A Star is Born (Again)

Why, exactly, do we love movies about the making of movies? Showbiz seems like a glamorous , mysterious world that most of us aspire to enter. Many of us nurse private fantasies about a stardom we know we’ll never achieve, and there’s a perverse comfort in discovering that show business has its seamy side—and its tragic side—as well.  

 Curiously, in the early days of sound movies, most of the showbiz stories on the screen—pictures like Busby Berkeley’s 42^nd Street and Footlight Parade as well as chestnuts like Stage Door—were devoted to the challenge of putting on a theatrical production. It was Broadway that seemed most glamorous back then. Berkeley’s famous musical numbers, like the “By a Waterfall” extravaganza from Golddiggers of 1933, contained elements like scantily-clad chorines swimming in formation, gliding underwater, or sliding down waterfalls into welcoming lagoons. Such moments were often shot from above, and the joke was that they couldn’t possibly work in a Broadway theatre.

 Despite moviedom’s ongoing fascination with success on the Broadway stage, the 1930s also saw two popular flicks that chronicle a newcomer’s overnight rise to Hollywood stardom. In 1932, George Cukor directed Constance Bennett in What Price Hollywood?, the saga of a waitress who’s discovered by a film director with a drinking problem. She quickly achieves fame and fortune, while he spirals downward, with romantic complications galore. It was briefly popular, though no one pretended it was a realistic look at the film industry. A mere five years later, William Wellman directed Janet Gaynor and Frederic March in A Star is Born, which is quite similar to What Price Hollywood ? in its plotting, but adds the complication that Vicki Lester (née Esther Blodgett) loves and marries her champion, fading actor Norman Maine. The lavish production, which some say mirrored the troubled marriage of Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Fay, was enormously successful.

 Almost twenty years later, in 1954, Cukor took another crack at the material, which was to be his first musical and first Technicolor film. This version of A Star is Born showcases the powerful singing of Judy Garland, who was looking for a career comeback, as well as the dissolute complexity of the ageing thespian played by James Mason. (In his George Cukor’s People, film historian Joseph McBride calls this film, despite its studio butchering, Cukor’s very finest effort.)  The restored version I’ve just finished watching is 178 moments long, and there are some unusual tonal shifts from cheery musical comedy hijinks to downright tragedy, but this is the version to see. And hear: Garland belting “The Man That Got Away” is a moment not to be missed. (It was nominated for a Best Song Oscar, but—unthinkably—lost to the sweet, syrupy “Three Coins in the Fountain”).

 Making Esther into a singer opened the door for two further remakes featuring pop legends of the moment. The 1976 film, starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, shifts the familiar story to the world of rock ‘n’ roll, adding onscreen sex, a soupçon of infidelity, and a really memorable poster.  The year 2018 saw Bradley Cooper’s re-imagining of the story, with Lady Gaga garnering raves for her first serious acting role.

 Who knows when the next version will show up? Maybe—why not?—it could involve an older female star and an appealing young male newcomer. After all, there’s nothing that says that the woman can’t be the knowledgeable veteran of Hollywood. But we as audience members wouldn’t easily accept that as anything but grotesque. See, after all, Sunset Boulevard. 

 

Film Geeks Cheer for LAist’s Film Week Extravaganza

Over the weekend, I attended what has become an annual bash beloved by many Angeleno film geeks. For 22 years, Larry Mantle—the on-air voice of hugely popular public radio station LAist 91.3—has hosted an Academy Awards preview show, on which all eleven of the station’s regular “Film Week” critics give their candid opinions about the race for Oscar gold. The show is taped for broadcasting later this week, but in-person audiences also enjoy watching film clips and applauding loudly for their own favorites.

 This is the second year that the show was staged at the Orpheum Theatre, on Downtown L.A.’s historic Broadway. The street is lined with old movie palaces, many of which have been converted over time into churches, clothing emporia, and Apple stores. The Orpheum, originally a vaudeville house (from 1926) with a Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ, has played host to such stars as Will Rogers, Ella Fitzgerald, the Marx Brothers, and Judy Garland (as one of the singing Gumm sisters). It has also played a version of itself in movies like The Artist, A Mighty Wind, Barton Fink, and The Doors.

 This past Sunday, on the Orpheum stage, critics of various ages and outlooks vied with each other to make colorful pronouncements. One described the Best Supporting Actor race between Robert Downey Jr. (for Oppenheimer) and Mark Ruffalo (Poor Things) as Iron Man vs. The Hulk. Another, bringing up a particularly outrageous European film called Mad Heidi, opined, “It makes Poor Things look like On Golden Pond.” At times, the panelists seemed to be competing for the title of Most Curmudgeonly. One snarky older man, the only one who took the stage wearing a jacket and tie, avowed that only four of the Best Picture nominees deserved to be on the list.  And yet a critic praising Celia Song’s Past Lives quoted with admiration a line from the romantic film—“I didn’t know that liking your husband would hurt this much”—and explained that it had moved her to tears.

 It was fascinating to see which films got the most love from critics and audience members. This group was partial to witty flicks like American Fiction but also to those that are sensitive (Past Lives) or tough-minded (The Zone of Interest). Front-runner Oppenheimer garnered much enthusiasm, but Barbie too had her fans. Not so Killers of the Flower Moon or Maestro: I liked both these films a great deal, but seem to be in the minority. In some cases the discussion made me want to watch a film again: such is the case with the complex whodunit, Anatomy of a Fall. There was also much critical appreciation for a movie that didn’t rack up a single nomination, the British entry, All of Us Strangers.

 At the close of the show, audience members were able to ask questions of the panel. I often cringe when questioners use their spot at the microphone to show off their own smarts, but the questions asked at this event were pertinent, and elicited intelligent answers. Someone wanted to compare the Oscar chances of the sound designers behind the films Oppenheimer and The Zone of Interest, in both of which the audio track plays a key role. Another man questioned the public’s declining interest in the annual Oscar broadcast. I didn’t ask a question, but belatedly wished I had. Several of the Robert Downey fans on the panel said he was “due” for an Oscar, after years of strong work. Here’s my question: should Oscars winners be chosen for one outstanding performance or for the legacy of an entire career?

 

Black is the Color . . . . Toni Morrison, Shirley Temple, and Blackface On-Screen

I recently saw a dramatic version of Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, not on the screen but on stage. In it, a young African American girl with a grim past obsesses (circa 1941) over her desire to have blue eyes like her idol, child-star Shirley Temple. She’s not the only one in her increasingly tragic family circle whose life-goals are shaped by Hollywood movies. Her downtrodden mother, it seems, has long brightened her own sad life by admiring such Caucasian stars as Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, and Hedy Lamarr on the silver screen. Tellingly, she has named her daughter Pecola, closely mirroring the name of the young Black girl who successfully—though painfully—passes for white throughout much of 1934’s Imitation of Life.

 Funny thing about Pecola’s obsession with Shirley Temple’s blond-and-blue-eyed charms. Though Temple, who starred in black & white films in the 1930s and ‘40s, was truly an adorable tyke, her hair was on the auburn side and her eyes were emphatically brown. But Pecola, longing to be a little white girl, naturally assumes that her idol has big blue eyes, unlike her own. There’s something about the power of movies that showcases our dreams of what we’d like to be, particularly if those dreams are wholly out of reach.

 On the other hand, back in the 1930s and 1940s there are many screen entertainments that highlight white performers posing as Black for public amusement. There was an era when it was controversial indeed for a Black performer to be injected into a white cast, even when playing a so-called “tragic mulatto.” As late as 1951, when Lena Horne sought to play the tragically bi-racial Julie in an upcoming version of Edna Ferber’s hit, Show Boat, she was rejected in favor of the not-Black-at-all (and not-musical-at-all) Ava Gardner. It was OK for William Warfield, in the role earlier made famous by Paul Robeson, to sit on the dock and sing “Old Man River.” But it was definitely NOT OK for a light-skinned African American woman to be shown in a love relationship with a white man.

 Still, white performers of those eras seemed perfectly comfortable smearing on blackface makeup and pretending to be “colored.” This had been happening since the era of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), when all the rapacious Black men who trash democracy and menace heroine Lillian Gish were portrayed by white actors. Later it was common for musical performers like Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney to do a blackface minstrel-show turn, as they did in 1941’s Babes on Broadway, completely with Judy’s hair in “pickaninny” braids.  In 1936, the great Fred Astaire—playing a nightclub performer—darkened his face for “Bojangles of Harlem,” designed as a tribute to Black tap dance legend Bill Robinson and also to Astaire’s friend and mentor, John Bubbles, whose dancing silhouette—I’m told—backs Astaire’s on screen in this number. I’m sure Astaire’s intentions were of the best, but today such moments can make us cringe. That’s how I felt when watching the otherwise frothy Holiday Inn (1942), in which Bing Crosby’s character establishes a country inn and nightclub which builds its floor shows around holiday themes. The President Lincoln’s birthday number, “Abraham,” features not just Bing (looking like Uncle Remus) and but also an entire dance band and chorus in blackface, with co-star Marjorie Reynolds forced to model exaggerated lips and a particularly obnoxious get-up. (One curious note: a cutaway to lovable Louise Beavers as the inn’s cook; she was earlier the  mother of Imitation of Life’s “tragic mulatto” child.)

 

 

“If Ever a Wiz There Was” – Introducing “The Wizard of Oz” to Today’s Youngsters

I remember when I was small, awaiting my first trip to a local movie house to see a screening of The Wizard of Oz. My mother was excited too, fondly recalling her own youthful introduction to this film classic. My first-ever viewing of The Wizard of Oz occurred long before the advent of color television, with its annual showcasing of the adventures of Dorothy and her friends,, so the return of this film to movie theatres was treated as a really big deal. Newspapers were full of enticing photos of witches and Munchkins. I clipped out a picture of Dorothy meeting the Good Witch Glinda and pasted it into my scrapbook. (Even back then I found Glinda’s outfit a trifle bizarre and her behavior puzzling. Still, my love for the film transcended any qualms I might have about Billie Burke’s weird manner and enunciation.)

 I’ve just had the glorious opportunity of introducing The Wizard of Oz to yet another generation, cuddling on the couch with a rather sophisticated nine-year-old boy and a sweet seven-year-old girl who adores animals. Though, especially after a year of quarantine,  they’re well accustomed to modern electronic games and can call up kid-friendly movies on their iPads, they were both enthralled by a flick that dates back to 1939. Adrian, who knew the basic story and had seen a stage version, kept up a lively stream of chatter, chortling with delight when one of the movie’s witty lines struck his funny-bone. Among his favorites: the Cowardly Lion’s bold assertion that courage is “what makes the muskrat guard his musk” and that if he were king of the forest it would be “imposerous” to be scared of a mere rhinoceros. And Adrian was duly amused by the unmasking of the fraudulent Wizard, the aftermath of the warning to “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”

 Mila, newly seven, was not frightened by the film’s many brushes with death. Most of her concern was directed toward her favorite character, Dorothy’s little Scottie dog, Toto. She watched with rapt attention as Toto escaped the clutches of the evil-minded Miss Gulch, and then helped protect Dorothy from Miss Gulch’s Ozian counterpart, the Wicked Witch of the West.  (I discovered I had forgotten how often the feisty little Toto saves the day, even being the one who unmasks the phony wizard by pulling aside the famous curtain that reveals the humbug behind Oz the Great and Powerful.) Elsewhere Mila reacted like any 21^st century child, expressing concern during the opening scenes that the whole picture would turn out to be drab black-and-white. She was disappointed by characters, such as Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion, whom she deemed all too obviously human, despite their elaborate costumes and makeup. The whimsy of 1939-style characters can’t measure up, it seems, to the expectations of a child conditioned by CGI miracles.

 Still, the morning after she watched The Wizard of Oz, Mila could be heard repeatedly singing, “Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead.” She was a bit puzzled by the Munchkins, but loved the all-green Emerald City, appreciating such inventive moments as the “horse of a different color” who pulls our Oz friends through the streets of the capital. My stories about the making of the film -- Buddy Ebsen being replaced at the last minute by Jack Haley due to his allergic reaction to theTin Man’s silver makeup; Margaret Hamilton risking her life through the untested special effects involved in the witch’s disappearance - -didn’t much interest her because the movie felt too real. Which, of course, it is.