Pretty in Black and White

I’ve been thinking a lot lately, after viewing several vintage Anne Hathaway films, about how often Hollywood has focused on stories of young women emerging to take over their lives. Obviously, such plot lines are meant to appeal to youthful female audiences, who hope that they too will burst like butterflies from the drab cocoons that have long been holding them in. Think Cinderella turning from a scullery maid to a princess. Think Eliza Doolittle casting aside her Cockney upbringing and her native speech patterns to go to the Embassy Ball and be mistaken for royalty. Think, more recently, of Pretty in Pink (representing other Eighties films of John Hughes) in which Molly Ringwald crosses from the wrong side of the tracks to wow her classmates at her high school prom.

 In many of these films, the focus is on the young protagonist discovering her physical beauty, or maybe demonstrating that she has learned the social skills that will help her navigate the adult world. But there’s a classic 1950 black-&-white comedy (somehow characterized by the often obtuse Golden Globes folks as a drama) in which the female protagonist blossoms, but not because of her improved looks or social manners. Instead, Born Yesterday is a comic paean to the way that political education can change a gal’s life.

 Born Yesterday, based on Garson Kanin’s hit Broadway play, stars the inimitable Judy Holliday as a former nightclub cutie with a New Yawk accent that won’t quit. Though basically a chorine with pretensions—she once spoke three lines on stage—she has long been the sidepiece of Harry Brock, a crude and very rich junkman with his eye on a shady deal involving a U.S. Congressman. (He’s played in the film by Broderick Crawford, who’d just nabbed an Oscar for his lead role as a Huey Long-type in All the King’s Men.) Harry loves Billie Dawn, when he isn’t busy abusing her, because she accepts her own ignorance and never pries into his sordid business affairs. But now that he’s arrived in Washington DC, he figures her uncouth social behavior may become a liability. So he recruits a straight-arrow local reporter named Paul (William Holden) to give Billie a smattering of education.

 Squiring Billie around the nation’s capital, Paul gives her some serious tutelage about American ideals and principles (something we could surely all use today). Though her vocabulary is limited and her shrill voice seems capable of shattering glass, she discovers in herself a thirst for knowledge, as well as a firm determination to no longer be anyone’s patsy. Needless to say, this change in attitude makes an ongoing relationship with Harry Brock untenable. And the smart, well-educated Paul (perhaps savoring his role as her Pygmalion) comes to love Billie’s oddball combination of budding idealism and street smarts.

 George Cukor was known, perhaps unfairly, as a women’s director. He certainly knew how to transfer Holliday’s acclaimed stage performance as Billie Dawn to the silver screen. The voice, the dimples, and the would-be haughty walk are all captured for moviegoers to enjoy. Holliday’s characterization is both funny and lovable, which is perhaps how she remarkably beat out Gloria Swanson (Sunset Boulevard) and both Bette Davis and Anne Baxter (All About Eve) for the Best Actress Oscar of 1951. It was the great triumph of a brilliant but sadly short career. Born in 1921, she died of breast cancer in 1960, just a decade after her greatest triumph. Her last role was a musical performance in another Broadway transfer, Bells are Ringing, in which she was once again irresistibly adorable.

 Dedicated to the memory of Dolly Parton, another adorable blonde who was smarter than she sometimes let on.

 

 

Hayden Panettiere: Showbiz Kid

I’m not exactly a Hayden Panettiere groupie. Truth be told, I never saw the TV series for which she was best known: Nashville and Heroes. Yes, I watched her childhood performance in Remember the Titans, but couldn’t tell you anything about it. So I was surprised by the outpouring of public grief that has followed Panettiere’s sudden death this past week at the sadly early age of 36. I read with great interest that—following a broken engagement, severe post-partum depression, and a long sad history of substance abuse—Hayden had published in May of this year a memoir titled This Is Me: A Reckoning. In it she owned up to a difficult coming-of-age and an ongoing struggle with mental health issues.

 All this meant something to me because, while writing for the Hollywood Reporter, I had interviewed a newly eleven-year-old Hayden (and her mom) for a special “showbiz kids” issue that featured the young actress as “one to watch.” We spoke on the telephone, and both mother and daughter sounded intelligent and serious about the complexities of a life lived on soundstages. Mom Lesley, once an actress herself, talked knowingly about casting sessions and about gauging her daughter’s comfort level when she was introduced to challenging material. Lesley clearly saw herself as a serious protector of Hayden’s physical and mental well-being.

 Hayden, who began her career doing commercials when she was a mere 8 months old, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying her on-set adventures. She proved herself a trouper, even when expected to perform difficult stunts like (in an historical drama called The Affair of the Necklace) jumping out of a moving carriage while carrying a heavy pretend-baby on her back. When we spoke, she seemed well aware that as she matured there would be new expectations to manage. Said she, “I’m sure when the kissing scenes come along, I’ll be very uncomfortable.” Giggling, she speculated on what it must be like to smooch in front of the cameras, with a director on hand to call the shots.

 I asked how well she fit into her home environment when she was not busy filming. She admitted that having friends was a bit complicated: “They judge me by my acting and not by me.”  Nonetheless, “I don’t think of myself as anybody special. I think of myself as just another kid.” 

 When writing my article about showbiz kids like Hayden, I consulted with Dr. Charles Portney, a psychiatrist who focused on adolescents. In his SoCal practice he treated many former young actors who were now finally able to speak for themselves. In some cases, patients who had played the role of crime victims suffered years later from “delayed onset” trauma. Another danger, he told me, was that kids might come out of their Hollywood experience “precocious and cynical. It’s too big a dose of reality at too young an age.” In the long term, they “can have problems, because your childhood is supposed to prepare you for adulthood.”

 Dr. Portney made clear that “there are many [showbiz] parents who try very hard to do a good job.” Still, you can only protect  your child up to a point. In the long run, showbiz kids are “oriented toward giving a performance, not preparing for adulthood.” When kids are too precocious, it’s at the expense of normal childhood experiences. This can affect future romantic and intimate relationships.  

 Some young actors, whether through good parenting or good luck, survive beautifully: look at Jodie Foster or Ron Howard. For Hayden Panettiere and others, though, truly adult coping skills are delayed until too late.

 

 

 

 

Anne Hathaway: Once Upon a Princess

A long airline flight always gives me a great excuse to check out movies old and new on my seat-back screen. Sometimes there are surprises: flying over the Atlantic in a plane full of sleeping passengers, I decided to watch an oldie: Astaire and Rogers in 1939’s The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. It’s the true tale of a famous dance duo hugely popular just before World War I.  I hadn’t realized, until I saw the film, that the historical Vernon, who had patriotically joined the Royal Flying Corps, died in a plane crash. Uh oh—not a nice thing to think about while aloft in the middle of the night.

 A recent cross-country trip allowed me to watch the new sequel to a comedy favorite of mine, The Devil Wears Prada (2006). Now, twenty years later, filmmakers have gathered the original cast—Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci—to update the story of an ambitious young journalist who finds herself taking orders from the imperious editor of Runway magazine, played by Streep with memorable sangfroid. In the original film, Hathaway’s Andy Sachs was a smart but naïve young college grad who thought she could handle the complexities of a job in the fashion industry while dealing with the demands of the capricious editor-in-chief, Miranda Priestly. Ultimately Andy learned . . . and triumphed (mostly) on her own terms. I had heard that the 2026 sequel would take an updated look at the waning role of the print medium within today’s fashion industry, and so it does. Andy is now an award-winning journalist with a new, and much more impressive, job at Runway, and Miranda is now threatened by unexpected forces that want to push her out of her top-dog position. That being said, not a lot has changed in terms of the film’s central relationship. Miranda is still icy; Andy is still puppy-dog eager. (Actually, it’s supporting player Blunt who makes the most striking evolution in the course of the story.) 

Having mildly (but no more) enjoyed this return to the ladies of Runway, I decided to check out the film that first put Hathaway on the map. She was not yet 20 when she starred for director Garry Marshall in Disney’s The Princess Diaries (2001), a family-friendly tale of a girl who makes the most romantic of transformations. Mia, played by Hathaway, is a San Francisco kid with a bohemian mom and very few friends at her trendy prep school. When she first appears on screen she’s almost unrecognizable in her requisite uniform: her hair is a frizzy mop and she wears thick spectacles. Beyond this, she’s gangly and awkward, and  clearly not the greatest of students. But life has a surprise for her, which comes in the form of a soignée Julie Andrews, who turns out to be Mia’s long-absent paternal grandmother—and the reigning monarch of the tiny European kingdom of Genovia. Now Mia, because of her father’s recent death, is next in line for the throne . . . and therefore must learn to conform to royal standards of looks and behavior. Hilarity ensues, as the ugly duckling is (with her grandmother’s loving help) transformed into a swan. It’s the Disney Princess version of Andy Sacks discovering how to dress, how to behave, and how to thrive in the fashion industry.

 Come to think of it, movies are full of these Cinderella stories, in which the drab or gawky young girl metamorphoses into some sort of princess.  I’m thinking, for instance, of Gigi, but YOU may have other examples in mind.

 

 

Sharks, Sirens, and Other Hollywood Icons

 

I’m lucky indeed to live in a place where movies are part of the landscape. And I’m doubly lucky because I’m a member of the Motion Picture Academy’s new museum, which takes pride in investigating the culture of movies from every angle. Since its opening in 2021, I’ve been to the Academy Museum multiple times, exploring movies in terms of their artistry, their technological mastery, and their impact upon world culture.

 The Academy Museum hardly ignores the motion pictures that represent foreign lands. I remember an exhibit vividly showing off key clips from the audacious Spanish writer/director Pedro Almodóvar. Currently, there’s a lovely tribute to Hayao Miyazaki’s charming animated Ponyo, as well as an in-depth look at the career of Korean auteur Bong Joon Ho, the brilliant satirist behind Okja and the Oscar-winning Parasite.   

 Still, the museum is fundamentally in and of Hollywood, and so you can rightly expect that many exhibits will focus on the men and women of the Hollywood studio system. (A newish permanent exhibit highlights the building of studio lots in the still-wide-open Southern California landscape, as well as the background of the men—several of them immigrants—who arrived in town with a gleam in their eyes and began to create an industry.) And some of the museum’s most lavish exhibits delve into the making of Hollywood’s greatest hits as well as the careers of Hollywood’s most indelible stars.

 Set to close soon is an appropriately massive  exhibit on the making and marketing of Jaws. (No surprise that this blockbuster is given star treatment, given that its director—Steven Spielberg—has been a generous supporter of the museum since its inception. And the surviving 25-foot fiberglass model of the film’s arch-villain, Bruce the Shark, permanently hangs over the museum’s escalator to give visitors a quick thrill.)  It was fascinating to discover how the timely improvisation of the three central actors helped bring to life Peter Benchley’s novel, but I equally enjoyed my glimpses of the film’s global marketing campaign. It featured  Jaws foreign language posters (the one from Japan, riffing on a hugely famous Hokusai woodblock print, is particularly clever) as well as zany collectors’ items like a shark-shaped souvenir cup with a straw that looks like a hapless swimmer.

 Though Jaws is going bye-bye, there’s a new and extensive salute to Marilyn Monroe, Hollywood Icon. For those who associate Monroe solely with her sexy role in Some Like It Hot or with the gossip surrounding her connection with President John F. Kennedy, it’s refreshing to focus in on other aspects of her talents. Though she certainly nourished her siren image, the off-screen Monroe was a serious reader who worked hard to polish her dramatic skills. The exhibit includes, along with some fabulous spangled gowns, the casual streetwear she preferred when she was not in front of the cameras. By happenstance, I’d just re-watched The Seven Year Itch, the (slightly toned-down) film version of a naughty Broadway hit about a middle-aged husband—home alone for the summer—who fantasizes abut the sexy young woman living upstairs. Tom Ewell, a terrifically average-looking comic actor, was the male lead on both stage and screen. In the film version, the dream girl was played by Monroe, as a charming though slightly dizzy blonde languishing in the heat of her top-floor digs. This is the film in which her flouncy white dress billows up when she stands over a subway grate. But the museum also displays the modest pink pjs she wears when invited downstairs for a nightcap, thus crushing Ewell’s erotic expectations.

 

Japanese "woodblock" ad for "Jaws"

Marilyn's PJs in "The Seven Year Itch"  

 

Hitchcock: Man and Myth

Alfred Hitchcock is hardly filmdom’s forgotten man. Although Hitchcock passed from the scene in 1980, every year seems to bring forth another few books about his films and his life. One of the latest, from University Press of Kentucky, is A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, The Myths, The Legacy by British filmmaker Tony Lee Moral. Moral, who poses in his book jacket author-photo with a vicious-looking crow on his arm, has previously published studies of both Hitchcock’s Marnie and The Birds. This new Moral work goes back to the beginning, showing Hitchcock developing his filmmaking talents among the German Expressionist. Still, Moral spends the bulk of his time on the late Hollywood Hitchcock, especially on his fraught relationship with anointed star-in-the-making Tippi Hedren.

 The interaction between Hitchcock and Hedren was clearly complex. Once the exquisite Grace Kelly had departed for Monaco, there to take the throne as Princess Grace, Hitchcock was casting around for a new leading lady. There’s not much discussion of why such later Hitchcock blondes as Doris Day (The Man Who Knew Too Much), Kim Novak (Vertigo), and Eva Marie Saint (North by Northwest) didn’t entirely fill the bill. But Hickock was apparently after a Hollywood newcomer whom he could mold to his own aesthetic specifications. He found Hedren, a successful New York cover-girl model, while watching a TV commercial for a diet drink. Their first project together, The Birds (1963), proved to be a physical and emotional challenge for the newcomer. But the film’s massive box-office success led to Hedren being given another opportunity, this time for the title role in Hitchcock’s Marnie. This 1964 film, with its lurid sexual subtext, earned mixed reviews and box-office earnings (though it has been rediscovered by critics since). But ultimately tension between director and star led to a break in their relationship, and Hedren never acted for Hitchcock again. In fact, she was later to claim that he actively worked to sabotage her future film career.

 Enter Donald Spoto, a young scholar and film critic who began by idolizing Hitchcock. (His first book, The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, was published in 1976).) Though, while teaching in Los Angeles,  he got to meet his idol, Moral posits that Spoto was disappointed not to be able to establish a closer connection. Ultimately, after meeting Tippi Hedren, Spoto published a sensational second book, 1983’s The Dark Side of Genius, which explores what he sees as Hitchcock’s bad behavior toward Hedren and other actresses. He was to expand on this theme once again in 2008’s Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies, a study even more lurid than the previous one. Moral, after doggedly questioning Hedren and other Hitchcock cast and crew members, is deeply skeptical about what Spoto sees as Hitchcock’s warped psyche and possessive attitude toward women. (For the record, Hitchcock had a long and apparently successful marriage to screenwriter and film editor Alma Reville, who was his frequent collaborator and sounding-board on his films. He had as well as a solid relationship with daughter Pat, who plays a key role in her father’s Strangers on a Train and continues to defend him today.)

 Frankly, I was surprised by how much of this book focuses on Spoto (including an exploration of his personal sexuality and his rather arcane  religious views). But Moral does make the valid point that, in a “Me Too” era, movie fans are less forgiving of behavior that once might have seemed quite normal on a film set. Did Hitchcock really demand sexual favors of Tippi Hedren? I guess we’ll never know.

 

 

 

 

Filmmakers Living Dangerously

Three years before he came to the U.S. to shoot Witness, Australian director Peter Weir took cast and crew to Asia on behalf of a highly ambitious project, The Year of Living Dangerously. Based on a novel of intrigue and romance by Australian author Christopher Koch, it brought together an international band of players to present a story full of real-world tensions. Weir had previously directed a fascinating tale of mysterious disappearance (1975’s Picnic at Hanging Rock) and a tragic World War I epic (1981’s Gallipoli). Both stories, deriving from actual historical incidents, saw the world from an Australian perspective. By the time he shot The Year of Living Dangerously, Weir had widened his focus to include citizens of many nations. Building on a turbulent era in the modern history of Indonesia, he used the overthrow of despotic President Sukarno by local Communist forces as the backdrop for a story about love, loyalty, and journalism as a profession. (To be entirely accurate, though the film’s vivid street scenes were filmed in Manila, standing in for Jakarta, social unrest in the Philippines caused cast and crew to head back to Australia to complete the shoot.)

 At the center of the drama is Australia’s Mel Gibson, known at the time for his Mad Max films and for his starring role in Weir’s Gallipoli. No surprise—in his role as an Aussie radio journalist on his first overseas assignment, Gibson’s Guy Hamilton proves to be handsome, cocky, and more than a bit naïve. He wants to become an overnight ;journalistic superstar, but is taken down a peg or two by fellow foreign correspondents, including a particularly crass American (Michael Murphy) and some stuffy Brits. And the environment he’s in is not at all pleasant: poverty is rampant; political dissidents are everywhere; daily life is mostly chaos.

 One major compensation arrives when he is taken to an unexpectedly ritzy country club where British expats congregate. There he meets a woman who works at the British embassy. She’s played by Sigourney Weaver who—three years after Alien—has paused her fight against  extraterrestrials in order to take on a romantic role. Her Jill Bryant is smart, convincingly British, and sexy as all get-out. She’s leaving Jakarta soon to return to her homeland, and part of Guy would enjoy going with her.

 Still, there’s his broadcasting career to consider. And there’s also an off-beat relationship he quickly comes to value. Billy Kwan is a pint-sized photographer, apparently half Australian and half Chinese, who frequently works with Australian journalist to cover the local news. Puckish, but with a strong moral code, he claims no loyalty to any particular national ideology. Instead, he cares deeply for his friends and for the underprivileged: out of sheer generosity of spirit he’s quietly supporting a local woman and her seriously ailing child. Billy, who also serves at times as the film’s voiceover narrator, is the emotional heartbeat of the story. And the casting of this role took observers by surprise.  From what I’ve read, Weir considered tiny American actors like Bob Balaban (5’5”) and Wallace Shawn (5’2”), but neither seemed right. Then through happenstance he saw a photo of an American actress named Linda Hunt. Afflicted with hypopituitary dwarfism, Hunt stood a mere 4’9” tall, and had an androgynous look. There’s nothing kitschy about her portrayal of an adult male, though her character is endowed with an otherworldliness that lingers in the memory. That’s doubtless why she beat out some of Hollywood’s finest (Glenn Close, for one) to win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1982.

 

 

Treasure Island in Topanga

Recently I wrote about Hollywood’s Blacklist era, as chronicled in a special exhibit at DC’s Capital Jewish Museum.  This past weekend saw me at a place deeply steeped in memories of that difficult time. Actor Will Geer (born in 1902) is best remembered as TV’s folksy Grandpa Walton from 1972 until his death in 1978. (His passing was ultimately written into the plot of The Waltons, allowing him to be publicly mourned.) Though a lifelong actor on both stage and screen, one who was nominated for multiple prestigious awards, Geer had many other passions. Politically he was a deeply committed activist with long ties to the American Communist Party, During the Great Depression he spent much of his free time touring labor camps with close friends like folksingers Burl Ives and Woody Guthrie. He also had a great love for  botany, and earned a master’s degree in that field at the prestigious University of Chicago.

 Geer’s refusal in the 1950s to “name names” of Communist sympathizers at the behest of the House Un-American Activities Committee naturally led to his being shut out of the Hollywood movie community for a number of years. Though he starred in Salt of the Earth, a 1954 independent film about a New Mexico’s miners’ strike, he was long barred from more mainstream productions. That’s why he and wife Herta Ware built a simple performance space on their rustic property in SoCal’s folksy Topanga Canyon, which became a popular gathering spot for fellow blacklisted performers. At the same time, they began growing fruits, vegetables, and herbs as a way of feeding their growing family. Eventually, following Geer’s financial success from The Waltons, they launched a nonprofit corporation known as the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum. The many offspring of the Geer family, by then launched on their own theatrical careers, joined together to stage works by Shakespeare and others in a rustic outdoor environment. Today the troupe is still going strong, mixing seasoned professionals with newcomers just learning to tread the boards.

 I try to visit the Will Geer at least once a year. The troupe is most active in summers, and its signature production is A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s romantic fable for which this is the perfect sylvan setting. Other offerings for 2026 include Romeo and Juliet, along with an obscure Noel Coward farce (I hardly think of Coward as suited to a rustic backdrop, but never mind) and an inventive dramatization of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. The script for this adaptation was prepared by Will Geeer’s daughter, longtime co-producing artistic director Ellen Geer, and her own daughter Willow (also an artistic director) here plays one of the drama’s most colorful roles. As always the troupe finds creative ways to use its permanent stage area, which consists of rough-hewn wooden building facades and beautiful old-growth trees. I’m happy to say that seating has improved a great deal over the years. The audience is shielded from the summer sun by a large canopy, but those concrete benches really cry out for cushions shlepped from home. 

 If you’re planning a day or evening trip to the Theatricum Botanicum, do save time to explore the premises. There is, for instance, a small wooden shack called The Shelter. Once a hang-out spot for the visiting Woody Guthrie, it now houses a collection of historic memorabilia from the 1950s onward. There are also places to buy food and souvenirs, and some gorgeous flowering plants to admire. For the full experience, make dinner reservations at Topanga’s mostly-outdoor Inn of the Seventh Ray, a magical venue full of other-worldly vibes. 

 

L.A. as the Emerald City: “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass”

Sometimes, especially in the dog days of summer, you just want to watch something carefree and a little bit silly. That’s why I opted for a small indie called Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass. Believe it or not, it sorta-kinda marries The Wizard of Oz to a modern-day sex comedy. Somehow it pulls off the trick of combining wide-eyed innocence with today’s wide-open sexual mores. Is it raunchy? Well, call it fairy-tale raunch.

 We begin (of course) in Kansas, where the wide-eyed Gail (once a prom queen, now a hairdresser) is on the brink of marrying her long-time sweetheart, Tom. First they’re joking about the right—should the occasion arise—to skirt their marriage vows if there’s a chance of shagging the celebrity of their dreams. Then, suddenly, Gail catches Tom in flagrante with Jennifer Aniston, who just happens to be passing through town. Despite this fling, Tom remains determined to marry Gail; understandably, she’s not so sure. At this moment of indecision, she’s invited by her best friend, a gay (of course!) African-American named Otto, to fly out to the coast, where a major hairdresser convention is going to take place. Gail’s personal goal: to even the score with her fiancé by bedding her own celebrity crush, Jon Hamm.

 Quicker than you can say “We’re off to see the Wizard,” they land in SoCal, an Emerald City chock full of crooks and rascals. After a celebrity sighting at the airport (Henry Winkler!) Gail discovers her suitcase has accidentally been switched with one containing secret government documents. Of course there are some bad guys (and one VERY bad gal) determined to get these papers back. If blood is to be shed, so be it.

 We follow Gail and Otto through Hollywood, where the not-too-bright crooks seem unable to find them even when they’re spotted on a surveillance video directly in front of the world-famous Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Eventually Gail’s merry crew expands to include an eager-beaver actors’ agent in training and a would-be paparazzo desperate to capture Hamm’s image with his lens. These new additions don’t exactly replicate L. Frank Baum’s friends-of-Dorothy, but they’re almost equally goofy. This goes especially for a late addition to the group: none other than snowy-haired John Slattery, who of course once co-starred with Jon Hamm on Mad Men, and who in this film turns out to be an aspiring martial artist. (Alas, the film misses out on the presence of Toto . . . but Gail DOES sport snazzy red shoes.)

 After much searching, and a near-disastrous encounter with an unhinged celebrity whose name I won’t reveal,  Jon Hamm’s current address is finally tracked down. But that’s not the end of the road for Gail and her pals. They face down a difficult challenge, and are nearly vanquished by—shall we say?—non-flying monkeys. Ultimately, though, the new pals prove their merit, and Gail gets . . . well, I don’t think I should spill any more beans. Except to say that the end of the film is silly and charming and entirely appropriate.

 None of this would be worth watching if there weren’t an absolutely delightful “Dorothy” at the center of things. Zoe Deutsch (who made a winsome Jean Seberg jabbering in French in last year’s Nouvelle Vague) is now a charmingly innocent brunette for whom we can’t help rooting, no matter the oddity of her quest. I enjoyed her companions too, though they lack the indelible presence of Dorothy’s eecentric band. But be assured we make it back to Kansas. After all, there’s no place like home.

 

 

 

 

Bearing Witness

 A culture clash is always a great subject for a movie. Many screen adaptations of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet raise the barriers separating the two lovers by showing that they come from very different ethnicities: see, of course, the (Anglo) Jets and the (Puerto Rican) Sharks of West Side Story. And the suspense element in international thrillers like The Third Man or The Da Vinci Code is heightened when the participants in the drama do not share a common background. Many police dramas set the values of the law-enforcement community against those of the general public. But 1985’s Witness is perhaps unique in bringing together a Philadelphia homicide detective and devout members of Pennsylvania’s rural Amish population, which shuns technology while cleaving to religious and social values that are centuries old.

 The story of Witness is a complex one. An eight-year-old Amish boy, on a rare trip out of town with his recently widowed mother, goes into a train-station men’s room and is horrified to see a brutal murder. He’s the “witness” of the story’s title, and soon Philadelphia police detective John Book (Harrison Ford) is on the case, which becomes far more complicated once it’s known that the victim is an undercover cop, and that corrupt members of his own department are responsible for the death. Through a thorny set of circumstances, Book seeks refuge with the boy's pretty mother, Rachel (Kelly McGillis), and her family. To save himself from detection, he must learn to blend in with the rural, peaceable Amish way of life. This means suppressing his own basic urge to fight back against adversaries, and also fending off the growing attraction he feels toward Rachel. (In perhaps the film’s most quietly complex role, Rachel is attracted to him as well.)

 When spotting this film on a shelf in my local library, I was looking for Places in the Heart, I wanted to re-watch that 1984 drama in tribute to Danny Glover, who had named this as his favorite performance. To my surprise, Glover is also a featured player in Witness, released just one year later, and a comparison of the two roles verifies the breadth of his talent. As Moze Hadner, he’s a down-home drifter, not entirely honest, by no means educated, but filled with a generosity of spirit that ultimately makes him lovable. One year later, as police lieutenant James McFee, he’s a decorated cop who has chosen to put his talents to nefarious ends.

 I’m no expert on the so-called “plain” lifestyle of the Amish, but cast and crew seem to have worked hard to set these characters apart from our “English” world. In the course of the film we get a good look at Amish ways, particularly in a spectacular barn-raising scene, and come to respect their values. There’s also one particularly grotesque moment when we see how stoically the Amish separate themselves from local hooligans who delight in tormenting them. In the leading role, Ford achieves an effective balance between his familiar machismo and respect for a culture totally alien to his own way of life. There are strong supporting performances by young Lukas Haas, ballet star Alexander Godunov (as a would-be suitor for Rachel), and others, all under the effective direction of Australian Peter Weir, making his first American feature. I was especially taken by the cinematography by John Seale, which owes much to the tender light so evident in the 17^th century Dutch paintings of Johannes Vermeer. This was one of the film’s eight Oscar nominations: it won statuettes for its screenplay and editing, and a lot of love from audiences.

.  

 

Home is Where the Heart Is: Places in the Heart

Sadly, actor and activist Danny Glover, perhaps best known for his cop role opposite Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon series, has acknowledged he’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Always a straightforward guy, he’d previously been frank about his youthful struggles with epilepsy. Now, close to 80, he’s looking back at a career that has given him a wide range of character roles in both wacky comedies and somber dramas. His favorite? He acknowledges that he’s most proud of a 1984 slice of Americana called Places in the Heart.

  As a tribute to Glover, and as a salute to the growing-pains of the USA in its semiquincentennial year, I recently caught up with Places in the Heart. It’s definitely a small film worth knowing, and not just because her leading role in it won Sally Field her second Oscar, and the opportunity to gush to the Academy that "I can't deny the fact that you like me—right now, you like me!" (Personally, I can’t deny the fact that most people misquote her words as “You like me—you really like me!”)

  Places in the Heart was written and directed by the late Robert Benton, who in 1967 came out of New York to co-write (along with fellow Esquire journalist David Newman) an historically -based screenplay they called Bonnie and Clyde. Their script—about a pair of attractive young bank robbers gallivanting through the Southwest during the Great Depression—eventually led to a production deal. After some serious interest from François Truffaut, Arthur Penn ultimately shot Bonnie and Clyde, with  Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in the leading roles. It became a national sensation and scored 10 Oscar noms in a highly competitive year.   

 After that triumph, Benton pursued his interest in directing as well as writing, winning Oscars in both categories for the 1979 divorce drama, Kramer vs. Kramer. But he was a native Texan, and perhaps that dry, dusty landscape continued to call to him. In 1984, he returned to his roots, crafting a Depression-era story set in Waxahachie, Texas, with nary a bank robber in sight. Life is not easy in Waxahachie: Edna Spalding (Sally Field) has been left a widow after the accidental killing of her husband, the local sheriff. Desperate to support herself and her young children, she takes in a boarder, a bitter ex-soldier (John Malkovich) who lost his sight during the Great War. She also takes pity on the African-American drifter (Glover) who shows up to do chores, even though he’s been caught trying to steal her silverware. Edna’s basic good-heartedness proves contagious, and a viable new household forms. But there are also many external challenges: the bank is eager to foreclose on Edna’s acreage; her sister’s marriage is threatened by a philandering spouse; a powerful tornado (dramatically filmed) flattens the town’s center; the Ku Klux Klan violently turns on Glover’s character. Somehow Edna holds on, leading to a remarkable final scene in which love and redemption surface in a way that can only be called mystical. 

 1985 was a year of BIG movies, led by Amadeus, A Passage to India, and a powerful drama about journalists covering the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, The Killing Fields. Folksy Americana hardly seemed like one of the film-year’s major areas of interest.  But Places in the Heart, a loving, inspiring, and yet down-to-earth portrait of small-town life, holds its own among the costume epics.

 I wish Danny Glover well, and hope he’ll be able to cling onto his memories of being a central figure in this tender film.  

 

I Still Love You, Alice B. Toklas

 

I’ve recently finished reading a colleague’s new, and award-winning, biography of Gertrude Stein. (The author is Francesca Wade, and her impressively researched book is called Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife.) When I was an artsy college student in the Sixties, I’m guessing that few of my classmates had actually dipped into Stein’s artistically challenging writings. I myself certainly hadn’t. But we all knew “rose is a rose is a rose,” and that Stein—an American in Paris—had published in 1933 a faux biographical work of her longtime companion. The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas. So the title of a 1968 romantic comedy, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, would have been enticing to us—especially since its cast and crew included some of the hippest people in Hollywood.

 One of the creators of the original script was Paul Mazursky, who would go on to both write and direct such comedy hits as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), Harry and Tonto (1974), and Moscow on the Hudson (1984). I Love You, Alice B. Toklas was his very first produced film project, and he badly wanted to direct it.  But when Peter Sellers came aboard as the film’s star Mazursky was removed from contention. (Instead, the movie was directed by TV veteran Hy Averback.)

 Aside from Sellers, prominent cast members included Leigh Taylor-Young as a sexy Flower Child with a butterfly tattoo on her thigh. (She was barely twenty-one and making her first film.). The plot focused on Sellers as Harold Fine, a stereotypical (Jewish, natch!) buttoned-down lawyer who’s being pushed toward the chuppah by his girlfriend, played by Joyce Van Patten. Just as matrimony seems inevitable, he meets a free-spirited hippie chick, Nancy. After they’ve hopped into the sack, she whips up a batch of Alice B. Toklas brownies, and he finds himself thoroughly hooked on his new lifestyle. Soon he’s growing out his crewcut, and dressing in caftans and love beads.

 It was quite clear, back in 1968, that an Alice B. Toklas brownie was some kind of psychedelic treat. (The comic spectacle of a middle-aged square suddenly tuning in and turning on was almost unavoidable in movie houses of the late Sixties.) But I didn’t fully grasp the implications of those brownies until I read Francesca Wade’s book. It seems that Toklas, who had no part in the writing of her famous “autobiography” (other than efficiently typing up the manuscript) ultimately chose, following Stein’s 1946 death, to fill her empty days by putting forth a cookbook. Toklas was a whiz in the kitchen, specializing in French cuisine, but she chose to fill out her book with recipes received from friends. One of them, a Morocco-based artist named Brion Gysin, contributed instructions for making a dessert item he called "Haschich Fudge," a heady combo of fruit, nuts, spices, and what he referred to as “Cannibis sativa.” Though the cookbook’s American edition, fearing legal consequences, decided to axe this particular recipe, it was included in the volume published in Britain. Once Time magazine had spilled the beans (so to speak), the rather prim and naïve Toklas discovered she’d published a best-seller.

 The Hollywood film is scored with a perky tune sung by a rock group known as Harpers Bizarre:. It begins “I love you, Alice B. Toklas/ and so does Gertrude Stein/ I love you, Alice B. Toklas/ I’m gonna change your name to mine.” The lyrics then go off on a psychedelic trip—”Green wooly golden gardens, Marvin Gardens”—of which the very avant-garde Gertrude Stein might possibly have approved.  (Though, I suspect, probably not.)

 

 

“The Bear”: What’s a Sitcom Anyway?

Having just binge-watched the fifth and final season of The Bear, I have some strong thoughts on how TV has changed over time. From 1972 to 1983 I was devoted to M*A*S*H, a sort-of sitcom set during the Korean War. Lasting eleven years, the show—about a military surgical unit a stone’s throw from the front lines—focused on the hijinks of young surgeons, nurses, and other American military personnel far from home. So this series (with Alan Alda as “Hawkeye” Pierce, its central figure) blended outrageous comedy with a deep awareness of the tragedies of war and the challenges faced by healers in times of crisis.

 My friend Elias Davis, who co-wrote the famous final episode of M*A*S*H , implies that the show’s outcome was by no means fully planned from the start. But it’s clear that The Bear—officially labeled a comedy, though much of the family backstory is dead serious—was building throughout most of its five-year run toward a very specific conclusion. In the past, American TV didn’t work that way. In long-running comic shows there would be changes over the years as key actors came and went. See, for instance, how the M*A*S*H dynamic evolved when the obtuse Major Frank Burns, as played by Larry Linville, was replaced by the know-it-all snob Charles Emerson Winchester III (David Ogden-Stiers) as Hawkeye’s tent mate.

 Today, of  course, TV series tend to have much shorter seasons: each of the past five years has seen the arrival of only eight episodes of The Bear. (Compare M*A*S*H , which typically had more than 20.) The Bear’s  tight timetable makes it much easier for the writing team to control the show’s narrative, and to plan out in advance where it is going, with some interesting detours along the way. Curiously, although there’s a good-sized cast portraying those who work in and around the Chicago restaurant known as The Bear, not much always happens from episode to episode. Some focus almost entirely on a single character, and it’s not necessarily star Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), a talented chef who agonizes over his decision to convert his dead brother’s sandwich shop into a fine-dining establishment. Each of the central characters has a complicated backstory, and the show sometimes pulls away from the restaurant setting to explore cousin Richie working on his people skills, line cook Tina discovering her professional abilities, pastry chef Marcus coping with the loss of his mother, or Somali kitchen helper Ebraheim shyly struggling to get the restaurant on a stronger financial footing. (His mentor is played by the late Rob Reiner, and there’s a subtle, touching tribute to Reiner in Ebraheim’s last-episode final line, “As you wish.” Jamie Lee Curtis as Carmy’s addled, sometimes alcoholic, mother does not enter the restaurant until the show’s very last episode, but she’s impossible to forget.  Because we come to know these people so well, we care about what they ultimately accomplish.

 One of my favorite things about The Bear is how it rewards viewers paying close attention. Early in season 4 there’s an episode in which maître d’ Richie, aiming to heighten the celebration of  a family whose daughter has just been declared cancer-free, mesmerizes them all by creating a magical summer snowfall. In passing, some attention is paid to the solo diner at the next table who sees and delights in the family’s joy. Who is this man? We don’t find out until the very last show of season 5, when his appreciation for his dining experience bears important fruit. It’s yet another tasty surprise for a very special show. 

 

Where Have All the Corpse Flowers Gone? Remembering "The Little Shop of Horrors"

I’m not convinced that Roger Corman ever saw (or even heard of) a Corpse Flower. But I have. This past Sunday I was lucky enough to catch the rare blooming of Amorphophallus titanium at the Huntington, that being a marvelous rare book library and botanical garden in San Marino, California. In case you’re interested, the so-called Corpse Flower is actually the world’s largest unbranched inflorescence. Its bloom can grow over twelve feet in height and can open to a width of four feet across. It’s a tropical plant that comes originally from Sumatra; its gruesome name refers to the stench it gives off when in flower, similar (it is said) to the smell of a rotting corpse. In the wild, insects attracted to this pungent scent arrive in time to pollinate the flower during its short blooming period, which may last a mere 24 hours. Lucky me, that I arrived just in time to see (and smell) this stinky marvel of the natural world.

 The one I saw blooming in the Huntington’s Conservatory has been nicknamed Odorysseus, not Audrey Junior. And I’m happy to report that no one was swallowed up by the gaping purple petals while I was around. Still, I couldn’t help thinking about the giant carnivorous plant immortalized by director Roger Corman and his inimitable screenwriter, Charles B. Griffith, back in 1960, when they discovered that they could have a full weekend to make use of a standing set that was about to be torn down. Their horror comedy, The Little Shop of Horrors, soon attracted millions of fans (most of them young and ready for anything) to drive-ins and low-rent movie houses, and soon became a late-night staple on the brand-new medium of television. Not all the actors in Little Shop went on to fame and fortune, but the name Jack Nicholson should ring a bell. (No, despite what I sometimes see in print, Nicholson did NOT have the leading role of hapless flower-shop underling Seymour Krelboined, but his tiny part as a masochist in a dentist’s chair is hard to forget.)

 Two young fans of Corman’s 72-minute film turned out to have real musical talent. In 1982, composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman launched an off-Broadway musical adaptation so infectious that it soon moved to Broadway and London’s West End. (It also became hugely popular in high schools and community theatres throughout the world; I’d be surprised to hear that there’s no production of it going on somewhere at this very moment.) In 1986, Hollywood got into the act, with Frank Oz of Muppet fame directing an elaborate big-budget version boasting Rick Moranis in the leading role, Steve Martin, John Candy, and Bill Murray in featured parts, and an ending that softened the grotesque outcome of the original.

 In my years as Roger Corman’s story editor, I had no immediate connection with the Little Shop film. Nor with the child-friendly 1991 animated TV series whose gore was toned down for the younger set. But in the early 1990s Roger toyed with the idea of launching a Little Shop sitcom: writers were hired and I remember some meetings at Fox studios with rather thick-headed young execs before we all gave up. I also remember the frustration of Chuck Griffith and others regarding the debut of the stage musical: because Roger had assured the producers that all the members of the original cast and crew were dead, none of them was invited to the show’s world premiere. Roger’s baseless assertion, I can’t help thinking, was an act as ghoulish as anything a Corpse Flower could claim.

 

                                          Odorysseus at the Huntington, 7/12/26

DC is for (Movie) Lovers

 

Washington DC can fairly be called a city of museums. Thanks to the long-ago generosity of a wealthy Brit who never made it onto American soil, the capital city of the new United States  built a castle-like museum on its national mall. From these beginnings back in 1846, the Smithsonian has evolved into a massive umbrella organization for some twenty-one museums, as well as libraries, research centers, and even a zoo. Most, though not all, of the Smithsonian’s treasures are located in the heart of the District of Columbia, where they can be visited sevcn days a week, free of charge. DC is also the home of many other remarkable educational sites (some public, some private)  designed for the public’s education and enjoyment. As someone obsessed with movies, I was surprised by the many creative ways in which film and video have been  put to use for visitors’ education and enjoyment.

 Of course some of the Smithsonian’s most popular museums use film to show us glimpses of a nation’s preoccupations over time. The African American Museum contains film clips from the bad old days when people of color were automatically assumed to be either brutal defilers of white women (see Birth of a Nation) or lovable mammies (see Gone With the Wind). The Museum of American History, one of my very favorites, boasts a pop culture exhibit that shows how films can help raise discussions about complex issues, like What is Justice? Or What is Family? Or What is Love? (In this day and age, I was impressed to see clips from such still-controversial films as Brokeback Mountain.) But this same museum also shows off footage and memorabilia from well-loved classics, like The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars, that underscore the romantic idealism of the American people. Dorothy’s ruby slippers –which have long been on view in this museum—seem to be a special favorite of visitors. In the museum’s gift shop, you can even buy a T-shirt bearing a sketch of the slippers, still on the feet of the now-expired Wicked With of the East, along with these words: SHOES TO DIE FOR.  

 What surprised me was how many museums now use sophisticated video applications to connect the individual viewer with the exhibit. At the Museum of American History you can virtually try on clothing from the museum’s historic collection by using your cellphone and following posted instructions. At the International Spy Museum (a pricey but fascinating attraction that’s not under Smithsonian auspices), you can establish your own spy identity, and even (via video) be outfitted in a nifty disguise of your own choosing. (I’ve supplied a photo, below, of my adventures in spycraft.)  

 The huge stately building dubbed the National Archives is best known for housing our nation’s essential documents, like the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. But the lower floor of the building on Constitution Avenue also features serious exhibits pertaining to social issues,, with showcases devoted to such-hot button topics as immigration, civil rights, and the struggle of women to attain the vote. Naturally, newsreel footage of protest marches is prominently featured.

 One floor up, before you get to exhibits celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, there’s a surprising opportunity to be interactive.  On a large screen you see these words: “THE AMERICAN STORY. The film collection of the National Archives contains motion pictures made by the U.S. government to engage and inform  Americans.”  If you’re tech savvy, you can sign in to a favorite topic, then watch appropriate films to your heart’s content.

                                                    Shhh! Beverly in disguise
 

                                

 

 

 

 

Listing All-American Movies

In the wake of this historic (and very unusual) 4^th of July holiday weekend, news outlets have been vying with one another to publish articles that are relevant to the story of the United States. This past Sunday, film critics at the Los Angeles Times joined together to produce a feature titled “10 Must-Watch Movies That Capture America in Times of Profound Change.” Here are their topic choices: (In every category there are also a few alternate suggestions.)

(1)   THE GREAT DEPRESSION: The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

(    (2)   POSTWAR OPTIMISM: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

(    (3)   CAPITALISM, UNCHECKED: There Will Be Blood (2007)

((  (4)   POST-VIETNAM/WATERGATE CYNICISM: Nashville (1975)

((   (5)  MEDIA DOMINATION: Network (1976)

(6  (6)  GENTRIFICATION AND RACIAL TENSIIONS: Do the Right Thing (1989)

(7  (7) RISE OF THE YUPPIES: They Live (1988)

( ) (8) ‘80s WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE: Working Girl (1988)

(9 (9)  DIGITAL ALIENATION: The Social Network (2010)

(1 (10) POST-9/11 ANXIETIES: Team America: World Police (2004)

 To me this is, for the most part, an excellent list. I would certainly put The Grapes of Wrath, The Best Years of Our Lives, Network, and Do The Right Thing on any best-film list I was compiling. By the same token, I wonder about the criteria at work here. Why is the 19^th century (especially the Civil War) so completely ignored? Why does this list contain not a single work made in the turbulent 1960s? I am particularly passionate about a seminal film year, 1967, which captured for a mass audience the tensions both between races and between generations. (Here are four of the five Oscar Best Picture Nominees for that year in film: Bonnie and Clyde, Guess Who’s Coming to  Dinner, In the Heat of the Night, The Graduate). Every one of these very distinctive films, screened in a turbulent year, has something vitally important to say about the differences that keep Americans apart.

 I also don’t see on the critics’ list any representation of films shot in the 1990s. That was a period  that balanced social optimism with the belated acknowledgment of the scourge of HIV, especially as it applied to the nation’s gay community. Remarkably, it was America’s favorite Everyman, Tom Hanks, who starred in a mainstream Hollywood movie that  finally looked with compassion on the plight of a gay man dying of AIDS. Hanks’ willingness to take on this role, especially after other leading men had turned it down, marked a new era for audiences and for the motion picture community, which honored Hanks with his first Oscar for this acting challenge. (Just one year later, he won again, for the very different Forrest Gump, which contained—in many people’s eyes—its own much more subtle AIDS reference.)

 Another film I think should be noted was also made in the Nineties, and also starred Tom Hanks, who seems to have a special talent for representing what’s on the minds of his fellow Americans. The 1995 film Apollo 13 (perhaps the seminal achievement of director Ron Howard) is a celebration both of American technological excellence and of the brave astronauts who are vaulting us into the world of the future. Apollo 13 was made, with the full cooperation of NASA, to showcase the story of a near outer-space disaster that, happily, turned into a human triumph. It’s surprising indeed to me that the L.A. Times critics seem to have nothing to say about American technological mastery. Social media (as shown in such listed films as The Social Network) has certainly changed all of our lives, but our relationship to our planet has also certainly evolved, right? 

 

They Could Have Been Contenders: The Hollywood Blacklist

I’m just back from a week in Washington, DC. To my surprise, the nation’s capital currently seems a lot more bipartisan than I would have guessed. Yes, there were giant Trump portraits hanging from some prominent government buildings. But I also saw a major Washington boulevard shut down on behalf of a wild and crazy Gay Pride festival. And overt dissent was on display nearby: outside a tent manned by some dedicated anti-Trumpers, I spotted a large placard that gave MAGA a new definition: Make Algae Great Again.

 Washington’s wonderful Smithsonian museums (open daily and free to all comers) seemed as welcoming and as even-handed as ever, pointing up our nation’s failings but also its glories.  Some of the city’s private museums, though, were clearly interested in viewing today’s deep political divide in the context of past eras that were equally contentious. That certainly seemed part of the reason the Capital Jewish Museum is now hosting an exhibit called “Blacklisted: An American Story.” Its focus is on the era—starting in 1947 and lasting until the early Sixties—when the House Un-American Activities Committee was terrorizing Hollywood, forcing the major studios to remove from their ranks anyone (Jewish or otherwise) who had ever been sympathetic to the Communist party. (The only way to return to the film industry’s good graces in that era was to dish up the names of others whose politics were—or had ever been—suspect.)

 As part of this exhibit, the museum showed a series of film clips relevant to the blacklist period. Two of the films were directed by Elia Kazan. Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) makes a brave argument against the built-in anti-Semitism of that era; the clip from On the Waterfront (1954) shows Marlon Brando as a longshoreman and would-be boxer climatically choosing to risk everything by bringing a mob boss to justice. Because Kazan was infamously known as one of those who “named names” to save his own career, many in Hollywood never forgave him. Orson Welles, for one, disparaged the latter film as “a celebration of the informant.”

 Three films written by Dalton Trumbo are also included in this montage. Two are from 1960, when the once-disgraced Trumbo was finally able to resume getting on-screen credit for his work. After writing Spartacus, he was championed by star Kirk Douglas, to whom he said, “Thanks, Kirk, for giving me back my name.” On earlier Trumbo films that appeared during the blacklist era, Trumbo had had to submit each of his scripts under a fictive monicker, or that of another writer. The screenwriting Oscar he won in 1954 for crafting under an assumed name the delightful (and totally apolitical) Roman Holiday was not awarded to him until 1993, almost three decades after his death.

 The exhibit also focuses on the sad example of John Garfield, one of many actors whose careers (and lives) were destroyed during the blacklist years. Garfield (born Jacob Garfinkle on New York’s Lower East Side) was a longtime supporter of liberal causes. He began appearing in major Hollywood films in 1938, usually in blue-collar roles, and was twice nominated for Oscars, notably for his lead role in the 1947 boxing film, Body and Soul. But his refusal to speak against his wife (once a member of the Communist Party) as well as his unwillingness to provide the House committee with the names of other Hollywood “Reds” ultimately destroyed him. He died of a heart attack in 1932 at the age of 39, just after a dream project in which he was to star was abruptly cancelled.

Despite it all, Happy 4^th of July!

John Garfield, with quote from his daughter

                            

 

Very Hush-Hush: ”L.A. Confidential”

Los Angeles is a movie town, and so it’s not a surprise that the L.A. Conservancy, which since 1978 has been working to preserve the city’s architecture landmarks, has a special affection for old movie theatres. The Conservancy’s Last Remaining Seats celebration, held every year, allows Angelenos to enjoy a wide variety of classic films in vintage movie palaces. This spring you could see Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, Hitchcock’s thrilling North by Northwest, or a Mary Poppins family singalong, all in historic showplaces along Downtown L.A.’s Broadway. I recently trekked to 1931’s 2000-seat Los Angeles Theatre—where the French Baroque décor may be a bit shabby but still dazzles—to watch a very L.A. movie, 1997’s L.A. Confidential.

 The Conservancy has always spiced up its screenings with treats like brief stage performances, fashion shows featuring period-appropriate wardrobe, and special guests. For L.A. Confidential, the Conservancy brought in James Ellroy, author of the novel on which the film is based. Ellroy, born in L.A. in 1948, became famous as a writer of hard-boiled crime fiction. His focus on brutal crime is perhaps not surprising, because when he was ten years old his mother was raped and murdered. Her death gave him an obsessive interest in the Black Dahlia murder case, and his works of fiction, like The L.A. Quartet, cast a dark light on the city of his birth.

 The film version, effectively directed by Roger Corman alum Curtis Hanson, is perhaps less wild and crazy than Ellroy’s original, but Ellroy calls it “a proficient movie,” one that successfully taps into his own fascination with “bad men in love with strong women.” It also visually captures the L.A. of the 1950s, a time when dreams of happy families enjoying backyard barbecues are undercut by a city—and a police force—rife with crime. At the center of the film are three LAPD cops. “Hollywood Jack” Vincennes (a slick Kevin Spacey) lives to hobnob with celebrities on the set of a Dragnet-like TV crime show. Curiously, Hanson found two other key actors Down Under. Guy Pearce (coming off his role as a drag queen in Australia’s Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) plays Edmund Exley, a straight-arrow police sergeant who gradually succumbs to the moral ambiguity of those around him. By contrast, Russell Crowe’s Officer Bud White first seems to be a thug in cop’s clothing, but reveals a gentler side when he falls in love with a call girl who’s a Veronica Lake lookalike, played by a memorable Kim Basinger. (This was the film that essentially marked the start of Crowe’s distinguished American movie career.)  Danny Da Vito, David Straithairn, and James Cromwell also have key roles. If, back in 1997. you had just become aware of Cromwell as the kindly Farmer Arthur Hoggett in Babe, you would surely be surprised to see his turnabout here.

 L.A. Confidential is frank in its depiction of a town essentially run by racists, pimps, and drug dealers. So it’s no surprise that there will be blood—lots of it. No one we see on screen is entirely good, but there’s a sort of moral justice at work, and we come to care about those who manage to leave the City of the Angels for a better life elsewhere. That’s exactly what James Ellroy himself did. He now makes his home in Colorado.

 The film was nominated for 9 Oscars, including Best Picture, but won only two—for Basinger’s performance and the film’s adapted screenplay. After all, this was the year of Titanic.

                               French Baroque Ladies' Room 

                                Los Angeles Theatre (1931)