There is Nothing Like a Dame: Remembering Joan Rivers, Elaine Stritch, and Ruby Dee

Seems like most of America’s citizens are busy dumping ice water over their heads. I’m all in favor of supporting ALS research, but (as a resident of a drought state) I wonder if the Ice Bucket Challenge should be re-thought. At any rate, the ladies I salute today—all of whom left us over the summer—would doubtless have preferred to reserve their ice buckets for better things, like chilling magnums of champagne.

These three ladies fall into the category of dames. Not dames in the British sense, mind you. In jolly old England, the word is an honorific reserved for the female equivalent of knights. Many of the British theatre’s brightest stars, like Dame Judith Anderson and Dame Edith Evans, have been granted damehood for their artistic achievements. To us Americans, this may sound rather snooty. True, Dame Judi Dench hardly appears to be the stuck-up sort, but for the imperious Maggie Smith the title seems a perfect fit.

The dames I’m thinking of were All-American feisty broads who rolled with the punches and were never afraid to speak their minds. Like, of course, Joan Rivers. I loved her comedy from her Johnny Carson days, long before she became notorious in some quarters as the Queen of Mean. Yes, her humor had an edge to it, but much of it was directed against herself. In her own eyes, I suspect, she remained forever the ugly duckling, unwed, unloved. That’s the thing about tough dames: they’re usually awfully raw on the inside. That’s why they opt for lots of plastic surgery, or lots of booze.

Take Elaine Stritch, who passed away in July at age 89. I first encountered Stritch as a standout guest on the old Pantomime Quiz ( the celebrity charades show that morphed into Stump the Stars). With her throaty voice and raucous spirit, she was hard to forget. Later I learned she had started out as a Broadway baby, featured in classic musicals like Pal Joey and as Ethel Merman’s understudy in Call Me Madam. She also played dramatic roles, nabbing a Tony nomination as the world-weary small-town waitress in William Inge’s Bus Stop. Though she appeared on TV and in movies, the stage was her real home. In the original Company, Stephen Sondheim wrote for her (and about her) the cynical show-stopper, “Ladies Who Lunch.”  It’s a left-handed tribute to those middle-aged gals who, when they get depressed, turn to “a bottle of Scotch/Plus a little jest.”

Stritch knew about both jests and Scotch. I was lucky to see her one-woman show, Elaine Stritch at Liberty, in which she frankly discussed her problems with alcohol, at least some of which connected with her enduring stage fright. Even after decades in the biz, this old trouper—a good Catholic schoolgirl at heart—needed liquid courage before she could face an audience. Toughness on the surface; insecurity inside: that’s what made these dames tick.   

  I know much less about the personal insecurities of Ruby Dee, pioneering African-American actress and civil rights leader, who died in June. But Dee’s Oscar-nominated performance in American Gangster (at age 83) showed her toughness, as did her refusal, back in 1967, to play a maid in The Incident. The film’s director, Larry Peerce, told me how she demanded that he turn her character into a social worker: “Ruby’s a tough dame. I’ve worked with Ruby a couple of times and I adore her, but she doesn’t take any baloney.”

Another Sondheim tune seems to fit all three dames: “I’m Still Here.” Though they’re gone, I hope they’ll never be forgotten. 
 

 This post is dedicated to HBO’s documentary wizard, Sheila Nevins, whose favors to me over the years have included passes to see “Elaine Stritch at Liberty.” Sheila knows all about great dames, because she’s one herself. 

Everyone’s a Critic: The Demise of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide

It’s the end of an era. I don’t mean simply the death of Joan Rivers, whose wicked tongue will definitely be missed. But the world has also learned that the 2015 edition of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide (now just coming onto the market) will be the very last. It’s not that Maltin, like Rivers, has gone to the big red carpet in the sky. Maltin is alive and well, but the movie fans who have been thumbing through his guides since 1969 have become, it seems, an endangered species.

As Maltin writes in the preface to his last hurrah: “With ready access to information on the Internet, our readership has diminished at an alarming rate. The book’s loyal followers know that we strive to offer something one can’t easily find online: curated information that is accurate and user-friendly, along with our own reviews and ratings. But when a growing number of people believe that everything should be free, it’s impossible to support a reference book that requires a staff of contributors and editors.”

Don’t waste your tears on Leonard Maltin. The guidebooks have made him a household name, and I expect we’ll continue to see him popping up in movie cameos, on TV (he stars in his own Maltin Minute for DirecTV customers), and in pop culture references. Maltin even gets satirized on The Simpsons, and who could ask for more than that? What saddens me, though, is the way that the era of the professional critic is coming to an end.

Not that I love all critics, by any means. Some are smarmy; some can be bought; some are too self-involved to offer dispassionate opinions. But back when I fell in love with film study, it was exciting indeed to see literate, intelligent men and women slug it out in the pages of my favorite magazines. That was the era when Pauline Kael, publishing in the New Yorker, wrote a 9000-word essay that rescued Bonnie and Clyde from oblivion by detailing its historical antecedents as well as its artistic brilliance. Film criticism in those days was a blood sport. We young intellectuals thrilled to Kael’s passionate defense of a film about 1930s bankrobbers that also managed to offer a critique of our own grim decade.  And we were not sorry when venerable Bosley Crowther—he who tsk-tsked primly about violence on our movie screens—was suddenly replaced, after twenty-seven years at the New York Times, by a feisty young woman. (Yes, Crowther in his day had been courageous, championing foreign art films and strongly opposing censorship at the height of the McCarthy era. But his time had, in our not-so-humble opinions, definitely come and gone.) 

As Pauline Kael gained stature, along with a permanent sinecure at the New Yorker, there developed a battle royal between her followers and those of Andrew Sarris, who published chiefly in the Village Voice. Kael was a pop culture fanatic, who through the power of her prose could make a wan re-make of King Kong seem worth watching. Sarris, on the other hand, was America’s pre-eminent supporter of Europe’s auteur approach to film criticism. What fun to compare their outlooks! And I still have on my shelf a rapidly-eroding copy of Film 67/68, a lively publication from the National Society of Film Critics in which America’s sharpest reviewers went head to head, gleefully praising their favorite films and condemning the  many Hollywood offerings they considered unworthy.

Anyone can be merely snarky, as the Internet proves on a daily basis. But, yes, I miss the cogent, educated arguments that make true critics worth reading.

Who Ya Gonna Call?: A Labor Day Salute to Saul Saladow

Everybody knows George Clooney. And nearly everyone recognizes the name and face of Steven Spielberg. But Hollywood is also full of worker bees who get little glory. They’re not in it for the golden statuettes or fat paychecks, but rather for the excitement of making movies. On Labor Day, I salute them.

Actor Van Heflin once said, “If you really love the business, you can find a way to survive in it. You may not be an actor, but you can do something.” That’s exactly what happened with Saul Saladow. Saul, a buddy of mine at L.A.’s Hamilton High School, found a home in the school’s drama department. He later earned a theatre degree at Cal State Northridge, but it was clear he wasn’t cut out to be an actor. (As a one-time scene partner of Saul’s, I can vouch for that!) Post-graduation, he got a gig at Warner Bros. as a bicycle delivery boy. One day there was an opening in the editorial department for someone able to file trims: claiming more experience than he actually had, he went to work, learning film editing on the job.

Saul’s talent for organizing stood him in good stead, as did his firm dedication to his craft. Eventually he was hired by producer-director Ivan Reitman, with whom – over a period of three decades -- he made such films as Ghostbusters, which is now enjoying its 30th anniversary re-release. While in production he often worked fourteen-hour days, sometimes seven days a week. He’s also had the odd experience of flying films to New York, in order to screen them for individual big-name critics. Studio brass demanded that the precious film canisters to be accompanied at all times. So they’d pay for two first-class seats: one for Saul, one for the movie. (No, he didn’t have to lug it into the aircraft’s lavatory when nature called.)

Though his job left little time for an active social life, Saul wasn’t about to complain: “I was very well paid, and I loved what I was doing.”  Why did he never rise above the ranks of assistant editor? He feels he simply lacked the drive and the self-confidence to interact with directors, who often turn into General Patton in the editing room. If you’re the top editor on a big project, you can’t allow yourself to be intimidated. Furthermore, Saul notes that as someone who’s “not very musical” (I can vouch for that too!), he would have found it hard to work on editing a film’s musical score.

At about age sixty, Saul retired with a comfortable pension. His very last project was Reitman’s My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006). He would like to have stayed for five or six more years, but the industry was changing so rapidly that it seemed time to leave. The directors for whom he had worked (including Sydney Pollack as well as Reitman) were starting to slow down. And this was the era of the changeover from linear to digital editing: the transition would have required of him massive retraining and a whole new way of thinking about film.

Now that he’s retired, Saul can make time for his many friends. But he’s also managed to hold onto his love of drama. He’s a dedicated play-goer, and for decades he’s been active with a community group in Santa Monica, the Morgan-Wixson Theatre. Though he’s long since stopped trying to be an actor, Saul now produces individual shows and serves on the board as executive vice-president. When I caught his recent production of Avenue Q, he was happily taking tickets and selling candy. Yes, he’s home.

A belated postscript:  Saul would like it to be known that he does far more than sell candy. Though he sometimes does help out behind the Morgan-Wixson Theatre's concessions counter, he's officially Vice President of Front of House, and along with the other five executives he administers a non-profit organization with an annual quarter-million-dollar budget. He also notes that in the movie Dave it is HIS voice you hear saying, "Mr. President, slip your arms in here and the machine will do everything your arms do," when Kevin Kline visits an automotive plant. Adds Saul, "I would much rather be remembered for this then selling candy."