Regarding Rosalind Russell

Well, it was supposed to be funny. I’m old enough (alas) to remember the Oscar broadcast of 1959. Back in those days, the show’s musical numbers were not nearly as elaborate as they are today. At one point in the evening, three British actresses (one was Angela Lansbury) sang a little ditty about their countrywoman, Deborah Kerr, who was up for Best Actress for her starring role in Separate Tables. While praising Kerr, they took would-be witty potshots at her rivals for the honor. Regarding Rosalind Russell, they cattily opined that “Your mother could have scored with Auntie Mame.”     

 As a kid I realized full well that it’s not nice to compare a film star to somebody’s mother. Still, much as I loved Russell’s madcap performance as the wealthy, uninhibited, fundamentally good-hearted Mame, I definitely put Russell in the middle-aged category.  (She was over fifty at the time.) Years later, I was surprised to learn that before World War II she was a glamorous leading lady type, particularly in comedies. After portraying a conniving society dame in The Women (1939) she graduated to the leading role of Hildy Johnson, ace reporter and the object of Cary Grant’s affections in the wonderfully screwball His Girl Friday (1940). Her first Oscar nomination came for her portrayal of the savvy but lovelorn elder sister in 1942’S My Sister Eileen.  But later in the decade she was again up for the golden statuette for playing a heroic nun in Sister Kenny (1946) and a tragic heroine in the film version of Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra (1947 – not a lot of laughs in that one!).

 In the following decade, Russell was a natural to repeat her Broadway triumph in Auntie Mame. The film version, though overlong, has its own sparkle, as Mame ebulliently proceeds to adopt an orphan boy, a bashful Southern millionaire, and a woebegone unwed mother into her life. (The last of these plot lines is extraordinarily dated, but Peggy Cass is hilarious – and Oscar-nominated – as the addlepated Agnes Gooch.) 

 AS she moved into the 1960s, though, Hollywood didn’t seem quite clear on how to make use of her considerable talents. In 1961 she starred in the screen version of a hit stage comedy, A Majority of One. Broadway audiences had kvelled to the performance of Gertrude Berg (TV’s Molly Goldberg) as a rather stereotypical New York Jewish widow who—against all odds—falls for a Japanese widower (would you believe Sir Cedric Hardwicke?) despite the misgivings of her family. The idea is that Bertha Jacoby, who lost a son in the Pacific during World War II, has a strong distaste for anything Japanese, until she meets a Japanese gentleman with his own sorrows. Of course it’s meant to be a story of love and reconciliation, and audiences of the day found it heart-warming..

 I’m told that Russell herself wanted Berg to repeat her stage triumph, but bowed to  Jack Warner’s insistence that she step into the role. She played opposite Alec Guinness, a talented actor known for his chameleon-like transformations but hardly convincing as an Asian. So a play about the melding of Jewish and Japanese culture was played by two Roman Catholics with roots in the British Isles, in an era long before our current passion for political correctness. Ugh!

 In 1962, Russell took on another hit Broadway role, that of Mama Rose in Gypsy, but it was hardly a triumph, partly due to her limited skill as a singer. She ended her career playing funny nuns in two The Trouble with Angels films. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Camelot" Ushers in the Lusty Month of May

Today is May 1, the traditional date for little girls to dance around Maypoles and Soviet workers to parade through the streets. It’s also the start of “The Lusty Month of May.” This is the title of a big production number in Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot, and it’s my cue to talk about the 1967 movie version of the Broadway musical hit.

Jack Warner, the last of the great movie moguls, loved Camelot. He was convinced that a film adaptation could be as huge a box office success as the top roadshow of that era, The Sound of Music. He also felt it could equal the cachet of Warner Bros.’ previous Lerner and Loewe extravaganza, My Fair Lady. Nearing the end of a long career (he was about to sell the studio to Seven Arts), Warner anted up $1 million to buy the film rights, then spent a great deal more to make the production as sumptuous as humanly possible. Ultimately he invested somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 million, which in that era was an enormous expenditure. His crew, headed by director Joshua Logan, filmed at eight Spanish castles. Australia designer John Truscott was signed to produce exquisitely detailed costumes, like Queen Guenevere’s wedding gown. Encrusted with tiny sea shells and pumpkin seeds, it’s reported to have cost $12,000, though its full beauty was never fully captured on screen. 

So intense was Warner’s focus on Camelot that he pretty much ignored smaller Warner Bros. films of that era, like Bonnie and Clyde. At first his gamble seemed like a good one. The fact that Camelot was widely known as the favorite musical of the late President Kennedy worked in his favor, and the story’s elegiac tone seemed to suit the mood of the day. So many expensive reserved seats were sold well in advance that he could afford to stock his picture with rising young British stars like Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave whose appeal was largely to the art-house set. Said Warner with satisfaction, upon watching the completed film, “It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure that there’ll be pictures like that one any more.” 

Director Logan, in talking about Camelot’s appeal, emphatically did not promote it as suitable for a family audience. The story, of course, is that of the tragic love triangle between the mythic King Arthur, his queen, and the noble knight, Sir Lancelot du Lac. Promised Logan, “The film shows real adultery in the relations of the King, Guenevere and Lancelot, something the stage musical didn’t do.” Tying his movie to the shifting morality of the Sixties, Logan called it “a mod treatment of the adultery theme,” with physical passion woven into the film’s very fabric. This determination to appeal to hip young Baby Boomers comes through loud and clear, starting with Camelot’s gorgeous poster, which features Guenevere’s wildly flowing and flower-entwined tresses, along with an almost psychedelic profusion of colors. The outdoor frolicking in several of the big musical setpieces seems cribbed from some edition of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. Featured players Vanessa Redgrave (Guenevere) and David Hemmings (Mordred) represented Boomer touchstones due to their appearance in 1966’s Blow-Up, which combined philosophical conundrums with some of the first on-screen nudity that American youth had ever seen.   

Warner Bros. was so sure of this film that merchandisers went berserk, offering up Camelot-themed nightwear, wallpaper, and stockings in “a pageant of ‘translucent’ colors, misting the legs in romantic shades from an enchanted spectrum.” Too bad the movie belly-flopped, leaving Bonnie and Clyde as the last big hit of the Jack Warner era.