I Still Love You, Alice B. Toklas

 

I’ve recently finished reading a colleague’s new, and award-winning, biography of Gertrude Stein. (The author is Francesca Wade, and her impressively researched book is called Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife.) When I was an artsy college student in the Sixties, I’m guessing that few of my classmates had actually dipped into Stein’s artistically challenging writings. I myself certainly hadn’t. But we all knew “rose is a rose is a rose,” and that Stein—an American in Paris—had published in 1933 a faux biographical work of her longtime companion. The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas. So the title of a 1968 romantic comedy, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, would have been enticing to us—especially since its cast and crew included some of the hippest people in Hollywood.

 One of the creators of the original script was Paul Mazursky, who would go on to both write and direct such comedy hits as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), Harry and Tonto (1974), and Moscow on the Hudson (1984). I Love You, Alice B. Toklas was his very first produced film project, and he badly wanted to direct it.  But when Peter Sellers came aboard as the film’s star Mazursky was removed from contention. (Instead, the movie was directed by TV veteran Hy Averback.)

 Aside from Sellers, prominent cast members included Leigh Taylor-Young as a sexy Flower Child with a butterfly tattoo on her thigh. (She was barely twenty-one and making her first film.). The plot focused on Sellers as Harold Fine, a stereotypical (Jewish, natch!) buttoned-down lawyer who’s being pushed toward the chuppah by his girlfriend, played by Joyce Van Patten. Just as matrimony seems inevitable, he meets a free-spirited hippie chick, Nancy. After they’ve hopped into the sack, she whips up a batch of Alice B. Toklas brownies, and he finds himself thoroughly hooked on his new lifestyle. Soon he’s growing out his crewcut, and dressing in caftans and love beads.

 It was quite clear, back in 1968, that an Alice B. Toklas brownie was some kind of psychedelic treat. (The comic spectacle of a middle-aged square suddenly tuning in and turning on was almost unavoidable in movie houses of the late Sixties.) But I didn’t fully grasp the implications of those brownies until I read Francesca Wade’s book. It seems that Toklas, who had no part in the writing of her famous “autobiography” (other than efficiently typing up the manuscript) ultimately chose, following Stein’s 1946 death, to fill her empty days by putting forth a cookbook. Toklas was a whiz in the kitchen, specializing in French cuisine, but she chose to fill out her book with recipes received from friends. One of them, a Morocco-based artist named Brion Gysin, contributed instructions for making a dessert item he called "Haschich Fudge," a heady combo of fruit, nuts, spices, and what he referred to as “Cannibis sativa.” Though the cookbook’s American edition, fearing legal consequences, decided to axe this particular recipe, it was included in the volume published in Britain. Once Time magazine had spilled the beans (so to speak), the rather prim and naïve Toklas discovered she’d published a best-seller.

 The Hollywood film is scored with a perky tune sung by a rock group known as Harpers Bizarre:. It begins “I love you, Alice B. Toklas/ and so does Gertrude Stein/ I love you, Alice B. Toklas/ I’m gonna change your name to mine.” The lyrics then go off on a psychedelic trip—”Green wooly golden gardens, Marvin Gardens”—of which the very avant-garde Gertrude Stein might possibly have approved.  (Though, I suspect, probably not.)

 

 

Gobbling Up the Ham in “Spamalot”

Lovers of outrageously silly comedy all know about Monty Python. This zany troupe was founded in 1969 by six talented Brits who were all graduates of Oxford or Cambridge. The British taste for low humor had previously given birth to The Goon Show (a 1951-1960 radio broadcast that launched the career of Peter Sellers, among others) and Beyond the Fringe (a slightly more satirical revue that gave the world Dudley Moore and three other talented chaps).  The Pythons were formed in 1969, first starring in a BBC sketch comedy that lasted until 1974. Their first movie, And Now For Something Completely Different, was a compilation of comic sketches that hit the big screen in 1971. Next they decided to try on a film that had something of an actual plot. The much-loved English legends of King Arthur seemed ripe for spoofing, and so Monty Python and the Holy Grail was launched (to the sound of coconut shells being clapped together) in 1975.

 The movie was a true Python affair, with members Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Erric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin all playing multiple roles. The two Terrys directed a script in which all the Pythons had a hand. The major thread was Arthur and his knights on a grail quest, but there were frequent digressions into silliness of many kinds: a Trojan rabbit that fails spectacularly to transport the knights into a castle; a Black Knight who is determined to keep fighting after all his limbs have been cut off; a Las Vegas-style Camelot; a nonsensical encounter with a band of Knights Who Say "Ni,” and an appearance by God. The film was shot in Scotland (so cheaply that the clapping together of coconut shells was used to replace the on-screen appearance  of actual horse hooves). Despite its low-rent style, The Holy Grail was a huge hit, first in Britain and then among comedy lovers everywhere.

 I bring this up because, back in 1975, the movie gave rise to a stage musical wittily dubbed Spamalot. Python’s Eric Idle had a lot to do with the show’s songs and book, and Mike Nichols was the original Broadway director. Over some 1575 Broadway performances, the show was cheered by more than two million theatregoers and raked in many millions. I saw it years ago, and now it’s back at L.A.’s fabulously art deco Hollywood Pantages Theatre, updated a bit by Idle (there’s quite a funny George Soros joke).

 The fun of the musical is that it combines some of the old familiar moments (like that cranky French sentry) with some satirical exploitation of musical-theatre tropes. The Lady of the Lake belts out sexy songs in a wide range of keys, and the overlong second act has a great deal of fun gently mocking the convention that musical theatre attracts performers who are either Jewish or gay—or maybe both. The song “You Won't Succeed on Broadway” (Without Jews) was a highlight with the Pantages audience, especially when that George Soros gag was worked in. Shortly afterward, attention turned to a gay bridegroom-to-be who successfully outed Sir Lancelot the Brave (as well, I gather, as Sir Robin, the-not-quite-so-brave-as-Sir-Lancelot).

 The show ends with audience participation, including a singalong of a Python classic (from the Jesus satire, The Life of Brian) : “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” At the Pantages, over two thousand playgoers joined in. Given the state of today’s world, looking on the bright side is about the best we can do. A big thank-you to Eric Idle and the Pythons for making it possible.

 

 

An Oscar (Levant) for “The World of Henry Orient”

While watching some of the great MGM musicals of the 1950s, like An American in Paris and The Band Wagon, I’ve been mystified by the appearance of a sour-looking troglodyte named Oscar Levant in sidekick roles. Levant was not much of a singer or a dancer, but the plots of his movies usually found a way to seat him at a piano, for he was (among many other things) a concert pianist of some note. In An American in Paris, which pays tribute to the musical compositions of George Gershwin, there’s a dream sequence in which he appears—elegantly clad—in a concert hall, not only pounding out Gershwin’s Concerto in F on the keyboard but also playing all the other instruments in the orchestra, while functioning as its conductor as well. 

 Levant was also a famous wit, one who’d aired his stock of arcane knowledge on a popular radio show, Information Please. It was he who first quipped, “I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.” But one target of his wit was always his own hypochondria, which was frequently written into his movie roles  I never saw this as particularly funny, though moviegoers of his era seemed to enjoy it. They also were amused by his wisecrack that “there's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line." 

 While marveling over Levant’s onetime popularity, I heard that he was the inspiration for the neurotic, womanizing pianist at the center of Nora Johnson’s novel, The World of Henry Orient, as well as its 1964 film adaptation. Having just seen that film, I’m not entirely convinced. But it makes sense that the name Levant (which in French suggests the east, the place of the rising sun) could by adapted by Johnson into “Orient.” The film version gets playful with Henry’s exotic surname, with his young-girl fans adopting Chinese coolie hats and performing vaguely Japanese kowtows in his honor.

 The World of Henry Orient involves two basic stories that ultimately come together. The first involves two lonely young teenage girls, both enrolled in a ritzy New York prep school, who join forces when they realize that their vivid imaginations and their willingness to pull pranks on strangers make them natural allies. The second concerns a talented but egotistical concert pianist who blithely skips rehearsals because he’d rather be rumpling the sheets with a safely married admirer. When the more musical of the two young girls hears Henry Orient tickle the ivories at the local concert hall, she’s in love. From that point onward, Val and Marian pursue Henry around Manhattan, adoringly spying on his every move, while he grows increasingly paranoid. 

 With Peter Sellers (in his first Hollywood film) as the pianist, Paula Prentiss as his main squeeze, and a host of filmdom’s best character actors in featured roles, this film is guaranteed to be spritely fun. It’s directed by George Roy Hill at a lively pace, several years before he captured moviegoers’ hearts with Butch Cassidy and The Sting. What I didn’t anticipate, though, was a scene-stealing Angela Lansbury, whose match-up with Sellers is a classic. She’s Val’s egotistical mother, who’d rather tour the world than attend to her daughter’s growing-up years. Accidentally discovering Val’s serious crush on Henry Orient, she marches off to do her motherly duty by confronting him. Then—whoops!—these two narcissists discover they’re made for one another. Which leads to a reshuffling of priorities in which Val’s easy-going father (Tom Bosley) finally takes a leading role. So hilarity and poignancy both contribute to an ending that’s satisfying while still fun. 

 

 

 

Tom Nolan: From Sound Stage to Page

 Seeking to expand my knowledge of Billy Wilder’s directing career, I sat down to watch a flick that raised many hackles when first released in 1964. Kiss Me, Stupid, in which Dean Martin canoodles with a presumably happy housewife and Kim Novak plays a lady of (shall we say?) loose morals, was condemned by the Catholic Church and accused by Hedda Hopper of being a stag film. It’s hardly that, but it’s a rather sour farce in which a small-town music teacher (Ray Walston) is so insanely jealous of his pretty wife that he disrupts his household arrangements when a swingin’ Las Vegas star with car trouble rents his spare bedroom for the night. Early in the film, there’s a scene in which a gawky kid bikes over for his piano lesson, only to be accused of having designs on Walston’s spouse. Appearing in that hilarious scene is a fresh-faced 16-year-old named Tommy Nolan. Could it be? Yes, it could.

 The Tom Nolan I know doesn’t have much hair, and he’s much older than 16. He’s had a major career as a journalist and author, earning plaudits especially for a biography of mystery writer Ross Macdonald that was published in 2015. I had no idea that he’d been a showbiz kid until I showed up at a gathering of fans of TV and movie westerns. To my great surprise, Tom was introduced from the stage as the one-time child star of something called Buckskin. This was a 1958 series about a boy and his widowed mom who run a boarding-house in frontier Montana, circa 1880. Though it didn’t last long, the characters were popular enough to launch a comic-book line.

 None of this was what young Bernard Girouard anticipated when he moved from Montreal  to the San Fernando Valley with his family at age 4. He had always liked tap-dancing and playing the piano, and once there was a TV set at home he started to wonder, “Maybe there was a place for me inside that box.” Through a lucky break he was signed by an agent who specialized in kids, and by 5 he was appearing on the Hallmark Hall of Fame in a costume drama, playing the Prince of Wales to Sarah Churchill’s Jane Seymour. For years he never stopped working, first as Butch Bernard and then (for Buckskin) as Tommy Nolan. Later, at UCLA, he tried reverting to his birth name, but it didn’t take, because “I wasn’t that person anymore.”

 Tom played Tom Ewell’s son in the Billy Wilder (and Marilyn Monroe) comedy classic, The Seven Year Itch. Almost a decade later, when Wilder was casting Kiss Me, Stupid, Tom got a second chance to be directed by the master. The role of the music teacher originally went to Peter Sellers, the troubled genius whom Tom describes as “the funniest person I had ever encountered.” By then, he had played opposite such comic stars as Ed Wynn, Jack Benny, and Jerry Lewis. But “Sellers's comic presence was so intense I had to cheat my glance to the side; I couldn't look him straight in the face for fear of breaking up at his merest raised eyebrow or chin-tilt.”  Unfortunately Sellers, enjoying a brand-new young bride and some controlled substances, suffered a massive heart attack mid-production, and was replaced by Walston. Which meant Tom had to shoot his scenes again with a new leading man. Tom remembers Walston as “courteous, well-prepared, professional and capable. But when we did our two scenes together, I had no trouble looking him right in the eye.”