Back-to-School: Sir Dares You to Go Up the Down Staircase

For me it’s shorts-and-sandals weather, so it’s hard to imagine young people going back to school. I’m sure that most adolescents would much rather head for the movies. But of course movies about unruly students—and the teachers who try to tame them
—are a genre unto themselves. The year 1967 featured two: Up the Down Staircase and To Sir, With Love.

The former, a gritty low-budget black-and-white feature, somewhat parallels To Sir, With Love, with Sandy Dennis assuming the Sidney Poitier role as a brand-new teacher who walks into a tough situation. Adapted from a best-selling novel by the late Bel Kaufman, it understands that a public school is a bureaucracy run amok. Shot in an actual New York City high school and incorporating non-professionals into its cast, it is one of the most convincing movies ever made about secondary education. Within its student body, some are hopeless and a few are dangerous, but others remain capable of making progress. The film does an honest job of showing both the risks and the rewards of being a classroom educator.

Up the Down Staircase earned only a third as much money as To Sir, With Love. The obvious explanation is that Sandy Dennis is no Sidney Poitier. Yes, Dennis was much admired for this performance, even winning the Best Actress prize at the 1967 Moscow Film Festival. (Rumor has it the film was submitted by the U.S. Department of State to counter Soviet propaganda that all American schools are racially segregated.) Yet Dennis’s spirited but vulnerable Sylvia Barrett is no match for Poitier’s suave, charismatic Mark Thackeray. The marketing campaigns for the two films tell the tale. In one prominent ad, a well-dressed Poitier is shown standing behind his desk, his hands splayed out flat on its wooden surface. He’s leaning forward, and his face is grim. Clearly, he’s a man who means business. This fact is reinforced by the words scrawled on the blackboard behind him: “You’ve got to make them cool it and call you ‘Sir’!” What To Sir, With Love is promising is a powerful hero, one who scores an almost-military victory (note the emphasis on the word “Sir”) over the young roughnecks who threaten to bring him down. Audiences were clearly pleased: the film was a major hit.

Many newspaper ads for Up the Down Staircase contained a full-length image of Dennis, carrying books and a large tote bag; she looks slightly disheveled, and also wary of the leers she’s getting from the teens loitering in her path. Other ads featured a male hand, complete with snake tattoo, writing boldly on the chalkboard, “DEAR TEACH—THE THING I LIKE BEST ABOUT YOU IS YOUR LEGS.” Above this implicitly sexual taunt, there’s a glimpse of Dennis’s anxious face. Though much of the marketing for Up the Down Staircase contains in small print a line clearly intended to be inspirational—“The year’s #1 best-seller picks you up and never lets you down”—all visuals emphasize the leading character’s feminine fragility. Poitier represents the teacher as victor, as someone who, despite his air of refinement, is tough enough to tame classroom hoodlums. Dennis, by contrast, is the teacher as potential victim. Nonetheless, the fact that a movie is devoted to a female whose dilemma is professional rather than romantic, and whose concern for her students’ progress is not to be confused with maternal softness, shows a rare and welcome respect for the idea of a woman finding her place in the world of work.

Here’s to teachers – and their students – everywhere!  

Robin Williams: Good Night, Clown Prince

The death of Robin Williams hit me between the eyes. He was just such an integral part of my young-adult years. I’ll always think of him as Mork from the planet Ork, looking at life on earth from a perspective both uniquely askew and consistently funny. (I’m sure I have those rainbow-striped suspenders around somewhere.)

Williams had many talents. But even he couldn’t do the impossible, like save a picture whose script is faulty. This lesson was brought home to me when my husband insisted we see 1990’s Cadillac Man. Sure, the reviews weren’t great, but with Robin Williams as star, how bad could it be? After surviving 97 minutes of lame attempts at zany humor, I learned a lesson I still share with my screenwriting students: without a strong script, even the best-cast film cannot fly.

Fortunately, most of Robin Williams’ projects were considerably better. My favorite period of his work ran from 1980 into the early 1990s, when he was blending offbeat humor with a satiric edge that managed to make a serious social comment. I remember Moscow on the Hudson (1984) and Good Morning Vietnam (1987) as both trenchant and hilarious. And his portrayal of a deranged homeless man in 1991’s The Fisher King (opposite the equally brilliant Jeff Bridges) is one I’ll long cherish. I can’t point to deep social meaning in his manic vocal performance as the genie in Aladdin (1992). But of all the Disney musicals this is the one that had me (along with my kids) singing and dancing outside Hollywood’s El Capitan Theatre, so delighted were we with the sheer antic exuberance of it all.

I admired the touching Dead Poets Society (1989), with its belief in the written word as well as the nobility of the teaching profession, though its “seize the day” message was undeniably heavy-handed. And this film seemed to send Williams in a direction I didn’t much appreciate: toward movies that reeked of sentimentality. I’m perhaps alone in the world in disliking 1997’s Good Will Hunting. (I do, though, admire the smarts of screenwriters Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for adding to their screenplay what they originally called the Harvey Keitel part. Here’s how film historian Peter Biskind describes it: “They tailored the part of the therapist to a Hollywood star, any star, gave him the best lines, made it small so he could fit it into his schedule.”  The role would have worked for Morgan Freeman or Meryl Streep, but ultimately Williams was cast as the bereaved but still funny therapist, and won an Oscar.) The next year, he starred in an even more egregiously schmaltzy film, Patch Adams, about a doctor who plays the clown to cheer up his dying patients. I had the misfortune of seeing it (over and over) in a hospital waiting room while a family member’s surgical procedure dragged on.

Three decades ago, I was writing a magazine story about a Hollywood branch of the famous Paul Sills improv troupe, which included such lively second bananas as Avery Schreiber, Hamilton Camp, Richard Libertini, and Dick Schaal. For these talented eccentrics, the challenge was finding a way to work together, spontaneously spinning a story out of the wispiest of materials. At one performance, the newly famous Robin Williams was announced as a special guest. Of course he proved remarkably quick and inventive. But he was not a team player, instinctively pulling focus from those who shared his spotlight. It was his destiny, I guess, to go it alone. Perhaps the price of being Robin Williams was just too high to bear.  

James Shigeta: A Bridge to the Future?

In the back pages of the Los Angeles Times, I just came across a funeral notice for James Shigeta, who probably qualifies as the first Asian-American heartthrob for his roles in two 1961 films, a World War II tearjerker, Bridge to the Sun, and a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Flower Drum Song. He passed away on July 28 at the age of 85 after a long, full career that includes a voice role in Mulan and a dramatic death scene in the original Die Hard. The brief item in the Times contains evidence of a large, loving Japanese-Hawaiian family. I’m sure they will respect his wishes by paying their last respects in aloha attire. And they’ll probably heed the instructions “No okoden.”

I speak Japanese (yes, really!), but this was a new term for me. I found out it refers to the old Japanese custom of mourners bringing cash gifts, enclosed in special paper wrappers, as a form of condolence offering. I always enjoy learning something new, and I also appreciated the chance to think of James Shigeta in a truly Japanese context. He was by birth a third-generation American, one who started out knowing little about the country of his ancestors. Having won first place on Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour, he tried to make it as a singer. But  even a “European” stage name—Guy Brion—didn’t help him get American bookings. That’s why, after a stint in the U.S. Marine Corps, he went to Japan, learned the language, and became a major musical star. Then Hollywood came calling. His first screen role was as one-third of a romantic triangle in Sam Fuller’s off-beat1959 noir, The Crimson Kimono. For a change, here was an Asian character who spoke standard English and was played by someone of the correct ethnicity. The original ads for this flick play up its shock value. Above a sketch of an embracing couple, we read: “Yes, this is a beautiful American girl in the arms of a Japanese boy!”

After World War II, the moviegoing public seemed newly intrigued by stories about the intermingling of Americans and Asians. I remember the hubbub over Sayonara (1957), a romantic melodrama in which Marlon Brando as a Southern-born Air Force major stationed in Japan, falls hard for the beautiful Miiko Taka. Also in Sayonara, Red Buttons and Miyoshi Umeki won Oscars for playing doomed lovers. Both women’s roles were cast with actual Japanese actresses. But a Japanese male character in the film, Nakamura, is played by none other than Ricardo Montalban.   

Prior to Shigeta, most major male Asian roles were undertaken by Caucasians wearing funny makeup. Here are a few that really stand out for me, and not in a good way: Warner Oland, born in Sweden, starring in a long string of Charlie Chan movies. Marlon Brando, playing at being Okinawan, in Teahouse of the August Moon (1956). The protean but very un-Asian Alec Guinness wooing Rosalind Russell in A Majority of One. (In this warm-hearted but ludicrous 1961 comedy, he’s supposed to be Japanese and she’s supposed to be Jewish—oi vey!) Worst of all, a grotesquely buck-toothed Mickey Rooney as a cranky Japanese neighbor in the same year’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s. (Publicists circulated a bogus announcement that the role had gone to a brilliant Japanese comic, Ohayo Arigatou, making his American debut.)

Today things are better. The talented Japan-born Ken Watanabe earned an Oscar nom for 2003’s The Last Samurai. But Asian-American leading men still gripe that their opportunities are limited. Yes, they want to play more than ninjas, superheroes, and sushi chefs. 

Barbra in Old Malibu: Two’s Company

No one is saying there’s really a Main Street USA.-style row of shoppes in Barbra Streisand’s basement. Michael Tolins’ clever new play, Buyer & Cellar, makes it clear from the start that his premise is total fantasy. But, oh!, we’d like to believe that la Streisand, sequestered in her fabulously decorated Malibu hideaway, longs for one-on-one contact with the new clerk in her private shopping paradise.

That clerk, played by the appealing and hilarious Michael Urie (he was Marc St. James on Ugly Betty), is our guide into Barbra’s world. He begins by showing us an actual coffee-table volume penned by the diva. My Passion for Design (2010) chronicles—through text and Streisand’s own photos—the always-tasteful compound she designed and built as a way of surrounding herself with beauty. Streisand’s meticulous mindset is well known, so it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine her housing her many collections (of dolls, old toys, used costumes, and so on) in quaint boutiques where she can browse and pretend to purchase.

It’s hugely appealing to envision a star of Streisand’s magnitude hanging out, in solitary splendor, in her re-purposed Malibu basement. From the earliest days of Hollywood, we common folk have liked thinking of our celebrities as breathing rarefied air, far from the madding crowds with their workaday lives. In the early years, stars like Mary Pickford chose hilltop aeries, and the trend continues, as any SoCal realtor will tell you. I can’t forget one brouhaha, back in the days when Johnny Depp was still living with Vanessa Paradis and their children. I’d always thought la famille Depp made its home in the south of France, but of course the Beautiful People can’t be limited to only one locale. It seems Depp and company also resided in the Hollywood Hills, overlooking the Sunset Strip. But their happiness was threatened by a planned office tower, far below, that would mar the aesthetics of their 180-degree view of the L.A. basin. It wasn’t that the tower encroached very much: it would be faintly visible only from the Depp children’s expansive play area. Depp was quoted by the L.A. Times as saying that no one had the right to spoil his children’s view. As much as I believe that SoCal overdevelopment needs to be checked, this was one case where I felt no sympathy for a homeowner whose sense of personal entitlement seemed limitless.

Down by the beach, entitlement runs rampant too. Malibu, of course, is a wonderful place for sun, sand, surf, and posh rehab facilities. It’s almost de rigueur for today’s stars to have a beach toehold. Many have put down roots in the Point Dume area, or along the exclusive gated street  known as the Malibu Cove Colony. (I’ve been there, thanks to friends in high places, and therefore know what it’s like to truly get away from it all.) Of course, given the rabid nature of some fans, I can respect a celebrity’s need for privacy. But it’s enshrined in California law that beaches are open to everyone. Alas, Malibu-dwellers make quite a game out of limiting public access to their pristine stretch of ocean by way of gates to which only the privileged few have a key.

How curious that stars with down-to-earth appeal like to tuck themselves away in Malibu. I’m thinking not only of Streisand (who was glad to escape the cramped Brooklyn apartment of her childhood) but also the presumably populist Bob Dylan. He may sing of urban environments like Desolation Row, but this particular rolling stone gathers moss near the California surf.

Conan (and Corman) vs. Pteracuda

History, as Conan O’Brien will be the first to tell you, is about to be made. As a late-night talk show host he has, by his own admission, achieved “a level of perfection that can’t be equaled.” That’s why he’s decided to shift gears and conquer Hollywood as a dramatic actor. His first role is a head-turning, gut-wrenching cameo in Roger Corman’s latest cheapie, Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda, which will debut August 2 on Syfy, during “Sharknado Week.”  

Conan being Conan, he’s playing up the honor for all he’s worth. To tout his own performance in what he calls a “powerful, hyperrealistic film,” he has sprung for a billboard, advertising himself as a candidate for Emmy and Oscar consideration. As he told his studio audience, he’d hoped for a spot on L.A.’s flashy Sunset Strip, where everyone of importance would be sure to see it. Instead, the Conan billboard hovers over “the Historic Brakes and Alignment District,” somewhere in the vicinity of the cement-encased L.A. River. He’s also taken out an expensive full-page ad in the Hollywood Reporter, featuring an earnest photo of himself alongside a quote: “I’ve never worked so hard to meet the dramatic demands of a performance . . . I want this to be my legacy.”

Everyone, it seems, wants to get in on the act. In that same issue of the Hollywood Reporter, one of Hollywood’s directorial legends has placed a congratulatory ad,  which reads, “Congratulations, Conan O’Brien! Your work in Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda is, in a word, sublime.” It’s signed “Your friend, Martin Scorsese.” And the media too are getting involved. On the Time Magazine site, commentator Melissa Locker headlines her post, “Conan O’Brien’s Cameo in Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda is Spectacular.”

Needless to say, all this attention to his Sharktopus sequel is music to Roger Corman’s ears. Roger stopped by Late Night with Conan O’Brien this past week to talk up the mayhem that occurs when Sharktopus (half-shark, half-octopus) tangles with Pteracuda (half-pterodactyl, half-barracuda) in a battle of CGI monsters. This current phase of Roger’s long career began back in 2004 when Dinocroc (yup, half-dinosaur, half-crocodile) became a surprise hit at the American Film Market. But the real breakthrough came in March 2010 with Dinoshark, a made-for-TV production that joined Syfy’s Saturday night monster-movie lineup. By the time Dinoshark aired, network execs were already asking for Sharktopus. As invented by my good friend (and longtime Corman assistant) Frances Doel, Sharktopus was genetically engineered by the U.S. Navy for the purpose of combatting Somali pirates. Naturally it runs amok, swallowing up many pretty girls in bikinis, not to mention Roger’s own daughter as a bungee jumper having a very bad day. (Serious fans will also recall Roger’s own cameo, as a beachcomber less interested in a Sharktopus abduction than in a rare coin left lying on the beach when its bikini-clad owner is dragged into the surf.)   

Those who’ve worked with Roger over the years praise his fundamentally serious approach to his material, even back when it involved monsters made of rubber and papier-mâché. As late as 2005, he told one journalist, “The worst thing you can do is say, ‘I want to start out and make a campy movie.’” Still, Roger is also known for keeping up with the times. Today, when it’s considered cool to watch (and mock) a really bad movie of the Sharknado ilk, he’s happy to climb on board, even when this means deliberately undercutting his own creations. Which is why that Conan cameo (see below) makes me grimace. Not because it’s yucky, but because Roger definitely knows better.