Bloodfist: Remembering “Body and Soul”

It’s hard to believe how many Hollywood films (and international films, for that matter) have focused on prizefighting. Such ring-set films seem to have a built-in audience: Wikipedia lists 50 boxing movies that over the years have grossed between $3 million and $300 million at the worldwide box office. At the very top of the list are five Rocky movies, as well as three Creed films that can be considered Rocky spinoffs with an African-American twist. A number of highly successful boxing movies are biopics: see Ali (2001), with “The Greatest” played by Will Smith; The Hurricane (1999), about the ringside and legal woes of Rubin “The Hurricane” Carter; The Great White Hope (1970), the slightly fictionalizing story of early Black prizefighter Jack Johnson; and of course Martin Scorsese’s great Raging Bull (1980) in which Robert De Niro plays the deeply troubled Jake La Motta. (I could name a good many more boxing biopics, but enough is enough.)

 Then there are boxing-related films that qualify as comedies. See for instance, Danny Kaye in a musical called The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), about a neighborhood milkman who accidentally becomes a boxing sensation. The high-grossing Any Which Way But Loose (1978) and its sequel, Any Which Way You Can (1980), both star no less than Clint Eastwood as a trucker who’s also a bare-knuckles brawler, and who roams the American West along with an orangutan named Clyde. In a more sentimental vein, a desperate Charlie Chaplin tries boxing in City Lights (1931), a film that many consider his masterpiece. Even more sentimental is another 1931 flick, The Champ, starring Wallace Beery as an over-the-hill prizefighter desperately trying to care for his young son. And let’s not forget Hilary Swank as a female boxer whose dreams are shattered, along with her body, in Clint Eastwood’s poignant Oscar-winning Million Dollar Baby (2004)

 My parents, who loathed John Wayne westerns as well as anything to do with boxing, made room in their hearts for John Ford’s The Quiet Man (1952). It’s the rollicking story of a former pro boxer with a guilty conscience who must reluctantly fight on behalf of the lass he loves. It’s a carefree Gaelic romp just right for St. Patrick’s Day.

 On the other hand, there’s 1947’s Body and Soul, which is a great deal more somber, but is often considered one of the best boxing films of all time. This designation is partly because it was shot by the great cinematographer James Wong Howe, who later won Oscars for both The Rose Tattoo and Hud. If part of the attraction of boxing on film is that it allows for intense close-ups of two human bodies in motion, Howe’s in-tight camerawork beautifully conveys the sport’s intensity. Meanwhile director Robert Rossen’s strong cast, led by John Garfield, punches home a powerful story about a young would-be boxer, his girl, his worried mother, and the dangerous men who control him. The film was a critical and commercial hit, accruing three Oscar nominations (it won a statuette for its editing). But its cast and crew paid a high price. The story, which specifically pointed to Jews and African Americans as victimized by powerful WASP interests, was not a safe one to be telling in an era when the House Un-American Activities Committee was on the rise. Star Garfield, screenwriter Abraham Polonsky, and director Robert Rossen all found themselves called to testify before HUAC, and only Rossen (who eventually agreed to name names) emerged unscathed. Garfield continued to make films, but was deeply scarred by the HUAC experience. He died in 1952 at age 39. 

 

Baseball Goes to the Movies (or Root Root Root for the Home Team)

OF COURSE I’m rooting for the Dodgers to win the World Series. I’ve loved the team since it moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, putting down roots at Chavez Ravine after a crazy season playing baseball in the historic L.A. Coliseum, where homeruns over the short left-field fence were almost inevitable. I admit these days I’m something of a fair-weather fan, ignoring the team when they are flailing and paying attention mostly when they’re in the thick of a pennant run.

When I was growing up, though, my whole family bled Dodger Blue. That was the era when Danny Kaye performed a hilarious song outlining a hypothetical game in which the Dodgers miraculously whip their arch-rivals, the San Francisco Giants. (Oh really? No, O’Malley.) Not only did I learn the Dodger Song  (see below) by heart but I actually seized the opportunity to sing part of it for Danny Kaye himself, when he visited the U.S. Pavilion at Expo ’70. (If you think I wasn’t a bit tongue-tied at that moment, you’re very much mistaken.)  

Anyway, now that baseball is in the air, I’m taking the opportunity to wax philosophical about why so many Hollywood movies have baseball settings. I haven’t done a serious survey, but it seems to me there are far more movies about baseball than about any other sport, like football, basketball, tennis, or golf. Why? Maybe it’s for the same reason that baseball has long been considered America’s favorite pastime. Though it of course celebrates teamwork, it also remains the spectator sport that best spotlights the talents of a rugged individualist, the player who can win a game with one pitch or one swing of the bat. 

Looking back on the baseball movies of the past, I see that some of the most famous are those that focus on the deeds of a single hero, like Lou Gehrig in 1942’a The Pride of the Yankees. There are also multitudes of movies in which the heroics come from underdogs who unexpectedly rise to the occasion. Witness, for instance, The Bad News Bears (1976, plus a slew of sequels and remakes), as well as A League of Their Own (1992), in which women show that they too have what it takes to play ball.

For some reason the 1980s (the era when the Dodgers last enjoyed World Series play) gave rise to many notable baseball films. Both The Natural (1984, based on Bernard Malamud’s first novel) and Field of Dreams (1989) endow the sport with mythic dimensions. In 1988, John Sayles delved into baseball history’s ugliest moment, the fixing of the 1919 World Series by the Chicago White Sox, in Eight Men Out.  Here was a case where the mythology turned dark, in a film highlighting the betrayal of America’s hopes and dreams. Much more fun was the subject matter of 1988’s other baseball movie, Bull Durham, with its focus on sexy fans who’ll do just about anything to show their loyalty to their favorite minor-league team.  

In recent years,  the heroics of Jackie Robinson, baseball’s first black player, were highlighted in 2013’s lively tribute film, 42. But our cynical era is perhaps best represented by 2011’s Moneyball, a hit movie based on the real-life story of how the Oakland A’s general manager, Billy Beane, used computer-generated analysis to build himself a champion ballclub.  It’s a provocative subject, and the film was nominated for six Oscars. But I admit I for one feel machinations in the front office are ultimately less interesting than exploits on  the field. 

Go Blue!

"Up in Arms": A Peach of a Pair at the Movies

When your mother is a packrat, you find yourself with all sorts of treasures. The letters my parents exchanged during World War II, when my G.I. father was stationed in a finance office in Indianapolis while my mother served as a social worker in Omaha, showed how important a role movies played in keeping their morale high during their enforced separation from one another. Both went to the movies constantly in their off-hours: motion pictures were cheap entertainment, could provide inspiration or a few laughs, and had the extra advantage of being shown in theatres that were “refrigerated,” in the terminology of the day. There’s one family story about Omaha, a sweltering city in mid-summer. Given that few residences were air-conditioned, staying home was out of the question. And so my parents—when together--were always seeking out  movies that struck their fancy. They loved to laugh, which is why comedies were always their first choice. In the summer of 1944, that meant Danny Kaye in Up in Arms:  they saw this laugh-fest about a hypochondriac who gets drafted into the Army at least seven times in the space of a few weeks. As a result, they learned all the musical numbers (including the zany Lobby Number) by heart -- and, years later, so did I. (When it’s cherry blossom time in Orange, New Jersey, we’ll make a peach of a pair . . . . but I digress.)

            Sadly, I’m cleaning out my mother’s home these days. (She died almost a year ago, at age 96.) Among the many souvenirs she saved was a professional caricature of herself done on May 5, 1944, on the back of a menu at L.A.’s swankiest nightspot, the Cocoanut Grove. My parents were obviously celebrating being home on a brief leave by going out on the town. The Cocoanut Grove, located in the famous Ambassador Hotel, was well known for its jungle décor, and for being a playground for Hollywood stars. My folks were Depression-era kids, so the prices must have seemed extravagant. Like the Dinner de Luxe, featuring an appetizer, soup, an entrée like chicken or leg of lamb, salad, dessert, and demi-tasse, for a whopping $3.00. And you also got to see a stage show featuring some of the day’s hottest musical acts.

            Needless to say, the Cocoanut Grove was featured in many films. On February 29, 1940, the Academy Awards were staged there, with Bob Hope as emcee. In 1967, the Cocoanut Grove didn’t make it into The Graduate. But the scenes supposedly set in the “Taft Hotel” lobby (where desk clerk Buck Henry flummoxes Benjamin Braddock by asking, “Are you here for an affair, sir?”) were shot in a cordoned-off section of the Ambassador’s own spacious entryway.  Just one year later, in the wee hours of  June 5, 1968, the Ambassador Hotel found another, much sadder, form of notoriety when Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy—having just won the California primary—was gunned down by Sirhan Sirhan. The hotel was Kennedy’s campaign headquarters. Having delivered a victory speech in one ballroom, he was passing through a hotel kitchen on his way to another venue, when Sirhan fired three times at close range. He died following surgery.

            It’s eerie to remember that I was there – one of thousands waiting to hear a victory speech that never came. My parents were present too. The Ambassador Hotel seemed far less glamorous after that tragedy. It closed down early in this century, and was replaced with a school complex that bears Kennedy’s name. A planned documentary about the Ambassador never quite happened. 

Kids from Brooklyn: Danny (Kaye) and Sylvia (Fine) and Woody (Allen) and Spike (Lee)

It must be something in the water. Over the years, the number of talented people coming out of New York’s most populous borough has been staggeringly high. I recently toured the picturesque section called Brooklyn Heights, strolling through the neighborhood where Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman, Thomas Wolfe struggled with Look Homeward, Angel, and Betty Smith explored domestic life in the popular novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Ironically, they all wrote about misery while living with a view of the New York skyline that’s downright gorgeous.

Though newly home, I’m still in a New York state of mind. A young man I know and love is a budding writer of music theatre. A showcase of his original work -- Dorks, Drunks, and Dinosaurs: The Songs of Jeff Bienstock – just lit up the stage of a small but trendy cabaret theatre. The Laurie Beechman is on fabled 42^nd Street, a few blocks west of Broadway.  Jeff, though, does not call Manhattan home.  One of his catchiest songs, “California Time,” may be a paean to his native Santa Monica. But, like so many young folks with creative aspirations, he’s turned into a Brooklynite.

Appropriately, I’ve just seen a small exhibit housed in the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles.  Called “Two Kids from Brooklyn,” it pays tribute to the careers of Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine. It’s accompanied by clips of Kaye in some of his many guises: clowning in films and on television, conducting the New York Philharmonic, serving as UNICEF ambassador to needy children around the globe. Kaye may have become a citizen of the world, but he started out in Brooklyn. And like so many entertainers of the day, he began by performing as a “tummler” (or comic master-of-ceremonies) in Borscht Belt summer resorts. That’s where he met another kid from Brooklyn, Sylvia Fine, who had a talent for writing witty songs. One of these, featuring a pseudo-French hat-maker called Anatole of Paris, was debuted by Kaye at Camp Tamiment in the Poconos. He later used it as the finale of his nightclub act, and in 1947 it became a dream sequence in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Obviously, Sylvia Fine was a great help to Danny Kaye’s career. As she often put it, “He couldn’t afford to pay me so he married me.”

A later kid from Brooklyn, Woody Allen, didn’t hone his comic talents in the Catskills. Rather, while still in his teens, he was earning big bucks for supplying TV performers with material. His involvement with Sid Caesar put him in the company of some of the best comic writers in the business. By the Sixties, he was performing his own material, then went on to write, direct, and star in some of our best-loved films. His portraits of Jewish homelife in Brooklyn are iconic – I’ll never forget Alvy Singer’s family living under the roller coaster in Annie Hall – but Allen himself eventually moved to a two-story penthouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.    

Spike Lee has devoted much of his directing career to films with an unmistakable Brooklyn flavor. The gritty neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant has always been his particular territory, starting with his NYU thesis film, Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads.  Later Lee portraits of the area include the impish She’s Gotta Have It and the dark, disturbing Do The Right Thing.

In Saturday Night Fever, John Travolta’s character finally makes it out of Brooklyn to start a better life in Manhattan. Today’s Brooklynites prefer to stay put, but I hope some of them make it to Broadway.

Danny Kaye: A Peach of a Performer

One of my very first movie memories involves Danny Kaye, whose official centennial arrives on January 18. When I was about to start kindergarten, my mother announced that we were going to a matinee with a friend and her five-year-old son. Since Lee was (heavens!) a boy, I leaped to the conclusion that we would be seeing a cowboy movie. It was called Hans Christian Andersen, which sounded like a Western to me. Instead, of course, it was a bogus biopic, turning the life of the great Danish author into a vehicle for Danny Kaye, complete with spritely Frank Loesser songs and a big dream ballet. I was enchanted.

In later years, I continued to be a Danny Kaye fan. I was especially delighted by the sublime silliness of The Court Jester, in which such authentically English folk as Angela Lansbury, Glynis Johns, and the great Basil Rathbone keep straight faces while acting out a drama of royal intrigue set in a Technicolor Middle Ages. The Court Jester is the film in which “the pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle,” and Kaye instantly turns from coward to master swordsman with a snap of the fingers. Hilarious!

As I was to discover, my parents had their own fond recollections of Danny Kaye. During World War II, my father was stationed for a long stretch in Omaha, Nebraska, and my mother was able to join him there. The heat was stifling, and only movie theatres were air-conditioned. So every night they went to the movies. And the movie they saw most often -– at least six times –- was a military comedy called Up in Arms, featuring Danny as a hypochondriac who gets inducted into the U.S. Army. The goofy plot is punctuated by patter songs, written by Sylvia Fine (Mrs. Danny Kaye) to show off her husband’s talent for inspired buffoonery. There is, for instance, the parody of a razzle-dazzle Hollywood production number --“When it’s cherry blossom time in Orange, New Jersey, we’ll make a peach of a pair” -- featured in his famous “Lobby Number.” My mother still remembers most of the words, and I do too.

Kaye took on the occasional serious role (as when he played bandleader Red Nichols in a weepie called The Five Pennies), but a later generation probably remembers him best for one of the great TV variety shows of all time, The Danny Kaye Show (1963-1967). He also could put on a helluva live performance, and I saw him at least once at L.A.’s Greek Theater. That’s when I first heard his Dodger Song (“Oh really? No, O’Malley”), because Kaye shared with me a passion for our local baseball team.

Cut to 1970, when I was one of 56 Japanese-speaking guides greeting visitors to the U.S. Pavilion at Expo 70 in Osaka. Celebrities came through almost daily (Imelda Marcos! Britain’s Prince Charles! Emperor Hirohito! Astronauts just back from the moon!), so it was easy to become blasé. But I was thrilled to see Danny Kaye and his entourage being escorted through. When he approached the folk art exhibit where I was standing, I greeted him enthusiastically, and announced that I knew the Dodger song by heart. Uh oh! His eyes twinkling with mischief, he insisted that I sing it for him. Caught between embarrassment and bravado, I stammered out a few lines, as journalists’ cameras clicked away. Fortunately for the world’s eardrums, that footage has never surfaced. But I’ll never forget my one meeting with Danny Kaye. May his memory -- and his movies -- live on forever.