MAME 1974

In Praise of Older Women or: I Love Lucy, But Even That Has Its Limits

Though not originally conceived as such, this look at Lucille Ball's Mame makes a fitting companion piece to my previous post on Mae West's Sextette. Both films were made in the '70s; both star actresses who found their greatest fame after turning forty; and both films represent the simultaneous big screen return/farewell of beloved show-biz legends in star vehicles (vanity projects?) modeled after the old-fashioned, large-scale musicals of Hollywood's Golden Era.
Although light years from each other in terms of competency, quality, and budget, both films were greeted with near-identical waves of incredulity and hostility from the press and public upon release. The lion's share of the brickbats hurled centering on accusations of fan-pandering, a distracting over-reliance on age-concealing diffused lighting and fog-filters, and the overriding sense of the stars in question being both ill-served by the material, and frankly, too old for their roles. (West was 84 playing 32. Ball, at 62, starts Mame—which spans from 1928 to 1946—at roughly the age her character should be when it ends.)

Lucille Ball as Mae Dennis

Bea Arthur as Vera Charles

Robert Preston as Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside

Jane Connell as Agnes Gooch

Bruce Davison as Patrick Dennis

Kirby Furlong as Young Patrick Dennis

The eccentric heroine of Patrick Dennis' fictional 1955 autobiography, Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade  (who made her first appearance in the 1956 Broadway play, later in the 1958 film, and ultimately the 1966 Broadway musical upon which this movie is based) is logically somewhere in her mid to late 40s, but, philosophically-speaking, has always seemed "ageless" ("Spoken like a press agent." - Margo Channing). It's conceivable to me that an actress of any age could convincingly play the wealthy, irrepressible free-thinker who becomes an instant mother when entrusted with the upbringing of her late brother's son and teaches the child to "Open a new window" and live by the motto, "Life is a banquet and most poor sons-of-bitches are starving to death"; provided she has the necessary iconoclastic verve, bohemian personality, and spontaneous, life-affirming energy to bring Mame Dennis to life.

Sixty-two-year-old Lucille Ball certainly had plenty of energy, but after six seasons each of I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show, and Here's Lucy (the last episode aired a week before Mame was released wide), much of that had calcified into drive, determination, and an adherence to tried-and-true schtick. Mame was Ball's first film since 968's Yours, Mine, & Ours, and it presented the actress with a dream role she actively campaigned to acquire. This is despite an expressed preference by the show's creators (Jerome Lawrence, Robert E. Lee, and Jerry Herman) for Angela Lansbury, who had won the 1966 Tony Award originating the role on Broadway.

Luckily for Ball, there was no way any studio could risk mounting a $12 million film adaptation of Mame without a star of her caliber and popularity attached to it, so, clearly not having learned his lesson from the film version of his Hello, Dolly! (where the common complaint was that Streisand was too YOUNG for the role), composer Jerry Herman handed over Mame's singing and dancing chores to a well-loved household name of advanced age. One who'd repeatedly gone on record decrying her own inability to either sing or dance.

(I've read that Herman, so displeased with how Mame and Hello, Dolly! turned out - and apparently after having banked enough money from both to finally buy himself some principles - has since refused to grant permission for the film adaptation of any of his work without his having creative control.)

Mame was one of the most heavily promoted musicals since 1973's Lost Horizon (and we all know how that turned out). Lucille Ball supported it tirelessly through personal appearances and television interviews. (Top) Hollywood's Cinerama Dome theater is decked out like an Easter bonnet cloche hat for the March 26 premiere. (Below) An advance trade magazine ad. 

It can't be said that a movie version of Mame didn't have timing working in its favor. Nostalgia was "in" in 1974, and everything from fashion (BIBA) to music (The Pointer Sisters, Bette Midler) to TV (The Waltons, Happy Days) had its rearview mirror on. In the world of film, at least every studio had at least one retro-themed release on its roster: The Great Gatsby, Chinatown, and the remake of The Front Page.

Though my being so over-enamored of Rosalind Russell in 1958's non-musical Auntie Mame should have made me warier, I was excited by the prospect of Lucille Ball in Mame because, like everybody else from my era, I was raised on Lucy Ricardo. I totally adored I Love Lucy (not so much The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy) and was confident that her small-screen magic would positively soar on the big screen. 

Mame - starring Diane Belmont
Diane Belmont was the hoity-toity stage name Lucille Ball adopted during her early modeling days as the Chesterfield Cigarettes Girl.
Fans expecting to see the clowning, rubber-faced Lucy TV persona were surprised to find, in its place, the regal, slightly haughty grande dame Lucy of the 1943 Al Hirschfeld caricature that closed every episode of  The Lucy Show. Ball goes through most of Mame with her chin held aloft, her lips pursed, and her cheeks deeply sucked in. A look that does wonders for her close-ups but absolutely kills any and all attempts at comedy. 

In late March of 1974, my family allowed me to drag them (kicking and screaming) to see Mame at the Regency Theater in San Francisco. 

And if hard work paid off in entertainment value, I would have had a wonderful time, for Lucy is clearly working her ass off. But under several layers of make-up, several pounds of elaborate wigs, movement-constricting Theadora Van Runkle costumes, a network of face-tightening surgical tape and straps - not to mention nursing a leg broken in four places just a year before - I'm afraid there wasn't much room for fun, élan, or even much in the way of a performance to rise to the surface. 

In fact, the character Mame Dennis is less prominent than that of Lucille Ball: the revered "comedy institution." There's so much protection of its leading lady in evidence (from the tempo of the songs to the choreography); the musical around her has been transformed into a kind of formal, laugh-free, drag-queen-inspired fandom career tribute. Indeed, Lucy enthusiasts, those who had stuck by their star through 18 years of black-and-white housedresses and dowdy office attire, were rewarded with a two-hour-plus fashion parade of Lucille Ball looking like the glamorous movie star Ricky Ricardo and Mr. Mooney never allowed her to be.

Joyce Van Patten is an all-too-brief bright spot as the conniving Sally Cato 

Lucille Ball's age only factored in my enjoyment of Mame insomuch as it seemed to utterly preoccupy the filmmakers to the point of distraction. Everything in the film is constructed with an eye toward camouflaging its leading lady's age and physical limitations. Filtered lenses, careful lighting, and a raised chin become the film's dominant visual motifs. Ball looks terrific throughout, and I really only thought about her age (and that broken leg) when it came to the physical comedy and modest dance requirements. Ball can kick as high as a chorus girl, but I don't think my reactions--alternately, relief that she didn't hurt herself and awe at her moxie in even undertaking these moderately strenuous endeavors--were conducive to my getting into the spirit of things. Mame should be a character so full of life that she gives the impression of never sitting still. Lucille Ball, for all her efforts, always left me wanting to offer her a chair.

She'll Croak the Blues Right Out of Your Heart!
Much was made of Lucille Ball's "singing." A lifetime of smoking, a voice-damaging stint on Broadway in Wildcat (1960), and a fondness for bourbon left Ball with a distinctive rasp that wasn't always kind to Jerry Herman's songs. Some critics at the time claimed Lisa Kirk (Rosalind Russell's voice in much of Gypsy) dubbed some of the vocals (Ball said Kirk should sue!), but Ball claimed all responsibility.
While it would have been nice to have had a singer in the role,  if we had to have Lucy (and it seems like we did), I prefer hearing her real voice. I'm not a big fan of dubbing. Marni Nixon's soulless voice ruins both  West Side Story and My Fair Lady for me, Marianne McAndrew's voice in Hello, Dolly! seems to emanate from under her hat, and don't get me started on the voices they chose for Liv Ullmann and Peter Finch in Lost Horizon...

Mame Dennis is a bohemian at heart, a sophisticated misfit thumbing her nose at convention. But like the actress herself, Lucille Ball's Mame exudes too much practicality. The only thing oddball about her is her wardrobe.

If anything, I found Agnes Gooch's age to be far more problematic in the context of the film. I know Jane Connell originated the role on Broadway and all, but I couldn't help wishing that her pregnancy number "What Do I Do Now?" had been scrapped (it's always been pure torture for me, anyhow) or refashioned into a menopause anthem or something. She just seemed too old. And her sheltered virgin bit was a cartoon. All through the film I kept imagining what fired-during-rehearsals Madeline Kahn might have done with the role.

Open a New Window
Ball has the best onscreen chemistry with Kirby Furlong, who plays young Patrick (my favorite moment is when he's allowed to slide down the banister in her apartment). The actress's legendary comedy timing seems to have abandoned her throughout much of the film, but whenever she is allowed to smile or laugh, her childlike appeal is irresistible. 

For all its faults, I have to say it was rather thrilling seeing Mame on the big screen for the first time; a feeling that has diminished significantly with subsequent DVD revisits. The scale and glossy sheen of the film were breathtaking to me at the time, Ball looking spectacular, if not exactly comfortable, in her elaborate wardrobe (she seems about as at home in those outfits as she does in the role itself). And if hampered by a lumbering pace, overlong running time, too-familiar plot, and a paucity of real humor (Jerome Lawrence: "The screenplay was by Dostoyevsky…they took out all the laughs!"), something about Mame is so eager-to-please and well-intentioned, you kind of want to forgive it. Just like Ricky always forgave Lucy.

Audrey Christie & Don Porter as the uppity Mrs. & Mr. Upson

Mame does many things wrong, but for me, three of the things they get right are so sublime that Mame has remained a favorite all these years, strictly on their strength.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
The Title Sequence.

In his review of Mame, New York Times critic Vincent Canby observed, "The opening credits, which look like a Cubist collage in motion, are so good they could be a separate subject."
Indeed, the titles are so classy and eye-popping (footage from old Warner films like Public Enemy and Forty-Second Street are utilized) that they whet your appetite and set a standard of style and sophistication the film only intermittently lives up to.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Loving You.
It's common practice for musicals adapted from Broadway shows to have at least one original number written for the screen version. Cynics (or are they realists?) say it's to make a bid for a Best Song Oscar nomination, as only songs written expressly for a film are eligible. However, in the case of Mame, one can make a good argument for needing to beef up the supporting role of Beauregard (he has only the title song) in order to attract a two-time Tony Award winner like Robert Preston. Also, since Mame was being marketed to women (so-called women's director George Cukor was initially attached to the project but had to drop out when Ball's skiing accident delayed production for an entire year), there was a desire to place a stronger emphasis on the romance.
Most importantly, Robert Preston could actually sing, and Mame needed all the good voices it could get.

The song composed for the film is "Loving You," and not only does the very dashing Preston sing and perform it beautifully, but the number as staged (a honeymoon montage) is so sweepingly romantic, I find myself moved by it each and every time. It's a great song anyway, but its presentation is so nicely handled. Special applause goes to the musical arrangement. The segment in a great ballroom has the most amazing recreation of a '30s, Guy Lombardo-inspired orchestral sound; then, when the scene changes to a grand garden, the music erupts into a piano crescendo of such goosebump-inducing romantic lushness, blending magically with the image of the dancing the couple...that the waterworks that had been building up just have to go for it. I just love this sequence. It's so wonderful it really does feel as though it were hijacked from another film.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS 
The Title Number.

In a word: Perfection. Every single thing about how this number is done just puts a smile on my face. It's rousing and old-fashioned in just the right way, vibrantly staged and choreographed... it's everything that ever made me fall in love with musicals. The sight of all those red jackets and white jodhpurs in a kickline on the big screen was quite unforgettable! Had the rest of the film been up to this standard, Mame would have been a classic.

PERFORMANCES
On its release, all the performers were understandably positive about the film (to the press, at least). In later years Bea Arthur spoke of Ball as having been miscast and that the film was "A tremendous embarrassment." Even Lucille Ball later recanted all her initial happy talk and described making the film as being "...About as much fun as watching your house burn down."

Personally, Rosalind Russell spoiled my chances of ever enjoying anyone else as Mame Dennis, so Lucy in the musical version bothers me less than those who perhaps found their biggest joy in Angela Lansbury's take on the character. I don't think Lucy's right for the role, but how does one go about disliking Lucy? To this day, no other TV show can make me laugh like I Love Lucy, and I think she is a genius in that regard. When she was still around, it was easy to rag on this picture....now that she's gone, I find myself a lot more at peace with my disappointments. She's missed, what can I say?

Other than a few unflattering costumes, the late-great Bea Arthur in Mame really has nothing to be embarrassed about (although she should have been upset the way her hilarious number "The Man in the Moon is a Lady" was butchered by so many cutaways). To my taste, Auntie Mame's Coral Browne IS Vera Charles, but Arthur is Mame's saving grace. (Bette Davis famously campaigned for the movie role of Vera opposite Lucy. Can you imagine a sound technician trying to measure those two voices in a duet?)

Mame is one of my "Fast-forward Favorites": A movie I find difficult to watch all the way through, but delight in watching a la carte...hopping from one favored scene to another. I highly recommend this method with this film - most of the film doesn't work, but there are flashes of brilliance here and there that are just too good to miss.

BONUS MATERIAL

Mame Art Deco Title Sequence (Designed by Wayne Fitzgerald thru Pacific Title & Art).

Lucille Ball appeared as herself in an episode of "Here's Lucy" titled: Lucy Carter Meets Lucille Ball. Broadcast on March 4, 1974, to tie-in with the spring release of Mame. Ball appears in one of her Mame outfits hosting a lookalike contest and plugging the film.

Lucille Ball on The Merv Griffin Show. Ball talks to the host about the making of Mame.

Ginger Rogers in Mame 1969. Mame's choreographer, Onna White also choreographed the original Broadway production. Here's a chance to see the same equestrian choreography from the film as it was performed on the stage.

Angela Lansbury and Bea Arthur perform "Bosom Buddies." The 1987 Tony Awards give us an opportunity to see what might have been.

My Three Mames: An ingenious montage of the "Mame" number as performed by Lucille Ball, Angela Lansbury, and Ginger Rogers created by Neil Wilburn.

Bosom Buddies: Another clever Mame mash-up by Neil Wilburn. This incorporates the OBC with the film soundtrack.

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 -2015

LAST SUMMER 1969

The occasion of a recent TCM screening of this forgotten minor masterpiece from the late ‘60s jogged my memory back to when the film collaborations of the matrimonial/professional team of director Frank Perry and screenwriter Eleanor Perry represented the bright promise of the New Hollywood. Their films, David and Lisa (1962), The Swimmer (1968), and especially the excellent Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970), felt almost European in their blending of arthouse aesthetics with exploitable, mainstream commercial themes.  

Goodbye, Gidget. Farewell, Frankie and Annette
An awful lot had changed since the release of the final Beach Party movie in 1966

I was 13 years old when Last Summer, and, in truth, I had no business seeing so adult a motion picture at such a young age. I may have had no business seeing it, but I wanted to see it like crazy. But thanks to having a much older sister who served as the accompanying “adult guardian” making possible my admission to a slew of age-inappropriate movie farein previous years—Barbarella, Rosemary’s Baby, Bonnie and Clyde, and Secret Ceremony, to name just a few—I had already convinced myself that I was far too mature an adolescent to waste time on the movies marketed to my age demographic. 

The MPAA movie rating system was in its infancy then (when G, M, R, and X were the designations), and I had self-seriously deemed that anything below an “M” was simply not worth my time. After all, I wasn't a child!

Of course, I know now that this attitude was as much born of fervid sexual curiosity (aka, adolescent horniness) as intellectual inquisitiveness, but when you’re that young, there really isn’t all that much of a difference between the two.

Last Summer premiered in New York with an X-rating. By the time it opened
in San Francisco two months later, it had been edited down to an R-rating

The release of Last Summer was on my radar because I had read that it was to be given an X-rating, and back then, to me, X-rated meant sophisticated. To my mind it was a rating that, in keeping with the critical and boxoffice success of the recent X-rated release Midnight Cowboy (1969), held the promise of being just the start of a whole slew of Hollywood movies made for grown-ups (and me, of course) that were free to tell important, contemporary stories unencumbered by the constraints of censorship or the worry of meeting the bland criteria of "wholesome family entertainment."

And indeed, for a time, that appeared to be the case. There came a string of films with intriguingly elevated themes that fell under the X-rating umbrella: Greetings! (1968), The Damned (1969), Medium Cool (1969), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Last Tango in Paris(1972). But soon the “X” rating was appropriated by the porn industry, and whatever chance an "X-rating" had of signifying hands-off censorship interference was short-lived.  

Barbara Hershey as Sandy

Richard Thomas as Peter

Bruce Davison as Dan

Catherine Burns as Rhoda

I saw both Midnight Cowboy and Last Summer within months of each other, and the reason I'm harping on the whole "X-rated" thing is that it became part of Last Summer's lore, and contributed to a lot of misremembering on my part. At the time, everyone was talking about these two high-profile, controversial, X-rated features. John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy maintained its X for the duration of its run, but Last Summer, after playing briefly in NYC with the "X" tag, Frank Perry agreed to delete a couple of swear words and a few frames from the film's harrowing climax to give his film an R-rating before going into wide release. 

What TCM screened a few weeks ago was said to be the R-rated theatrical release from 1969, and likely the same film I saw back then. But over the years, there have been so many edited versions of Last Summer in circulation (remarkably, I don't think it ever had a VHS or DVD release) that I have my doubts. This isn't helped by my having two bootleg versions of the film, one running about a minute and forty some seconds longer than the other. (The extended time seems due to longer shots in the final sequence. The longer version is recognizable by the inclusion of Bruce Davidson's line "She's gonna swallow her braces," after Barbara Hershey's remark "You look like you're gonna choke.")

This shot, part of an extended verbal exchange, was missing, along with several other brief cuts
to this sequence, from the version of  Last Summer broadcast on TCM 

So, despite what I do and don't remember about the version I saw back in 1970, at least we know there are at least two different cuts of Last Summer floating around. 

Both Midnight Cowboy and Last Summer received high praise from critics, Midnight Cowboy going on to make history as the first (and to date only) X-rated movie to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. But somehow, Last Summer, despite having garnered a Best Supporting Actress nod for newcomer Catherine Burns, and launching the long careers of its other young stars, managed to fall through the cracks. All but forgotten due to the film's unavailability. 

Affluent teens vacationing on Fire Island with their disinterested parents 

bond after saving the life of an injured seagull

With its title a darkly ironic harkening back to the innocent, sun-and-sand Gidget movies of the sixties, or those sexually innocuous Frankie & Annette Beach Party romps, Last Summer is perhaps one of the harshest eviscerations of adolescent social dynamics I've ever seen. Neither a youth-pandering idealization of the Pepsi Generation of the sort typified by late-'60s films like The Graduate and Easy Rider, nor one of those nostalgically sentimental coming-of-age films that would later flourish in the '70s (The Summer of ’42, The Last Picture Show, American Graffiti), Last Summer is adolescence presented as a state of proto-barbarism. Where the youthful cry for "freedom" is met with the notion that, if left to their own devices, would the Love Generation be any less savage than the Over-30 set?

In a scene emphasizing Sandy's sexual acquisitiveness and dominance over the boys' relative sexual hesitancy, Sandy and Dan come across two lovers making out on a remote stretch of beach. When it's discovered that the lovers are men, Dan wants to leave, but Sandy insists they stay and watch. 

A trio of teens vacationing with their parents on Fire Island strike up an intimate friendship when callow, future fratboy Dan (Davison), and sensitive go-alonger Peter (Thomas) come upon sexually precocious brainiac, Sandy, tending to a wounded seagull on the beach (Sandy: Well you asked me, so don’t think I’m boasting, but my IQ is 157.”) Bonding over their shared isolation, sexual restlessness, and an overweening, heretofore unplumbed disdain for the feelings of others, the threesome find the dynamics of their tightly-knit group challenged with the appearance of Rhoda, a bright but shy and awkward outsider who insinuates herself into the fold.

The vulnerable don't stand much of a chance with this crowd. Rhoda is introduced committing a simple act of deceny (which already makes her a misfit): she tries to get the trio to stop tormenting the seagull they're attempting to turn into a pet.  

Plump and pale to their tall and tawny; braces-wearing and happy to act her age to the trio’s fevered acceleration into adulthood; it’s fairly obvious from the start that Rhoda’s emotional self-assurance and killjoy, sober decency is a wrong mix for this crowd. Yet the point is keenly made by the film that in adolescence, the pain of loneliness can be so acute that even the belittling company of those who fail to see your value is sometimes preferable to being alone.

In Rhoda, Sandy finds another "project" ...like the seagull. 

Here, Rhoda models the update from her "old lady" bathing suit 

Last Summer's poignancy is derived from the realization that, what with all four teens coming from broken or troubled homes, they could have been helpful to one another, and that the summer would wind up being memorable to them for a lot of good reasons. But, being at its heart an existential parable on power, hurt people hurting others, and the question of whether cruelty is a choice or an instinct, Last Summer leaves our young protagonists irrevocably changed, and unlikely for the better. 

"You have an unmapped face. It doesn't come right out
and say what's going to become of it."

The gentle connection that Rhoda and Peter begin to develop stands to threaten the dynamic of "the trio." 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

 Like so many of my favorite films from this era: They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Midnight Cowboy, Puzzle of a Downfall Child, even Rosemary's Baby; Last Summer is for me a marvelous example of how fascinating American movies were becoming in the late-60's, early-'70s when they began to venture into realms of storytelling that were not overtly tethered to their commercial potential. 

Sure, there's always the marketable angle of sensationalism, and films like Last Summer were more than willing to make their boldness and daring a part of their marketing. 

But what made the films of this era different from those released even a few years earlier (and, sadly, just a decade later) was their willingness to go to the darker places of the American myth and challenge our concepts of ourselves and the world we live in. 

So often, I find movies today tend to feed us comforting images of ourselves and set out to reinforce tissue-thin myths we harbor about everything from gender politics to racism. Although I don't require it in every film I see, I must say I enjoy it when movies hold up a mirror to American culture that reveals the decay behind the gloss, proposing, in the exposure, that we have the potential to do and be better.  

Again, the vulnerable are seen as targets, not subjects of empathy

Last Summer doesn't shy away from the exposing the privileged arrogance of the of these blond teens who, sheltered in their all-white enclaves make comic/idiotic jokes in the contrived slave dialect of Gone With the Wind, or, in this painful scene, make blantantly racist jokes at the expense of Anibal Gomez (Ernesto Gonzalez), a sweet and lonely Puerto Rican computer date set-up for the reluctant Rhoda.

Movies in the '60s/'70s were comfortable with revealing the darker shades of human nature. In fact, one of my strongest memories from this period in filmmaking was the distinct impression I was never going to see a movie with a happy ending again. I enjoyed seeing movies that made me think, made me feel...but at times it seemed as if every movie released during my teens ended in some devastating tragedy. Even the musicals were downers: Sweet Charity!

PERFORMANCES

Relying perhaps on type-casting and using his young cast's relative acting inexperience to their benefit (Last Summer is the film debut of all but Barbara Hershey, who appeared in Doris Day's last film, With Six You Get Eggroll, just the year before), Frank Perry gets natural and surprisingly complex performances out of everyone, particularly Catherine Burns. Although lacking in the sort of easy, obvious camaraderie Peter Bogdanovich was able to achieve with his cast in The Last Picture Show--most apparent in a visibly forced, "beer as truth serum" sequence that gives credence to Hershey's claim years later that despite the intimacy required of their roles, the cast didn't become close during the making of the film--each actor achieves a kind of heroic bravery in allowing themselves to be presented so honestly and unpleasantly.

When Last Summer was released, the entire cast was applauded for their performances, but it was Catherine Burns who emerged as the breakout “star,” garnering the lion's share of the film's best reviews and Last Summer's sole Academy Award nomination. Though reunited with Richard Thomas in 1971's Red Sky at Morning (a film I haven’t seen), Hollywood didn't seem to know what to do with her, and so after being wasted in a few TV movies and disposable roles in episodics, she bowed out of the industry for good, becoming a published author. She passed away in 2019.

The role of Mr. Caudell, Sandy's sexual assaulter dubbed "Snow White" due to his inability to tan, is played by character actor Peter Turgeon. Recognizable to fans of Airport (1970) as the annoying passenger who eventually gets slapped by a priest. 

Barbara Hershey's assured and dynamic performance as the dreamgirl sociopath is one that has really stayed with me over the years. Carnal, conniving, straightforward, and deeply troubled, I think her characterization is so genuinely terrifying because she is just such a recognizable brand of emotional/intellectual bully. Long a favorite of mine and a definite object of a boyhood crush, Hershey's impressive and enduring career includes BAFTA and Oscar nominations. 

Barbara Hershey (born Barbara Hertzstein) briefly changed her name to Barbara Seagull out of guilt surrounding the death of the seagull that was accidentally killed during the filming (the scenes involving the bird are another reason why Last Summer is a very unsettling affair).

Poster for the 1975 heist film Diamonds, featuring Barbara Hershey with her "Seagull" billing

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Perhaps the parallel symbolism is all too heavy-handed for some, but what I loved about this film in 1969 and what still stands up marvelously in 2013 are the parallels drawn between the film's early sequences involving the attempt to rehabilitate and then train the wounded seagull, and the introduction of the character of Rhoda into the group. The foreshadowing of the film's agonizing denouement is as clear-cut and unalterable as a self-fulfilling prophecy, but what grips me is what lies behind why it happens at all.

To see this film now is to understand what occurs inside any group or individual in power when threatened with the loss of that power. Whether it be the behavior of the GOP in the last election or the reluctance of certain states to grasp the inevitability of marriage equality, it all fits and paints an ugly portrait of cowardice cloaked in entitled domination. To find all of this within a teenage coming-of-age film is just brilliant, and provides one more reason why it's such a shame this film is so hard to track down. 

That Sandy would most likely be happiest were Dan and Pete to be somehow merged into one person feeds the already heady homoerotic sexual tension that exists within this tripartite friendship.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

For years on the internet, there have been reports of Last Summer finally getting a DVD release. Its reemergence on cable TV and a recent American Cinematheque screening of a long-lost, uncut 16mm print hint that perhaps one day soon this might very well be the case. I certainly hope so. 

Not only is it one of Frank and Eleanor Perry's best films (and Frank Perry doesn't deserve to be remembered in perpetuity for being the man who gave us Mommie Dearest and Monsignor,  does he?), but I also think it's one of the more important and representative films of a significant era in American film.  

Scene from "Last Summer" (1969)

BONUS MATERIAL

I read Evan Hunter’s 1968 novel Last Summer not long after seeing the film. Eleanor Perry’s screenplay is surprisingly faithful to the source material, and it's every bit as disturbing as the film. The novel provides a bit more backstory to the characters and is told in the form of a flashback memory recounted by an emotionally shattered Peter to his psychiatrist. In 1973, Evan Hunter wrote a sequel to Last Summer titled Come Winter. I don't know if any significance should be placed on the fact that while I read it much more recently than Last Summer, I nevertheless can't recall a thing about it. 

A deleted scene from Last Summer featuring Ralph Waite as Pete's father. Waite and Thomas would go on to appear on TV as father and son for five seasons of The Waltons.

The Manor (2021)
Bruce Davison and Barbara Hershey were reunited as co-stars for this Gothic horror film set in a retirement home. Oh, if only some clever writer had thought to make this an extended sequel to Last Summer. Would Dan and Sandy have changed?  Would that summer have scarred them for life? 

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009- 2013