Are the Stars Out Tonight?

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!

Romantic Gab-edy

Werth: Happy post-Valentine's Day, Wise!

Wise: Happy post-Valentine's Day, Werth. Did you do anything romantic yesterday?

Werth: I was too busy being overwhelmed by all the romantic movies that are out right now: Josh Duhamel and some blond girl in Nicholas Sparks' latest romantic schlock Safe Haven; a teen witch falls in love with a human in Beautiful Creatures; even a zombie gets impaled by Cupid in the zom-rom-com Warm Bodies.

Wise: Better Russell Stovers than trying to eat your date's brains. 

Werth: Romance and the silver screen have had a long affair—almost from the very beginning with the scandalous short The Kiss (1896). One of my favorite romantic comedies gave the genre a re-boot in 1959. Pillow Talk stars Doris Day as Jan Morrow, an interior decorator (they weren't desginers yet) who lives the single-girl life in New York City.

Wise: Sex and the studio-back-lot-version-of-the-city. 

Werth: Complicating her nights out with handsy Phi Beta Kappa boys and marriage-proposing clients is the fact that she can't use her phone because the man she shares it with (they were called party lines, kids... and the phones had rotary dials) is too busy wooing chippies with mediocre love tunes.

Wise: Now there's an app for that.

Werth: But what Jan doesn't know is that her unwanted phone pal, Brad Allen (handsome as all get-out Rock Hudson) has, through a set of coinicidences that could only happen in a Fifties Romatic Comedy, found out who she is and decides to woo her by pretending to be a visiting Texas cowpoke. 

With an accent that would make Hudson's character from Giant see red, Brad proceeds to sweep Jan off her feet to get back at her for putting a crimp in his bachelor lifestyle. What makes this film more intriguing than some of its corny predecessors is how it explores a freer sexuality while at the same time maintaining a sense of Fifties sexless decorum. 

Split-screen scenes with Jan and Brad on the phone take place in bed and even the bathtub, the two seemingly touching sudsy feet across the telephone line.


Wise: FaceTime on the iPhone just isn't nearly as alluring. 

Werth: Brad's swinging lifestyle—complete with living room switches that activate record players, mood lighting, extendable beds and a rape-tastic door lock—is smoothed out by the boyish charm that Hudson exudes. 

His scene where he tries to make Jan think he is gay is so meta in its depiciton of a gay man playing a straight man playing a gay man who's not really gay, that you can't help but sing "You Lied" along with Perry Blackwell. Day is pluckily prim as Jan, the sexuality she is smothering always ready to come flaming back to life for the right guy. 

Expert character work from Tony Randall as a millionaire mama's boy and Thelma Ritter as Jan's drunk maid add to the fun in this flick that is tentatively turning the corner of the Eisenhower Fifties to the Swingin' Sixties. 

Wise: Since then lots of films have aspired to the heights of the iconic Day/Hudson pairing, but one film aspired harder than most: Down With Love (2003) attempts to recreate the winking sexuality of its predecessors while also layering on its own winks to telegraph an even wink-ier level of camp

Werth: That's a lot of winking  

Wise: Renée Zellweger stars as Barbara Novak, a single gal and successful author of the titular tome advising women to forget love and enjoy a single life unfettered by the prim mores of the past.  Of course, this seditious talk brings the social and commercial life of New York to a grinding halt as women flee both their sweethearts and their Selectrics.  

The only hope for the city is caddish magazine writer Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor) who has a talent for the ladies and timely exposés.  Disguising himself as a chaste astronaut, Catcher attempts to turn the tables on Barbara by driving her so wild with unfulfilled desire that she'll admit to wanting a husband more than a career.  

Werth: I'd admit that to Ewan McGregor before the opening credits were through.  

Wise: The film's designers beautifully recreate the color saturated look of idealized 60's New York, particularly in Barbara's costumes and Catcher's swank bachelor pad.  

David Hyde Pierce turns up in the Tony Randall role as Catcher's fey and fumbling boss, and would have stolen the show had not the real Tony Randall appeared in cameo as Barbara's stentorian publisher.   

The plot is jam-packed with the kind of plot twists, missed connections and mistaken identities that once made audiences cheer for the inevitable coupling of Doris and Rock, but something about the pairing of Zellweger and McGregor falls flat.  

Zellweger's pout and determined squint seem a poor match to Day's pixie sharpness, and while McGregor fares better with his boyish charm, he lacks Hudson's broad-shouldered masculinity. Still, the film ends on a high note with the pair singing a swinging love duet that hints at the chemistry the two might have displayed in a film better suited to their charms.  

Werth: I hope all this talk about romantic movies doesn't give you a love hangover.  

Wise: Just a handful of leftover Sweethearts candy and a cup of joe and I'll be more than ready for next week's Film Gab.

   

Hunks, Hogs and Hot Ladies

Just a quick reminder to all the classic film lovers out there that this weekend Film Forum continues its celebration of Universal Studios.  Forget the beach and curl up with some of these treasures from the Universal vault:

Indulge in soapy romance with two Douglas Sirk classics (both starring delectable Rock Hudson) with Written on the Wind (1956) and Magnificent Obsession (1954).  
 

Enjoy a double date with two of Hollywood's most iconic leading ladies—Audrey Hepburn and Doris Day—when the Forum presents Charade (1963) and Pillow Talk (1959).  

Or, skip brunch and spend the afternoon with the cuddliest pork belly (sorry, Miss Piggy) to ever hit the silver screen: Babe (1995).  While this heroic ham doesn't come with a complimentary mimosa, this little piggy does star in an even more audacious and adorable sequel Babe: Pig in the City (1998), which, unfortunately, is not part of Film Forum's line-up, but is available for you to complete a porcine film festival at home.