A Post-Feud Bette Davis Goes Skyward

The enthusiasm with which TV audiences and critics have greeted Feud, and its unfurling saga about the making of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, proves that megawatt stars like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford never fall completely out of fashion. The opportunity to see Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange go toe to toe as legends of the past is something to be cherished. All this excitement reminded me of a little-known episode in Davis’s great career. In 1980, some eighteen years after the filming of Baby Jane,  Davis signed on to star in one of fledgling director Ron Howard’s first movies for television. 

Howard, who had made his directorial debut with a 1977 Roger Corman car-chase flick, Grand Theft Auto, tried to further his career with a series of modest movies for television. Cotton Candy (1978) and Through the Magic Pyramid (eventually released in 1981 but made several years earlier) did him no favors. But in 1980, having just made an emotional departure from the cast of Happy Days, he embarked on a gutsy project that was to star a true Hollywood dragon lady. The film was called Skyward.

Skyward was made for NBC under the terms of Howard’s new three-year contract. It was produced in conjunction with Howard’s former Happy Days co-star Anson Williams, who was also looking for new career options. While making a personal appearance, Williams had once chatted with a glum young man in a wheelchair, who complained, “I’m tired of looking up.” From this, Williams devised a story idea about a disabled boy and an old black man who teaches him to fly an airplane. Writer Nancy Sackett transformed this barebones premise into a two-hour teleplay about a wheelchair-bound girl, overprotected by her well-meaning parents, who finds a new lease on life when she learns to pilot a bi-plane. Skyward was a landmark production because it was the first television drama in which a handicapped character was portrayed by an actor with a genuine disability. For the role of sixteen-year-old Julie Ward, Howard chose Suzy Gilstrap, a plucky teenager whose spine had been crushed by a falling tree during a school outing. Howard showed courage in hiring as his leading lady a paraplegic who was also a complete acting novice. He was equally brave when it came to casting Bette Davis as the veteran stunt pilot who shows Julie how to take to the sky. 

Howard has often recounted what it was like, at age twenty-six, to direct the seventy-two-year-old Davis. Then near the end of her long and lively career, Davis accepted this part because she had never before played an aviator. She loved the script, but was suspicious of her director’s youth and inexperience. At first, she was icily polite, refusing to call him anything but “Mr. Howard,” because “I don’t know whether I like you yet.” 

On the set, she loudly questioned his ideas—until he sweet-talked her into trying one scene his way, and she found herself pleased with the results. From that point forward, life improved immensely. At the end of the shooting day, she patted him on the rump and said, “See you tomorrow, Ron.” 

What Howard quickly discovered was that actors—even legendary ones—will respond well when they are treated as trusted collaborators. Skyward was praised by critics for broaching big issues while avoiding cheap sentimentality, and roundly applauded by groups that advocate for the disabled. The film’s official premiere took place in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with a yearlong federal focus on disability issues. In Los Angeles, Mayor Tom Bradley proclaimed “Skyward Day.” 

 On the subject of Happy Days, a not-so-happy farewell to Erin Moran, whose career soared when she was cast as Ron Howard’s kid sister on that long-running series.

Hemingway and Dos Passos: Frenemies to the End

Almost 50 years after his death in 1961, Ernest Hemingway remains an American icon. Schoolchildren continue to know (or at least I hope they do) such masterworks as In Our Time and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Cineastes revere films based on Hemingway novels, like To Have and Have Not, which gained fame as the first and sexiest on-screen pairing of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. In various picturesque parts of the globe there are Hemingway statues as well as watering holes named after his favorite drinking spot, Harry’s Bar in Venice. I once made a pilgrimage to a Madrid restaurant called Botín because Hemingway’s Jake Barnes had feasted on suckling pig there, washed down with a nice rioja, in The Sun Also Rises.   

Not only have many of Hemingway’s works been filmed (as far back as 1932, Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes starred in a screen version of A Farewell to Arms) but he himself has appeared as a character in numerous Hollywood movies and TV series. Some were intended as seriously biographical, but he has also shown up in several fanciful projects. A Hemingway character was featured in TV’s Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. does not actually materialize in an offbeat 1993 indie called Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, but I still treasure Corey Stoll’s robust portrayal of the author in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. 

When Hemingway was just starting out, the talk of the literary world was John Dos Passos, a Harvard graduate with an exotic upbringing, a talent for art, and strong leftwing leanings. The two met in Paris in the 1920s, and quickly bonded. One thing that drew them together, aside from their literary interests, was that both had experienced the bloodshed of World War I while serving as volunteer ambulance drivers on the battlefields of Europe. The twists and turns of their relationship are chronicled by my friend and colleague, James McGrath Morris, in a short but fascinating  book called The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War. The sad truth of the matter: Hemingway was not easy on his friends. At the beginning, the chum and drinking companion he called “Dos” performed an invaluable service by bringing Hemingway’s work to the attention of New York publishers. But later, as the esoteric works of Dos Passos (who experimented with using cinematic techniques like montage on the printed page) earned more respect than money, Hemingway resented needing to make loans to keep Dos and his wife afloat.  Eventually, as he came to do with all his (former) friends, he was cruelly lampooning Dos Passos in print

Jamie Morris is at his most captivating when he compares Hemingway and Dos Passos in terms of their feelings about war. Dos Passos, says Jamie, “had come away from the experience with the belief that war was a macabre and purposeless dance of death.” By contrast, Hemingway looked to war as a place for a man to prove himself, as well as a prime opportunity for romance. Hemingway’s own wartime experience of near-death followed by a passionate love affair is the stuff that movies are made of.  Hollywood heroes, like Hemingway himself, tend to find that the closeness to death make them feel more alive, and the vicarious excitement makes moviegoers feel alive too. 

There are also a lot of famous Hollywood movies that chronicle wartime friendships: see, for instance, the Vietnam era films The Deer Hunter and Platoon. From the example of these movies and others, friendship in time of war doesn’t fare so well in the long term. 

I Remember Jonathan Demme

I never knew Jonathan Demme well. But he was part of my early days in the film industry, and so I add my voice to those who are paying tribute to this talented, eclectic filmmaker, who died of cancer Wednesday at age 73. 

Back in 1974, in the early days of Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, I was a jill-of-all-trades, working on scripts and publicity releases, while dipping my toes into the mysterious business of film production. Jonathan had attracted Roger’s attention by crafting the script for a motorcycle movie in the style of Akira Kurosawa’s classic Rashomon. By the time I joined the New World staff, he had his first shot as a director. Though he filmed in East L.A. instead of in Roger’s go-to exotic location, Manila, Jonathan’s Caged Heat was hailed by some perceptive critics as both a tribute to and a brilliant satire of the women-in-prison fare for which New World was becoming famous.

I participated in Caged Heat only on the sense of contributing to its marketing campaign. But Jonathan soon became a familiar sight around our Sunset Strip office suite, wandering the grimy halls with his very tall, very Australian then-wife Evelyn Purcell in tow. You couldn’t miss Jonathan: he of the shaggy hair, friendly grin, and brown-and-white saddle oxfords. But I wouldn’t have guessed that he’d be a future Oscar winner, for directing the 1991 thriller, The Silence of the Lambs. 

My one close encounter with Jonathan came when, on the strength of Caged Heat, he was offered by Roger the chance to write and direct a co-production with Twentieth-Century Fox. This was the era of tough-guy movies with outrageous rural heroes. Billy Jack had done well at the box office. So had a vigilante film about a Southern sheriff, Walking Tall, and a rambunctious NASCAR flick, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry. Roger’s genius was that he always knew how to take what was working elsewhere and repackage it with a little more sex, a little more violence. Jonathan was sent off to do some thinking. Then he met with Roger and the New World story department (Frances Doel and me) over lunch at a local eatery. It was one of the very rare lunches I ever had on Roger’s dime. Jonathan wowed us by holding up a chart in which he compared his new film concept, point by point, to those three low-budget hits. He decreed that his hero, too, needed a sidekick, an unusual weapon, and a trademark mode of transportation. So he proposed that in his Fightin’ Mad, his leading man would ride an old Indian motorcycle, wield a crossbow, and hang out with his toddler son. Most of that ended up changing, but Fighting Mad (without the apostrophe) was eventually produced, with Peter Fonda in the lead. 

In his later years, Jonathan paid tribute to his former mentor by casting Roger in virtually every film he made. Sometimes Roger’s roles were miniscule, like that of a wedding guest in Rachel Getting Married. In Silence of the Lambs, Roger has little personal screen time, but—because he’s the movie’s FBI chief—his photo appears on the wall in many scenes. His most sizable role came as a wily businessman in Philadelphia, the powerful 1993 AIDS drama for which Tom Hanks won his first Oscar. 

Demme’s affection for his old boss never waned. It was he who called it “the thrill of a lifetime” to present Roger with an honorary Oscar in 1991. Hard to believe that Demme is gone now, while Roger Corman, at 91, keeps on rollin’ along. 

A Little Danish in La La Land

In the City of the Angels (now newly known as City of Stars), April 25, 2017 has been officially proclaimed “La La Land Day.”  To celebrate this momentous event, dancers wearing bright primary colors will be dangled from bungee cords down the side of the L.A. City Hall tower. That seems a fitting salute to this award-winning film, on what is sure to be another day of sun. 

L.A. is clearly besotted by a movie that pays tribute to its own wacked-out glory. I know people who’ve already bought their tickets to a big event scheduled in late May for the Hollywood Bowl:  a La La Land Concert, with the movie accompanied by a hundred-piece live orchestra and (presumably) by anyone who cares to sing along. 

Personally, these events aren’t for me, even though I thrill to the excitement of musical theatre. I grew up with a strong appreciation for musicals performed live, on stage, and it’s rare for me to see a movie musical that outshines its stage version. I’ll make an exception for West Side Story (great film!), but I firmly believe that a true stage metamusical, like A Chorus Line, shouldn’t even try to work as cinema. 

Which makes it curious that today’s Broadway producers keep looking to Hollywood for new material. Check out how many of the current long-running Broadway musicals originated as films: Aladdin, Kinky Boots, School of Rock, Waitress, The Lion King. And this season’s new hopefuls include musicalized stage versions of Anastasia, Amélie, and Groundhog Day.  

I’m particularly obsessed with stage musicals right now because a young writer who’s near and dear to me, Jeff Bienstock, is just back from Denmark, where his original musical (with composer Andrea Daly) had its world premiere. Their Legendale moves in and out of the videogame universe, and its cast includes a Wild Warrior, a Cow Maiden, a creepy Alchemist, and several Zombie Robots, along with more everyday folk. The head of Denmark’s Fredericia Theater, Søren Møller, snapped up Legendale when he saw a workshop production in New York City. As he told the opening night Danish crowd, the show made him feel he was watching beloved films of his childhood: ET, Back to the Future, Raiders of the Lost Ark . He emphasized that he fell in love with the Legendale script partly because of its cinematic possibilities. 

The rear of the Fredericia Theater stage is spanned by huge curved panels encrusted with thousands of LED lights. Through the magic of technology, Legendale’s audiences could see behind the actors such glowingly realistic effects as a gushing waterfall, a fiery explosion, soaring birds, and trees swaying gently in the wind.  In Søren’s words, Legendale is “changing the perspective of what theatre can be.” Other musicals included on the Fredericia Theater’s roster of late are direct stage adaptations of big Hollywood animated musicals: Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame and DreamWorks’ The Prince of Egypt. These too take advantage of the Danish theater’s spectacular electronic wizardry. So little Denmark, where per capita funding for cultural activities far exceeds anything we’ve ever had (or are likely to have) in the U.S., is expanding the horizons of theatre production by way of the inspiration of the cinema.

For the youngest generation of playgoers it may occasionally be hard to tell the difference. Somewhere on  Facebook’s Fredericia Theater site, I spotted mention of an overheard comment in praise of Legendale – “En pige på omkring syv år sagde: ‘Det var en god film’” Which of course is Danish for “A seven-year-old girl said, ‘That was a good movie.’”  

Death of a Jock: Aaron Hernandez and the Movies

The big news coming out of the sports world as I write this is the suicide of Aaron Hernandez, who starred as a tight end for the Super Bowl-winning New England Patriots. At the time of his death, Hernandez was in prison serving a life sentence for fatally shooting a friend.  Less than a week after he was acquitted of a double-homicide in Boston, he was found in his cell, dangling from a noose made out of bedsheets. 

Hernandez’s brief life (he died at 27) seems to have been continuously marked by violence. Back in 2007, when he was a seventeen-year-old college football player at Florida State in Gainesville, he refused to pay a bar tab, then punched a barroom employee so hard that he shattered the man’s eardrum. Later that same year he was implicated but not charged in a Gainesville incident in which five shots were fired into a car at a stoplight, wounding two. Pundits say these were classic cases in which a prized jock eluded punishment because of his value to his team and his sport. Star athletes are like stars of stage and screen: their glamour allows them to pretty much get away with murder. (See the strange and disturbing case of O.J. Simpson, who was of course a celebrity in both respects, and whose acquittal on murder charges is very much part of the history of the City of Stars.)

Aaron Hernandez is hardly the first star athlete to combine physical power with a propensity for violence off the field. Some jocks, or so it seems, are fueled by rage that bubbles to the surface without warning. What’s striking is that, given how many movies focus on the wide world of sports, how few of them confront the anger that’s at the center of many athletes’ lives. Instead, sports movies tend toward fun and games, or toward a hagiographic approach in which the athlete at the film’s center seems a candidate for sainthood. Take baseball: such movies as Pride of the Yankees (about Lou Gehrig), The Jackie Robinson Story, Field of Dreams, and 42 tend to idolize baseball players. The characters in Bull Durham are less saintly, but fit into the category of charming rogues.

For me the football-related movies that spring to mind also focus on heroics. See, for instance, 1940’s Knute Rockne, All American. Much more recently there’s Brian’s Song, the 1971 TV movie that became a 2001 feature film: in both the focus of this true story is on the evolving friendship of a black and white teammates  who start as rivals and end as close friends, who close ranks before Brian Piccolo dies of cancer. And football becomes an ennobling experience in such high school films as Remember the Titans and The Blind Side. 

I’m hard-pressed to think of a football film in which the game’s raw cruelty is central to the story. Nor can I recall a football flick in which a character’s full-on aggression is not limited to the playing field. Are there any sports movies that dare to explore flawed men who can’t control their powerful and reckless anger?  I’d suggest looking at films about boxing. The classic example, of course, is Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, a gripping biopic about the self-destructive Jake LaMotta. In the more recent The Fighter, it’s the brother (played by Christian Bale) of the main character, real-life boxer Micky Ward, who best exemplifies the self-defeating anger that can ruin a boxer’s life. 

Will the Aaron Hernandezes of the sporting world inspire any movies? Maybe these stories are just too sad to tell.