Film Gab Birthday Duo!

Wise: Werth, I see you have two cakes prepared again. Is it another double birthday or are you binging?

Werth: I'm binging on birthdays because today is the birthday of not one, but two great character actors, Eileen Heckart and Arthur O'Connell.

Wise: They not only shared a birthday but they also shared the Broadway stage in the premiere of William Inge's Picnic in 1953 and the silver screen in 1956's Bus Stop.

Werth: Eileen was the younger of the two Oscar-nominated actors, greeting the world as Anna Eileen Herbet in Columbus, OH. Eileen graduated from Ohio State and while her husband was away at war, she moved to NYC to pursue a stage career. She would go on to become a Tony-nominated fixture on the Great White Way and found her way into the fledgling television biz performing stage properites on classic shows like The Ford Theatre Hour and Lux Video Theatre. Her road to Hollywood was a little rougher, as her looks didn't easily translate to the screen. But in 1956 she was in four—count 'em four—films and earned her first Oscar nomination for the camp classic, The Bad Seed. 

One of those films was also a big starting vehicle for a then fairly unknown actor named Paul Newman. Somebody Up There Likes Me is the film adaptation of boxer Rocky Graziano's autobiography and follows the young Rocky from boyhood no-goodnik, to adult no-goodnik, to boxing champion.

Wise: But not up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum, I assume.
 

Werth: Filmed by director Robert Wise in black-and-white, the film maintains a gritty, noir-ish look at poverty-stricken New York and Brooklyn and at the shady world of prize-fighting. Newman is a wonder to behold, his classic good looks busted into broken noses and swollen eyes care of makeup artist William Tuttle. 

But Newman proves he's not just a man to drool over. He gives Rocky a torn characterization that gives him more humanity than a simple punching bag. Newman's Rocky is dumb and lazy but resourceful and driven, a callous thug and a tender father. The NY accent hinders Newman's innate naturalness on screen, but his role in Somebody clearly shows a star was born.

Wise: That and his boxing trunks.
 

Werth: And only six years Newman's senior, Heckart plays Rocky's mother, Ma Barbella, a guilt-ridden mother who only wants the best for her son—even when he doesn't deserve it. Heckart was wonderful at playing flawed survivors. 

As Ma, she lives with the guilt of knowing that her husband's abusive, downward spiral into the shit-heel we see is all because she begged him to stop boxing, killing his dream at the expense of her desire not to see his mug get beat-up all the time. Wrapped in a shawl watching Rocky get the crap knocked out of him on television, Ma has to re-face the consequences of the sweet science. 

Wise:I bet Newman's agent was doing the same thing. 

Werth: While the fight scenes are not as realistic as a post-Rocky and Raging Bull audience might be used to, the black-and-white photography of the fight scenes brings the ring into stark-reality, the audience encircling it thrown into darkness as they watch two men punching their way to what they hope will be a better life. Cinematopgrapher Joseph Ruttenberg earned an Oscar for his work on the film.  

Heckart would join the Oscar Winner's Circle in 1972 when she won for the role she created on stage in Butterflies Are Free, before going on to a busy career in television playing everything from Mary's aunt on the Mary Tyler Moore Show to playing Ellen's Grandma on Ellen. 

Wise: Arthur O'Connell had a similarly varied career, making his big break as a reporter in the final moments of Citizen Kane (1941) before earning an Oscar nom for Picnic (1955), sharing screen time with James Stewart in Anatomy of a Murder (1956), and playing a friendly pharmacist in a series of ads for Crest.  This versatility came in handy when he joined the cast of Frank Capra's Pocket Full of Miracles (1961) in a small but pivotal role.  

The film, a remake of Capra's own Lady for a Day (1933), features a deep bench of some of Hollywood's great character actors.  

Werth: And Ann-Margret playing Ann-Margret.

Wise: The film stars Glenn Ford as Dave the Dude, a superstitious gangster on the make who refuses to seal a deal without first buying a rosy-cheeked fruit from Apple Annie (a bedraggled Bette Davis).  

When he discovers that Annie has a secret daughter whom she's been supporting in a Spanish boarding school and who now wants to finally meet her mother, Dave and his girlfriend Queenie (Hope Lange) clean Annie up, install her in a swank apartment, and assemble a cast of underground toughs to pose as her society friends.  

Werth: There should be a reality show based on this.

Wise: O'Connell plays Count Alfonso Romero, the potential father-in-law to Annie's daughter, and the role calls for a very nuanced take—stern enough to put the ruse at risk, but tender enough to make audiences root for the romance to succeed—and O'Connell succeeds brilliantly.  Davis has a lot of fun in the first half of the film playing a drunk guttersnipe with a heart of gold, and later, after she's had a makeover and the script calls for little more than smiling beatifically, she still radiates the passion of a mother who would do anything for her child. 

Peter Falk has a few great lines (and received a Best Supporting Actor nomination) as Dave's sidekick Joy Boy.  But it's veteran scene-stealer and Film Gab favorite Edward Everett Horton who seems to 
be having the best time onscreen, making sly nods to the audience while taking full advantage of all the plum bits that Capra and his screenwriters were feeding him.  

Even amidst this wealth of talent, O'Connell shines, bringing dignity and humor to a role that anchors the madcap shenanigans around him.

Werth: So, Wise, are you ready to dig into this cake?  

 Wise: I'll take two pieces.  One for now and one for next week's Film Gab.

 

Jazz Gab-ies

Werth: Hello there, Wise!  

Wise: Oh, hi, Werth.  

Werth: Why so glum?  You weren't nominated for a Golden Globe?  

Wise: No, it's not that.  I always get a little blue this time of year.  I took down the Christmas tree, all the holiday lights are disappearing, and the only things I have to look forward to until spring are whiskers on kittens and snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes.  

Werth: You mean you've been having your very own Julie Andrews film fest. 

Wise:  I got a giant TV for Christmas; what else am I going to do with it?  I've climbed every mountain, taken a parrot-headed umbrella out for a spin, and gone cross-dressing with James Garner.  But one of my most enjoyable trips was a return to the Roaring Twenties of Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967).  

Werth: Time travel with Julie Andrews. Sign me up!

Wise: Playing Millie Dillmount, Andrews bobs her hair, gets a swank Jean Louis flapper wardrobe, and sets her cap for her handsome, but dim boss Trevor Graydon (the similarly handsome, but wooden John Gavin).  Meanwhile, she becomes pals with beautiful orphan Miss Dorothy Brown (Mary Tyler Moore) who lives across the hall from Millie at the Priscilla Hotel for Single Young Ladies.  At a dance hosted by the hotel's matron, Mrs. Meers (Beatrice Lillie), Millie and Miss Dorothy strike up a friendship with gadabout paperclip salesman, Jimmy Smith (James Fox).  

Werth: Don't forget the elevator that only works if you tapdance in it.  

Wise: Oh, the whole film's a mess with crazy plot twists, ironic asides, mistaken identities, masquerades, unfortunate racial stereotypes, a 

white slavery ring, and Carol Channing as an oversexed society widow who dances on bi-plane wings, has a stable of lovers and belts a grab-bag of novelty tunes.  

Werth: Nothing says entertainment like Carol Channing being shot out of a cannon .  

Wise: Director George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The World According to Garp) keeps things moving cheerfully along, and screenwriter Richard Morris (The Unsinkable Molly Brown) sweetens his witty scenes with some great Tin Pan Alley confections, but attempting to make sense of the entire movie is nearly impossible. 

Audiences didn't seem to care about the lack of coherence when it premiered, and the film had an extended theatrical run that culminated in seven Oscar nominations.  I'm not sure it deserves recognition from the Academy, but Millie is certainly full of delights. 

Werth: Well, Julie Andrews must have really enjoyed her trip back to the Jazz Age because a year later in 1968 she starred as 20's British actress Gertrude Lawrence in the musical bio-pic, Star!

Wise: Isn't Star! supposed to be a legendary flop?

Werth: It was—and at the risk of upsetting Julie-Heads everywhere, it deserved to be.

Wise: I can see the hate mail being delivered by angry airborne nannies now.

Werth: With the talent involved, it's actually quite shocking that the movie is as lifeless as it is. Robert Wise and Andrews had so much fun working together on The Sound of Music (1965), and since she owed 20th Century Fox another picture, it seemed like the perfect opportunity for the two to create yet another timeless musical classic. But they overlooked one thing—a hugely successful bio-pic musical starring Barbra Streisand called Funny Girl. 

Wise: No one should ever overlook Streisand.

Werth: Released in September of '68, Funny Girl beat Star! out of the gates by about a month with a very similar "came from nothing" story about an entertainer from the '20's (in this case, Fanny Brice) and racked up big box office and critical acclaim for its music and star. 

Unfortunately no matter how much love was banked for Andrews from her previous work, Star! was a critical and financial disaster that paled next to the competition. Andrews tried valiantly to be fresh-faced and plucky as the scene-stealing, temperamental ham Lawrence, but she was hobbled by forgettable tunes (with the exceptions of "Someone to Watch Over Me" and the theme tune) and a clumsy script conceit that had Andrews as Lawrence watching a movie about her life—alternating between faux newsreel footage and flashbacks.

Wise: Was Julie's team too busy burnishing her adorability to bother reading her scripts? 

Werth: The sytlized naturalness that made Andrews so appealing in other films doesn't work here, and Wise's direction is strangely uninspired. It's almost as if the concept of a "show musical" where the music emanates from a stage instead of exploding forth from human emotion and relationships traps Wise in ways that West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music freed him. 

Wise: You know that old adage about if you can't say something nice...?

Werth: Raymond Massey's son, Daniel is wonderfully wry as Lawrence confidante Noel Coward and earned an Oscar nom for his performance. But after all, he was Coward's godson—so he had to have picked up something. Donald Brooks was also Oscar nommed for his period costumes which ranged from Victorian street garb to spangled pajamas. Some of the musical numbers are so strange 

they are actually worth viewing. "Parisian Pierrot" has Andrews dressed as a harlequin; in "Limehouse Blues" she's an Asian callgirl stuck in the seedy part of old Chinatown; and for "The Saga of Jenny," Andrews croons in a staged circus wearing a glittery pantsuit. So on the whole, the film is worth watching—if nothing else to see how Star! earned its stripes as a classic Hollywood misfire.

Wise: I'm feeling a lot better after taking these two little detours in Julie's career—as long as we eventually get back to her playing magical nannies and lovestruck nuns.  

Werth: Have one more spoonful of sugar with this little Julie web tidbit. Tune in for more supercalifragilistic cinema on next week's Film Gab.