Category Archives: movie stars

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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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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Should we “dress our age”?

Posted on January 24, 2024 | 1 comment

 Every morning, if we’re not staying in our pajamas all day (which we may well choose to do), we need to decide:  Which items of clothing do I want to wear that day?

Last month, the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The New York Times, Vanessa Friedman, asked “What does it mean to ‘dress your age’?”

This question strikes me as pretty silly. Friedman used it to fill up space in her newspaper, space that deserved a less trivial topic. But I’ve decided to focus on it for a moment.

Here’s my question:  When we decide what to wear each morning, are we supposed to focus on the number of years we’ve lived so far?

Balderdash!

My answer:  Forget about your age!  Who cares?  “Age” is a number, but each person has an individual relationship with that number.  Joe Biden at 81 handles domestic and global issues with considerable aplomb, and film director Martin Scorsese at 81 continues to direct outstanding films, while much younger people struggle with their grocery lists.

Your decision should mostly depend not on your age but on how you spend your day.  Do you spend your day in a workplace?  Workplaces vary tremendously, and your clothing should conform to where you work.  A desk job in an office is very different from a job in a farm or factory setting.

Perhaps you work from home.  Your choices will probably depend on whether you never see another human being or you do see others when you appear in a meeting on Zoom.  And if you spend your day at home with no work commitment, you’ll want to satisfy your own goals.

Your decision will also depend on how your clothes fit and whether you like the way you look in them.

But dressing your age?

Let’s not forget that Friedman’s perspective is that of a working NYC journalist with an undoubtedly healthy income. While she mentions that “strict social or cultural rules about what to wear as you age don’t really exist anymore,” she agrees with me that “how you dress is a statement about who you are and how you want to be perceived.”  She thinks “that changes as we grow up.”  So she has “said goodbye to clothes I generally associate with my youth,” like hemlines above the knee.  She’s now “gravitating toward long skirts…and wider trousers,” which give her “a swishy feeling” when she walks. 

Exactly where is Friedman walking? Maybe that works for her, but I can’t imagine seeking out “a swishy feeling” when I walk. Negotiating city streets as I stroll through my neighborhood, I need clothes I can move in quickly, zooming through crosswalks without getting hit by careless drivers. [Please see my blog post, “Thank you for not killing me,” https://susanjustwrites.com/2021/08/.%5D  

Even a New York Times fashion expert should get real.  How many women want to get that “swishy feeling” when they walk?  How many can afford to or even want to when they have far more important things to worry about?

From my point of view, it’s simple: You should wear what you think is comfortable and, if you like, clothes you think look good on you.

I never consider my age when I get dressed.  I tend to choose clothes I find comfortable, eschewing anything that’s so tight that buttons gap and waistbands pinch.  My go-to clothes are black t-shirts and black pants, which are both comfy and make me feel OK about how I look.  Because I primarily work from home, sitting in front of my desktop computer, I usually don’t worry about how I look to others.  When I do leave home, my attire depends on where I’m going and who will be there. 

I generally try to “outsmart the bad guys” by wearing fairly worn-out and dumpy garb. [Please see my blog post, https://susanjustwrites.com/2021/08/06/outsmarting-the-bad-guys/.%5D These are just fine when I walk around my neighborhood.  But if I’m going to be seen by people I know, I’ll make other choices.  Still comfy but not quite so dumpy.

Women in my daughters’ age-range make choices that work for them.  My older daughter has a hybrid working environment, part-time working from home, often appearing in meetings on Zoom, and sometimes showing up at her office.  So she wears whatever suits the occasion. Her taste is impeccable.  But she also chooses comfort as much as possible.  My younger daughter works almost exclusively from home and invariably chooses comfort.  But when she has an occasional meeting on Zoom, she aims at looking a bit more spiffy.

My teenage granddaughters, members of Gen Z, may be the only people in my life who “dress their age.”  They’re dazzling in whatever they wear, but they tend to choose clothes their contemporaries are wearing. (Didn’t we do that when we were teenagers?)  They also express their own style by wearing t-shirts and sweatshirts featuring a favored university, a city they’ve traveled to, or a popular band.  On occasion, they’ll wear semi-glamorous dresses for major social events, but basically you’ll find them in jeans and a t-shirt.

Friedman concludes by applauding the choices of women of a certain age “who look as if they know who they are and are comfortable telegraphing that to the world.”  She lists five or six Hollywood actresses, privileged women who can spend gobs of money on what they wear.  Maybe they’re good examples of “dressing their age.”  (At that level of privilege, I’d add.) This, Friedman says, means “making your own decisions about what makes you feel good, wide pants and all.” 

Pretty much what I said, right?  Except for the wide pants.

I’ll conclude with my favorite mantra.  It appears on a button I wear and a plaque I display in my living room:  “She could see no good reason to act her age.”

That goes for clothing-choices, too.

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Posted in aging, clothes, clothing, clothing-choices, fashion, films, getting older, Joe Biden, Martin Scorsese, movie stars, walking, women's clothing, workplace

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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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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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Posted in 1950s, American culture, Broadway musicals, California, Chicago, Daddy, family, family road trips, fathers, films, friends, Hollywood, Los Angeles, LA, memories, movie stars, movies, music, New York City, San Francisco, The New York Times

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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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Another love story

Posted on May 24, 2021 | 3 comments

December 2020 marked 50 years since the release of the film “Love Story” in December 1970.  This film played a role in the burgeoning romance between me and the astonishing man who became my husband a few months later.  I’ll call him Marv.

Part I

We waited in a long line outside the theater in chilly Westwood.  The air was nothing like the frigid nighttime air that would have enveloped us in Chicago, or Boston, or Cleveland. But we were in LA, and for LA it was a chilly December night.

We didn’t mind waiting. We were too enthralled with each other, with Westwood, and with the prospect of seeing “Love Story” on the big screen. 

I’d met Marv two months earlier at the Chancellor’s Reception on the UCLA campus. The reception was intended for faculty only, but the director of my legal-services support program at the law school was a member of the faculty, and he circulated his invitation to all of us working in the program.

I’d moved from Chicago in late August and was eager to meet new people in LA. The reception was taking place on a Sunday afternoon in October, and I decided to show up.  I purposely wore my incredibly fetching black sleeveless miniskirt dress with bright red pockets and made my way to the campus under a radiant California sun.

I looked around.  I didn’t know anyone there—I’d been in LA for only six weeks.  I wandered over to the “cookie table” and was pondering which cookies to sample when a woman approached me.  “Are you by yourself because you want to be, or would you like to meet some other people?” she asked.

I immediately responded that I’d like to meet other people, and she led me to a group of four men. She began by introducing her husband, a bearded middle-aged math professor, who was accompanied by three much younger men. As I glanced at the younger men, I instantly recognized one of them–a good-looking guy I’d seen around my apartment building near the campus.

The professor explained that these young men were there because they were new math faculty, and he asked me why I was there. I told him I was working at the law school.  He then asked where I’d gone to law school. When I said Harvard, he turned to the good-looking guy and said, “Marv went to Harvard, too.”

Thus began my bond with Marv.  We had Harvard in common.

I’d noticed Marv around our building but, as it turned out, he’d never noticed me. I’d seen him—alone—diving into the building’s small pool, and I’d seen him walking back and forth along a pathway that connected our apartment building (near the corner of Kelton and Gayley) to the campus.  Sometimes he’d been smoking a pipe as he walked.

I sometimes wondered: How could he help noticing an adorable redhead like me?  But I later decided it was just fine that he never noticed me because that meant he wasn’t noticing any other young women either.

Even later, I figured out why he’d been totally unaware of me.  Whenever he was by himself–in this case, walking to and from campus by himself–he was thinking about math.  Marv was a brilliant mathematician who almost never stopped thinking about math.

When we began talking at the Chancellor’s Reception, Marv discovered what I already knew—we lived in the same apartment building.  He smiled a lot and let me know that he wanted to see me sometime.

Did I give him my phone number?  I must have because a day or two later he called and asked me to go to dinner.

We agreed that I would meet him at his apartment and make our dinner plans there.  So on Saturday night I walked a short distance from my apartment to his apartment on the same floor. 

Marv and I had both searched for a studio apartment in Westwood at the same time. At the end of my search, I decided that I preferred the building on Kelton.  Hoping to rent a relatively inexpensive studio there, I returned and learned that the last studio had just been rented.  It turned out that the renter was Marv. 

So, because someone (namely Marv) had just rented the last available studio in that building, I had to decide whether to rent a one-bedroom I could barely afford.  It was a stretch for me, financially.  But I decided to go ahead and rent it. 

Destiny? 

When he answered his door, Marv welcomed me and handed me a copy of a paperback book, “101 Nights in California.”  We sat together on his sofa, looking through the book’s list of restaurants, along with their menus.  “You pick wherever you want to go,” he said.

My jaw nearly dropped.  It was 1970, and it was almost unimaginable that a man would say that to a brand new date, allowing her to choose the restaurant where they’d dine that night.  I knew immediately that Marv just might be the right man for me.  He was certainly unlike anyone I’d ever dated before.

I’d already dated some pretty good guys.  But when men met me during my years at law school, or later learned that I was a lawyer, only the few who were immensely secure chose to date me.  Others fell by the wayside.

Marv was completely secure and non-threatened by someone like me.  He actually relished having a smart woman in his life.  And that never changed.

That evening, I chose a French restaurant in Santa Monica called Le Cellier.  How was our dinner there?  In short, it was magical.  We not only had a splendid French meal, but we also used our time together to learn a lot about each other.  My hunch that Marv was possibly the perfect man for me was proving to be correct.

We proceeded to have one promising date after another.  Dinner at Mario’s, a small Italian restaurant in Westwood.  A Halloween party at a colleague’s home in Pacific Palisades.  Viewing the startling film “Joe,” starring Peter Boyle.  (We later ran into Boyle when we ate at a health-food restaurant in LA.)

By December we were hovering on the precipice of falling in love.  We’d heard the buzz about “Love Story,” and both of us were eager to see it.  So there we were, waiting in a long line of moviegoers at the Westwood Village Theater that chilly night.

The plot of “Love Story” wasn’t totally unknown to me.  I’d already read Erich Segal’s story shortly before I’d moved to LA from Chicago.  I was casually leafing through a magazine when I came across the story.

It grabbed me right away.  It was set, after all, in Cambridge, and its leading characters were students at Harvard.  I’d spent three years there getting my law degree, and I’d finished just a few years earlier.

The story was sappy and had a terribly sad ending.  But I relished the Harvard setting, and I couldn’t wait to see the film based on it.  When Marv learned a little bit about it, he wanted to see it too.

We soon found ourselves inside the theater, every seat filled with excited patrons like us, and began watching Hollywood’s “Love Story,” our eyes glued to the screen.

What did we think of the movie that night?  I truthfully don’t remember, and Marv is no longer here to recall it with me.  So I recently decided to re-watch the film—twice–to reflect on it and what it may have meant to us at the time.

In 1970, enamored with my companion, I most likely loved the film and its countless depictions of student life at Harvard.  Marv had graduated from the college in 1963, and I’d finished at the law school in 1967, so we’d attended Harvard at about the same time as author Segal (Harvard class of ‘58, Ph.D. ‘65). 

The two lead actors, Ryan O’Neal (playing Oliver) and Ali MacGraw (playing Jenny), were also contemporaries of ours who could have been Harvard students at about the same time.  Let’s add Tommy Lee Jones, whose first film role is one of Oliver’s roommates.  He was himself a Harvard grad, class of ‘69.  (Segal reportedly based Oliver on two of his friends:  Harvard roommates Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore.)  By the way, Tommy’s name in the credits is Tom Lee Jones.

Marv and I certainly relished the scenes set in a variety of Harvard locations, including the hockey arena where Oliver stars on the school’s hockey team and where I had skated (badly) with a date from the business school. In another scene, the two leads ecstatically make snow angels on the snow-covered campus. 

And I loved watching Oliver searching for Jenny in the Music Building, a building located very close to the law school, where I occasionally escaped from my studies by listening to old 78 LP records in a soundproof booth.

Overall, Marv and I probably found most of the film a lightweight take on life as a Harvard student (although darker days followed as the story moved toward its tragic end).  I’m sure we were also moved by the haunting music composed by Francis Lai, an unquestionably brilliant addition to the film that earned its only Oscar (out of seven nominations). 

Seeing “Love Story” together that chilly night must have been wonderful. 

But watching the film again, 50 years later?  I have to be honest:  I found it disappointing.

                                       To be continued

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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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Return to Xanadu, or Have you found your “Rosebud”?

Posted on October 16, 2019 | 1 comment

“Rosebud”… every film buff knows the reference. In the monumental 1941 film, Citizen Kane, Charles Foster Kane repeats the word on his deathbed, recalling the beloved sled so cruelly snatched from him during his impoverished youth.  He was still obsessed with its loss, a loss that may have represented the loss of his mother’s love.

I hope you’ve never lost your “Rosebud.”  But it you have, you might look for it at Hearst Castle.

Hearst Castle?  It’s the fabulous estate built by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst on the central coast of California.  Most filmgoers acknowledge that it was Orson Welles’s inspiration for Charles Foster Kane’s mansion, “Xanadu.”

Today Hearst Castle is a National Historic Landmark (as well as a California Historical Landmark), and this year it’s turning 100 years old.  When I learned of this milestone, I couldn’t help recalling my two visits to that extraordinary place.

It wasn’t always called “Hearst Castle.”  Hearst inherited the original estate at San Simeon from his father (along with even more land and $11 million) when his mother died in 1919.  Together with his architect, the pioneering Julia Morgan, they greatly enhanced it during a span of over twenty years.

Hearst himself later called it “The Ranch.” After he separated from his wife in 1925, he and his mistress, Hollywood film star Marion Davies, spent time at his mansion entertaining prominent guests from the worlds of politics, literature, and film.  In addition to the mansion itself, Hearst acquired an enormous amount of priceless artwork and furnishings on an epic scale.

I first heard about Hearst’s mansion in the early 1970s when my soon-to-be husband (I’ll call him Marv) proposed that we drive up the coast from Los Angeles, where we’d met a few months earlier, to San Francisco and back.  Marv said we could stop at “San Simeon,” and our stop there turned out to be a shimmering highlight of one of the most memorable trips of my life.  Maybe that’s why I remember it so well.

We set out from LA on a beautiful sunny morning in mid-March.  Driving north on Highway 1, we visited Danish-themed Solvang and beautiful Morro Bay en route to San Simeon.

When we arrived, we walked up to a fairly small entrance and joined a few other tourists on a tour of the mansion, where we learned a lot about Hearst and his mansion’s history.  I knew something about Hearst from his role in U.S. history, especially his “yellow” journalistic efforts to embroil the U.S. in the Spanish-American War in 1898.  But before we visited San Simeon, I knew very little about his personal life.

When the tour ended, we were able to explore the outdoor areas by ourselves.  My photo album includes scenes of the two of us at “Hearst Mansion.”  Unaccompanied and unbothered by any staff or other tourists, we roamed around, taking photos of each other, choosing backdrops like the gorgeous Neptune Pool and some of the exquisite outdoor statuary.

Just after leaving the Hearst Mansion, we drove through Big Sur and relished a memorable lunch at Nepenthe.  This charming restaurant, which first opened in 1949, features an outdoor terrace offering a panoramic view of the south coast of Big Sur.  The breathtaking view is still worth a stop.

The rest of our trip included equally memorable stops in Carmel and Monterey, as well as a celebration of my birthday in San Francisco.  Visiting a couple of wineries in Napa, seeing friends in Berkeley (where Marv had spent five happy years as a grad student), and a trip down the coast to return to LA (via Andersen’s Pea Soup just off Highway 1 in Buellton) completed our remarkable trip.

But most unforgettable was our joyful decision to marry each other in a few short weeks.

Fast forward about 35 years.  I returned to Xanadu…er, Hearst Castle, during a road trip with my daughter in 2008.  This visit was very different.  First, we had to enter through a sterile structure, the visitor center, which didn’t exist at the time of my earlier trip.  In this dreary “holding pen,” we waited with a large crowd of other tourists until we were herded onto a bus, herded through the castle, and herded back onto a bus.

This new approach struck me as far too regimented.  Although my daughter was delighted to see the castle and learn about its history during our tour, we had very little chance to roam around the grounds by ourselves when the tour ended.

With the castle’s 100th anniversary coming up, some positive changes are arriving on the scene.  For example, the slate of tours has expanded to include tours with exciting new themes.  Even better:  Most tours now allow visitors free-roaming once their guided tour is over. This appears to be much like the roaming I remember from my first trip.  Visitors can admire the grounds, including the Neptune Pool (recently renovated for $10 million), for as long as they wish.  So it now promises to be a far better experience for visitors than the one I found wanting in 2008.

 

In my mind, Hearst Castle is inescapably linked with the movie Citizen Kane.  That classic film looms especially large because it turned out to play an important role in my own life.

Marv and I had met on the campus of UCLA, where we were both working, and we had rented apartments in the same building on the fringes of the campus.  Our lives, not surprisingly, often centered around UCLA.

One of our most remarkable dates involved a showing of Orson Welles’s film in a classroom building on the campus.

Sometime after we decided to get married, Marv asked me whether I wanted to see Citizen Kane.  I immediately jumped at the chance to see a film I’d only heard about but never saw, even on late-night TV.

Marv grinned and said something like, “I think you’ll like it,” adding, “There’s a surprise in it for you.”  That clearly piqued my interest, and I couldn’t wait to see it.

We took our seats in a bare-bones classroom and began to watch the film.  It was fascinating from the start, beginning with the announcement of Kane’s death on the “March of the News” (patterned after the “News of the World,” a newsreel shown in movie theaters in the 1940s). The story then flashed back to Kane’s involvement in politics, the purchase of his first newspaper (soon followed by other papers), and his marriage to his first wife.

I was totally caught up in the storyline.  Then came the surprise.  A character named Susan Alexander suddenly appeared on the screen.

My birth name is not Susan Alexander.  But I was never very fond of the last name (my father’s) I was given at birth, and I was planning to change it to Marv’s last name when we married.  Now here was a character with the name I hoped to have.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t a totally positive character, and as the story moved on, she became less and less so.  Abused by Kane, by the end of the movie she had become a pathetic alcoholic, engendering sympathy rather than antipathy.

I would have been happier to see a more positive figure with my future name on the screen.  But what’s astonishing is how the character’s name has lodged in filmgoers’ minds.

During the decades since I married Marv and assumed her name, I’ve encountered countless people who, upon meeting me, mention Citizen Kane.  I immediately know that these people (sadly, a dwindling number) have seen the film and vividly recall the name of Kane’s aspiring-soprano second wife, who was actually patterned after the wife of another tycoon, Samuel Insull.

I’ve always been happy that I took Marv’s last name and became Susan Alexander (even when I’ve been confused with other women who share my name).  And I’ve never regretted being associated with a truly great film like Citizen Kane.

 

Do you have a “Rosebud”?  I didn’t have a favorite toy that I lost during my childhood, so I’ve never obsessed over something the way Charles Foster Kane obsessed over his sled.

But if you have a “Rosebud,” I hope that you’re luckier than he was, and that someday you, unlike Kane, succeed at tracking it down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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