Physically and Emotionally Naked: Remembering Sally Kirkland

So, I’m sorry to say, Sally Kirkland is no longer with us.  If, that is, she ever was. My personal feeling is that Sally came from another  planet, and only visited earth occasionally. She was, in any case, one of a kind.

 The highlight of Sally’s acting career was Anna, a 1987 indie in which she played the title role, that of a Slavic actress who has survived political persecution. The showy part won her a Golden Globe, and she was even nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. (Her competition included Glenn Close for Fatal Attraction, Holly Hunter for Broadcast News, Meryl Streep for Ironweed, and the winner, Cher, for Moonstruck.)

 But I knew Sally before all that, when she was one of the many aspiring movie people hanging around the Sunset Strip offices of Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. An Actors Studio alumna who had also spent time among Andy Warhol’s The Factory crazies, she helped out with casting, and also played small but flamboyant roles like “Barney’s woman” in Big Bad Mama. She performed in some major studio films too, like The Sting, Private Benjamin, and JFK, mostly in parts that called for big emotions and very few clothes.

 Sally, you see, had a thing for nudity. A former model, she was tall and lean, with augmented breasts. (Years later, she was to become a very public crusader against breast implants.) When I was researching my former boss for the biography that evolved into Roger Corman: Blood-Sucking Vampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers, she told me that on screen she had a gift for appearing both physically and emotionally undressed: “Combining the emotional nakedness with the physical nakedness—that’s something that Roger’s always loved about my work.” 

 The 1999 in-person interview I did with Sally for that book is something I’ll never, ever forget. We met at the Silver Spoon, a trendy West Hollywood coffee shop near her home. When I entered, she (fully dressed) was ensconced in a booth, beneath a large framed movie poster of herself in Anna. And she was not alone. There was a young male assistant sitting beside her, taking notes, and I realized I was expected to buy them both breakfast. She was also the only person I interviewed for the Corman book who required me to sign an agreement allowing her to check all her quotes and context before my book was published. (When I later complied, she kept tinkering with her own brief bio at the rear of the book to make sure pretty much every film she’d ever made was mentioned.)

 We were studying our menus when two very attractive young blondes walked through the door. They were wearing low-cut blouses and short-shorts, and they looked to be identical. Twins? They were, it turned out, Sally’s acting students, and she’d invited them along. And then . . . a third young lady arrived. Yes, triplets. Sally proudly told me that, like her, they’d been featured in a Playboy spread, and that they now—under her tutelage—were getting ready to pursue acting careers. And I discovered I’d be buying breakfast for myself and five other people. (The triplets sat, looking awestruck, as Sally praised Roger to the skies for encouraging her directing aspirations and for treating her like a member of his family.)

 Sally Kirkland was, among many other things, a crusader for a variety of causes. I of course have no way of knowing where she is now. But I’m sure of one thing: wherever she may have ended up, it’s where the action is.

 

 

 

Bob Mackie, Naked?

I met Bob Mackie circa 1981, on the fabled MGM studio lot. We were on the set for Herbert Ross’s ambitious musical, Pennies from Heaven, starring Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters. They played dreamers who (almost) survive the Great Depression by fantasizing about living lives filled with music, dance, and luxuries like spectacular clothing. Needless to say, this was a dream assignment for Mackie, whose chief claim to fame at the time was his flamboyant duds for TV divas like Carol Burnett and Cher.

 As a big fan of the Carol Burnett Show, I asked the amiable blond Mackie (wearing a polo shirt and looking like a kid) whether he was responsible solely for the lavish gowns in which Burnett greeted her weekly studio audiences. In fact, he explained, he did everything related to costuming for the long-running weekly variety show. This meant bunny suits for the dancers, when needed, and goofy garb for Burnett in her various skits. It turns out—as Burnett herself is quick to admit—that it was Mackie who came up with the crowning sight-gag in a movie parody of Gone With the Wind that got one of the show’s all-time biggest laughs. Burnett plays Scarlett O’Hara, forced to greet a post-war Rhett Butler in a dress hastily crafted from her plantation’s green velvet curtains. When she wafts down Tara’s majestic staircase, viewers can’t help guffawing: her home-made gown still retains its original curtain rod.

 Burnett is one of many celebs interviewed by Matthew Miele for his lively 2024 documentary, Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion. Its title refers to the tantalizingly sheer sheath gowns designed by Mackie first for Mitzi Gaynor and eventually for Cher, who—with her scintillatingly slender figure—has been perhaps his ultimate muse. His glittery gowns hint at nudity but leave the wearer’s private areas discreetly covered, though oh so sexy. For Mackie, all this now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t glitz is fun to design, and has led him to costume everyone from Vegas show girls to Barbie. Another of his more unusual clients in Elton John, who encouraged Mackie’s outrageous side, allowing him to come up with a Donald Duck ensemble and an Amadeus-style frock coat, as well as a sequined baseball uniform for a sold-out concert at Dodger Stadium.

 It's clear that Mackie adores pretty women (and pretty men like RuPaul), but in fact he seems to like pretty much everyone. The documentary carefully hints at his sexual orientation, but also shows homey scenes of the now-eighty-plus-year-old Mackie (grey-haired but still boyish) cozily hanging out with his recently-discovered granddaughter and her children on a sunny patio. (His son Robin, a Hollywood make-up artist, died in 1993 at age 33 after an apparently turbulent life.) Though he dresses top stars, Mackie seems wholly comfortable—even overjoyed—to be dressing conservatively and blending into family surroundings.

 Mackie’s talent for glamour has earned him fame and fortune, as well as many accolades from his peers. (The film opens with him modestly accepting myriad awards from fellow designers and critics.) But the top Hollywood honors have eluded him. He has three long-ago Oscar nominations—for Lady Sings the Blues, Funny Lady, and Pennies from Heaven. In the documentary, Carol Burnett expresses outrage that the 1982 Oscar for costume design went not to Pennies from Heaven but to the year’s big film, Chariots of Fire. In this well-crafted period Olympic Games drama, veteran designer Milena Canonero’s cast mostly wear track suits that look like long underwear. Ah well! I guess no one can win them all. 

 

Hail and farewell to Mitzi Gaynor, an early Bob Mackie muse, who has just died at age 93

Robert Altman Goes Indie: “Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean”

It’s hard to resist a movie with an outrageous title like Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Especially when you learn it was directed by a past master of quirky ensemble dramas, Robert Altman. It was not until I’d watched this small 1982 film that I found out it began life as a play, written by an Ohio-based dramatist who was also for many years the artistic director of a local theatre company. It had a brief stay on Broadway when Altman left Hollywood for more fertile artistic climes. That stage production starred Oscar winner Sandy Dennis (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf), Oscar nominee Karen Black (Five  Easy Pieces), and Broadway newcomer Cher, who would win her own Oscar for Moonstruck five years later. Also featured were Marta Heflin and Kathy Bates, another future Best Actress Oscar recipient. All these women repeated their roles in the modest film production.

 Hooray for low-key productions in which actors have the opportunity to shine! The film, like the play, mostly takes place in a modest Woolworth five-and-dime store, a place where you can sip a Coke at the lunch counter, listen to the McGuire sisters harmonize on the jukebox, and then shop for pretty much anything you can think of.  This one is in McCarthy, Texas, a stone’s throw from Marfa. The rapidly decaying Marfa is, in the eyes of the store’s patrons, a shrine of sorts, because it is where the film Giant was shot, back in 1955. Giant, of course, starred Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and heartthrob James Dean, who was killed in a California auto crash before the film’s release.

 In a story that moves back and forth in time, we see the central characters in 1955 and also at a reunion meet-up twenty years later. (Their costumes and appearances don’t really change from era to era, which makes for a lot of confusion on the part of viewers.) They are all members of a fan club called The Disciples of James Dean, and have the matching red jackets to prove it. Mona (the twitchy but always interesting Dennis) is convinced she was chosen to be an extra in Giant. She’s furthermore sure that she spent a romantic evening in Marfa with Dean himself, resulting in a never-seen but clearly difficult son she named after his daddy. In the twenty years since the filming of Giant and Dean’s deadly accident, some things have changed and others haven’t. Bates’ character, the sassy Stella Mae, seems to have gotten rich. Heflin’s Edna Louise is now married and perennially expecting.  But Mona remains as daffy and Dean-infatuated as ever, and Cher’s voluptuous Sissy is still the siren of the group. At midpoint, there’s also a mysterious stranger (Karen Black) who seems to know a surprising amount about the town and its inhabitants. Aha! A mystery! But not one that seems, in the long run, terribly convincing.

 I try to be open-minded when it comes to art. I don’t like rules about who should or shouldn’t handle certain subjects. I don’t think you should be required to write only about what you know in a deeply personal way. That being said, the man who wrote this play abut women doesn’t seem to have a genuine understanding of the opposite sex. I can’t put a finger on anything he gets terribly wrong, but the characters he’s created seem far more theatrical constructs than flesh-and-blood human beings. And the play’s stab at exploring gender identity, which may have seemed bold in 1982, just strikes me as a ham-handed trick here.

 

 

In the Family Way: “Moonstruck”

I wonder what genuine Italian-Americans think of Moonstruck, which in 1987 was a huge critical and popular hit. Do they consider it a charming, heartwarming representation of a vanishing way of life? Or do they cringe at the clichés, annoyed at being presented to the world as superstitious, hyperemotional, in love with food, sex, and opera? Maybe they’re just glad that this fanciful version of life in an Italian section of Brooklyn--while it may boast some (offscreen) lusty coupling and a smidgeon of adultery—contains nary a single Mafioso. Not being of Italian descent myself, I am free to enjoy this fairytale (which, I should note, is based on an Oscar-winning original screenplay by John Patrick Shanley, who is no more Italian than I am).

There is, I should note, a mostly Italian-American cast, featuring Vincent Gardenia as a philandering papa, Broadway avant-garde specialist Julie Bovasso as a lusty aunt, and the late Danny Aiello as a hapless suitor. The leading man is Nicolas Cage, who is actually a Coppola with a name change. But the film’s two performance Oscars were won by women whose kinfolk came from other locales. Cher (born Cherilyn Sarkisian) can claim Armenian descent, and Olympia Dukakis is Greek-American. Well, I guess their Mediterranean roots make them close enough for Hollywood.

At any rate, their characters are definitely people with a well-defined outlook. They strongly believe in luck, mostly bad. (Cher’s Loretta started off her marriage on the wrong foot because there was no church wedding. As a direct consequence, her husband was hit by a bus and died.) Whatever their behavior during the week, these women go to confession on Sunday. They crave romantic rapture, but remain highly suspicious of it: to marry for love is to invite disappointment. Still, there’s always room for the occasional miracle, like the one in faraway Palermo that solves everyone’s problems at the film’s end. So long as that huge round moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie (as in the Dean Martin musical oldie that opens and closes the film), everything will turn out as it should.

You can call this movie a watered-down form of grand opera: the snippet of Puccini’s La Bohème we hear in Moonstruck captures something of the characters’ baroque emotional journeys. Though the operatic performance that’s a key part of the plot takes place at WASP-y Lincoln Center, it tugs directly at the heartstrings of the blue-collar Italians in attendance. (There’s a key moment when Loretta, overcome by her first taste of opera, breaks down her emotional barriers. Her eyes moisten, and suddenly this self-sufficient woman is ready to clutch the proffered hand of someone who loves her This night-at-the-opera trope was stolen, I suspect, by the writers of Pretty Woman, who created a similarly transformative moment for Julia Roberts, in the company of Richard Gere, three years later.) 

More than anything, though, Moonstruck is a movie about the unbreakable bonds of family. To cast off (or cast out) a family member is to invite disaster. On the other hand, to bring family together (especially around a dinner table stocked with plenty of pasta and wine) is to usher in God’s grace. At a time when most of us are stuck in self-isolation, sometimes separated by great distances from loved ones, it sounds like a dream come true to be crowded around a table groaning with the weight of good food. Would that this year’s Easter and Passover celebrations could allow for that “all in the family” kind of joy.