To wrap up The Amnesia Trilogy, here’s the amnesia film that started it all, at least for me: Alfred Hitchcock’s Oscar-winning thriller Spellbound. I first saw it on WPIX-TV on a Sunday afternoon when I was a youngster in the Bronx. After the literally breezy opening credits, Spellbound sets the stage with a foreword by the film’s medical advisor, Dr. May Romm (more about her shortly):
“Our story deals with psychoanalysis, the method by which modern science treats the emotional problems of the sane. The analyst seeks only to induce the patient to talk about his hidden problems, to open the locked doors of his mind. Once the complexes that have been disturbing the patient are uncovered and interpreted, the illness and confusion disappear…..and the devils of unreason are driven from the human soul.”
Got all that? Yeah, it may sound quaint in today’s more sophisticated, complicated world, but somehow I find Dr. Romm’s foreword (which has also been attributed to screenwriter Ben Hecht) endearingly earnest. In fact, Spellbound’s more dated aspects, like its approach to psychotherapy, intrigues me when I think of how these things have changed over time.
The lovely, luminous, gentle-voiced Ingrid Bergman plays Dr. Constance Petersen, the youngest member of the crackpot, er, crack team of psychoanalysts at Green Manors, a posh psychiatric institution. Constance brims with book smarts, but her people smarts still need fine-tuning. Dr. Fleurot (John Emory), who’s a bit of a scholarly wolf in shrink’s clothing, is always trying to pitch woo at Constance, but she’s just not that into him. He says, “You approach all your problems with an ice pack on your head….I’m trying to convince you that your lack of human and emotional experience is bad for you as a doctor...and fatal for you as a woman.” Constance wryly replies, “I’ve heard that argument from a number of amorous psychiatrists who all wanted to make a better doctor of me.”
Doctor on Call-Me-Anytime!
If you could see Constance’s feet now, you’d see bobby sox on her feet! *swoon!*
Well, I can tell you from family therapy experience that sometimes it takes a few tries with a few different therapists to find one you really click with—and Constance soon discovers love can work that way, too, when Green Manors’ elderly head honcho Dr. Murchison (veteran Hitchcock player Leo G. Carroll) is about to retire, albeit reluctantly. Constance and the staff are sorry to see Dr. Murchison go, even though his imminent replacement, the renowned Dr. Anthony Edwardes, is supposed to be hot stuff. “Hot” is the word for the ruggedly handsome new doc on the block, especially considering Dr. Edwardes is played by young Gregory Peck, who became an Oscar nominee himself that year for The Keys of the Kingdom. (Little did Peck know he’d be playing another amnesiac in peril twenty years later in another New York-set suspense film, the 1965 thrillerMirage!) Cool Constance’s pleasant but prim demeanor thaws rapidly, Dr. Edwardes’ agitation at the sight of lines scratched into a tablecloth notwithstanding, and those crazy kids fall in love lickety-split. Heck, how could anyone not fall in love with Bergman and Peck in this movie, with both of them at the peak of their yumminess? I can’t help smiling every time I see the scene with Constance and Edwardes (I’ve never once heard our heroine call him “Anthony” in the film’s early scenes) on their impromptu get-to-know-you picnic in the sunshine, and the way she dreamily accepts a sandwich from him. She says, “Liverwurst” as it if were the loveliest word she’s ever heard, bless her heart!
Those who scratch the tablecloth do not get fruit cup!
When Dr. Edwardes doesn’t recognize a caller’s voice, he’s initially annoyed, then laughs it off as a practical joke. Moreover, Dr. Edwardes takes a personal interest in Mr. Garmes (Norman Lloyd, frequent Hitchcock player and later producer of TV’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour), a patient with a guilt complex about his late father. Garmes also seems to be way too intrigued with knives and letter-openers. When Garmes tries to kill himself, Constance and Edwardes assist at the emergency surgery. But to everyone’s shock, Edwardes freaks out and faints. In fact, this is the first of four fainting spells Dr. Edwardes has over the course of the movie. If you happen to have a thing for watching handsome men being rendered unconscious, Spellbound is your cup of Sleepytime Tea!
With a few more jokes and scientific types, we’d have Ball of Fire!
Uh-oh! Someone’s got some ‘splainin’ to do!
Love opens doors for Constance
Constance realizes what’s up when she compares the signature on Dr. Edwardes’ autographed book to a note he’d left for her. Turns out Dr. Dreamboat is an impostor with amnesia, and the lovebirds have to figure out why and how! They’d better hurry, because the initials “J.B.” on his cigarette case are their only clue to his real identity. But the jig’s up when Dr. Edwardes’ worried office assistant comes to Green Manors herself, confirming the ruse. Constance ends up playing footsie with a note J.B. had slipped under her door when the local police drop by. Apparently the real Dr. Edwardes is missing and presumed dead, with J.B. as a person of interest! Poor Constance—she lets her hair down for once, falls in love, and wouldn’t you know the guy might be a killer? No wonder more and more people meet through online dating services nowadays! Anyway, before he fled, J.B. left Constance a note saying he can be reached at the Empire State Hotel in NYC until the heat dies down. For the rest of the film, Constance is essentially a female detective, a comparatively rare bird in suspense stories. Cool! She can start by delving deeper into why J.B. resents smug women. Smugness is infuriating in both genders, but J.B. doesn’t seem to mind smug men!
Aww, J.B. sleeps so cute! (Faint #1)
When she hits NYC, Constance gets some unexpected but welcome help from the house detective (Bill Goodwin, who was also the announcer for The Burns and Allen Show on both CBS and NBC), who pegs Constance as a gal in trouble, “a schoolteacher or librarian.” I love the way the hotel dick comes so close and yet so far in his assessment of her as he helps her in his amateur “psychologist” capacity without revealing her mission! Oh, and what would a Hitchcock movie be without one of the director’s famous cameos? It’s in this very scene, about 37 minutes into the movie; you’ll see Hitch walking out of an elevator at the Empire State Hotel, wearing a fedora, carrying a violin case and smoking a cigarette. If you can’t wait that long, go back to the beginning of this blog post and click here for the trailer.
Ground floor, Hitchcock cameo, everybody off!
Pesky tourist Wallace Ford puts the “Pitts” in “Pittsburgh”!
Danger between the lines!
Once Constance and J.B. are reunited (and it feels so good), they’re able to figure out that J.B. is a doctor (“The eminent Doctor X,” he says ruefully). They also deduce that J.B. must have been with the real—and still missing and presumed dead—Dr. Edwardes when foul play apparently befell him. J.B. feels this is only further proof that he must have knocked off Dr. Edwardes. Also, J.B. has burn scars on his left hand, with a skin graft, and he relives the pain and horror of his accident as if it was happening all over again, poor guy. Well, at least it’s a start—but when the bellboy brings up the afternoon papers, there’s an article about the manhunt, including a lovely photo of Constance! Oops, gotta run—to Pennsylvania Station for train tickets to wherever it was that J.B. went with Dr. Edwardes. Constance figures when J.B. left the mountains after Dr. Edwardes’ accident, he must have passed through New York, so asking for train tickets might jog his memory. Poor J.B. can only stammer “Rome,” then collapse. If J.B. is gonna have these dizzy/fainting spells on a regular basis, I think Constance should get a wheelchair for him! So all roads lead our fugitive sweethearts not to Rome, but to Grand Central and Rochester, NY to see Constance’s dear old professor and fellow psychoanalyst Dr. Alex Brulov (played by Michael Chekhov, famed acting teacher, former member of the Moscow Art Theater, and nephew of playwright Anton Chekhov. Alex was one of my favorite Spellbound characters, so I was happy to learn he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his delightful performance). On the way, Constance helps J.B. remember the fiery wartime plane crash in which he was burned, reliving the horror: “I hated killing. I can remember that much….”
One perk to J.B.’s fainting spells; he’s got the lovely and devoted Constance to catch him!
(Faint #2)
Yikes! Talk about unwanted publicity!
When our fugitive couple reaches Alex’s Rochester home, claiming they’re honeymooning newlyweds, there’s a nice little scene with two police detectives (Art Baker and Regis Toomey of Burke’s Law), with one of them complaining about his clingy mother and accusations of being a “mama’s boy.” Even John Law has neuroses! And once again, poor J.B. can’t catch a break: the line pattern on the coverlet upsets him so badly that he faints again. When he wakes up after everyone’s asleep, the poor guy gets freaked out again by the relentlessly white bathroom fixtures; with his white phobia, he can’t even wash up or shave, though he seems perfectly capable of wandering dazedly through Alex’s house with a straight razor. Could’ve been worse, though; Spellbound could’ve taken place in the 1970s, with all those harvest gold and avocado green fixtures! Luckily, Alex turns out to be wilier than Constance gave him credit for; he slips bromides into J.B.’s milk, and it’s beddy-bye time!
“You like close shaves, don’t you?”
From the folks who brought you the Fisticam: The Dairycam!
But Alex, this is a good boy...this is a nice boy...this is a mother's angel! (Faint #3)
Next time J.B. comes over, we’re giving him the plastic cups! (4th and Final Faint!)
It takes lots of convincing, but the next day, Constance and Alex are able to get J.B. on the fast track toward helping him find out who he is and what happened to Dr. Edwardes. One more fainting spell and a look out the window on this snowy day, and our intrepid heroes realize the lines that freaked out J.B. were skiing tracks in the snow! That’s where the dream sequence comes in:
Sled tracks on a snowy day gives our heroes the major clue they need: Dr. Edwardes had been into sports, saying it was a boon to the treatment of mental disorders. That’s why the dark lines in the white snow freaked out J.B. so severely. Using the notes from J.B.’s dream, they figure out that J.B. and Dr. E. went to Gabriel Valley for what turned out to be their ill-fated therapy vacation. Constance and J.B. go there to recreate the events leading to Dr. Edwardes’ death. The couple opts for downhill skiing, and the tension is almost unbearable as J.B. starts to remember the horrible thing he was trying to forget: the accidental death of his little brother as young J.B. tried to yell warnings to him. The point of impact where the poor kid is impaled lasts only seconds, but it still breaks my heart and chills me to the bone every time I see Spellbound. But the evil spell is broken as J.B. grabs Constance and saves her from flying off the cliff in the proverbial nick of time. Now they can forget the past and forge a future together as husband and wife, as well as Doctor and Doctor Ballantine (the “J” is for “John”). Nice day for a white wedding….
Or is it? When the police catch up with them, they confirm that Dr. Edwardes’ body is where our heroes deduced it would be, all right—but they didn’t figure on finding the cause of death was a bullet! After a montage of Constance desperately trying to convince the jury that John is innocent,to no avail, our heartbroken heroine returns to Green Manors. Ah, but the film and the surprises aren’t over just yet:
The screenplay by Ben Hecht and Angus MacPhail is loosely based on Francis Beeding’s 1927 novel The House of Dr. Edwardes; indeed, the opening credits specifically say “Suggested by Francis Beeding’s novel The House of Dr. Edwardes.” I’ve read in various sources that the original novel was a lot more gimmicky and Gothic-y. Hitchcock had no qualms about retooling a novel to serve his movie’s needs, so he, Hecht, and MacPhail improved upon it. But there’s one writer few can improve upon: William Shakespeare, whose lines from Julius Caesar open Spellbound with a most appropriate quote: “The fault…is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
Spellbound was released in theaters in 1945, when World War 2 ended and soldiers were coming home suffering from shell shock, nightmares, and “battle fatigue” (or as we know it today, PTSD: post-traumatic stress disorder), so it was inevitable that Spellbound would strike a chord with moviegoers at that time (and even now, really, since war is unfortunately still with us). It also struck a chord with its producer, David O. Selznick, since he was undergoing psychoanalysis on account of his own family tragedy: Selznick’s brother Myron, a top Hollywood agent, had died after many years of alcoholism. On top of that, Selznick’s marriage broke up, so he wound up in therapy with psychoanalyst/psychiatrist Dr. May Romm. Interestingly, in 1944, the year before Spellbound was released, life during wartime was the subject of another acclaimed Selznick drama, Since You Went Away (which I must confess is known here at Team Bartilucci H.Q. as one of the most depressing movies ever made! But I digress….)
Miklós Rózsa is one of my favorite composers, and it’s no wonder that he won an Oscar for his glorious Spellbound score! It sets the film’s tone in every way, its theremin weaving foreboding throughout the emotion-packed, lushly romantic orchestrations. Ironically, according to Wikipedia, Selznick originally wanted a musical score from future Hitchcock composer Bernard Herrmann, another favorite of mine! But Herrmann wasn’t available, so Rózsa got the gig. Indeed, Spellbound also received five other Oscar nominations, not only for Chekhov’s supporting performance (James Dunn won for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), but also for George Barnes’ gorgeous black-and-white cinematography (The Picture of Dorian Gray won); Jack Cosgrove’s special photographic effects (the Oscar went to another of my favorite movies, the Danny Kaye comedy Wonder Man); Hitchcock’s direction; and a Best Picture nomination for Selznick International(though I can't complain about The Lost Weekend winning the prize). Also, Ingrid Bergman won a New York Film Critics Circle Award for her performance. It’s also worth noting that Rhonda Fleming, only 22 at the time, made quite an impressive debut in the small but memorable role of Green Manors patient Mary Carmichael, whose flirty manner and beauty disguises a vicious hatred of men. Team Bartilucci favorite Dave Willock of the animated Hanna-Barbera series Wacky Races and Robert Aldrich films such as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte played the bellboy who recognized Constance in New York. Vinnie recognized Willock’s voice; he's got an ear for such things, bless him. Many folks reading this may also remember Willock from another Team B. fave, It's in the Bag.
Hello, Dali!
The scenes in Spellbound involving Salvador Dali’s surrealism were originally going to be even more surreal and elaborate than the classic dream sequence we movie fans know and love! However, as is explained in the Spellbound DVD’s special features, the rushes showed lighting problems, and worst of all for a romantic thriller, the footage just plain wasn’t packing the emotional and visual punch that Hitchcock had hoped for. So Selznick contacted production designer William Cameron Menzies, with whom he’d worked on Gone with the Wind. Menzies redesigned the shots, and the film certainly seems to have retained the impact and entertainment value that Hitchcock & Company wanted. Heck, I could go on and on about Menzies’ own extraordinary career alone, considering that in addition to being a brilliant production designer (a title Menzies created, by the way), he was also an Oscar-winning producer, director, and screenwriter in his brilliant 50-year career—but that deserves a blog post all its own, if someone hasn’t written one about him already!
If a honeymoon on a train was good enough for Mr. & Mrs. Thornhill, it's good enough for Dr. and Dr. Ballantine!
My smart, funny hubby Vinnie and I have our Team Bartilucci caps on for this week’s double dose of The Producers. We adore writer/director Mel Brooks’ madcap satire in all its forms: the original Oscar-winning 1968 movie; the Tony-winning 2001 Broadway musical; and the movie version of the musical! How’s that for blanketing the field?
Dorian: “Money is honey…He who hesitates is poor!”
I know more people who can quote lines from The Producers than lines from Shakespeare’s works; make of that what you will! J People seem to either absolutely adore or utterly despise The Producers. But most folks I know agree with Vin and me that this nutzoid farce has "Love Power," to quote the late, great Dick Shawn as the ever-groovy, scene-stealing LSD, a.k.a. Lorenzo St. DuBois. Outrageously impudent yet surprisingly tender at times, it’s no surprise that writer/director Mel Brooks' zany tale of schemers trying to produce “the worst play ever written” and profit from it won Brooks his Best Original Screenplay Oscar and became a comedy classic. Need I say it’s also one of our family’s longtime favorites?
All singing! All dancing! All outrageous!
Two coffees, black, hold the bullets!
Meet our rascally protagonist Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel), who’s had an epic string of bad luck in recent years: “You know who I used to be? Max Bialystock, King of Broadway, six shows running at once! Lunch at Delmonico’s. $200 suits. (Max gestures at his stick pin.) You see this? This once held a pearl as big as your eye. Look at me now. Look at me now! I’m wearing a cardboard belt!” Even Max’s comb-over has seen better days. It’s been years since Max has produced a hit Broadway show, and he’s been reduced to using his powers of persuasion — and wheedling, and bellowing, and conning — to “launch… (himself) into Little Old Lady Land” to seduce money out of his rich elderly female backers, giving them “one last thrill on their way to the cemetery.” Afterwards, he collects checks made out to “Cash” (“That’s a funny name for a play.”) from the unsuspecting old dears. The most aggressively horny of them all is Estelle Winwood as “Hold Me Touch Me,” who loves to play games where she both insults and sexes up Max as her chauffeur, naughty stableboy, etc. I used to wonder if Winwood was born old, God bless her; I’ve never seen her as a young woman in any of her many films! She lived to the truly ripe old age of 101, stealing the show in all of her movies that I’ve seen, including this one.
Enter one Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder), a meek young accountant sent to do the books for Max’s most recent Broadway flop. It innocently occurs to the studious, honest Leo that “under the right circumstances, a producer could make more money with a flop than he could with a hit” by raising $1 million, putting on a $60,000 Broadway flop, and keeping the rest when the play theoretically closes on opening night. Of course, if the play was a hit instead, the producer would go to the hoosegow, since there’s no way he could pay back all the backers. A light bulb goes on over Max’s head. After Max badgers, er, persuades Leo to be his partner, the book-cooking begins, the hunt for a surefire flop play commences, and the wacky shenanigans escalate! Max and Leo find their worst play candidate, Springtime for Hitler, written by addlepated Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind, played by the recently departed Kenneth Mars, a longtime Team Bartilucci fave. Thrilled, Franz waxes rhapsodic about his beloved Fuhrer: “Hitler, there was a painter. He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon! Two coats!” But that’s only the beginning of our heroes’ audacious, hilarious odyssey, as they hire flamboyantly gay transvestite director Roger De Bris (Christopher Hewett, best known as TV’s Mr. Belvedere when I was a youngster), the aforementioned LSD, Swedish-speaking sexpot secretary Ulla (Lee Meredith), and one of the craziest chorus lines in movie history. No wonder this screamingly funny, no-holds-barred comedy helped to put former Your Show of Shows writer Brooks on the map as a filmmaker.
The great Zero Mostel steals every scene in his uproarious, larger-than-life portrayal of Max. I’ve heard that Mostel could be a handful to work with, but it sure pays off in all his stage and screen performances. The Producers is no exception. Alas, Mostel wasn’t nominated for an Oscar, but Gene Wilder was nominated for Best Supporting Actor; his perfect balance of hysteria and sweetness played off blustery, wily Mostel beautifully. In particular, I’ve always liked the father-and-son vibe Mostel and Wilder develop over the course of the movie—including antic father-and-son-style arguments. Anyone trying to make a comedy depending on controversy and questionable taste for its laughs should watch The Producers first and see how a master does it! In fact, before the Broadway musical version of The Producers revitalized Mel Brooks’s career, I was thinking that maybe Brooks and Wilder should take the time to watch it again themselves. At that point in their careers, they seemed to need a refresher course in how to be funny after the duds they’d begun churning out. At their peak as writers and comedic actors, Wilder always seemed to be able to temper Brooks' mania for poo-poo humor, and Brooks always seemed able to help Wilder to better balance out his trademark hysteria/sweetness. In her 1968 New York Times review, film critic Renata Adler wrote that Wilder “played (Leo) as though he were Dustin Hoffman being played by Danny Kaye.” Her assessment is both on-target and ironic, considering Dustin Hoffman was originally cast as Liebkind, until he was offered the role of Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate. Brooks gave Hoffman his blessing, Mars moved into position, and movie history was made all around!
Much as my family and I also loved the Broadway and film editions of the musical version co-written by Brooks and Thomas Meehan, and starring the incomparable Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick (even though I felt that Broderick wasn't quite as good as Leo Bloom as Lane was as Max Bialystock. That said, together they have great buddy chemistry), the original is still the champ!
Vinnie: “Broadway! Oh joy of joys! Oh dream of dreams!”
Upon first rumors of a Broadway adaptation of The Producers, the eyes of The Wife and I filled with a mania usually only seen in children approaching Christmas. We riffed madly on what the show might contain: We guessed right on songs called “Where Did We Go Right?” and “Little Old Lady Land” (okay, the song was titled “Along Came Bialy,” but it was absolutely about Little Old Lady Land) and “Where Did We Go Right?”, while my guess of “Everything Goes Better with Dancing” was wrong. Nathan Lane as Max Bialystock was our only guess/choice, and when Mel Brooks showed up on Letterman with a contract for Nathan, we breathed a sigh of relief. Soon afterwards, we were strolling along NYC’s Theater Row during a picturesque Manhattan winter with our friend Jason, who casually remarked that tickets had gone on sale for the show, a moment we’d been watching for carefully. Suddenly time seemed to stretch and slow, and the snowflakes hung frozen in the air as Jason tried to recall which theater it was. We dragged him through Times Square like we were Regina Lampert and Peter Joshua (et al) at the Paris Stamp Market in Charade, screaming, “Think, Jean-Louis, THINK!” He eventually remembered the theater (The St. James) and we grabbed two seats for the first show they had, which was for the fourth night after opening. Oh how we laughed.
Ulla -- Ulllll-la-la!
Four hundred years later (or so it seemed) we were in our seats in the mezzanine, and the air was filled with a shared joviality. The show had already been declared a hit, but these first few shows were filled with Mel Brooks fans who had, like ourselves, bought our ticket sight unseen, based purely on our love for the man, the film and his entire catalog. A party of people across the aisle from us were decked out in tuxedos and Viking helmets, like the ones seen on the boys in the cut (and presumed lost) scene where they take the Siegfried Oath in the original film. The show went through a few changes. With the musical now set in the 1950s instead of the late ’60s, Lorenzo St. DuBois and his classic protest ballad “Love Power” was gone entirely, and Franz Liebkind’s part grew in kind when it’s he who is originally cast as the Fuhrer with the classic line, “That’s our Hitler!” Pretty much everybody’s part got bigger – Ulla graduated to full female lead, complete with romantic subplot. Roger DeBris and Carmen Giya got a big bump up, with Roger eventually having to play Hitler, with riotous results. Lots of new songs, all written by Mel on the only musical instrument he knows – the tape recorder. He made the songs up and sang them into a waiting microphone, and the musical staff transcribed and arranged them. Thomas Meehan clearly took the Gene Wilder role and kept Mel from going too crazy – there’s clearly a lot more “Later Mel”-isms in the show (“I can assure you, even though we’re sitting down, we’re giving you a standing ovation”), but it’s kept well in check. Plus, the boys (and Ulla) get a traditional Broadway Happy Ending, crammed in at the end after the rehearsal of “Prisoners of Love”, with the show opening on Broadway and Max and his new partner taking their place as Kings of the Great White Way. While Lane and Broderick are the best-known actors in the parts of Max and Leo for the musical, there are a few folks who have taken the roles who I would have killed to see. A limited performance in L.A. featured Jason Alexander and Martin Short – indeed, Short was Mel’s first choice for the role of Leo. In Britain, Lee Evans played Leo with Lane as Max again. Lane and Evans teamed in Gore Verbinski’s first major live-action film, Mouse Hunt, and while his career in the U.S. was limited, Evans is a national treasure in England. Reece Shearsmith of The League of Gentlemen played Leo later in the run as well. And in a run in Manchester, U.K. standup comic Peter Kay played Roger DeBris.
Anyway, back in America…
At the premiere party of the musical, which went on to win a well-deserved 12 Tony Awards including Best Musical, Harvey Weinstein said to Mel, “We gotta make a movie of this!” Mel replied, “We MADE a movie of it; it was called ‘The Producers’!” So there was little doubt there would be a film of the musical…of the film. Lane and Broderick were back, as were Gary Beach and Roger Bart as DeBris and Carmen. Nathan Lane was perfection as usual, using his magnificent mix of equal parts Zero Mostel and Lou Costello. But Matthew Broderick’s performance, both in the musical and the film, always fell a bit flat for me. He never reached the level of panic that Wilder did (which I imagine Lee Evans and Martin Short did in their turns), and comes off more uncomfortable than hysterical. Uma Thurman hung her performance on a passable accent, but ultimately, she seems better cast for action roles than comedy. Will Ferrell has yet to give a poor performance, and his manic Liebkind is no exception. Cameos from Andrea Martin as one of the little old ladies and one of the Queer Eye boys, Jai Rodriguez, as one of DeBris’ in-house staff (Jai graduated to playing Carmen later in the Broadway run) are a nice treat as well. Don’t blink or you’ll miss Brad Oscar, Broadway’s Franz, as a cab driver. Speaking of Oscars, check out the newspaper the usherettes read in the first number; the Funny Boy review byline is “Addison DeWitt,” the role for which George Sanders won his All About Eve Oscar.
Susan Stroman directed the Broadway production and was chosen to direct the film, but as has happened many times with adaptations of musicals, it felt very much like a filmed stage show, not really taking advantage of the larger stage. Somehow, the scenes that DID venture outside, the performances of “We Can Do It” and “Along Came Bialy,” still felt flat and staged. Like so many before, the film is merely a good approximation of the stage musical.
A little bit of trivia is revealed by Stroman on the DVD commentary: at the close of the film as the camera pulls back to reveal the many marquees of Broadway, we see a bit of the Lunt-Fontanne theater’s marquee on the left; specifically, the letters “ANNE”. That’s a tribute to Mel’s wife Anne Bancroft, who had died shortly after the opening of the musical, last appearing in the Producers-centric episode of Curb your Enthusiasm.
To her dying day, The Wife’s Mom swore she had seen The Producers “in its first run on Broadway.” We tried endlessly to tell her it had started as a film, and she was patently mistaken, but no number of IMDb listings would change her mind. (We suspect that she’d innocently mistaken it for one of Mostel’s other Broadway hits.) It’s nice to know that we got to see it — I can only hope it was as good as the production she remembered.
Those of you who’ve been reading TotED blog posts for a while now might be thinking, “‘The Quiet Man?’ Isn’t that an Irish romantic comedy with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara? What, no Hitchcockian suspense, chases, guns, murder, derring-do?” Derring-do, no; action and tension along with the romantic comedy, aye! Based on Maurice Walsh’s short story, there’s a lot going on in director John Ford’s justifiably beloved 1952 comedy-drama both action-wise and emotion-wise, including a memorable cast of characters and, in my opinion, the funniest, rowdiest marathon fistfight in movie history—take that, Fight Club!
The Quiet Man (TQM) has been one of our family’s favorite films since I was a kid growing up in New York City. My late mom’s side of the family is Irish-American, so every St. Patrick’s Day, our family would drive from the Bronx to Manhattan to see the big parade on Fifth Avenue. Afterward, we’d all eat at what was then our favorite Irish restaurant, Limerick’s on Second Avenue and 32nd Street, for a fine dinner including corned beef, steak, baked potatoes, Irish soda bread, and for the grownups, Irish Coffee. Nowadays, we of Team Bartilucci make our own corned beef and cabbage St. Patrick’s Day dinner at home, including my yummy (if I do say so myself) gluten-free Irish soda bread, and of course, we watch our 2002 Collectors’ Edition DVD of TQM, with all its wonderful documentary featurettes, including interviews with John Wayne’s grown children—all of whom traveled to Ireland with their dad and played roles in the movie, along with Ford’s veteran actor brother Francis Ford, and so many other friends, loved ones, and longtime colleagues in front of and behind the camera, including Ireland’s Abbey Players. The film is the richer for it; each actor, from star to bit player, is memorable and engaging. Our DVD includes a marvelous commentary track by Maureen O’Hara herself (Miracle on 34th Street, The Fallen Sparrow, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and a great many other films with John Wayne, and so much more!) with all kinds of heartwarming, hilarious, and fascinating anecdotes about the making of the film. (Fun Fact: O’Hara took notes in shorthand for Ford in the script’s early stages.) How fitting that making TQM was a family affair for director John Ford, winning him his fourth Best Director Oscar (his other winners being The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, and How Green was My Valley), especially since watching and quoting TQM have long since become a family tradition in our own home.
“Always hated a flabby handshake myself.”
Let the feud begin!
Filmed mostly on location in Ireland, with the film’s fictional town of Innisfree (or “Innishfree,” as it's often pronounced onscreen) played by the village of Cong in County Mayo, TQM was a labor of love for Ford and Company—and just like so many other cinematic labors of love now hailed as classics, Ford had a tough time getting it underway despite his enviable critical and financial success. Potential backers feared there wouldn’t be enough of an audience for Ford’s fairly simple, sentimental story (no Angela’s Ashes, this) about Sean Thornton (Wayne), born in Ireland, raised in Pittsburgh, PA, and now returning to Innisfree to stay. Along the way, Sean reconnects with such colorful local characters as tippling matchmaker and bookie Michaleen Ogh Flynn (Barry Fitzgerald, beloved in films ranging from Bringing Up Baby to The Naked City to his Oscar-winning turn in Going My Way, and more!); Catholic priest Father Lonergan (Ward Bond, one of Ford’s regular cast members), who’s been trying to catch the same bass for years; and Protestant Reverend Playfair (Arthur Shields, who was actually Fitzgerald’s older brother!), whose enthusiasm for boxing reveals Sean’s secret: in the U.S., Sean was prizefighter Trooper Thorn until he accidentally killed his opponent in the ring, leading him to quit boxing and live a, well, quiet life. Quiet goes out the window when Sean falls in love with spirited Mary Kate Danaher (O’Hara), whose temper is as fiery as her flame-red hair—and so are their love scenes. Not a stitch of clothing is removed, but the chemistry between Wayne and O’Hara has as much heat as a forest fire; no wonder the pair co-starred in five films together, as well as being close platonic friends offscreen! But it’s Mary Kate’s bullying older brother, “Red” Will Danaher (Victor McLaglen, whose wide array of memorable roles include not only his Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for TQM, but also Gunga Din, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and The Informer, for which McLaglen won the Best Actor Oscar in 1935), who really gets his Irish up. Will’s nasty temper and overall obnoxiousness blow up in his face after our hero asks to buy White O’Morn, the house Sean grew up in. The Widow Sarah Tellane (Mildred Natwick of The Trouble with Harry, The Court Jester, and Barefoot in the Park, among many others) takes issue with Will’s entitled attitude. Sean gets the house and a new enemy in Will. This is a bargain?
With lovely Mary Kate Danaher around,who needs Little Bo Peep ?
Sean and Mary Kate wed after the townsfolk pull a fast one on Will to make him think The Widow Tellane might become Mrs. Danaher. When Will finds out he’s been had, all hell breaks loose, and a battle of traditions begins as the loving but strong-willed newlyweds have to contend with overall culture shock; Will’s refusal to give Mary Kate her dowry and furniture; Sean’s refusal to fight back when Will gets in his face, and the resulting unfair accusations of cowardice; and, being an American, Sean’s difficulty in understanding why it’s so important to Mary Kate to have a dowry in the first place. She tries to explain that it’s not just about the money: “Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve dreamed of having my things about me…Until I have my things, I’m no married woman. I’m the servant I have always been.” Will those roses Sean planted turn into a bed of thorns (with plenty of horse fertilizer), or will he realize sometimes you literally have to fight for what you want? Well, let’s just say there’s a reason the exciting, hilarious epic fistfight between Sean and Will is a classic!
It’s practically a miracle that TQM even got made! Wayne’s long-standing contract with low-budget Republic Pictures turned the tide, since its head honcho Herbert J. Yates wanted to upgrade Republic to a big-budget studio. Ford formed Argosy Productions and they signed a three-year contract with Ford and partner Merian C. Cooper (yep, King Kong’s Merian C. Cooper), but the antsy Yates wanted to make sure he got his money’s worth. So before filming TQM, Ford, Wayne, and O’Hara filmed Rio Grande (1950)—and it was a smash hit, resulting in a green light for TQM. In addition to Ford’s Best Director Oscar, TQM also won for the gorgeous Technicolor cinematography by Winston P. Hoch and Archie Stout, with nominations for Best Sound and its art direction and set decoration.
Sean and Mary Kate are soaked to the skin,
but who’s complaining?
Sean's walking his baby back home!
Wonder what kind of sweet nothings Mary Kate is whispering in Sean’s ear? Read our friend and fellow blogger Clara Fercovic of Via Margutta 51http://via-51.blogspot.com/2011/03/lip-read-and-unveil-one-of-hollywood.html
Robert Benchley (1889 - 1945) has been one of my favorite humorists ever since my high school days, when I read a vintage copy of his hilarious 1936 collection My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew. I've also enjoyed his movie work as a character actor since I first saw him in the great Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940); few people can make the word “No!” sound so funny. Watching Benchley in It’s In The Bag! for last week’s blog post led me to revisit Benchley’s witty, classic Vanity Fair essays, which in turn made me eager to watch his drolly funny, award-winning short films, now available from Warner Archive in a 3-DVD set, The Robert Benchley Miniature Collection.
As the scion of a renowned writing family including Nathaniel Benchley and Jaws’ Peter Benchley, Robert Benchley became a multi-media phenomenon when Hollywood beckoned and he became king of the mini-comedies, whose titles usually began with the words How To…. In most of these shorts, he usually played either an endearingly frazzled lecturer/expert or the ultimate everyman Joe Doakes (not to be confused with Joe McDoakes, a different everyman played in a series of Warner Bros. comedy shorts by a pre-Jetsons George O’Hanlon) exploring, puzzling over, and of course commenting on the foibles and challenges of daily life.The second of Benchley’s 46 short films, The Sex Life of the Polyp (1928), was among 25 classic films preserved for posterity by the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Adapting one of his own essays and using animation, Benchley plays a ditsy doctor lecturing to a women’s club about the sex life of the ever-gender-bending polyp. Benchley’s droll commentary includes this:
“We took one of the tiny creatures home with us to live. It was at the time a girl polyp, so we called her Mary after Ethel Barrymore. She was at first naturally shy, but soon grew accustomed to our mannish ways and became more like a child of our own than a polyp—although she looked more like a polyp than a child of our own....”
Those of us who’ve heard the anecdotes about Benchley and his sharp, witty colleagues at New York City’s Algonquin Round Table back in the day may long to go back in time to break bread and quaff cocktails with them. Of course, even the Algonquin gang probably had their off-days wit-wise, grappling with writer’s block, deadlines, hangovers, and life’s usual highs and lows. Luckily, whether you read traditional paperbound books like Mother used to make, or online, Kindle, or whatever new medium appears, we’re lucky to have Benchley’s hilarious essays in various formats. The following excerpts from “Lucky World!” in My Ten Years in a Quandary…are among my favorites:
When you come to think of it, the wonder is not that there are so many jammed automobile fenders, bad motion pictures, sore throats, divorces and wars, but that there aren’t more of them. We are living in a world that is shot through with luck, that’s all….Consider the number of young people all over the world who are getting married, day in and day out, for no other reason than that someone of the opposite sex looks well in a green jersey or sings baritone, and then tell me that Divorce has reached menacing proportions. The surface of Divorce has not been scratched yet. We are lucky that everyone isn’t divorced.
Look at the people in the Congress, or the Chamber of Deputies, or the Parliament in London, and listen to what they say. The only logical ending to it all is that the world is headed for dementia praecox, with all the buildings tumbling down, all the water works shooting up into the air and all the citizens bumping into each other with trays of hot soup.
And yet automobiles dodge each other as if by magic, passable motion pictures are produced, many people stay married all their lives and actually don’t seem to mind, and only occasionally does hell break loose entirely. It’s a pretty lucky old world we live in, when you consider its possibilities. Benchley sure got around, making Hollywood short subjects for Fox, Universal, RKO, Paramount—and MGM, where the Simmons Mattress Company first approached him to write and act in the short How to Sleep, inspired by The Mellon Institute’s sleep study. Benchley did double-duty as the narrator and sleep-deprived protagonist, trying everything from hot baths (ouch!) to a midnight lobster snack (yum!) to every kind of goofy sleeping position imaginable. Benchley later claimed his role was “not much of a strain, as (he) was in bed most of the time.” Nice work if you can get it! Audiences at preview screenings loved Benchley, and a star was born. A still from How to Sleep was used in Simmons ads. Only the Mellon Institute wasn’t pleased, pouting over MGM mocking their study—spoilsports! But audiences were pleased as punch with Benchley, leading to a contract with MGM from 1935 to 1944, and an Oscar for Best Short Subject, Comedy, for How to Sleep.
Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin):“I’m fixing to do something dumber than hell, but I’m going anyways. If I don’t come back, you tell Mother I love her.”
Carla Jean Moss (Kelly Macdonald):“Your mother’s dead, Llewelyn.”
Llewelyn:“Well, then I’ll tell her myself.”
Those of you who’ve been enjoying my playful natterings about classic movies ranging from the 1930s to the 1970s might be surprised to see a bleak, bloodily violent, gallows-humored 2007 Western noir like No Country for Old Men (NCfOM) here on TotED.But you see, this thriller, written and directed by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen based on Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel, just happened to be my beloved mother’s absolute favorite film during the final two years of her life. On January 22nd, 2011, this very weekend, it would have been Mom’s 84th birthday. Now Mom was multifaceted, to say the least. The "Cherry Girl" side of our family affectionately nicknamed her "Auntie Mame" -- oh, and Cherry was Mom’s maiden name. Mom and her sister, my Auntie Joy (who died of pulmonary fibrosis just a few months after Mom did) told us many hilarious anecdotes about the boys’ reactions to the Cherry sisters’ surname in high school.
Mom in New York City at Auntie Joy's NYC pad in the early Aughties.
Mom and I talked on the phone almost every day, and when she moved to Florida over 20 years ago, we visited her each summer. She was an unfailing champion to all who needed a champion, and a scold to those who richly deserved scolding. She had a great sense of humor and a loving heart, while still providing witty yet no-nonsense advice. She was glamorous, yet down to earth; a talented painter and sculptor and an avid reader as well as an excellent swimmer and tennis player; a lover of all things swanky and soignée. One of Mom’s most endearing quirks was that for all her smarts and sophistication, she was the Mistress of Unwitting Movie-Title Malaprops. For instance, she automatically referred to Roxanne, Steve Martin’s comedic update of Cyrano de Bergerac, as “Pinocchio.” She was also a fan of the Tom Hanks-directed comedy about a 1960s rock band, “That Noise You Make!” as well as Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winner “Slumlord Millionaire.”
They shoot dogs, don't they? Hell yeah, when the dogs are trying to kill you!
Mom was a big fan of Mel Brooks, The Marx Brothers, and the Coen Brothers—especiallyNCfOM.Mom loved the intelligence and offbeat humor of the Coen Brothers’ films as much as I did, whether they were comedies, dramas, or thrillers like Blood Simple, Fargo (our family loves Frances McDormand, too) and, of course, NCfOM. Although Mom and I weren’t able to see NCfOM together in the same theater since we lived in two different states, we did happen to see it on the same day. When we caught up with each other by phone, we talked excitedly about the movie for an hour! Soon Mom and I were recommending it to other friends and loved ones. Each of us saw it at least three times in our respective local theaters, usually taking others who we knew would love it (even I admit that NCfOM isn’t for all tastes, what with its relentless violence and abrupt downbeat ending). I wish I had a dollar for every time Mom called to ask me to explain the complex plot to one of her many admirers. Yes, even in her 70s and early 80s, and even when her health went downhill, Mom had more male admirers than James Bond had hottie honeys, dear little minx that she was!
Anton Chigurh likes his work a LITTLE too much!
When Mom’s health deteriorated from pulmonary fibrosis to the point that she rarely left the house, I sent her the NCfOM DVD. When my daughter Siobhan and I visited Mom several times over the last 18 months of her life, she had it on more often than not, almost like cinematic wallpaper. I wonder if the Coens would have appreciated Mom cheerfully doing the little chores she was still capable of, sitting in her elegant lounging pajamas and drinking a cup of tea with her oxygen tube on like it was just another of her fashionable accessories, all while watching and commenting on what was going on in the film. (Siobhan, as a then-13-year-old animation fan, preferred to watch her beloved cartoon DVDs until NCfOM was over, or at least had come to a stopping point.) Mom and I had always felt there was a Sam Peckinpah vibe to this gripping thriller, set in 1980. It’s a morality play and a tense suspense story rolled into one, like the leaner, meaner, more vicious brother of the Coens’ previous thrillers.NCfOM’s protagonist is Vietnam vet Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin in a brooding, laconic, star-making performance), who goes hunting near the Rio Grande and finds himself embroiled in nightmarish mayhem and violence, West Texas prairie style. Instead of bagging wild game, Llewelyn bags $2 million in drug money after stumbling across the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong, complete with human and canine carcasses. (It’s chilling to see the bodies in the process of decaying as others happen upon the scene over the course of the movie.) Llewelyn thinks he can just take off with the money, dodge whoever might come after it, and live happily ever after with his sweet young wife Carla Jean, played with a letter-perfect Texas accent by winsome Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald. Brolin and Macdonald make a wryly endearing couple. The rare times Llewelyn smiles, it’s usually when he’s talking with Carla Jean.
This definitely wasn't the kind of room service Llewelyn had in mind!
But to his peril, Llewelyn doesn’t figure on being pursued by merciless bounty hunter Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a mysterious figure with a pneumatic cattle gun, a penchant for using a coin toss to decide whether someone should live or die, and a voice that sounds like it’s coming not from a human being, but from the bowels of Hell itself. Chigurh relentlessly pursues the equally dogged Llewelyn through Texas as the compassionate, sad-eyed Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (the great Tommy Lee Jones as the film’s voice of reason) tries to catch up, but he can't help feeling overmatched by the sheer implacable evil of the “ghost” that is Chigurh.The film’s pacing is deliberate, but for me that simply increased the suspense as I wondered what Chigurh would do next, and whether Llewelyn had a chance in hell of ever eluding him for good, especially with both men’s ever-increasing number of injuries. The suspense scenes are real nail-biters. There’s a thrilling night-into-dawn chase where Llewelyn is pursued first by a monster truck, then into the rapids by dogs. Pit bulls don’t stand a chance against bullets! One of my favorite scenes finds Llewelyn in his motel room in the dark. The only lights are the glowing tracking transmitter he finds in the satchel of drug money, and the light under the door from the hall outside—until a pair of feet appear on the hall side. All we hear is the transmitter…and the sound of a light bulb in the hall being unscrewed, resulting in more darkness…and I can say no more without ruining a classically terrifying moment!
In McCarthy’s world as seen through the Coen lens darkly, fate’s gonna catch up with you no matter how smart you think you are. In NCfOM’s particular setting, 1980 seems to be a time in the West when it was easier to victimize people. You get the feeling Chigurh was able to get close to his hapless victims simply because his sheer unnerving strangeness caught them off-guard. It’s a tribute to the power of Bardem’s portrayal of Chigurh that his comically unflattering Beatles moptop-cum-Prince Valiant pageboy haircut doesn’t prevent him from being one of the most horrifying villains in movie history. It got so that every time Chigurh showed up, I’d watch the rest of the scene between the fingers covering my face, because I knew Very Bad Things Were About To Happen. Bardem’s Chigurh is all the scarier because he can seem utterly calm and casual even as he blows people’s brains out with that pneumatic cattle gun of his. The damn thing can blow out locks as well as brains; its versatility certainly makes up for its cumbersomeness. My favorite black-humored sight gag: after Chigurh launches a protracted, agonizing attack in which a cop is killed, the camera pulls back to show that the floor is completely covered with scuff marks from the dead man’s shoes flailing and scraping against the floor during the struggle. There’s low-key, matter-of-fact humor in the dialogue (taken mostly from the novel). My favorite is this exchange between deputy Wendell (Garret Dillahunt) and Sheriff Bell:
Wendell: “It’s a mess, ain’t it, Sheriff?”
Sheriff Bell: “If it ain’t, it’ll do till the mess gets here.”
Be warned, NCfOM is not for the squeamish or for those who like endings neat, tidy and upbeat, with everyone getting what they deserve. Nevertheless, it haunts and grimly amuses me even now. No wonder this powerful film won 4 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor for Bardem, and Best Adapted Screenplay for the Coen brothers. I feel that NCfOM is not only one of the best films the Coens have ever made, but a modern classic all around!
Mom and Baby Siobhan, in late 1996
Dedicated to Jacqueline Tenore Kehoe, with love and laughter
