Birthday Apocalypse!

Here at Film Gab we are a little obsessed with Classic Hollywood birthdays, and today, July 26th is such a goldmine of cake and ice cream, we couldn't stand to leave any star out. So put on your party hats and get ready to gab!

Blake Edwards- This wise-cracking director started off with comedies like Operation Petticoat (1959), but moved on to direct more complex films like Breakfast At Tiffany's (1961) and Days of Wine and Roses (1962). He's most remembered for the goofball Pink Panther series (he directed 6 of them, 7 if you count A Shot in the Dark (1964)) but Victor Victoria (1982) will always hold a special place in Werth's little drag heart. 

Stanley Kubrick- One of the greatest filmmakers of all-time (without winning a single directing Oscar) this native New Yorker turned ex-pat took the art of film iconography to new heights in films like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), and The Shining (1980). We here at Film Gab also think you should check out some of his less quotable works like The Killing (1956), Paths of Glory (1957), and Barry Lyndon (1975).

Kevin Spacey- Whether on the big screen or in the middle of the night in a London park, Kevin Spacey is the consummate actor. Starting with his breakthrough role in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) Spacey has crafted complex male characters who are damaged goods, fighting to get ahead in this ratrace we call life. He got gold statues for his roles in The Usual Suspects (1995) and American Beauty (1999), but he's also worth checking out in Swimming With Sharks (1994), Se7en (1995), L.A. Confidential (1997), and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997). While it didn't fly with audiences, his Lex Luthor in Superman Returns (2006) has the necessary camp and toupee chops.

Helen Mirren- While she happily displays her sex-bomb figure in the tabloids, Helen Mirren began her career doing serious theater, first in Britain's National Youth Theatre and then in the Royal Shakespeare Company. She has continued her theater work on both Broadway and the West End, while also appearing in films from kicky, teenage junk like Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999) to the Oscar-winning The Queen (2006). Other film roles include Gosford Park (2001), The Madness of King George (1994), Hitchcock (2012), and senior citizen spy series RED (2010) and RED II (in theaters now).

Sandra Bullock- Perhaps one of Hollywood's busiest actresses, Bullock shot to stardom in Speed (1994) playing a woman trapped on a bus rigged to explode by terrorists. Building on that success and on her girl-next-door persona, Bullock has played a wide variety of roles, from romantic comedies—While You Were Sleeping (1995), Miss Congeniality (2000) and Two Weeks Notice (2002)—to indies—Crash (2004) and Infamous (2006)—to her Oscar-winning role in The Blind Side (2009). Never one to allow glamour to get in the way of a good role, Bullock has managed to keep her relatable charm while becoming one of the most powerful women in Hollywood.

That should be enough Hollywood birthday cake for one post, but we'll be back next week for more cinema celebration here at Film Gab.

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.

 

Happy 109th, Archie Leach!

Werth: Wise!

Wise: Werth!

Werth: With all the cake from our recent birthday salutes, I'm busting out of my pants.

Wise: Cake just wants you to be happy.  It's the pants that double-crossed you. 

Werth: Today is really a special birthday, though, as it would have been Hollwood icon Cary Grant's 109th birthday.

Wise: Which means that Taylor Swift is just a bit too old to be his co-star. 

Werth: In his later years, Hollywood did have a habit of making Grant the romantic partner for some much younger leading ladies. But in the 1940 classic His Girl Friday, Grant was evenly matched age- and acting-wise with the fast-talking Rosalind Russell. Grant is Walter Burns, a sly, underhanded newspaper editor who is willing to do anything to break the story. Russell is Hildy, his recent ex-wife who stops by the office to let him know she's not only quitting his rag, 

but she's engaged to be married to insurance salesman Bruce Baldwin who "looks like Ralph Bellamy" (a punchline paid off by the fact that Bruce is played by Ralph Bellamy).



Wise: Making him prince of the second banana role. 

Werth: Walter refuses to lose his best reporter and his wife, so he concocts a plan to trick Hildy into helping with one last story hoping she'll miss her train to Albany and a "normal" life. Walter's plan is helped along by the fact that a controversial execution is about to take place and Hildy can't resist covering it. 

Howard Hawks directed His Girl Friday at a breakneck pace with the comic zingers, sly glances, and even the stripes on Hildy's hat and coat zipping by so fast that we have to lean forward to catch every wonderful moment. It's the perfect pacing for a story about journalism, racing across the screen like an AP newsflash.

Wise: Although at the time, it must have been the teletype machine. 

Werth: Grant's charm and grace make even the conniving Walter loveable and Russell's machine-gun one-liners and asides are comedy perfection. As much electric chemistry as these two generated, Grant and Russell never teamed up on the silver screen again. Perhaps it's for the best, because it's hard to imagine even this great duo topping their performances in this milestone in Hollywood comedies.
 

Wise: Grant plays an equally appealing, although more sinister, character in Suspicion (1941).  As irresponsible playboy Johnnie Aysgarth, Grant stumbles into the train compartment of bookish Lena McLaidlaw (Joan Fontaine) and promptly scams her for first class fare before gradually falling for her.  

After a whirlwind romance, the pair elope, much to the disapproval of Lena's staid—and wealthy—parents.  After they return from a grand honeymoon, Lena begins to realize that Johnnie's finances are a tangle of debts, promises, and lost bets at the racetrack.  This being an Alfred Hitchcock film, she also begins to suspect that her beloved husband has a darker side.  

Werth: Why can't Hitchcock's ladies ever trust their men?

Wise: As Johnnie's financial troubles mount, she begins to wonder to what lengths he'll go to shore up his failed business ventures.  And when his best pal—and erstwhile business partner—turns up in Paris dead under mysterious circumstances, she begins to fear for her life.  

Werth: Oh Joan, just drink your milk...

Wise: Fontaine won the Academy Award for this, her second outing with Hitchcock (she was also nominated for her first, Rebecca, the year before), and her evolution—from a dowdy spinster to a woman possessed by lust and finally to a prisoner of her own fears—unfolds thrillingly, yet believably.  

Of course Grant's performance provides the perfect support: his charm could just as easily melt an old maid's frozen heart as it could drain the lifeblood from her veins.  But as a pair, the two make one of Hitchcock's most erotic screen couples.  Grant's roguishness barely conceals his carnal desires, while Fontaine's slightly breathless performance makes audiences wonder if she might willingly sacrifice her life to her husband's gambling addiction in exchange for just one more roll in the sack.  

Werth: Speaking of sacks, I need something to wear that has a little more give than these pants.  

Wise: Just have another piece of cake and we'll both wear muumuus for next week's Film Gab.

  

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.

  

Happy Birthday, MM!

Werth: Happy... Birthday... to youuuuuuuuu. Happy... Birthday—

Wise: Normally I wouldn't interrupt your introduction, but your breathy birthday song in a skintight spangled gown is making me feel funny... and not where the bathing suit goes. 

Werth: I just couldn't think of a better way to wish Marilyn Monroe a happy 86th birthday than with her very own iconic 1962 birthday song to President Kennedy.

Wise: Perhaps a greeting card from Maxine would have sufficed.

Werth: I just get so excited about Marilyn. She was my entrée into the wonderful world of classic films and I'll always have a soft spot in my lil' ol' gay heart for her.

Wise: Right next to the soft spots reserved for Joan Crawford and dancing at the Pyramid. 

Werth: I'll start off this double-barrel birthday salute to Marilyn with one of her comedies, Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch (1955). When goofy, dime-store novel editor Richard Sherman's (Tom Ewell) wife and son head to the country to escape the brutal NYC summer heat, Sherman and his fertile imagination are left to run wild. Before long he is opening his soda with the kitchen cabinet handle, smoking cigarettes and fantasizing in Cinemascope about all the women who just can't resist his animal magnetism.

Wise: Sounds like an evening at your house.

Werth: But when a new tenant (Monroe) buzzes his buzzer and gets her fan caught in the door, Sherman is flummoxed by a real-life fantasy that could make his summer even hotter.

Wise: Because nothing is hotter than the fish smell on Canal Street in July. 

Werth: Marilyn is at the peak of her comedic talents here, crafting her dumb blonde character to be more than just a bubble-headed male sex fantasy. She may not know who Rachmaninoff is but she knows it's classical music, "because there's no vocal." 

She brilliantly satirizes the commercial spokesmodel by explaining how she does her Dazzledent toothpaste ad noting, "...every time I show my teeth on television, I'm appearing before more people 

than Sarah Bernhardt appeared before in her whole career. It's something to think about." Monroe even gets to enter Sherman's fantasies as a tricked-out Natahsa Fatale-esque temptress. Her monologue at the end of the film about what makes a man exciting flies in the face of her dumb blonde persona—and legend has it, it was done in one take. 

Movie lore abounds about this film with my favorite story being the one about Marilyn's descent down the stairs in a nightie. Wilder ordered her to take her bra off, as it would be ridiculous for a girl to wear a bra under her nightie. Monroe insisted she wasn't wearing a bra, but Wilder refused to believe anyone's breasts could look that good without one. So Monroe grabbed Wilder's hand, put it under her nightie, and settled that argument.

Wise: She should have negotiated for the UN. 

Werth: Marilyn exudes simple, sexual joy in Seven Year Itch, with the famous subway vent scene vaulting her already successful career into the Classic Hollywood stratosphere. It is an iconic scene that exemplifies the sort of sexy wit that makes Seven Year Itch a memorable comedy of the 1950's, and Marilyn the most memorable blonde of the 20th Century.

Wise:  She wasn't quite so blonde—but no less memorable—in Monkey Business (1952), a Howard Hawks screwball comedy about scientist Dr. Barnaby Fulton (Cary Grant) searching for an elixir of youth and the hijinks that result when Barnaby and his wife (Ginger Rogers) keep getting doped up on the formula after one of the lab chimps dumps it into the water cooler.  

Werth: My chimps pour vodka into the water cooler where I work.  

Wise: Grant and Rogers are obviously having a lot of fun acting like teenagers while under the influence of the cocktail, but it's when they're playing adults that the sparks really fly. Grant does a variation on his befuddled-but-charming scientist routine—something he'd perfected in Bringing Up Baby—; 

Rogers, however, is fuller and more womanly than when she was dancing with Fred Astaire.  She'd always played a gal who could handle herself, but in this movie she acts as though she could handle her partner, too.  

Werth: And a couple monkeys.

Wise: Hawks' pacing seems a bit off.  While there are many delightful moments, the film never fully takes flight.  Perhaps it's because the premise doesn't feel grounded in reality; or perhaps the anxieties of living in the atomic age make the possibility of eternal youth feel terrifyingly close at hand.  

Werth: Don't forget to mention the Birthday Girl.

Wise: Whatever its faults, the film gives a captivating glance at an embryonic stage of the Monroe legend.  Playing Miss Laurel, the knockout secretary to the head of the chemical company where Grant works, she naturally becomes the object of Grant's attention when he succumbs to the formula.  

They go for a joyride in a hot rod, take in the afternoon at the pool, and spin around the roller rink—basically all her role required was a sexy jiggle—but Monroe invests her dumb blonde with a lot of smarts.  Even in scenes where she's not the focus of the action, it's impossible not to watch her every move.  





Werth: And pilfering attention from a charismatic screen legend like Grant is no piece of cake.  

Wise: Speaking of cake, how about we indulge in a piece to celebrate Marilyn's birthday?  

Werth: I'm afraid that might make this dress explode.  

Wise: That's fine as long as we can reassemble all the pieces in time for next week's Film Gab.