Category Archives: Hollywood

Declare your independence: Those high heels are killers!

Posted on July 3, 2025 | 1 comment

HAPPY JULY!  Following a tradition I began several years ago, I’m once again encouraging women to declare their independence this July 4th and abandon wearing high-heeled shoes. I’ve revised this post for 2025. My newly revised post follows:

I’ve long maintained that high heels are killers.  I never used that term literally, of course.  I merely viewed high-heeled shoes as distinctly uncomfortable and an outrageous concession to the dictates of fashion that can lead to both pain and permanent damage to a woman’s body. 

Several years ago, however, high heels proved to be actual killers.  The Associated Press reported that two women, ages 18 and 23, were killed in Riverside, California, as they struggled in high heels to get away from a train.  With their car stuck on the tracks, the women attempted to flee as the train approached.  A police spokesman later said, “It appears they were in high heels and [had] a hard time getting away quickly.” 

During the past few years, largely dominated by the global pandemic, many people adopted different ways to clothe themselves.  Comfortable clothing became popular, and many women abandoned wearing high heels.  Staying close to home, they saw no need to push their feet into high heels.  Venues requiring professional clothes or footwear almost disappeared, and few women sought out venues requiring any sort of fancy clothes or footwear.  

But when the pandemic began to loosen its grip, some women were tempted to return to their previous choice of footwear.  The prospect of a renaissance in high-heeled shoe-wearing was noted in publications like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.  According to the Times, some were seeking “the joy of dressing up…itching…to step up their style game in towering heels.”

Okay. I get it.  “Dressing up” may be your thing.  But “towering heels”?  They may look beautiful…BUT don’t do it!  Please take my advice and don’t return to wearing the kind of shoes that will hobble you once again.

Like the unfortunate young women in Riverside, I was sucked into wearing high heels when I was a teenager.  It was de rigueur for girls at my high school to seek out the trendy shoe stores on State Street in downtown Chicago and purchase whichever high-heeled offerings our wallets could afford.  On my first visit, I was entranced by the three-inch-heeled numbers that pushed my toes into a too-narrow space and revealed them in what I thought was a highly provocative position.  Never mind that my feet were encased in a vise-like grip.  Never mind that I walked unsteadily on the stilts beneath my soles.  And never mind that my whole body was pitched forward in an ungainly manner as I propelled myself around the store. 

But during one wearing of those heels, the pain became so great that I removed them and walked in stocking feet the rest of my way home.  After that painful lesson, I abandoned three-inch heels and began wearing lower ones. Sure, I couldn’t flaunt my shapely legs quite as effectively, but I nevertheless managed to secure ample male attention.  Instead of conforming to the modern-day equivalent of Chinese foot-binding, I successfully and happily fended off the back pain, foot pain, bunions, and corns that my fashion-victim sisters often suffer in spades.

I’ve been joined in my rejection of high heels by a prominent journalist, Sally Quinn.  In an opinion piece in The Washington Post on July 5, 2024, she wrote, “I never thought I’d abandon high heels. But I did. It wasn’t the pandemic. It was the pain.”  I wonder whether Quinn has taken notice of my opinion-writing on this topic because she echoes my thinking.  She admits that she liked the way her legs looked in high heels, but the pain she endured during a lifetime of wearing them finally pushed her over the edge.  I recommend reading her piece in the Post as another thoughtful rejection of high heels.

Until the pandemic changed our lives, I observed a troubling trend toward higher and higher heels.  I was baffled by women who bought into following the dictates of fashion and the desire to look “sexy” by wearing extremely high heels.  Watching TV, I’d see too many women wearing stilettos that forced them into the ungainly walk I briefly sported so long ago.  Women on late-night TV shows who were otherwise smartly attired and often very smart (in the other sense of the word) wore ridiculously high heels that forced them to greet their hosts with that same awkward walk.  Some appeared to be almost on the verge of toppling over. 

The pandemic no longer dominates our lives, but this phenomenon has sadly reappeared.  Otherwise enlightened women are once again wearing absurdly high heels.  Even one of my favorite TV journalists, Stephanie Ruhle, has appeared on her “11th Hour” program on MSNBC in stilettos.  C’mon, Steph!  Dump those stilettos!

What about the women, like me, who adopted lower-heeled shoes instead of following fashion?  I think we’re much smarter and much less likely to fall on our faces.  One very smart woman who’s still a fashion icon agreed with us long ago: the late Hollywood film star Audrey Hepburn.  

Audrey dressed smartly, in both senses of the word.  I recently watched her 1963 film Charade for the tenth or twelfth time. I once again noted how elegant she appeared in her Givenchy wardrobe and her–yes–low heels. Audrey was well known for wearing comfortable low heels in her private life as well as in her films.  In Charade, she’s seen running up and down countless stairs in Paris Metro stations, chased by Cary Grant, not only on those stairs but also through the streets of Paris.  She couldn’t have possibly done all that frantic running in high heels!

More recently, the Cannes Film Festival has highlighted a few Hollywood stars who’ve rejected stilettos. Julia Roberts walked barefoot in 2016 rather than wear them, and Kristen Stewart notably changed from heels to sneakers in 2018.  Stewart also appeared in sneakers on a late-night TV show in March 2024.

Foot-care professionals have soundly supported my thinking.  According to the American Podiatric Medical Association, a heel that’s more than 2 or 3 inches makes comfort just about impossible.  Why? Because a 3-inch heel creates seven times more stress than a 1-inch heel. A noted foot and ankle surgeon has explained that after 1.5 inches, the pressure increases on the ball of the foot and can lead to “ball-of-the-foot numbness.” (Yikes!)  He advised against wearing 3-inch heels and pointed out that celebrities wear them for only a short time, not all day.  To ensure a truly comfortable shoe, he added, no one should go above a 1.5-inch heel. 

Before the pandemic, some encouraging changes were afoot.  Nordstrom, one of America’s major shoe-sellers, began to promote lower-heeled styles. Although stilettos hadn’t disappeared from the scene, they weren’t the only choices.  I was encouraged because Nordstrom is a bellwether in the fashion world, and its choices can influence shoe-seekers.  Then the pandemic arrived and changed shoe-purchasing.  During the first year, sales of high heels languished, “teetering on the edge of extinction,” according to the Times. 

But because the pandemic has now dissipated to a large extent, some women may have resurrected the high heels already in their closets.  They may even be inspired to buy new ones.  I hope they don’t.

There is heartening news from bellwether Nordstrom.  In its brand-new catalog for summer 2025, it features pages of stylish sneakers and other flat-heeled shoes. A couple of low-heeled shoes appear, but stilettos are nowhere to be found.

Let’s not forget the Gen Z generation.  Most Gen Z shoppers don’t follow the dictates of fashion. They largely eschew high heels, choosing pricey and often glamorous sneakers instead–even with dressy prom dresses.

My own current faves: I wear black Skechers almost everywhere (I own more than one pair).  Sketchers “step-ins” are a welcome new addition.  I occasionally choose my old standby, Reeboks, for serious walking. (In my novel Red Diana, the protagonist laces on her Reeboks for a lengthy jaunt, just as I do.) I’ve added a pair of Ryka sneakers–so far so good.   And in warm weather, I wear walking sandals, like those sold by Clarks, Teva, and Ecco.

Any women who are pondering buying high-heeled shoes should hesitate.  Beyond the issue of comfort and damage to your feet, please remember that high heels present a far more serious problem.  As the deaths in Riverside demonstrate, women who wear high heels may be putting their lives at risk.  When they need to flee a dangerous situation, high heels can handicap their ability to escape. How many needless deaths have resulted from hobbled feet? 

The Fourth of July is almost here.  As we celebrate the holiday this year, I once again urge the women of America to declare their independence from high-heeled shoes. 

If you’re thinking about returning to painful footwear, think again.  You’d be wise to reconsider.  I urge you to bravely gather any high heels you’ve been clinging to and throw those shoes away.  At the very least, keep them out of sight in the back of your closet.  

And don’t even think about buying new ones.  Shod yourself instead in shoes that allow you to walk in comfort—and if need be, to run. 

Your wretched appendages, yearning to be free, will be forever grateful.

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Posted in fashion, feet, foot pain, films, high-heeled shoes, high heels, Hollywood, movie stars, movies, Nordstrom, Paris, Riverside, California, safety, senior proms, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, TV late-night, walking, women

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Hollywood’s take on unwanted pregnancies

Posted on May 16, 2024 | 2 comments

The current turmoil over abortion rights arose after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade two years ago.  But the problems created by unwanted pregnancies have been around for generations, since long before Roe v. Wade made legal abortions possible in the U.S. in 1973. 

A Place in the Sun was a powerful 1951 Hollywood film highlighting the problem. Starring Montgomery Clift and Ellizabeth Taylor, the film featured Shelley Winters as a hapless young woman whose unwanted pregnancy led to disastrous consequences. Based on the Theodore Dreiser novel An American Tragedy, the film dramatized a real-life story dating back to 1906.  I’ve watched this film many times, and although I felt sympathy for Shelley Winters’s pathetic character, I never related to her.

A much later Hollywood film openly dealt with the subject of abortion in 1963.  Love With the Proper Stranger featured two Hollywood superstars during that era, Natalie Wood and Steve McQueen (both of whom coincidentally met untimely deaths in 1980/81).  It became a huge box-office hit in 1963, and it’s worth revisiting today.  

In the film, Natalie Wood (as “Angela”) and Steve McQueen (as “Rocky”) confront the abortion question head-on.  Rocky is a jazz musician seeking a gig at a union hiring hall in NYC when Angela suddenly appears.  Steve McQueen had just starred in The Great Escape and a bunch of popular Western films, but he reportedly wanted to play a different kind of character in a different kind of film.  Natalie Wood’s career was thriving, and she probably relished playing a sharp young woman who boldly chooses to confront the one-night stand who’s caused her a serious problem—an unwanted pregnancy.

Angela’s life is constrained by her oppressive family. She’s “choking to death” in their small apartment, constantly vowing to escape. Now, unhappily pregnant, she tells Rocky, “All I want from you is a doctor.”

After some hesitation, Rocky tracks down the name of a doctor who charges $400 for an abortion, and he agrees to pay half.  The two of them arrive at the location where they’ve been told to bring the money, but the lowlife they meet demands another $50.  (Please note: Angela is wearing a dress and high-heeled shoes, an outfit that looks absurd when viewed today. This is what Hollywood moguls must have thought women wore to their illegal abortions in the 1960s.)

The couple has scraped up the original $400 fee with difficulty, so they resort to getting the extra $50 from Rocky’s family. They finally make their way to the doctor’s address, a run-down apartment where Angela shakily begins to undress.  But the abortionist is a not an MD, just a rude woman with scary-looking things in a suitcase.  Angela is shocked and begins to sob, fearful of what might happen to her.  Rocky bursts in, and they escape together, Rocky bravely announcing “I’ll kill them before I let them touch you.”

Their budding romance has its ups and downs as they deal with Angela’s family and a prospective suitor her mother pushes on her.  But Rocky finally realizes that he loves Angela, and he asks her to marry him.  Thus we have a typical Hollywood “happy ending.”  Except that this couple has shared a horrific run-in with the illegal abortion industry that existed in NYC in 1963. 

Love With the Proper Stranger offered a cautionary tale for its audience, including a young woman like me.  When I saw this movie, I was a naïve student hovering between college and law school. Although I was dating a variety of suitors, I wasn’t as sexually active as many other women my age. (I was what we called a “good girl”.)  Still, I could easily see myself in Angela’s appalling situation, confronting an unwanted pregnancy sometime in the future.  And it certainly struck me as unfair that it was the woman who had to deal with this situation while her partner could escape without any consequences.

Four years later, I graduated from law school with the goal of helping minorities and women achieve the justice often denied them in the U.S. at that time.  So when I began work in a job that enabled me to challenge the constitutionality of the restrictive Illinois abortion statute, I seized the opportunity to effect change and, with my co-counsel, took on that challenge.

Did seeing the film, Love With the Proper Stranger, influence me in any way?  Specifically, did it influence me to become a lawyer who challenged that restrictive law? 

Maybe.

In retrospect, I think I was influenced by a great many things in our culture.  Including Hollywood movies.

A much more recent movie similarly addresses the deplorable absence of abortion rights in 1963:  The 2021 French film, Happening, based on the 2000 novel with the same title by the 2022 Nobel Prize-winner in literature, Annie Ernaux.  Ernaux’s novel, and the film adapted from it, dramatize the real-life experiences she endured (coincidentally in 1963) when, as a promising young college student, she was faced with an unwanted pregnancy.  Both the film and the book depict her repeated attempts to secure a safe abortion, thwarted by the harsh anti-abortion law governing French women at that time. 

Happening is a far more sophisticated version of this story than the 1963 U.S. version. It garnered outstanding reviews by prominent film critics worldwide. Anyone viewing it lives through exactly what women at every level in French society confronted when they tried to live a meaningful life free from the cruel and antiquated views of abortion by those in leadership positions in the French government. 

Like the story in Love With the Proper Stranger, it’s a story as vivid to us today as it was to those of us who fought against the harsh laws depriving women of their reproductive freedom in the past.  In 2024, we must vow to re-fight those fights whenever and wherever our reproductive rights are denied.

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Posted in 1960s, 1970s,, pensions, pension law, fairness, workers' rights, women lawyers, films, gender equality, Hollywood, law

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SusanLindaBarbaraCarolJudyNancy

Posted on March 25, 2024 | 1 comment

When I was growing up, about 80 percent of the girls I knew shared one of these six names:

Susan

Linda

Barbara

Carol(e)

Judy

Nancy

I was one of the perhaps hundreds of thousands of women in my generation named Susan.  In 1945, it ranked as the #10 girls’ name in the U.S.  By 1957, it was even more popular, ranking #2.

Why did so many of us share the same names?

I trace their popularity to something that seemed to permeate the consciousness of our parents:  The bright lights of Hollywood.

When we were born, many of our parents were still emerging from the shadows cast by World War II and the financial setbacks of the Great Depression.  Our parents may have already become financially successful or they may have been continuing their attempt to achieve financial success.  Either way, they hoped for a bright future for their darling daughters.  Hollywood seemed like a glittering site where they could find names to bestow on them.

In my own case (and that of the throngs of other Susans), I blame Susan Hayward.  By 1940, Susan Hayward had begun to earn a place for herself in Hollywood.  She went on to star in a series of box-office hits during the 1940s and ‘50s.  In most of her roles, she was a notable standout among the film actresses of her day—courageous, smart, and fiercely independent, frequently paired with some of Hollywood’s top male stars.  Her flaming red hair and other appealing features helped bolster her status as a Hollywood star.

What about the other names?  The reliance on Hollywood’s women stars is equally clear when we consider at least four of the other names.

Linda:  Hollywood was fascinated with Linda Darnell, and she was featured in a wide range of films during the 1940s and ‘50s.  The Mark of Zorro (1940) was her first opportunity to star with leading man Tyrone Power, with whom she was paired in a number of films.  Coincidentally, Tyrone Power later married Linda Christian, another Hollywood star during the ‘40s and ‘50s.

Barbara:  One of Hollywood’s megastars, Barbara Stanwyck, starred in 85 films, including many during the 1940s and ‘50s.  She was admired for her roles as a strong leading woman in films like Double Indemnity (1944).   Incidentally, Ruth Handler created the Barbie doll in 1959, probably influenced by the popularity of the name Barbara during the ‘40s and ‘50s.

Carol(e):  Carole Lombard, a huge star in the 1930s, was originally named Carol but was once mistakenly credited as Carole, and she adopted that spelling because she decided she liked it.  Her popularity zoomed until a plane crash in 1942 ended her life as well as her radiant career.  Her husband, Hollywood leading man Clark Gable, remarried twice but reportedly never got over Carole’s death.

Judy:  The name Judy was undoubtedly inspired by Hollywood legend Judy Garland.  Need I say more?

Nancy:  It’s harder to track any film stars named Nancy.  Nancy Davis, who married Ronald Reagan, didn’t begin making movies until the late ‘40s and she never became a big star.  Other Nancys in Hollywood films during the ‘40s and ‘50s were fairly unknown actresses who never achieved box-office success.  Maybe they were among the countless women who rejected the Hollywood casting couch and fell into oblivion as a result.  Parents may have chosen the name Nancy simply because they liked the good vibe the name Nancy offered, in part due to the popularity of the Nancy Drew books.  As a teenage sleuth, Nancy Drew gave off a great vibe.  A total of 175 books featuring her began publishing in 1930 and continued for decades.

Among my cohorts, many other girls’ names had their moment in the sun:  Karen, Julie, Natalie, Ann/Anne, Janice, Marcia/Marsha, Elizabeth (in one form or another), and Katherine (ditto).  But they couldn’t compete with the six favorites.

Boys’ names pretty much stuck to more traditional favorites. Most popular from the 1940s through the 1960s were James, Robert, John, William, and Richard, with Michael and David gaining strength in the ‘60s.

Both boys’ and girls’ names had changed radically by 2000.  Boys were most often named Jacob, Joshua, and Matthew.  Girls’ favored names were Emily, Hannah, and Madison.

Some parents began using names derived from pop culture, especially TV series (supplanting Hollywood films)–names like Phoebe in “Friends.”

As for Susan, it’s plunged in popularity since its heyday, when it ranked #2.  By 2023, it had fallen to #1708.  

Nobody seems to name a daughter Susan anymore. 

But with the recent revival of venerable names like Amelia, Evelyn, Charlotte, and Olivia, who knows?  Maybe Susan will live again! 

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Posted in 1940s, 1950s, Hollywood, movie stars, movies

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Easy to Love

Posted on October 21, 2023 | 3 comments

 For a total departure from the horrific TV news that continues to unfold, I escaped by watching a 1953 Hollywood film, Easy to Love.

This film, starring three 1950s Hollywood favorites, offered just the kind of escape I needed.  The stars were three of my own favorites when I was growing up:  Esther Williams, Van Johnson, and Tony Martin.

Set in the lush backdrop of Cypress Gardens, Florida (as it existed in the mid-fifties), the story transports us to a Technicolorful world where people faced the kind of simple problems we all wished we had right now.

Esther provides the dominant star power, charmingly swimming, diving, and singing her way through the silly plot.  As an astonishing athletic female star during that era (for which she deserves far more attention and praise), she headlined a number of MGM films.  Some of them frequently appear on Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and when I recently watched Easy to Love, the TCM host noted that Hollywood legend Busby Berkeley had choreographed Esther’s escapades in this film. The film opens, in fact, with a stunning example of just what Esther and Busby could do together. Berkeley later revealed that he loved being free of “the confines of the pool” in this film, here able to marshal 100 “troops” of water-skiers and swimmers, along with Esther, to perform astounding spectacles on water.  What’s remarkable is that, before making this film, swimmer Esther had never water-skied and had to learn how.

Esther’s MGM films included Neptune’s Daughter (1949), in which she and Ricardo Montalban sing the Frank Loesser Oscar-winning song that decades later has been viewed by some as offensive:  “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”  You probably know that the male singer tries to persuade the woman to stay with him despite her desire to leave.  Truthfully, the sexual innuendo it splashes on the screen was pretty typical of many Hollywood films in that era.

Montalban, by the way, later became famous for his roles in StarTrek and Planet of the Apes films, as well as his role on TV’s Fantasy Island.

Esther’s co-star, Van Johnson, who usually played the quintessential good-guy, has a different role here.  He ruthlessly runs the resort at Cypress Gardens, where he’s a tyrannical boss, ordering his employee Esther to work long hours while he ignores her romantic interest in him.  He’s constantly surrounded in his domain by a bevy of countless other “girls” (no one’s a woman in this film).  Esther frequently rages against his awful treatment, which he keeps on doing…. Until the very end.

Midway, along comes Tony Martin, the handsome singer I focused on in a post last year [https://susanjustwrites.com/2022/10/26/marlon-tony-and-cyd/].  He meets Esther during her brief stay in NYC, and romance ensues.  As the film moves along, successful cabaret-headliner Tony sings a number of mostly forgettable numbers, with the notable exception of Cole Porter’s “Easy to Love.”  Tony charmingly serenades Esther with that American-songbook standard at a pivotal point in the story.

[As I noted in my earlier post, my father wangled tickets for our family to watch Tony Martin perform at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas one year after the film Easy to Love appeared.  In addition to singing “Luck Be a Lady” from the Broadway musical Guys and Dolls (the song that forever left a powerful memory for me), he must have sung a wide range of other songs that I don’t remember.  But I’ll bet that “Easy to Love” was one of them.]

Back to the film:  What’s most escapist in this film today is its colorful portrayal of flower-filled Cypress Gardens, Florida, and the astounding swimming and water-skiing that it highlights.  This made me wonder:  Whatever became of Cypress Gardens?

I did a bit of research into the fascinating history of Cypress Gardens.  During the 1930s, a couple named Pope created this new resort, opening in 1936 with 8,000 varieties of flowers and the first electric boats “gliding through” the canals they’d constructed. It became Central Florida’s major tourist attraction, especially the water ski show that evolved.  Numerous movies were filmed there, including Easy to Love.  Over the years, it’s been bought and sold many times. Today it’s the site of the theme park LEGOLAND Florida Resort.

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Posted in 1950s, American culture, Broadway musicals, films, Hollywood, memories, movie stars, movies, New York City

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On “thin ice”?

Posted on June 29, 2023 | 2 comments

                    

When the events in our world become too unpleasant, I retreat to a comforting place:  old movies.

I’ve been a movie buff my entire life, and I’ve previously written about some of my favorite films.  

An invaluable source of old movies has been the TV channel TCM, Turner Classic Movies.  A recent threat to the status of TCM arose when a new CEO assumed a degree of power over it.  Maureen Dowd described the situation perfectly in her column in The New York Times on June 24, “Save Turner Classic Movies.”  In her column, Dowd proclaimed that TCM is “a public good, like libraries,” adding that “It enshrines our cinematic past.” She relates that she has spoken with David Zaslav, the new CEO in charge, and he promised to preserve it.  Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese have just announced that they will work for free to help TCM survive.

Watching old films is illuminating:  They almost never feature extreme violence and the supernatural, two features prominent in current films.  Although I’m frequently disturbed by the depiction of women as either frivolous or annoying (also apparent when I rewatched on DVD the first season of TV’s Twilight Zone), there’s almost no graphic depictions of the worst kinds of aggressive sexual violence toward women.  Women didn’t have the role in society that we (for the most part) play today, and that’s reflected in the films from earlier eras.  Still, women frequently played strong characters in many of the classic films I’ve watched.  As Dowd noted, film noir femmes fatales “taught me that women could be tough and play the game better than any man.”

I fervently hope that the threat to TCM does in fact vanish because I rely on TCM to find films featuring absorbing plots, excellent dialogue, and highly regarded film stars of the past.  Male stars like Paul Newman, Montgomery Clift, John Garfield, and Humphrey Bogart. I’ll add Tyrone Power, William Holden, Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas, Marlon Brando, Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Jack Lemmon, James Stewart, Fred McMurray, Stewart Granger, Orson Welles, Ray Milland, Gregory Peck, Burt Lancaster, Henry Fonda, Clark Gable, James Mason, Joseph Cotten, Charleton Heston, and Edward G. Robinson. And if Robert Redford has truly left making feature films, I’d add him also.

Unfortunately, many women stars haven’t survived nearly as well.  Some may have been cast aside because they wouldn’t comply with the bedroom demands of certain Hollywood moguls.  But women like Ingrid Bergman, Katharine Hepburn, Ida Lupino, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Judy Holliday, Susan Hayward, Vivien Leigh, Barbara Stanwyck, Olivia de Havilland, Anne Baxter, Deborah Kerr, Audrey Hepburn, Geraldine Page, Lauren Bacall, Elizabeth Taylor, Lee Remick, Eve Arden, Myrna Loy, Claire Trevor, even Marilyn Monroe survived and played strong female characters in a variety of classic films.  (I’m probably forgetting a few of your favorite stars of the past, both male and female.  Sorry.)

I’m currently obsessed with Tyrone Power, a great actor who starred in 48 feature films during his short lifetime. His handsome face and endearing persona simply beam from my TV screen.  Although I was already aware of some of Tyrone Power’s (hereinafter “TP”) best films, TCM has helped me discover a great number of movies I’d never encountered.

In my quest to find more of TP’s films, I’ve found many on Netflix DVDs (sadly ending in September).  I also learned that the San Francisco Public Library houses some of them on DVD, and I can request that these show up at my local branch. The result is that, thanks to TCM and the two other sources, I’ve recently been immersed in TP’s films.  Some of the DVDs also include wonderful special features, while TCM hosts like Ben Mankiewicz sometimes add “inside Hollywood” stories.

I’ll list just a few of TP’s films that you’re probably never heard of.  (I didn’t.)  I recommend that you seek them out if you can.  In chronological order, they are:

In Old Chicago (1938): A fictionalized story of brothers who become political leaders in Chicago, ending with an amazing depiction of the Chicago Fire of 1871

Rose of Washington Square (1939): A music-filled film that centers on the same life-story of Fanny Brice as that told in “Funny Girl,” with Alice Faye as Rose (Fanny) and TP in the Nick Arnstein role.  By the way, when Fanny Brice sued Fox for $750,000, the studio settled out of court for an undisclosed amount

The Rains Came (1939): TP plays a handsome MD in India, and a haughty Myrna Loy falls hard for him; it features astounding special effects of flooding rains and an earthquake that earned the very first special-effects Oscar

The Mark of Zorro (1940): An exciting updated version of the story that starred Douglas Fairbanks as Zorro in the 1920 silent version; Basil Rathbone, who sparred with TP in a fierce sword-duel, said that “Power was the most agile man with a sword I’ve ever faced…. He could have fenced Errol Flynn into a cocked hat.”

Blood and Sand (1941): TP is a wholly believable matador in glorious Technicolor

And now for a unique film I was surprised to come across:  Thin Ice (1937).  Here TP is paired with Olympics gold-medal-winning Norwegian ice skater, Sonja Henie.  Henie set records as a three-time Olympic champion in women’s singles, and Hollywood welcomed her as a star from 1936 to 1943. Thin Ice is set at a resort in the Alps, where Sonja arrives to teach ice skating.  While skiing, she encounters TP, a prince from somewhere in Europe.  Clothed in casual skiing garb, he introduces himself as Rudy, and he charmingly proceeds to keep his real identity as Prince Rudolph a secret.  

During the film, Henie performs as the star of several ice shows at the resort, skating to music by Borodin (before “Stranger in Paradise” used the same melody in the Broadway musical “Kismet”) and other classical composers. TP sits in the audience disguised in absurd Groucho Marx-type outfits, but of course the two finally meet up as prince and skating star and fall in love.

I find this film of special interest because Sonja Henie played a small but memorable part in my life. When I was very young, my parents took me to see one of the skating extravaganzas she starred in when her life as a movie star was over.  My father remarkably saved the souvenir program from the extravaganza, the “Hollywood Ice Revue,” and I found it years later in a scrapbook he kept for our family.  I’ve preserved this program, perfectly intact, ever since.  And although I’ve forgotten almost the entire show, I retain a vivid memory of one thin slice of it when Henie came out onto the ice.  She was perched at the top of an enormous ice-cream soda glass, sitting on the whipped cream at the very top, before somehow getting to the ice in order to skate. 

Tyrone Power left Hollywood to serve in the Marines during World War II.  His distinguished service record led to a bunch of medals.  In 1946, he returned to Hollywood and resumed a successful career in films.  But he also left on occasion to work as an actor in several notable stage productions.

Memorable films during this period include these:

Nightmare Alley (1947): TP’s favorite role, and one he had to fight to make. Darryl Zanuck, who ran Fox, viewed TP as his “darling boy” and tried to confine his roles to the lightweight ones in his early films.  But TP was determined to play more challenging roles, and he finally succeeded in making Nightmare Alley.  The studio didn’t promote it and, as a result, it wasn’t a box office hit, but it has gained acclaim and is now recognized as a film noir classic. The recent remake, starring Bradley Cooper, lacks the exciting flavor of the original.

Rawhide (1951): A wonderful pairing of TP and Susan Hayward (another of my favorites) in an unconventional Western setting; they’re hostages held by a murderous gang seeking to steal a shipment of gold (BTW, it has no connection to the TV series sharing its title)

TP’s last completed film, Witness for the Prosecution (1957), is an exciting drama ending with a riveting courtroom scene. In the story, based on a play by Agatha Christie, TP is the lead, playing a criminal defendant accused of murder.  Although Charles Laughton and Marlene Dietrich, in starring roles, have probably garnered more attention for this film than TP, he plays his part brilliantly, directed by the esteemed Billy Wilder.

Tyrone Power tragically died at the age of 44 while making a film in Spain in 1958.  I’ll skip the harrowing details of his death; you can read about them online.

I’ll simply state that watching him in one or more of his movies will probably lead you to admire him as a brilliant and accomplished actor who illuminated every film he was in. 

And if you want to fall in love with Tyrone Power, as I have, please watch one more film:  The Eddy Duchin Story (1956).  In this film, TP assumes the role of the real-life pianist who achieved fame as a bandleader and musician in NYC in the 1930s.  Co-starring with Kim Novak as his wife, TP is bound to win you over.

In my view, Tyrone Power’s reputation is secure.

On “thin ice”?  Not the way I see it.   

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Posted in "Funny Face" film, "Rosebud", "Some Like It Hot", 1940s, 1950s, American culture, Audrey Hepburn, Battle of the Sexes film, Billy Wilder, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Daddy, films, Hollywood, Jack Lemmon, Orson Welles, The New York Times, theater

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Marlon, Tony, and Cyd

Posted on October 26, 2022 | 5 comments

Thanks to the cable TV channel Turner Classic Movies (TCM), I frequently watch a wide range of movies produced from the late ‘30s to those in the 21st century.

Some of my favorites are movies from the 1950s.  One highlight is the 1955 film Summertime, featuring Katharine Hepburn as a single woman who finds love while touring Venice on her own. Shot on location in Venice, it’s not your typical romantic movie, surpassing that genre with Hepburn’s brilliant performance and its glorious setting.

Among many other films from the ‘50s, I recently came across the 1955 Hollywood version of the 1950 Broadway blockbuster musical Guys and Dolls.  I’d seen it before but not for decades, and the TCM introduction by host Ben Mankiewicz was intriguing.  He noted that the film’s director, Joe Mankiewicz (Ben’s uncle), induced Marlon Brando to take the role of the leading man (Sky Masterson) despite Brando’s reluctance to assume a role in a musical. 

Joe reportedly told Marlon that he’d never directed a musical before, but, hey, they’d worked well together one year earlier when Joe directed the film version of Julius Caesar, and neither of them had ever done Shakespeare in a film before. As we know, Julius Caesar was a success, and Joe convinced Marlon that they’d also succeed together in a musical.

Although I enthusiastically agree that they both performed at the top of their game in Julius Caesar, their later collaboration in a musical was less than totally successful.

Filled with catchy tunes composed by the great Frank Loesser, the movie is exuberant, probably as far as a movie musical can go.  But one enormous weakness is Marlon’s lack of vocal ability.  His part requires that he sing a host of major songs, but his voice just isn’t up to them.

(By the way, Frank Sinatra was reportedly angling for this role and not happy about being given the secondary part of Nathan Detroit.)

One of the most obvious examples of Marlon’s poor vocal ability is his rendition of “Luck Be a Lady,” a show-stopping musical number on Broadway. 

When I watched Marlon’s pitiful attempt to master it, I was flooded with memories of first hearing this song performed—live—by singer Tony Martin at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas.

I was a kid when my family and I arrived in Las Vegas en route from Chicago to Los Angeles.  We’d left our life in Chicago behind, hoping to find a new life for all of us in LA.  Our move was prompted by my father’s serious illness, which we optimistically believed was cured, and his hope to establish a new life for our family in sunny LA.

I was delighted by our departure.  I knew I’d miss my friends in Chicago, who memorably gave me a surprise farewell party featuring a cake emblazoned with “California, Here Comes Sue” (my preferred nickname at the time).  But I was excited about forging a new life on the West Coast, where I fervently hoped that Daddy would be healthy and able to forge a new career.  Sadly, that wasn’t to be.  (I plan to write about that period in my life another time.)

Many of you may be wondering, “Who was Tony Martin?”

Although Tony Martin has faded into our cultural background today, he was a prominent American singer and film actor during most of the 20th century.  Born in San Francisco and raised in Oakland, Tony began his musical career with a local orchestra until he left for Hollywood in the mid-‘30s.  He appeared on radio programs like Burns & Allen, then moved on to films, where he starred in a number of musicals and received equal billing with the Marx Brothers in their final film, The Big Store.  After serving during WWII, he came back to the U.S., recorded memorable songs for Mercury and RCA records (including some million-sellers), and returned to Hollywood to star in film musicals in the ‘40s and ‘50s.  He also began performing in Las Vegas and other venues and continued to perform live till he was over 90.  (The NY Times reported that he performed at Feinstein’s on Park Avenue in NYC at the age of 95.)

Before dying at 98 in 2012, Tony was truly a fixture in Hollywood films, recorded music, TV appearances, and as a headliner in live concert performances for seven decades.  In the public mind, he’s been eclipsed by another Tony—Tony Bennett–who became successful during the ‘50s recording hits like “Because of You” and “Rags to Riches.”  His rendition of 1962’s “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” became his signature song and made him a hero in San Francisco (although it was Tony Martin who was actually born in SF).  Tony Bennett, perpetuating his role as a celebrated singer of pop standards, jazz, and show tunes, has become something of a cultural touchstone.  Despite his recent battle with Alzheimer’s, his popularity endures.  I can’t deny that his prominent place in the American musical landscape has lasted far longer than Tony Martin’s.

Back to my story…. 

Our family was staying at an inexpensive motel on the Las Vegas Strip, but Daddy had grand plans for us.  He succeeded in getting us front-row tickets for Tony Martin’s memorable performance at the Flamingo, a luxury hotel on the Strip.

The Flamingo Hotel itself is noteworthy.  As the 1991 film “Bugsy” (starring Warren Beatty as Bugsy Siegel) and, more recently, the 2021 film “Lansky” (featuring Harvey Keitel as Meyer Lansky) make clear, Ben “Bugsy” Siegel and Meyer Lansky were major figures in organized crime who funded the construction of the Flamingo Hotel in the late forties.  It was finally completed in 1947 around the time Bugsy was shot to death by his fellow mobsters, who believed him guilty of skimming money. 

I knew nothing of this history until many years later.  When I was a kid, all I knew was that I got to see and hear Tony Martin live at the Flamingo.  I absolutely reveled in being part of the audience that night, watching Tony perform.

When Tony sang “Luck Be a Lady,” he lighted up the stage, and the audience responded enthusiastically. I recall being completely enthralled. 

Marlon’s performance in Guys and Dolls wasn’t in the same league.

At the same time that Tony was executing this song far better than Marlon ever could, Tony’s wife, dancer Cyd Charisse, was making her own mark in Hollywood.  Tony and Cyd married in 1948, and their six-decade marriage ended only with Cyd’s death in 2008. 

Cyd was an astounding dancer in a raft of Hollywood films, paired with both Gene Kelly (in Brigadoon, for one) and Fred Astaire.  Her dance number with Astaire in The Band Wagon (to the song “Dancing in the Dark”) has been immortalized in 1994’s That’s Entertainment III.  And if you watch 1957’s Silk Stockings (a musical version of Garbo’s Ninotchka), your eyes are riveted on her fantastic dancing, which outdoes Astaire’s in every way.  (By the way, Cyd’s comments in her autobiography on dancing with Kelly and Astaire are fascinating.)

Was Cyd in the audience that night, sharing her husband’s fabulous performance with the rest of us?  I’ll never know.  But it’s exciting to imagine that she was there, applauding with gusto, just as we did, to pay tribute to Tony’s outstanding rendition of “Luck Be a Lady.”

It goes without saying that Marlon Brando was a brilliant actor, one of the most remarkable actors of his generation.  His performances in films like On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Godfather, and, for that matter, Julius Caesar, will remain in our cultural memory as long as films endure. 

But notably, after playing Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls, Marlon never attempted another singing role.  

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Another love story

Posted on May 26, 2021 | 3 comments

Part II

Watching “Love Story” again, 50 years later, I found it terribly disappointing.

The film was an enormous hit at the box office, earning $130 million—the equivalent of $1 billion today.

It was a box-office phenomenon, a tearjerker that offered its audience a classic love story filled with amorous scenes and, ultimately, tragedy.

But….

Fifty years later, I found the two leads far less appealing than I remembered.  Ryan O’Neal, who plays highly-privileged Oliver Barrett IV, and Ali MacGraw, who plays Jenny, a super-smart girl from the wrong side of the tracks, encounter each other on the Harvard campus as undergrads.  After some sparring, they quickly fall into each other’s arms.  But I didn’t find either them or their relationship overwhelmingly endearing.

Ali MacGraw’s character, Jenny, strikes me now as borderline obnoxious.  She’s constantly smirking, overly impressed with her brain-power and witty repartee. 

Even Oliver, who falls madly in love with her, calls her “the supreme Radcliffe smart-ass” and a “conceited Radcliffe bitch.”  (As you probably know, Radcliffe was the women’s college affiliated with Harvard before Harvard College itself admitted women.)

Jenny would repeatedly retaliate, ridiculing Oliver by calling him “preppie,” a term used at the time by non-privileged students in an attempt to diminish the puffed-up opinion that privileged prep-school graduates had of themselves.

Jenny may have been Hollywood’s version of a sharp young college woman of her time, but 50 years later, I view her character as unrelatable and hard to take.

I received my own degrees at a rigorous college, a demanding grad school, and a world-renowned law school.  My classmates included some of the smartest women I’ve ever known.  But I don’t recall ever encountering any bright young women who exemplified the kind of “smart-ass” behavior Jenny displays.  If they existed, they clearly stayed out of my world.

The film has other flaws.  In one scene, filmed near a doorway to Langdell Hall (the still-imposing law school building that houses its vast law library), Jenny bicycles to where Oliver is perched and proceeds to make him a peanut butter sandwich while he is so engrossed in his recognizably red Little Brown casebook that he barely notices her presence. This scene is ludicrous.  Law students are traditionally super-focused on their studies.  Well, at least some of them are.  But Oliver’s ignoring a beloved spouse who’s gone out of her way to please him in this way is offensive and totally contrary to the “loving” tone in the rest of the film.  In short, ludicrous.

The movie also became famous for its often quoted line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”  The absurdity of that line struck me back in 1970 and has stayed with me ever since.  I’ve never understood why it garnered so much attention.  Don’t we all say “I’m sorry” when we’ve done something hurtful?  Especially to someone we love?

Interviewed by Ben Mankiewicz in March 2021 (on CBS Sunday Morning), both Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal (still vibrant and still in touch with each other) confessed that they never understood the line either.  “What does it mean?” Mankiewicz asked.  MacGraw’s response:  “I don’t know.” 

One more thing about that famous line:  If you watch the hilarious 1972 screwball comedy “What’s Up, Doc?” you’ll probably get a kick out of a scene at the very end.  Barbra Streisand cleverly mocks the “Love means never…” line while traveling on a plane with her co-star (and “Love Story” lead) Ryan O’Neal.

Another line in the film, this one spoken by Oliver’s father, struck me as remarkable as I listened to it 50 years after the film first appeared.  When his father, played by veteran actor Ray Milland, learns that Oliver has been admitted to Harvard Law School, he tells Oliver that he’ll probably be “the first Barrett on the Supreme Court.”  Just think about this line.  Who could have predicted in 1970 that someone named Barrett would actually be appointed to the Supreme Court in 2020? (My opinion of that appointment?  No comment.)

One more thing about Jenny:  Yes, women used to give up great opportunities in order to marry Mr. Right, and many probably still do. But I was heartily disappointed that Jenny so casually gave up a scholarship to study music in Paris with Nadia Boulanger so she could stay in Cambridge while Oliver finished his law degree.

What’s worse, instead of insisting that she seize that opportunity, Oliver selfishly thought of himself first, begging her not to leave him.  Jenny winds up teaching at a children’s school instead of pursuing her undeniable musical talent.

I like to think that today (at least before the pandemic changed things) a smart young Jenny would tell Oliver, “I’m sorry, darling, but I really don’t want to give up this fabulous opportunity.  Why don’t you meet me in Paris?  Or wait for me here in Cambridge for a year or two?  We can then pick up where we left off.” 

But I’m probably being unfair to most of the young women of that era.  I’m certainly aware that the prevailing culture in 1970 did not encourage that sort of decision.

When I decided to marry Marv in 1971 and leave my job at UCLA to move with him to Ann Arbor, Michigan, I wasn’t giving up anything like Paris and Nadia Boulanger.  For one thing, I had had a perilous experience in LA with a major earthquake and its aftershocks.  [Please see my post, “I Felt the Earth Move under My Feet,” July 17, 2019.]  I was also aware of other negative features of life in LA.

And shortly after Marv asked me to marry him, we set off on an eight-day road trip from LA to San Francisco, via Route 1, along the spectacular California coast.  Spending every minute of those eight days together convinced me that Marv and I were truly meant to be together. (On one memorable occasion, while dining at The French Poodle restaurant in Carmel, Marv insisted that the server let me, not him, taste our wine before accepting it for our dinner. In 1971, this was absolutely stunning.) 

So I decided, on balance, that moving with Marv to Ann Arbor would mean moving to a tranquil, leafy-green, and non-shaky place where I could live with the man I adored.  The man who clearly adored me, too.

I was certain that I would find interesting and meaningful work to do, and I did.  

Both of us hoped to return to California after a few years in Ann Arbor, where Marv was a tenured member of the University of Michigan math faculty.  (He’d been at UCLA in a special one-year program and had to return to Ann Arbor in 1971.) 

But when that didn’t work out, and we jointly decided to leave Ann Arbor, we settled elsewhere—happily–because it meant that we could stay together.

I’ve made many unwise choices during my life.  The list is a long one.  But choosing to marry Marv, leave LA, and live with him for the rest of our gloriously happy married life was not one of them. 

The unwise choices were my own, and loving Marv was never the reason why I made any of them. 

On the contrary, life with Marv was in many ways the magical life I envisioned when we shared dinner for the first time at Le Cellier in Santa Monica in October 1970.

It was, in the end, and forever, another love story.

Postscript:  If Marv were still here, we’d be celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary this month.

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HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD Part III:  “Some Like It Hot”

Posted on June 11, 2020 | 2 comments

We’re currently in the middle of a great many “hot” news stories.

But let’s step back, take a break from the news, and think about something else.

Something funny.

How about a film that’s been called “the greatest film comedy ever”?  It’s even been judged “the #1 comedy film of all time” by the American Film Institute.  And it’s one of my all-time favorites.

Countless words have been written about “Some Like It Hot” during the past six decades.  But in case you’re one of those unfortunates who’ve never seen it or haven’t seen it in a long time, I’ll highlight some of my favorite things about it.

Then I’ll tell you my own personal connection to it.

 

HIGHLIGHTS

The writing

Astoundingly clever, can’t-miss dialogue by Billy Wilder and his partner, I.A.L. Diamond, has garnered plaudits from moviegoers for the past 60 years.

The direction

Director Billy Wilder, also heralded for films like “Sunset Boulevard” and “The Apartment,” made his American directorial debut with the comedy “The Major and the Minor” (another film I have a personal connection to; I’ll save that for another day).

Wilder keeps the storyline in “Hot” moving along at an astonishingly rapid pace.  The audience has to stay on its toes to keep up with it.

The casting and plot

Perfection on both counts.

The two male leads are perfect.  Tony Curtis (playing Joe), already established as a young leading man, was cast first.  Once Wilder signed Marilyn Monroe as his female lead, he added Jack Lemmon (as Jerry).   Jack was known for his many appearances on TV, and he’d already starred in “It Should Happen to You” (1954) and “Mr. Roberts” (1955).

Wilder actually had Frank Sinatra in mind for this role, but Frank never showed up for a meeting with him, so he chose Jack Lemmon instead.  Jack turned out to be a brilliant addition to the cast, much better at outrageous comedy than Tony Curtis.

The duo zooms through the film at a breakneck pace, beginning with their desperate search for work as musicians in 1929 Chicago.  When no gigs (for male musicians) turn up, and they happen to witness the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre by mobsters in a Clark Street garage, they move fast.  They borrow some women’s clothes and makeup and add a couple of wigs, hoping to pass as women so they can join an all-girl band that’s about to depart for Florida.  They know the mob is searching for them (“Every hood in Chicago will be after us”) and fervently hope their disguises will keep them from being bumped off.

Marilyn Monroe (M for short) already had enough star power to get top billing over the two men.  By 1959, she had impressed moviegoers in a number of acting roles.  She had also earned her singing stripes in the film “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953), featuring her dynamic performance of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.”  She proved she could excel at comedy as well when Wilder directed her in “The Seven Year Itch” (1955).  (I keep wanting to insert a hyphen between “Seven” and “Year,” but darn it, the film’s title doesn’t have one.)

In “Hot,” she confirmed that she’d mastered both singing and comedy as well as straight acting.  (Too bad she didn’t believe that herself.  She reportedly felt terribly insecure throughout her career.)

Her entrance in this film is simply spectacular.  As Jerry and Joe (J and J for short) approach the train leaving for Florida, M whizzes by, stunning both of them. Dressed in chic black, she’s startled by a puff of steam that highlights her provocative derriere.  Jerry notes her enticing walk, famously blurting out “Look how she moves!  It’s like Jell-O on springs!” adding that “she must have some sort of built-in motor!”  Once on the train, M launches into her first song, a terrific rendition of “Running Wild.”

As Sugar Kane (born Sugar Kowalczak), M latches on to J and J, accepting them as sympathetic new girlfriends.  She confides that she’s always had problems singing with male bands, especially with unfaithful saxophone players, adding that “I always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop.”  (A great line.  She later repeats it when she’s alone with Joe in the train’s bathroom, where he learns of her hopes to marry a millionaire, and he wishes her “the sweet end of the lollipop.”)

Both of the men fall for her, but once they’re in Florida, it’s Joe who devises a complicated plot that leads M to meet with him, posing as a millionaire with a Cary Grant accent, on a borrowed yacht.  There he tells her that “girls leave me cold.”  M is so anxious to land a millionaire that she does everything she can to seduce him.  The lengthy seduction scene is my least favorite part of the film for a couple of reasons.  First, because M (who otherwise comes across as somewhat ditsy but not stupid) is depicted as too easily taken in by Joe’s charade, and second, because it goes on much too long.

Meanwhile, Jerry, who’s dubbed himself Daphne, has met Osgood, an eccentric (and real) millionaire.  We first see Osgood, who’s played for laughs by old-time actor Joe E. Brown, sitting on the hotel porch in a line-up of old geezers ogling the band members when they arrive in Florida.  He soon focuses on Daphne, and while Joe is on Osgood’s yacht romancing Sugar, Daphne is at a nightclub, hilariously dancing the tango until dawn with Osgood.

When J and J meet up later in their hotel room, Jerry, as Daphne, announces, “I’m engaged!”  But when Joe asks “Who’s the lucky girl?” Jerry’s answer is “I am!”

A smaller role, that of hard-boiled band leader Sweet Sue, is played admirably by Joan Shawlee.  When she tells J and J that she won’t put up with her girls getting involved with two things during working hours, liquor and men, Jerry (as Daphne) immediately responds:  “Men? We wouldn’t be caught dead with men!  Rough, hairy beasts with eight hands!”  The audience is clearly in on the joke.

Marilyn’s singing

M does a sensational job performing three 1920s-era songs: “Running Wild,” dating from 1922; “I Want to Be Loved by You,” first performed by Helen Kane in 1928 (who became known as the “Boop-Boop-a-Doop Girl” and seems to have inspired M’s performance here); and “I’m Through with Love,” which actually dates from 1931.  M performs this one, a much sadder song than the others, dressed in black and appearing far more somber, as befits the song and her feelings at this point in the movie.

Costuming

First, the men’s clothes: As women, both men wear authentically designed dresses that women in the 1920s would have worn.  Demure high-necked dresses, for the most part.  These were designed for them by the renowned fashion designer, Orry-Kelly, who’s much better known for the gowns he designed for M.  In some scenes, J and J don women’s hats typical of the 1920s.  And for their appearances on the bandstand, they wear more ornate black garb, appropriate for musicians performing for an audience.

M never fails to look deliciously provocative, even in a bathrobe.  But the dazzling gowns Orry-Kelly designed for her two appearances with the band (one of which she also wears in the scene on the yacht) are jaw-dropping examples of gowns that simply shout “sex.” Even though M is almost completely covered by fabric, the fabric chosen is essentially see-through, so that much of her body appears to be nude.  The designer strategically added beads and sequins in especially revealing places, but the gowns have nevertheless left moviegoers agog.  M wears a fluffy white stole that covers the gowns whenever she’s outdoors, and that stole keeps them from being totally indecent by 1959 standards.

The light-colored dress worn on the bandstand for “I Want to be Loved by You” and on the yacht was designed for the 1959 film, but it has always reminded me of the dress M famously wore three years later.  In May 1962, M appeared at a birthday celebration held at Madison Square Garden for then-President John F. Kennedy.  There were longstanding rumors that she and JFK had been intimate, but these rumors were never proved to be true.

At the 1962 fundraising event, M wore a similarly jaw-dropping sheer-fabric bead- and rhinestone-covered dress while she breathlessly sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.”  She reportedly wore nothing under the form-fitting dress, which she paid for herself, and had to be sewn into it.

Sadly, with her personal life in a steep decline, M was found dead in her home, a probable suicide, a few months later.

 

Other notable things about the film:

  • The comic depiction of the Chicago mobsters is classic. Led by bootlegger-in-chief “Spats,” played by longtime movie star George Raft, the film mocks the mobsters’ somewhat idiotic personas.  When we first see Spats in Chicago, he protests being apprehended by veteran actor Pat O’Brien, Irish cop par excellence.  O’Brien tells him, “Call your lawyer if you wanna,” and Raft responds, “These are my lawyers.”  When a few goofy guys stand up, Spats adds, “All Harvard men.”  (This line strikes me as particularly funny.)

When the mobsters later show up for a convention of “opera lovers” at the same Florida hotel where J and J are hiding out, J and J immediately pack their things to leave, but their departure is stymied by some hilarious happenings, leading to a terrific chase scene.

  • The last line has become famous. In Osgood’s motorboat, Daphne tells Osgood that s/he can’t marry him, naming one reason after another.  Osgood is OK with all of them.  Finally, Jerry (as Daphne) is so frustrated that he pulls off his wig and yells, “I’m a man!”  Osgood’s reply:  “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

It’s always hard to come up with a great finish, and the writers debated what to use as the last line.  But after some debate, this one became the last line, and it’s now a cherished part of Hollywood history.

  • The film’s original preview, held at a theater in Pacific Palisades, was something of a flop. The audience wasn’t expecting a comedy, and everyone left thinking it was a failed melodrama.  For the second preview, held at the Westwood Village Theatre, the studio wisely signaled in advance that it was a comedy.  The audience laughed from the very beginning.  (The Westwood Village Theatre is close to my heart.  Another story for another day.)

 

  • The “Florida” hotel, called the Seminole-Ritz in the film, is actually the Hotel del Coronado, a luxurious and historic beachfront hotel located across the bay from San Diego. The scenes shot there were shot first, and all went well.  Later scenes, shot at the studio, proved to be more difficult, especially for M, who sometimes needed 50-plus takes.

The Coronado is still a beautiful hotel, well worth a visit.  I was a guest at a rehearsal dinner held there in 2007, and that event was even more memorable than the wedding itself, held at a location in San Diego.

  • High heels play a role in this film. When J and J arrive at the Chicago train station, they’re both struggling with wearing high heels.  Jerry exclaims, “How do they walk in these things?”  Both actors, trained by a famous female impersonator, eventually mastered wearing heels.  But the appearance of heels on Jerry, near the end of the film, is a tip-off to the mobsters that the newly-disguised men are the witnesses the mob has been pursuing.  (A similar giveaway appears in the 1938 Hitchcock film “The Lady Vanishes,” when a fake nun is spotted wearing high heels.)

By the way, I’ve long disparaged the wearing of high heels.  [Please see the most recent blog post where I’ve argued against them:  https://susanjustwrites.wordpress.com/2017/06/28/declare-your-independence-those-high-heels-are-killers/ ]

 

MY PERSONAL CONNECTION

Whenever I see this film (and there have been countless times), I can never forget the very first time I did.

When my high-school senior prom loomed, my most pressing concern was who would be my date.  My current crush, a friend since first grade who’d metamorphosed into the man of my dreams?  (I hoped so.)  Last year’s junior prom date?  (I hoped not.)  Who would it be?

As luck would have it, an amiable and very bright classmate named Allen T. stepped forward and asked me to be his prom date.  I could finally relax on that score.

Allen and I went on a few casual dates before the prom.  On one notable date, we saw “Some Like It Hot” at a filled-to-capacity downtown Chicago movie theater, one of those huge ornate palaces on Randolph Street, where we sat in the last row of the balcony.

The film was brand-new and terrifically funny, and both Allen and I loved it.  But Allen’s delight was unfortunately cut short.  When he heard the now-famous last line, he laughed uproariously, threw his head back, and hit it–hard–on the wall behind our seats.

I felt sorry for him—that must have hurt—but I still found it pretty hard to stifle a laugh.  Luckily, Allen recovered right away.  And I don’t think it hurt his brainpower.  As I recall, he went on to enroll at MIT.

Although the bloom was off the rose by the time the prom came along, Allen and I went off happily together to dance on the ballroom floor of the downtown Knickerbocker Hotel.

But what I remember even more vividly than the prom itself is the time Allen and I shared our first viewing of “Some Like It Hot.”

 

[You can see what I wrote about my senior prom, and proms in general, in my blog post, “Proms and ‘The Twelfth of Never’”  https://susanjustwrites.wordpress.com/2017/06/17/proms-and-the-twelfth-of-never/ ]

 

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Hooray for Hollywood! Part II: I Love Your “Funny Face”

Posted on March 16, 2020 | 1 comment

I’m continuing to focus on films that have been relevant to my life in some way.

The film I’m focusing on today is “Funny Face,” a 1957 film starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire.

I first saw this film at Radio City Music Hall during a memorable trip to Washington DC and NYC, a trip made with my high school classmates, and one that represented the height of excitement in my life at that time.

It wasn’t my first visit to NYC and Radio City.  It also wasn’t my first trip to DC.

My parents had taken my sister and me on a road trip to the East Coast during the summer of 1950, when I was barely conscious and didn’t get a great deal out of it.  I did have a few notable experiences—staying at the St. Moritz Hotel on Central Park West (how did we afford that?) and viewing some astounding sites in DC, mostly from a cab Daddy hired to show us around town. The place I remember most was an FBI museum, where I was frightened by a loud demonstration in which a gun was shot at targets to prove how the FBI dealt with crime. (Not a great choice for a young kid.)

Some other memories include our entering a DC restaurant where the tables were covered with pink “reserved” signs, and one sign was magically whisked away when we arrived.  I later learned that the restaurant used this ploy to prevent people of color from eating there.  The staff would refuse to seat them, telling them that all of the tables were reserved.  Even at a tender age, this struck me as wrong, although I was too young to fully understand the ugliness of this blatant form of discrimination, one I’d never encountered when we ate at restaurants in Chicago.

Another vivid memory:  Strolling through Central Park Zoo in NYC, I asked Daddy to buy me a balloon.  Daddy refused.  I didn’t view my request as unreasonable.  Looking around, I saw all those other kids who were holding balloons.  Why couldn’t I have one?  I was too young to grasp reality: My father was in NYC to search for a new job (which never materialized), and our family budget didn’t permit buying an overpriced balloon.  No doubt the balloon vendors catered to far more affluent families than mine.  But I remember crying my eyes out because of the balloon-deprivation, which seemed so unfair to me.

Finally, I remember viewing a film at Radio City.  It was a poor choice for a family film: “The Men,” starring Marlon Brandon as an injured war veteran.  It was a somber film, and the atmosphere was not made any cheerier by the newsreel (ubiquitous in movie theaters then), featuring the brand-new war in Korea, which had just begun in June.  The Rockettes probably did their thing, but I barely noticed them, too disturbed by the sad movie and the scary newsreel.

Fast forward a bunch of years, when I joined my high school classmates on a school-sponsored trip to DC and NYC, during which our group of rowdy teenagers disrupted life for countless locals.  Standing out in my memory is a concert held at the Pan American Union Building, a beautiful Beaux-Arts building in DC, where my silly friends and I began to stare at a mole on the back of a young woman sitting in front of us.  Our adolescent sense of humor led us to start laughing, and once we started, we of course couldn’t stop.  Other concert-goers were probably horrified.  But something else I can’t forget:  The concert included a brilliant rendition of Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain,” a piece I’ve loved ever since.

Moving on to NYC, where we were bused to an odd assortment of sites, we finally arrived at Radio City. The film that night was one of Hollywood’s new blockbusters, “Funny Face.”  Surrounded by my friends, whispering and laughing throughout, I barely focused on the film, certainly not enough to remember it very well.  But when I recently re-watched it on TCM, I found it completely delightful.  (Thanks, TCM, for all of the classic films I’ve watched on your channel.  Please keep showing them!)

In the film, which features a number of Gershwin tunes (including “Funny Face” and “S’wonderful”), Audrey Hepburn stands out as the radiant star she had become, while (in my view) Fred Astaire recedes into the background.

The movie’s storyline focuses on a NYC-based fashion magazine like Vogue, dominated by an aggressive editor played by Kay Thompson (much like the editor played by Meryl Streep years later in “The Devil Wears Prada”).  The editor (Kay) insists on major changes at the magazine and demands that her favored photographer, played by Astaire (Fred), help her effect those changes.  (His character is based on the renowned photographer Richard Avedon.)

Their search for a new look for the magazine improbably leads them to a bookstore in Greenwich Village, where Hepburn (Audrey) is the sole salesperson, the owner being off somewhere doing his own thing.  When Kay proposes that Audrey be the new face of her fashion magazine, Audrey—garbed in neutral black and gray– ridicules the whole concept of such a publication (it features, in her words, “silly women in silly dresses”).  But when Kay’s offer includes a trip for her to Paris, Audrey decides to go along with the idea.  She’s always wanted to see Paris!

Kay, Fred, and Audrey arrive in Paris about 15 years before my own first trip there.  But when the film begins to roam through the highlights of the city, I easily recognize the many breathtaking scenes I saw for the first time in 1972, including the view from the top of the Eiffel Tower.  (I’ve luckily returned to Paris many times, and the city and all that it offers still thrill me.)

As a teenager, I had a high regard for “fashion.”  My family’s business–women’s fashion-retailing–probably had something to do with it.  Peer pressure also played a role.  Some of my classmates were obsessed with pricey clothes, like cashmere sweaters with matching skirts, and even though I wasn’t in the same income bracket, their obsession couldn’t help rubbing off on me.  At least a little.  My place in the world just then probably accounts for my somewhat detached view of Audrey as someone who spoofs the fashion industry, at least at first.

Once the story gets underway, “Funny Face” offers a wealth of imaginative episodes.  The writer, Leonard Gershe, whose writing is clever and surprisingly not extremely dated, was Oscar-nominated for best writing, story, and screenplay.  Gershe came up with a whole lot of scenes that highlighted Paris.  A special scene takes place after Audrey goes off on her own, and Fred is sent out to track her down.  He finally finds her in a small café on the Left Bank, where she launches into a stunning dance set to jazz music.  (You may already know that Audrey had a background in dance.  She studied ballet as a teenager in Amsterdam and later studied it in London.  She then began performing in West End musical theater productions and went on to star on Broadway in a non-musical performance of Gigi in 1951.  She reportedly turned down the same role in the 1958 film.)

The jazz dance scene in “Funny Face” became famous a few years ago, when Gap used a portion of it in one of its TV commercials.  (As I recall, Gap was promoting the sort of black pants Audrey danced in.)  A controversy arose during the filming of this scene in “Funny Face.”  Audrey wanted to wear black socks while director Stanley Donen insisted that she wear white ones.  In an interview Donen gave shortly before his death, he explained why. The white socks would highlight her dancing feet while black ones would fade into the background.  Donen succeeded in persuading Audrey to see things his way, and the dance scene is now film history.

Without elaborating on the plot, I’ll point out that Audrey’s storyline has an interesting focus on “empathy,” a concept that has gained a foothold in popular culture in recent years.  (I attribute some of that to Barack Obama’s focus on it, something I picked up on when I first heard him speak to a group of lawyers in Chicago in 2002, when he was still an Illinois state senator.)

Dance highlights in the film include not only Audrey’s jazz dance scene in the Left Bank café but also Fred’s dance scene with an umbrella and a coat lining that transforms into a cape.  The two leads share at least two memorable dance scenes, including the closing scene set in a charming landscape outside a Paris church.

Notably, after Audrey leaves NYC for Paris, she poses all over the City of Light in clothes designed by Givenchy, who became her favorite designer, and whose designs for this film seem timeless.  Also notably, she wears shoes with heels, but they’re invariably very low heels.  These became her favorite style of footwear.  (For some of the “inside Audrey” comments made here, please see my earlier blog post, “Audrey Hepburn and Me,” published on August 14. 2013.)

Finally, the age difference between Audrey and Fred is stark.  She was 28 while he was 58—and looked it.  Despite his agile dancing, he was an unlikely man for her to fall in love with.  But then Hollywood often paired her with much older men.  The all-time creepiest example was Gary Cooper in Love in the Afternoon.  (You can find my earlier comment on this topic in my 2013 blog post.)

In sum, “Funny Face” is a glorious film, featuring a radiant Audrey Hepburn, a clever storyline, and countless scenes of Paris.  The Gershwin songs and the wonderful dancing, which blend almost seamlessly into the story, lead to a stunning result.  Even though I didn’t fully appreciate it in 1957, the memory of seeing it back then has stayed with me for the past six decades.  Seeing it again made me realize just how “’s’wonderful” it really is.

 

 

 

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Hooray for Hollywood! Part I

Posted on December 30, 2019 | 1 comment

As a lifelong film buff (OK, since I was about 4), I have great fondness for much that Hollywood (and foreign cinema) has produced.  Each year I try to see a number of new films and re-watch some of the old ones.

During the past year, I never got around to seeing most of the blockbusters that dominated the box office. According to the online publication The Verge, Disney produced an unprecedented 80 percent of the top box-office hits in 2019.

Thanks to its purchase during the last decade of Marvel Entertainment (2009) and Lucasfilm (2012), Disney films have included franchises like Star Wars and the Marvel hits, in addition to popular animated films like Frozen and Frozen 2.  The result:  Disney films have surpassed many other films at the box office.

But I don’t pay a lot of attention to box-office success.  I’m far more focused on seeing films that have something to say to me. This year my clear favorite was Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.

Once Upon a Time, a Quentin Tarantino film, is not only a fabulous depiction of Hollywood in 1969, but it also related to me and my life in a number of ways.

Spoiler alert:  If you haven’t yet seen this film, DO NOT read the ending of this blog post, where I write about the Manson murders.

First, about the film itself:  It’s been called a “buddy picture,” and in many ways it is.  In two stellar performances, Leonardo DiCaprio (playing the fictional Rick Dalton) and Brad Pitt (playing fictional Cliff Booth), are indeed buddies.  Rick is a fading former star of a Western TV series, trying to make a comeback in Hollywood, while Cliff is his longtime stunt double.  By 1969, with Rick’s star on the wane, Cliff spends much of his time driving Rick from place to place.  Both are struggling to survive in a Hollywood that has changed from the one they knew.

Weaving fiction and fact throughout the film, Tarantino uses both humor and violence to depict the end of an era.  In this love letter to 1960s Hollywood (which has earned positive reviews by most top critics on Rotten Tomatoes and garnered numerous awards and nominations), he embeds specifics of popular culture and real places in 1969 LA into the film.

 

The story takes place during two days in February and one day in August of 1969.  Notably, Rick Dalton’s home is right next door to the home of minor film star Sharon Tate (married to director Roman Polanski) in a posh section of western LA, Benedict Canyon.

In this film, Tarantino also skillfully blends in the ugly story of the Charles Manson “family.”

Re-creating in many ways the world that I lived in at about the same time, even if he himself did not, Tarantino provoked a cascade of intensely vivid memories for me.  Here’s why:

 

 

I left Chicago in August 1970 and moved to the Westwood neighborhood on the west side of LA, where I rented a cheerful furnished apartment within walking distance of UCLA.

I had moved my “Reggie Fellowship” from the Appellate and Test Case Division of the Chicago Legal Aid Bureau to a health-law related Legal Services office that was located at UCLA Law School.  Reggies were predominantly young lawyers who opted to work on behalf of the poor rather than toil in a corporate law firm.  (Please see my more detailed description of the Reggie program in an earlier post, “The Summer of ’69,” published on August 7. 2015.)

Westwood and Westwood Village (the commercial area in Westwood, adjacent to UCLA), loom large in my memory.  I met my husband-to-be (I’ll call him Marv) on the UCLA campus in October 1970, six weeks after I arrived.  Before we met, we had both rented separate apartments in the same apartment building located on the fringe of the campus. We soon began dating, and my memory bank is filled with countless memories related to our courtship and marriage that year.

My new location was very close to much of what happens in the Tarantino film only one year earlier.  So when he replicates things from that time, I recall seeing and hearing a lot of what looked like them myself.

Examples:  Street signs, ads painted on bus-stop benches, movie posters, commercials, and music. (Some of these are Tarantino’s own inventions.)

Probably the best example:  Sharon Tate goes to see herself in a film at a movie theater in Westwood Village.  During the year that I lived in Westwood, I saw many films at the movie theaters in Westwood Village.  (Seeing “Love Story” with Marv in one of them in December 1970 was especially memorable, and I plan to write about it in a future blog post.)

Another example:  A scene in the movie is set at the famous LA restaurant called Musso & Frank Grill.  Marv and I were both aware of its fame, and during that year we sought it out and dined there one special night.

One more thing:  The stunning area where Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski lived next door to the fictional Rick Dalton (Benedict Canyon) is in western LA, not far from Westwood and very close to BelAir.  Marv and I not only lived in Westwood, but we also celebrated our wedding luncheon at the charming BelAir Hotel.

Then there’s the Manson family storyline in the movie.  I learned about the Manson murders during a weekend in New York City.  I was spending part of the summer of 1969 at the Reggie training program at Haverford College, near Philadelphia, and I traveled from Philly to NYC one weekend in August

During trips to NYC, I often stayed with a close friend and a law-school classmate (I’ll call her Arlene).  Although Arlene was planning to be out of town that weekend, she invited me to stay in her 86th Street apartment on the East Side of Manhattan without her.  It was a great opportunity to live by myself as a quasi-New Yorker, and I decided to do it.

Returning to her apartment on Saturday evening, I picked up the Sunday New York Times and was shocked by a headline spelling out the startling discovery of the Manson murders.

At that time, I was still living in Chicago, but I had briefly lived in LA when I was 12 and always liked to follow any news arising there.  So I was riveted by the Manson story and read the paper from cover to cover.

When Tarantino decided to weave this story into the rest of his film, he did what he’d done in Inglourious Basterds and changed the real ending to a much different one.

Watching Once Upon a Time, I was terribly nervous as the film approached its ending.  I knew how the real story turned out, and I didn’t know exactly how this film would portray it.  But what a departure from reality Tarantino created!  The shocking ending to the film includes imaginative violence that is so over-the-top that it’s almost humorous.  Overall, the ending is a clever re-imagining of the fate of the Manson family and a much happier resolution of what happened to their victims.

Although the new ending was violent in its own way, creating an exciting piece of filmmaking, I left the theater in a much sunnier frame of mind than I would have if Tarantino had re-created the actual massacre that took place in 1969.

 

In sum, Once Upon a Time is, to my mind, an absorbing and a fascinating film.  For me, it was one of the best films of 2019.

 

I plan to write again about Hollywood films that have been relevant to my own life.  Part II will begin to explore classic films that have done just that.

 

 

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Posted in 1960s, 1969 movies, August, BelAir, Brad Pitt, California, Chicago, films, Hollywood, law, lawyers, legal assistance to the poor, Leonardo DiCaprio, lifestyle choices, Los Angeles, LA, memories, movie stars, movies, music, New York City, Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino, Reggie program, The New York Times, UCLA, Westwood, Westwood Village

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