THE LATE SHOW 1977

Neo-noir is the inevitable by-product of 1970s nostalgia-craze sentimentality colliding with post-Watergate pessimism. If inflation, the gas crisis, and a culture in constant flux (sex, religion, Women’s Lib, civil rights, drug use, youthquake) prompted much of America to seek comfort in the pop-culture romanticizing of the past and a so-called “simpler” time, then post-‘60s cynicism and Vietnam War malaise most certainly inspired many a filmmaker to outfit their rearview spectacles with a filter of healthy skepticism. A filter not at all certain that the Good Ol' Days were really all that different (or better) than the here and now.

With its distinct visual style and built-in fatalism, the 1940s film noir—particularly the ’40s private eye movie—proved a perfect fit for '70s revisionism. There were serious entries in the field: Chandler (1971), Chinatown (1974), The Long Goodbye (1973), and Robert Mitchum’s aging take on Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep (1978); some were seriocomic spoofs: Gumshoe (1971), Pulp (1972), and Peeper (1975); some were updates: Night Moves (1975); and some were broadly comedic: The Black Bird (1975), The Cheap Detective (1978), Murder by Death (1976). America's appetite for retrieving and redrafting the past was insatiable in the 1970s, and the updated film noir remained a plentiful and popular sub-genre, even if the results were sometimes wildly uneven.

One of the better films to come out of this era is Robert Benton’s The Late Show. Robert Benton is the 3-time Oscar-winning director/writer behind Kramer vs Kramer (1979) and Places in the Heart (1984) in addition to being a collaborator on the screenplays for Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Superman (1978), and What’s Up, Doc? (1972). The Late Show is Benton’s second feature as director (his debut was the 1972 western Bad Company) and his first solo screenwriting effort.

I bring all of this up because the first time I saw The Late Show (it opened at my then place of employment, San Francisco's Alhambra Theater, and was one of the last features I recall playing there before I quit to move to LA) I honestly thought I was watching a Robert Altman movie. In terms of tone, structure, appearance, and cast, The Late Show looks and feels like the best Robert Altman film Altman never made. To be fair, Robert Altman did produce, but like that strange alchemy that occurs with actors who appear in Woody Allen movies--resulting in all of them taking on Allen’s speech inflections and mannerisms--directors working on films produced by Altman (Alan Rudolph - Welcome to L.A. 1976; Robert M. Young - Rich Kids 1979) tend to make films that look exactly as though they were directed by Altman himself.

Art Carney as Ira Welles

Lily Tomlin as Margo Sperling

Bill Macy as Charlie Hatter

Thirty years ago, retired Los Angeles private eye, Ira Wells (Carney) was—to hear him tell it—one of the best in the business. A hard-boiled detective in the mold of any number of '40s tough-guy gumshoes dreamed up by Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, Ira is still possessed of a steel-trap mind and continues to pepper his speech with the outmoded shamus slang of dime-store pulp novels. But Ira Well’s glory days are behind him.

Gray-haired, paunchy, outfitted with glasses and a hearing aid, Ira downs Alka Seltzers for his ulcer, limps due to a bum leg, and gets around town—a Los Angles he barely recognizes—by public transit. A self-styled loner, Ira rents a small room in the home of an elderly widow, one Mrs. Schmidt (Ruth Nelson), and spends his time reading the racing forms and writing his memoirs: “Naked Girls & Machine Guns: Memoirs of a Real Private Detective.” 

Eugene Roche as Ron Birdwell

When former partner Harry Regan (Howard Duff, who, in the '40s portrayed Sam Spade on the radio series) suddenly turns up at his door, mortally wounded from a gunshot to the stomach, yet talking of a sweet deal that could mean “a lotta dough” for the both of them; loyalty compels Ira to embark on an investigation to uncover the identity of his friend's killer. This decision almost immediately brings him into contact (though not entirely by chance) with two fringe L.A. types not-so-tangentially connected to the mystery of the murder: oily Charlie Hatter (Macy)—a sometimes talent agent, full-time bartender, and equal-opportunity informant; and eccentric Margo Sperling (Tomlin)—one-time actress, now jack-of-all-trades dress designer, pot dealer, transporter of stolen goods, and would-be talent manager. 

At first glance, this motley trio of mismatched associates appears ill-suited to even tackle a task as elementary as unearthing the whereabouts of a kidnapped pussycat (which, as it turns out, is precisely the CATalyst [heh-heh] for the film’s labyrinthine murder mystery plot); but, much like The Late Show itself, the disparate tonal contributions of these brought-together-by-circumstance individuals makes for a uniquely harmonious alliance.

Circumstances propel this unlikely trio into situations that put them increasingly
at risk or in way over their heads. More often than not, both.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

In retrofitting the tough guy conventions of the private-eye film to the laid-back rhythms of Los Angeles in the Me Generation ‘70s, The Late Show deftly juggles tonal shifts in the narrative accommodating mystery, comedy, and character study. The Los Angles depicted is a seedy, morally relative wasteland of faded Hollywood glamour populated by wannabes and small-time operators living unstable, anything-to-make-a-buck existences. 

By way of contrast, Ira Wells is a living throwback to another time. Amidst all the L.A. denizens chasing trends, half-hearted careers, and try-on-for-size identities, Ira is constancy personified. In fact, he’s consistent to the point of fossilization.
One senses that not much has moved forward in Ira’s life for some time, and he likes it that way. Ruled by a principled moral code and a personal sense of dignity that brands him old-fashioned from the outset, he lives a smallish, solitary existence that hasn’t made much room for the passage of time.

The Big Nap
Aging private eye Ira Wells has to remove his hearing aid before firing his gun,
ride the bus to his stakeouts, and do his own washing at the launderette 

The Late Show, with its irresistible blood-orange color scheme and glimpse back at the Los Angles I remember when I moved there in 1978, is at its best in its culture-clash scenes where the cool-headed Ira has to work closely with the excitable and rather spacey Margo. Ira's world of girls, gats, and goons seems an ill-fit for the faddish world of psychoanalysis, mood rings, crystals, and biorhythms, but Robert Benton's script and the film's exceptional cast do a remarkable job of making the incongruous blending of these two worlds as amusing as it is affecting.

Mismatched partners are a timeworn staple (read: cliché) of cop/detective films, but the generation gap sparring matches between Ira and Margo--conflicts born of both gender and personality--have genuine spark; much of which I attribute solely to the onscreen chemistry of Carney and Tomlin. (Although mutually respectful, apparently it took some time for the actors to settle comfortably into each other's method of working.) It certainly isn't lost on me that at times Tomlin's talkative Margo feels as though she could be the offspring of Art Carney's hyperactive Ed Norton character from The Honeymooners, and Carney's convincing underplaying of the hard edges of his character is reminiscent of how good so many comics can be when tackling drama (The Honeymooner's Jackie Gleason in The Hustler).

The Late Show is extremely funny and human, with witty, character-revealing dialogue and performances that ring so true-to-life that when the film occasionally explodes into unexpected bursts of violence, it’s not only startling, it’s upsetting. Without knowing it you've found yourself really caring about these people.

Joanna Cassidy as Laura Birdwell embodies the contemporary update of
the vulnerable-yet-dangerous femme fatale

PERFORMANCES

Familiar to an entire generation as Jackie Gleason's sidekick, Art Carney was a Tony-nominated actor (Lovers - 1969) and multi-Emmy-Award-winning star who earned an Oscar for Harry & Tonto (1974), his first starring role in a feature film. In The Late Show Carney is simply a marvel. Not exactly an actor known for his tough side, Carney convinces as the aging, street-wise, former gumshoe compelled to solve just one more caper.

Although Robert Benton is said to have based the character of Ira Welles on his father, Carney—who was 59 at the time and did indeed wear a hearing aid and suffer a limp—brings so much strength, dignity, and frustration to the role, it’s hard not to feel as though it were written expressly for him.

Bill Macy (then riding high on the popularity of the TV series Maude) is The Late Show's most valuable player. In the tradition of supporting actors who enrich a film by supplying first-rate performances that rarely get the attention they deserve, Macy's double-dealing Charlie Hatter is pure gold. That's actor John Considine on the right, playing sadistic enforcer Jeff Lamar. Considine wrote and appeared in Robert Altman's A Wedding

I’ve been a fan of Lily Tomlin since first seeing her on the short-lived 1969 TV show Music Scene. From Laugh-In, to seeing her onstage in The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, to Netflix’s Grace & Frankie, she is a truly inspired performer and gifted actor who always finds the humanity in humor. As per Grace & Frankie, seeing Tomlin in The Late Show portraying the kind of psychobabbling enlightened type we used to call a “granola,” Margo Sperling is like getting a look at Frankie: The Early Years.

One's enjoyment of The Late Show might depend on whether or not one finds Tomlin's character appealing or annoying. To me, Tomlin is nothing short of a comic genius (1978's Moment by Moment notwithstanding). She is an endless source of delight in this film and her scenes with Carney have a sensational, oddball rhythm

THE STUFF OF FANTASY 
Art Carney won the National Society of Film Critics Award for his performance, and Lily Tomlin was nominated for a Golden Globe, but when Academy Award time rolled around only Robert Benton's excellent screenplay nabbed a nomination.
Like many a good detective thriller The Late Show has at its center a complex, if not convoluted, crime caper, one which I was only recently able to make sense of thanks to the replay benefits of DVD; but Benton's dialogue is the real star. The almost musical rhythms of the divergent speech patterns of Ira and Margo (a great deal of the latter attributed to Tomlin's not-always-welcome-to-Carney improvisational skills) is superb.

Margo-isms:

“Mr. Welles, I can understand your feeling that way. I mean, as an actress I understand it as a motivation…”

“My shrink says I’m a very conflicted personality…plus my astrologer.”

“And Brian’s not very evolved, in fact, he’s rather de-evolved. I’m very sensitive to the vibrations he gives out and I know what kind of karma he has."

"Do you know that people who play with guns are generally impotent?"

“Mr. Welles, a truly evolved person doesn’t go around ratting on her friends, if you catch my drift.”

"I am finished! Finalisimo!"

“It’s very lucky for you that I just happen to be a very self-destructive person.”

“This car is not only a toilet but you are the attendant!”

"Everything’s copacetic."

"If you lay a hand on me I’m telling you, you’ll pay for it in your next life.”

"I really cannot relate on this level." 

 The Wit & Wisdom of Ira Welles:

“Somebody puts the breeze on Harry Regan, next thing I know you show up at Harry’s funeral with some dolly and a song and a dance about a stolen cat and all that hot comedy. What’s it all got to do with Harry?”

 “Put that thing down Charlie, you haven’t got the ass to swing it!”

"Back in the '40s this town was crawling with dollys like you. Good lookin' coquettes tryin' their damnedest to act tough as hell. I got news for you...they did it better back then! This town doesn’t change; they just push the names around.”

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

The only real point that I can see behind making a film about the past as seen through a contemporary prism is to ruminate on the differences (if any) that time has wrought in people and places; to contemplate the advantages/disadvantages of youth vs. aging; or to ponder what has been gained and what has been lost culturally, with the inevitable passing of time. What’s remarkable about The Late Show is that it manages to hit on all of the above while weaving a pretty nifty crime caper.

Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) featured a movie hero who stepped out of the screen and tried to live in the real world with the same idealism and values his character possessed on the screen. Ira Wells in The Late Show is very much like that character. Wells is a self-styled throwback to the 1940s private-eyes in the Sam Spade/Philip Marlowe mold who somehow managed to survive into the ‘70s with his old world values intact. But Ira's problem is that he's well aware of having outlived his time, and worse, he senses that he's also outlived his usefulness. 

The Late Show—humorously, with heart, and a good deal of bloodshed—makes the case that no matter how much time passes and how significantly things appear to change, all of us....life's misfits, dinosaurs, and fringe-dwellers, have something unique to bring to the table. 

BONUS MATERIAL
The film's credits sequence provides brief glimpses into Ira Welles' past.

In the photo on the left, Ira and partner Harry proudly stand before the offices of Welles & Regan: Private Investigators.  On the right, Ira and a woman we can assume to be his wife (whom we learn eventually left him) pose with their friend Harry

The woman in the photo that sits framed on Ira's desk beside his typewriter is actress Martha Vickers, who played Carmen Sternwood in the granddaddy of all private eye films, Howard Hawks's The Big Sleep (1946).

Her entrance is particularly memorable

“That’s just what this town has been waiting for; a broken down old private eye 

with a bum leg and a hearing aid…and a fruitcake like you”

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2017