It’s Not Just a Job, It’s an Adventure: My Low-Budget Film Gig

Back in late 1988, about six months before Vinnie and I got married, I got the chance to do more than just watch movies; I got to help make them, too! It all began after Vinnie and I returned from our first trip overseas, the “Conspiracy” Worldcon in Great Britain. I was all set to take NYU’s Intensive Filmmaking Workshop for eleven weeks. Then Fate stepped in, thanks to a phone call from Bob Zimmerman (not to be confused with the singing Bob Zimmerman, a.k.a. Bob Dylan). This Bob Zimmerman was a friend and fellow member of CAPrA,short for Cinematic Amateur Press Association. For any young’uns reading this, an APA is a homemade newsletter in which each member of the APA contributes their own fanzines (‘zine for short) and collates them all together while enjoying food and fun. This all happened before the Internet came along and begat blogs!

At the time, our Bob Zimmerman had been hired by producer Steve Mackler for Sony Pictures to be the line producer (click here for more info on what the job entails) for three theatrical films they were financing. Since movies were a new area for Sony at the time, they played it safe by starting out with low-budget genre films which would be sure to make a profit one way or another, whether in theatrical release or on home video. Bob needed a Production Office Coordinator on these films, starting with Rejuvenatrix (not to be confused with The Re-Animator), and he offered me the job. How could I pass up a chance like that? The pay wouldn’t render me fabulously wealthy, but I was more interested in getting hands-on movie set experience, and even my dear mom finally agreed it was worth going for, despite her worries about the crazy hours required. Besides, movie job opportunities with someone I could trust, like Bob, are harder to come by than film school classes!

When I reported to work on Rejuvenatrix, my job was pretty much to be Bob’s second-in-command, running the production office. I was in charge of keeping track of the budget (on the computer, of course), and during the early days of pre-production, I was running errands and scouting around for the props and locations, getting prices and directions and the like. For example, my first two weeks on the job had me calling all over New York and New Jersey for white rats, rabbits, and a Mercedes-Benz. (No, smarty, the Mercedes wasn’t for me, fun though I’m sure that would have been!) I also helped draw up the contracts and the crew/cast lists for everyone involved. My duties included hiring Production Assistants for the set. Many of them came from film schools, while others were filmmakers who Bob had worked with before. I even had my own assistant, Caroline Sinclair. We wound up helping each other because Caroline had done more movie work than I had. I was really grateful to her for filling in the cracks of my film production knowledge, and in return, I taught her how to use the computer; not that I was ever a computer genius by any means (that’s Vinnie’s bailiwick), but as my dear old dad used to say, “In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

Finding good P.A.s wasn’t hard; even the ones with little experience were fine as long as they were enthusiastic and willing to learn, though I won’t deny that the $150/week salary put off some candidates. Granted, back in the late 1980s, $150 went farther than it does today, plus at the time, I was only 22 and still lived in NYC with Mom. But hey, from what my co-workers told me, many Production Assistants on low-budget movies don’t get paid at all, except in experience. More often than not, the camaraderie and the filmmaking experience convinced most newcomers to stay (sometimes even when we hoped they wouldn’t!).

 Synthesizing sinister serum with scientists Stella Stone (Katell Pleven) and Gregory Ashton (John MacKay)

Frankly, being part of it all was pretty exciting, and it was much more responsibility (and more intriguing) than I’d been used to. I’ll admit it was a little intimidating at first, but I quickly got used to my authority, made contacts, and enjoyed the experience while still being kind and having a good rapport with everyone. It helped that many of the folks working on these films weren’t much older than I was at the time. The oldest person on the film was the producer, and he was a mere lad of 40! I even sat in on production meetings; it’s fun to listen to people talking about creating mutant rats as if they were exchanging cookie recipes. I enjoyed listening to the terrific cast reading the entire script out loud, too, with humor and gravitas in all the right places. I particularly enjoyed John MacKay’s performance as Dr. Ashton, the young scientist who gets into an unholy, lust-laced alliance with aging movie queen Elizabeth Warren (Vivian Lanko); his voice has always reminded me of Martin Sheen. He was a nice guy with a great dry wit, too. Since then, our man MacKay has been on such TV series as Third Watch and Law and Order, and his films include Regarding Henry and Niagara, Niagara, as well as a hilarious recent Sprint commercial about “sticking it to the man.” (Click here for the commercial!)

Rejuvenatrix (whose working title was Brains for Beauty, by the way) was a wonderfully nutty, campy, stylish script. It was B-movie-ish in a good way, a nifty hybrid of Sunset Boulevard, The Bride of Frankenstein, and Altered States, with pretty darn good horror F/X, considering our tight budget. It’s about an aging movie star, Elizabeth Warren, initially played by Jessica Dublin. She and John MacKay as Dr. Gregory Ashton join forces, with Elizabeth using her big bucks to finance experiments to create a youth serum. It works, with Elizabeth’s renewed gorgeous self now played by the lovely and talented Vivian Lanko. Of course, this being a horror film, the serum turns out to have some wild side effects: now and then she turns into a bloodthirsty mutant! Don’t you hate when that happens? Dig the cool monster transformation scene!

Like Hitchcock with Psycho, we worked wonders on a low budget! :-)

There are some great lines, like when Elizabeth starts mutating in a nightclub rest room in front of two trendy types, one of whom sniffs, “You know, as soon as a club gets hot, they let in the bridge-and-tunnel crowd.”  Then there’s the scene with hungry mutant Elizabeth killing Dr. Ashton’s sweet young assistant, Stella (Katell Pleven). The doc kneels at her side, moaning, “Stella! Stella!” Mutant Elizabeth, now turning back into Gorgeous Elizabeth, says, “Your Marlon Brando needs a little work, darling.” And then there was Team Bartilucci’s favorite: MacKay’s intense delivery of this sibilant line: “I’ve got to synthesize the serum!” Personally, I enjoyed working on Rejuvenatrix the most. Sure, the hours were long; at first, I got in the office by 9 a.m. and rarely left before 8:30 p.m. But once filming began, most of the action was on the set, so my hours and duties lightened up a bit.

Much as I enjoyed working in the production office, I also wanted an opportunity to work on the set, just for the experience. I got my chance with our second film, Bloodscape, a.k.a. Escape from Safehaven (EfS).  (Check out DVD Update's review on YouTube.) This was a more grim-and-gritty thriller, set in a post-nuclear holocaust world about a family desperate to live in Safehaven to avoid the horrors of the ravaged outside world. Need I say things turn out to be a whole lot worse on the inside? Hero Rick Gierasi went on to Troma's Sgt. Kabukiman, TV's Caroline in the City, and Star Trek: Voyager.

This time, I was a Production Assistant — specifically, I was the P.A. in charge of Craft Services, a professional-sounding way of saying I got food for our cast and crew. It was like feeding an army every day. Imagine grocery-shopping every day for forty to fifty ravenous people. Now imagine having to keep two large Craft Service tables—one on the first floor of the school where we were filming, and the other located anywhere from the fifth floor (did I mention the school had no elevator?) to two or three blocks away (for outdoor scenes). I did most of the shopping, though Vinnie helped me out with the shopping on weekends. That’s a lot of heavy lifting, lugging, and schlepping! I soon began to appreciate the soothing powers of a nice warm bath before bed, especially since I usually came home dusty and/or grimy from head to toe, to my dear mom’s dismay. My mission was to provide breakfast, usually bagels, muffins, and the occasional order of hot egg sandwiches, cold cereal, fruit, yogurt. The afternoon brought our stalwart cast and crew cold cuts and veggies—or as our otherwise tolerant sound man Pavel Wdowczak would snort in his thick Polish accent, “Weggies!” Anything edible was washed down by gallons of coffee, coffee, COFFEE — hold the decaf! Oh, and don’t forget the wrap beer! An hour before our projected wrap time each night, I had to place three cases of beer (Budweiser was the favorite) and a bag of ice into the beverage cooler, all the better for the crew to unwind after a tough day. Ironically, I’ve never enjoyed alcoholic beverages or coffee myself; I just never developed a taste for them. As a result, I had no idea whether or not the stuff was any good, taste-wise. “You ought to try them and see what all the excitement’s about,” our Unit Manager Phil Dolin wryly suggested. But I daresay our tired, thirsty crew wasn’t all the choosy about their beer by the time we wrapped things up in the middle of the night!

Would Louise Brooks think our films were lulus? :

And of course, what would a Craft Services table be without snacks? Even with EfS’s tight budget, variety was the by-word; every so often I’d come up with something special, like strawberries and cream, kiwi fruit, or my mostly-homemade spinach dip (I seasoned it with Knorr’s leek soup mix). Although most of the cast and crew were appreciative, there was always some self-styled epicure who wasn’t quite satisfied. I could have five varieties of bagels (since we were in New York City, they were truly awesome bagels), and three types of rolls on the table, with all kinds of different spreads, and there would still be some wise guy who’d say, “Ya got any Wonder Bread for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?” (To be fair, the p.b. & j. fan was thrilled and thankful when I brought him the necessary ingredients the next day, and so were several other members of the cast and crew.) I took great pains to include fresh in-season produce along with the munchies, but of course, the sweets were always the first food items to be snapped up. “We’ve gotta eat more healthy food,” people would wail as they stuffed their rosy little cheeks with M&Ms (the favorite snack of our director, Brian Thomas Jones), Double-Stuf Oreos (everybody’s favorite), or Entenmann’s cakes, the only cake with frosting guaranteed to survive a nuclear attack. All kidding aside, I can’t deny that I loved them all, too! Lucky for me this job required lots of walking and stair-climbing; believe me, I burned off an awful lot of those calories, empty and otherwise. (If Entenmann’s ever makes gluten-free goodies as melt-in-your-mouth delicious as their traditional goodies, I for one will be a very happy girl! But I digress….)

Lunch break! Come and get it!

Fortunately for my sanity and the filmmakers’ petty cash supply, a caterer brought a hot lunch for us every day. For late shoots, we’d order out for pizza or Chinese food. Heck, thanks to Pavel, we even splurged for Polish food—one of the advantages of filming in the East Village was the variety of exotic yet affordable take-out cuisine. Still, Craft Services is a pretty relentless job. In addition to all the running around between tables and supermarkets, you’ve got to make absolutely sure you’re not running out of anything — especially coffee, soda, and utensils — so you quickly learn to anticipate your future food needs.

On a movie set, it’s not just hunger that makes people place such importance on Craft Services. People don’t just eat because they’re hungry, they eat because:

• It gives them something to do during the long set-ups and such between takes.
• Like Mount Everest, the food is there.
• Eating is fun, especially in New York City!

The folks most often guilty of recreational eating are the actors and extras. They often have no choice but to sit around in “The Green Room” or in the location’s production office for hours on end while waiting to do their scenes. I provided recent magazines from home to occupy the gang, but the siren call of the Craft Services table inevitably lured them. There was plenty of hard work involved, but there were many bright spots, too. If you do Craft Services well (and I think I did, if I do say so myself), you’ve got a certain amount of power. Faces lit up when I entered the room with beverages and comestibles; the reactions are almost Pavlovian! People courted my favors in hopes that I’d save them the last bottle of Orangina (and I did just that whenever I could; I’m not heartless, you know!). You get to schmooze with the actors and, if it’s an action flick like EfS, the special effects folks. More than once, someone would leave a bottle of fake blood on the Craft Services table. Good thing the main ingredient in the fake blood was corn syrup and red food coloring!

I even got a chance to be an extra one day! Lauri, the makeup artist, grimed me up good. I had to laugh; I’d spent about ten minutes artfully dabbing concealer on the circles I already had from long days on the set, and Lauri undid it all within seconds with some brown goop, bless her. I wore some dystopian-style clothing, and voila! I, a sworn teetotaler, had been transformed by movie magic into a seedy patron at a sleazy dive bar.  As Pierce, a young Clint Eastwood type, Gierasi passes right by my table when he enters the bar. If you happen to come across EfS sometime, you just might spot me in the scene for a nanosecond near the top of the screen. I even got my sister Cara into the act, however briefly. She came to help out one day when we had fifty more extras (extra extras!), and Cara became the 51st; she’s one of the shocked Safehaven citizens witnessing a public execution in the Arena. Barrymores, Carradines, Baldwins, eat your hearts out!

I wasn’t in on the third Sony film because by then, I really needed a steady paycheck, especially since Vinnie and I eventually wanted to get married and start a family. Still, I have fond memories, and I’ll always be glad I got to be in pictures! (Speaking of pictures, the movie illustrations sprinkled throughout this post came from Ready-Made Rubber's line of movie stamps by Rick Geary.)

Lord, won't you rent me a Mercedes-Benz?

ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT: The Continuing Adventures of Annabelle's Husband

Here’s a high concept for you: “Damon Runyon Kicks Nazi Heinie in NYC.” That’s the clever premise of first-time “A” picture director Vincent Sherman’s 1941 Warner Bros. wartime comedy-thriller All Through the Night (ATtN). Don’t you love it already? And what a cast — it’s Character Actor Central, and all in their prime! The good guys’ corner includes a dazzling array of funny, colorful sidekicks and associates in addition to Humphrey Bogart himself: William Demarest; Jackie Gleason (then billed as Jackie C. Gleason); Phil Silvers as a nearsighted but patriotic waiter; the lovely Kaaren Verne (Kings Row, The Seventh Cross); Barton MacLane (whose many films with Bogart included The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, though TV fans may remember him best as General Peterson on I Dream of Jeannie); Edward Brophy (who Team Bartilucci knows best as Joe Morelli in The Thin Man, and who the young Disney fans in our lives know best as the voice of Timothy Mouse in Dumbo); Wallace Ford (billed as “Wally” here) and Charles Cane from Dead Reckoning; Frank McHugh, in the role that endeared him to Team Bartilucci and earned him the affectionate nickname “Annabelle’s Husband” (more on that shortly); and of all people, The Grapes of Wrath Oscar-winner Jane Darwell as Bogart’s mom (doesn’t sound like it should work, but it does, trust me!). The bad guys they’re up against are no slouches, either: Conrad Veidt; Dame Judith Anderson, Martin Kosleck, and Peter Lorre (who ended up married to co-star Verne for several years, ironically enough). There’s gonna be a rumble in Manhattan tonight!

Sunshine explains how to catch
the Nazis with their Panzers down.

This fast, funny, suspenseful adventure gives Bogart one of his most entertaining roles as Alfred “Gloves” Donahue, a dapper New York City “sports promoter.” Translation: gambler and bookie. I should know; that was what my dear old dad did when he wasn’t managing his Italian restaurant in the Bronx when I was a little tyke. My favorite euphemism for Gloves’ line of work comes from a radio bulletin when he’s wrongly accused of murder, describing him as a “man about town and well-known figure in the sporting world.” But I’m getting ahead of myself! The film opens with Gloves’ “boys,” Sunshine (Demarest), Starchy (Gleason), and waiter Louie (Silvers) using toy soldiers and such to map out a campaign against the Nazis. Our guy Gloves joins Sunshine and their cohort Barney (McHugh) at the restaurant. Gloves is a rough-and-tumble but essentially decent guy who’s good to his lovable mother (Darwell). He’s more interested in the sports page than the war news on the front page, until Mom seeks out Gloves for help. Mr. Miller (Ludwig Stossel) is missing. This is a crisis, as Mrs. Miller (Irene Seidner) is Mom Donahue’s BFF, plus Mr. M. is Gloves’ favorite cheesecake maker! We viewers had just seen Pepi (Lorre), a pianist (no, not Adrien Brody) and generally slimy so-and-so, slinking around Miller’s store, eating candy he hasn’t paid for and making veiled threats — not a good sign! Well, Mom Donahue has even sharper “women’s intuition” than Grace Kelly did in Rear Window, and her never-wrong “funny feeling” is once again on the money, alas; Mr. Miller is found murdered in his basement.

Gloves picked a fine time to
accidentally leave his calling card!

Speaking of cheesecake, the lovely German-accented singer Leda Hamilton (Verne) drops by wearing a picture hat and a worried look. Turns out Pepi is Leda’s accompanist. Now Gloves is the one with the funny feeling, first with his attraction to the mysterious yet endearing Leda, then the growing realization that Pepi and Leda are involved with a bunch of mugs even tougher than Gloves and his cronies. When Mom tries to get info out of Leda at The Duchess Club, the nightspot run by Gloves’ rival Marty Callahan (MacLane), Gloves steps in, and before he knows it, shots are fired and he’s framed for the murder of the obnoxious Joe Denning (Brophy). Joe only gives Gloves one clue before dying: he lifts his hand. The chase is on, and soon Gloves and Company realize they’re dealing with “Fivers”— Fifth Columnists, headed by smooth antiques dealer Franz Ebbing (Veidt)! Leda seems to run hot and cold, first knocking Gloves out, then helping him and Sunshine escape. Turns out there’s a terrible hold over her: her father’s in the Dachau concentration camp, and Ebbing and company have been keeping Papa’s death from “natural causes” from her so she’d keep working with them. (I wonder what those Nazi creeps defined as “natural causes”?) Now that Gloves and Leda are joining forces, they’ve got to find out what those Nazi scum are up to over at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Will Gloves get himself and Leda out of this mess? Will Barney and his brand-new bride Annabelle (Jean Ames) get to enjoy any action on their wedding night that doesn’t involve chases and clobbering? You bet — with a little help from their cronies, of course! Native New Yorkers rule!

Congrats & good luck to Barney & Annabelle,
married to the mob!

George Raft, notorious for turning down roles that wound up turning his replacements into stars, was offered the role of Gloves Donahue first. Thank goodness Humphrey Bogart landed the role instead, because Bogie was a tough guy with a knack for comedy! As wonderful as the whole cast is, McHugh is our favorite among the supporting cast. Indeed, we affectionately call him “Annabelle’s Husband.” He gets lots of the best lines, too, like these:

Drake on the move! Perry Mason’s
William Hopper in his first film role.

Barney: “Annabelle’s waiting for me…after all, I’m a married man. I got obligations.”

Gloves: “All right, send her flowers.”

Barney: “Well…that wasn’t my idea.”

Talking to Madame (Anderson) at the auction house after Gloves and Sunshine are knocked out and tied up:

Barney: “Lookit, lady, when we started out tonight, there were three of us. Twenty minutes later, there was only two. Now there’s only one. One of us isn’t enough to leave here alone!”

A portrait's worth 1000 words: fiendish Fivers afoot!

The screenplay by Leonard Spigelgass and Edwin Gilbert (story by Spigelgass), and Leo Rosten writing as Leonard Q. Ross is fast and funny, blending comedy, action, and suspense effortlessly. I especially got a kick out of the breezy, sometimes punny dialogue (like Gleason’s “The first one of those (Nazi) guys I tag, I’m gonna kick him right in the swastika!” and Bogart’s “Hey, there’s more here than meets the FBI!”). I was also tickled when I spotted Hedda Hopper’s son DeWolfe Hopper in an uncredited role as a reporter in the background of the film’s last scene; of course, we Perry Mason fans know him better as William Hopper, who played Perry’s private investigator Paul Drake, as well as starring in the films 20 Million Miles to Earth, The Deadly Mantis, and The Bad Seed, among others!

Considering ATtN ends with Gloves’ Mom rushing to him in the middle of a press conference to tell him that now the milkman is MIA, it would have been so cool if Warners had made a sequel, and/or maybe even a new movie series! But alas, at that time, the attack on Pearl Harbor was still too fresh in 1941 audiences’ minds for them to embrace a quasi-realistic World War 2 spy thriller with broadly humorous overtones. Happily, ATtN is available on DVD and TCM (as it was during Conrad Veidt Day recently on TCM’s Summer Under the Stars) so we modern movie lovers can enjoy this entertaining genre blend guilt-free!

Hmm, wonder which cheesecake Peter Lorre liked best? Miller's cheesecake?

Or then-wife Kaaren Verne? ;-)

It’s double jeopardy for Gloves and Leda as
they unravel the evil Fifth Columnists' plot.

 Poor little pooch! It’s not the dog’s fault his owner is Nazi scum!

High Anxiety, You Win…Me Over! My Multimedia Review

For those of you who’ve asked about my DorianTB avatar photo since this mug of mine began turning up on Facebook and in this blog, the answer is directly related to this week’s blog post about Mel Brooks’ smart, affectionate, deliriously funny 1977 Alfred Hitchcock spoof High Anxiety! You see, during my senior year at Fordham University in 1985, our beloved Theater professor Sister Francesca Thompson, the coolest and most sophisticated nun ever, assigned our class to lip-synch to a recording of our choice; the more inventive the performance, the better. I decided to salute two of my favorites with one stone, so to speak.
I wore a black fedora from my dear mom's vast hat wardrobe, a black tuxedo-style blazer, and black slacks—that is, until I innocently strode up to my pal and classmate Kypro (“Kyp” for short), nonchalantly removed my slacks, and asked him to keep an eye on them during my number. Considering that Kyp looked rather like a young 1980s version of Victor Mature, the look on his face was especially priceless, bless him! I went up to the front of the classroom, looking as much like Judy Garland in Summer Stock as I could. (Luckily, I had a cute figure then, if I do say so myself!) I opened my mouth to lip-synch—and out came the boisterous voice of Mel Brooks singing “High Anxiety” from the soundtrack album! If I do say so myself, I brought down the house, getting an A+, and it was a heck of a lot of fun, as well as a confidence boost for a shy kid like me (don’t let my gregarious writing style fool you!).

Off to Sr. Francesca's Theater class, 1985

High Anxiety (HA — even the initials are funny!) is great fun even if you're not already an Alfred Hitchcock fan — but if you are, you'll love it all the more as you nail specific spoofs of and references to Hitchcock’s classic suspense films. The key is that Brooks’ best movie genre parodies would still be solid genre films if you took out all the jokes and sight gags. That’s why his biggest hits are so good and have been so dearly loved, such as 1974’s Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. HA is a comedy piñata stuffed with outrageous yet affectionate spoofs of Hitchcock’s best films—a far cry from many other genre parodies who try to do what Brooks and his writers do when they’re at their best, except that all too many of the wannabes’ attempts come off as puerile and mean-spirited.

I should explain to those who might be new to Mel Brooks’ work (so many young movie fans to inspire!) that aside from Brooks’ solo screenplays for his 1968 Oscar-winner The Producers, and 1970’s The Twelve Chairs, his best scripts have often been collaborations between himself and other writers, as they did with Your Show of Shows. Of course, there’s wit in Hitchcock’s thrillers, too. The difference is that Hitchcock’s humor was sleek and sly, while Brooks and his co-writers Ron Clark, Rudy DeLuca, and future Oscar-winner Barry Levinson are boisterously cheeky; as Brooks himself might say, “they kid because they love.”

Flying the friendly skies? Richard begs to differ!

Herrmann-like  traveling music from John Morris!

Madeline Kahn as Victoria Brisbane - so cute!

Montague & Diesel unwind after a day of evildoing

The plot plays delightfully like Hitchcock’s Greatest Hits, or as our friend and fellow blogger Nathanael Hood of Forgotten Classics of Yesteryear said in his own superb in-depth High Anxiety blog post from 2009: “The Master of Comedy takes on The Master of Suspense!...I find that this film is more than just a collection of satirical set pieces. It shows an endearing love of Hitchcock. Not only are his movies parodied; Hitchcock’s camera movements are mimicked, his musical scores quoted, and even the actors’ performances are modeled after prominent characters from his movies. Many of the references are subtle. So subtle that they can be missed, or even outright ignored by audiences.” The story is a delightful blend of every Hitchcock trope as seen through a funhouse mirror. Our hero, Nobel Prize-winner Dr. Richard H. Thorndyke (Brooks), arrives as the new head man of the Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous; it’s like Green Manors in Spellbound (1945). Of course, the P-NIftV,VN is goofier than Green Manors ever was, with patients like Charlie Callas as the man who thinks he’s a cocker spaniel, and who Richard is led to believe is Arthur Brisbane, Industrialist. (The real Brisbane is played by the dapper, gentlemanly F/X expert Albert Whitlock, who worked on several Hitchcock movies.)

Meanwhile, poor Richard is fighting a vertigo-like malady, the titular High Anxiety. “If left unchecked, it can cost you your life!” declares his old friend and mentor Professor Lillolman (Howard Morris)—whereupon Lillolman and Richard are startled by an ominous musical sting, courtesy of the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra’s touring bus! Soon Richard becomes the man who knew too much as he falls in love with Brisbane’s beautiful, soignee daughter Victoria (Madeline Kahn), or as Richard and others say, “You’re the cocker’s daughter?” Before you can say “Que sera sera,” Richard’s making like Frank Sinatra crooning the title song for Vicki in the hotel’s Art Deco-ish piano bar (for me, that’s HA’s highlight), and getting framed by evil P-NIftV,VN personnel Nurse Diesel (Cloris Leachman) and her love slave Dr. Montague (Harvey Korman) for a murder he didn’t commit, running hither and yon to clear himself through all kinds of picturesque locations while the Hitchcock gags (and even a few that aren’t Hitchcock-centric but are still funny anyway) fly thick and fast and fabulous—and so much more!

Don't you feel less neurotic already?

While I’ve always thought Brooks’ former co-star and co-writer Gene Wilder would've been perfect casting as acrophobic psychiatrist Dr. Richard H. Thorndyke (click here for the psychiatrist panel and the HA musical number to find out what “H” is short for), Brooks is nevertheless as irresistible as he is irrepressible, with Kahn a fine match for him as the flakiest mysterious blonde this side of Kim Novak. When you’ve seen as many Mel Brooks comedies as Vinnie and I have, you notice the genuine emotions behind the laughter. Sure enough, HA’s approach is as affectionate as it is hilarious. Not to overstate the case, but there’s palpable tenderness in the almost father-son relationship between Richard and Professor Lillolman, as well as the budding romance between Richard and Victoria. Ah, but there’s plenty of funny packed between the tender moments and Hitchcockian suspense! For example...

Dick Van Patten is caught in a web of evil, beyond the shadow of a doubt!

Could Vicki Brisbane be the future Mrs. Dr. Victoria Harpo Thorndyke?

It's not heights little Richard was afraid of, it's parents—or Pablum!

• Professor Lillolman, who reminds me of Spellbound Oscar-nominee Michael Chekhov, is mistakenly addressed as “Professor Little-Old-Man.”
  
• As Victoria, Kahn’s a knockout in her Vertigo gray suit and picture hat and Notorious-style black gown (not to mention her Louis Vuitton jumpsuit and matching car!). Vicki’s ditzy moments crack me up, too, like her hotel room scene while Richard’s in a phone booth trying not to be strangled by Diesel and Montague’s henchman “Braces” (co-writer Rudy DeLuca). First she tries to pretend she’s not turned on by what she thinks is an obscene phone call, then she tosses away her Vuitton teddy bear and backpedals like mad when she realizes it’s Richard: “I knew it was you! I laughed. Did you laugh?”
  
• As Dr. Montague, Harvey Korman dresses like Charles Gray in the 1968 Hammer thriller/period piece The Devil Rides Out. As Nurse Diesel, Cloris Leachman looks like a scarily hilarious cross between Rebecca’s Mrs. Danvers and Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S.! They play uproariously outrageous bondage-and-discipline games when they’re not keeping rich patients prisoner. Dominatrix Nurse Diesel: “I know you better than you know yourself. You live for bondage and discipline!” Submissive Dr. Montague: “Too much bondage! Not enough discipline!”
  
• Like any self-respecting Hitchcock-style hero, Richard has what The New York Times reviewer described as “an elegant flaw,” namely his High Anxiety. The Times went on to say, “He has the cowardly man’s restless glance as he keeps track of the terrain and of all the ways to make a quick exit.” My kind of guy! I’m also tickled that Richard’s name is clearly a nice tip of the hat to debonair but beleaguered hero Roger O. Thornhill from North by Northwest. Those who’ve been following TotED for a while may recall that North by Northwest is not only my favorite Hitchcock film, it’s my absolute favorite film of all time, period. 
  

Now when I love a movie, I go out of my way to learn everything I can about it, including buying novelizations of that film if there is one. High Anxiety was no exception. The author of the High Anxiety paperback was Robert H. Pilpel, who wrote a great many articles for Harper’s Magazine, as well as a number of his own books, including the 1979 historical novel To the Honor of the Fleet; Between Eternities; Churchill in America, and a title that particularly intrigued me, Understanding your Therapist, or Why is This Taking So Long? I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that last title got Pilpel the High Anxiety novelization gig! Pilpel has a real gift for humorous writing with a sting in the tail, blending comedy, suspense, and romance nicely. For example, here’s our height-hating hero’s first-person account of his feelings as his airline prepares to land:

Omigod, we’re losing altitude! No, the ground is gaining altitude! “Ladies and gentlemen, the Captain has turned on the No Smoking sign. Please extinguish all smoking materials. Make sure your seat belts are fastened and your seats in the full upright position for our arrival in Los Angeles.” Omigod! Too fast, too fast! We’re dropping like a stone….Oh, Lord, why does the landing gear coming down always sound like the landing gear breaking off?

And here’s Richard insisting on meeting Arthur Brisbane, and Montague reluctantly phoning Nurse Diesel to set up a meet-and-greet:

“Hello? Nurse Diesel? Dr. Montague here. Dr. Thorndyke would like to visit Arthur Brisbane this afternoon…Good…Oo-yay oh-knay ut-way oo-tay oo-day. Et it gay?”

He hung up with a little flourish of his wrist, as if Pig Latin were the most natural language for a licensed psychiatrist to use in speaking with a psychiatric nurse.

Richard sees the ultra-modern (for the late 1970s) Hyatt Regency Hotel for the first time:

Convention headquarters in San Francisco was a large modernistic hotel almost twenty stories high, built around a central glass-roofed courtyard. By some fiendish miracle of advanced architecture, the hotel was constructed so that each floor facing the courtyard juts out into thin air a little farther than the floor just below it. As you stand in the lobby, therefore, you are treated to the impression that the whole building is about to cave in on you. If you leave the lobby and venture upward, on the other hand, you are treated to the impression that gravity will soon bring you and the whole impudent pile of overhangs crashing ignominiously to the ground. The net impression you are treated to is that you should get the hell out of there before the building makes you dead, and that impression becomes a certainty when you see the fishbowl elevators whizzing up and down at the junctions of the walls like to many glass-enclosed coffins. It was doing my High Anxiety no good.

A beautiful stranger (who turns out to be Vicki Brisbane) bursts into Richard’s hotel room:

“Get away from me,” she snapped. “Don’t move. Be quiet. They’ll hear you. Close the drapes.”

It occurred to me that I was dealing with a beautiful victim of paranoia—a beautiful armed victim—so I went to do as she’d asked.

“Get down!” she said vehemently. “They’ll see you.”

Paranoid. Definitely. I crouched down and closed the drapes.

“Close the other one,” she commanded.

Paranoid and pushy. I obediently started across the room.

“Keep down,” she ordered.

She was so obviously scared and so much more obviously pretty that I really didn’t mind being bossed around by her. Her gun impressed me, too…Suddenly there was the sound of the doorknob turning…. “Quick,” she said. “Make believe you know me.” And with that, she pulled me to her and kissed me as no paranoid had ever kissed me before.

Our trapped hero Braces himself for mortal combat!

Braces starts strangling Richard in the phone booth as he calls Vicki:

Vicki jumped to the wrong conclusion. “Listen, fella. I don’t go for this kind of thing.”

I managed to get one hand between my throat and the wire, but almost immediately the strangling pressure of the cord trapped it, and I could feel my wrist bone being forced into my Adam’s apple. I gasped and huffed like a man with terminal asthma, which in a way was what I was.

“Who is this?” Victoria asked. “Listen, you’re crazy if you think I’m going to stay on this phone and listen to heavy breathing.”

It wasn’t working. I was making a lot of noise, but no air was coming in. Red spots started dancing in front of my eyes.

“Listen,” Victoria went on, “maybe other girls get turned on with these kinky phone calls, but I couldn’t care less. How did you get my unlisted phone number? Did someone I know give it to you?...Listen, mister, I’m not going to listen to any more of this. I’ve had just about enough!...What are you wearing?”

It was horrible. I was being strangled to death while listening to the girl I loved mistake me for a pervert. It made me wild with terror and despair. It made me want to wail and sob. The only sound I could squeeze out, however, was a squeaky “Jeeeeee…Jeeeeee….”

“Jeans?” said Victoria. “You’re wearing jeans? I bet they’re tight.”

So if you loved the movie, read the book! I’ve seen it available online. 

And if you haven't yet read all of Nate Hood's excellent High Anxiety blog post, here's a link:

http://forgottenclassicsofyesteryear.blogspot.com/2009/10/high-anxiety.html

THE GAZEBO: Home Sweet Homicide with a Hidden Hitch

Caution! Spoilers at Work!

In the mid-1980s, Ted Turner was colorizing every black-and-white movie he could get his mitts on. George Marshall’s MGM comedy The Gazebo (1959) was no exception. Frankly, when I first watched the colorized version on TBS years ago (the colorization looked strangely washed-out to me), I was surprised it wasn't filmed in color to begin with. Thanks to Warner Archive, The Gazebo is now available on DVD, and thanks to TCM, this wicked little comedy will be on tonight at 8:00 p.m. EST as part of Summer Under The Stars’ Debbie Reynolds Day!

If you can’t get Adrien Brody as your pianist, Debbie Reynolds and chorus boys will do!

Despite the gallows humor of its storyline, The Gazebo is one of those frenetic farces that 1950s Hollywood usually filmed in bright postcard colors. Who was more bright, colorful, and energetic, then and now, than Debbie Reynolds, The Gazebo’s unsinkable leading lady? Nevertheless, the film was made in black-and-white, with Helen Rose nominated for an Oscar for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White, for Reynolds’ smart, perky costumes (which tastefully yet alluringly showed Debbie’s darling derriere to delicious advantage, if I may say so!).

George Wells adapted a script by Alec Coppel, who’d also worked with Alfred Hitchcock on Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and uncredited contributions to To Catch a Thief. Fittingly, The Gazebo’s hapless hero Elliot Nash (Glenn Ford), is a TV writer who’s currently working on a Hitchcock script. He’s happily married to Broadway musical star Nell Nash (Reynolds), but said happiness is jeopardized by blackmailer Dan Shelby (we never see his face, but character actor Stanley Adams provides his voice. Fans of the TV version of The Odd Couple will remember Adams as chain-smoking pool-player Sure-Shot Wilson in the “Hustler” episode; but I digress….). Shelby has been shaking Elliot down, threatening to publish risqué photos of Nell when she was a hungry young artists’ model before she became a star, unless Elliot comes up with hush money. Does anybody really get blackmailed that way anymore, considering so many celebrities out there seem almost eager to air their dirty laundry every chance they get, as long as their names are spelled right? In any case, the blackmail threats result in a murder plot, a dead body and a panicky Elliot making like a mole to hide the corpse in the new gazebo that Nell bought for the Nashes’ Connecticut home (Nell’s one of those gals who never met a garden tchotchke she didn’t like, bless her heart).

The Gazebo's origins were British, but it was Americanized for Hollywood. I think it probably would have worked best with a British cast, but the American cast takes to black-comedy slapstick like a New York pigeon takes to bread crumbs, namely the scene-stealing Herman, who becomes a member of the Nash household after being mildly injured in Broadway traffic. Heck, Herman even gets a screen credit! Indeed, there are enough bird gags in The Gazebo (my favorite being Elliot’s power to make Herman and the neighborhood birds shut up on command. Too bad he couldn’t do that to the blackmailer so easily!) to make me wonder how long Hitchcock had been developing his 1963 film adaptation of The Birds.

Glenn Ford is amiable enough as our highly anxiety-stricken hero, but I can’t help feeling that Danny Kaye or Jack Lemmon would have been better choices to play the increasingly manic Elliot. Well, maybe they were busy, or maybe they simply weren’t under contract to MGM. Fortunately, Ford and Reynolds had previously co-starred in another Marshall comedy, It Started with a Kiss (1959), and their chemistry went a long way. (Click here for more about Ford and Reynolds’ relationship on and off the set.) Carl Reiner (with hair) makes a fine pesky friend as Harlow Edison, the Nashes’ friend, who also happens to be the District Attorney. The ever-jolly Harlow makes no bones about his unabashed crush on Nell, up to and including driving miles out of his way just to drop by for friendly nightcaps.

Still, I found The Gazebo’s perky American stars to be quite engaging. I’m accustomed to seeing Ford playing stolid heroic types, but here he acquitted himself nicely as a man who’s determined not to let his frayed nerves keep him from protecting his beloved wife. Despite not being Danny Kaye or Jack Lemmon, Glenn Ford was a pleasant surprise as our frantic hero Elliot. As the initial blackmail target (more on that momentarily), Debbie Reynolds is as pert and winsome as ever. Since she plays a musical comedy star, she’s given an energetic Bob Fosse-style song-and-dance number, “Something Called Love.” One quibble: charming though “Something Called Love” is, was it really necessary to have Reynolds hum it throughout the movie? Well, maybe the producers figured it had a crack at a Best Original Song Oscar nomination.

These are hip boots? Where’s Nancy Sinatra when you need her?

Perhaps it’s because they were under contract to MGM, but the great supporting cast is practically a North by Northwest reunion. Martin Landau, in his pre-Oscar days, played a heavily Noo Yawk accented thug, The Duke. Until then, I’d only seen Landau on TV’s Space 1999, in which his performance was rather wooden, so I was pleasantly surprised by his range and flair for comedy in The Gazebo. From that day forward, I was a full-tilt Landau fan! Then there was Landau’s fellow North by Northwest henchman Robert Ellenstein as Elliot’s peripatetic agent (no, not a secret agent!).

Since Elliot writes TV mysteries, is it any surprise that he keeps referring to Alfred Hitchcock? To wit:

* “I gotta finish that script I’m writing for Hitchcock….”

* “What would Hitchcock do at a time like this?” Luckily, at this point, Hitchcock calls Elliot to check on the progress of their screenplay, giving our hapless hero an opportunity to work out a solution with Hitch under the pretext of working out their script. We don’t hear Hitchcock’s voice, of course; use your imagination! :-)

* “To England and Connecticut and Alfred Hitchcock!” This comes after Elliot toasts the new gazebo with the corpse nestled snugly in the foundation. Of course, at this point our hero hasn’t confided in Nell about the body under the gazebo, so she and Harlow just give Elliot funny looks and chalk it up to too much champagne too early in the day.

The Gazebo definitely has all the earmarks of British stage farces: slamming doors, falling-apart contraptions, wacky misunderstandings, and matter-of-factly cuckoo dialogue. For instance, when the Nashes find themselves up against it, Nell laments, “I wish this had happened in Los Angeles…They’re always finding bodies out there; they don’t think anything of it!” There’s also a funny running gag about running water—that is, the Nashes’ plumbing, which Elliot keeps trying to sabotage in hopes of making Nell eager to sell the house so Elliot can give the proceeds to the blackmailer (this is before Elliot resorts to murder).

Whatever Norm Abrams can do, John McGiver can do funnier!

In addition to Landau and Ellenstein, other Gazebo scene-stealers include the hilarious Doro Merande as Matilda, the housekeeper who yells every word at the top of her lungs because she’s used to communicating with her hard-of-hearing mother (you might also remember Merande from The Snake Pit and Clifton Webb’s The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker and Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell); John McGiver (Fitzwilly, Mame, and Midnight Cowboy, among others) as Mr. Thorpe, the Nashes’ phlegmatic handyman who keeps calling the gazebo a “gaze-bo”; and Mabel Albertson as determined real estate agent Mrs. Chandler, best known and loved by Team Bartilucci as Darren’s mother on Bewitched and wealthy Mrs. Van Hoskins in Peter Bogdanovich’s 1972 screwball comedy What’s Up, Doc?

Hope these lovebirds won’t end up dead pigeons!

My favorite Gazebo scene answers the musical question, “How do you solve a problem like a blackmailer?” No, the answer isn’t “Keep paying the creep until you’re bankrupt.” It’s “Just say no!” Here’s the scene, all transcribed nice and pretty for your reading pleasure:

Harlow: “Certainly an ideal subject for blackmail, brand-new star on Broadway. I’m surprised Shelby never called you.”

Nell (cheerfully): “Oh, he did.”

Elliot (understandably shocked, but trying to hide it): “He did?”

Nell: “Mmm-hmm. He came to the theater about two months ago, and he brought the pictures, and he threatened to publish them unless I gave him ten thousand dollars in cash.”

Elliot: “Well, what did you do?”

Nell: “Well, I laughed in his face! Wouldn’t you?”

Elliot: “Oh yes, I…I…” (He trails off into incoherent fumferring.)

Harlow: “Still, it would’ve been quite a story for the scandal sheets.”

Nell: “Oh yes, it would have, but you know what would have happened then? You couldn’t buy standing-room-only for the next five years! I dared him to do it.”

Elliot (weakly): “Good girl.”

For Nell and Elliot, home is where the hearse is!

Good old Elliot, the world’s luckiest dope!

Yum! I've Been Given The Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award!

To my surprise and delight, our own Caftan Woman has chosen me as a recipient of the Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award (ISBA)! And of course, everyone, Caftan Woman can always be found at:

http://caftanwoman.blogspot.com/

Following the provisos and quid-pro-quos of this delicious-looking award (suddenly I have a hankering for gluten-free strawberry shortcake!), here are the 7 Things You Lovable ISBA Folks Have Apparently Always Wanted to KnowAbout Me* 
*(but were afraid or too busy to ask! :-)

1.) I was born in New York City on June 8th, 1963 (the same year one of my favorite movies, Charade, came out), and lived back and forth in the Bronx and Manhattan until...

2.) ...I met and married my sweet, funny, devilishly clever hubby Vinnie Bartilucci, whom I met at the NYC branch of the improv group Chicago City Limits. We recently celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary and look forward to many more, not to put the whammy on it! Anyway, when Vin's job moved to PA, we moved along with it, and we've lived there for a decade now.

3.)  My colorful, lovable parents (both deceased, alas) were Jacqueline Kehoe (then Tenore, née Cherry), a vivacious model-turned-medical/legal secretary, and Peter James Tenore, a bookie-turned-restaurant manager.

4.) Before I discovered the wonderful world of blogging, Vinnie introduced me to the Internet and Amateur Press Associations (APAs) before that. For me, blogs were the writing equivalent of a gateway drug! :-)

5.) On October 30th, 1996, Vinnie and I became the proud and busy parents of Siobhan Maggie Bartilucci. As a toddler, she was diagnosed with ADHD and Asperger’s Syndrome, but to our relief and joy, Siobhan has become a smart, funny, high-functioning, high-spirited young lady with an affectionate nature, a love of animation, and excellent grades in her Inclusion classes, in a mainstream school with lots of resources for Aspies and other kids with special needs. She's a great swimmer; in fact, we like to swim together at local pools and the Y. And she's starting high school this fall! The mind boggles! :-)

6.) Some of my favorite people, living or dead (besides my friends and loved ones) include authors Donald E. Westlake, Craig Rice, Richard Prather, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler; director/producers Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks, and the Coen Brothers; all-around entertainer Danny Kaye (who really deserves a renaissance); and Oscar-winning actor Adrien Brody, who is not only a talented actor but also a kind, considerate person, as he proved at last year's New York Comic Con (NYCC). To make a long story short (who said "Too late"?), when Brody was doing a signing at NYCC and the lines went all kablooey, the folks running the show almost cut us out of the line for lack of time. Our fellow fans were kind enough to intervene on our behalf, and apparently Brody got wind of this, because he went out of his way to make sure we got face time and autographs even though the con folks were applying pressure. He was really sweet, even praising Siobhan for being so patient during the whole mishegoss! Such a mensch, bless him!

7.) I'm currently working with ghost editor Nicole Bokat, polishing my first novel The Paranoia Club, a witty, character-driven romantic thriller and novel of manners. Don't take my word for it, ask our own ClassicBecky! :-)  If you'd like a taste of PClub (as I've nicknamed it), I ran Chapter One on TotED a while back; feel free to check it out here:


http://doriantb.blogspot.com/2010/08/paranoia-club-by-dorian-tenore-chapter.html

I'm also only a couple of chapters away from finishing my second novel, Suburban Outlaws, set in the Riverdale section of the Bronx.


And now for the hard part: winnowing all my favorite bloggers down to a mere 12! Without further ado, the richly-deserving ISBA Recipients:

1.) ClassicBecky's Brain Food
http://classicbeckybrainfood.blogspot.com/

2.) Thrilling Days of Yesteryear
http://thrillingdaysofyesteryear.blogspot.com

3.) MacGuffin Movies
http://macguffinmovies.wordpress.com/

4.) My Love of Old Hollywood
http://myloveofoldhollywood.blogspot.com/

5.) Twenty-Four Frames
http://twentyfourframes.wordpress.com/

6.) Noir and Chick Flicks
http://dawnschickflicks.blogspot.com/

7.) Another Old Movie Blog
http://anotheroldmovieblog.blogspot.com/

8.) Laura's Miscellaneous Musings
http://laurasmiscmusings.blogspot.com/

9.) ...in so many words
http://yvettecandraw.blogspot.com/

10.) Is That Really Desirable?
http://itrd.blogspot.com/

11.) Classic Film and TV Cafe
http://classic-film-tv.blogspot.com/

12.) The Girl with the White Parasol
http://thegirlwiththewhiteparasol.blogspot.com/

My daughter Siobhan and my sister Cara in Florida in the Early Aughties

Now everybody go spread the love amongst your favorite 12 bloggers, prepare to share 7 fun facts about your fine selves, and go for a swim while the summer's still here! :-)