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Reviews
Stage Door (1937)
What fun!
Funny, what Time will do to a film. Andrea Leeds was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for "Stage Door." Yet today, hers is the only performance that sticks out like a sore thumb. From her first entrance to her final scene climbing the staircase (PARTICULARLY that scene), Miss Leeds -- whose career went on to nowhere -- hits one note and stays there; "Poor, sensitive me." Since she acts so badly in this film, you wonder how her character was supposed to the the toast of Broadway in the previous year, and why her character is considered the best actress in the Footlights Club. She can't even cry convincingly -- burying her head in Ginger Rogers' lap in her first scene -- "I've GOT to get that part."
Fortunately, the rest of the cast is outstanding. The film is a wonderful documentation of legendary actors at the beginning of their careers, more or less. Katherine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Ann Miller, Eve Arden, Lucille Ball are surrounded by excellent supporting players and character actors -- from Adolph Menjou to Franklin Pangborn, Gail Patrick, Grady Sutton, Phyllis Kennedy, Constance Collier and Jack Carter.
The script is (wrongly) credited to Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman, who wrote the Broadway play.
In fact, director Gregory La Cava assembled the cast on the set for two weeks of "rehearsal," in which he encouraged the women to ad lib to their hearts' content while a script girl wrote everything down. THAT'S where the rapid-fire repartee comes from -- not from Ferber and Kaufman.
And that's why the acting is so largely naturalistic and convincing. Ginger Rogers' line readings are astoundingly in character -- or is she simply being herself? Her only "weak" scene is one scripted in the play, near the end, when she shows up in Katherine Hepburn's dressing room on opening night to tell her of the suicide, and to say the immortal line, "I DARE you to go on tonight." Perhaps NOBODY could make those lines convincing, but it's Rogers' only moment in the film where she's anything less than believable.
ALL of these wonderful players and legends are long gone, now. But thanks to "Stage Door" they'll be forever young, fun and hopeful.
Mame (1974)
Everybody got what they wanted, except Jerry Herman . . .
Yep! Lucille Ball proved she could sink substantial amounts of her Desilu earnings into financing and controlling a "final" vanity production that demonstrated she was too old to sing, dance, act or even move, despite all the Theodora Van Runkle costumes and gauzy lenses in the world, just to say, "I'm Still Here." THAT number, from "Follies," Ball could have done in spades, and torn your heart out. But no. Her vanity won out, and "Mame" was her cinema swan song.
Gene Saks (director) got a lot of $ for pimping his ex-wife, Bea Arthur, and delivering a far inferior film than the original "Auntie Mame." Bea Arthur got a lot of $ for proving that, though she won a Tony for the same role on Broadway, it wasn't funny on film.
Jane Connell got a (relatively) lot of $ for reprising her Broadway turn as Agnes Gooch, and proving that she can't hold a candle to Peggy Cass.
Robert Preston got a lot of $ for proving he can be a team player and go on to star in a REAL hit like "Victor/Victoria" several years later.
Angela Lansbury, thankfully, never had her Broadway performance committed to film or video, thus avoiding comparison with the superlative Rosalind Russell and inaugurating her (Lansbury's) "legend" on the Great White Way -- which she was later to validate in other works like "Sweeney Todd," "Gypsy," "Dear World," et al.
Onna White's pedestrian choreography of the stage production was happily lost in the film's frenetic cutting, in the attempt to make Lucille Ball appear to actually dance as opposed to "pose" and be carried by much younger "boys," which is what we actually see.
Jerry Herman, alone, wasn't happy.
And well he should not have been. His songs have never -- NEVER -- gotten the showcase they deserve. Not on film, not on Broadway. Despite his recollected fondness for Miss Lansbury's interpretation (and I saw it), she basically changed costumes every five minutes and struck "poses." Too bad. With a book as fast-paced as "Auntie Mame" and choreography befitting another Jerry Herman hit, "Hello, Dolly," the musical could have lived up to the original.
As it happens, it doesn't.
So even Rosalind Russell got what she wanted (which was to close the show when her contract expired, so possessive of the role was she).
Everybody, except Jerry Herman, got what they wanted.
Happy ending!
Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
Warrants Repeated Viewings
Billy Wilder's and Harry Kurnitz's script is a model of how to structure a "courtroom drama." Fashioned from the long-running stage play, the film cleverly takes us out of the Old Bailey (meticulously reconstructed on a sound stage) for several important scenes.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The cast, save one, are remarkable. Elsa Lanchester's nurse was a character added to the original stage play for comic relief and it's a delight to watch her play off her real-life husband, Charles Laughton, and to watch their characters' onscreen relationship develop.
Laughton is brilliant.
Marlene Dietrich is perfectly cast and does more genuine "acting" in this film than probably all of her other films combined. Just shy of sixty years old, she plays 1) a wife of perhaps late-thirties to early forties, 2) that same woman in her twenties in Germany, and 3) a pivotal role as a facially scarred Cockney (with no trace of her inimitable German accent). She was prevented from being nominated for Best Actress because Wilder didn't want to spoil the "surprise" of her dual roles. The transformation is remarkable and convincing, even when you know the secret.
The supporting cast is uniformly excellent, particularly the great Una O'Connor as the victim's maid.
The only false note, unfortunately, is Tyrone Power. His legendary looks clearly fading, his always meager acting skills unable to rise to the occasion, he is simply unbelievable in virtually every scene -- especially in the courtroom when he is supposed to scale the heights of drama ("It's like some horrible nightmare!). Except for the flashback sequence to wartime Germany, where he is his most relaxed and natural as an actor, his "performance" veers from boring to almost painfully incompetent.
Despite Power, the film is brilliantly written, staged, directed and photographed -- thanks to the always-reliable plotting of Agatha Christie's original.
Repeat viewings bring increasing pleasure from watching a stellar cast obviously having the time of their lives (and doing their best to support, distract or conceal Tyrone Power's lack of acting chops).
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Disturbing, because it's real
Interesting, to see comments dismissing WEHTBJ? as a "gay" film, or "cult" film, etc.
As a writer/producer who lived and worked in Hollywood for 30 years, I submit that those comments represent a "denial syndrome" of people who are ignorant of the facts of Hollywood.
What is so "horrifying" about WEHTBJ? is that the film is an utterly realistic psychodrama about two specific sisters of that era.
It's easy to say that Bette Davis' performance/makeup was "over the top," except that they weren't. In fact, I thought her look was taken from a sad "street person" in Hollywood who, in her seventies, walked up and down Hollywood Boulevard in a pink ball-gown and dead blonde wig and thick makeup, speaking into a transistor radio she held to her ear -- in the 60s, long before cell phones -- "talking" to the FBI about people chasing her.
Perhaps those who've spent their lives elsewhere, other than in Hollywood, feel that the characters in WEHTBJ? are "over the top." But they're not.
That's what makes them so heartbreaking. And the incredibly brave performances by Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Victor Bono and the rest -- not to mention the script and Robert Aldrich's direction -- make this simply the most definitive "Hollywood" psycho-thriller since "Sunset Boulevard."
There's "A Star Is Born," in any of its incarnations. Which is also "true" in its (their) way.
And there is "Sunset Boulevard" and "Baby Jane," which are even more true, and more brilliantly made.
These are not "horror films." They are riveting psychological studies, cast with astonishing actors, and magnificently directed and photographed.
They are the equivalent of Hitchcock's "Psycho," IMHO, which was preceeded by "Sunset Boulevard" and followed by "Baby Jane."
Each different, each brilliant, each marked by some of the most indelible performances ever captured on film.
It's typical of adolescents to make a "joke" about things that make them uncomfortable.
But when experience and age acquaint one with people like Baby Jane and Norma Desmond and, yes, Norman Bates, what's the point of joking?
These three films will tell those characters' stories forever, and better than 99% of films ever made.
That's why they're classics.