We’re finally getting relief this weekend from the Death Valley-like temperatures that have scorched California, the nation, and most of the planet for the past three weeks. The heat wave started the day after I saw the Al Gore documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and I was convinced that the weather was heralding a new age of global warming where daily lows will never dip below 100 degrees and people in Los Angeles will start dressing like contestants on “Survivor: Surface of the Sun.”
Nerves have been on edge throughout southern California. I saw many examples of road rage with overheated drivers jumping out of their cars to wave fists at each other, both sporting diagonal sweat stripes across their chests from their seat belts. We don’t have any air conditioning in our house and it’s not uncommon these days for our bedroom to feel like a wood-burning pizza oven. Have you ever seen 100-year-old walls sweat? When I was a kid in Chicago I used to fry eggs on the sidewalk on abnormally hot days—I never thought I’d be able to try that on a Victorian nightstand inside my house! Oh well, it saves having to go downstairs to the kitchen and getting near our 1940s stove that is practically daring us to turn it on. Has anyone cooked at home during the past month? It felt like one extra degree in that kitchen would have started an irreversible chain of nuclear fusion.
There’s one industry that has a long history of catering to people who were sweltering in the summer heat. Beginning in the years just after World War I, movie theatres were the first public buildings in the United States to boast “man made weather.” Until the 1920s, many theatres had to shut down during the hot summer months because it was simply too stifling in the windowless auditoriums. Public officials began expressing serious concerns about the “unwashed masses” crowding together in such poorly ventilated spaces. In the early nickelodeons, the heat and smells that would accumulate on hot days became so unbearable the theatre owners were forced to close for the season.
Because theatre owners had to find a way to keep their business open year-round, they pioneered the use of air conditioning. As opulent movie palaces began springing up all over the country in the 1920s, the grand structures boasted mechanically cooled environments that frequently became a greater attraction than the films themselves. Newspaper ads showed snow drifts on the letters of the theatre’s name as a shorthand for informing consumers which theatres they could choose to escape the summer heat. The “air-cooled by refrigeration” sign on a theatre’s marquee became just as important as the names of the popular movie stars in that week’s film.
Air conditioning in regular homes finally arrived after World War II, but most of the turn-of-the-century homes in my neighborhood were never retrofitted with this newfangled and expensive technology. So I ask you, what better location for someone like me during these molten weeks? Between the hellish heat, dire reports from the Middle East, and depressing news wafting in from around the globe, my sizzling brain has been capable of only one cogent thought: “Get me to an air-cooled movie theatre!”
Unfortunately, the cache of films touted as this year’s Summer Blockbusters has not lived up to advance hype. “Superman Returns” was uninspired and forgettable. “Pirates of the Caribbean” was a confusing, long-winded bore, even with Johnny Depp in full makeup. And don’t even bring up “You, Me, and Dupree,” “The Lake House,” or “The Break-Up.”
Thank God I live in Los Angeles where relief from Hollywood hackdom can be found in frequent screenings from the city’s more gloried past. Nothing can cure a bad case of heat stroke faster than watching a pristine black-and-white nitrate print of one of the best movie collaborations I have ever seen: the Billy Wilder-scripted, Howard Hawks-directed “Ball of Fire” starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. We saw this at the UCLA Preservation Festival and it catapulted straight onto my list of my Top 10 favorite films.
The 1941 film tells the story eight highbrow professors living together in a New York brownstone. The eccentric eggheads are in the middle of a 12-year project to write a new encyclopedia and their lives revolve around their all-important research. Gary Cooper plays the youngest of the professors, Betram Potts, who is assigned the task of writing the entry on American slang. He soon realizes that his life as a scholar has left his knowledge of slang hopelessly out of date so he sets out to find someone to help him with the modern lingo. He runs across a saucy burlesque performer named Sugarpuss O’Shea who speaks in perfect slang and needs a place to hide out from the police who are trying to catch her no-good mobster boyfriend, Joe Lilac. Sugarpuss pretends to help Potts just so she has a safe place to stay while the police are looking for her.
I always respected Barbara Stanwyck but she was never that high on my movie star radar. I admired Stanwyck’s performances in films like “Double Indemnity,” “Meet John Doe,” and “Sorry, Wrong Number” but did not go out of my way to catch up on her complete oeuvre or learn what made her tick. I thought she was pretty in a sort of no-nonsense hardened kind of way, but devoid of the sexual magnetism of an Ava Gardner or a Rita Hayworth.
When we entered the James Bridges Theatre on the UCLA campus, I figured that the film would provide a temporary respite from the heat and my frayed emotional state. I never expected that Barbara Stanwyck’s Sugarpuss O’Shea would be hotter than the interior of a parked car in the Mojave Desert. Wow. From the moment she appeared on the screen, performing a superb rendition of “Drum Boogie” with the great Gene Krupa, my impression of her was forever changed. I can’t imagine another actress being able to spew the steady stream of slang she dishes out without sounding ridiculous but Stanwyck makes it seem effortless. When she leads the stuffy professors (who bear a striking resemblance to Snow White’s seven dwarves) around the brownstone in a Conga line, you start wondering what this character could have accomplished if she’d been sent on a mission to the Reichstag in Berlin. “C’mon Adolph, let’s CONGA!”
Billy Wilder was such a brilliant, witty writer that he could get anything by the strict censors of the day. Certain scenes in “Ball of Fire” are so sexy that even the air-cooled theatre heated up like the fourth of July. What idiots ever came up with the notion that nudity and depictions of hardcore sex acts carried a fraction of the thrill of watching an expertly played scene full of clever dialogue and innuendo. In one scene in “Ball of Fire,” Stanwyck asks Gary Cooper to hold her foot. If the film ratings were based on sexual energy rather than words uttered or body parts shown, this scene would have landed the film a Triple XXX.
SUGARPUSS
OK, where do I sleep?
POTTS
Well, I don't know. Where do you live?
SUGARPUSS
Up on Riverside, but I'm gonna sleep here.
POTTS
Here? Oh, you don't understand, Miss O'Shea. We're all bachelors, with the exception of Professor Oddly, who is a widower. Why no woman ever -- Even Miss Bragg, who takes care of our needs, goes home every night at 7:30.
SUGARPUSS
If you want me tomorrow morning at 9:30 --
POTTS
-- Oh, I do, Miss O'Shea!
(She begins to peel off her stocking)
But, uh, even the most free-thinking people must respect the, uh --
(She raises her leg and presents him with her foot.)
SUGARPUSS
All right, feel that. Go on, feel that foot.
(He hesitates, grabs it, then quickly lets go)
OK, Tootsie Bell, whaddaya say?
POTTS
It's cold.
SUGARPUSS
It's cold and it's wet.
(Beckoning him)
Now, c'mere... C'mere... closer... closer...
(She grabs him and pulls him to her face)
Oh, c'mon, give!
(She momentarily turns to acknowledge the other professors, who have been slowly, stealthily gathering around.)
SUGARPUSS
Hullo, kids.
(Back to Potts)
Look down my throat.
(Opens her mouth wide and keeps talking)
Ga awn, ook da...
(As he leans over to peer inside, she keeps making unintelligible sounds.)
POTTS
I don't know what to look for.
DR. MAGENBRUCH
There is possibly a slight rosiness of the laryngal region?
SUGARPUSS
Slight rosiness? It's as red as the Daily Worker and just as sore!
Fantastic. Another respite from this summer’s inferno has been a series running every Monday night at the Motion Picture Academy called “Great To Be Nominated.” They’ve been screening in chronological order films that have been nominated for Best Picture Oscars but did not win. Tickets only cost $5.00, the best possible prints of these films are screened in the Academy’s state-of-the-art Samuel Goldwyn auditorium along with various Academy-nominated shorts from that year, and best of all, living cast and crew members are gathered together to watch the films with the crowd and talk in a panel discussion after the show.
When the recent heat wave began, the screenings had reached the year 1969. The film shown for that year was “Anne of the Thousand Days,” starring a very young and breathtaking Geneviève Bujold as one of my favorite historical characters, Henry VIII’s doomed second wife, Anne Boleyn. This movie was based on the Maxwell Anderson play from the 1940s but with a story chock full of promiscuity, adultery, and charges of incest, the studios wouldn't touch it until censorship laws started to relax twenty years later. I’ve read almost every book ever printed about Anne Boleyn and it’s clear that she was one of the most maligned figures in English history. All of the accusations that led to her beheading were preposterous (unlike the well founded allegations against her slutty young cousin Catherine Howard, the fourth wife of Henry VIII, who also lost her head). I’ll leave my ravings about the innocence of Anne Boleyn for another post, but did you know there was an attempt last year to get the British government to formally pardon Boleyn and have her remains transferred from their resting place of shame in the Tower of London to Westminster Abbey where her daughter Queen Elizabeth I is buried? The request was ultimately rejected with the argument that since the case is 470 years old most of the original evidence is long gone so there’s no way for the British government to prove her innocence. Oh, come on, guys, just watch the movie!
One of the best things about these Academy screenings is watching the original stars watching themselves up on the big screen. Many have not seen these movies since they were first released decades ago. Geneviève Bujold seemed genuinely moved by the film and was a class act in the post-screening discussion. “Anne of the Thousand Days” was her first American film and promised to jettison her to superstardom in this country. One of the reasons that this never happened is that immediately after “Anne,” Universal wanted her to appear in a sequel of sorts, their production of “Mary, Queen of Scots” with the same director, crew, and costumes. Bujold felt it would be a mistake to do two such similar films in a row. She refused and Universal sued her for $750,000. Rather than deal with that, she left the country and continued making smaller films abroad.
The following Monday we braved the melting tarpit once known as Wilshire Boulevard to see the 1970 offering at the Academy—the granddaddy of all disaster epics, “Airport.” This was just before Irwin Allen jumped on the bandwagon and started producing one overbloated epic after another. “Airport” was based on the bestseller by Arthur Hailey and featured heavyweights such as Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Helen Hayes, Maureen Stapleton, Jean Seberg, George Kennedy, Van Heflin, and Jacqueline Bisset. It was great fun to see this film on the screen where it belongs, but I think what surprised me the most is how “uneventful” the story really is. Oh, I was on the edge of my seat during every moment of peril for the Boeing 707, but we’ve been spoiled by later entries in this genre to expect constant life-threatening hysteria. By today’s standards, what happened on that plane wasn’t such a big deal.
A stunning Jacqueline Bisset was at the Academy screening and told wonderful stories about her frequent fittings for her stewardess uniform with eccentric designer Edith Head and the time that she accidentally got drunk at lunch just before her big scene with Helen Hayes even though director George Seaton expressly forbade the cast to drink that day. She said that for the duration of the filming she was a hippie living in Topanga Canyon. Bisset and all of the cast members discussed how tortured poor Jean Seberg was. It was the last big-budget film for the ethereal star of "Breathless" and "Saint Joan" and she committed suicide a few years later. I cringed for Bisset when several people mentioned the period when the studios were trying to sell her as a nubile sex kitten. “After filming ‘The Deep,’ all they talked about was my tits for the next four years,” Bisset said. “God, if I was going to do a picture like that, I'd have done it a lot sexier. That looked like two fried eggs on a platter.”
Last Monday, with waves of heat rising off Academy headquarters, I went to see the 1971 offering, “Fiddler on the Roof.” I already wrote about this film after seeing it last year at the American Cinematheque, but it was great seeing a gorgeous print of the original roadshow version. Amazing how many of the film’s creators were present: 80-year-old director Norman Jewison who told a funny story about the look on the studio executives’ faces when he informed them after being hired that he wasn’t Jewish; 94-year-old screenwriter Joseph Stein; 91-year-old cinematographer Oswald Morris; and 85-year-old producer Walter Mirisch among others. I was half expecting Shalom Aleichem to walk out on the stage. Oh wait, the creator of these characters would be 147 today. Of all the actors who were present, I was most touched to see the reunion between lovers Perchik (Paul Michael Glaser) and Tevye’s second oldest daughter Hodel (Michele Marsh). When last we saw these two crazy kids, they were headed to an isolated settlement in frigid Siberia, but now, here they were on the Academy stage, running into each other’s arms. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other during the entire panel discussion. “Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match…”
Tomorrow night we return to the Academy to see the 1972 film “Cabaret” with Michael York and Joel Grey speaking afterwards. Hey, Liza, what’s up, you’re too busy to attend?
While I strongly recommend revisiting these great old films, especially if you can see them in a real theatre, I don't mean to be dissing the entire summer movie season. Meryl Streep's bravura one-two punch in "Prairie Home Companion" and "The Devil Wears Prada" is definitely worth a look, and there were several excellent documentaries I really enjoyed. “Wordplay,” about the crazy world of crossworld puzzle fanatics was loads of fun (even though it made me feel very dumb) and I think everyone should see the entertaining and upsetting “Who Killed the Electric Car?” which details the ugly collusion between the major car manufacturers, the oil industry, and corrupt politicians to destroy the zero emissions electric car.
One of the best films of the summer and the year, in my opinion, is the poignant, funny, and very original “Little Miss Sunshine” starring Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Alan Arkin, Steve Carrell, and Abigail Breslin. This tale of a wildly dysfunctional family’s journey across the country in a broken down mini-van so that their young daughter can attend the finals for a child beauty pageant in Redondo Beach was so brilliantly acted and so surprisingly moving that I wouldn't have even cared if the theatre's air-cooling system had been on the fritz.
"Ball of Fire" is one of my ALL time favorite films and I thought Barbara Stanwyck burned up the screen with the sexual heat that exuded from her. It is also the first film that I became aware of and fell in love with Dana Andrews as that 'bad guy' boyfriend! A funny dear fiilm and I never tire of seeing it!
"Fiddler" of course was a wonderful film and my dear friend Norma Crane's last role (playing Golda) on the screen having been diagnosed with breast cancer as filming began on that movie and subsequently dying at the age of 43....a terrible loss to all who knew and loved her as well as her legion of die hard fans. What a joy to go to The Academy, Danny to not only see these films but to have the privilege of hearing and seeing those who are still with us who participated in the making of these films talk about their experience. Fabulous! Oh how I wish I could go with you!
Posted by: OldOldOldLady Of The Hills | July 31, 2006 at 03:22 AM
Thanks for sharing this movie experience. What fun to go to all the Acadamy Award Nominee Films and hear the actors and directors talk about their experiences! It makes me wish we had something like that where I live. Closest we come is a few artsy film houses. I'm with OldOldOldLady...I wish I could go with you.
Posted by: Wanda | July 31, 2006 at 08:20 AM
Danny, I have to say it again: Can we trade places for a day? You seem to lead such a charmed life... I LOVE your social schedule.
Posted by: Pearl | July 31, 2006 at 07:13 PM
Danny! How could Barbara Stanwyck not have been that high on your movie star radar?!? She's one of my all-time favorites--maybe even THE favorite of the golden era actresses. Have you seen 'Baby Face'--the pre-Code trampfest where she sleeps her way to the top of the social ladder? She's incredibly sexy. Part of what makes her sexy is her unconventional beauty. She's really not an Ava Gardner or Joan Crawford. But her looks lasted late into her life. Even as a kid, I thought she was hot on 'Big Valley.' (Her grey 'do is part of the reason I want Leesa to let her hair go grey.)
I always find her in movies that appeal to me more and more as I grow older. She was adept at both comedy and drama and is especially good in films like Christmas in Connecticut and The Lady Eve (both Sturges comedies), Double Indemnity, Clash by Night and The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Ooh, and Stella Dallas! She's one of the most interesting femme fatales, in my opinion, because she seems so tough and tender at the same time. One of my all-time favorite films is Sam Fuller's Forty Guns. It's a revisionist Western in which she plays an outrageous, ruthless butch rancher/landowner. The title song calls her "a high-ridin' woman...with a whip."
Even in b-grade material I still find her fascinating. Her performance in The Night Walker lifts the film beyond its stock exploitation storyline and marketing. She co-starred with Robert Taylor who she was married to in the 30s and who had affairs with Ava Gardner and Lana Turner before they divorced. A few years later she had a torrid affair with Robert Wagner, 20+ years her junior. I recently read an interview-portrait of her in which she was described as less than an intellectual, someone who relied on street smarts and instinct rather than "book smarts." I don't know that I buy that. Not that she wasn't book smart, I can believe she may not have been much of a reader (or should I say "autodidact"?). But the implication that she wasn't smart is ridiculous and the proof is in her performances.
Oh, Danny...we have to talk!
Posted by: Matt | August 01, 2006 at 04:18 PM
Matt, you're right on all counts! Not sure why it took me so long to fully appreciate Stanwyck. On the other hand, I remember thinking how amazing (and sexy) she was in her later projects such as "The Thord Birds" which she made at the age of 75!
You need to give me a list of films I need to see to bring me up to speed. I should've kicked Norma Shearer to the curb years ago and replaced her with Barbara Stanwyck. (Oh great, now Kendall will be mad at me...)
Posted by: Danny | August 02, 2006 at 05:59 AM