Hepburn's first starring role, and boy does she deserve it. You can't take your eyes off her. Her effortless beauty and youthful maturity leap off the screen. It's hard to imagine this girl ever being anything except a hugely successful movie star.

Wise: She wouldn't be scrubbing the john with those cheekbones. 

Werth: With all the attention being given to Hepburn's bird-like, belted waist, you'd think her co-star would just fade into the Trevi Fountain, but not Peck. He had wanted to do a comedy to get away from all the heavy dramas, biblical epics and westerns he'd been doing, so he relished playing the handsome, free-wheeling Bradley. 

This slick, "knows all the angles" newsman attempts to trick this incognito, day-tripping princess into giving him a whopper of an interview without disclosing who he is—or that he knows who she is. He leads her all over Rome on a once-in-a-lifetime tour that has probably done more for Roman tourism than any other movie.

Wise: Except maybe for Gladiator.

Werth: Shot entirely on location (with some help from the legendary Cinecitta Studios) Roman Holiday is just that: a wonderful adventure through a 1950's Rome crowded with horses, bicycles, Vespas, and wildly gesticulating Italian "types."  Of course the two fall in love—but wisely, the ending avoids the fairy-tale possibilities by showing us that sometimes the most magical day in our life only lasts one day. 

With ten Oscars noms (including Wyler for Best Director and pre-Green Acres Eddie Albert for Best Supporting Actor) and three wins (Hepburn as Best Actress, Edith Head for Best Costume Design B&W, and blacklistee Dalton Trumbo hiding behind McLellan Hunter for Best Writing Motion Picture Story), Roman Holiday is a light laugh confection that makes you yearn to use some of those air miles for a nostalgic Italian getaway.  

Wise: Bette Davis leaves for an island getaway at the end of Jezebel (1938), but it's not for a romantic romp. 

Werth: Unless you consider a Yellow Fever colony romantic.  

Wise: Davis plays Julie Marsden, a strong-willed Southern belle who asserts her independence to the detriment of her engagement to stolid banker Preston Dillard (Henry Fonda).  

When she dons a flaming red gown instead of the white traditional to unmarried women at the annual Olympus ball, Preston breaks their engagement and she is shunned by New Orleans society.  After a year spent in seclusion, Julie learns that Preston has returned from a sojourn up North and she goes to him begging for forgiveness and to resume their engagement only to find that he has married another woman in the meantime.  

To further complicate matters, a Yellow Fever epidemic sweeps the city, sickening Preston and condemning him to an island where all the victims are quarantined.  His new wife Amy prepares to accompany him, but Julie begs to take her place on the grounds that only a Southerner could survive the horrors of the island and to prove that her love for Preston has transcended her selfishness. 

Werth: I don't know about you, but there are better ways to try and prove you're unselfish than subjecting yourself to deadly communicable diseases. Donate money to the Milk Fund or something.

Wise: Hollywood legend has it that Davis used Jezebel as a lengthy audition for David Selznick as he was casting Scarlett O'Hara, but whatever the truth to that claim, the film is much more than a pale copy of Gone with the Wind. Davis won her second Oscar for Best Actress and the film cemented her status as a top Hollywood star. 

Of course all the hallmarks of classic Davis performance are here—the unruly pride, a frankness about women's desire—but she also incorporates a vision of ennobling female sacrifice that transforms the character from run-of-the-mill to extraordinary.

Werth: Her Louisiana accent by way of Boston is extraordinary.

Wise: Helping her along is William Wyler's evocative direction, Max Steiner's moving score, and Ernest Haller's alternately tender and terrifying cinematography.  But perhaps the biggest assist comes from costume designer Orry-Kelly who created not only the infamous red dress as well as its obverse, the dimity lace number she was supposed to wear, but also the self-abnegating gray cloak she wears at the end of the film that obliterates her vanity and asserts her sacrifice. So, Werth, whose cake should we slice into first?

Werth: Any way you slice it, we'll be back for next week's Film Gab. 

Wise: No, seriously. I want to eat both cakes.