Counting Down the Hours with “The Clock”

I’m discovering that, in tough societal times like these, I truly appreciate movies that take me to an earlier era. It’s good to see that people can survive—even thrive—during dark days. Perhaps that’s why I’ve reacted so positively to The Clock, a 1945 romantic drama directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring his soon-to-be wife, Judy Garland, in her first non-singing dramatic role. Set against the backdrop of World War II, The Clock gives a happy ending to a tale that is best described as pure wish-fulfillment fantasy.

 The Clock begins with boyish-looking Robert Walker, in full military uniform, arriving at New York’s Grand Central Station. He’s a young American G.I., on weekend leave from training camp, and he’s come to the Big Apple to look around. I  couldn’t help comparing this opening section to the naïve young sailors on shore leave in a great 1945 musical—and subsequent 1949 film—On the Town, which like The Clock celebrates romance but hints at a world war always lurking in the background. 

  It’s quickly established that Walker’s character, Joe, is a small-town fellow, one who’s encountering for the first time such wonders as an escalator. While hanging out aimlessly in the station, he accidentally trips a pert young lady, whose heel snaps off of her stylish spectator pump. Mortified, Joe manages to get the shoe repaired, then wonders if he can tag along with its wearer (who of course is Garland) as she heads home from work. Garland’s Alice is naturally wary of this stranger. But she’s a good-hearted soul and finally agrees to meet him for dinner. Their rendezvous spot: under the clock in the lobby of the Astor Hotel.

 The clock, of course, soon becomes a symbol of the swift passage of time. As the two get to know each other, a dinner date turns into a romantic walk in Central Park. (The camera’s s-l-o-w build-up to the first big kiss is rather hilarious.) Suddenly it’s midnight, too late for Alice to catch a bus back to her working-class neighborhood. Cabs, as always in NYC, are nearly impossible to get, so Al, a friendly milkman making early morning deliveries, offers them a ride in his van. But the van gets a flat tire; the three enter an all-night café to call Al’s company; a drunk attacks poor Al and knocks him out. After the van is repaired, Joe takes over the driving, and he and Alice work together to make all the deliveries on Al's route in record time. Al, now recovered, invites them to his home for breakfast; his loyal wife greets them warmly, and the conversation turns to the homey joys of married life.

 Now it’s Saturday morning, and the pair have agreed to spend together the waning hours  before Joe’s early Sunday departure. Enter the challenges of the New York subway system. In a crowded station, Alice is forced onto a train car, leaving Joe behind. Their search for each other becomes frantic (if only they had cell phones!), made more desperate by the fact that they don’t know one another’s full names.  But, since this is a fairy-tale, they do at last reunite—and agree that they never want to be parted again. And so they take steps to make their love permanent, via matrimony.

 It's the love-conquers-all ending we’re rooting for, one that I’m sure was highly necessary in wartime. By 2025 standards, though, the lovers seem painfully naïve.  Ironically, both Garland and Walker found no lasting happiness in marriage. Both turned to drink and drugs, and died young.  

 Thanks to Danish Qureshi for alerting me to a careless error that made my storytelling VERY confusing. I've fixed it now. 

 

 

 

 

Liza Minnelli: A Star Was Born

The new documentary,  Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story, made me curious about the movie career of one of Broadway’s favorite song-and-dance divas, Liza Minnelli. After all, Liza (still alive and kicking at age 78) is the daughter of two charter members of the Hollywood pantheon, director Vincente Minnelli and the incomparable Judy Garland. 

Liza made her first screen appearance as a babe in arms at the end of one of her mother’s musical films, The Good Old Summertime (1949). Her first credited role came in 1967’s Charlie Bubbles, as an ingenue opposite Albert Finney, who both starred and directed. But it was in 1969 when she truly made a splash: her role as a needy college co-ed in something called The Sterile Cuckoo led to her nomination for a Best Actress Oscar, along with such dramatic icons as Genevieve Bujold (Anne of the Thousand Days), Jane Fonda (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?), Jean Simmons (The Happy Ending) and ultimate winner Maggie Smith (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie). The following year she was featured as a disfigured young woman in another highly emotional dramedy, Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon. The death by overdose of forty-seven-year-old Judy Garland on June 22, 1969 had left Liza bereft just as she was entering young womanhood. Judy’s own youthful screen career had seen her frequently cast as a girl-next-door type, even though her huge singing voice contained paradoxical notes of what one critic has called “fragility and resilience.” For Liza, I would choose the word “waif.” Directors seemed to see in her someone who was hurting, but knew how to cover her grief with sheer pizzazz.

It all came together for Minnelli in 1972, when she snagged the female lead in the film version of Cabaret. Director/choreographer Bob Fosse knew how to capitalize on her combination of little-girl-lost pathos and brassy insouciance (as well as her musical skills and her long, long legs) to fill out the character of Sally Bowles. Sally, who first appeared in Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin, was portrayed as the top chanteuse at the city’s seedy Kit Kat Klub, at a time when Hitler and his thugs were taking over German life. It was the perfect melding of performer and role, and it won her the Best Actress Oscar in 1973.. (Also in 1972, Minnelli scored another triumph with her televised concert film, Liza with a Z.)  

Though after 1972, Minnelli’s continuing screen success would have seemed assured, she ran into a series of roadblocks. Projects that looked good on paper—like 1975’s Lucky Lady and 1977’s New York, New York—turned out to be expensive flops. Liza herself faced health crises (exacerbated by recreational drug use) and went through a pack of mostly unsuitable husbands and lovers. She craved motherhood, but it was not to be. 

It wasn’t until 1981 that she had another bona fide hit movie, 1981’s Arthur, in which she plays a scrappy waitress who unexpectedly becomes the love interest of a childish (and generally drunk) millionaire, portrayed with gusto by Dudley Moore. To be honest, I watched Arthur again recently, and found  much of it rather repugnant. To me there’s nothing particularly hilarious about a falling-down drunk, even if he generally means well. But the film won an Oscar for John Gielgud’s portrayal of a cranky but endearing butler. And Minnelli and Moore have some charming moments—notably when, upon first meeting, they instantly launch into spritely husband-and-wife banter to conceal the fact that she’s just been apprehended for shoplifting an expensive tie. The waif, it seems, also rises. 

 

Liza Minnelli: Getting By With a Little Help from Her Friends

I have a faint recollection of seeing Liza Minnelli perform on television when she was a mere teenager. She was coltish, even gawky, and I suspected that she owed her spot on the tube to her legendary parents, singer/actress Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli. It’s certainly true that Liza has had, all her life, the twin advantages of money and connections. But the label of Poor Little Rich Girl truly fits her. She was all of twenty-three when her mother died of a barbiturate overdose. True to form, she jumped in to make the necessary arrangements, while also taking in hand her younger half-sister and half-brother.

Bruce David Klein’s new documentary, Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story, captures the now seventy-eight-year-old Minnelli in all her ebullient glory. We see her as she is now, still chain-smoking, still belting out that memorable cackle, still enjoying life to the fullest, and we also catch glimpses of her back when she was just starting out. Klein is a veteran TV writer, director, and producer whose work has explored a number of wildly assorted topics. I heard him speak at a screening presided over by my long-ago UCLA film critic buddy, Stephen Farber, and it was clear that Klein—like most of the world—had fallen under Liza’s spell. 

In crawling out from her mother’s shadow, Liza was blessed by a series of formative friendships. Always modest about her own accomplishments, she does credit herself with a talent for choosing mentors. Her godmother,  Kay Thompson, helped teach her to put pizzazz into her life. (Thompson, known for her “Think Pink” role in the film Funny Face, was also the author of the Eloise books about a precocious child who lives at New York’s Plaza Hotel. Minnelli herself is often considered one model for this supremely self-assured tyke.) The musical theatre team of John Kander and Fred Ebb were strong influences on her performance style, leading to her Oscar-winning performance in the film Cabaret as well as the much-lauded TV special, Liza with a Z. Bob Fosse served as her choreographer, finding unique ways to showcase her dance skills. When she needed to develop a personal style that distinguished her from her mother, Halston was on hand to create for her the glittery costumes that showed off her long dancer’s legs. (I learned from Klein that Liza, when on stage before a live audience, performs with such intensity that she tends to get sweaty. That’s why Halston turned to sequins to detract, with their sparkle, from her inevitable perspiration.)  

Though Liza’s circle of friends may seem glamorous, she doesn’t only hobnob with fellow celebrities, Much featured in the documentary are a retired dentist and his wife who’ve been close friends of Liza’s for decades. Over the years, she’s been closely connected with their children as well, and everyone who knows her speaks of her generosity. An example: when one Kander and Ebb musical, Chicago, was playing in its original Broadway run, star Gwen Verdon had to leave the production for several weeks to undergo surgery. There was a very real chance that her absence would cause the show to close. When she learned of the situation, Minnelli jetted in from Europe to play the Roxie Hart role, but insisted there be no big press release to tout her appearance. This was simply, in her mind, something she wanted to do to help friends who had always been there for her.  

Minnelli’s instruction  to documentarian Klein: “Don’t put in anything foolish.” What we see is the unvarnished Liza, not foolish at all. 

Have Yourself a Sweet St. Louie Christmas (An "Unprecedented" Meet Me in St. Louis)

Christmas movies—the old-fashioned kind—tend to be short, sweet, uncomplicated, and sprinkled with music. The Christmas movie that comes to mind right now is Meet Me in St. Louis, the 1944 musical that was one of the first features directed by Vincente Minnelli, and the one that introduced him to his future wife, Judy Garland.

 Not that Meet Me in St. Louis is entirely set in the Christmas season.  This wholesome story about a large, chaotic family living in a big Victorian house on St. Louis’s Kensington Avenue actually covers an entire year. It’s an eventful year for the Smith family, beginning in the spring 1903 with preparations for the St. Louis World’s Fair and ending with the blaze of electric lights that dazzled fairgoers once the fair opened in April 1904.  In the interim, youngsters get lost and get found, and their siblings fall in and out of love. But the most serious plotline involves the announcement by Mr. Smith (the predictably autocratic but slightly addled family patriarch) that a job promotion will send all of them packing for a move to New York City. As Christmas 1903 approaches, seventeen-year-old Esther Smith (Garland) and the others are sadly preparing to leave their comfortable St. Louis life behind. That’s when Garland, with that characteristic quaver in her voice, croons to her sad little sister (Margaret O’Brien) the indelible “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

And what a little sister! I was surprised to see seven-year-old Margaret O’Brien billed in second position, just below Garland, but in many ways this tyke is the one who makes the movie sing. Her character is based on Sally Benson, who grew up to pen the nostalgic New Yorker stories that became the basis for this film. As portrayed in Meet Me in St. Louis, she’s an adorable scamp, one who delights in subjecting her dolls to grizzly fates, then stages funerals for them in the family’s garden. Her comic cakewalk duet with Garland is a delight. She also reminds us of a time when a little kid could safely roam the streets of her neighborhood, without interference from the older generation.  

 What sent me back to Meet Me in St. Louis (which is charming, but hardly the best movie musical to ever come off the MGM lot) is an “unprecedented” stage production by the Irish Repertory Theatre. This group normally presents dramatic works by Irish and Irish-American playwrights at their cozy playhouse in New York City. When the pandemic hit, they found a way to continue performing, by having the actors play their roles individually, from wherever they were quarantined, against a common specially-designed Zoom backdrop. In a play like Eugene O’Neill’s A Touch of the Poet, it looks as though all the characters are interacting in a tavern (most Irish plays seem to be set in taverns!), even though solo performances have actually been stitched together via clever editing techniques. The IRT’s Meet Me in St. Louis takes this one step further. Company head Charlotte Moore actually directed from St. Louis, where she has been quarantining with family. The actors may all seem to be singing “The Trolley Song” in unison, as they ride a tram toward the World’s Fair site, but in fact they have all recorded themselves separately on their cell phones. Common backgrounds make the illusion of togetherness almost seamless.

 Which makes an apt metaphor for this complicated season. In the words of Garland’s big song, “Through the years we all will be together/ If the fates allow . . . so have yourself a merry little Christmas now.”

 Here’s actress Melissa Errico’s recounting, in the New York Times, of what it was like to be part of this unique production. 

 Deepest thanks and holiday wishes to Beth Phillips, who got me hooked on the IRT’s very special work.