BYE, BYE, BIRDIE 1963

Sure, Bye Bye Birdie is a bright, lively, tuneful, only intermittently funny satire of teenage pop culture in the '60s. But as far as I’m concerned, Bye Bye Birdie has two huge assets (I know what you’re thinking…and you should be ashamed of yourself!) which make it one of my all-time favorite movie musicals. Those assets: the unstoppable star-quality of Ann-Margret, and the snappy musical staging and choreography by Onna White. 

Ann-Margret as Kim McAfee

Bobby Rydell as Hugo Peabody

Dick Van Dyke & Janet Leigh / Albert Peterson & Rose DeLeon

Mary LaRoche & Paul Lynde / Doris and Harry McAfee

Jesse Pearson as Conrad Birdie

Adapted from the 1960 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, Bye Bye Birdie pokes gentle fun at America’s burgeoning youth culture by spoofing the real-life pandemonium surrounding hip-swiveling pop star Elvis Presley being drafted into the army in 1958. Standing in for Elvis in the musical is the fictitious rocker Conrad Birdie (Jesse Pearson): a beer-swilling, ill-mannered, libidinous hillbilly who wreaks havoc on prototypical Midwestern small town, Sweet Apple, Ohio when he arrives to bestow a symbolic coast-to-coast televised goodbye kiss on an adoring female fan before being shipped overseas.

Cue the generation-gap complications and small-town vs. show-biz culture clash hijinks. None of which, I might add, should anyone having even the most cursory familiarity with '60s-era sitcoms should have trouble staying one step ahead of. Bye Bye Birdie, when it’s either singing or dancing, is the most engaging and sprightliest of musicals, full of fun and as eager to please as a puppy. In its quieter moments—scratch that, there are no quieter moments—in its non-musical moments, Bye Bye Birdie's amusing, if not particularly funny, screenplay feels a tad labored and more than a little creaky.
Rooted in a kind of broad, over-emphatic acting style of most sixties sitcoms (a style that struck me as riotous when I was nine, a good deal less so now) and over-reliant on moldy, near-vaudevillian comedic shtick of the sort that considers silly names (Hugo Peabody) and wacky plot contrivances (that deadly speed-up pill subplot) the height of comedic brilliance; Bye Bye Birdie stays afloat chiefly through its simple desire to entertain and because of the buoyant charm of its talented and energetic cast.

The Sweet Apple chapter of The Conrad Birdie Fan Club 
(fronted by Ann-Margret and Trudi Ames) pledge undying allegiance.

The film version of Bye Bye Birdie was significantly (and, as per the voiced consensus of Dick Van Dyke, Janet Leigh, Paul Lynde, and Maureen Stapleton, controversially) retooled from the stage production. Primarily a middle-aged romance (Albert & Rosie) against a satirically rendered teen-culture backdrop, the Broadway production was nominated for eight Tonys, winning four: Best Musical, Best Director, Best Choreography, and Best Actor (Van Dyke). By the time it reached the screen, what was essentially a Dick Van Dyke showcase was fashioned by director George Sidney into a $6 million valentine to vivacious protégé Ann-Margret.
This was Ann-Margret's third film (she made her debut in Pocketful of Miracles, and assumed the Vivian Blaine role in the 1962 remake of State Fair), but thanks to Sidney's loving attention and her heretofore peripheral character being thrust to the film's center, Bye Bye Birdie is the movie most people credit with making her a star.

What began life as an anti-rock & roll musical fashioned to reflect the middle-age mentality of adult Broadway audiences reeling from rock & roll upstarts like Elvis stealing the Sinatra crown, arrived on the screen as a youth-centric glorification of teenybopper culture that effectively allocated once-prominent adult plotlines and relationships to the sidelines to make way for the fresh vitality of its young cast members (aka Ann-Margret). With Dick Van Dyke and Paul Lynde the only carry-overs from the Broadway show, numerous songs jettisoned and plotlines abandoned or reworked; Bye Bye Birdie became the ironic embodiment of all that the Broadway play had spoofed. Bye Bye Birdie, hello to the first multimillion-dollar teenage musical!

Paul Lynde's comedic number, "Kids" was a showstopper that brought down the house on Broadway. When speaking of his much-abbreviated screen role, Lynde was fond of saying of the film, "They should have retitled it, 'Hello, Ann-Margret'!" 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

One look at Bye Bye Birdie and it’s easy to see why it has become one of the most imitated and referenced movie musicals since The Wizard of Oz. Each number in the bouncy Charles Strouse / Lee Adams score is given almost cartoonishly vibrant life in increasingly clever and dazzlingly cinematic ways. So many large-scale musicals fall into the trap of thinking that mere size and expense is enough to make a film fun and energetic; Bye Bye Birdie is that rare example of a musical whose scale perfectly fits its subject, and whose accumulated talents (dancers, singers, cinematography, color, choreography, staging, and minor special effects) all remain on the same creative page. Every number throughout is infused with a lighthearted wit and silliness that remains true to the escapist tone of the entire enterprise. The effective musical film is almost a lost art, but Bye Bye Birdie is a glowing example of the genre done right. Small wonder that musicals like Grease and Hairspray, and entertainments as diverse as music videos, TV’s Mad Men, and Disney’s High School Musical franchise, have all owed a debt to Bye Bye Birdie.

The combined talents of director George Sidney (Pal Joey, Annie Get Your Gun) and choreographer Onna White (The Music Man, Oliver!) result in a movie whose clever, eye-popping musical sequences are a great deal of silly fun and still have the power to delight and captivate after all these years.

"The Telephone Hour (Going Steady)" predates the look of MTV music videos; "Put on a Happy Face" makes imaginative use of cute, if primitive special effects; and "A Lot of Livin' to Do" is a powerhouse production number of unparalleled energy and witty choreography.

Oscar and Tony Award-winner Maureen Stapleton makes her musical debut in
Bye Bye Birdie as  Mae Peterson, Albert's dominating mother.

PERFORMANCES

In her 1982 book 5001 Nights at the Movies, fave film critic Pauline Kael wrote the following about Ann-Margret in Bye Bye Birdie...and I couldn't have said it any better: “Ann-Margret, playing a brassy 16-year-old with a hyperactive rear end, takes over the picture; slick, enameled, and appalling as she is, she’s an undeniable presence.” 

OK, I might have left out “appalling.”

Real-life teen idol Bobby Rydell makes his film debut as Ann-Margret's love interest

Beyond that, Kael pretty much nails Ann-Margret’s appeal for me in this film and why any director would have been a fool not to have kept the camera trained on her every second. She's a dynamo! Members of the film’s cast may have felt slighted, and fans of the stage show may cry foul, but in my book, if Bye Bye Birdie is remembered at all today, it’s due in large part to Ann-Margret. The material is just too ordinary as it is. She is camp, a little over the top, and perhaps artificial as hell, but she is blessed with that indefinable something that makes it near-impossible for you to watch anyone else when she's on the screen. She’s a star.

In the Broadway show, Bye Bye Birdie paid tribute to iconic, stone-faced TV host Ed Sullivan  in the song, "Hymn for a Sunday Evening." Director George Sidney snagged the genuine article for the film (that's him on the left, for all of you youngsters).

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

There aren't many lines across which the life experiences of gays and straights of my generation intersect, but one thing that many males (and a good many females) my age have in common—regardless of sexual orientation—is the memory of their first time seeing Ann-Margret singing the film’s title song. Whether we saw it on the big screen in full color or in black and white on our TV sets, like the Moon Landing, few of us ever forgot or recovered from that image. Wow!

At the start of the film, Ann-Margret's performance of "Bye Bye Birdie" is girlish and plaintive. When she reprises the song at the end of the film, her performance has become assured, teasing, and not a little sexually aggressive.

The fifties had Marilyn Monroe standing over that subway grate, but we children of the sixties had Ann-Margret on that treadmill. A sequence so obviously tame, perhaps it's a testament to our nation's level of sexual repression at the time that Ann-Margret, in those few short minutes at the start and end of the film, made men, women, children, straights, gays, lesbians, and adolescents of all stripes fall in love/lust with her.
The first time I saw Bye Bye Birdie was in black & white on late-night TV. I remember being just thunderstruck (I'm positive my jaw dropped open). I'd never seen anything like her! Advancing and retreating against that endless void, wind machine a-blowing...Ann-Margret was nothing less than a celluloid Venus emergent.

The dancer assuming the puppy hands pose with Bobby Rydell here is Lorene Yarnell, 
who found fame in the '70s as half of the popular mime duo, Shields and Yarnell.

The blonde staring agog at Jesse Pearson is '70s TV personality and Match Game stalwart, Elaine Joyce. Pearson himself would go on to write and direct porn films in the '70s until his untimely passing in 1979 at the age of 49. 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
As I've stated, Bye Bye Birdie is one of my favorite movie musicals, but primarily due to its songs, musical sequences, and the rapturous presence of Ann-Margret. I have no complaint with anyone in the cast except to say that they're sorely ill-served by the weak script and they're all goners when it comes to having to share any scenes with Miss You-Know-Who. Predictably, I'm finding that the older I get the more certain aspects of the film seem to strike me as charmingly camp or comically dated. Some of these things are fun: the middle-class suburban milieu, the fashions, all those rotary phones. Other things less so: the all-white cast, that Shriner's Ballet when it starts to get out of hand (the 2009 Broadway revival removed the number entirely claiming, in the words of its star Gina Gershon, "It seemed a little too gang rape-y").

Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye
When I saw Bye Bye Birdie on the big screen for the first time in the 80s, the film's biggest laugh came from the intentional misunderstanding of this sweet, totally innocent lyric. 

So whether enjoyed as camp, escapism, or an idealized journey to a past that never existed, Bye Bye Birdie is, at 50-years, still the most fun-filled musical around. And best of all, it has Ann-Margret!

This great caricature is the work of Pete Emslie

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2013

KITTEN WITH A WHIP 1964

Ann-Margret in her 1994 memoir, “My Story”:

“My performance in ‘Kitten’ was so gritty and intense audiences were confused. They preferred me as the innocent sweetheart in ‘Birdie’ (Bye, Bye Birdie). The same problem frustrated Elvis; people didn’t want us to change.”

Not so much…

Allow me to qualify the above quotation:

“My performance in ‘Kitten’ was so gritty and intense audiences were confused”

Only if by “gritty and intense” she means “artificial and hyperactive.” 

“They preferred me as the innocent sweetheart in ‘Birdie.’”

We preferred something resembling recognizable human behavior.

“The same problem frustrated Elvis; people didn’t want us to change.”

Diversity was not exactly their strongest suit. Ann-Margret didn’t really begin acting in film until “Carnal Knowledge” in 1971. 

I’m a major, MAJOR fan of Ann-Margret. Like most people my age, the first time I ever laid eyes on her was in Bye Bye Birdie (1963). The staggeringly eye-popping image of her sashaying towards us in a skintight dress (ever-present wind machine blowing her orange mane) in a limitless blue void, singing the title song …well, it launched a thousand puberties.

In this and every subsequent film of hers in the 60s, Ann-Margret mined a paradoxically wholesome/smutty glamour of dizzyingly kinetic female hypersexuality of the sort I’ve literally never seen before or since. Bouncing about the screen in impossibly high heels, wiggling her rump, undulating her bosom, and tossing her hair about in absolute abandon; Ann-Margret was in-your-face, aggressively sexy. She was also resoundingly camp. Cross an over-the-top female impersonator with Lola Falana and Joey Heatherton on speed, and you’re still not likely to get an appreciation of the full-tilt atomic sex-bomb that was '60s-era Ann-Margret.

Energy and star quality personified, Ann-Margret, unlike the sex symbols of the 50s, wasn’t coy about her allure. Indeed, she seemed to so revel in her vivacious (voracious?) sex appeal and took so much bawdy pleasure in her own body that she never seemed to need anyone else. What man could keep up with her?  Outside of Elvis Presley in Viva Las Vegas (1964), no other male co-star ever looked like they could spend an evening with Ann-Margret and come out alive.

As much as I took delight in watching Ann-Margret on screen and on her TV specials, I have to admit that I never quite knew if she was putting us on or not. Her brand of femininity was so far out on a limb that I could never tell if this was Ann-Margret engaging in a subtle form of self-parody (like Mae West), or did she really believe in her exaggerated, tigress/vamp act?

This ambiguity is somewhat cruelly exploited in Kitten with a Whip: one of a rash of black & white, low-budget films released in the early 60s that attempted to capture the gritty neo-realism of Something Wild (1961) or UK’s The Leather Boys; but instead fell into the chasm of B-movie exploitation, exemplified by films like Who Killed Teddy Bear?(1965) and Lady in a Cage (1966). Kitten with a Whip was made in 1964, but it feels like a late '50s Mamie Van Doren castoff.

Ann-Margret as Jody Dru

John Forsythe as David Stratton

Peter Brown as Ron

Diane Sayer as Midge

Skip Ward as Buck

17 year-old Jody Dru, nee Dvorak (Ann-Margret), escapes from a girl’s detention center and seeks refuge in a darkened, apparently vacant, suburban home. Come morning, Jody discovers the residence to belong to aspiring State Senator David Stratton (Forsythe) whose estranged wife and daughter are away. Certain he’s being set up for a political scandal, Stratton decides to call the police but changes his mind after hearing Jody’s tale of abuse and neglect. Resolving instead to help her reverse her fortunes, Stratton offers Jody his assistance only to discover that there is clearly more to this voluptuous teen than meets the eye. What follows is a black comedy of errors crossed with a juvenile delinquent cautionary tale as the woodenly sincere Stratton attempts to extricate himself from the escalating mess his life becomes after crossing paths with the auburn-haired minx.

Relax and enjoy the rear-screen projection

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

With its nervously percussive, espresso bongo jazz soundtrack; Saul Bass-inspired titles; and stark, almost nourish, photography; there’s the nagging sense that Kitten with a Whip is trying to say something deep about teen disaffection in the age of The Bomb. Fortunately for us, director /screenwriter Douglas Heyes’ preference for sleaze over sermons makes certain that Stanley Kramer isn't likely to suffer any sleepless nights. 

Kitten with a Whip is an overheated, flagrantly gynophobic, suburban nightmare about middle-class normalcy turned upside-down by a bi-polar teenage sociopath in French heels. Ergo, it’s an awful lot of fun.

Everything in this film—emotions, dialog, and dramatic situations—are ratcheted up to such absurdly shrill levels that it feels like you’re watching flash cards. Nothing substantive is allowed to land and take root. Like the animated cartoon that plays in the background of one scene, Kitten with a Whip doesn’t allow for the dust to settle between explosions. As soon as one disaster is felled, a new one pops up to take its place. 

All the above would certainly disqualify this film from most people’s must-see lists, but as a fan of the brilliant Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), I find Kitten with a Whip to be a similar thrill ride. Bad girls are always more fun, and as “Kitten” defies being taken seriously, it’s easy to sit back and wallow in its naïve lewdness. There are countless laughs to be had (some even intentional!).

Jody don't take no mess!

PERFORMANCES

Kitten with a Whip was Ann-Margret’s first “dramatic” role following her star-making turn in Bye Bye Birdie (her manager even turned down Cat Ballou for this film. He was later fired). Sandwiched between Viva Las Vegas and The Pleasure Seekers, Kitten with a Whip was to be the film to show off her range and versatility. Alas, it did anything but. 

There’s a kind of bad acting that is boring to watch and painful to subject yourself to (evident most reliably in testosterone-laden action films), but Ann-Margret’s performance in Kitten with a Whip is so electrifyingly awful, you can’t take your eyes off of her.

If there’s anything jarring about her efforts (she wins us over by being photogenic and histrionically agitated at all times) it’s that Ann-Margret trying to be “real” seems phonier than anything you've ever encountered. It’s like she’s never seen real human behavior and has no idea of how to convey emotions except in the broadest strokes possible.

Hers is a strenuous, muscular, performance that decimates everything and everyone else in the film (particularly the stupendously inexpressive and monumentally dull John Forsythe), but it’s the only life the film has. Giving it everything she’s got, Ann-Margret purrs, writhes, gnashes her teeth, pops her eyes, leers, pouts, and glowers;  all in bas-relief, indicating and telegraphing like she’s in a silent movie. She’s magnificent in a "I can't believe my eyes!" kind of way. (Ken Russell would harness Ann-Margret’s ferocity more capably in 1975s Tommy.)

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

As the film’s star, it’s only fitting that Ann-Margret is blessed with the lion’s share of Kitten with a Whip’s colorful (and comical) dialog.

 Jody: “Ooooh! Everything’s so creamy! Kill me quick, I never had it so good!”

Jody:  “How come you think you’re such a smoky something when you’re so nothing painted blue?”

Jody: “Hands off, Buster! Don’t you ever bruise me, David. God knows what I might do to you if you ever bruise me.”

Jody: “You’re gonna think I have an awfully dirty mind David, I change it so often.”

Jody: “You follow all this? You live behind walls here, man. Where I come from it’s outer space.”

Jody: “Put it down! You poke that finger at that dial, mister, and that's when I start screaming rape!"

Jody: “Look, I’m only a girl…I panic!” 

Jody's not that kind of girl

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Folks who don’t enjoy camp humor or lack a taste for cult films with reputations built on their shortcomings, may find this post bewildering; does he hate Ann-Margret, does he like her? What gives?

As I stated from the start, I’m really pretty much mad about Ann-Margret, but I’m not one of those fans who needs to take an-all-or-nothing stance about a performer. She's developed into a phenomenal actress over the years, but some of her early performances are painful to watch. I'm the first to admit that she's outstanding in both Carnal Knowledge and Tommy...but I'm not about to let my affection for this gorgeous lady excuse embarrassments like Made in Paris or The Swinger (although its title sequence alone is worth the price of a rental). I admire Ann-Margret because she is a dynamo, a hard worker, and is genuinely, truly talented. And like Cher, she’s one of those stars whose career has spanned decades and innumerable shifts in tastes and trends. The two are such survivors they’re likely to be the only things left standing after Armageddon.

One of the things I most like about Ann-Margret is her ability to be “good” even when she’s awful. And by that, I mean I admire her commitment. She may give a bad performance in Kitten With a Whip, but you'd have to look far to find a poor performance done with such conviction. She's giving 100% and then some. The results may be artistically uneven, but when accessed by standards of professionalism, dedication, and sheer hard work, she really delivers. I can’t help but admire that... even as I’m looking at some of her acting choices and wondering “What was she thinking?”

The whiny crybabies of today who drop out of Broadway plays because they’ve eaten bad sushi,  or deliver half-assed hosting performances on Academy Awards telecasts because they disagree with the script…well, they could take a lesson.  

Oh, and for the record:  Fans didn’t stay away from Kitten with a Whip because they didn’t like seeing Ann-Margret acting bad; they stayed away because didn’t like seeing Ann-Margret acting badly.

In a review for the 1968 musical Star!, Pauline Kael observed of British stage personality, Gertrude Lawrence: "She was what drag queens want to be."
I can't think of a sentence that better encapsulates Ann-Margret's uniquely enduring charm.

...for the literal-minded.
(I swear, this is a legitimate piece of promotional artwork for the film!!)

Copyright © Ken Anderson

TOMMY 1975

In 1975, a full six years before the existence of MTV and two years before Saturday Night Fever propelled disco to the forefront of pop culture, director Ken Russell (who had previously trained his by-then trademark grandiloquent eye almost exclusively on the lives of classical composers), created what was essentially a 2-hour music video. Part Scopitone cheese-fest, part surrealist fever-dream, part theater of the absurd, and part post-'60s drug-addled freak-out; Ken Russell's 100% assault on the senses is the self-proclaimed rock-opera, Tommy.

One of the most phenomenal cinema experiences of this or any other time. 

Ann-Margret as Nora Walker

Oliver Reed as Frank Hobbs

Roger Daltrey as Tommy Walker

Not since Roman Polanski, that atheist genius of contemporary nihilism, was assigned to the darkly cynical Rosemary's Baby, has there ever been a more perfect match of director and subject. Ken Russell's theatrically baroque, visuals-as-narrative style is ideally suited to a tale of such broad-strokes bombast as Tommy. Marketed as an experience as much as a movie, Tommy boasted rock-concert-decibel-level sound (the five-speaker Quintaphonic sound system that rattled movie theater rafters every bit as much as Earthquake's Sensurround), a story told entirely in song and music; and a mind-blowing, only-in-the-'70s cast of pop/rock musicians and movie stars. But best of all, Tommy had at its helm one of the UK's most artistically fearless directors. 

In his TV biographies of classical composers for the BBC, and in the films The Music Lovers (1971), The Boy Friend (1971), and Mahler (1974), Ken Russell proved himself to be an undisputed visionary when it came to unearthing daringly evocative ways of melding music and imagery. A director for whom too much was never enough, I can't think of a soul better suited to transfer a rock opera to the big screen with all the genre-requisite exaggeration and excess.

The release of Tommy was poised as a '70s happening...and it didn't disappoint.

Certainly not when it came to its eye-popping cast of pop-cuture icons.

Jack Nicholson as The Doctor

Tina Turner as The Acid Queen

Elton John as The Pinball Wizard

Significantly retooled from the 1969 double album by The Who, Tommy is a quasi-spiritual parable about a boy (Barry Winch) rendered hysterically deaf, blind, and non-verbal after witnessing the murder of his father (Robert Powell) at the hands of his mother's lover (Oliver Reed).

Witness to the Murder
Seriously, who wouldn't be traumatized by Oliver Reed screaming in your face?

While shared guilt tears at the fibers of the marriage of Nora (Ann-Margret) and Frank (Reed) --Nora, in particular, grapples with remorse over what she has done-- the now-grown Tommy (Daltrey) retreats further and further into himself, inhabiting a vivid inner world that serves to shield him from the paradoxical trauma of well-intentioned attempts to cure him backed up by thoughtless instances of parental neglect and familial abuse. As a result of his experiences, Tommy develops a near-supernatural talent for pinball and is hailed as a pop culture prodigy. 

For Nora, instant wealth and fame only superficially cushion the pain of the responsibility she feels for Tommy's afflictions. But when her hysterics bring about his "accidental" fall through a plate-glass mirror, the miraculous restoration of his senses changes the course of all of their lives. Tommy instantly becomes a worldwide spiritual messiah, but discovers that this mock religion, which offers spiritual redemption through material acquisition, is yet but another existential dead end. 

I Am The Light

For a treatise on fame addiction, pop-spirituality, drugs, child abuse, and family dysfunction, five seasons of "Oprah" couldn't accomplish what Ken Russell does in these crammed-to-overflowing two hours. In song, yet! Classical music devotee Russell seems creatively invigorated by his first foray into the world of Rock & Roll, and his inspired translation of the Who's opera to the screen is nothing short of dazzling. Always a director able to capture memorably vivid tableaux, Russell fills Tommy with striking and, in some instances, downright bizarre images and setpieces that 1975 audiences weren't quite prepared for.  

Nora & Captain Walker
Tommy is credited to three cinematographers. Their work is often breathtaking.

Tommy is chock full of spheres, globe motifs, religious iconography, inside jokes, and Freudian symbolism. All this heavy-handed pretension was like manna for a high school film geek like me.

Robert Powell as Captain Walker

Looking at the film now, it's hard for me to take it as seriously as I did way back when. But what does persist and becomes more apparent with each viewing is the obvious artistry on display and how much sheer outrageous fun it is to watch. So many movies today are all spectacle, with nary an idea in their heads. Ken Russell movies are so crammed full of ideas and subthemes that it frequently takes repeat viewings to even catch them all. Oh, and there's plenty of spectacle to spare, too.

Modern Family

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

If Tommy were a Western, it would be a Western with covered wagons, the cavalry, and stagecoaches; were it a war film, it would have air strikes, tanks, battalions, and explosions every fifteen minutes. In short, Tommy is so much fun because it has too much of everything. The music is exhilarating (and loud), and the visuals are, in turn, brash, vulgar, and ingenious. Most movies have at least one setpiece scene; Tommy is ALL setpiece scenes. Under any other circumstances, this would be a recipe for a somewhat overwhelming viewing experience. But Ken Russell's operatic ambition and vastness of scope are so gleefully grandiose and overreaching that I find Tommy to be just irresistible cinema.

Show Biz
The "Pinball Wizard" sequence, featuring The Who and Elton John is combat as rock concert

Satire
Organized religion and fame culture are skewered in a jaw-dropping sequence set in a church worshiping Marilyn Monroe 

Surrealism
Tommy in a landscape of giant pinballs and flaming pinball machines

PERFORMANCES

The title role may belong to Roger Daltrey, but the film belongs to Ann-Margret. As Tommy's troubled mother (understatement), Ann-Margret seems to sense that this is the role of a lifetime and attacks it with a commitment and ferocity that comes from a place very real. Her performance is so compelling that she pulls off the Herculean feat of anchoring the entire film (which could have easily slid into campiness) in a kind of emotional truth.

Tommy was Ann-Margret's first Best Actress Oscar nomination. In 1971 she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Carnal Knowledge, a film in which she played opposite Tommy's romantically smitten physician, Jack Nicholson

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

The pairing of the director of The Devils with the actress who stole an entire film from under Elvis Presley's nose was bound to produce a few sparks, but no one was prepared for the cinematic conflagration that was the "Champagne" musical number; popularly known as "The beans sequence." A song written expressly for the film, it communicates Nora's profound guilt, compounded by the riches and comfort that has come to her through Tommy's pinball success. In an attempt to blot out Tommy's image from both her mind and the television screen, which alternates close-ups of Tommy's staring, blameless eyes, with insipid commercials for baked beans, soap suds, and chocolate, Nora gets plastered. Everything comes to an emotional and visual head when Nora hallucinates the television set vomiting its material goods into her pristine white bedroom.

If you really want to see an actor going all out, nerves exposed and raw, you need look no further than Ann-Margret's Technicolor nervous breakdown in Tommy. Audacious isn't even the word. Understandably, this scene was all critics could talk about when the film was released, and even today I think it can't help but astonish. A primo example of truly inspired, virtuoso looniness.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

It's fascinating to me that a film propelled by wall-to-wall rock music is also so visually stimulating; I can imagine someone could watch it without sound and still find it to be an exciting and compelling motion picture. Ken Russell has a silent filmmaker's grasp of the visual rhythms of dramatic storytelling. He's always been a director known for letting images do the talking, and with Tommy, he comes the closest he's ever been to achieving pure cinema.

Tommy's Primary Color Triad of Trauma
(The Acid Queen, Uncle Ernie, and Cousin Kevin)

As a teen, the only records I owned were movie soundtrack albums (the film-geek thing), so, rather remarkably, Tommy was my introduction to rock music. Purists, of course, would say that Tommy is to Rock what Dreamgirls is to R&B. But independent of questions on whether The Who's concept album conceit is the real thing or not, my love for this score eventually led to my expanding my record collection to include real-life, non-movie music of all stripes. How fitting then to be indoctrinated into the musical world of soaring theatrics, broad emotionalism, and specious spirituality by a film director whose entire career was built on those very things.

AUTOGRAPH FILES

Ann-Margret (or her publicist) sent this photo and this accompanying note in 1976 following a letter I wrote gushing about her performance in Tommy. I always assumed messages and pictures from celebrities were PR products until I worked for actor Walter Matthau in the 1990s and saw that he personally answered his fan mail and autographed photos. Do stars even do this now, or are fans immediately placed on a "stalker" list?

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2010