cinema obscura: two with tony

I admit it. I really miss the comedies of the 1960s. Desperately. They were breezy and stress-free and there was nothing mean-spirited about them. Yes, times have changed. Either that, or I've become way too old.

The average modern film comedy leaves one feeling battered and worn out, even the so-called "chick flicks" and romantic comedies. Face it, the romantic comedy died when Meg Ryan illustrated a fake orgasm in the deli sequence of "When Harry Met Sally." And the infamous urgent diarrhea scene (pure guy stuff) in "Bridesmaids" was another discouraging setback.

Today, there is no more exposition - nothing is set up as modern comedies come barreling at us with veritable cattle prods in hand, zapping us every five seconds or so with dubious double-entendrés (the words "penis" and "vagina" are apparently surefire punchlines) and CGI-generated pratfalls.

So what's the problem with all of this?

Most of the time, it simply isn't funny - just strained. Which brings me to two minor gems from the 1960s, both starring Tony Curtis in top form.

1964's "Wild and Wonderful," directed by Michael Anderson ("Around the World in 80 Days," "All the Fine Young Cannibals"), is a nifty take on the eternal triangle. Only in this case, it's a dog - a handsome white standard-size French poodle - that comes between a man and a woman.

Monsieur Cognac is a national celebrity in France, the star of his own TV show, as well as films, and he's completely in love with his owner Giselle Ponchon (Christine Kaufmann, Curtis's wife at the time), obsessively so. Giselle has an acting career of her own, but Cognac's comes first.

One day, Cognac disappears and goes on a bender. He meets Terry Williams (Curtis), an American musican performing in Paris, and in one of the film's more hilarious scenes, Terry and Cognac go on a wild drinking spree.

True to his name, Cognac loves alcohol. When Giselle tracks down her dog and meets Terry, she falls madly in love - much to Cognac's chagrin. The rest of the film is about how a disapproving Cognac sets up roadblocks for Terry and Giselle, feigning illness and even abuse (supposedly at the hand of Terry) and generally acting out.

"Wild and Wonderful" is effortless fun. George Clooney should do a remake (with Marion Cotillard, perhaps?). And Universal should release the original on DVD already.

A year earlier, in 1963, Curtis made an affable Universal comedy for a first-time director named Norman Jewison: "40 Pounds of Trouble," about a casino manager who gets stuck with an orphan as a marker.

Sound familiar? Jewison's debut film is, of course, based on the famous Damon Runyon story, "Little Miss Marker," which has inspired at least three other film versions - Alexander Hall's "Little Miss Marker" (1934) with Adolphe Menjou and Shirley Temple; Sidney Lanfield's "Sorrowful Jones" (1949) with Bob Hope and Lucille Ball, and Walter Bernstein's "Little Miss Marker" (1980) with Walter Matthau, Julie Andrews and ... Tony Curtis. Small world, this place called Hollywood.

In Jewison's version of the material, Curtis plays Steve McCluskey who manages a Lake Tahoe casino for Bernie Friedman (Phil Silvers). Steve is trying to juggle the responsibilities of his job with his attempts to evade the private eyes hired by his ex-wife to collect past alimony.

Complicating matters are (1) Bernie's niece, Chris Lockwood (Suzanne Pleshette), who arrives to sing at the casino and who Steve thinks is actually Bernie's mistress, and (2) a 6-year-old named Penny Piper (Claire Wilcox), who has been abandoned by her father who owes the casino money. When Penny's dad ends up dead, the kid ends up with Steve.

This leads to an antic chase through Disneyland, with Steve using Chris and Penny as his little family to ward off his pursuers.

The exceptional supporting cast includes such pros as Silvers, Kevin McCarthy, Howard Morris and Edward Andrews. Better yet, Pleshette matches up well with Curtis - they make a hugely attractive couple - and she also gets to sing here  ("If You," by Sydney Shaw and Mort Lindsey).


Jewison followed "40 Pounds of Trouble" with Doris Day's "The Thrill of It All," made the same year from a great script by Carl Reiner.

A year later, in '64, Day recruited Jewison for the best of her three comedies twith Rock Hudson, "Send Me No Flowers," based on the short-lived but very funny Norman Barasch-Carroll Moore stage play that starred David Wayne and Nancy Olson during the 1960 theater season.

Next for Norman Jewison came "The Cincinnati Kid" and "The Art of Love" (both 1965), "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming" (1966) and then his Oscar winner, "In the Heat of the Night" (1967).

A nice, steady rise.

That said, "40 Pounds of Trouble" is also unavailable on home entertainment. Both films should be taken off whatever shelf on which they've been languishing seemingly for decades at Universal. They'd also be perfect programming for Turner Classic Movies. Hint, hint.

Note in Passing: Thanks to my friend Marvin for sending me a rare VHS copy of "40 Pounds of Trouble," taped off of television when it was still possible to see the film. I'm in heaven.

 *  *  *  *  *

~images~

  ~Tony Curtis, Monsieur Cognac and Christine Kaufmann in "Wild and Wonderful"

~photography: Universal-International 1964 ©


 ~Poster art for "Wild and Wonderful"

 ~Poster art for "40 Pounds of Trouble"

 ~Tony Curtis and Suzanne Pleshette in "40 Pounds of Trouble"

~photography: Universal-International. 1963 ©

adventures in movie reviewing: Schatzberg's "The Seduction of Joe Tynan" (1979)

It's funny how some things stay with you. It was Thursday, August 23rd, 1979 and the call came in about three in the afternoon. I was reviewing for a Philadelphia daily and was rarely ever in the office, let alone at 3 o'clock.

I've no idea why I was there. Kismet perhaps? The call was from the projectionist at a cineplex in Marlton, New Jersey and had to do with "The Seduction of Joe Tynan," a film that I had reviewed the previous Friday.

I'm paraphrasing now but the voice on the phone said, "Joe, we have a print of 'The Seduction of Joe Tynan' that we're not supposed to have. Universal just had a replacement print delivered for the rest of the engagement. So, if you want to see this version, I suggest you get here tonight." Great. I drove there just in time for the 5 o'clock show.

The print that the theater was showing turned out to be a longer version of the film that I reviewed - a  preview print containing footage that was supposed to be excised before it reached theaters for public viewing.

"The Seduction of Joe Tynan," a political drama a la Michael Ritchie's "The Candidate" (1972), is largely a forgotten movie now and, even when it first opened, was pretty much under the radar, despite compelling credentials.

It was directed by Jerry Schatzberg, a former fashon photographer who made a huge impression with his first three films - "Puzzle of a Downfall Child," "The Panic in Needlepark" and "Scarecrow." And it was written by its title star, Alan Alda, best known as a TV actor at the time ("M*A*S*H"), who would use the opportunity to pursue a modest career directing features ("The Four Seasons," the most noteworthy, and three others).

Alda's two co-stars in the film are the irresistible Barbara Harris, who was having a brief fling with films at the time, and an intimidating newcomer named Meryl Streep, who was taking movies by storm in the late '70s.

Harris plays the devoted yet independent wife of Alda's Joe Tynan, an ickily smooth liberal Senator with Presidential ambitions, and Streep is a labor attorney with whom he starts an affair and who is also married.

Then there's Melvyn Doulgas, as an aging senator and Joe Tynan's mentor whom Tynan will invariably disappoint. Douglas played a vaguely similar role in the aforementioned "The Candidate." Anyone who saw "The Candidate" will recognize it in "The Seduction of Joe Tynan." Alan Alda demonstrates that he saw the same Robert Redford movie that we all saw.

Douglas is a vital part of the movie but, when I reviewed it on August 17th, back in 1979, his character mysteriously disappears from the narrative, a situation that was left unquestioned by movie  critics.

The mystery was solved when I saw a different version of the film - the version used for "producer's sneak" previews - for a second time a week later. Douglas disappears from the storyline because his character, distraught by the dubious actions of Tynan, commits suicide. The footage revealing this, if I recall, didn't add up to much but it definitely altered one's perception of the Tynan character who, up to that point, is all charisma and who, despite his infidelity and other shortcomings, asks us to see him as a good, sensitive man.

It's not the first or last time that a character was rehabilitated in the editing room. Ever since its release in 1984, rumors have swirled around Jonathan Demme's "Swing Shift" - that producer-star Goldie Hawn had the film re-edited to make her character less unappealing. Hawn plays a woman in the film who cheats on her seabee husband (Ed Harris) while he is off fighting World War II. Writer Nancy Dowd took her name off the film.

But back to Alan Alda and "Joe Tynan"... Two years later, I interviewed Alda over breakfast at the Bellvue-Stratford. He was doing publicity for "The Four Seasons," which he wrote and directed and also stars in.

It was an affable interview; Alda was charming and responsive. I brought up "Joe Tynan," with the intention of complementing Alda for creating a character with a negative side. But when I mentioned that I had seen an early version of the film that included the suicide, he turned pale and the smile left his face. "No one was supposed to see that," he said.

Our interview continued, although he now seemed distracted. In my head, I saw Alan Alda making a call to Universal afterwards.  Just a guess.

~images~

~Meryl Streep and Alan Alda in a scene from "The Seduction of Joe Tynan"
~Alda with Melvyn Douglas in a scene from the film 
~photography: Universal 1979©

indelible moment: "The Notorious Landlady"

"Some Like It Hot" (1959) is probably the one comedy classic for which Jack Lemmon is best remembered. It was directed by one of his mentors, Billy Wilder, and it predictably tops every Best Comedies film list.

But Jack had another collaborator for whom he starred in comedies that were equally great (and undeservedly neglected) - Richard Quine.

Together, at their home base at Columbia, they made the superior musical "My Sister Eileen" (1955), the scrappy service farce "Operation Mad Ball" (1957), the bewitching "Bell, Book and Candle" (1958), the it-gets-better-with-age "It Happened to Jane" (1959) and especially the sophisticated "The Notorious Landlady" (1962), a playful, clever take on Hitchcock.

"The Notorious Landlady" is my preferred Lemmon movie (hands-down) and one of my favorite films in general. Its titanic supporting structure is, of course, its sceenplay - an incredibly literate affair penned by no less than Blake Edwards and Larry Gelbart, by way of British nutneggy Margery Sharp, who wrote the short story (originally published in the Saturday Even Post as "The Notorious Tenant") on which the script is based.

Quine's direction here is his most assured as he blends subtle comedy, snappy repartee and Hitchcock quotes with incredible, impressive ease.

One memorable scene follows another, the highlight of which is a comic chase staged at Penzance, the location of an elderly residence whose tenants are enjoying an open-air concert atop the forbidding cliffs.

Here is Jack in a selection of shots bounding through the air in the film's climatic and wonderful chase sequence, which Quine and composer George Duning set to selections from - what else? -  "The Pirates of Penzance" and other Gilbert and Sullivan goodies. "Take me back before I miss "The Mikado!," the wheelchair-bound Estelle Winwood snaps at her nefarious caregiver, Phileppa Bevans, before Winwood is pushed down a rocky hill.  The scene makes me want to jump, tumble and fly, too. Enjoy!

Note in Passing: Richard Quine directed Jack Lemmon's screen test when Jack was hired by Columbia and put under contract by Harry Cohn and, along with Wilder, Quine was a Best Man at Jack's wedding to Felicia Farr in Paris in 1962, the year "The Notorious Landlady" was released. Kim Novak, Jack's co-star in "The Notorious Landlady" and Quine's muse, also attended the wedding. Wilder and Lemmon were in Paris at the time, with Shirley MacLaine, filming exteriors for "Irma La Douce" (1963).

~images~

~Jack Be Nimble - Lemmon doing his own stunt work in "The Notorious Landlady"

~photography: Columbia Pictures, 1962©

virtuoso

Jerry Lewis 

1926-2017

People who are blissfully uninformed like to equate film criticism with movie snobbery. But I know precious few critics who are film snobs.

Quite the contrary, most movie critics are adventurous, with a need to see and understand anything filmic. On the other hand, it's your average moviegoers who are picky about what they see and what they like:

The latest comic-book franchise? "Do you even have to ask? I'm in!" A movie musical? "Are you kidding? I'm not gay!" A serious drama? "Sounds like a downer!" A "chick flick" (awful expression)? "Give me a break!"

And even worse is Hollywood, which likes to complain about movie critics and how they are sadly "out of touch" with the modern movie audience.

Hollywood produces disposable junk ten months out of the year and then, suddenly in November, wills itself into the big-screen Masterpiece Theater, producing films made to win awards exclusively (thereby making itself look legit) and, if enough average moviegoers can be convinced to see them, make a bit of money. By the time the summer movie season rolls around, no one remembers the tiles of these films. "Moonlight," anyone?

At awards time, Hollywood becomes even more self-conscious: The popular moneymakers are ostracized and faux art is rewarded. Also forgotten are the veterans who kept the ungrateful studios afloat. Doris Day, although nominated for an Oscar one time (for "Pillow Talk") has never been given a Lifetime Achievement Award (I can hear a few uninformed moviegoers giggling as I write this) by the same Academy that found the time to honor Peter O'Toole, an example of snobbery unbridled.

And then there's Jerry Lewis, arguably film's most polarizing figure but undeniably a comic artist who mastered performance, narrative and technology unlike anyone else in movie history - an actor-filmmaker on par with Chaplin and Welles and (dare I say it?) perhaps superior to them both. Arguably.

On the downside, he also influenced a lot of inferior-to-dubious film comics who appropriated from him without fully understanding what they were appropriating. Either way, for better or worse, he was influential. I've learned the hard way not to discuss Jerry Lewis with someone who thinks he/she has exquisite good taste and that Lewis just doesn't fit in.

Again, even worse is Hollywood. No Lifetime Achievement award for Jerry Lewis in his lifetime. The best that the club could do was give him the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 2009 when he was 83 - not for his work as a filmmaker but for his charitable activities. "Charitable." Ironic, isn't it?

I suppose, at this point, that I should go into Lewis' life, career and amazing achievements but I'd rather point you in the direction of two friends who have done jaw-droppingly thorough jobs explaining what made Jerry Lewis great - the obits/appreciations written by Dave Kehr for The New York Times and Carrie Rickey for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Yes, two movie critics - well, make that former movie critics - and two of the best. Dave and Carrie have always been open-minded about film and bracingly unpredictable in their tastes. And there's no hint of snobbery.

I think Jerry Lewis would approve.

~images~
(from top)

~Jerry Lewis' star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
on the North side of the 6800 block of Hollywood Boulevard  
~installed in 2010

~Lewis in his prime in the 1960s
~photography: Kobal/REX/Shutterstock©

~Lewis in an atypically reflective pose
~photography: John Springer Collection/Corbis via Getty Images©

fake facts

I'm a sucker for Turner Classic Movies. It's become the filmic equivalent of White Noise in our home, always on. And, sometimes, I get to sit down and watch a movie (always when Alfred Hitchcock's "North by Northwest" or Mervyn LeRoy's "Gypsy" is aired). Its programming is beyond reproach.

What's become enervating, however, are the introductions and banter that provide misinformation. I've developed a penchant here for quibbling about them - a habit picked up, no doubt, from decades as a critic.

Too often opinions and gossip are presented as facts - and likely to be accepted as facts by the blindly loyal film buffs who make up TCM's core audience. I mean, if a filmmaker of some stature states a "fact" about a film during an on-air chat, that filmmaker surely knows what he/she is talking about, right? Well, not really. Often, it's just another opinion.

And opinions are like you-know-what: Everyone has one.

Also, an opinion posing as a fact is something easily researched - and invalidated - these days. It's foolhardy to pass one off as a fact.

The internet, you know.

The latest case in point is Saturday's segment of The Essentials, which included conversations between host Alec Baldwin and filmmaker William Friedkin prior to and following a screening of "The Manchurian Candidate."

Friedkin, of course, was one of the young filmmakers who, back in the 1970s, ushered in the New Wave in American filmmaking, along with Robert Altman, Peter Bogdanovich, Brian DePalma, Paul Mazursky, Bob Rafelson and Hal Ashby. Back in the day, in the space of three years, William Friedkin directed "The Night They Raided Minsky's," "The Boys in the Band" and "The French Connection." Then came "The Exorcist."

His satisfying second act has included excellent films based on two Tracy Letts' plays - "Bug" and "Killer Joe." That aside, Friedkin was on The Essentials because he is an enthusiastic fan of "The Manchurian Candidate" in general and its director, John Frankenheimer, in particular. He has referred to Frankenheimer as "my idol," as well as "the most important" and "the most innovative" filmmaker, admiring the documentary feel the director brought to his work, particularly "The Manchurian Candidate."

Friedkin's comments are documented on the "A Little Solitaire" featurette on the "Candidate" DVD, an extra produced and directed by Michael Arick and edited by Glenn Erickson, author of the invaluable DVD Savant site.

Much of what Friedkin says on "A Little Solitaire" he repeated on The Essentials. But, at one point, he went off script. This was the jaw-dropping moment when Friedkin casually debunked the fact that "The Manchurian Candidate" was taken out of circulation a few years after its 1962 debut and made unavailable for decades for either theatrical or TV screenings. Never happened, he flatly stated. And he spoke with utmost authority. 

His logic?

Well, Friedkin pointed out that all films that were two or three years old at that time routinely had limited or no showings in theaters or on TV after their first-run engagements, not just "The Manchurian Candidate."

Not really. It's true that the three major TV networks and local stations discontinued telecasting feature films during the late 1970s - although "The Manchurian Candidate" did have one screening on NBC before its suppression and before commercial TV stopped airing movies regularly.

But, by then, cable had picked up the slack, airing films 24/7.

And it's true that second-runs and return engagements in mainstream movie theaters had become a thing of the past, but the other films that Friedkin claimed were never seen again in theaters actually found a second life in rep houses and on cable and home entertainment.

John Frankenheimer, for example, made two other films in 1962 in addition to "Candidate" - "All Fall Down" and "Birdman of Alcatraz," both of which were readily available either on cable or home entertainment and, in the case of "Birdman," in art houses. But not "The Manchurian Candidate."

It was simply ... gone.

OK, now for the facts...

The history of "The Manchurian Candidate" is as twisted, twisty and fascinating as its plot, which deals with elaborate brainwashing and a planned political assassination. It was Frank Sinatra, one of the film's stars and its executive producer, who posed the idea to United Artists head Arthur Krim to film Richard Condon's book. Krim was the finance chairman of the Democratic Party in those days and the material scared him.

But a call from Sinatra's friend, John F. Kennedy, sealed the deal.

The film was made in 1961 and released in '62 - and a year later, in 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated.  And Sinatra, who owned both "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Suddenly" (a 1954 film also about a planned political assassination), reportedly became disturbed by how life had suddenly imitated art. And so, the two films disappeared. In tandem.

The film's screenwriter George Axelrod, interviewed by the Washington Post, confirmed that Sinatra felt that "having assassination pictures floating around (in this climate) seemed to be in grotesque bad taste."

The suppression of "The Manchurian Candidate" didn't come overnight but in stages. First, all 35mm theatrical prints were removed from circulation.  There would be no more showings in movie theaters. Then, the television versions, both complete and edited, were deleted from United Artists' syndication package.  The film was available for a while in 16mm for non-theatrical rental (for showings on college campuses and the such) but those prints eventually were deleted from U.A.'s programming guide.

The decades-long absence of "The Manchurian Candidate" was the result of a very methodical process, as various studio departments got the word.

Films are suppressed for any number of reasons, most usually personal, and they can be placed in limbo by either the studio that made and released them or, in rare cases, by their filmmakers/owners. Both Otto Preminger and Alfred Hitchcock, for example, owned most of their films. In the case of "The Manchurian Candidate," it was owned by Sinatra, plain and simple. And if one goes on the internet to do research - or, the old-fashioned way, to a library - one will find reports that point to Sinatra.

So, the popular explanation is that "The Manchurian Candidate" was pulled by Frank Sinatra, its executive producer, for politically correct reasons.

Sounds good. The stuff of excellent press.

But a second reason has also been advanced - that "The Manchurian Candidate" (along with other titles) disappeared because of a financial dispute involving discrepancies and disagreements about profits between the film's producers and United Artists. This is the version that John Frankenheimer himself had often corroborated in interviews.

Whatever the story, the movie was indeed unavailable for years.

It wasn't until home entertainment created a new market for films that the financial issues were finally resolved and "The Manchurian Candidate" was - ta-da! - suddenly released from limbo and free to be seen again.

But, first, a Big Comeback... Prior to its release on VHS, "The Manchurian Candidate" was screened at the 1987 New York Film Festival, with the spin being that the festival's selection committee had successfully coaxed Sinatra to comply. But it was all part of the planned re-release.

"The Manchurian Candidate" was restored for the occasion and became the hit of the festival. It eventually had a limited release in select theaters (read: art houses) in May of 1988 and was reviewed anew by critics.

The subsequent home entertainment included a seven-minute taped interview (produced by David Fein and Eytan Kella) with Frankenheimer, Axelrod and Sinatra discussing the making and controversy of "The Manchurian Candidate" - everything, but nothing about its disappearance. 

Note in Passing: During his chat with Friedkin, Baldwin elicited surprise that the screenplay for the film was penned by Axelrod, a writer who was noted for light comedies ("The Seven Year Itch," "Phffft!" and "Breakfast at Tiffany's"). No surprise, Friedkin responded, because in his view, "The Manchurian Candidate" is a satire. Huh? True, there are a few humorous moments in "The Manchurian Candidate" but these largely revolve around the broad performance of James Gregory as a buffoonish (but decidedly dangerous) Senator with serious pretensions of becoming President.

Still, calling "The Manchurian Candidate" a satire is a bit of a stretch. John Frankenheimer's film has always worked as a compelling and often harrowing experience - even more so these days when its once-outrageous premise seems downright prescient. Now, Jonathan Demme's wildly misguided 2004 remake of the material, that's a funny film.

~image~

~John Frankenheimer rehearses a scene with Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey on the set of "The Manchurian Candidate" 
~United Artists 1962 ©