MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY: Little Murders, Big City

When I was in high school back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the teen heartthrob pictures taped inside the lockers of my classmates at dear old St. Catharine Academy in the Bronx included John Travolta, Parker Stevenson, Shaun Cassidy, and other cute lads one might find on the cover of Tiger Beat and the like. But I was always drawn to the so-called offbeat types, like Dustin Hoffman and writer/director Woody Allen, as well as Danny Kaye and Bob Hope in their 1940s movie comedies on WPIX or WOR. If I recall correctly, my sister Cara graduated from Lehman High School in 1976 at a ceremony at Manhattan’s own Carnegie Hall. Afterward, our family went to The Russian Tea Room for a celebratory lunch, all of us dressed to the proverbial nines. I was stunned to see Woody Allen and Dick Cavett standing together in front of us, chatting and waiting for their table! My combination of shyness and politeness kept me from running up to them and blathering like a fangirl. Frankly, I was perfectly content to stand on line quietly with my family, peeking at Allen out of the corner of my eye while munching on jelly-filled mints. However, Mom noticed Allen, too, and although she was never one to go up to celebrities and gush, she knew I was a big Woody Allen fan. As I believe I’ve mentioned in previous TotED posts, my dear beloved Mom was kind and as lovely as the fashion model she used to be—and about as shy as a speeding Mack truck, bless her! (She claimed to have been shy as a youngster, but she obviously got over it by the time I was born!) So I was both embarrassed and excited when Mom strode up to Allen and said in her enthusiastic way, “Mr. Allen, my daughter just loves your movies, and I knew she’d be thrilled if you’d say hello to her.” Allen had a deer-in-the-headlights look (can’t blame him, really; for all he knew, we could’ve been stalkers, or at least pests), while Cavett smirked and said, “Oh, here we go.” Mom gave Cavett a sort of elegant version of The Hairy Eyeball as she said to him, “I wasn’t talking to you, sir.” Then she turned to Allen and said, “It wasn’t so long ago that you were a movie fan like my daughter. How would you feel if someone you admired was rude and dismissive to you?” Looking both chastened and somewhat bewildered, Allen shook my hand, and I thanked him, and then our respective parties went our separate ways in the restaurant for lunch. Ah, if only Mom had lived to see our much more upbeat encounter in 2010 with our favorite Oscar-winner, Adrien Brody!  (For those who didn't read this over at our friend and fellow blogger Clara Fercovic's Via Margutta 51 blog, here's the link: http://via-51.blogspot.com/2011/09/if-i-had-to-keep-4-guest-dorian.html)
 

Woody Allen schlepped here. (So did our family!)

That brings us to this week’s blog post, Manhattan Murder Mystery (MMM—an appropriate acronym for such a delicious movie). For my money, it’s sheer delight, one of Allen’s funniest, most unabashedly entertaining movies. Even the locations are a joy to behold; in addition to the Russian Tea Room, there’s the Cafe Des Artistes, The Chelsea Hotel, and The '21' Club, accompanied by the great music of, among others, Dave Brubeck, Benny Goodman performing Louis Prima’s “Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing),” and the opening number, the great Bobby Short’s rendition of Cole Porter’s “I Happen to Like New York.” The Oscar-winning team from Annie Hall—including Allen, frequent co-star/former inamorata Diane Keaton, and co-screenwriter Marshall Brickman—reunited for this film after Allen’s relationship with previous co-star/significant-other Mia Farrow ended (a long story in itself). That old magic and the marvelous quirky romantic chemistry Allen and Keaton had together in Annie Hall, Sleeper, Love and Death, and so many others was still there onscreen in full force, as if the two of them had never parted. As much as I liked Mia Farrow in Allen’s movies during the period when they were co-stars as well as lovers (they made 12 movies together, if I recall correctly), I feel Diane Keaton was the perfect choice to play Carol Lipton. While Allen certainly brought out Farrow’s funny side in their comedies, especially in Zelig and Broadway Danny Rose, it always seems to me that when Farrow plays funny everyday people—as opposed to over-the-top funny characters like the ones in Broadway Danny Rose or Radio Days—she often has a kind of a mewling, whiny quality that I feel just wouldn’t have worked for the brainy, bubbly Carol.

Is Ted hoping to make out on this stakeout?

When we meet Carol and Larry Lipton (Allen), their son Nick (Zach Braff, before TV’s Scrubs made him a star) is off to college. Carol is feeling a touch of Empty Nest Syndrome; how will she fill her days? Start a business, like maybe a restaurant, with their longtime friend Ted (Alan Alda at his most charmingly witty and rakish, kinda doing for MMM what David Wayne did for Adam’s Rib)? Ooh, wait, I know just the thing for those midlife blahs—solving a murder! You see, Carol and Larry have a chance encounter in their apartment building’s elevator with an elderly but bright and quick-witted couple, Paul and Lillian House, leading to a friendly chat-turned-impromptu-visit to the House hacienda. Carol and Lillian (Lynn Cohen, best known to Team Bartilucci as Golda Meir in Steven Spielberg’s 2005 thriller Munich) discuss dieting, health/fitness issues, and the Houses’ upcoming wedding anniversary. Paul, played by Broadway producer and character actor Jerry Adler (TV’s The Sopranos, Mad About You, Rescue Me, and the dark 1997 comedy film Six Ways to Sunday, with Adrien Brody in one of his earliest roles) cheerfully shows Larry his stamp collection while Larry quietly yearns to get home in time to watch the Bob Hope movie he’s been looking forward to on TV. (I wonder which one it was? If I’d written the MMM script, it would have been My Favorite Brunette! How charmingly low-tech life was before the invention of the DVR! But I digress….). Not long afterward, Carol and Larry come home from the opera to find ambulances, police, and a covered body; apparently Mrs. House died of a coronary! As time passes, Carol can’t help noticing that their “next-door widower” seems to be taking his beloved wife’s unexpected death rather well…perhaps too well? Carol’s curiosity and yearning for adventure in her own life kicks in, and she embraces her inner Nora Charles. But Carol had better watch her back; this is the kind of thing that gets Alfred Hitchcock’s characters in trouble, only (even) funnier!

At Cafe des Artistes, Marcia knows when to hold ‘em, but does Larry know when to fold ‘em?

At first, Larry is both too skeptical and too busy with his publishing job at HarperCollins to humor Carol’s amateur detective leanings. Where’s Jason Schwartzman as Bored to Death’s version of Jonathan Ames when you need him? At least Ted has both the time and, as a playwright, the imagination to help Carol solve The Case of the Merry Widower, especially since Ted is a divorcé, and not exactly shy about letting his understandable crush on Carol show. What I enjoyed most about MMM‘s amateur sleuthing was that for the most part, Carol, Ted, and eventually Larry pretty much go about searching for clues the way your average Joe or Jo would, with fairly accessible, approachable, down-to-earth DIY tactics. For instance, Carol and Ted stake out the street where Mr. House has been keeping company with a lovely young model, Helen Moss (Melanie Norris). During the stakeout, whenever a woman leaves Helen’s apartment building, Ted yells out, “Helen!” to see if she turns around. Dialing *69 comes in handy, too, when Carol surreptitiously borrows the super’s keys to investigate:

“I’ll pretend I’m a pair of comfortable old shoes until the coast is clear.”

The potential for illicit romance lurks not only with Carol and Ted’s stakeouts, but also with one of Larry’s authors, the alluring, accurately-named Marcia Fox (Anjelica Huston, another one of Team Bartilucci’s favorite Oscar-winners), who’s playfully making eyes at Larry. To Larry’s credit, he truly loves Carol and doesn’t want to lose her. To Marcia’s credit, she tells Larry point blank that if he wants to keep Carol, he’d better make more of an effort. (Fun Fact: As luck would have it, I happened to go to HarperCollins for a job interview the day Allen and Huston were filming that scene in Larry’s office! Although I didn’t get the Editorial Assistant gig I’d hoped for, it was nevertheless a thrill just to get fleeting glimpses of them. But I digress….) Larry finally joins Carol on a stakeout that leads to a rundown Gramercy Park hotel, a corpse, and a chase leading to New Jersey. It’s a zany, funny ride as the Liptons find themselves in all manner of suspenseful situations with just the kind of witty goofiness you’d expect from writers Allen and Brickman and that ingratiating cast. (I cracked up when Larry “takes care of” hotel employee Aida Turturro with one dollar!) See what happens when middle-aged people have too much time on their hands?

Will our heroes push up daisies in The Garden State?

As Nick and Nora, er, Larry and Carol dash around scenic parts of Manhattan and New Jersey trying to find clues without getting themselves murdered, the cowardly if practical Larry keeps kvetching and Carol keeps grumbling about how “Ted would know what to do…” It’s a delightful tip of the hat to Allen and Keaton’s 1973 classic Sleeper and its President’s Nose/“Emo would know what to do” gag! Just thinking about the comparison had me laughing even more than I already was! More affectionate salutes to classic movies abound, including the Vertigo ad on a crosstown bus, where Carol is sure she’s just seen the allegedly dead Mrs. House looking very much alive at the moment; and the big finale with our beleaguered couple and villain caught in a funny yet suspenseful send-up of Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai in Mr. House’s revival theater. Larry gasps, “I’ll never say life doesn’t imitate art again!”




As Larry Lipton, Allen gives himself most of the best lines as he quips and dithers his way through their adventures, and why not? After all, who can say Woody Allen’s dialogue better than the man himself? Play to your strengths, I always say! Some of his best MMM lines:

On the emotions Wagnerian opera brings out in Larry: “…I always feel like invading Poland.”

On how Carol’s been dwelling on sinister things since she decided to play amateur detective : “You should wear happy glasses.”

Stunned to discover that a key player in the mystery plot is dead, and after they’d brought her a gift and everything: “She’s dead? Try giving her the present!”

Begging Carol to get rid of her fixation on the case and her jealousy of Marcia: “There’s nothing wrong with you that couldn’t be cured with Prozac and a polo mallet.”

Looking for Maxwell House, Carol finds Mrs. House!

MMM boasts stellar work from the rest of the supporting cast, too, including smart, sexy Huston, who turns out to be a pretty slick dilettante detective in her own right, bringing out the green-eyed monster in our heroine. When Carol feels like Marcia Fox is stealing both her thunder and Ted’s crush on her, you half-expect her to shout in exasperation, “It’s always Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!” Marge Redmond of Hitchcock’s Family Plot and TV’s The Flying Nun plays Mr. House’s right-hand woman Mrs. Dalton. Redmond gets an especially nice scene in the big movie theater climax; the catch in her voice as she quotes Everett Sloane in The Lady from Shanghai always touches my heart. I also liked Joy Behar and Ron Rifkin’s scenes as two of the couple’s friends, who help out with their recording studio, resulting in a shakedown ruse that goes hilariously awry. By the way, is it me, or does Paul House’s pretty young model girlfriend Helen Moss (Melanie Norris) dress rather like Annie Hall? (Tangent Alert…For the most part, I’ve liked Alan Alda best on the TV version of M*A*S*H and in other people’s movies, rather than the films he wrote and directed himself. Whenever Alda has donned the director’s hat, it’s always seemed to me that he gets preachy, self-conscious, and sensitive in a trying-too-hard way. Heck, I even liked him better in the otherwise disappointing thriller Whispers in the Dark until writer/director Christopher Crowe suddenly turned Alda’s character into an overwrought, frothing-at-the-mouth psycho. No wonder Alda won the Razzie that year!…End Tangent Alert.)

That’s not the kind of helping hand our heroes need! 

Is that pride skeptical Larry is swallowing there in the elevator?

Eye contact is crucial when you’re catching killers!

Uh-oh! This wasn't the kind of movie-date night our heroes had in mind!

Life imitates art with the Mrs. Dalton gang!

But overall, MMM is Woody Allen Light—Light-Hearted, that is! Don’t take my word for it, watch this charming last scene (or don’t, if you’d rather be surprised):

“…And the punchline is, ‘Would you believe I’m waiting for a train?’”

Special photo treat from our pal and fab fellow blogger Caftan Woman! 
Her sister Maureen got to meet Woody Allen in person!

Read all about it in C.W.'s true-life anecdote in TotED's Comments Section!

“…And the punchline is, ‘Would you believe I’m waiting for a train?’”