THE SUBSTANCE 2024

Spoiler Alert. This is a critical essay, not a review, so plot points will be revealed for discussion purposes.

Have you ever come across one of those hysterical clickbait links with a headline screaming, “You’ll be shocked to see what (insert any celebrity ...99% of the time, a woman) looks like today!” only to discover that the person has simply aged naturally?

Or maybe you've noticed that—while the posting of heavily filtered, augmented, and body-tuned selfies is nothing new—they all now seem to be aiming for the same standardized mannequin aesthetic.

ALL ABOUT EVE (1950)

Or you may have seen the male fitness influencer (who stays mum about his secret cycle of HGH injections) who cloaks run-of-the-mill narcissism in the aspirational rhetoric of discipline and self-mastery. Employing aggressive Alpha language (fight, power, winning, conquer pain), it all feels like obvious compensation for an underlying unease with what might be perceived as a “socially feminine” preoccupation with one's looks. 

And then, perhaps you’ve had the misfortune of encountering the AI artwork of a “creator” who wants to share with you his/her depiction of the ideal in female beauty: Which somehow ALWAYS means a vacantly staring white woman with the exaggerated eyes and lips of a Bratz doll and a body of Jessica Rabbit cartoon proportions.

VEEP- 2019

The most successful form of oppression is when
you get the marginalized to enforce their own subjugation

Even my citing these examples reflects the hegemony of body politics that we all perpetuate, participate in, and endure. Underscoring how, as a society, we continue to intrude upon the personal, private domain of others (our bodies are our own and no one else’s business) by asserting that we all, collectively, have some kind of say in the matter. Consequently, our bodies and physical appearance come to significantly influence our experience of the world, our self-esteem, and in far too many cases, our mental health. 

Where once fashion magazines and advertising were the primary suppliers of unrealistic beauty norms,  now, selfie-culture (with its "take 500 photos to get the ideal one to post" standards of phone-filter perfection) makes sure that every moment of every day, we're bombarded with images of how we think we're supposed to look.  

In The Substance, French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat takes a laceratingly frank look at bodies- our own and the bodies of others- and our relationship with them. Using vivid imagery and startling symbolism, Fargeat confronts the attitudes, conflicts, phobias, and fetishes we attach to our all-too-weak flesh with a take-no-prisoners bravado. Forcing us to examine how our reckless pursuit of beauty standards has blurred the jagged line between self-care and self-mutilation. And Fargeat does so without offering solutions, reassurance, or much concern for our comfort zones. 

THE MIRROR CRACK'D (1980)

Only the second feature film from the gifted director/writer/editor, The Substance is a darkly surreal fairy tale exploring body image, beauty standards, aging, self-loathing, misogyny, disposable people culture, patriarchy, psychological violence, and two of my all-time favorite themes: dualism and the human desire to connect and be loved. 

Though in so many ways unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, The Substance possesses a visual richness that pays homage to classic cinema while blazing an audaciously unique path all its own. Psychological, cultural, and emotional truths merge with a barely-linked-to-reality narrative that evokes a monstro-mutation of the cinema of our past: All About Eve, Showgirls, Death Becomes Her, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Perfect, Black Swan, Carrie, and of course--

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

This movie is 75 years old. A society really must have a serious talk with itself to explain how a woman losing her mind because she's turning 50 is still a thing

Embodying the tagline of 1974’s The Day of the Locust: “It Happened in Hollywood, But It Could Have Happened in Hell,” The Substance is set in a present-day Hollywood of the mind—a Hollywood where it sometimes snows, people still read newspapers to find jobs, nighttime talk show hosts are Black, exercise TV programs are ratings blockbusters, and ‘80s/‘90s aesthetics...like legwarmers...have never really left. 

The film's anti-heroine is once-popular, Oscar-winning actress Elisabeth Sparkle (it’s her real name; for we learn in school she was called Lizzie Sparkle, “the most beautiful girl in the world”…at least according to Fred in 10th-grade homeroom). Elisabeth is on the verge of an existential crisis.

Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle

Margaret Qualley as Sue

The (de)evolution of Elisabeth’s career suggests perhaps ageism played a role in her no longer acting in movies (roles for women over 40 make up only 5% of available female film roles), leading her down the B-List showbiz path of TV aerobics guru -"Sparkle Your Life with Elisabeth" - and advertising spokesperson exploiting her catchphrase "You Got It!" A career in which her success and fame are entirely linked to her physical appearance and age-defying physicality. 

Alas, age-defying doesn't mean age-less. On her 50th birthday, Elisabeth receives (in the harshest way imaginable) the world-shattering news that she and her long-running TV show are to be put out to pasture to make room for a tighter, firmer, younger version of both. 

Dennis Quaid as Network Executive (wouldn't you know it) Harvey

These guys don't think you're hot enough. 

As emphasized by the film’s Kubrick-esque camera angles and macro closeups, The Substance is partially an allegory about distorted perceptions. TV executive Harvey's lack of self-perception makes him think he's a charming winner instead of a bullying sociopath whose inner sense of inadequacy manifests in external outbursts of psychological violence. Always targeting women.  

On the distaff side, Elisabeth's lack of self-perception is a kind of mind blindness. She has an inability to latch onto any yardstick of self-evaluation not linked to impossible aesthetic norms and the validation of the male gaze. Her lack of self-esteem manifesting in escalating internal (and later, VERY external) outbursts of self-directed violence...psychological, emotional, and physical. In fact, she hates herself.

The fact that an entire wall of Elisabeth's Barbarella spaceship-style penthouse is dominated by a
floor-to-ceiling portrait of herself tells us everything we need to know about her priorities 

It can be said that Elisabeth's lack of inner substance—exemplified in her complete embrace of superficial beauty ideals that undermine her worth as a human—is the fatal character flaw that sets the conflict of The Substance in motion. Instead of directing her anger at a social construct that diminishes her in every way, she directs her anger at herself for failing to live up to these ridiculous standards. Still, it's impossible not to feel empathy. 

One can always detect discernable traces of self-loathing behind the physical perfection-seekers of our culture, but since we're a society that values overachievement no matter how hollow the reward -as in celebrating "good" plastic surgery or the "quickest" fad diet- we reinforce the notion that "looking" like we're okay on the outside is more important than actually "being" okay inside.

That's one of the reasons why I think fame and celebrity are so sought-after by those plagued by self-disgust; though meaningless in the larger scheme of things, the external validation of strangers can work like lead to the kryptonite of introspection. 

Letting others define you and tell you exactly what you need to be, do, and look like to make yourself worthy of love is a doctrine that clearly works for a great many people. Religions have been doing it for centuries, and they swear by it (literally). 

Of course, the implicit caveat behind the conditional love and transitory admiration offered by celebrity and fame is the understanding that said "stars" must never change or age. 

"Youth and beauty are not accomplishments. They're the temporary happy by-products 

of time and/or DNA. Don't hold your breath for either."  Carrie Fisher -2015

For someone like Elisabeth, being told that she's at the end of her career is like telling her she's at the end of her life. The Substance—an underground youth elixir that promises a younger, more beautiful, and more perfect version of oneself—enters Elisabeth’s life at the exact moment she starts to feel its impending erasure. How convenient.

And while the promise of that little Day-Glo vial is irresistible and appears to be the solution to all of Elisabeth's problems, anyone who's read a Stephen King novel, watched an Amicus anthology horror film, or seen an episode of The Twilight Zone knows- 

...there's always a catch.

Whoopi Goldberg - Ghost (1990)

That image above of the injected and divided egg yolk will have to serve as summary of how the drug known as The Substance works. Fargeat is far too compelling a visual storyteller (and it's all too far-out and surreal) for anything I write to do it justice. 

I will say that The Substance does indeed create a new, fully formed, independent person from Elisabeth’s DNA (picture Botticelli’s "The Birth of Venus" reimagined by David Cronenberg); however, Sue, as she names herself, is more a “side” of Elisabeth than a new “version.” 

Self Care
"I guess I just try to be myself. To be sincere and grateful for all that I have. And to always remember to lead with my heart." - Sue, spouting the empty affirmations of selfie-caption psychology 

The ultimate Odd Couple, Elisabeth and Sue, share an apartment and an irksomely inconsistent consciousness while living an alternating existence of one week on, one week off. 

It’s a bit like if the adult, self-possessed part of me and the side that still compulsively bites my fingernails existed as two separate people. It’s definitely ME biting my nails; however, in most cases, it’s something I do without conscious awareness. I often “catch” myself biting my nails, which sounds absurd since it’s ME, yet that’s how it works. You’re one, yet it’s still possible to act as though you are disconnected from yourself. 

Sweet Sue

No one else, it seems, ever shared my dreams.
And without you, dear, I don't know what I'd do.

In Robert Altman's 3 Women (1977), Sissy Spacek plays a character named  Pinky Rose (!) who cultivates a hyperfeminine personality that comes to dominate and drain the life force of her roommate Millie (Shelley Duvall). A similar dynamic develops between Elisabeth and Sue in The Substance, turning this already ingeniously assaultive allegory into an absolutely demented roar of anger confronting the horrific violence we’re willing to inflict upon ourselves (body and psyche) in the pursuit of unattainable perfection.

The Violence of Beauty
Hard to imagine a male director including a detail like this. When Elisabeth is taken to the hospital after an accident, there is a brief shot of her bare legs dangling over the edge of the table. Barely visible are the callouses of friction blisters...the kind that come from wearing high heels

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I don't often write about contemporary films, but when I do, I've noticed that most of them tend to be of a "sort": Hereditary (2018), Black Swan (2010), Midsommar (2019), Maps to the Stars (2014), Nocturnal Animals (2016). This sort being movies that convey a sense of auteurist vision, independent daring, and a kind of artistic audacity that reminds me of that unpredictable, "Only in the '70s," off-the-wall quality that made so many films from that era so great. And so insane!

I love everything about The Substance: its immersive use of sound (incredible!), color, camera angles, editing, and locations. All is in service of the film's meticulously-crafted worldview. A worldview wherein absolutely everything feels excessive, yet nothing feels wasteful. 

Best of all, I think it's a very smart movie. It knows what it wants to say and, by refusing to spell everything out, doesn't mind if what's being expressed is misunderstood. Indeed, in some ways, it could be said that The Substance dares you to like it. 

A valid argument could be made that the film's points are made with a sledgehammer, but to that, I'd say, if in the year 2025 we're still having men legislate women's bodies, then perhaps a sledgehammer is necessary to get these (to me) obvious points across.

These guys don't think you're hot enough.
Daniel Knight and Jonathan Carley as Casting Directors

I have four sisters, and according to them, the "Seinfeld Syndrome"—their term for the phenomenon of utterly unprepossessing guys expecting physical perfection from women—is far from a social exaggeration. 

I found The Substance to be compelling, grotesque, ingenious, and as sharp as a razor. It moved me and grossed me out, and the ending, in particular, is so poignant (major waterworks) that it’s a shame the scene itself is so difficult to watch. Speaking of which, I've seen The Substance four times—well, make that three; the first time shouldn't count because I spent so much time covering my eyes—and each time, I continue to discover new things. There's something powerfully honest about a movie that examines how the marginalized can internalize and identify with society's hatred of them. 

The Final Metamorphosis

"Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous." 
                                           Nathanael West - The Day of the Locust -1939

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

For a film about an actress, set in Hollywood (filmed in France) and exploring the pressures placed on women to be perfect, I appreciate how Coralie Fargeat and her team utilize a visual storytelling style that has the viewer perpetually processing this new story (The Angry Young Woman has yet to become a trope, but I think it might be on its way) through the echo of familiar cinematic imagery. 

The power of images is immense, which is why it's crucial to ask ourselves who is behind the representations we see of ourselves in movies, TV, and advertising. If those controlling what we see are also the people who hate us, then their only vested interest is in teaching us how to hate ourselves. 

The obsession with perfection is the core theme of both
The Substance and Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan 

The Substance and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey
Grids and Richard Strauss' " Thus Spake Zarathustra feature in both films

These bold callbacks to Kubrick's The Shining heighten The Substance's use 

of confined spaces to create tension and convey a sense of imminent violence.

PERFORMANCES

This is a two-hander as far as I'm concerned, with both Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley delivering full-throttle, pull-out-the-stops performances that are each unimaginable without the other. Qualley is new to me, but she had me in her pocket in the silent scene where Sue comes upon an indented easy chair and TV remote- evidence that Elisabeth has been wasting her allotted time doing nothing but watching television. The acute level of disapproving judgment and disgust that comes across Qualley's face at this moment speaks volumes about her character.  I don't know how she did it. 

American Beauty / Black Dahlia

I have to confess I'm not the best Demi Moore fan. I checked on IMDB to see how many of her films I'd seen...grand total: five (my favorite being Mortal Thoughts -1991). Before The Substance, I had not seen Moore in a movie since the 2007 Kevin Costner thriller Mr. Brooks, and I hadn't even REMEMBERED she was in it!

Moore came back into my awareness when a relative gifted me her 2019 memoir (which I initially met with a WTF? but it turns out the book is really terrific). And then, last year, she turned in a brief but powerful performance in the FX series FEUD: Capote vs. The Swans. And I was besotted. 

"You got it!" 

I would like to say that Demi Moore in The Substance gives a career-best performance, but it's already been established that I'm ill-equipped to make such a call. What I will say is that she gives my #1 favorite performance of this year. There's no better testament to the truth and humanity she brings to her character than the fact that The Substance works at all. In some ways, it is an absolutely lunatic movie that takes risk after risk with the audience's suspension of disbelief. Yet, it stays grounded due to the reality and meta-authenticity Moore delivers. 

In a largely silent role, Moore is wonderfully expressive in conveying everything that Elisabeth feels and experiences. Much like what I've always admired about Julie Christie, Moore meets the challenge of giving an essentially superficial character enough depth for us to relate to and empathize with.

BONUS MATERIAL

Reality + (2014)

In this early short film by Coralie Fargeat, she touches upon many of the same themes

explored in The Substance, only from a male perspective. You can watch it HERE.

Men aren't immune to the prevailing pressure to conform to unrealistic beauty standards--though, being men and inherently fragile, we find it necessary to disguise appearance obsession in "action" language: strong, fit, athletic, healthy, muscular, powerful, and so forth; or label it a "masculinity standard" and infuse it with an alpha illusion of self-actualization ("The only reason I work out is because I'm always my BEST me, and it gets me lots of sex. I'm the one in control."). In other words, anything to mask acknowledging the inherent passivity and loss of power that goes with courting the objectifying gaze.    

Revenge (2017)
Coralie Fargeat made her feature film directing debut with this action thriller
starring Matilda Lutz and Kevin Janssens

Actor Vincent Colombe, cast as one of the silent "suits" in The Substance, has featured roles in both Fargeat's Revenge and the short film Reality +.

Jurassic Fitness

Having enjoyed a long career in the fitness industry myself (1985 to 2019), I absolutely loved that Elisabeth Sparkle was an aerobics instructor! That brief "Sparkle Your Life with Elizabeth" sequence was like watching my past flash before my eyes. Every move executed in her class was one I'd done thousands of times. Even the toxic inspirational/abusive language rings true - "Think of those bikini bods! You wanna look like a giant jellyfish on the beach?"

The photo on the right is an outtake from a mercifully unproduced step-aerobics video project.

As a group instructor and personal trainer, I was pretty much immersed in a world that feeds on and perpetuates everything that The Substance is about (explaining in part why this movie so resonated with me). The promotion of oppressive beauty standards has always been a part of our culture, but the kind of perfectionist extremes The Substance speaks to have their roots in the "exercising for the aesthetics" trend of '80s fitness culture. 

In fact, that tiny figure in the far left side of the movie screencap at the bottom is me working as an extra in the 1985 John Travolta/Jamie Lee Curtis aerobics exercise opus called...you guessed it, "Perfect." 

Sue's "Pump It Up" exercise TV program is satirically over-the-top, but from 1980 to 1982, the cable network Showtime ran a truly hilariously overheated "erotic exercise" program called "Aerobicise" that makes Sue's show look like a documentary. There's a YouTube channel devoted to it HERE.

Take Care of Yourself 

Copyright © Ken Anderson    2009 -  2024

HELLO, DOLLY! 1969

Hello, Dolly!, indeed.

I’ve wanted to write about this movie since I started this blog way back in 2009.

The only thing preventing me was the promise I’d then made to myself—in response to what felt like (in the days of IMDb’s message boards and forums) a pervasive trend toward negativity and combativeness in online film writing and discourse—that I would devote this retro movie blog exclusively to the films I loved and admired most.  

And when it comes to Hello, Dolly! ...well, let's just say my relationship with it is complicated.

Barbra Streisand as Dolly Levi

Walter Matthau as Horace Vandergelder

Michael Crawford as Cornelius Hackl

Marianne McAndrew as Irene Molloy

Danny Lockin as Barnaby Tucker

E. J. (Edra Jean) Peaker as Minnie Fay

Louis Armstrong as Louis, the Orchestra Leader

Hello, Dolly! is the much-hyped, megamillion-dollar 1969 screen adaptation of that enduring, now-classic 1964 Tony Award-winning musical (with the annoying exclamation point) about a meddlesome matchmaker from Yonkers who sets her personal matrimonial sights on a curmudgeonly, wealthy client. I’m old enough to have seen Hello, Dolly! when it was released in December of 1969, but not being much of a Streisand fan at the time (that changed with 1972’s What’s Up, Doc?) I foolishly backed out of every opportunity to see it. 

That was the winter when I, a precocious, self-serious, hormonal adolescent, was busy spending my weekends and most of my allowance money going to see Easy Rider, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Midnight Cowboy, and The Sterile Cuckoo...over and over again. The last thing I was interested in was seeing anything rated “G.” Much less a G-rated thing that sang and danced.

Of course, now I could kick myself for not having given up at least one weekend of “Suggested for Mature Audiences” nihilism for the chance to experience the opulent excesses Hello, Dolly! on the big screen. More’s the pity because I just know that impressionable, 12-year-old me would have gone utterly gaga over the whole "event" spectacle that is Hello, Dolly! 

If anyone can upstage 4,000 extras, it's Barbra Streisand

I absolutely live for that moment in “Before the Parade Passes By” when Streisand, arms aloft, striding toward the camera, flanked on both sides by a red-jacketed marching band, brings herself to a theatrical halt to end all theatrical halts, dropping her arms and that big ol’ hat, grounding herself like a rocket before liftoff, then lets fly with that voice that soars to the heavens and shattering all the artificiality around her. It’s a genuine “goosebump moment” in a film with all too few. 

My family lived in San Francisco in 1969, and Hello, Dolly! played in movie theaters for at least a year after its exclusive, reserved-seat, $ 4.50-a-ticket roadshow engagement ended (at which time it became available at “popular prices” in neighborhood theaters on weird-ass double bills with The Battle of Britain or The Kremlin Letter, of all things). But I didn’t get around to seeing Hello, Dolly! until 1974…when it was broadcast on TV, in cropped format, with commercials, on our family’s ginormous living room console. Not the most advantageous of circumstances under which to see my first Barbra Streisand musical, to be sure, but at least by this time, I was an interested party.

Hello, Dolly! had its broadcast TV premiere on Thursday, February 28, 1974. I’m not sure why CBS thought scheduling a 3-hour special movie event on a non-holiday weeknight was a good idea (I was exhausted in school the next day). Maybe timing was a factor: earlier that week, the 1973 Academy Award nominations were announced, and Streisand was up for Best Actress for The Way We Were. 

So… what were my first impressions of Hello Dolly!? 

(1) Well, I loved Jerry Herman’s tuneful score (although the beautifully sung, written-for-the-screen ballad [a.k.a., shameless Oscar-nomination bid] “Love is Only Love” was, is, and will forever remain for me, a total slog). 

(2) I enjoyed Michael Kidd’s strenuous “The word I think I’d use is athletic” choreography. 

(3) And although Barbra Streisand’s Dolly Levi makes not a lick of sense to me in the context of the story and casting—I’m supposed to believe this young, glamorous, sexy, and vivacious firecracker of a woman is wasting her time meddling in the love lives of four vapid virgins and one grumpy old man?—I was nevertheless utterly charmed and entranced by her. 

The movie itself…not so much.

As Hello, Dolly! is set in 1860, I've selected a quote from a 19th-century author (re: drawing-room entertainments of the day) that cannily echoes my thoughts on seeing it for the first time. 

If You Ain't Got Elegance
"All is forced, coarse, heavy. The jokes are like cannon-balls, smashing everything in their passage.
 No wit, nothing natural, no sprightliness, no elegance."  

Guy de Maupassant - The Moustache 1883

As I said, perhaps television wasn't the best showcase for a film of this scale, and likely influenced at least a part of my initial response to Hello Dolly!  

For example, the film's lack of visual distinction (all static shots and overlit sets) was ill-served when subjected to the then-standard practice of cropping the edges of wide-screen movies to better fit the square TV screen. The sight of blandly colorless dancers with fixed, joyless smiles leaping about with mechanical precision in a New York set that, in the minimalized format of television, resembled nothing so much as Disneyland’s Main Street; didn’t scream "$25 million movie musical" so much as suggest a “The Doodletown Pipers Meet The Ernie Flatt Dancers"  TV variety special.

While singing groups like The Doodletown Pipers and Up With People always gave off "cult" vibes to me, their popularity during the "let it all hang out" Sixties reflected a market for aggressively wholesome, MOR entertainment. Hello Dolly!, pitching itself as the family-friendly alternative to the saturated R and X-rated market of the New Hollywood, emerged as one of the top 5 highest-grossing films of 1969/70. (But, due to its hefty production and marketing budget, still wound up losing 20th Century Fox [depending on the source] in the neighborhood of 10 to 30 million dollars.)

The widow Levi serving up a little wholesome, G-rated sex appeal

Given my penchant for falling in love with waaaaay less-than-perfect movies, none of the above-stated would have factored significantly in my feelings for Hello, Dolly! had I just felt something…ANYTHING…for the characters or the story. Outside of the allure of Dolly’s fin de siècle fabulousness, I had no love story to root for and no investment in anything that was going on. By the film’s two-hour mark, I found myself wishing Ambrose and Barnaby would run off together and that Dolly would hook up with one of the Harmonia Garden waiters. 

In the end, I was so disappointed that so much money, talent, and obvious hard work hadn’t resulted in a movie that was more fun. Or even funny.

Coke Eyes and Gaping Maws
No small part of my annoyance with Hello Dolly! is Michael Crawford's creative decision to convey boyish American enthusiasm by imitating a largemouth bass. Similarly, director Gene Kelly has the cast adopt an acting style of contrived naivete that's all cartoonish "takes" and eyes held open so wide that everyone looks like they've just taken a bump 

Despite my complaints and primarily due to the immense pleasure I derive from Streisand's The Three Faces of Eve take on the character of Dolly Levi (she's Mae West! She's Fanny Brice! She's a drag queen!...the fun to be had is in never knowing from scene to scene which Dolly is going to show up), I've always owned a copy of Hello, Dolly! and watched it countless times over the years. Usually à la carte...with the TV remote at the ready, finger poised over the "fast-forward" button. 

So, how does a lifelong cinephile and movie musical lover reconcile himself to this paradox? Well, you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have: Hello Dolly!…a film for which I’ve never fully resolved my love/hate feelings. (Thank you, Al Burton, Gloria Loring, and Alan Thicke.)

Until now. 

The way Dolly sexily grinds her hips against Horace in "So Long, Dearie" convinces me her matrimonial gameplan is to induce a honeymoon heart attack and go on living happily solo on the old man's half-a-million 

Ironically, the one thing that got me to stop evaluating Hello, Dolly! exclusively through the prism of unrealized potential—putting me on the path toward appreciating the film, warts and all, for what it is—was my late-to-the-party discovery of The Matchmaker (1958), the screen adaptation of the 1954 Thornton Wilder Broadway play that inspired Hello, Dolly! 

The Matchmaker Cast: Shirley Booth, Shirley Maclaine, Paul Ford, Anthony Perkins, and Robert Morse

One of the smartest decisions screenwriter John Michael Hayes (Rear Window, The Children's Hour) made in adapting The Matchmaker to the screen was to dump the superfluous characters of  Ambrose and Ermingarde. If only Hello, Dolly! had done the same

I had never even heard of The Matchmaker before seeing it on TCM sometime in 2001, but it instantly won me over with its abundance of heart, humor, engaging performances, and genuinely sweet-natured charm. The very things I’d always felt were missing in action from Hello, Dolly!. I initially thought that my falling in love with a practically-perfect-in-every-way adaptation of Wilder’s story would only amplify my dissatisfaction with Hello, Dolly!, but to my surprise, it had the opposite effect.

 

Finally seeing Thornton Wilder’s frothy farce presented on a scale appropriate to its slim plot and humble characters led me to conclude that perhaps part of my issue with Hello, Dolly! might stem from evaluating it by motion picture standards when it’s really not a movie at all; it’s a monument.

An eager-to-please, pull-out-the-stops, Barnum and Bailey Circus of a monument erected to commemorate and pay tribute to the institution that is Hello, Dolly!...a show that, at the time, was one of the most lauded (10 Tony Awards), lucrative, and long-running musicals in Broadway history.

Suspended in Time 
The movie I once dismissed as the kind of musical Hollywood needed to stop making, I now appreciate as a last-gasp souvenir of a style and type of Hollywood filmmaking that is gone forever 

Thinking of Hello, Dolly! this way has gradually turned me into a more appreciative audience. I once felt the film’s chief liability was its dogged devotion to the proved-to-be-fatal Hollywood dictum that bigger, busier, noisier, and more expensive was ALWAYS better. Now, simply because these qualities affix Hello, Dolly! squarely in a specific time and place in Hollywood history—the sets, costumes, production numbers, and sheer spectacle of it all shine brighter for me than they ever did. 

On Feb. 29, 1968, a month before Hello, Dolly! began filming (and nine months after Streisand's casting), Carol Channing not-so-subtly thumbed her nose at 20th Century Fox while giving America a glimpse of what it stood to miss in the way of comedy chemistry by having Walter Matthau guest on her TV special. 

As Broadway’s first singing Dolly (from 1964-1967), Carol Channing was so affectionately identified with the role that the casting of anyone else in the film version was bound to be controversial no matter who it was. But when news broke that the Hollywood parade had passed by 46-year-old Channing in favor of 25-year-old, hot-as-a-fuse Barbra Streisand—the very person Channing had beat out for Best Actress at the 1964 Tony Awards (Channing won for Hello, Dolly! against Streisand in Funny Girl)—the outcry over perceived miscasting turned it into a cause célèbre that raged unabated for over a year.

 

Billboard - May 9, 1964

Hello, Dolly! has often been dismissed as a "one-song musical" by critics. But when it comes to that one song, no one is more responsible for its widespread recognition and success than Louis Armstrong. His 1964 recording won Grammys for Best Song and Best Male Performance and gave the 62-year-old jazz legend his first and only #1 hit, famously dethroning The Beatles. I’ve always thought of Armstrong’s brief guest appearance in Hello Dolly! as one of the film’s few moments of magic. It’s the only moment in the entire film when Streisand looks relaxed and genuinely happy.

GOOD GOLLY, MISS DOLLY or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

If part of my making peace with Hello, Dolly! means accepting that my heart will be on a bit of a starvation diet, I take comfort in knowing that—thanks to the modern innovations of Blu-ray, restoration, widescreen HD television, and impeccable digital audio—my eyes, ears, and nervous system will be treated to a veritable feast. Watching the title song production number and the breathtaking "Waiter's Gallop," I found myself feeling for the first time a sense of gratitude that Hello, Dolly! is such an overinflated totem of studio-era excess.

PERFORMANCES 

Time has made the supporting cast of Hello, Dolly! less of an irritation to me (they're all so young, they're kind of cute now). Walter Matthau will ever be a favorite, his reactions and line deliveries being the source of many of the film's meager laughs: "Any man who comes to the city deserves what happens to him." 

But I've often wondered if the creators of Hello, Dolly! didn’t fully recognize what a screen presence powerhouse they had in Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl hadn’t yet been released when "Dolly" went into production); otherwise, it's hard to understand why they didn’t see it as a problem that her character is offscreen for so long. The stage show is built to give an older actress lots of rest…but when you’re fortunate enough to have Streisand in a musical, do you really want to give so much screen time over to those dull ingenues and juveniles?   

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

"I thought she did the BEST job she could do."
 - Carol Channing's slightly shady appraisal - Dec. 29, 1969 

Perhaps because I don't think of Hello, Dolly! as a "great" musical in the first place (ergo, impervious to being "ruined" in any significant way), I don't have any problem with the built-in contradiction of my thinking Barbra Streisand is most definitely miscast as Dolly, yet I find her to be ideal as an musical comedy star.  There's just no way I'd ever be disappointed to have one of the preeminent entertainers of my generation showcased in a vehicle like this. As unpleasant an experience as it was for Streisand in the making (as detailed in her EPIC memoir), I will be forever grateful that it exists. Streisand's not perfect in it...but in many ways, she's better than perfect, she's exquisite.

Hello, Dolly! is over 55 years old. Barbra Streisand is over 80. And I’m somewhere there in between. Sure, Hello, Dolly!, much like myself on certain mornings, can be lumbering and stiff. But just as I’ve found peace in not focusing on my aches and pains and learned to simply celebrate the fact that I’m still here, I'm glad—after so many years of back and forth—I can at last accord Dolly Levi a similar grace. 

BONUS MATERIAL:

Gene Kelly puts his handprints in cement in the forecourt of Hollywood’s Grauman’s Chinese Theater on November 24, 1969, just prior to Hello Dolly!’s December 16th West Coast premiere.

The young ladies behind him are the stars of Fox's forthcoming X-rated release Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - Marcia McBroom and Cynthia Myers in Irene Sharaff-designed costumes from Hello, Dolly!. 

During the '90s I worked for a time as Walter Matthau's personal trainer. After taking months to win over his confidence, he was finally comfortable enough with me to share some anecdotes about the making of "Dolly" after I begged to know the details. Without going into it, let me just say that in having heard the exact same story Streisand relates in her memoir more than 20 years before she wrote it, the talk about their not getting along during the filming is true (his recounting of the rude comment he made to her was accompanied by a surprisingly spot-on Streisand impersonation), as is the fact that they became good friends...or at least friendly...later. 

The hemlines of women's skirts fluctuated rapidly in the 1960s, but it's got nothing on the 1890s, as evidenced by these screencaps of the "Dancing" sequence, showing Minnie Fay's dress growing shorter by the second.  

Barnaby Tucker and Minnie Fay

Two-time Tony Award winner Robert Morse made his Broadway debut at 24, originating the role of Barnaby Tucker in The Matchmaker, later reprising his performance in the film. In 1968, Morse co-starred with E.J. Peaker (24 when she made her screen debut in Hello, Dolly!) in the musical sitcom That's Life, which ran for a single season on ABC. 

Richard Amsel, one of my all-time favorite illustrators, was just 21 and a recent art school graduate when his submission for 20th Century Fox's nationwide talent contest (to design a poster for Hello, Dolly!) was selected, launching his brief but prolific career. His iconic artwork for the Hello, Dolly! poster is noted for the era-specific, Boomer-recognizable Spirograph-style design of the flowers adorning Mrs. Levi's enormous hat.

Streisand & Matthau in a clip from Hello, Dolly!

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2024