CACTUS FLOWER 1969

Thinking back to that time in the late '60s when Old Hollywood (all overlit studio sets, name stars, and conventional genres) begrudgingly made way for New Hollywood (auteurism, non-linear storytelling, and emphasis on youth), it’s easy to forget how gradual and awkward a transitional period it was. Film history can make it sound like Hollywood was churning out The Sound of Music on a Monday, then by Friday, it released Bonnie and Clyde. But closer to the truth is that the old guard was very slow in passing the torch to the younger generation, and the strain frequently showed.

Some Flowers Blossom Late But They're The Kind That Last the Longest
Ingrid Bergman admires her metaphor

During what I call the movie industry’s “Last Gasp” phase—a period wedged awkwardly between the studio system excesses of the late-60s and the emergence of the American New Wave in the early-'70s—Hollywood released a glut of wheezily old-fashioned films it attempted to pass off as “with it” and “now” entertainments that sought to reach out to the young. These woefully middle-class, middle-aged, and formulaically sitcom-y films strove to reflect a youthful perspective, but were at a loss for what that actually meant. This led to the token insertion of self-consciously “hip” templates like rock music (which, to the septuagenarian ears running the studios meant muzak-type stabs at the contemporary sound by veterans like John Williams and Henry Mancini); a smattering of profanity and skin; aggressively mod costuming and art direction; and at least one cast member under the age of 40.

The Kids Are Alright
Bergman gets in touch with her inner MILF

The worst examples: In 1969 Lana Turner starred in the psychedelic freakout The Big Cube, and Oscar-winner, classy lady Jennifer Jones looked adrift in the has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed Angel, Angel, Down We Go. Both films alienated audiences, young and old alike, by thrusting past their prime and obviously uncomprehending members of Hollywood Royalty smack into the center of exploitative, youth-pandering tales of drugs, sex, and depravity. By and large, most of these late-to-the-party efforts were just forced and artificial overtures to the youth market which, when dramatic, could only look at youth through the prism of struggling-to-adapt adults (The Arrangement and The Happy Ending ),  or when comedic, settled into a kind of out-of-touch smarminess that mistook smirking sleaze for daring: a la Prudence and the Pill and The Impossible Years, both released in 1968.

One of the better films to emerge from this cross-generational limbo is Cactus Flower; a farcical bedroom comedy that in less capable hands could have come off as little more than an expanded episode of the TV program Love, American Style (whose brightly-lit look it shares). However, this somewhat routine generation gap comedy (a cousin of the tepid but similar in tone 40 Carats) avoids that fate chiefly through the efforts of its appealing and talented cast. Truly, this film is a shining example of how charismatic and resourceful actors can turn run-of-the-mill dross into gold.

Walter Matthau as Julian Winston

Ingrid Bergman as Stephanie Dickinson

Goldie Hawn as Toni Simmons

Jack Weston as Harvey Greenfield

Rick Lenz as Igor Sullivan

To keep from giving his much-younger girlfriend, Toni (Hawn), any matrimonial ideas, confirmed middle-aged bachelor Julian (Matthau) pretends to be the married father of three. When a suicide attempt (always good for a laugh) prompts the Park Avenue dentist to propose, Julian asks his devoted nurse Stephanie (Bergman) to pose as his wife and reassure Toni that she is not a home-wrecker and that their divorce is mutually desired and amicable. Of course, this being a farce, nothing goes as planned and all manner of Neil Simon-esque comic complications arise before the not-unexpected happy fade-out.

Walter Matthau and Goldie Hawn are each so adorably asexual that their May/December romance (there's a 25-year age difference) never crosses over into gross-out territory. The rubber-faced Matthau is one of my all-time favorite actors and I just think he's hilarious in this film. The inherent likability of the actor goes a long way toward preventing his character from coming across as loathsome as written

Based on the 1965 stage hit which provided Lauren Bacall her Broadway debut, Cactus Flower is an artifact from the “tired businessman” era of theater when breezily escapist musicals and plays were concocted for the benefit of NYC businessmen seeking to avoid the rush hour crunch of the trains to the suburbs. Dating back as far as 1952's The Seven Year Itch, these shows offered mindless laughs and tame titillation by way of middle-aged wish-fulfillment fantasies envisioning a world populated by bland professional men on the prowl pursued by bevies of beautiful young women who live only to be wed. That marriage is presented as the end-all and be-all symbol of happy-ending bliss has always struck me as positively perverse given how prominently deception, serial adultery, and lying figure into the courtship rituals of the characters in these so-called sexually sophisticated comedies.

To my way of thinking, America in the very repressed and sexist early-'60s had a particularly ugly concept of what constituted sexy and funny in motion pictures—Under the Yum Yum Tree; The Marriage-Go-Round; Boeing, Boeing; Any Wednesday…ick! Is it some heterosexual coping mechanism that, even to this day, makes it necessary to perpetuate an image of romantic courtship as an intricacy of calculated lies and tricks leading to the altar? Only to be followed by a state of matrimony wherein the “domesticated” male can’t wait to stray, and the clinging female is depicted as an emasculating killjoy? Every time I hear that pathetic “sanctity of marriage” argument in today’s same-sex marriage battle, my mind goes to all those comedies and sitcoms that came out of this “simpler, more innocent time.” All of which treated adultery like some kind of frolicsome lark.

So she got herself all dolled up in her satins and furs,
 and she got herself a husband...but he wasn't hers
Very-married diplomat Arturo Sanchez (veteran character actor Vito Scotti) romances dental assistant Stephanie Dickinson, whose last big love affair was with a married man. What with Toni's year-long involvement with a man she thinks is married, Cactus Flower is like one long, pro-adultery infomercial.

Having so far lodged a case as to why Cactus Flower should be at the top of my list of most reviled films; I state here and now that no one is more surprised than I that this film ranks among my favorite comedies of the '60s. It’s a sweet-natured, laugh-out-loud, absolute delight… almost in spite of itself.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Say what one will about old Hollywood, when it was at the top of its game, no one was better at turning out these types of frothy, intricate farces. Cactus Flower has the undistinguished yet delectable visual gloss of a Doris Day movie; a sardonically funny screenplay (adapted from Abe Burrows' play) by Some Like it Hot’s I. A. L. Diamond; snappy, keep-the-action-moving direction by Gene Saks; and, most advantageously, a cast of newcomers and veterans who all know their way around a punchline.

The premise of Cactus Flower is silly in the extreme, but it’s inconceivable to me that anyone could ever devise a journey that I wouldn't want to be taken on by Goldie Hawn, Walter Matthau, Jack Weston, and Ingrid Bergman. What an absolutely amazing cast! Just the fact that they're all in the same film should qualify Cactus Flower for classic status, but watching their sublime comic sparring is like taking a master class in chemistry and timing. Their scenes fairly crackle with inspired bits of acting magic. Each is so deft and gifted a performer that together they infuse Cactus Flower with spark and wit. Maybe even more than it deserves.

Another Cactus Flower odd couple is Jack Weston and statuesque Eve Bruce (she played the Amazonian streetwalker in The Love Machine), both of whom add hilarious support to the increasingly complicated proceedings

PERFORMANCES

As Goldie Hawn’s nomination and win for Cactus Flower is the only Oscar recognition the film received, it’s a fact worth mentioning, but as an indication of merit...I'm not so sure. In considering her win over Susannah York in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Dyan Cannon in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, and Catherine Burns in Last Summer; one has to keep in mind we’re talking the Academy Awards here: an organization that first weighs in on sentiment, politics, publicity, and popularity before it ever gets around to considering performance excellence.
Hawn was the blonde "It" girl of the moment, and the public's affection for the bubble-head she portrayed on TV's outrageously popular Laugh-In factored heavily in her win. Apparently, the voting bloc of the Golden Globes felt the same, for Hawn also took that award home. I don't mean to sell Hawn short, however, for in this, her first major film role (in 1968 she appeared in Disney’s creaky musical, The One and Only Genuine Original Family Band in a giggly blond role E.J. Peaker probably turned down for Hello, Dolly!), Hawn radiates genuine star quality and holds her own against veterans Matthau and Bergman. In fact, the publicity surrounding Hawn's debut somewhat stole the thunder of Bergman's return to American screens after a 20-year absence.

Old Hollywood meets New Hollywood

With her enormous eyes and Betty Boop voice, it is difficult not to watch Hawn every second. She's so excitingly kinetic a presence she single-handedly blows the cobwebs off of Cactus Flower's rather stale bedroom humor. I think she does a marvelous job with a deceptively difficult role. She has to make Toni sweet and waiflike enough to care about, but strong and resilient enough so that Julian doesn't come off as a total jerk.

The talent and chemistry of Oscar winners Ingrid Bergman and Walter Matthau elevate Cactus Flower to high-style farce. Dick Van Dyke had initially been considered for the Matthau role, and when Bacall was passed over (or declined) there was talk of casting Lee Grant as the film's late-blooming leading lady.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Goldie Hawn's character is a clerk in a Greenwich Village record store, and the scenes that take place amongst the shelves of albums (featuring artists like Lou Rawls, The Beatles, Buck Owens, and Petula Clark) and walls of psychedelic blacklight posters feel as distant and of another time as any episode of Downton Abbey. They make me feel so nostalgic...and so old. 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Because there’s so little about Cactus Flower that actually reflects the year in which it was made, I think it plays better now than it did in 1969. In the year of Woodstock, the Stonewall Riots, Charles Manson, and the Vietnam War, America could certainly use a few laughs, but Cactus Flower's mid-life comedy must have seemed a tad out of touch. Today, it's a film that fits snugly into the vague, pop-culture mashup that is the entire decade of the 1960s (on a double-bill, Cactus Flower would not look out-of-date with 1963's Move Over, Darling), and feels charmingly corny and just a tiny bit camp (what with references to “love beads” and those stodgy Muzak-style arrangements of songs by The Monkees and Boyce & Hart playing on the soundtrack). The dialog makes me laugh, the performances are great fun to watch, and if I don't dwell too long on the whole lying-your-way-to-love subtext, I have a wonderful time watching it. This is rom-com done right.

By the way, given my oft-voiced disdain for all things Adam Sandler, it's not likely I'll be checking out the loose 2011 remake of Cactus Flower titled Just Go With It. Although I'm curious to see if they are able to update the casual sexism of the original material, I'm not curious enough to subject myself to both Adam Sandler AND Jennifer Aniston...quick, call the bomb squad!


THE AUTOGRAPH FILES

Inscription reads: "Ken, See how old and mean you get if you hang around long enough."

Back in 1995 I had the pleasure of being Walter Matthau's personal trainer (a fact which amused the legendary sloucher no end). I liked him a great deal and found him to be every bit as funny (he told the best dirty jokes!) and sweet as he appears on screen. With all the anecdotes he shared about working in Hollywood, I should have been paying him. He's very much missed.

One of the Goldie-centric newspaper ads for Cactus Flower

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2012