The Sharks vs The Rats - Team Bartilucci's Summer Movies post!

This post is for The Beach Party Blogathon, Hosted by Speakeasy and Silver Screenings, from June 8th - 12th, 2015!

Dori's pick

Jaws (1975): “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Post!”

In case you haven't heard, Fathom Events is bringing
JAWS back to theaters for two days only!
More info at www.fathomevents.com/event/jaws

JAWS was the blockbuster hit of 1975 – indeed, the FIRST of what we call a blockbuster, being the first film to break 100 million dollars.  Seems a paltry sum today – now a film is practically considered a dismal failure if it DOESN’T break a hundred million! Of all the people that became household names as a result of the film, the biggest have to be sharks themselves.  It made shark attacks guaranteed ratings for the nightly news, and put the Discovery Channel on the map when some clever dick decided to give them a week of programming every year, a week some look forward to the way a kid looks forward to Christmas.

I remember the first time our family went to see Steven Spielberg’s thriller.  At the time, I was the youngest kid in our family, as well as the shyest  (though nobody ever believes me; I guess I talk a good game! :-D) . I was at Orchard Beach in the Bronx, where we lived at the time. I was nervous as all get out, but my Mom said. “Don’t worry, little one, we’ll help you!”  Even my older brother Peter was smiling and, saying, “You’ll be fine!”  He was a lifeguard that summer – what a year to pick, huh? So, Mom and our parents and friends were both scared silly, yet nursed guilty hopes that hoped we kids might find a Great White Shark in the Long Island Sound.

JAWS also gave me my first crush on rumpled and vulnerable Richard Dreyfuss as oceanographer Matt Hooper.  He’d go on to win an Oscar for The Goodbye Girl and entertain in plenty of films, including house favorite, What About Bob? Roy Scheider came a close second in the crush race, with an equally stellar career in thrillers like Last Embrace, and Still of the Night as well as wacko outings like Naked Lunch.

If this shark doesn't leave me alone I'm gonna give
"poop deck" a whole new meaning!

Murray Hamilton, a character actor known for “having ROTC” in No Time for Sergeants and the moody Frankenheimer classic Seconds played the Mayor of Amity island, and if he didn’t take that anchor-emblazoned blazer home with him, I’ll lose all respect for him.  Actress Lorraine Gary may have had a sweet deal as being the bosses’ at wife of Universal, but I found her to be endearing as Ellen Brody.

Fun Fin Fact – In Peter Benchley’s (grandson of better-than-us humorist Robert Benchley) original novel on which the film is based, Hooper and Ellen Brody were secret lovers, and ended up dead.  Just as well that they dropped that – would have made it hard to like him!

The film starts off with a bang (and many whimpers from the audience) with poor swimmer Chrissie (Susan Backlinie) doing out for a quick dip, and becoming the first…boating accident victim.  At least that’s what Mayor Vaughn insists it was; what with only a few days before the July 4th holiday, he doesn’t want to scare the island’s main source of income away with news of a shark attack.

The poster for JAWS may be the single most parodied
image in the history of film. 

Fun Fin Fact – Backlinie would return four years later, not for Jaws 2 (thank God) but for Spielberg’s foray into comedy, 1941, to play a similar young lady who decides to go for a swim, but with decidedly different results!

Sheriff Brody (Scheider) a former city cop who hates the water, suspects that may not be the case (what with all the bite marks and all) but goes with the Mayor, because hey, what are the odds that it’ll…oh, yeah, so it happens again. A kid gets et, and when his mom puts a bounty on the shark, there’s a feeding frenzy for it, which is what we writers call “irony”.

Brody calls in oceanographer Matt Hooper (Dreyfuss) to give a second opinion on Chrissie’s autopsy.  He does, vociferously, and it is summarily ignored by the Mayor, who happily invites the tourists to the beach, because what are the odds that THREE…oh yeah.

They hire grizzled shark fisherman Captain Quint (Robert Shaw) to bring in the monster, and it’s here that the film spends most of its time.  Indeed, when he was offered the job, director Steven Spielberg said the shark hunt was his favorite part of the story, and planned to make it the dramatic center of the film. With the help of editor Verna Fields, the balance between humor and shock was perfected.  Case in point – the famous (and allegedly ad-libbed) line “We’re gonna need a bigger boat” was originally lost under the screams of the audience after the preceding shot of Ol’ Brucie popping up to dine on chum – they added space to Brody’s reaction and increased the volume so it wouldn’t be missed.

Spielberg had moments of doubt during the filming, but
I doubt he ever really thought of doing this!

The shoot of the film is legendary – it went twice again over the budgeted shooting schedule of 50 days, and the mechanical shark almost never worked, spawning the title of two separate documentaries about the film.  But as happens at great moments in history, things going wrong often bring great inspiration.  With the shark barely functioning, the plan changed to barely showing the shark.  Save for a tactfully photographed fin and that iconic theme by John Williams, the source of all our fear barely made an appearance until we board Quint’s ship the Orca.

It’s been said that Star Wars changed film and the film industry forever, changing the mindset to the goal of the “summer movie” and the slow replacement of character-driven films with action and thrillers.  But I maintain that move started here with JAWS. While still very much a character film, which Roger Ebert pointed out in his review, it got the ball rolling for wide releases and bigger budgets.  The film was originally to open in as many as 900 theaters, a staggering number for the day.  But after a screening, Universal honcho Lew Wasserman ordered the number of screen be reduced. Not because he doubted the film, just the opposite – he saw the film running all summer, and wanted to make it a destination event. Reducing the number of theaters meant people would have to drive a bit to see it – quite the change in tactics from what we see today, where they’d run the film on the side of a bark if they thought they could sell a few more tickets.
 

Vinnie's pick

“He is Our Ideel” – the undeniable charm of Eric Von Zipper

You can tell the quality of a hero by the caliber of the foes he attracts.  And loveable teenagers (a highly elastic term in Holywood) Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon had the perfect foil in their classic run of beach movies – the ultimate tough guy, the lord of all he surveys, the great Eric Von Zipper, undisputed leader of the Rats, the roughest motorcycle gang on the beach.

Played with comic virtuosity by Harvey Lembeck, Zipper was a note-perfect parody of Marlon Brando’s character from The Wild One. Indeed, in Beach Blanket Bingo, Zipper says his favorite actor is “Marlo Brandon”. Harvey and his gang so permeated the national zeitgeist that to this day there’s no major city that isn’t rumored to have a street gang called the Rats, responsible for most of the havoc and chaos the police are tasked to combat.

The Rats and their fearless leader were largely ineffectual, befitting the fun harmless nature of the films.  Harvey was a master of slapstick and physical comedy, peppering his performance with odd gestures and moves to order the Rats around, punctuated by well-placed sound effects.

Eric and the Rats almost outlived the beach party films themselves.  They last appeared in The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, with almost a completely different cast– the Rats served as the connecting tissue to the rest of the series. Eric and Annette Funicello has unnamed cameos in the Frankie Avalon vehicle Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, which was a very interesting production.  Lembeck appeared on a Very Special Episode of popular dance series Shindig! titled The Wild Weird World of Dr. Goldfoot, designed as publicity for the film. Harvey played the role of Hugo, played by Jack Mullaney in the film.  According to star Vincent Price, Goldfoot was to have been a “horror musical”, in the style of Rocky Horror which would come along decades later.  The Shindig special featured many of those songs that never got used for the film, performed by Lembeck and Price.

Harvey Lembeck was an established and successful character actor, including a long run on Sgt. Bilko, the Phil Silvers show. He took the role of Harry Shapiro he created in Stalag 17 on Broadway and carried it to the Billy Wilder classic movie, playing against William Frawley Robert Strauss as Animal.

Why me? Why me alla time?

Harvey was an early proponent of improvisational comedy – when he was asked by Jack Kosslyn of the Mercury Theater to take over their actors’ workshop, he agreed, but used it to teach comedy instead of drama.  Starting with scripted pieces, he used improv as a tool to sharpen the wit of the students as he realized there weren’t nearly enough scripts to practice with.  The comedy workshop that bears his name is still going strong, run by his kids, director Michael Lembeck and actress Helaine, best known from her run on Welcome Back Kotter.  The alumni of the school is a staggering list, from Robin Williams to Brian Cranston, from Sharon Stone to Kim Cattrall.  For some time, the school had space at Paramount Studios, and the producers of their TV shows would regularly visit the classes to see who Harvey was working with. Garry Marshall often picked the best of Harvey’s students, including his own sister Penny Marshall and Al Molinaro, to star in his shows.

By the time producer James Nicholson approached Harvey Lembeck to be in their first “beach party” film (creatively titled Beach Party) he had already amassed a successful acting career.  So what inspired him to take on the role? According to his son Michael Lembeck, a successful director in his own right, it was to help students in his classes.  He would populate the Rats (and its female auxiliary, the Mice) with his students. The films were, as Michael put it, “The silliest thing he ever did” but it provided a place to showcase “his kids”.  “He treated his students like family” said Michael, something that carries through to Michael’s work today. “I’ll have my cast over for dinner while we’re working”.

Eric falls victim (again?) to the
Himalayan Time Suspension Technique.

The beach party story has never gone out of style, and the role of the tough guy ruling the beach a la Eric and the Rats remains just as vital. While it didn’t take place on the beach, early seasons of Happy Days featured street gang The Demons, led by their Zipper-analogue, Bag Zombrowski.  Ten years after the last beach party film, Harvey’s daughter Helaine got her first professional job on The Krofft Supershow (which also featured her brother Michael as the lead singer of Kaptain Kool and the Kongs) in a show called Magic Mongo, about some teenagers spending all their time on the beach…with their genie (played by Lennie Weinrib).  The role of the beach tough “Ace” was filled by Bart Braverman, just a couple years before his run on Vegas. Another ten and change years after that, Frankie and Annette reunited for Back to the Beach, featuring many of the original cast.  Harvey had passed on by then, but the spirit of the Von Zipper clan was carried on by Zed and his gang, an 80’s punk re-interpretation of the Rats.  His last name was never given, but if he wasn’t the son of Eric and Puss (the muscular blonde in the Mice played by Alberta Nelson), I’ll eat my second-favorite hat. His sway has reached outside of film well. There’s a Brazlian surf-rock band, Erick Von Zipper, named after him, and VonZipper.com sells quality sunglasses and goggles for the discriminating beach and snow-bum.

North by Northwest: Mad Men and Englishmen

This post has been revamped and republished for the CMBA Blogathon: Film Passion 101, from December 1^st through December 6^th, 2013. Enjoy!

Danger: Beware of Spoilers!
For me, my fascination with Alfred Hitchcock first started with my sister having the flu.  My big brother let me stay up with him to watch Strangers on a Train—half of it anyway, once Mom put me back to bed.  But it was like a “gateway drug” for movie fans, and the biggest score of all was North by Northwest!  It all began when composer Bernard Herrmann (On Dangerous Ground; Vertigo; Psycho) introduced his friend, screenwriter Ernest Lehman (Sweet Smell of Success; West Side Story; Sabrina), to director Alfred Hitchcock.  As Lehman explained, “I sat in my office, trying to construct a story which began at the United Nations…I said, ‘I want to make the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures.  Something that has wit, sophistication, glamour, action, and lots of changes in locale…And that’s when I started writing.”  Well, Lehman did all that and then some, in my absolute favorite film of all time, which also happens to be my favorite Alfred Hitchcock film:  North by Northwest (1959).  When there weren’t enough Hitchcock movies available in theaters or on home video (remember Blockbuster and such?), I filled the gap as best I could with Stanley Donen’s own delightful comedy-thrillers: Charade; Arabesque; Mirage; and Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?, also penned by Peter Stone.  Silver Streak was also a favorite of mine during its original theatrical run, when I was a fresh-faced lass of 13.  I was eager to see more of Hitchcock’s own films, but at that point in time, few if any of us Average Joes and Josies owned VHS players, and DVDs weren’t even a twinkle in technology’s eye yet. Therefore, if I wanted to watch honest-to-goodness classic Hitchcock movies, I had to wait for them to turn up on TV, often in the wee hours of the night , or sometimes I’d be lucky enough to find them playing at one of the many revival theaters operating in my hometown of New York City back then. 

Mr. Thornhill, your horoscope predicts
you'll have a most unusual day!

Believe it or not, I first saw the Hitchcock film destined to become my all-time favorite in a tiny movie theater in midtown Manhattan. Appropriately enough, it was called The Mini Cinema. As I recall, it was in a brownstone; I only remember maybe twenty seats in the screening room. I was there to see North by Northwest, having heard it was one of Hitchcock’s very best films. Well, they had me at Saul Bass’s sleek green skyscraper in the opening credits!  The print was excellent, and all of us in the audience were enthralled.  By the time the film ended and I emerged into the sunshine, I was in love. So a short time later, when my mom took my friends and me to see Silver Streak at East Tremont Avenue’s now-defunct Interboro Theatre — so named because it straddled the Bronx/Manhattan border — I was just film-savvy enough to pick up on Silver Streak’s tips-of-the-hat to Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, Strangers on a Train, and of course, North by Northwest.

See no evil, drink no evil,  frown no evil!  

In the 1950s, Hitchcock was at the peak of his powers with Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder; Dial M for Murder; Rear Window; The Trouble with Harry (more renowned in France at the time); the 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much; To Catch a Thief, and Vertigo (even if the latter wasn’t fully appreciated until years later). But North By Northwest was truly the jewel in Hitchcock’s crown at that time; heck, it’s still the champ as far as I’m concerned!  MGM originally wanted Hitchcock to film Hammond Innes’s The Wreck of the Mary Deare from a Lehman script, but both men soon realized they were far more interested in making North by Northwest.  Slyboots that Hitchcock was, he and Lehman devised a way to slip out of …Mary Deare by colorfully describing the high points of North By Northwest to the MGM brass, leaving them thinking they’d get two Hitchcock pictures!

 

You’ve got me all wrong, fella, I’m a teetotaler! 

… Mary Deare was eventually filmed by Michael Anderson, and everyone got what they wanted—except James Stewart. According to the IMDb, while Stewart and Hitchcock were filmimg Vertigo, Hitch gave Stewart a taste of what he had in mind for North By Northwest.  Stewart was hooked—but as much as Hitchcock liked Stewart, he felt (rightly) that Cary Grant was the ideal choice for the lead.  Rather than disappoint his old friend and frequent leading man, Hitchcock delayed production on North By Northwest until Stewart found himself committed to shooting Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder—and then he offered the role to Stewart, who of course had to turn down the offer by then. Oh, that Hitchcock—such a finagler!

Even Hitch can't control NYC traffic!

The opening credits alone sweep us viewers into the action before the bad guys even show up. Saul Bass’s sleek opening credit sequence works beautifully with Bernard Herrmann’s fandango-style opening theme, swirling tempestuously along as Manhattan’s bustling citizens rush into subways and taxis—except for that distinguished, imposing gent who’s just missed the Fifth Avenue bus. Yep, it’s Hitchcock himself, literally trying to catch up with the credits. This is New York City, all right, with its boisterous, cocky attitude, like this dialogue from Eddie,  the elevator operator:
Roger: “Say good night to the missus.”
Eddie: “We’re not talkin’!”

Strangers on a train, exchanging cigarettes! 

What’s the world coming to when even your mom, Cyrano Jones,
the Chief of CONTROL, and the SIA won’t believe your life is in danger? 

Just as well Hitchcock's cameo came early, because our hero gets few opportunities to relax and enjoy the film’s fabulous locations, what with the wringer he’s about to be put through! Talk about Mad Men: as Roger Thornhill, the ad man who became a bewildered red herring, Cary Grant’s romantic panache and flair for comedy perfectly suits our literally dashing hero, Roger O. Thornhill. The “O” stands for "nothing", much like Roger himself at first.  He’s a charming, slick executive who's used to having his own way in business and the boudoir, judging from the fact that he’s been married twice and is currently wooing a new gal with “candy from Blum’s. Each piece wrapped in gold paper. She’ll like that; she’ll think she’s eating money.” Indeed, those aforementioned opening credits move at a rapid-fire pace, almost like one of the screwball comedies Grant made with Howard Hawks in the 1930s and ‘40s.

“You gentlemen aren’t really trying to kill my son, are you?”

We see that Roger is a man of smooth confidence, always in charge—until that fateful day at The Plaza Hotel’s Oak Bar when the name “George Kaplan” is called out at the wrong time, turning our hero’s life upside down!  Roger has barely had time to knock back his cocktail before he’s kidnapped by the coolly sinister henchmen of a suave gent calling himself Townsend (James Mason of Lolita; 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; and Team Bartilucci’s Suave Hall of Fame!).  It seems these wicked jaspers are convinced that Roger is really George Kaplan, a government agent, and they’re not playing on Kaplan’s team. Roger is outraged and bewildered, but his frustrated insistence that “I’m not Kaplan!” falls upon deaf ears. Instead, Roger gets bourbon forced down his throat in Townsend’s Glen Cove home, thanks to reptilian henchman Leonard (Martin Landau before TV’s Mission: Impossible and his Oscar-winning performance as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood), and is nearly killed in a drunk-driving frame-up.  From there, things go from bad to worse as Roger’s visit to the U.N. to confront Townsend results in more mistaken identity and worse: our hero gets framed for murder!  And so the chase begins, monitored by a spymaster known as “The Professor” (Hitchcock favorite Leo G. Carroll, looking remarkably like one or both of the Dulles brothers)!

Not one, but TWO fist-i-cams in one film!

North By Northwest is truly the Hitchcock film to end all Hitchcock films, with all his pet themes covered with maximum wit, panache, and suspense: a wrongly-accused hero on the run; mistaken identity; a romance between Roger and soignée spy Eve Kendall (played by On the Waterfront Oscar-winner Eva Marie Saint in a sexy-cool change of pace) that's tender, sensuous, and full of surprises, on a chase that takes our hero from New York to Chicago to Mount Rushmore.  Fun Fact:  Hitchcock took our gal Eva Marie to Bergdorf Goodman in New York City for a fabulous new wardrobe for her, all seen in the film (look sharp in the scene where she’s wearing the red dress; you can see the Bergdorf label).  In the movie’s extras, she playfully called Hitch “my one and only Sugar Daddy.”  But as engaging and dashing as Grant is, the smoothly villainous James Mason nearly out-suaves him.  My husband Vinnie and I have joked that if Mason had played Roger O. Thornhill, the film would have been over in minutes. With all due respect to Grant, if the imperious, unshakably confident Mason asked the Glen Cove police, "Do you honestly believe that this happened the way you think it did?", they would immediately reply, "Er, no, sir, you must be right, you're free to go, sorry we bothered you."

North By Northwest was nominated for Oscars for George Tomasini’s film editing, the art direction and set decoration of Robert F. Boyle (who you may remember from the sterling documentary Something’s Gonna Live), Merrill Pye, William Horning, Henry Grace, and Frank McKelvy (but not Best Director or Best Score, alas). Best of all, North By Northwest was nominated for Lehman's screenplay; in fact, he borrowed from it liberally for his suspenseful, rollicking script for the film version of Irving Wallace’s The Prize, starring Paul Newman! 

Roger wanted to catch a plane, but now the plane’s trying to catch him!  

As auctioneers, Les Tremaine and Olan Soule
want to ditch troublemaker Roger at any price! 

“Stop!  (She looks closer and gets swoony.) Stop.”
(The female patient wants more of Grant’s bedside manner as Grant flees
Who could blame her?)

For more information about North by Northwest, here's a post I wrote about the 2001 Oscar nominee The Man on Lincoln’s Nose; and the 2010 documentary Something’s Gonna Live, produced by Norman Jewison.