POPEYE 1980

“The sun’ll come out tomorrow.”  Annie - The Broadway Musical (1977)

“I am what I am an’ tha’s all that I am.”  Popeye - The Movie Musical (1980)

The eccentric, rebellious spirit that characterizes much of what I love about ‘70s movies is a trait I associate with the decade’s turbulent, smash-the-idols mindset that challenged societal norms through movements like the Sexual Revolution, Black Power, Women’s Liberation, and the fight for LGBTQ Rights. As anyone who lived through that decade can tell you, the ‘70s were A LOT. So, it’s also no surprise—considering the Vietnam War, Nixon, Watergate, the Energy Crisis, and a struggling economy—that another defining characteristic of ‘70s films is their pervasive sense of pessimism, disillusionment, and cynicism.

The 1970s: When No One Went to the Movies for a Good Time

But even pressure cookers have their limits, and by mid-decade, after years of near-unrelenting sturm and drang, a kind of mass battle fatigue had begun to set in. The result: like trauma survivors reverting to age-regression as a coping mechanism, the nation’s moviegoers started turning away from post-Watergate nihilism and began flocking (in precedent-setting droves) to reassuring, old-fashioned, almost juvenile entertainments like Jaws (1975), Rocky (1976), Grease (1978), Superman: The Movie (1979), and the unabashedly hopeful, “look to the skies” optimism of Star Wars (1977), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).

The overwhelming dominance of these films at the box office ushered in the age of the blockbuster, the revival of the movie musical, and signaled the end of the New Hollywood reign of director-as-self-indulgent-auteur (Heaven’s Gate was detonated in November 1980). By decade’s end, it was confirmed: uplift and escapism were in, reflection and navel-gazing were out. 

Some were quick to label this sociocultural shift an avoidance tactic—a deliberate retreat into the past to escape the instability of the present and the uncertainty of the future. But it’s clear, at least on some level, that it was also an act of retrieval. A retracing of our steps to find out where, on the ‘70s road to America shedding its illusions about itself, we’d also lost the capacity for hope, optimism, and trust.

To discover, as David Bowie sang in his 1975 song, "Young Americans": “Where have all Papa’s heroes gone?”

We Could Be Heroes

This late-decade surge of pop-cultural positivity found an anthem and hero in the 1977 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Annie. Based on the 1924 Harold Gray comic strip, Little Orphan Annie, the show and its signature song “Tomorrow” – an unironic paean to optimism – caught the eyes and ears of Paramount producer Robert Evans, who, ever on the lookout for another anticipating-the-zeitgeist hit like 1971's Love Story, had hoped to make it into a film, but was beaten to the punch by Ray Stark at Columbia Pictures (and we all know how that turned out). 

Undeterred, Evans raided Paramount’s vaults and in no time announced plans to mount a live-action movie musical around cartoonist E.C. Segar’s 1929 comic strip character Popeye the Sailor (Man). A rather canny choice on Evans’ part, for not only did Popeye have global familiarity and name recognition, but in Popeye’s catchline: “I yam what I yam (an’ tha’s all I yam),” Evans had landed upon the perfect ideological hook—individualism, self-acceptance, and being true to oneself—upon which to anchor the entire film (and to inspire, he hoped, a suitably “Tomorrow”-like optimistic musical anthem).

Popeye and King Blozo in E.C. Segar's Thimble Theater comic strip

Preproduction on Evans’ passion project got promisingly underway with the usual revolving door of actors (Dustin Hoffman, Lily Tomlin, Gilda Radner, Jason Robards [for Poopdeck Pappy]) and directors (Arthur Penn, Mike Nichols, Louis Malle) considered. 

But industry eyebrows were raised to the snapping point when it was learned that one of Hollywood’s most notoriously hands-on, old-school movie producers had selected as the creative team for his broad-appeal, family musical comedy based on a comic strip, not one but THREE of the industry’s most notoriously rebellious, independent-minded, and artistically temperamental substance abusers: Jules Feiffer (Screenplay), Harry Nilsson (musical score), and Robert Altman (director). 

Poised to be Paramount's big holiday season release of 1980, Popeye arrived—over budget, behind schedule, and amid reams of negative press about its troubled production—on Friday, December 12, 1980, at Mann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. 

Robin Williams as Popeye the Sailor Man

Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl

Wesley Ivan Hurt as Swee'pea

Paul L. Smith as Bluto

Paul Dooley as J. Wellington Wimpy

Ray Walston as Poopdeck Pappy

As was my wont back then, on Popeye’s opening day, I was among the first to arrive in the long line of keyed-up ticketholders that serpentined down Hollywood Boulevard from the Chinese Theater forecourt. The overall atmosphere felt like being at an “event," and the early bird section I was in seemed to be made up entirely of Robin Williams/Mork and Mindy fans who were completely unaware of Robert Altman but were eager as all get-out to see Williams in his film debut. 

In fact, for fear of instigating a real-life reenactment of the last scene from The Day of The Locust, I found myself lying to my line-mates—the strangers one bonds with while waiting in a movie line for two hours—that I, too, was a fan of Williams (I wasn’t…at least not back then) and loved Mork and Mindy (a show I seriously could not stand).

Popeye and his Pappy
Mork meets My Favorite Martian 

However, as a fan of Robert Altman since my high school days, everything about Popeye represented such a departure for the director that I was practically chomping at the bit with anticipation, wondering what the “strange bedfellows” partnership of Altman & Evans would yield. By reputation, Evans seemed to be precisely the kind of profits-driven producer Altman had railed against his entire career, yet it was also clear that from a professional standpoint, Altman was in no position to stand on principle. As Altman’s third release of 1980 (Quintet was a flop, H.E.A.L.T.H was shelved after a brief L.A. run), Popeye represented #3 in a three-strikes-you’re-out comeback bid for Altman’s return to the kind of mainstream success that had eluded him since Nashville (1975).

Duvall's letter-perfect Olive Oyl deserved an Oscar nomination,
but Popeye was overlooked entirely at Awards Season.

Popeye was Shelley Duvall's 7th collaboration with Robert Altman. May of 1980 saw the release of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, marking her first major role in a film by another director (she had a brief but amusing part as a Rolling Stone reporter in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, 1977).

Donald Moffat as The Tax Man

As an end-of-the-year release, Popeye, through no fault of its own, arrived shouldering all the anxieties of the industry’s disappointments of the previous months. The summer of 1980 had seen a spate of expensive musicals flop stupendously (Can’t Stop the Music, Xanadu, The Apple), indicating that, despite Grease's success, the movie musical might not truly be “back” after all; the boxoffice underperformance of the comic-book-based Flash Gordon (playing next-door to Popeye in the Chinese Theater’s add-on twin cinemas) had producers biting their nails; and just three weeks earlier, the megaton detonation of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate had symbolically signaled the end of the New Hollywood era of directors as free-rein auteurs. 

And we haven't even gotten to Popeye's own issues yet. As mentioned earlier, Popeye's release was dogged by negative press. Most of it focused on the film's troubled production history: filmed in Malta on an initial budget of $12 million, reports of inclement weather, stormy personalities (Altman, Feiffer, and Nilsson clashed throughout), and technical problems, led to rumors of Popeye running over schedule and hemorrhaging money like bilge water; its final cost, more than twice the original budget. 

But a good deal more press coverage was reserved for the grossly inopportune timing of Popeye's publicity-hound producer (Evans, of course) being charged with cocaine possession and trafficking just months before his family-friendly Disney-Paramount co-venture was set to hit theaters. 

I, for one, wasn’t worried about all the bad press. In fact, if I’m being honest, the very real possibility that Popeye could turn out to be an epic disaster factored positively in my opening day excitement. As a longtime aficionado of Cinema de Merde I ignobly admit that rarer and more exciting than being among the first to see a future movie classic is the opportunity to be one of the first to see a genuine, history-making stinker…a bomb on the scale of something that provides “I was there!” stories to dine out on for decades to come. 

Popeye, like Superman: The Movie (1979)—Warner’s comic-book-to-screen hit whose success Paramount aspired to emulate—is an origin story. It introduces the mononymous seafaring loner (prolonged solitude accounting for his habit of talking to himself in muttered, sarcastic asides) as a storm blows him into the seaside shantytown of Sweethaven, where he hopes to find his long-lost Pappy. 

As Altman described it, his Popeye is the story of a human sailor who shipwrecks in a cartoon town and finds himself in a kind of two-dimensional limbo. The longer he stays amongst these eccentric cartoon characters, the more he begins to resemble them. In finally finding a place where he belongs, the sailor gradually transforms until "He becomes the Popeye of the cartoon.” In the film’s finale, after vanquishing Sweethaven’s dictator, gaining self-acceptance ("I am what I am"), and discovering the joys of family—both found and biological—the heroic, spinach-loving Popeye of the 1930s Max Fleischer cartoons is born. Hence, the introduction and sole appearance of Samuel Lerner’s iconic “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man” theme song.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Well, blow me down…

I’ll be darned if Robert Altman didn’t go and make the most charming, sweet-natured movie of his career. Quirky and whimsical, Popeye bears the stamp of Altman's influence in ways both beneficial (he's a wonderful ensemble director) and detrimental (the film is almost recklessly singular in its vision). However, as a true collaborative work of many talented individuals, both in front of and behind the cameras (production design: Wolf Kroeger, costumes: Scott Bushnell, cinematography: Giuseppe Rotunno), what is achieved with Popeye—at least in terms of faithful visual representation—is nothing short of dazzling. The characters are brought to life in a colorful (if not always vivid) manner, effectively crafting a cohesive, fully realized, live-action cartoon world that's true to the visual and tonal spirit of the original E.C. Segar comics.

So, why didn’t I like it more? 

Bluto sees red when Olive shows up late to their 
 engagement party with another man...and a baby!

A movie this good-natured and with its heart in the right place is difficult to thoroughly dislike; yet, I can’t say I entirely fell in love with Popeye, either. Instead, my feelings align with this quote from LA Times critic Charles Champlin: “[Popeye] … is a film that is rarely uninteresting but seldom entirely satisfying, except when young Wesley [Swee’pea] is beaming his radiant innocence on all about him or when Shelley Duvall is being Olive Oyl to absolute high-voiced perfection.”    

The Toughs
Actor Dennis Franz is visible 2nd from the right.
The other Toughs are members of Popeye's production crew 

I can only guess that the audience I watched it with felt something similar because the response throughout the evening was attentive but mild. The film's biggest laugh came from a growling fox fur, and the most vocal reactions happened every time there was a close-up of Swee'pea.

Absolutely nothing is lacking in the film’s production values or anything related to the visual transfer of the Popeye comic world to the screen, which is part of the problem. In focusing so heavily on getting the neo-realist, material aspects of Popeye right, I think Altman & Co. missed the boat by not investing at least as much meticulous attention to figuring out how to make us care about these characters.

The world created is so richly textured, the look of the characters so striking in their eccentricity, I couldn’t help feeling they all deserved a better story, better music, and certainly better jokes than the ones they’re given.

A sure bet for Popeye's all-around crowd pleaser was literal nepo-baby

(the director's grandson) Wesley Ivan Hurt 

"Keep A-Goin' " (the title of one of Haven Hamilton's songs in Nashville) is the name of one of the horses considered when Wimpy takes the "clairvoyink orphink" Swee'pea to bet on the races

As a comedy, Popeye’s gently absurdist tone elicited more smiles than outright laughs from me. And as a musical, I thought it had some truly sublime moments—I adore Olive’s “He Needs Me” and Popeye singing “Swee’pea’s Lullaby”—but I remember waiting for the magic to kick in. It never really did.

I’m grateful Popeye never succumbed to the kind of deadening, forced exuberance and “bigger is better” bombast that sounds the death knell for so many big-budget movie musicals. But what’s served up in its stead (a lot of inert slapstick and surprisingly joyless, curiously earth-bound circus tumbling) is bewildering. It’s not like the world of Popeye didn’t offer Altman plenty to work with…even with that consciously crackpot musical score of Nilsson's.

The Walfleur Sisters
Played by the a cappella quartet The Steinettes, who appeared in Altman's H.E.A.L.T.H.

It has been said of Altman that his dedication to his creative vision tends to make him a director who can be indifferent to the audience’s experience and enjoyment. Aspects of Popeye bear this out. For instance, conceptually speaking, it’s all well and good to decide, since they’re simple townsfolk, no one in Sweethaven should know how to sing or dance. But since it was SOMEBODY’s idea to make Popeye a musical, didn’t it occur to anyone to consider what the audience is being asked to sit through? The concept proves far more fanciful than the reality when parts of Popeye inspire the same squirmy discomfort as those scenes of tone-deaf Sueleen Gay singing in Nashville.

Olive and the Oyls
Olive's Miss Bossypants posture clearly shows the family’s power dynamics.

And why wasn’t all of this more fun? One reason musicals ARE musicals is their potential for emotional transcendence. A musical can be as small, subtle, and offbeat as it wants to be…but that shouldn't mean it can't also be a little joyous and magical. Though “Swee’pea’s Lullaby” always gives me waterworks (which I credit to Robin Williams' endearing performance), it's the rare musical that fails to provide me with at least one good “goosebump moment.” 

There's enough that Popeye does right for me to see it as a triumph of adaptation (and if you’ve seen the live-action versions of The Flintstones, The Cat in the Hat, or How the Grinch Stole Christmas, you know how truly dreadful Popeye could have been), but it's more a movie I'm fond of than a movie I love. 

As much as I still feel Popeye never quite gelled into the movie it had the potential to be, with each passing year, I become more appreciative of its uniqueness and eccentricity. Especially when taking into account it was made at a time when the film industry was starting to embrace the kind of cookie-cutter mediocrity that guaranteed blockbuster multiplex weekends.

It turns out there was real wisdom in Evans’ gamble on Feiffer, Altman, and Nilsson, and in his belief that a movie emphasizing the virtues of individuality should be created by artists who embody those qualities. Altman is a risk-taker, and in his way, a humanist visionary who fought to do right by Popeye by doing it HIS way. 

It's in this way that Popeye feels very much a product of the post-‘70s zeitgeist of optimism and hope. And as an adult-friendly flick geared towards kids, I love that it champions self-acceptance and the nobility of heroism rather than—like the blockbuster Grease—the triumph of conformity and the safety of buckling to peer pressure. 

Spinach Power Couple

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall are the ideal Popeye and Olive. Both are cute as a button and impossibly young here, and since their deaths, their effortless chemistry has taken on a nostalgic poignance. Williams subdued is my kind of Williams, and his Popeye is appealingly naïve and decent. Duvall, doing wonders with her voice, gawky grace, and extravagant eyelids, gives Olive Oyl a comic-lyrical beauty resulting in her being the very best thing in the film. I don’t think Popeye would have worked at all without Duvall in, as Altman put it, “The role she was born to play.”

Although the character of Poopdeck Pappy doesn't make a lot of sense--he's a redeemed villain whose villainy served him no real purpose--Ray Walston is perfect, and this is one of my favorite scenes

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Popeye shares several amusing similarities with Robert Altman’s revisionist Western, McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971). Both are set in small, makeshift settlements built specifically for the films. Both tell stories about loners whose fates are tied to an indifferent town. Shelley Duvall appears in “McCabe,” as does Robert Fortier (Edgar in 3 Women ), who plays the town drunk we see dancing on the ice. In Popeye, Fortier wears the exact same costume in his role as Sweethaven's drunk, Barnacle Bill.

The church in "McCabe" inspired Sweethaven's house of worship, while, in Popeye's wittiest allusion, a woman in an opium haze can be seen staring at a ceramic vase in the "House of ill repukes" that Popeye enters to save Swee'pea.

And both Popeye and "McCabe" are subtle anti-fascism parables. Citing a lyric from the Sweethaven anthem " We're people from the sea, free from democracy," Altman stated: “The thing we're doing in 'Popeye' is showing a microcosm of an oppressed society. The people of Sweethaven are not what they are, they are what people tell them to be.” As one journalist noted, until Popeye stands up to the tax man, the citizens of Sweethaven are happily oblivious to their entrapment and oppression. 

Sounds familiar.

BONUS MATERIAL

THINGS DON'T ALWAYS GO BETTER WITH COKE

The above wheatpaste poster ad for WHITE HORSE hair cream is likely an in-joke added by one of Popeye's craftspersons, poking fun at (or paying homage to) the abundant drug use during filming on Popeye's remote Malta location. In speaking of the shoot, Robin Williams claimed, "We were on everything but rollerskates." While Robert Altman conceded, "There was a lot of cocaine and a lot of drugs going around. Everybody was shipping stuff in."

I won't go into it here, but you're interested in knowing more, just Google: Popeye 1980 Cocaine—the internet is seriously flooded with info about the Maltese Snowstorm.

Clip from "Popeye" - 1980

Copyright © Ken Anderson    2009 - 2025

GLENDA JACKSON: MORE THAN A TOUCH OF CLASS

May 9, 1936 - June 15, 2023

Winner of two Academy Awards for Best Actress, a two-time BAFTA winner, and the distinguished recipient of a Golden Globe, Emmy, and Tony Award. The late, great Glenda May Jackson (Ms. Jackson, if you're nasty) was indisputably one of the preeminent actors of my generation. 

And a lifetime personal favorite. 

What I wrote about Glenda Jackson in 2014: 

“Blessed with a mellifluous voice and an articulate beauty that radiates strength, intellect, and a fleshy sensuality, Jackson is Old Hollywood star-quality without the lacquered veneer. Her performance as Gudrun Brangwen [in Ken Russell's Women in Love - 1969], certainly one of the more complex, emotionally paradoxical characters in literature, is almost wily. Throughout the film, she wears the look of a woman in possession of a secret she dares you to find out.”

When I started this blog in 2009, Jackson had already been retired for sixteen years (if serving for 23 years as a member of British Parliament can be called retirement). At the time, what with a substantial amount of her film and television work unavailable on VHS or missing in action on DVD at the local Blockbuster, I recall devoting a great many paragraphs to venting my spleen about how profoundly I missed her and how sorely her brand of grown-up intelligence was lacking in the adolescent male fantasy/franchise-driven cinema of the first decade of the 21st century. 

Their chemistry was electric. My favorite of all Jackson's co-stars.
Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed made three films together.
Women in Love (1969) - The Triple Echo (1972) - The Class of Miss MacMichael - 1978

I've been in thrall of Glenda Jackson since my teens. Though initially, due to the “mature” nature of her early films, mine was an infatuation formed on what I’d read, not seen. Since I wasn’t yet in high school when Women in Love premiered in the US in 1970 and only of “rated-GP” age when her subsequent R-rated films—The Music Lovers and Sunday, Bloody Sunday—came out the following year, no small part of the Glenda Jackson mystique for me was that she was this highly acclaimed, Oscar-winning darling of the arthouse and hard-to-please critics, who made movies that my parents thought were too controversial and adult for me to see. I was hooked!

In Glenda Jackson's first film, she was an uncredited extra in Richard Harris's This Sporting Life. In her last feature film before assuming her duties as MP in 1992, Richard Harris was her co-star. In King of the Wind, Jackson plays Queen Caroline to Harris' King George II in a dual cameo for this star-studded children's film. Said Jackson to a journalist during filming: “I’m only doing it for the money. I’ve never been paid so much for doing so little in my life.” 

With her movies off-limits to me, through the initial stages of my infatuation, Glenda Jackson was just this striking woman with the Vidal Sassoon bob, razor-sharp cheekbones, wry mouth, and no-nonsense gaze looking back at me from issues of Sight & Sound, Film Quarterly, and Films in Review at the library. But in the era of the "flower child" and the perennial waif (Mia Farrow, Goldie Hawn, Leigh Taylor-Young), Glenda Jackson represented a screen commodity in short supply during Hollywood's youthquake panic...she was a grown woman. 

Glenda Jackson never played the ingenue. Straight out of the gate, 

she tackled demanding roles of unsettling emotional forcefulness   

"Now, every time there's a role for a nut case who takes her clothes off, they say 'Call Glenda Jackson'"
Chicago Times - 1971 (Jackson, on wearying of playing neurotics)

In the films of the late '60s, a confluence of the youth counterculture, the sexual revolution, eased censorship, and pushback against the feminist movement brought about the rise of the “buddy flick” and the “alienated young man" movie. The result: the marginalization or complete erasure of the grown woman from movie screens. In its place, and the emergence of “the girl”…the showy, supplicant, supportive, subordinate, sexually-available girl. 

"Women aren't integral to films except as sex-objects. The woman is always a soothing balm or irritating scourge to the man whose story is the main thrust of the film."  - Glenda Jackson in 1989

TELL ME LIES: A FILM ABOUT LONDON (1968)
Jackson appeared in the film adaptation and original 1966 stage production of Dennis Cannan's anti-war exercise in experimental theater, "US," directed by Peter Brook for the Royal Shakespeare Company. 

But Glenda Jackson was no girl; everything about her communicated “grown-ass woman” and “force to be reckoned with.” Ill-suited for standing on the sidelines, retreating into the background, or diminishing herself for the sake of a male co-star (I still have memories of 5' 8" Swiss actor Marthe Keller having to slouch and contort herself to appear shorter than co-stars Dustin Hoffman [Marathon Man 5' 5"] and Al Pacino [Bobby Deerfield 5' 6"), when you saw Glenda Jackson in a movie, she stood out as the individual whose story you wanted to know more about. 

                                       NEGATIVES (1968)                    Severinfilms.com
In this precursor to Women in Love, Jackson portrays one half of a role-playing couple
 who finds herself having to fight for dominance once the duo becomes a trio 

Harboring few illusions about herself or her career (which she regarded as work, not stardom maintenance), both onscreen and in interviews, Jackson radiated a grounded self-sufficiency that frustrated journalists accustomed to writing about women through the traditional gendered prisms of glamour, sex appeal, love life, and fashion.

In those days, it seemed impossible for any critic to write about Glenda Jackson at any length without using at least one of the following words (invariably as a negative): steely, challenging, hard, intellectual, direct, dominating…you get the point. In some circles, her bluntness earned her the nickname "Stonewall" Jackson.

Glenda Jackson made two films with Peter Finch. For Sunday, Bloody Sunday, she received her second Best Actress Oscar nomination. For The Nelson Affair (known as Bequest to the Nation in the UK), Jackson caused a PR furor by openly telling the press that she thought she was terrible in it

It took a while, but once critics adapted to the (shocking!) notion that there was nothing extraordinary about a woman exhibiting the same strengths traditionally lauded in men, they came to appreciate that Jackson’s resilience was just one aspect of her broadly dimensional range as an actor. The warmer shades of Jackson’s palette—affection, grief, longing, loneliness—are on affecting display in several of her films, particularly Stevie, The Return of the Soldier, and The Turtle Diary.

Personally, I liked Jackson's toughness. She emerged from the British New Wave (the post-war cultural era of "kitchen sink realism" that was dubbed the Angry Young Man movement), and I remember thinking at the time that it would be very cool if she became known as British Cinema’s “Angry Young Woman.”

Glenda Jackson's acerbic intensity made her a natural choice for portraying
 domineering authoritarians. As for this proclivity leading to roles as nuns...
well, that's something you'll have to take up with the authors of these works.

Considering how coming across as likeable or pleasant didn't appear to rank high in her concerns when choosing movie roles, in many ways, Glenda Jackson's success contradicted every standard once considered essential for a woman to become an international star in motion pictures at the time. There was far too much intelligence behind her eyes for me to feel Jackson could ever be entirely convincing as a giggly, superficial character, but she nevertheless built up an impressively versatile resume of roles in her career. Speaking to that point in 1974: "People see me as profane one time, regal the next, funny, insane, demure...I want to keep it that way."  

THE BOY FRIEND (1971)
If avant-gardist Peter Brook of the RSC is considered the most influential director of Glenda Jackson's theatrical work, then Britain's enfant terrible, Ken Russell, is the director most closely associated with her film career.  She and Russell collaborated on five feature films and one TV movie from 1969 to 1992

Given my adolescent fondness for films that were too adult for me, the irony isn’t lost that my first glimpse of Glenda Jackson on the big screen was in the only G-rated movie Ken Russell ever made: the charming 1920s musical The Boy Friend. Showcasing a previously untapped flair for comedy, Jackson’s uncredited cameo as an egotistical stage star benefited from a meta quality that may not be appreciated today. Jackson was a major star at the time, known for her simple lifestyle, seriousness, and indifference to celebrity. Seeing cinema's biggest and most down-to-earth dramatic star in comically over-the-top diva mode was a delightful surprise.  This brief glimpse left me wanting more.

Make Mine a Double
Glenda Jackson's one-woman British Invasion of Elizabeth I portrayals saw Elizabeth R premiere on TV screens in February 1972, and Mary Queen of Scots open in theaters the following month.

Happily, I didn’t have to wait long; a few months after the US release of The Boy Friend, PBS Masterpiece Theater aired Jackson’s six-part miniseries on Queen Elizabeth I, Elizabeth R, for which she earned two Emmys. Spanning 45 years in the monarch’s life, the BBC series gave Jackson the opportunity to delve deeply into the character and portray such a broad array of emotions; each week was like a 90-minute crash course in Glenda Jackson 101. If I was only infatuated with Glenda Jackson before, Elizabeth R made certain I was now in love.

Though the humor and appeal of the legendary British comedy team of Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise is utterly lost on me, Glenda Jackson's June 3, 1971, appearance as Cleopatra on The Morecambe and Wise Show was instrumental in altering the Grand Tragedian trajectory of her career. Jackson's then-uncharacteristic comedic outing caught the attention of A Touch of Class director Melvin Frank, leading to her being offered her first "average woman" role and her first comedy. 

"All men are fools! And what makes them so is having beauty like what I have got."
Jackson appeared on The Morecambe & Wise Show four more times over the years. And in 1978, she got to legitimately portray the Queen of the Nile in Peter Brook's production of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra for the RSC. 

A Touch of Class marked a series of firsts for Glenda Jackson: her first film with American co-stars, her first romantic comedy, and her first mainstream hit. And it marked one significant “second": it garnered Jackson her second Academy Award win for Best Actress. 

The Jackson/Segal spark failed to ignite in the anemic Lost and Found, but by then, the formula established in A Touch of Class—contrast comedy rooted in Jackson's starchy “Britishness” butting up against boyish, Yankee schlubbiness—would be repeated to considerably better effect in her two films with Walter Matthau.

Glenda Jackson and Walter Matthau shared an irresistible onscreen chemistry in House Calls that reminded me of peanut brittle ice cream: smooth, sweet, but with a bite. Offscreen, they maintained a mutual admiration society that led Jackson to accept Matthau's personal invitation to join him in Salzburg and take on an absolutely nothing role in the spy comedy Hopscotch. It's just the sort of empty "girlfriend" part that Jackson had spoken out against countless times. She herself called the character she played "a cipher," going on to say, "It was money for old rope. I played her with my usual mid-Cheshire accent, but I hardly look on it as a major contribution."

The Muppet Show - 1980
Glenda as Black Jackson, the heartless pirate captain who takes over
The Muppet Show in what I think is one of the best episodes in the series

Glenda Jackson’s success as a romantic comedy foil had the added benefit of making many of her earlier films more accessible on cable TV and in the revival theater circuit. Finally, I was able to catch up on all the Glenda Jackson films I missed as a kid, and with the advent of home video, I was able to follow her career forward and backward simultaneously.

THE MAIDS - 1975

THE ROMANTIC ENGLISHWOMAN - 1975    d. Joseph Losey

HEDDA - 1975        d. Trevor Nunn

THE INCREDIBLE SARAH - 1976

STEVIE - 1978

H.E.A.L.T.H. - 1980          d. Robert Altman

THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER - 1982

AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH (aka GIRO CITY) - 1982

TURTLE DIARY - 1985

BEYOND THERAPY - 1987      d. Robert Altman

BUSINESS AS USUAL - 1988

SALOME'S LAST DANCE - 1988        d. Ken Russell

THE RAINBOW - 1989      d. Ken Russell

THE SECRET LIFE OF ARNOLD BAX -1992
A biographical TV film directed by Ken Russell. It's fitting that, in this, their final collaboration, Glenda Jackson and Ken Russell (making a rare appearance in front of the cameras) play lovers. 

This headline is from 1971

Glenda Jackson declaring in interviews that she was about to quit was an annual occurrence since the start of her career. She followed through when she turned 55. Jackson's political career as a Member of Parliament spanned from 1992 to 2015. She was 78 when she resigned, and I was certain she would retire for good. I should have known better.

53 years after making her Tony-nominated Broadway debut in Marat/Sade in 1965, 81-year-old Glenda Jackson made a triumphant return to Broadway in Three Tall Women, winning her 1st Tony Award. She returned the following year, assuming the title role of Shakespeare's King Lear.  

MOTHERING SUNDAY - 2021
At age 84, in her first feature film in 32 years

1975                                        2023 

Glenda Jackson's final film role was in The Great Escaper, which reunited Jackson with her co-star from The Romantic Englishwoman, Michael Caine. She was 86, and Caine, who is still with us as of this writing, was 90.

To me, Glenda Jackson will always be “The woman who didn’t ask permission." 

When I think of her, the first things that come to mind are her beautiful speaking voice (a journalist aptly called it a "stainless steel voice"), her expressive mouth, and the almost magical way she seemed to take command of every scene. Even when she was silent. 

Oh, and I also think of her as the person who introduced me to the word "pusillanimous"! (House Calls)

I truly admire how, through her work, she continually challenged societal constraints. And in the way she lived, she made all the "don'ts" and "can'ts" related to gender and age completely irrelevant. 

Most of all, I remain inspired by her brilliance as an actor and how she utilized her gifts—her determination, sensitivity, intelligence, and bravery—to illuminate the darker aspects of the human experience, never hesitating to confront the unpleasant and difficult.

Truly one of the greats, and one-of-a-kind.

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To see clips from Glenda Jackson's films on the Le Cinema Dreams YouTube Channel

AWARDS

Maggie Smith - Why did we come, Sidney?

Michel Caine - Because it’s free, darling.

Maggie Smith - Glenda Jackson never comes. She’s nominated every goddamn year!

                                                                         Neil Simon’s California Suite (1978) 

In any discussion of Glenda Jackson, it must be understood that any emphasis on awards and accolades comes entirely from the biographer, in this case, me. Jackson, though pleased and always so graciously thankful, was notoriously detached from the whole prize-winning aspect of acting; insisting that awards can be "given," but because acting is not a horse race, they cannot be "won."

Winning Her First Best Actress Academy Award in 1971 at age 33

Winning Her First Best Actress Tony Award in 2018 at age 81

Best Actress Oscar-nominated four times (wins in Bold): 

Women in Love, Sunday Bloody Sunday, A Touch of Class, and Hedda 

Jackson attended the Oscar ceremonies only once (April 8, 1975), as a presenter handing the Best Actor Oscar over to the draw-dropping choice of Art Carney (over Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, and Albert Finney).

Years later, she had this to say about watching the 1979 Oscar telecast:  

“I felt ashamed of myself for watching. No one should have a chance to see so much desire, so much need for a prize. And so much pain when [it] was not given ... I felt disgusted with myself. As though I were attending a public hanging.”  

I love that. But as I've always felt, Glenda Jackson was a very classy lady.

I think this is a high school graduation photo

"I've won all of the prizes. Every single one. They're all here, in the attic somewhere. 

It was inevitable. The task was impossible. But it was... Wonderful."

 Mothering Sunday (2021) 

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2025