Baby Jane Grows Up

Well, none of us is getting any younger. And Hollywood actresses, who’ve always relied on youth and beauty to fuel their careers, know better than most that ageing is tantamount to career suicide. Ten years ago, Amy Schumer went so far as to join with gal pals Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Patricia Arquette in a darkly comic video short, all of them desperate to stave off the approach of their so-called “Last F**kable Day.”    

 But things were perhaps even worse in Old Hollywood. When Audrey Hepburn, still under 30, was romantically paired with fifty-six-year-old Gary Cooper in 1957’s Love in the Afternoon, this confirmed the basic Tinseltown understanding that—for women, at least—the freshness of youth was everything. As for those talented actresses who weren’t as young as they used to be, they had to accept that they were now considered by studio honchos to be damaged goods. And so it happened that two of the Golden Age’s most revered stars suddenly had to accept lesser projects to fill up their dance cards.

 Bette Davis, who arrived in Hollywood in 1930, had some rough years before she triumphed in the powerful role of a slatternly waitress in a screen adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage: it led to a unique write-in Oscar nomination. Thereafter she made her mark in a series of historical and romantic dramas, including Jezebel (1938); Dark Victory (1939); Now, Voyager (1942); and the wonderful All About Eve (1950): she ultimately won the Best Actress Oscar twice, and was officially nominated a record ten times.  For years she was Warner Bros.’ most bankable star, specializing in bold, uncompromising portrayals of strong women.

 Joan Crawford, started out as a Broadway dancer, then in 1925 was signed to a contract at classy MGM, where she first specialized in playing flappers and then working girls who made good. Depression audiences loved her, and she was a marvelous hussy in The Women (1939), but eventually she wore out her welcome at MGM and moved to Warners in 1943. The noirish Mildred Pierce (1945) revived her career and won her an Oscar, but sharing the Warners lot with Queen Bee Bette Davis was a challenge.

 By 1962, Davis and Crawford (both in their fifties) found their careers had essentially dried up. That’s when someone got the bright idea of pairing these two fading stars in a Grand Guignol-style horror movie, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Their fabled real-life feud made audiences run to see them play two sisters who were once stars of the silver screen and now live together in a mansion where bad things happen. Someone has said that on film Davis is the quintessential sadist and Crawford (with her tremulous expressions) the quintessential masochist. In this film, so it plays out. Davis’s character, once the golden-haired kiddie star Baby Jane, is a drunk with a skewed view of reality. Crawford plays her sister, formerly a leading lady but now confined to a wheelchair after a mysterious accident that is explained (in a way that thoroughly baffled me) at the end of the film. Both are essentially grotesque, but Baby Jane revived their popularity, and Davis (though not Crawford) thereby racked up one more Oscar nom.

 Sad, though, that two fifty-year-old actresses needed to stoop to such trashy material. Happily, at least one great actress today still has her pick of roles. Everywhere I turn, I see photos of Meryl Streep, at 77, looking devastatingly glamorous in ads for The Devil Wears Prada 2.  Yes, she plays a sort of villain, but a gorgeous one.

Stealing the Crown Jewels

Ever since the news broke about the astounding jewel heist at the Louvre, I’ve had one big thought: what a great movie this could make! Of course, I’m also deeply sorry that the Napoleonic-era crown jewels on display in the Louvre’s galleries have been carried off by nefarious means. As a museum-lover myself, I don’t like shaking my head sadly over empty cases. Still, I’m a longtime fan of heist movies, and so I’ve got to admire the cleverness of the meticulous thieves who, in broad daylight entered the Louvre through an upper-story window and—in a mere seven minutes—made off with unspeakably fabulous gems.

 To be honest, I’ve enjoyed a lot of movies that center on the theft of jewels or precious minerals. The nature of the genre is such that we’re often rooting for the success of the thieves, though the films frequently end with a suspect in custody. Examples include The Italian Job, The Pink Panther (a series that started with the theft of an unusual pink diamond), and even—for a family audience—Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, in which an penguin who’s a ruthless diamond thief is pursued by our favorite man-&-dog duo. But I want to focus here on two outstanding crime caper films that take place in museums. 

 Topkapi, a 1964 caper movie, is very much on the side of the bad guys,  It seems there’s a certain jewel-encrusted dagger, once the prize possession of  Sultan Mahmud I, on display in Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace. Elaborate security measures are in place, but the presence of the dagger proves irresistible to an international jewel thief (Melina Mercouri), who recruits a former lover  (Maximilian Schell) to plan a brilliant heist. The two assemble a team with a wide range of skills: one is a muscleman, one an aerialist, one a slob who can be counted on to follow orders without thinking too clearly. (Peter Ustinov won an Oscar for this hilarious role.) Everything goes as planned, until – uh oh! By the by, Topkapi is directed by Jules Dassin, Mercouri’s husband. He’s also the director of a classic French jewel heist flick, Rififi, in which the audience is rendered breathless during a half-hour-long safecracking scene conducted in total silence.).

 Perhaps my very favorite film in this genre is How to Steal a Million¸ from 1966. This spritely caper comedy, directed by the great William Wyler, pairs Audrey Hepburn with Peter O’Toole as two unlikely folks who unite to steal a priceless antique statuette, known as the Cellini Venus, that’s newly on display in a Paris museum. The twist is that the statue is not an antique at all. It’s a clever forgery, and Hepburn desperately needs to get it back to save her father from disgrace (and probably prison). What makes the film lovable is the budding relationship between Hepburn’s concerned daughter and O’Toole’s “thief” who turns out to be not at all what he seems. If you’re a romantic who adores heist films with sunny endings, this is the movie for you.

 Right now we don’t know who stole the Napoleonic treasures or where they’ll end up. In their current form (as diadems, etc.), they’re probably too well known to be fenced, but of course they can be disassembled and the parts sold for very big bucks. It’s disheartening to know that art thieves sometimes manage to keep well-known works for decades. Consider Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which in 1990 was robbed of 13 works of art, including a Rembrandt and one of the world’s 34 Vermeers. No one has seen them since.

 

 

 

The Story of “The Nun’s Story”

Little girls of my generation were fascinated by nuns. This had nothing to do with being Roman Catholic: in my recollection the kids with the least respect for nuns were those unfortunates who attended Catholic schools, and were subjected to what they saw as a rigid and humorless group. But those of us with zero Catholic connection were entranced by the long heavy robes, the cropped heads covered by veils, the very idea that someone would wholly give up her private life for the sake of an ancient ritual. That’s probably why we gravitated toward everything from Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison to The Sound of Music. And, of course, we read Katherine Hulme’s 1956 best-seller, The Nun’s Story, based on the life of an actual Belgian nun who nursed the sick in the Congo during World War II. Somehow, though, I never saw the major Hollywood film based on that novel—until now.

 It's well known (everywhere but at the new Academy Museum) that the American film industry was largely started by Jewish immigrants. Still, despite the ethnic backgrounds of men like Jack Warner, Carl Laemmle, and Samuel Goldwyn, they were eager to please the American public by hewing as closely as possible to what they viewed as traditional American values. From the moment that censorship threatened to enter the picture, studio bosses actively looked to the Catholic Church for public approval of their projects. Particularly in the 1930s, the point-person within the industry who was charged with keeping the silver screen moral was Joseph Ignatius Breen, a devout Roman Catholic. Breen, who enforced the so-called Hays Code with missionary zeal, made sure that Hollywood films did not stray from subjects and behaviors of which the Church approved. Even after Breen’s retirement, the infamous Production Code continued to be largely enforced, until the arrival of television made the industry eager to capture and hold new audiences—at which point (we’re talking about the Sixties, of course) all hell broke loose.  

 What I hadn’t realized until now was that a big-budget film based on Hulme’s popular novel was hardly a slam dunk. Apparently, Warner Bros. sought to bring this material to the screen before the book was even published, but naysayers worried that its story—which depicts a gifted young woman’s inability to make peace with the unrelenting demands of her order—might alienate Catholics by casting a dim light on Church values. After all,  Sister Luke must agree to suppress her vibrant personality in order to conform to Church requirements for obedience. At one point she’s even told by a superior to fail an all-important exam as a necessary exercise in humility. Eventually director Fred Zinnemann and screenwriter Robert Anderson (neither of them Catholic) were persuaded that it was essential not to criticize the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary, while  also acknowledging that Sister Luke, for all her talents, was unsuited to the strict discipline the order required.

 Without Audrey Hepburn in the starring role, there would apparently have been no film. She’s perfectly cast as a young woman in love with God and with the chance to save souls by repairing damaged bodies. In the film’s early scenes, we are steeped in Church ritual—the flickering candles, the solemn processions, the rapt faces—and understand her commitment. But we also see how she blossoms, far from the Mother Church, in the Belgian Congo, where she can put her intelligence to work, unafraid of violating arcane rules of modesty and silence.  In the year of Ben-Hur, this film garnered 8 Oscar nominations, but (alas) not a single win.

 Happy birthday to Hilary, who (thankfully) is not a nun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Emma” and “Charade”: Close Encounters of the Romantic Kind

Now that I am housebound because of Covid-19 worries, I’ve been checking out a lot of feature films on my not-so-big TV screen. One I just watched was Emma, which Universal Studios was pragmatic enough – now that movie theatres are shuttered – to air on video very soon after its theatrical release. It’s not for me to comment on how the business model for Hollywood is being upended by the current pandemic. But I can record my feelings about this latest in a long line of Jane Austen adaptations for the screen. Emma, written by Austen in 1815, is a witty novel of manners about a very young woman who delights in her abilities as a matchmaker. Blessed with wealth, wit, and good looks, she takes charge of the social life of her small English village, with nearly disastrous consequences for all involved. But since Austen’s vision is a comic one, things right themselves in the end.

Emma has been filmed more than once. Gwyneth Paltrow played the title role in 1996, just after Amy Heckerling wrote and directed a delectable American adaptation called Clueless, set amongst the well-dressed teens at Beverly Hills High. The current version, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, has a welcome satiric edge, underscored by Autumn de Wilde’s witty directorial flourishes and by an offbeat score. I enjoyed it as a welcome diversion, but found little emotional reason to connect with this material. Maybe it’s a matter of timing. The characters in Emma, whatever their social station, all have their place in a tight-knit small community: there’s little chance for interaction with the outside world. But unlike those of us who are sheltering in place today, they don’t feel themselves the least bit isolated. Even ladies of leisure find so much to do. There are balls, picnics, small shopping expeditions; a young woman, like Emma, can also occupy herself with sketching, singing, playing the piano, and poking her nose into everyone else’s business. And, of course, just getting dressed and crimped and groomed (in the rather hideous sack-like fashions of the early nineteenth century) takes a fair amount of time.  No sweatpants for even the stay-at-homes.

British character actors are always worth watching, and one of the treasures of this production is the great Bill Nighy as Emma’s discombobulated father. But one question I  keep finding myself asking: why is it that today’s leading men (like Johnny Flynn’s Mr. Knightley) seem to underscore their masculinity through their failure to brush their hair? The heroes of old movies perhaps overdid the patent-leather-hair look, but I for one am tired of all those unkempt locks.

As a change of pace from Emma, I followed up with one of Hollywood’s great Golden Age treats: 1963”s Charade. This Stanley Donen classic stars an adorable Audrey Hepburn opposite an impeccable, every-hair-in-place Cary Grant. Instead of a quaint English village, we get Paris; instead of matchmaking we get murder, though the film’s violence is so deliciously low-key that there’s nary a fear of taking the story too solemnly. Hepburn’s heroine may be far more experienced than Emma—she’s a well-heeled married lady whose husband has just been offed under mysterious circumstances—but she is almost equally naïve in the ways of the world. And Grant’s character, with his shifting names and identities, represents a tough nut she has to crack. In one respect, Charade and Emma work in parallel: both feature a sweet young thing being wooed and won by a much older man. There was a 25-year-age difference between Audrey Hepburn (at 34) and Cary Grant (at 59), but no one has ever objected.