THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE 1972

Warning: Spoilers galore

Looking back, I still find it hard to believe that I first came to know of the existence of The Poseidon Adventure only after it had already opened in theaters. It was in December of 1972, I was 15 years old, and my folks were treating my sisters and me to our first visit to Disneyland over the Christmas holidays. Disneyland and Universal Studios were, of course, a blast for a film fan like me (this was back when Universal was ONLY a tour, not an amusement park, and the main attractions were Lucille Ball's dressing room, the props from the Land of the Giants TV show, and that bridge Shirley MacLaine got pushed off of in Sweet Charity). But that was for the daytime.
My favorite part of our trip was in the evenings. At night we were treated to a driving and walking tour of Los Angeles, Hollywood, to be specific. Of all the places we visited, I especially loved seeing Hollywood Boulevard. Hollywood Boulevard was always kind of tacky, but not to my utterly overwhelmed and enthralled eyes. In the early 1970s, it was still a place to go to see first-run movies, where premieres were held, and where they had their annual Christmas parade populated with actual movie stars you've heard of. Hollywood Blvd...all decked out in Christmas decorations, stars on the sidewalks, overflowing with one lit-up movie palace after another…to my eyes, it looked every bit as magical as Main Street in Disneyland.

Who Will Survive--In One Of The Greatest Escape Adventures Ever!

Gene Hackman as Reverend Frank Scott

Ernest Borgnine as Mike Rogo 

Stella Stevens as Linda Rogo

All of the 1972 holiday season movie releases were playing in the local theaters: Grauman's Chinese had Streisand's Up The Sandbox, Diana Ross was at The Pantages in Lady Sings the Blues, the Cinerama Dome had the Patty Duke thriller You'll Like My Mother, the Pacific was showing The Getaway with Steve McQueen & Ali MacGraw, and Paul Newman was at the Hollywood (currently a Ripley's Believe It or Not museum) in The Life & Times of Judge Roy Bean.

Back then, movie theaters still went all out with marketing gimmicks and displays. Every theater was bathed in colorful neon, aglow with bright and flashing lights, and everywhere you looked were banners, streamers, oversized posters, and colossal cardboard promotional cutouts for movies now playing or coming soon. My eyes were popping out of my head.

As we strolled along Hollywood Boulevard that night, what really stopped me in my tracks was when we came upon the opulent and enormous Egyptian Theater. There, towering at least two stories high above the theater's massive, winding marquee, was the poster art for a film I'd somehow not heard a single thing about: The Poseidon Adventure. The Egyptian, then every bit as glamorous as Grauman's Chinese, was in the middle of an exclusive run of The Poseidon Adventure after hosting the film's premiere a week prior. The remaining evidence of the event was the massive cast portraits adorning the sprawling marquee, taller-then-me cutout posters, hanging banners, production stills, posters, and lobby cards filling every inch of available display space. Suddenly I was surrounded by images of what looked like the most exciting film I'd never heard of.

Shelley Winters as Belle Rosen 

Jack Albertson as Manny Rosen

Red Buttons as James Martin

Carol Lynley as Nonnie Parry

To understand how a dyed-in-the-wool film fan like myself managed not to hear a single advance word about a movie that not only became one of my all-time favorites, but the second highest-grossing film of the year, it helps to know what kind of year 1972 was for the movies. In both fan magazines and the legitimate press, the lion's share of 1972 movie coverage/publicity centered around these high-profile titles: The Godfather (Brando's comeback!), Cabaret (Judy's daughter makes good!), Last Tango in Paris (Le Scandale!), Lady Sings the Blues (a Supreme film debut!), The Getaway (behind-the-scenes adultery!), and What's Up Doc? (Streisand meets New Hollywood wunderkind!).

With no nudity, sex, drug use, violent bloodshed, or profanity, The Poseidon Adventure—an old-fashioned throwback to the Grand Hotel-style "all-star cast" melodrama—couldn't really compete with the more daring, youth-oriented releases of the season, so it pitched itself more to the market largely ignored by New Hollywood: families and the older demographic. 

Roddy McDowall as Acres

Pamela Sue Martin as Susan Shelby

Eric Shea as Robin Shelby

Leslie Nielsen as Captain Harrison

Arthur O'Connell as John, the ship's Chaplain 

The Poseidon Adventure opened on December 15^th in Los Angeles and opened a week later back home in San Francisco, where I saw it on Friday the 22^nd at the Alexandria Theater. I sat through The Poseidon Adventure twice that weekend and went back to see it two more times over the Christmas holiday. Every bit as exciting as I'd hoped it to be, I absolutely loved the film, and it definitely left its mark--for weeks afterward, I couldn't enter a classroom, library, store, or friend's home without imagining what it would look like upside down.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS MOVIE

It says a lot about the traditionalism of TV and studio-era films that by the time I was 15, I'd already grown pretty well-versed in recognizing movie clichés. While I'd not yet seen many of the films that established the familiar tropes from which so many '70s disaster movies would later draw (The High and the Mighty, Zero Hour!, The Last Voyage), I was familiar enough with combat movies (dangerous situation + dissimilar people from all walks of life + hero = everyone discovers what they're really made of); all-star ensemble flicks (the aforementioned Grand Hotel, Tales of Manhattan); and waterlogged melodramas (Lifeboat, A Night to Remember), for The Poseidon Adventure's high-concept upside-down ocean liner premise to seem intensely original yet reassuringly familiar.

Reverend Scott, not looking exactly pleased to have someone besides himself talking.
Far left is actress Frieda Rentie, sister of 227 actress Marla Gibbs

On New Year's Eve, the ocean liner S.S. Poseidon (significantly, at least in terms of ironic poignancy, making her final voyage before the scrap heap) is capsized by a tidal wave. While several passengers survive the breathtakingly entertaining catastrophe, only nine of the ship's most stock and photogenic passengers ultimately elect to follow the long-winded Reverend Scott (Hackman) on a perilous climb to safety by navigating their way up to the ship's bottom.

All involved—save for the resourceful reverend, who oozes so much self-reliance and leadership qualities he can't help but grow tiresome—are spectacularly ill-suited to the task. Still, any life-or-death struggle that begins with a ragtag group of "types" having to climb a big, tinselly Christmas tree to salvation is my kind of calamity. And so, armed with little more than pluck, guts, body-shaming, and tight-fitting hot pants, our intrepid troupe begins their adventure.

Meet The Players / Character Shorthand

He's a Rebel 'Cause He Never, Ever Does What He Should
Rev. Scott--who's such a hip, throw-out-the-(Good)book type that he wears a turtleneck instead of a clerical collar--assists in moving the plot along by simply telling us what we're not trusted to discover for ourselves

The Bickersons
Common-but-decent police detective Mike Rogo and his foul-mouthed, former-prostitute wife Linda are a kind of Bronx George and Martha. Never afraid to say what's on their minds, Mike thinks Rev. Scott is a loudmouth, and Linda refers to Mrs. Rosen as "Ol' Fat ass." So, of course, they are my favorite characters in the film

Oh, My Papa and Yiddishe Grandmama
As though their borscht-belt accents weren't a dead giveaway, the film makes sure we know Belle & Manny are Jewish by introducing Manny with his nose in an Israel travel brochure while Belle knits their grandson a sweater with prayer shawl stripes.

Coded and Fabulous
James Martin--the real hero of the film due to his being the one who comes up with the idea to climb to the hull--is gay. No one can tell me otherwise. And the 50-something bachelor haberdasher might have actually said so, had Belle, the Hasidic Heteronormative Buttinsky ("It comes from caring"), not interjected that "What you need is a pretty wife" business in front of a table full of guests. In any event, it's not likely anyone bought his "I'm too busy" line anyway. Mr. Martin's character was happily out and proud in the 2006 Poseidon remake, but the movie itself was so lousy no one cared.

Damsel in Distress
My real-life experience has been that in moments of crisis, most men & women act more like Nonnie than Rev. Scott. But that doesn't mean her fraidy-cat, easy-listening songbird character isn't still something of a pill. She's genuinely sweet, though, and as one of cinema's most high-profile fag hags (you didn't honestly think she and middle-aged Mr. Martin became a post-rescue romance, did you?), I like to imagine Nonnie and Mr. Martin became friends: she tagging along on his visits to The Mine Shaft or meeting up for Sunday brunches in the Village

Susan Being Polite To Mr. You're-Not-Reverend-Scott (Ernie Orsatti)
Although I don't ever recall a brother actually calling his sister "Sis" instead of her given name in real life, I suppose it was important for the film to establish lovesick Susan and "all boy" Robin (so much the kid stereotype I expected him to say "Jeepers!") as siblings instead of some kind of Susan Anton/Dudley Moore couple.

Where Am I From?
Sure, his role is brief, but after three Planet of the Apes movies, I'm sure Roddy McDowall was happy just to have his actual face seen in a movie again. More a plot device than a character...what exactly is Acres' accent? I thought he was British (with a Liverpool lilt), but someone told me he's supposed to be Scots (maybe due to that bagpipes crack?)

In the 1972 shout-fest X, Y and Zee, Elizabeth Taylor has the line: "I may be the worst thing in the world, but I carry it in front where you can see it!" Well, if The Poseidon Adventure could speak, that would be its mantra. It's old-fashioned, schlocky, and loaded with what director Ronald Neame (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) labeled "cardboardy" characters; but the film carries it all out in front where you can see. 

The Poseidon Adventure proudly wears its corniness on its sleeve. As a 20th Century Fox production, its asserted broad-market, family-friendly appeal feels like a purposeful shift in direction from Fox's rather desperate attempts to stay afloat in the early part of the decade by courting the youth market: Myra Breckinridge (1970), The Panic in Needle Park (1971), and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1972).

Sure, The Poseidon Adventure is hokey, soapy, cliché ridden, and terribly contrived, but (miracles of miracles) it works. And rather magnificently, at that! I loved the premise, enjoyed the archetypal characters, and was thrilled as all get out by the upside-down sets and visual effects. But, most surprising of all was that the filmmakers somehow not only got me to care about these characters, but to respond emotionally to their fates. Who knew a cheesy movie could be so moving?

The terrible remake (which Carol Lynley called "The biggest piece of shit I've ever seen") cost 32 times more and had CGI wizardry up the ass, but I never gave a whit about what happened to anyone in it, and cannot clearly recall a single scene. The Poseidon Adventure was ripped apart by many critics in its day, but it has aged remarkably well. What seemed corny in 1972 looks rather sincere today. And creators of today's largely disposable and indistinguishable action films could take a lesson from how The Poseidon Adventure takes the time to get us to know/care about the characters before the mayhem starts. The Poseidon Adventure is now 45 years old. Despite its well-earned reputation as a campy favorite, I can't help but think that in the realm of disaster movies, The Poseidon Adventure is some kind of a minor classic of the genre.

As both Beyond The Poseidon Adventure and The Swarm proved, any movie Irwin Allen decides to direct is a guaranteed disaster from the get-go. The Poseidon Adventure is directed by Ronald Neame, with Allen on hand only to handle the action sequences

PERFORMANCES

One of the peculiarities of the disaster film genre is that things don't actually improve when "good" actors are cast. Due to the unique demands of a film dominated by fast plotting and special effects, personality tends to win out over performance. Nothing bogs a disaster movie down more than a so-called serious actor trying too hard. For example, for all their innate talent, you'd have to look to an Ed Wood movie to find performances worse than Olivia de Havilland in The Swarm or Rock Hudson in Avalanche.

Leslie Nielsen as Captain Harrison
Younger viewers tend to be surprised to see the star of Airplane and Naked Gun in a serious role. However, those of us of a certain age know that for decades, THIS Leslie Nielsen was the only Leslie Nielsen there was.

No, with the genre's emphasis on action and expediency, it's often a matter of finding actors with distinct, identifiable, almost over-emphatic screen personas, capable of projecting a level of conviction appropriate to the arch dialogue and bigger-than-life exploits.
Much in the manner that Vincent Price became the master of schlock horror sincerity, disaster film actors who take their roles too seriously come off as ridiculous. Meanwhile, the most compelling performances are often given by those who seem to operate on a level of magic realism that hovers somewhere between authentic and artificial.

The distinction I'm trying to make is that while the cast of The Poseidon Adventure may be quite accomplished actors in their own right, what they're called upon to do in the film doesn't require "good" acting so much as "effective" acting. To make material like this believable, it matters more to strike the right tone; in which case, performances ranging from hammy to hoary can prove to be 100% on the money.

My absolute favorite shot in the entire film, and also my favorite moment.
No matter how often I see The Poseidon Adventure, Linda Rogo's death remains the most shocking and heart-wrenching. Winters' Belle Rosen was set up from the beginning to be nobly tragic, but Mike and Linda Rogo were the couple I identified with. They weren't know-it-alls, they weren't noble, and they responded to the fantastic circumstances of their situation in a way that felt realistic. They were funny, sweet, and a life force in the film. Linda's death reverberated like no other. Ernest Borgnine just breaks my heart in this scene, and I always get waterworks from his reaction. To me, he was always the film's most valuable player.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
By no means all, but just a few of my favorite things:

I don't care how dated the special effects are; the capsizing of The Poseidon is epic moviemaking
(Gotta love Red Buttons during this part. That's not acting!)

No one on the Poseidon faced a bigger challenge than these two trying to find the beat of the music

I love Mrs. Rosen

Even in 1972, the Hot Pants Under The Gown Reveal drew gasps and laughs.
Loving Linda's reaction

That Dive!
The biggest shock of the film. It got laughs, applause, and cheers

I love Linda Rogo

The Poseidon Adventure is a favorite. You'll never hear me call it one of the best films ever made; I don't buy into revisionist assessments ranking it a genuine classic (it's great for what it is, but let's not forget what it is); nor do I harbor illusions about its depiction of women (save for Belle and her big moment, the men are all active while the women are reactive) and the lack of People of Color in the principal cast. (Akers & Belle occupy the stereotypical roles of ethnics in action films: "first to die" and "noble sacrifice.")

Yet there's no denying The Poseidon Adventure is one of those imperfect films that achieve a lightning-in-a-bottle kind of excellence. From script (dialogue, primarily) to characterizations, to outlandish (albeit exciting) premise; it shouldn't really work as beautifully as it does. But you'd have to look hard and long to find a disaster film that does it better. I've come to regard it with such fondness. I've noticed that over the years, my laughs of derision have turned into laughs of affection. Despite its flaws, I fully understand why it has endured and why so many people have taken it to their hearts.

Clip from "The Poseidon Adventure"  1972

BONUS MATERIAL
In 1973, MAD magazine once again produced a movie satire that hit the nail on the head. In "The Poopsidedown Adventure," the characters are Reverend Shout, Hammy & Bellow Roseman, Snoozin & Rotten, Mr. Martyr, Ninny, Mr. Rougho, Limber, and Apers.

Though it's nothing compared to U.S. obesity norms today, in 1972, Shelley Winters' weight gain for The Poseidon Adventure was a major source of comedy and comment. Winters was Oscar-nominated that year for Best Supporting Actress, and when the list of nominees was read, Winters had the alphabetical misfortune of having her name come up right after Cloris Leachman reads the title of co-nominee Susan Tyrell's film, Fat City. The film's title resulted in an associative coincidence that caused Robert Duvall to lose it. When questioned later about his laughter, Duvall professed that James Caan was making faces from the audience. Few (certainly not me) believed him. See the Oscar sequence HERE.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2017

THE OSCAR 1966

"You finally made it, Frankie. Oscar Night!. And here you sit, on top of a glass mountain called 'success.' You're one of the chosen five, and the whole town's holding its breath to see who won it. It's been quite a climb, hasn't it, Frankie? Down at the bottom, scuffling for dimes in those smokers, all the way to the top. Magic Hollywood! Ever think about it? I do, friend Frankie, I do…."

And thus begins one of the most sublimely terrible movies ever to grace the screen. A speech rife with overelaborate hyperbole (it's hard to imagine anyone taking the Oscars this seriously, even in the '60s), clumsy metaphors, labored clichés, and the name "Frankie" repeated no less than three times in a single breathless paragraph. Remarkably, three (count 'em, three) screenwriters are responsible for the dialogue in this gilt-edged burlesque, which, given how the characters are prone to repeat the name of the very person to whom they're speaking, sounds as though it were written for the radio.

Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Stephen Boyd with Johnny Grant, the real-life honorary Mayor of Hollywood

With nary an ironic or self-aware bone in its bathetic, threadbare body, The Oscar is the kind of pandering-yet-earnest, self-serious Hollywood trash no one has the old-school, out-of-touch naiveté to know how to make anymore. A 1966 film that would have felt warmed-over in 1960 (the year Ocean's Eleven and Sinatra's Rat Pack made this kind of clean-cut, pomaded, sharkskin-suited, ring-a-ding-ding brand of cool into a veritable brand), The Oscar is from the Joseph E. Levine (The Carpetbaggers, Harlow) school of overlit, elephantine artifice. Every interior looks like a soundstage, everyone's clothes look as though they've never been worn before, and the characters are so lacquered and buffed they resemble department store mannequins.
As though encouraged to get into the spirit of things, The Oscars' flirting-with-obsolescence "all-star cast" (eight Oscar winners in all) contribute performances that somehow manage to be mannequin stiff and over-the-top at the same time. Performances wholly unacquainted with human psychology, normal speech patterns, or recognizable human behavior.
With each viewing of this unrelentingly unconvincing take on what I assume was intended to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of unbridled ambition, I grow less and less surprised that one of its screenwriters (Harlan Ellison) is known principally for his work in science fiction.

Stephen Boyd as Frankie Fane
"I'm fighting for my life! And there's a spiked boot for anyone who gets in my way."

Elke Sommer as Kay Bergdahl
"It's that seed of rot inside of you that makes you what you are
that you can't change. You just dress it better!"

Tony Bennett as Hymie Kelly
"You lie down with pigs, you come up smelling like garbage!"

Eleanor Parker as Sophie Cantaro
"You go after what you want. In some men, it's admirable. In you, it's...unclean!"

Milton Berle as Arthur "Kappy" Kapstetter
"You never know you're on your way out until
suddenly you realize it would take a ticket to get back in."

The Oscar, subtitled: Memoirs of a Hollywood Louse, is an unabashed laundry list of every show biz/Hollywood cliché handed down since What Price Hollywood? (1932). A beyond-camp, glossy soap opera whose overripe performance and purple prose present the first male-centric challenge to the women of Valley of the Dolls (and Beyond).

Stephen Boyd, he of the narrow frame and chiseled, Tom of Finland profile, is Frankie Fane; your garden-variety ruthless user with a suitable-for-movie-marquees alliterative name. Side note* I don't recommend anyone try playing a drinking game in which you take a shot every time someone in the film says Frankie's name; you'll be rushed to the hospital with alcohol poisoning by the 20-minute mark.

As this told-in-flashback opus begins, Frankie and longtime buddy Hymie Kelly (Tony Bennett, making his film debut/swansong and looking like he wished he were back in San Francisco with his heart) are eking out a living, largely thanks to the bump-and-grind efforts of Frankie's stripper girlfriend, Laurel Scott (Jill St. John).

Jill St. John as Laurel Scott
"What does he think I am, dirt? Every morning I'd get the feeling
he was gonna leave two dollars on the dresser for me!"

After a nasty run-in with a crooked sheriff—a bulldoggish Broderick Crawford playing the flip side of his Highway Patrol TV character—the vagabond trio thumb a ride to NYC where breadwinner Laurel (who's, of course, basically a nice, decent girl who just wants "a kid") soon tires of Frankie's freeloading. This is in spite of the fact that Hymie, the perennial 3^rd wheel and clearly healthy as an ox, also appears to be living with the couple, yet shows no signs of being any more gainfully employed than his pal.

As audiences wait in vain for Hymie to happen upon a microphone and solve everyone's problems by discovering a latent talent for singing (and, in the bargain, providing a much-needed respite from the film's ceaseless stream of risible dialog and '60s slang); Frankie the hound dog decides to accompany Hymie to "a swingin' party in the village…lots of chicks" where he meets aspiring costume designer Kay Bergdahl (Sommer). In no time, Frankie makes his move:

Frankie- "You a tourist or a native?"

Kay- "Take one from column A and two from column B and get an egg roll either way."

On the strength of that nonsensical rejoinder, one would be forgiven for leaping to the assumption that Kay was suffering a stroke-related episode and in need of immediate medical attention, but not our Frankie. Clearly smitten by Kay's pouting accent, silk-awning bangs, and mink eyelashes, our smarmy antihero instead continues to engage the comely blond in more Haiku-inspired small talk. Kay, perhaps as a nod to the film's title, has a way of making everything she says sound like excerpts from an Academy Award acceptance speech:

"I am the end result of everything I've ever learned...all I ever hope to be,
and all the experiences I've ever had."

Uhmm...O.K.

We return now to Laurel—that hip-switchin', nice-walkin', bundle of loveliness—who, in a late-in-coming display of backbone, lays down the law to Frankie when he returns home:

"If you think I'm gonna work my tail off so you can run around with the village chicks…oh, stop spreadin' the pollen around, Frankie...or else!"

Unfortunately for Laurel, her ultimatum doesn't have the desired effect on Frankie as she'd hoped. After spending the evening with hard-to-get Bergdahl, round-heeled Laurel starts to look like used goods to him, and in record time, Frankie, the village pollen-spreader, beats a hasty retreat. So hasty that he misses out on hearing the joyous news that Laurel is pregnant with his child. 

In much the same way Willy Wonka's shiftless Grandpa Joe miraculously finds the energy to haul his wrinkled carcass out of bed once the prospect of a candy factory tour looms; the heretofore serially unemployed Frankie promptly lands a job in the garment district when it affords the opportunity to see more of the glacial Miss Bergdahl. But it isn't long before Kay's middle-European cool proves no match for Frankie's hotheaded, borderline sociopathic personality.

Koo Koo Frankie shows a wise guy actor (Jan Merlin) what it's
like to be on "the business end of a knife."

Frankie expends so much abusive energy exorcising his inner demons ("The way he sees it, no woman's any better than his mother," intones Hymie, deep-thinker) that Kay scarcely has time to examine her own Bad Boy attraction issues ("Sometimes I get the feeling, Frankie, that you ought to be chained up with a ring in your nose!") before their relationship begins to go south and take on all the dysfunctional sparring rhythms of Robert De Niro & Liza Minnelli in NewYork, New York…minus the warmth & mutual respect.

One particularly theatrical outburst of Frankie's captures the rapacious eye of roving talent scout Sophie Cantaro (Parker), who sees in Frankie's mercurial mood swings the makings of a star (Charlie Sheen, no doubt). Faster than you can say, "Bye-bye, Bergdahl! Hello, Cougar Town!" Frankie is whisked off to Hollywood and becomes exactly the kind of noxious nightmare of a movie star you'd expect. Think Neely O'Hara crossed with Helen Lawson combined with every ego-out-of-control rumor you've ever heard about Jerry Lewis, and you get the idea.

Joseph Cotten as Kenneth Regan, head of Galaxy Pictures
"I find myself repelled and repulsed by you."

Of course, this is precisely when the already dizzying lunacy of The Oscar really swings into high gear. Cue the laughably garish sets meant to signify high-style opulence, the tired visual short-cuts (EVERY scene in a studio backlot features strolling cowboys, gladiators, and showgirls in headdresses), and the standard-issue What Makes Sammy Run? rise and fall of our unscrupulous schnook scenario.

Yes, whether it be the simile-laden narration ("Man, he wanted to swallow Hollywood like a cat with a canary."); the rote, claws-his-way-to-the-top conflicts ("The fact is my 10% before taxes is paying your office overhead. And you stop earning it when you stop giving me what I want!"); or clumsy, tin-eared metaphors ("Have you ever seen a moth smashed against a window? It leaves the dust of its wings. You're like that Frankie, you leave a powder of dirt everywhere you touch."), The Oscar leaves nary a cliché unturned and untouched. And for that, we should all give thanks.

Ernest Borgnine and Edie Adams as lowbrow couple Barney & Trina Yale

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

The Oscar is artificiality as motif. Without actually intending to do so, director Russell Rouse (who made the must-see Wicked Woman -1953) has crafted a film so phony and plastic, it winds up saying a great deal more about the real Hollywood than this contrived, self-serving fairy tale. A fairy tale that would have us believe that Hollywood is comprised of basically decent, principled, hard-working folks, and that unscrupulous bad apples like Frankie are the rotten exception.

When I watch The Oscar, I always wonder: was this movie pandering to star-struck yokels and hicks from the sticks? Was this fable of Tinseltown-as-Toilet designed to make Nathanael West's "locusts" feel less-resentful of the rich, famous, and privileged? To feed us the comforting fantasy that those beautiful, glamorous people on the screen have it far worse? 

Or had years of lying to itself deluded "The Industry" into believing its own publicity? This can't be how '60s Hollywood actually saw itself, can it? 

In the film's most blatantly parodic role, Jean Hale is hilariously spot-on as the self-absorbed actress Cheryl Barker. The role is an obvious and mean-spirited swipe at Carroll Baker that was likely included at the behest of producer Joseph E. Levine. (Baker and Levine clashed during the filming of Harlow, leading to her suing to get out of her three-picture contract. Baker won, but was blacklisted.)

It's not as though no one knew what a good film about Hollywood looked like: Sunset Boulevard -1950, The Bad & the Beautiful -1952, A Lonely Place -1950, Stand-In -1937. So, I tend to think everyone involved in The Oscar knew precisely what kind of trash they were making (Bennett doesn't recall the experience fondly in his memoirs) and just cashed their paychecks and moved on. But given the expense, effort, and the fact that many equally overstuffed, fake-looking, questionably-acted, and poorly-written films that came before it had somehow managed to find boxoffice success (The Carpetbaggers comes to mind); I can only imagine that the eventual awfulness of The Oscar wasn't as much of a surprise to those involved as was the public's total indifference to it.

Exterior shots of the Oscar ceremony were shot at the 37th Academy Awards in 1965. Bob Hope was indeed the host that year, but as the stage design was different, I suspect these scenes were shot on a sound stage. The Oscar actually did garner two Academy Award nominations in 1967: art direction (remarkably, given how ugly the sets are) and costume design. 

PERFORMANCES

It's a crowded, competitive field, but Stephen Boyd walks away with the honors for The Oscar's most exaggerated, indicating performance. In a film of parody-worthy performances, Boyd's bellowing, bombastic over-emoting (much like Faye Dunaway's in Mommie Dearest) sets the bar. It serves as the tonal rudder for this Titanic testament to overstatement. It's a performance that towers over the rest. And while one might argue he's no worse than anyone else (certainly not Bennett) and only as good as the knuckleheaded screenplay allows; when there's this much collateral damage, every offender has to be held accountable for their fair share of the carnage. 

Frankie's cutthroat efforts to win an Oscar make up the bulk of the 1963 Richard Sale novel
upon which the film is based, but comprise only the last half hour of the movie 

Indeed, in a reversal of my usual standard in camp movies I adore, the women don't really dominate in The Oscar. Despite their towering hairdos and colorful wardrobes, Elke Sommer, Eleanor Parker, Jill St. John, and a woefully over-rehearsed Edie Adams have their work cut out for them in trying to keep pace with the hambone scenery-chewing of Boyd on one side, and the Boo Boo Bear blandness of mono-expression crooner Tony Bennett on the other.

Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci They're Not
Hope you like Tony Bennett's expression here, 'cause that's it...for two whole hours

Add to this, schticky comedian Milton Berle as another one of those saintly talent agents that only seem to exist in Joseph E. Levine films (Red Buttons, another face-pulling comic, played a similar role in Levine's Harlow). Berle's approach to serious drama is something out of an SCTV Bobby Bittman sketch: go so low-wattage as to barely register any vitality at all.

Not sure, but I think knuckle-biting to convey distress went out with silent movies.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
As hard as it is to believe that the Motion Picture Academy actually endorsed this sordid melodrama (although it is thought that the embarrassing flop of this film is responsible for the copyright stranglehold the Academy has had on the use and depiction of the Oscar Award in movies ever since). But one has to wonder about the many drop-in guest appearances of so many "stars" adding verisimilitude and unintentional comic relief. Were they contractual, were favors owed, or were they simply prohibited from reading the entire script?

Edith Head (or an animatronic copy) as Herself

Jack Soo as Sam, Frankie's live-in valet

Famed Hollywood columnist, commie-finger-pointer,
and homophobic blabbermouth, Hedda Hopper 

A puffy Peter Lawford is a little too convincing as Hollywood has-been Steve Marks

Ed Begley as Grobard, the scowling strip club owner

A beaming Frank Sinatra and daughter Nancy, in her brunette phase

Waler Brennan (right) as network sponsor Orrin C. Quentin of Quentiplak Products, Inc.
On the left, one of my favorite character actors, John Holland, as Stevens, his associate 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

The bad film delights of The Oscar are so myriad, I can only speculate that its relative unavailability is to blame for its not having risen in camp stature equal to Valley of the Dolls or Mommie Dearest over the years (it's not on DVD and pops up on TV only sporadically). That, and its lack of an ostentatious drag queen aesthetic or even compelling roles for women. I'm not sure why, but a lot of the best camp is rooted in seeing women presented in the traditional, male-gaze "drag" of ornamental allure (big hair, theatrical makeup, elaborate costumes) but behaving in non-traditional ways--i.e., assertive, aggressive, and with a plot-propelling agency (Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!). 

The gender-role incongruity of seeing ornamentally decked-out women behaving in the aggressive, toxic ways movies have traditionally ascribed to male anti-hero types, comes as a pleasant surprise and welcome change of pace. It also probably accounts for why a nasty piece of work like Neely O'Hara in Valley of the Dolls tends to remain in one's memory longer than the passive Jennifer North.

Despite giving lip service to the contrary, the women in The Oscar are a pretty passive bunch and more or less serve a traditional, reactive function in the plot. Pointedly, the poised and elegant Sophie Cantaro, as one of the film's two exceptions (the other being the blowsy but street-smart Trina Yale), is presented as both sexually desperate ("You, you're 42. There are many good minutes left for you," a well-meaning, tactless friend tells her) and unable to prevent her so-called "feminine" emotions from playing havoc with professional decision-making.

It's not difficult to imagine that The Oscar's preponderance of masochistic females is due to its three male screenwriters. This leads me to wonder if one of the reasons The Oscar never became the midnight screening hoot-fest its entertaining awfulness might otherwise guarantee is because the women's roles are so toothless. 

But such wrong-headed thinking prevails throughout The Oscar. Making it one of the best of the worst, the apex of the nadir, and unequivocally one for the books. A book no doubt titled: "What The Hell Were They Thinking?"

Clip from "The Oscar" - 1966

BONUS MATERIAL

Update: After being unavailable for decades, a Blu-ray edition of The Oscar was released on February 2, 2020.

Elke Sommer wore the same Edith Head gown to the actual 1966 Academy Awards she donned in the fake ceremony that bookends The Oscar (top photo). Here's a clip of a somewhat botched dual acceptance speech with Connie Stevens for Doctor Zhivago's absent costume designer, Julie Harris. Watch HERE

Although only an instrumental version plays in the film, Tony Bennett sang the Muzak-ready theme song from The Oscar ("Come September") on the soundtrack album. This 45rpm single was an opening day giveaway at many first-run theaters. 

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2016