Not-So-Young Frankenstein

I’m afraid the Frankenstein story doesn’t really resonate with me. Circa 1990, when I worked for Roger Corman  at Concorde-New Horizons Pictures, a successful Hollywood producer named Thom Mount approached Roger with an offer he couldn’t refuse. Mount had been a Corman underling years before, and felt that his mentor should set aside his production company  obligations and return to directing. So he came to Roger with a deal: a cool million dollars to write and direct a film based on Mary Shelley’s 1818 gothic novel, Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, about a scientist who creates and animates a monstrous creature, only to live to regret his own folly.

 As Roger’s story editor, I was charged with overseeing the film’s script, which would ultimately be based on Frankenstein Unbound, a Brian Aldiss novel with a time-travel element: a man from our own era finds himself back in the early nineteenth century, interacting with Dr. Frankenstein, a sensuous Mary Shelley, and of course the monster. Naturally I read both the Aldiss novel and Mary Shelley’s original—and I can barely remember either one. But a few oddball things remain in my memory banks from the completed film. One is Roger’s decision to cast his fourteen-year-old daughter Catherine as a servant girl wrongly accused of murder. Young Catherine Corman played the role credibly, but it’s not every day that a film director hangs his own child on camera. (Today, Catherine, none the worse for wear, is a writer, photographer, and indie filmmaker.)

 I have two other memories of a film that most critics and most audiences have scorned. One is an awkward sex scene between Mary Shelley (played by the very young Bridget Fonda) and John Hurt as a very middle-aged visitor from the 20^th century. The other is the moment when the Frankenstein monster finally finds a mate—and the two inexplicably lapse into a romantic pas de deux. This was in the version of the movie I saw at an advance screening, but apparently the audience reaction was so negative that the moment was cut from the released film. 

 Of course there are other cinematic versions of Mary Shelley’s work. Most of us know the classic 1931 James Whale film, featuring Boris Karloff as an ungainly but oddly likable monster who accidentally drowns a little girl because he doesn’t fully understand the game they’re playing. Karloff’s monster has become iconic, inspiring generations of Halloween costumes and a delicious Mel Brooks spoof. But Spanish director Guillermo del Toro had long wanted to try his hand at creating an intelligent, sympathetic Frankenstein monster. His new approach (with Oscar Isaac as the scientist and the very tall Jacob Elordi as the monster)  is visually exciting, But it also seems endless and, frankly, more than a bit sappy, leaning heavily on ultimate recognition by man and monster that they’re in many ways father and son . . . and that it’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature.

 There’s much philosophical meat in the Frankenstein story, and we in the 21^st century are well advised to be aware of the dangers of taking science too far. But I don’t think del Toro, for all his good intentions, has made a movie that’s philosophically worth our attention. Curiously, it was just two years ago that Yorgos Lanthimos directed a film that—while in no way based specifically on Shelley’s novel—approaches some of that book’s intellectual concerns. I’m talking about Poor Things, in which a female “monster” reminds us of the dangers of science, and what it might take to move beyond them. 

 

 

The Gregarious, Gorgeous Teri Garr

I once had the good fortune of seeing Teri Garr up close and personal. It was decades ago, long before the brilliant comic actress was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, the cruel disease that recently ended her life at age 79. The place: the tiny, cramped locker room at Jane Fonda’s then-famous West Hollywood exercise studio. Both of us were changing out of exercise gear. She was among friends, clearly—and I saw her as a true life force, lively and exuberant.

 She brought that same exuberance to her acting career, which included the wife role in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the adorable mädchen who loved a roll in the hay in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein. Her biggest screen success came in 1982, with the release of Tootsie, in which Dustin Hoffman stars as an out-of-work actor who disguises himself as a woman to win a soap opera role. The gender confusion that arises in this Sydney Pollack film is hilarious. But it also seems quite modern, given that there’s a move afoot to deny a newly-elected transgender U.S. congresswoman the right to use the women’s restroom in the Capitol. (So what, pray tell, is she supposed to do when the need arises?) 

 When Tootsie was being cast, Garr apparently hankered for the role of the female lead. Julie is depicted as a slightly damaged but sturdy soul who interacts with Hoffman’s Dorothy Michaels in a popular hospital-based soap opera. (She introduces herself to the new cast member as the “hospital slut.”) Julie treasures Dorothy’s friendship and is guided by her relationship wisdom, but has no inkling that this sassy older woman is actually a man—and that he’s in love with her. After losing the role of Julie to Jessica Lange, Garr was reluctant to take the smaller part of Sandy, the neurotic would-be actress who’s Michael’s protégée and at one point his accidental lover. (Don’t ask!) Luckily for us, Garr ultimately changed her mind about the role. Sandy’s uproarious neediness is a highlight of the film, and resulted in an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Ironically, Jessica Lange was also nominated in this category, and took home the gold statuette: it was the only win for Tootsie that evening despite a whooping nine nominations. (This was the year of Gandhi—and the gender-bending Victor/Victoria). But if Lange won the Oscar, Teri Garr completely won my heart.

 Like all the greatest comedies, Tootsie has something to say, about the human condition. Its particular focus is on how women are treated in what often continues to feel like a man’s world. What Dustin Hoffman’s character discovers—in this beautifully directed, beautifully written, beautifully edited film—is that women benefit from being able to stand up for themselves. And, as a man, he comes to acknowledge that women need, and deserve, basic respect. Two prominent characters who have not learned this lesson are Dabney Coleman as an outrageously sexist TV director and George Gaynes as a preening actor who makes it his business to tongue-kiss every actress on camera. (By contrast, Julie’s father, as played by Charles Durning, is a manly but gentle widower who is smitten by “Dorothy” and complicates things by proposing marriage.)  Big kudos to screenwriter Larry Gelbart for finding the funny in the battle of the sexes while acknowledging that his characters all have something to learn. One of those characters of course is Garr’s Sandy. But she fights to hold onto her sense of humor. That of course also describes Garr, who considered titling her memoir, Does This Wheelchair Make Me Look Fat?  

 

High Anxiety: Mid-Level Mel Brooks

What would we do without Mel Brooks? He’s been the comic genius behind TV (Get Smart) and recordings (2000 Year Old Man), but I associate him mostly with movies, as a writer, a director, and sometimes a star. His first directorial outing was in 1967, as writer/director of The Producers, which introduced the world to the outrageous combination of Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, as well as to the most hilariously tasteless production number of all times, “Springtime for Hitler.” I suspect that if you watch the film you’ll agree it runs out of steam midway though, but Brooks would later enlarge it into a Broadway musical blockbuster.

 I’m fond of The Twelve Chairs, Brooks’ off-the-wall 1970 look at Tsarist Russia. (I’ve adopted its original song, “Hope for the Best, Expect the Worst,” as my own personal philosophy of life.) But Brooks’ greatest year was arguably 1974, when he introduced not one but two comedic masterworks, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. Both showcase Brooks’ talent for parody, his success at spoofing familiar genres like the Western and the classic monster flick. Next came the considerably more effortful Silent Movie, featuring Brooks favorites Marty Feldman and Dom DeLuise, along with a cast of Hollywood stars in cameo roles. In 1977 it was back to a genre spoof: Brooks’ High Anxiety (despite its title’s witty nod to High Society) is dedicated to poking fun at the suspense classics of shockmeister Alfred Hitchcock. Many critics have noted that Hitchcock’s films are themselves frequently tongue-in-cheek, and don’t need to be parodied. Still, there’s fun to be had in seeing how many Hitchcock references you can spot.

 First of all, the jaundiced look at the whole field of psychiatry reminds us of Hitchcock’s 1945 Spellbound. Here Brooks himself plays an eminent psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Thorndyke, who has flown out to California to lead the Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous,  a place that is clearly not as salubrious as it seems. (Thorndyke’s name is an immediate reminder of Cary Grant as Roger Thornhill in  North by Northwest.) Despite his sterling reputation, Thorndyke is suffering from a Brooksian psychological ailment called “high anxiety,” which seems a cross between vertigo and acrophobia. He is not helped by the institute’s location, high above the rocky shoals of the Pacific, and his troubles are compounded when he’s victimized by a flock of pooping pigeons, à la Hitchcock’s The Birds.

 Things go from bad to worse when Thorndyke attends a conference in San Francisco, where he’s housed on the 14^th floor of the brand-new Hyatt Regency. This real locale was famous in its day for being built around an enormous atrium that would make almost anyone dizzy if she were on the top floor looking down. Of course there’s a beautiful, mysterious Hitchcock blonde (Madeline Kahn) who needs his help, leading to the film’s single most hilarious scene: when they sneak a gun past airport security by posing as the world’s most annoying traveling couple. Predictably the film’s climax is staged as an homage to Hitchcock’s Vertigo, with Dr. Thorndyke forced to pursue the bad guys up the high twisted staircase of the institute’s bell tower. Of course villains like Cloris Leachman and Harvey Korman get their comeuppance, and everyone else lives happily ever after.  Kudos to the 1940s-style black & white cinematography and the surreal elements borrowed from Salvador Dali’s Spellbound dream sequence.

 I’m told Hitchcock himself was mightily amused. He reportedly sent Brooks a case of six magnums of fine wine with a note that read, "A small token of my pleasure, have no anxiety about this."

 A very happy 98th birthday to the 2,000-Year-Old Man! 

 

 

 

Not Hedley but HEDY Lamarr: Screen Siren and Science Whiz

French poster for "Ecstasy"

 Hedy Lamarr? I’ve never seen Ecstasy, the 1933 Czech film (with certain similarities to Lady Chatterley’s Lover) in which she swam naked and allowed her face to suggest the joys of an orgasmic encounter. The film of course met resistance in many nations, including the U.S., where it was denied the seal of the all-important Hays office. That’s why its American release was limited to a few independent art houses.

 Back then Lamarr was still billed as Hedy Kiesler, the name with which she was born in 1914 Vienna. The only child of Jewish parents (though her mother apparently adopted Christianity early on), she quickly showed she had brains as well as beauty. Her father, who adored her, enjoyed talking to young Hedy about technology. But once she developed a passion for acting, she devoted her energies to advancing her stage and screen career. At 18, while playing the youthful Empress Elisabeth in a highly regarded Vienna theatre production, she attracted scores of admirers. One was 33-year-old Friedrich Mandl, a hugely wealthy munitions manufacturer with close ties to Mussolini                                                                        and later to Hitler.

Why exactly did she marry this domineering man, who made her give up her acting career in order to play the part of a dutiful wife? A 2019 historical novel, Marie Benedict’s The Only Woman in the Room, claims her father encouraged her in the marriage, as a way of potentially saving herself and her family from a rising tide of anti-Semitism. I have no faith in Benedict as an in-depth researcher, but she also posits that much of Lamarr’s later life in Hollywood was marked by her guilt over the fact that she was aware of, but had no way to stop, Hitler’s murderous plot against Europe’s Jews.

 But the marriage itself soon turned dangerous, with Hedy being treated by her spouse as a prisoner in her own home (by which I mean a castle or two).  She escaped to England, where she quickly cozied up to Louis B. Mayer, who was abroad looking for new talent. It was he and his MGM colleagues who gave her a new last name, promoted her as the “world’s most beautiful woman,” and starred her in exotic vehicles like 1938’s Algiers with Charles Boyer. The role of an exotic seductress became her specialty, in films such as White Cargo (1942) and Samson and Delilah (1949).

 The most unlikely aspect of Lamarr’s biography is the fact that, at the height of World War II, she joined with avant-garde composer George Antheil to support the anti-Nazi cause by developing a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes. Her invention, which was patented but never accepted by the U.S. military, “used spread spectrum and frequency-hopping technology to defeat the threat of jamming by the Axis powers.^”  (I’m quoting here from the evcr-useful Wikipedia, but I have no idea what I’m saying.)  Apparently their discovery has now contributed hugely to the rise of cellphones, so I’m not sure if we should be grateful or not.

 Meanwhile, as an American movie star of the Golden Age, Lamarr accepted the fact that her main function was to be beautiful. Though her invention didn’t help win the war, she sold a whole lot of war bonds by guaranteeing to kiss young soldiers if enough money was raised on the spot. But personal happiness remained elusive.  After six failed marriages, she lived most of her later life in seclusion. One oddity: her 1976 lawsuit claiming that the comic use of the name Hedley Lamarr for Harvey Korman’s character in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles violated her right of privacy.

 

Heil, Myself! Ernst Lubitsch’s “To Be or Not to Be”

Old-school comedian Jack Benny playing Hamlet? That seems about as unlikely as a Polish theatre troupe, circa 1939, successfully impersonating Hitler and his goons to fool the Gestapo. But both of these things happen in a remarkable (and remarkably serious) comedy that emerged from Hollywood in 1942, while war raged in Europe.

 Benny, mostly known for the radio (and eventually TV) show that spoofed his tightwad image, wears tights for real as he stars as the hammiest of ham actors. His biggest concerns, as actor Joseph Tura, seem to be the adoration of his fans and the possibly roving eye of his beautiful wife, played by Carole Lombard in her final role. (Alas, Lombard died ina a plane crash at age 33, shortly before the film opened, while returning from a war bonds tour.)  But while the company is rehearsing an anti-German drama, Gestapo, the Nazis march into Warsaw and swiftly take over. Suddenly patriotism comes to the fore, and all the members of the company unite to thwart the will of  their new German overlords.

 Theatre troupes make for strange bedfellows, but in this crisis everyone pitches in wholeheartedly. The glamorous Maria Tura (Lombard) strategically cozies up to a turncoat, insinuating she’d be glad to spy for the Nazis as a way of allying herself with the winning team. The obviously Jewish spear carrier who longs to play Shylock gets his chance at a critical juncture to recite his big speech and be a key diversion—and a hero. The Polish flyboy (Robert Stack) who yearns to take Maria away from her husband uses his aviation connections to save everyone’s neck. And Jack Benny’s Joseph Tura dives into a trunkful of fake mustaches and beards to impersonate prominent Nazi leaders, befuddling the pompous Sig Ruman, who hilariously plays the local Gestapo commandant .

 It's all uproariously funny, except that the movie never forgets what the stakes are for these people, who are human beings first, actors second. With death and destruction all around them, they balance on a knife-edge between triumph and disaster. Call it the comedy of desperation. The Berlin-born Lubitsch may have been known for the worldly elegance of so many of his films (like Trouble in Paradise), but he remained at heart an immigrant, the son of a Jewish tailor who had moved to Germany from the outskirts of the Russian Empire.  In other words, Lubitsch was not entirely at home in a world where borders kept changing and tribal identities were key.  Commentators have pointed out that the one character in the film who is by no means ever comic is the Polish-born scholar with a prominent academic post in Britain but a secret commitment to the Third Reich.

 As the plot continues to thicken, it’s pretty much impossible to follow the ins and outs of a story in which the good guys impersonate the bad. My advice: just relax and enjoy the chaos, knowing that, thankfully, it will come out all right in the end.  The title phrase, To Be or Not to Be, is of course from Hamlet’s great soliloquy, but it takes on several alternative meanings in the course of the film, even signaling an upcoming assignation. There’s no question that funnyman Mel Brooks enjoyed the joke (as he did the phrase, “Heil, myself!” which later shows up in Brooks’ The Producers). In 1983, four decades after the original, Brooks shot his own version, with wife Anne Bancroft as the glamorous Maria, Charles Durning assuming a highly-ersatz German accent as the commandant, and himself chewing the scenery in the Jack Benny part.