A Fishy Story

This is my entry in the Hotter'nell Blogathon hosted by Moviemovieblogblog(ii?)

Recently Avengers:Endgame blasted records for a movie release, surpassing every movie ever released in history except Avatar (and it may yet surpass even that.)  The so-called "summer blockbuster"  has been a designation that has been around for about 40 years or so.  Of the top grossing films of all-time, at least half if not more were released during the summer.  (The other half were released during what is at least equal to summer as a big money time to release movies, during the Thanksgiving/Christmas season).

The one that started it all for the summer blockbuster designation however was Jaws.  This movie proved that a great movie, released at an opportune time, could mean profits that could line studios pockets for months (or even years) to come.  When people forgo going to the beach for the weekend in order to spend two or three hours in a theater to watch a film, that says something about the power of movies.  And studios for the last 45 years or so have strained to capitalize on that market.  Jaws made some $470 million off a $9 million budget.  (It also had the effect of reducing the amount of traffic at the beach that summer, but that is for later in the review...)

Jaws was such a huge hit that, of course, Hollywood tried to go back to the well again and again.  It spawned 4 sequels, to date, each increasingly worse than the original.  Fortunately for us it didn't make it to Jaws 19... (a movie "predicted" in Back to the Future II.  "This time it's REALLY REALLY personal!")

But the original still can be an exciting film.  A couple of weeks from now Flashback Cinema is going to re-release the original for a one-week stand.  The theaters that will have it are part of a conglomerate of theaters and if you'd like to see if it will be showing anywhere near you, you can check out the list here.

Jaws (1975):

"You're gonna need a bigger boat..."  -Chief Brody.


Villains come in all shapes and sizes.  What motivates a villain to act the way he or she does can vary across the entire spectrum of the so-called "seven deadly sins".  The predominant one in my opinion, having seen hundreds of movies featuring villains, is greed.  The villain of Jaws is not the shark, in this view.  The villain (or villains, if you will) are the greedy townspeople of Amity, who don't want their money ticket, the summer vacationers, scared away by a "rumor" of a shark.  In other words "money talks and BS walks".

At the start, on Amity Island,  a girl goes skinny-dipping with a guy, and is attacked by a shark  (and this should be a warning to you youngsters.... it's a bad idea to go "skinny-dipping"...)  After discovering remains of the body,  Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) wants to close the beaches, but the Mayor (Murray Hamilton) won't hear of it.  Doesn't Brody realize that the entire economy of the island depends on vacationers coming to use the beach during the summer?

When the coroner (who was either uneducated in shark attacks or maybe bribed by city officials) determines that the death was the result of a boating accident, Brody reluctantly agrees to forgo his plans to close the beach.  But the shark attacks another boy.  What ensues is havoc, as the mother of the boy offers a reward for the capture of the shark.  This brings out every amateur money hungry fool to try to get the reward.

At a council meeting local fisherman and would -be aquatic hero, Quint (Robert Shaw) offers his services, but for no less than $10,000.  His offer however, is rebuffed, and in the meantime two of the fools trying to get the smaller reward bring in a tiger shark, which is pronounced by everyone to be the culprit shark.

Everyone that is except for marine scientist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), who claims that the tiger shark is too small and proves his theory by cutting open the shark and finding no proof that it had attacked either of the victims. 

The second half of the movie includes the (finally) introduction of the shark in question.  (Imagine!  We were halfway through the movie and had not actually seen the monster.  That's a tribute to how intense the build up was.)  Our first introduction is when Brody, who is rather reluctantly tossing chum out into the water in order to attract the shark actually succeeds in bringing the culprit to the surface, and determines that the boat they are in is a bit inadequate for the job.

 

Quint, saddled with two amateurs, and being overly enthralled with his own abilities, has his hands full.  But the three manage to survive without killing each other.  Can't say the same about the shark.  Old "Bruce" (as the mechanical shark was called during production) has other ideas about who is going to come out on top in this battle of wills.

In the end, all the sophisticated gadgetry is pretty much useless.  Saddled with no less than three barrels which have been harpooned into him, the shark continues to wreak havoc, and while the ultimate end may come off as a little anti-climatic (at least it did to me), it does satisfy.

The movie had an affect on people who watched it.  It caused many to be wary of going into the ocean.  I don't know what the actual figures were, but the reduction in beach traffic seems to be a given in talking about the effect Jaws had on the public.  

And it became a part of the zeitgeist of American culture for years to come.  It continues to be an influence.  It crops up in political cartoons, TV and movies (just the strains of John Williams' "Duh-dum duh-dum duh-dum" and most people know exactly what the film is referencing, even if they haven't seen it+.  And being afraid to go into the water?  That crops up too.  A 1981 film, Blood Beach, capitalized on the theme with a catch-phrase of "Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water...you can't get to it!" (That movie featured what was apparently a giant ant lion living on the beach).

The Jaws phenomenon made Steven Spielberg a household name.  Its success opened the door for a wealth of great (and not-so-great) movies over the years.  Spielberg followed up Jaws with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extraterrestrial, the Indiana Jones movies and Schindler's List (which netted him his first Best Director Oscar), just to name a few.

As stated earlier, I will be going to see Jaws on the big screen later this month.  Although it will be at an indoor theater...
 

Well, folks, time to get the old Plymouth fired up for the ride home.  Drive safely folks.

Quiggy

My Personal Reminiscence on Stephen King

Early 1979 was a turning point in my life.  I was a junior in high school.  A friend of mine and I were discussing books and he told me about some stories in a book he was reading called Night Shift by a guy I had never heard of, Stephen King.  The stories my friend related sounded extremely fascinating and I immediately went to the local supermarket and found a copy of the paperback issue of the book.  As it turned out, I had actually read one of the stories before.  My uncle had a copy of the July 1976 issue of Penthouse under his bed, which had printed "The Ledge", and I had read it a couple of years before, but I didn't remember who the author was until I read it in the Night Shift collection.  (I'm not telling whether I looked at anything else in the issue.  but I was 15, so what do you think...?)

It turned out that King had been around for several years.  Not only the short stories published in Night Shift, but he had also published a few novels, and one, Carrie, had been made into a movie.  Of course, this was before my coming of age at 18, so I had not seen it, or for that matter even heard of it.  I started reading the books that were at that point available, and fortunately for me my introduction to King was in time for me to be aware of the TV miniseries made from his second book  'Salem's Lot. (which for some reason was changed to Salem's Lot without the first apostrophe for the TV show.)

This started a 20 year love of Stephen King.  I read everything that came out by King over the next 20 years.  I must admit I have grown lax in the last 20 years.  At some point I started to get annoyed with King who, rightly so in my opinion, has been accused of having "diarrhea of the word processor".    I have only read a handful of the books published since Desperation and The Regulators.  That last one was published under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman.  Which brings up a separate point.  King was such a prolific writer that he published 5 separate novels under the Bachman name, ostensibly because his publishers thought that more than one book by King on the market might hurt sales of both.

(As a side note:  I bought the Richard Bachman book The Running Man  off the rack at the supermarket when it first came out.  This was prior to King's exposure as being Richard Bachman.  I never cottoned to the idea that maybe it was King under a pseudonym at the time.  I still have the book.  It is worth, according to my last research, about $100 if I wanted to sell it.  Which makes it the most valuable thing I have in my house...)


My lapse of interest in reading King has not hurt my love of watching movies made from his work, however.  Although, truth be told, many of the movies made from King's works tend to be somewhat different from the stories themselves.  Being a traditionalist, I get annoyed with the ones that seem to have only King's name attached to them as a selling point, while the film itself has virtually nothing to do with the story.  Case in point, 1992's The Lawnmower Man.  Only one brief scene in the movie had anything to do with the actual story, but it still carried the title Stephen King's The Lawnmower Man.  (A side note:  King himself disavows the film and even sued the production company to have his name removed from the title.)

Many of the King movies I saw, as opposed to my blog title, in indoor theaters.  I think it's fitting, though,  that I saw Christine in a drive-in theater.  (Although not in my father's '60 Plymouth Fury, which would have been even more fitting, but even if he had been willing to let me borrow it, I never learned to drive standard transmission vehicles...)  Christine is not my favorite John Carpenter movie, but it is one of my favorite movie made from one of King's books.  I wholly identify with Arnie Cunningham (Keith Gordon).  I was the class geek in my own high school.

My first introduction to Stephen King film was the aforementioned TV mini-movie Salem's Lot.  It was a couple of years before I was old enough to go to the typically R rated theatrical versions of his work.  I just barely missed getting to see The Shining, so I only missed that and Carrie in the theater, but I religiously tried to get to every one thereafter, especially for a few years.  Creepshow was the first, and it remains one of my favorite horror films. Between 1982 and 1989 I went to the theter almost every time a new Stephen King movie came out.  (For some reason, I missed the original Children of the Corn.  I can't exactly remember why, but perhaps it never made it to the local theater where I lived.  And I wouldn't have driven to Dallas just to watch a movie.)

There is something about King that appeals to me.  His characters are easily acceptable, and many times I feel a certain affinity for some of them.  Arnie Cunningham from Christine is not the only one.  I also liked Bill (Emilio Estevez in the film) from Maximum Overdrive, Uncle Red (Gary Busey) in Silver Bullet and Stu Redman (Gary Sinise) from The Stand.

Not all the film adaptations are gems.  In fact, some of them are downright crap.  But the books and stories from which they (sometimes ostensibly) get their inspiration are great.  (Unless you are a sado-masochist, I wouldn't recommend any of the Children of the Corn movies.  Even the first one which is at least somewhat based on the story.  The rest are just typical Hollywood attempts to cash in on a "cash cow"... or "cash corn" if you'll forgive a pun...)

And even though horror is the primary milieu of King, I have to admit that my favorite book is Different Seasons, which featured four novellas, none of which are really in the horror genre.  Three of which were made into pretty damn good movies.  The Shawshank Redemption was based on "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption", Stand by Me was based on "The Body" and Apt Pupil was based on "Apt Pupil".  The only one of the four that has yet to be made into a movie is "The Breathing Method", but word is it is coming to a theater near you as a film sometime next year.

A guy named Scott von Doviak has published a book in the Hal Leonard FAQ series called "Stephen King Films FAQ" which is a great place to start if you are not ready for a full course meal in Stephen King films.  It is also a great reference book for those of you who might be King fanatics.


Hope you enjoyed this reminiscence.

Quiggy

Blowing in the Wind

This is my entry in the Clark Gable Blogathon hosted by Love Letters to Old Hollywood

The world was agog in the late thirties over Margaret Mitchell's book, Gone with the Wind.  Everyone, and I mean everyone, was reading it and anticipating who would play whom in the upcoming film version of the book.  If, that is, it would ever get made.

Yes, there were more than afe who were aghast that Hollywood would even consider TRYING to bring it to the big screen.  After all, for the 30's at least, it was as racy as Old Mother Hubbard's porn stash.

But still, when it came time to cast the film, there was a long line of young and sometimes not so young starlets who thought themselves up to he task of bringing Scarlett O'Hara to cinematic life.  The list of actresses who auditioned for the role is as long as the list of bad girls and boys on Santa's "Naughty List".

Among those who tried for the role are the then top actresses of the day, including Katherine Hepburn,  Bette Davis, Paulette Goddard, Tallulah Bankhead and Miriam Hopkins and about 100 others.  The girl who won the role, Vivian Leigh, was a long-shot at the outset, but eventually won the role.

But there was only one real actor who was in the running for Rhett Butler.  Not only was Clark Gable the preferred choice of the money men and casting bigwigs, but it seems that Mitchell herself had Gable in mind when she was creating the character.  (Although there was a casting call, and some of those who vied for it make for an interesting "what if" when considering the possibilities of potential film versions.)


OK its time for one of those anecdotes which you may or may not find intriguing but that I like telling.  Earlier this year I got to see Gone with the Wind in the theater (and experience that anyone should have, not just devotees of this film.  As with a previous viewing of It's a Wonderful Life, the theater had one of it's employees address the audience prior to the show.  And she showed up in authentic costume.  No not authentic costume from the movie.

She told a few of us that she was telling her father about the event and her father suggested she do it Carol Burnett style.  Just in case you have been living under a rock for most of your life I am including here the classic Carol Burnett parody.

Anyway, it turns out this poor girl had been one of those poor souls living under a rock most of her life and didn't know about the parody.  So her father sat her down and watched it with her.  And she loved it, and  incorporated the same theme into her costume.  (BTW, if you are a devotee of the film, but find the parody lower than a wart on a toad's ass, you probably won't like hanging out with me... I absolutely love it.)

Gone with the Wind (1939):

Scarlett O'Hara (Vivian Leigh) is one spoiled rotten brat.  She has gotten her way all her life, and as a result, is like many of the spoiled rotten brats of today.  At a party at her parents' plantation, Scarlett learns of an impending proposal for marriage to her best friend,  Melanie (Olivia de Haviland).  The problem is that the suitor is Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), and Scarlett has had heart and mind set on obtaining Ashley as her own husband.

So inevitably, Scarlett, believing that she can get what she wants just because she wants it, tries to win Ashley's heart before he can marry her cousin.  But Ashley, despite having some attraction to Scarlett, rebuffs her advances.  After he leaves she angrily throws a vase against the wall, not realizing that Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) has been in the room and overheard every word.

In a pique over her loss of Ashley, Scarlett accepts a proposal of marriage from Melanie's brother, Charles (Rand Brooks).  Scarlett doesn't really love Charles, however.  More or less, she only accepts the proposal as a kind of "getting back" at Ashley for rebuffing her advances.

What with every good Southern boy and man going off to join the Confederacy and fight for the honor and integrity of the South, her new husband is among the early casualties of the war,  But Scarlett doesn't really care.  Her selfish mind is still focused on her next conquest and objective, ultimately trying somehow, someway, to get Ashley, of course.

Enter Rhett Butler again.  At a dance to raise money for the South, Rhett bids a substantial amount of money for the honor to dance with Scarlett, and to the chagrin of those around her, she accepts, despite the fact that she has a moral obligation to be in mourning for her dead husband.

Ashley comes home on Christmas leave, and asks Scarlett to help take care of Melanie, who is now pregnant with their child.  After the child is born, Scarlett sends word to Rhett to ask for his help in returning to Tara with Melanie and the new baby, so the whole crew leave as Atlanta burns.  When they arrive at Tara, they find it in ruins with Scarlett's mother dead and her father a virtual mental case.

Sometime later Scarlett learns that her beloved Tara is in arrears on taxes.  Having no money, and with the threat of a former overseer on the plantation threatening to buy it for a pittance when it goes on the auction block, Scarlett heads to beg Rhett for a loan (in the aforementioned dress made from the window curtains).  But Rhett is basically broke.

So Scarlett, being the ever resourceful (conniving) girl that she is, she finds a way by getting the beau, Frank (Carroll Nye), of one of her sisters, Suellen (Evelyn Keyes), to marry her instead.  Of course, Scarlett doesn't love him either.  She just wants to have access to his wealth to save Tara.

If this is beginning to sound like a soap opera, I'm pretty sure this was the predecessor of those same soap operas we have today.  Eventually Frank dies (didn't see that coming...NOT!) and Scarlett eventually marries Rhett.  Which is a tumultuous marriage, to say the least.  Because after all, Scarlett still loves Ashley and has hopes that someday God will include him in His plans for Scarlett.  Of course, eventually Rhett tires of the little biddy and leaves her.  (Good for him!)

Except that Scarlett finally grows up (a little too late) and realizes that she loves Rhett after all.  But Rhett doesn't give a damn anymore.


Gone with the Wind, despite some negative predictions about how it could be successfully made in the wake of the Hays code restrictions, was a resounding success, and went on to dominate the Oscars that year, winning in virtually every category for which it was nominated.  Significantly, however, Gable lost the Best Actor to Robert Donat for Goodbye, Mr. Chips, which may be one of the most significant Oscar faux pas in the history of the Academy (author's opinion).

It was, without a doubt, a significant role in the actor's career.  Ask anyone to name one movie that Clark Gable starred in and I bet 99% or more will immediately respond with Gone with the Wind.  (the other 1% will probably say "Who is Clark Gable?"... which makes it even more significant if you ask me.)

Well folks, time hitch up the horses and pull this old wreck home.  Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy

Announcing the 1st and 10 Blogathon

Football!   The word means different things depending on with whom you are talking.  In Europe it means that sport where the kick the little round white ball around.  But here in the US, we call that soccer.  And when WE are talking about football, we mean Sunday afternoons in the stands (or it front of a TV) watching 22 men fight over a brown oval shaped ball.  (We also mean Friday nights with the local high school and Saturdays with the colleges fighting over the same little ball).

September, to those of us who are fans, means an end to being useful husbands, sons, boyfriends, what have you, that we were over the summer.  It means essentially that a great majority of men become, effectively, "living room gnomes", parked on a couch with a favorite beverage and some other equally tasty accoutrements and giving our undivided attention to our favorite teams on the gridiron.

 Jonathan @ Dubsism invited me to join him in this celebration of the greatest sport ever invented.  (I can hear the dissenters already, but this is my favorite sport, so there...)  When September rolls around again, and before we football fanatics get so wrapped up in the action, we want to celebrate the sport that the great Vince Lombardi once said: "Football is like life- it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority".

So if you are interested in the sport (or at least have a favorite movie which includes football action), we encourage you to sign up.  There are a few rules to consider.  First this is about the American version of football (or Canadian, if any such movies exist).  Save the European football (soccer) movies for the next blogathon, please. You can write about any movie which features scenes of people playing football (even if the movie is not entirely about football... M*A*S*H anyone?).  You can also write about movies featuring actors who were once players on the gridiron.  Dubsism has provided a few links if you need inspiration:

• http://www.sportsretriever.com/football/celebs-played-college-football/
• https://www.si.com/nfl/photo/2017/01/20/nfl-players-turned-actors#28
• https://www.footballbabble.com/football/movies/actors/

Here are the rules as established by my compadre:

1. Fit the theme: As we said, this is about films or television programs about the sport, those in which American footballers appear, or actors who were once players
2. No more that two duplicates per movie or program.
3. A limit of three posts per participant.
4. Publish your posts during one of the three days  of this blog-a-thon.
5. New material only.
6. Include the banner at the top of this post in your post.

Your team members (and what they have chosen):

Dubsism:  Necessary Roughness (1991)
The Midnite Drive-In: The Longest Yard (1974)


Realweegiemidgetreviews:  Flash Gordon (1980)
Wide Screen World:  Dick Butkus 
Moviemovieblogblogii: Popeye "You Gotta Be a Football Hero" (1935)
The Stop Button: Wildcats (1986)

Spy Games

This is my entry in the D-Day Blogathon hosted by Hamlette's Soliloquy and Coffee, Classics and Craziness

D-Day was the ultimate beginning of the end of World War II on the German front.  It was also the end of  Operation Fortitude, which involved a intricate plan, to convince the Germans that the actual invasion would occur not in Normandy, as the Operation Overlord plans for the D-Day invasion  called for, but farther down the coast in Calais.

To the effort of Operation Fortitude,  the Allied forces had installed a vast array of plywood planes and various other war accoutrements that were designed to convince aerial recon planes by the Germans that the invasion was set for Calais.  Close inspection of he force would have revealed the subterfuge, but from a height of a few thousand feet in the air, the planes and other war materiel would look like a full scale force.

But what if the Germans had discovered the ruse?  You think the D-Day invasion was bloody?  It might have been even bloodier or perhaps have even failed had some enterprising German spy stumbled across the ruse.  This was the plot of Ken Follett's extremely entertaining novel The Eye of the Needle in 1978. The novel was made into a major theatrical release in 1981 featuring Donald Sutherland in the role of the German spy, Henry Faber.

Eye of the Needle (1981):

Henry Faber (Donald Sutherland) is an inconspicuous government employee.  He has established himself as a friend and confidant to those that surround him and appears to all extents and purposes to just be a regular guy.  But in fact Faber is a spy for the German High Command, one known as "the Needle". So called because of his preference to dispatch his enemies with a knife.

When he is caught by his landlady using a transmitter in his room, he kills her and takes off, leaving behind some evidence that he was the culprit, but that doesn't faze him in the least.  He still has his mission, that of letting the Germans know of whatever secrets he has attained.

While scouting near an Allied command post, Faber discovers that the planes that are parked there are all fake.  He immediately figures out the subterfuge and heads toward the coast where he can connect with a U-boat and head back to Berlin with his information.

Unfortunately for Faber he chooses the wrong time to try to hijack a boat.  Although he is successful at commandeering the boat, a storm hits the coast.  Floundering at sea with the boat that is ill-prepared to sail under such conditions, he ends up crashing on Storm Island.

There he encounters two of the residents, Lucy and David Rose (Kate Nelligan and Christopher Cazenove).  He manages to convince the two that he is the unfortunate survivor from an ill-advised boating excursion and that he is just a regular guy.  But David is rather suspicious.

David had been scheduled to be an RAF pilot back in 1940, but on his wedding night he and Lucy were involved in a car accident and David was crippled.  He has  been relegated to Storm Island where he has become rather standoffish to his wife, as a result of his inability to come to terms with his condition.  Although the two did manage to give birth to a son, David has since been rather cold and their romance has suffered.

As a result, Lucy finds herself attracted to their new visitor.  And Faber himself, although initially seeming to use the attraction to benefit his own nefarious purposes eventually finds himself falling in love with Lucy.  Thus setting up the denouement.  Because, although he has killed David with the same dispatch as he has with others who stood in his way, when Lucy discovers his true identity he cannot bring himself to kill her.

The movie was fairly successful, making $17M in it's initial release.  Sutherland shines as the extremely cold Faber.  Although the plot is pretty much the same as any number of other novels and movies that surround the subterfuge during the war, the film has you hanging on until the very end.  One little complaint, however.  A great scene in the book did not make the movie, but in the book it further enhances the cold-bloodedness of Faber.

In the novel there is a scene where Faber has to meet a confidante who has information to pass on to Faber.  Meeting in the dark, the confidante insists that Faber turn on a light so he can be sure that he is talking to the real Faber.  Faber complies, but after receiving said information, Faber dispatches the fellow spy with his knife, claiming "you saw my face."

Drive safely, folks.  And don't pick u any strange men you see on the road.

Quiggy

Lively Aunt

This is my entry in the Rosalind Russell Blogathon hosted by In The Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood

When I was growing up, my father's older sister, my Aunt Shirley, was my favorite.  She used to harangue my mother about how much she was holding me back, and she was the one who first taught me to drive.  I can remember my mother having a fit when she found out that Aunt Shirley had let me drive her pickup (when I was 16, and should have been driving already... most of my high school friends already had their own cars...)

Auntie Mame reminds me quite a bit of my Aunt Shirley (although Shirley was married and had three boys).  She was the epitome of an independent woman and not ashamed to admit it.  I have a lot of love for a woman who refuses to bend to the rules of "respectability" and "conservative behavior".  Not an uncommon thing these days, but in those prehistoric days before Erica Jong and Betty Friedan, a woman of independence was viewed with suspicion and disdain, not only by the male-dominant populace, but also with many woman (who may or may not have viewed with envy as well as disdain.)

Auntie Mame (1958):

"Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death."

In the beginning there was Mame.  Mame (Rosalind Russell) is the sister of millionaire tycoon, who has passed away.  Under extreme regret at having to do so, due to his dislike of his sister's bohemian lifestyle, the father has made his sister the caretaker of his young son, Patrick (Jan Handzlik), whom he has made the beneficiary of his inheritance.

But the old man put a caveat in his will.  He wants young Patrick to be raised right.  Mame is saddled with a watchdog, Dwight Babcock (Fred Clark).   Babcock's first order of business is to see to it that young Patrick is enrolled in the right school.  Although Mame spouts agreement with Babock, behind his back she enrolls him in a rather liberal school run by Acacius (Henry Brandon), who, among other things, teaches some rather unorthodox subjects.  When Babcock finds out, he flips his wig and takes Patrick out of Mame's hands and enrolls him in a more conservative boarding school.

While Patrick is away, Mame ends up going bankrupt after the stock market crash of 1929.  She ends up having to go into the real world and actually work for a living, which she is supremely unqualified to do.  She is a failure at all the jobs she takes.  (I doubt she would have even been successful as a drive-thru clerk at a fast food place...)

But during one job as a counter girl at a department store she meets a rich oil tycoon, Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside (Forrest Tucker).  Beauregard is absolutely smitten with Mame.  After she is fired for being totally incompetent as a counter girl in a department store, Mame returns to her mansion where her two faithful servants have delved into their own savings to help keep her afloat.  Enter Beauregard, who has searched the city trying to find her.

Beauregard woos Mame and eventually wins her over and they are married (despite the fact that she doesn't hit it off with Beauregard's family who are just as conservative as her late brother).  On a whirlwind world honeymoon, however, Beauregard dies.  But since Mame is now a rich widow, she can resume her rather flighty lifestyle.  She returns home where Patrick has hired her a secretary and she is encouraged to write her own autobiography.

And this is only halfway through the movie.  Patrick (Roger Smith), now grown,  has met a girl with whom he is smitten and wants her folks to meet Mame, but he is wary of Mame's rather exuberant attitude towards life.  He pleads with her to act more "normal" at the meeting, but of course, Mame just has to be herself.  Which not only makes for a bad first meeting with the parents but even Patrick's bride-to-be disdains Mame's liberality.  But the plans continue until Mame invites the bride's family to her place as a return gesture, where she really lowers the ball on "polite" activities.  The marriage plans fall apart.

When you have such a character as Mame in the family you have to learn to go with the flow.  Patrick, who has become more and more like his father despite the free-spirit substitute parent he has acquired, eventually does find the right woman.  But he is wary about letting Mame have contact with his young son.

I would be remiss if I didn't also give attention to Agnes Gooch (Peggy Cass), the woman Patrick hires to be Mame's secretary.  She is an absolute hoot as a clueless girl who has no real idea of what she has gotten herself into by working for Mame.  Cass was an also-ran at the Oscars that year for the role.

Rosalind Russell was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance, but she lost it to Susan Hayward.  Maybe the Academy just wasn't quite ready to acknowledge such a outrageous character as it's top winner.  It remains a popular movie however, especially among the gay community.  One website I saw a while back recommends this as the #1 movie in a list of Movies All Gay Men Should See Before They Die.  (Note I tried to find the website but I can't remember where I found it.)

But you don't have to be gay to enjoy Mame and her personality.  I personally find myself in Beauregard Burnside's shoes.  I think Mame is a breath of fresh air, and I would definitely marry someone like Mame.  I tend to be more restrained in the circles I hang around in, but I think she could draw out a hidden joie de vivre in me.


The movie was nominated for six Academy Awards.  It lost out on all of them, most of them to the musical Gigi.

I don't agree with my friend Chris who thinks Russell should have gotten the Oscar.  (I actually would have voted for Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof , but they both lost to Susan Hayward).  But I do think, as he does, that this is probably Russell's "greatest and most enduring screen role" (at least of the ones I've seen...).  I mention my fellow reviewer because it was he who directed my attention to this previously unseen movie.  Thanks, Chris.

Well, time to fire up the old Plymouth.  Going home to my cat which, though I love her, is no substitute for an Auntie Mame...  Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy

Come to the Cabaret

This is my entry in the Broadway Bound Blogathon hosted by Taking Up Room 

Cabaret started out as a Broadway show.  Actually it started out as a series of stories written by Christopher Isherwood about life in Berlin, post WWI, just before and immediately after the coming of the Nazi party.  The original play ran on Broadway for three years to the tune of over 1000 performances, good enough for it to squeak into the top 100 of longest running Broadway shows in it's first run alone.  (And time has been kind to many of those ahead of it.  When it closed in 1969 the play would have been ranked in the top 20 in terms of number of performances.)

Cabaret as a film was a resounding success.  It made $42M against a budget of only $2M, good enough to rank it #6  in the top 10 moneymakers of the year.  What beat it out?  Well, The Godfather, of course, but also The Poseidon Adventure, What's Up Doc?, Deliverance and Behind the Green Door. (And in case you were wondering, yes, I did include that tidbit just so I could mention Behind the Green Door in this article...)

At the Oscars that year, Cabaret went head-to-head and toe-to-toe with The Godfather, both films acquiring 10 nominations in various categories, but Cabaret came out on top with 8 Oscars, while The Godfather only went home with 3.  (Of course, The Godfather was the winner of the big one as Best Picture, but still...)

One of the most impressive Oscar wins is the one that went to Joel Grey, who took home Best Supporting Actor.  In order to acquire the gold statuette he had to beat out not one, not two, but three competitors from that same Godfather dynamo.  (Al Pacino, James Caan and Robert Duvall).  {Eddie Albert was also in the mix for his role in The Heartbreak Kid, but I'll bet he was a distant 5th in the voting, among that crowd.}

I have stated on numerous occasions that I don't particularly care for musicals.  The reason being that it just seems so unrealistic.  It never happens in real life where somebody will stop what they are talking about and do an exposition in song instead.  (At least, it never happens in the crowd I hang out with, anyway).  But Cabaret and Victor/Victoria both appeal to me and there is a major reason why;  in both movies the songs are just an added feature.  You could take out the songs and the movie would not suffer plot-wise.  Try that with West Side Story.

To be honest, however, there are a handful of musicals I like even with the fact that said songs are necessary to progress the plot.  I like Fiddler on the Roof.  And of course, you would have to have been living in a cave (or at least new to this site)  to NOT know I adored Rocky Horror Picture Show...

Cabaret has some pretty good songs.  The best ones are the ones that feature Miss Liza, but even the opening Joel Grey song "Willkommen" is a toe tapper.

Cabaret (1972):

In 1931 Berlin, life is apparently rather decadent.  The free love movement of the 60's almost pales by comparison.  Sally Bowles (Liza Minelli),  a very free-spirited American woman, is a cabaret singer living in a rooming house with, among others,  a prostitute as a fellow rooming house boarder.

 Into this mix comes Brian Roberts (Michael York), a reserved British professorial student.  Brian makes a living by teaching rich German students English, while working towards a degree.

Sally immediately tries to put the moves on Brian, but he is very standoffish about it.  Sally thinks he may be gay, and Brian for his part does not try to dissuade her from the belief.  He in fact states that he has been with a woman three times and they were all failures.  Despite this, Sally continues to try, on occasion.  And eventually does succeed. (So, "Maybe those three women were just the wrong women...")

Brian begins teaching a young rich Jewish girl, Natalia Landauer (Marissa Berenson), and another of his students, Fritz Wendel (Fritz Wepper) develops a crush on her. But his attempts at trying to woo her are seemingly doomed to failure, because she insists that her future husband must also be Jewish.  And therein lies the rub, because Fritz is a Christian.  (Or maybe he's not...)

A new man arrives on the scene, Maximillan von Heune (Helmut Griem).  He begins to woo Sally and Brian develops a resentment against the rich playboy.  But later, after Max has moved on to other conquests, part of the truth is revealed in a conversation between Sally and Brian:

Brian: "Oh, screw Max!"
Sally:  "I do."
Brian: (laughing) "So do I..."

Later, when it becomes apparent that Sally is pregnant, and since she has been having relations with both Max and Brian (and possibly others) and therefore doesn't know who the father is, Brian gallantly offers to marry her.  Which she initially accepts.  But because the thought of being a settled down wife to a professor instead of the free-spirit life she prefers begins to bother her, she has an abortion, not telling Brian about it until afterwards.  And this causes their relationship to deteriorate.  Brian, it seems, despite loving Sally's free-spirit attitude just can't accept it as it is.

Throughout the film, the ever-apparent rise of the vicious Nazi party becomes omnipresent.  But most of the characters see them as harmless and ineffective, which gives some shadowing of how such a group could actually come to power.  But Cabaret is not initially meant as a window into the darker side of Germany's history.  Rather it is a look at the more decadent pre-Nazi history which may or may not have been the impetus for the coming future.

Whatever one's view of the lifestyle that people chose to adopt in those Weimar Republic days of Berlin (and truthfully, they aren't quite as decadent as some other periods of history), Cabaret is a wonderful movie on so many levels.

Time to make that trip home.  Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy