CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC 1980

For this essay ushering out the month of October and welcoming in November, I present for your edification, a movie that qualifies as both a Halloween horror and an overstuffed Thanksgiving turkey. Said turkey being Allan Carr’s notorious Can’t Stop the Music, a longtime guilty-pleasure favorite that, unlike most camp films in my “favorites” canon, grows increasingly less fun to watch as time goes by. 

A highly fictionalized account (and I stress fictionalized) of the creation of the gay-themed disco singing group Village People, Can’t Stop the Music, released in the summer of 1980, hit theaters at the worst possible time and under the worst possible circumstances. If Xanadu—that other 1980 summer musical release that tanked at the boxoffice—suffered from too much '80s faddism by way of roller skates, spandex, and leg warmers, Can’t Stop the Music looked and sounded exactly like a disco relic that had been gathering dust on the shelf since 1978.

A 1979 Trade ad from Boxoffice Magazine with the film's original title.
Note the dodged-a-bullet cast members, Chita Rivera and Pat Ast.
Presumably in the Altovise Davis and Marilyn Sokol roles

So significantly had the music and cultural landscape shifted from the time of its August 1979 production start date to its June 1980 release, Can’t Stop the Music opened at theaters as a literal, antiquated period piece. Thankfully, someone saw the writing on the wall early enough to jettison the film’s original title: Discoland: Where the Music Never Ends, but not early enough to tone down its already anachronistic glitter & amyl nitrate fueled “shake your booty!” overzealousness.

Valerie Perrine as Samantha Simpson

Steve Guttenberg as Jack Morell

Village People as the closeted version of the Village People

Caitlyn Jenner as Ron White

Tammy Grimes as Sydne Channing (are they kidding with that name?)

Bad timing also reared its head in that the release of Can’t Stop the Music—a self-professed family musical with a closeted, “don’t ask, don’t tell” gay sensibility—coincided with an emerging cultural conservatism (aka, The Reagan Era) that was anti-gay, anti-sex, and anti-drugs  (the naive "Just Say No!" campaign started in the '80s). Can't Stop the Music came out, so to speak, during the early days of the AIDS epidemic. The attendant groundswell of public anxiety at the time prudishly and homophobically associated it with the '70s sexual revolution and the drugs & sex lifestyle that disco culture glamorized and marketed.

It also hit theaters in the wake of the earlier release of two controversial 1980 films with gay themes: Gordon Willis' Windows, about a homicidal lesbian; and William Friedkin's Cruising, a movie about a gay serial killer. Given the paucity of positive portrayals of gays in films, activist groups were wise to protest two films released within months of each other depicting homosexuals as homicidal maniacs. The heterosexual filmmakers behind these epics took a wide-eyed "Who me?" position, playing ignorant to observations that such a concentrated association of Gay=Death could only feed into the rising tide of homophobia and anti-gay violence across the country. 
Into this atmosphere of what appeared to be media-sanctioned homophobia came Can't Stop the Music, a gay film that came across as being duplicitously coy about that very fact.

Reflecting perhaps the tastes of the film's casting couch...er, agent, the eye-candy supporting cast of himbos, twinks, and Muscle Marys is predominantly white. Which is pretty much in keeping with the way the gay community tended to depict itself in the '80s.

Had Can’t Stop the Music been made with even a shred of the strength of its flimsy convictions, I’m sure its leering “cocaine and Crisco” homogenized ode to homosexual hedonism would have come under attack as well. But at least then the film's "out and proud" dialogue: "I don't judge people. I accept them"  - and anthems like Liberation would have made a little sense.
But as it stood, Can't Stop the Music failed to take any kind of stand whatsoever, for producer Allan Carr knew that much more money could be made from within the closet than outside of it.

Good, Clean, Wholesome, Hetero Fun!

With scenes like the above in a PG-rated "family" musical, Alan Carr relied on coding to attract "knowing" gay audiences, while simultaneously banking on mainstream viewers remaining reliably clueless of the film's so-obvious-even-a-blind-man-can-see-it gay subtext. And why not? Keeping it in the closet for capitalism certainly worked for the Village People themselves. In the 2012 documentary The Secret Disco Revolution members of the group contributed such eye-rolling statements as: "Our songs were never gay, we were just a party band!" and the absolutely mental "There was not one double-entendre in our music. 'In the Navy' was just about enlisting." Right...and Dinah Washington's "Long John Blues" is just about dental hygiene.

At a time when it really would have made a powerful statement to have an unashamedly out, “We’re here, we’re queer” mainstream movie in the theaters (along the lines of The Ritz or The Rocky Horror Picture Show), Allan Carr, one of the most high-profile and powerful gay men in Hollywood (especially after Grease), instead gave the world a movie so self-negating, so deeply in the closet and in denial about itself, Liberace could have been its technical advisor.

We know, James...we know

Although it didn't hit me as strongly in 1980 as it does now, Can’t Stop the Music, to an almost contemptible degree, suffers from a distasteful undercurrent of homophobic self-loathing and ideological selling-out. In an effort to keep its many corporate sponsors happy (Dr. Pepper, Baskin-Robbins, Famous Amos Cookies, American Dairy Association) and to court the mainstream boxoffice that made Grease into such a mega-hit, Can’t Stop the Music systematically and schizophrenically undercuts every bit of the film’s laid-on-with-a-trowel gay subtext with an unpersuasive overlay of bland heterosexuality. Honestly, in spite of Can’t Stop the Music being about a gay-themed singing group formed in New York’s Greenwich Village featuring numerous coy allusions (acres of male flesh on display, a multitude of homoerotic double and triple entendres) - I don’t think the word “gay” is uttered even once in the whole film.

Olympic Gold Medalist Caitlyn Jenner, making her film debut, here achieves the
impossible by actually managing to look sillier than the Village People

To paraphrase one of my favorite Judge Judy-isms, Can’t Stop the Music is a movie that doesn't know whether it’s afoot or horseback. It courts gay dollars with its setting, its music, its "Auntie Mame syndrome" supporting cast of flamboyant elderly actresses, and its virtual non-stop parade of beefcake. Yet it doesn't want the polarizing effect (at the box-office) of actually being what it is...a big-budget, big ol' gay musical. Instead, it operates in a sex-neutral (Guttenberg’s character swears off sex until he becomes a success…how convenient), heterosexual-insistent (just WHO are those nondescript, lost-looking women clinging to the Village People during the “Magic Night” number?) limbo that makes no sense. As I mentioned earlier, at one point in the film, the Village People sing a song titled “Liberation,” but in the "Ain't nobody here but us straights!" context of the movie, what the hell kind of liberation are these guys even singing about?

Male starlet Victor Davis strikes a pose to show Guttenberg & Jenner
just how "not gay" Can't Stop the Music is.

In trying to be the all-things-to-all-people crowd-pleaser its sizable budget demanded, Can’t Stop the Music wound up not being much of anything to anybody.

Seventies bisexual porn "star" George Payne jogs by (twice!) in the
excruciating Guttenberg-on-roller-skates opening sequence

A must-read for behind-the-scenes details on the making of this rainbow-colored fiasco is Robert Hofler's 2010 Allan Carr biography Party Animals. Wherein we learn that Carr's desire to bring back the glamour of old Hollywood extended to reviving the casting couch. In an attempt to put a male spin on the old MGM "Goldwyn Girls" tradition of featuring beautiful girls as extras and bit players throughout the film, Allan Carr made ample use of a coterie of male dancers, models, hustlers, starlets, and party boys ("Cash or career?" was purportedly Carr's standard come on when meeting a handsome young man). We also learn that director Nancy Walker and Valerie Perrine hated one another, that sizable chunks of the film were actually directed by choreographer Arlene Phillips and cinematographer Bill Butler (Grease, Jaws), and that Allan Carr harbored a near-Hitchcockian obsession with his heterosexual protegee, Steve Guttenberg. 

I took this picture in the summer of 1980, not long after this billboard for Can't Stop the Music was unveiled on Hollywood's Sunset Strip during a red carpet ceremony on what LA's mayor declared to be "Can't Stop the Music Day." The Village People were granted the key to the city (or maybe it was to a bathhouse, I'm not exactly sure)

That summer, my excitement regarding the forthcoming release of Xanadu so eclipsed all else, I tend to forget that 1980 was something of a banner year for musicals. There was Alan Parker’s Fame and Saturday Night Live alums Belushi & Aykroyd brought their characters The Blues Brothers to the screen. The heavily-hyped Can’t Stop the Music wasn’t very high on my list of must-see summer films mostly due to my general antipathy towards Grease (I know it’s considered a classic and all, but I just find it clunky) and my lack of fondness for the Village People (their anthem-like songs always sounded like Romper Room marching music to me, and, having grown up in San Francisco, their costumes suggested nothing more daring than your average ride on the Market St. F streetcar).
However, being the devoted disco maven I was (and remain), just the idea of a multi-million-dollar disco musical was too tantalizing a prospect to dismiss. Which brings me to the reason I was most excited to see Can’t Stop the Music: choreographer Arlene Phillips.

Arlene Phillips (Annie, The Fan) first came to my attention through her work in a series of fantastic TV commercials for Dr. Pepper. The top photos are from the 1975 Sugar-Free Dr. Pepper commercial, "Penthouse" (see storyboard here), which bears a strong resemblance to Can't Stop the Music's "Milkshake" number. Even down to sharing the same set designer, Stephen Hendrickson.

Gay, straight, or bi, the one thing we DO know about Jack is that he's a Pepper!
CSTM came under fire for its comically blatant product placement

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

While my enjoyment of Can’t Stop the Music’s non-musical sequences has diminished significantly over the years, my affection for Arlene Phillips’ deliciously awful/wonderful musical numbers has increased, tenfold. I absolutely love them. Her cheesy “Las Vegas showroom by way of aerobics class” choreography fairly oozes with late-'70s sleaze, and her “What WAS she thinking?” staging has the staggering, jaw-dropping lunacy of Busby Berkeley at his most ingeniously demented. That these musical numbers are also monumentally tacky, done with a great deal of wit, and, like the film itself, possess an almost surreal lack of self-awareness, only adds to their appeal.  Each time I have a chance to revisit the industrial glitter factory of “I Love You to Death” or that wholesomely raunchy paean to homoerotic health & fitness “YMCA,” my heart soars and a smile comes to my face. 

Given how so many of Arlene Phillips' dance tableaus resemble photoshoots from Eyes of Laura Mars, it comes as little surprise that the late Thenoni V. Aldredge, the designer of all those slit-skirt ensembles for Faye Dunaway, also contributed costume designs (with Jane Greenwood) to the musical numbers in Can't Stop the Music.

Seriously, if it sounds as though I'm putting these dance sequences down, nothing could be further from the truth. They're a delight and a lot of fun. Most of them appeal distinctly to all my aesthetics, which more than one person has assured me run to the cheesy and grandiose. They're, clever, cinematic, over-the-top, and for me, more than worth the price of admission on their own.

PERFORMANCES

Where to begin? What can be said about performances in a film where the amateurism of the neophytes and professionals is evenly matched? I like Valerie Perrine a great deal and she seems like an awfully sweet woman, but her (and there’s no other word for it) fag-hag role here requires a personality, not an actress. Ms. Perrine splits the difference by being neither. She comes across as the genial housemother for a gay fraternity.

No, that's not Tim Curry's Dr. Frank-N-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show making a cameo appearance. That's actress Marilyn Sokol attempting to channel Bette Midler's bawdy Divine Miss M "Bathhouse Betty" persona. To grating effect.

And then there's Steve Guttenberg. Prior to this, I'd always considered Todd Susman's underground newspaper journalist in 1971s Star Spangled Girl to be the most annoying performance committed to film. Guttenberg wins by a landslide.

Striving for boyish exuberance, he gives a performance of such overarching hyperactivity that a mere absence of restraint can't be the only answer (it's like he's on crack). He's a character who never speaks when he can shout, and is perpetually in motion. With eyes popping, cords in his neck bulging, forming his words as if to make himself understood by lip-readers on Mars...Guttenberg constantly appears on the brink of popping a blood vessel.

This film has the oddest grab-bag of celebrity cameos. Jack Weston, recruited perhaps for his gay-cred as the star of the gay bathhouse farce The Ritz pops up as disco proprietor Benny Murray

There being so many of them, the Village People have little time (and even less ability) to establish themselves with any personal individuality. Thus their costumes are left to do all the acting., often coming off as visiting tourists in their own movie. 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

I've seen Can't Stop the Music so often that when I watch it these days, it's usually with my remote close at hand, finger poised over the FFWD button, moving swiftly from one delightfully garish musical number to the next. They are totally awful, but I swear, I love them to pieces.

YMCA
Taking four days to shoot and featuring 250 dancers, athletes, and sundry bleached-blond hunklets, the full-tilt camp YMCA song - a salute to the gymnasium number in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - is said to have been Allan Carr's most hands-on sequence. Which I don't doubt for a minute. There allegedly exists an R-rated cut of the shower scene, commissioned by Carr for his private collection.

I Love You to Death
This number most resembles Arlene Phillips' work with her dance troupe Hot Gossip. A staple of the '70s UK TV program The Kenny Everett Show, you can see a slew of Hot Gossip videos here on YouTube.

Her Milkshake Brings All The Boys To the Yard
The Busby Berkely-esque "Milkshake" number really does a body good. Choreographed for the camera in a series of rhythmic cutaways, close-ups, and inserts, it's pure movie musical bliss. The most fun 3 1/2 minutes of the entire film. 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Can’t Stop the Music is kind of a strange movie to include in a collection of films I love, because, in many ways, I find the film to be rather cowardly and reprehensible. Part of me wants to simply enjoy the movie on a Showgirls level…just escapist, mindless, campy fun. But as a gay man, I find myself unable to get past the fact that Can’t Stop the Music is (to me) such a colossal sellout. A bunch of wealthy gay men make a movie full of gay people, gay references, and gay music. But because there are dollars to be made and hetero sensibilities to be appeased, the film spends all its time trying to avoid making an assertive declaration of what is hidden in plain sight. What could have been a mainstream celebration of the Queer influence and contribution to the arts ends up just another pop culture misfire.

Paul Sand, the David Schwimmer of the '70s, as record exec Steve Waits

I watch this movie, and sometimes all I can see is, at worst, gay self-loathing. At best, the kind of fence-straddling, middle-market project that remains willfully clueless of the far-reaching cultural ramifications of perpetuating gay "invisibility" under the guise of a broader audience appeal.

And as an ostensibly “family-oriented” entertainment that thinks it’s being racy by slipping in coy and winking gay references at every opportunity, Can’t Stop the Music is a homophobe’s dream (nightmare) of the subversive cult of a “gay agenda” being secretly foisted upon unsuspecting straights. Look!...a red bandana! Look!...naked men playing innocent grab-ass in the shower! Listen!...subtle-as-a-sledgehammer triple-entendres like, “Anybody who can swallow two Sno-Balls and a Ding Dong shouldn't have any trouble with pride.”    Kill me now.

Joining Jenner and Perrine in this shot are Broadway star Tammy Grimes and actress-dancer (and Mrs. Sammy Davis, Jr.) Altovise Davis. Grimes sang a song in the musical 45 Minutes from Broadway called "So Long, Mary" which, when you stop to think of it, would have been a great subtitle for this movie.

All gripes aside, I still rate Can’t Stop the Music among my enduring favorite musicals because, as I look over my career as a dancer, Arlene Phillips ranks among the choreographers who were the most influential and inspiring to me. A list headed by Bob Fosse, Michael Bennett, and David Winters (growing up, I was a big fan of the teen variety show Hullabaloo).

Can't Stop the Music is so problematic it's difficult to imagine it would have been much of a hit even at the height of the disco craze. But there exists the possibility that it could have grown into an affectionately-remembered cult hit had it at least acknowledged the community that Village People grew out of (and initially intended to celebrate).

In the terrific Christopher Guest Hollywood satire For Your Consideration..., there's is a scene in which the makers of the film "Home for Purim" - a movie about the distinctly Jewish holiday, are told to "Tone down the Jewishness" in order to appeal to a broader market. Clearly poking fun at Hollywood's legendary lack of backbone, I laugh, but how satiric is it, really? One can easily imagine a similar gay-centric scene being played out in production meetings for Can't Stop the Music. This perspective severely undercuts my ability to wholly abandon myself to the film's campy sense of fun. And as it now stands, Can't Stop the Music has become for me a little like one of those tasteless jokes you initially laugh at, only to regret it later.


Can't Stop the Music Addendum:
11/11/13  Yay! After posting this essay critiquing Can't Stop the Music on its closeted, mainstream agenda and total lack of a single (acknowledged) gay person in the film, my eagle-eyed sweetheart spotted what may be the film's sole gay couple!

Although their presence is used as a kind of "We're not in Kansas anymore" sight-gag for Caitlyn Jenner's straight-laced character to react to as she walks the streets of Greenwich Village, there is nevertheless a prominently featured gay couple shown with their arms across each other's shoulders in a PG movie. I love it! 

Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 2013

WAIT UNTIL DARK 1967

Before there really was such a thing as a high-concept movie, in 1967 Warner Bros. released this doozy of a nail-biter whose intriguingly unorthodox casting and high-concept thriller premise resulted in lines around the block and a boxoffice ranking as the 16th highest-grossing film of the year. The film: Wait Until Dark. The casting: All the heavies are played by actors best known for comedy roles. The concept: Somebody wants to kill Holly Golightly!

Audrey Hepburn as Susy Hendrix

Alan Arkin as Harry Roat, Jr.

Richard Crenna as Mike Talman

Jack Weston as Sgt. Carlino

Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as Sam Hendrix

As if drawn to the theater for the collective purpose of forming a militia in her defense, sixties audiences—long-accustomed to spending a pleasant evening being charmed by the winsome, doe-eyed, Belgian gamine of Sabrina and Breakfast at Tiffany's—turned out in droves to witness Hepburn as a defenseless blind woman tormented by a gang of sleazy, drug-dealing, New York thugs. The Old-Hollywood zeitgeist had shifted in a big way! And if you don’t think placing cinema’s much-beloved eternal ingénue within harm’s way is a concept both incendiary and controversial, you must have missed the 2010 online war raged against Emma Thompson when she dared to utter but a few disparaging remarks about everyone’s favorite sylphlike waif.
Thompson, at the time writing a since-shelved remake of My Fair Lady, drew the heated ire of millions when she expressed the opinion that Hepburn couldn't sing and “Can’t really act.” Ignorant or indifferent to the fact that, at least on this side of the pond, anyone trash-talking Audrey Hepburn is just begging for a major ass-whippin’; Thompson made herself no friends in Hepburn camps. There's no reason to believe there's any connection between this public outcry and the fact that Thompson's My Fair Lady re-up hit a snag, but if there’s one thing Audrey Hepburn elicits from movie fans, it’s the near-unanimous desire to shield and protect her. A quality exploited to entertainingly nerve-racking effect in Wait Until Dark.

"What did they want with her?"
Poster art for Wait Until Dark prominently featured the image of a screaming Audrey Hepburn accompanied by the above tagline.  Yikes!

From the moment I first saw her in Roman Holiday, I've always thought of Audrey Hepburn’s screen persona as akin to that of a butterfly. A creature so exquisitely fragile and beautiful that you couldn't bear seeing harm come to it. Sure, Hepburn was drolly menaced in Charade, and most certainly, pairing the then 27-year-old Hepburn with 57-year-old Fred Astaire in Funny Face constitutes some form of romantic terrorism; but for the most part, Audrey Hepburn has always seemed to me to be a woman far too adorable and classy for anybody to mess with.

That being said, I don’t number myself among her fans who would have been happy to have seen her continue along the path of taking on the same role in film after film. When Hepburn made the heist comedy How to Steal a Million in 1966, she was 36 years old, a wife and mother, yet still playing the sort of girlish role she virtually trademarked in the fifties. While that particular comedy revealed Hepburn in fine form and as radiant as ever, it was nevertheless becoming clear that in a world that was making way for Barbarella, Bonnie Parker, and Myra Breckinridge; it was high time for the Cinderella pixie image to be laid to rest.

Taking on the role of the tormented blind woman in Wait Until Dark was a concentrated effort on Hepburn's part to broaden her range and break the mold of her ingénue image. Earlier that same year Hepburn appeared to spectacular effect opposite Albert Finney in Stanley Donen’s bittersweet look at a troubled marriage, Two for the Road. Giving perhaps the most nuanced, adult performance of her career, Hepburn in modern mode revealed a surprising depth of emotional maturity that signaled, at least for a time, she might be one of the few Golden Age Hollywood stars able to make the transition to the dressed-down '70s. While Two for the Road ultimately proved too arty and downbeat for popular tastes, Wait Until Dark was a resounding boxoffice success and garnered the Oscar-winning actress her fifth Academy Award nomination.

Wait Until Dark was adapted from the hit 1966 Broadway play by Frederick Knott (Dial M for Murder) which starred Lee Remick in the role that won her a Best Actress Tony nomination. Recreating the role she originated on Broadway, actress Julie Harrod (above) portrays Gloria, the bratty but ultimately resourceful upstairs neighbor.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I really love a good thriller. And good thrillers are awfully hard to come by these days. When a suspense thriller succeeds in its objectives to send a chill up my spine, keep me guessing, or, better yet, induce me to spend a restless evening sleeping with all the lights on…well, I’m pretty much putty in its hands and will willingly follow where I’m led. Wait Until Dark does a marvelous job of duplicating the formula that worked so well for Ira Levin in both Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives, two of my all-time favorite suspense thrillers. Wait Until Dark takes a vulnerable female character (a woman recently blinded in a car accident, just learning to adapt to her loss of sight); pits her against an enemy whose degree of malevolence and severity of intent she is slow to recognize (Susy is the unwitting possessor of a heroin-filled doll her tormentors are willing to kill for); and (most importantly) takes the time to develop its characters and methodically build suspense so as to best to encourage empathy and audience identification. Simple in structure, yet rare in its ability to sustain tension while providing plenty of nightmare fodder, Wait Until Dark is one of those scary movies that still packs a punch even after repeat viewings.

When it comes to strict adherence to logic, most psychological thrillers don't hold up to too-close scrutiny. Wait Until Dark is no exception. Plot points and theatrical devices that play well on the stage don't always translate to the hyper-realistic world of motion pictures. But when a thriller is as fast-paced and full of spook-house fun as Wait Until Dark, head-scratchers like the one above (I won't give anything away, you'll have to see the film) won't hit you until long after your pulse has returned to normal and the film has ended. 

PERFORMANCES

A while back I wrote about how refreshing it was to see Elizabeth Taylor tackle her first suspense thriller with 1973’s Night Watch. In thinking back to 1967 and my first time seeing Audrey Hepburn’s genre debut in Wait Until Dark, the word that comes to mind is traumatizing. Yes, it was quite the shock seeing MY Audrey Hepburn keeping such uncouth company and being treated so loutishly in a film without benefit of a Cary Grant or Givenchy frock for consolation. Like everybody else, I had fallen in love with Audrey Hepburn’s frail vulnerability in Funny Face and My Fair Lady, so seeing her brutalized for a good 90 minutes was a good deal more than I was ready for at the tender age of ten. 

Javier Bardem's creepy psychopath of No Country for Old Men owes perhaps a nod to Alan Arkin's equally tonsorially-challenged, undies-sniffing nutjob in Wait Until Dark. 

Over the years, my shock over Hepburn’s deviation from type has given way to an appreciation of the skill of her performance here. Actors never seem to be given the proper credit for the realistic conveyance of fear and anxiety, yet I can't think of a single thriller or horror film that has ever worked for me if the lead is unable to convince me that he/she is in genuine fear for their life. Audrey Hepburn delves deep into her somewhat underwritten character and makes her more than just a "lady in peril." She authentically conveys her character's mounting apprehension and fearful response to the circumstances she finds herself facing, yet never abandons the innate resourcefulness that has already been established as part of this woman's makeup as a survivor. 

Hepburn is the emotional linchpin of the entire movie, and she is incredibly affecting and sympathetic. Without benefit of those expressive eyes of hers (she somehow allows them to go blank, yet finds ways to have all manner of complex emotions play out over her face and through her body language) Hepburn keeps us locked within the reality of the film. Even when the plot takes a few turns into the improbable (once again, my lips are sealed!). 

Sixties model Samantha Jones (yes, Sex and the City fans, there IS a real one) plays Lisa, the inadvertent catalyst for all the trouble that erupts in Wait Until Dark. Jones' fabulously '60s big-hair, big-fur, slightly cheap glamour seems to have been borrowed by Barbra Streisand's working girl ("I may be a prostitute, but I'm not promiscuous!") in 1970s The Owl and the Pussycat.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Having been born too late to experience the mayhem attendant the release of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho with that famed shower scene, I'm therefore thrilled to have had the experience of actually seeing Wait Until Dark during its original theatrical run, when exhibitors turned out all of the theater lights during the film's final eight minutes. Jesus H. Christ! Such a thunderous chorus of screams I'd never heard before in my life! My older sister practically kicked the seat in front of her free of its moorings. At least I think so. I was on the ceiling at the time. Without giving anything away, I'll just say that while that experience has since been duplicated at screenings I've attended of the films Jaws, The Omen, Carrie, and Alien; it has never been equaled. At least not in my easily-rattled book.

I hope William Castle appreciated the irony
At the exact moment director William Castle - the great-granddad of horror gimmickry - was making a bid for legitimacy with Rosemary's Baby, Wait Until Dark, a major motion picture with an A-list cast, was attracting rave notices and sellout crowds employing a promotional gambit straight out of his B-movie marketing playbook.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Audrey Hepburn ventured into the damsel-in-distress realm just once more in her career (with this film's director, Terence Young, no less). Unfortunately, it was in the jumbled mess that was Bloodline (1979). An absolutely dreadful and nonsensical film I've seen, oh, about 7 times. As theatrical thrillers go, Wait Until Dark is not up there with Sleuth or Deathtrap in popularity, but it does get revived now and then. Most recently, a poorly-received 1998 Broadway version with Marisa Tomei and Quentin Tarantino, of all people. In 1982 there was a cable-TV adaptation starring Katherine Ross and Stacy Keach that I actually recall watching, but, perhaps tellingly, I can't remember a single thing about.

As a kid, I only knew Jack Weston from the silly comedies Palm Springs Weekend and The Incredible Mr. Limpett. Richard Crenna I knew from TV sitcoms like Our Miss Brooks and The Real McCoys. Producer Mel Ferrer (Mr. Audrey Hepburn at the time) is credited with casting these two talented actors against type to refreshingly unsettling effect

When people speak of Wait Until Dark, it is invariably the Audrey Hepburn version that's referenced, and it's this film to which all subsequent adaptations, like it or not, must be compared. Even when removed from the fun exploitation gimmick of the darkened theater and the novelty of seeing Hepburn in an atypical, non-romantic role, Wait Until Dark holds up remarkably well. Delivering healthy doses of edge-of-the-seat suspense and jump-out-of-your-seat surprises, it's a solid, well-crafted thriller with a talented cast delivering first-rate performances (save for Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., who just does his usual, bland, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.thing).
Still, it's Audrey Hepburn—age 37, inching her way toward adult roles— who is the real marvel here. Being a movie star of the old order, one whose stock-in-trade has been the projection of her personality upon every role; Hepburn is never fully successful in making us stop thinking at times as if we're watching Tiffany's Holly Golightly, Charade's Regina Lampert, or Roman Holiday's Princess Ann caught up in some Alice-through-the-looking-glass nightmare. But in these days of so-called "movie stars" who scarcely register anything onscreen beyond their own narcissism, I'm afraid I'm going to favor the actress whose sweetly gentle nature has shone through in every role she's ever assumed. That's a real and genuine talent, in and of itself.

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2013

CACTUS FLOWER 1969

Thinking back to that time in the late '60s when Old Hollywood (all overlit studio sets, name stars, and conventional genres) begrudgingly made way for New Hollywood (auteurism, non-linear storytelling, and emphasis on youth), it’s easy to forget how gradual and awkward a transitional period it was. Film history can make it sound like Hollywood was churning out The Sound of Music on a Monday, then by Friday, it released Bonnie and Clyde. But closer to the truth is that the old guard was very slow in passing the torch to the younger generation, and the strain frequently showed.

Some Flowers Blossom Late But They're The Kind That Last the Longest
Ingrid Bergman admires her metaphor

During what I call the movie industry’s “Last Gasp” phase—a period wedged awkwardly between the studio system excesses of the late-60s and the emergence of the American New Wave in the early-'70s—Hollywood released a glut of wheezily old-fashioned films it attempted to pass off as “with it” and “now” entertainments that sought to reach out to the young. These woefully middle-class, middle-aged, and formulaically sitcom-y films strove to reflect a youthful perspective, but were at a loss for what that actually meant. This led to the token insertion of self-consciously “hip” templates like rock music (which, to the septuagenarian ears running the studios meant muzak-type stabs at the contemporary sound by veterans like John Williams and Henry Mancini); a smattering of profanity and skin; aggressively mod costuming and art direction; and at least one cast member under the age of 40.

The Kids Are Alright
Bergman gets in touch with her inner MILF

The worst examples: In 1969 Lana Turner starred in the psychedelic freakout The Big Cube, and Oscar-winner, classy lady Jennifer Jones looked adrift in the has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed Angel, Angel, Down We Go. Both films alienated audiences, young and old alike, by thrusting past their prime and obviously uncomprehending members of Hollywood Royalty smack into the center of exploitative, youth-pandering tales of drugs, sex, and depravity. By and large, most of these late-to-the-party efforts were just forced and artificial overtures to the youth market which, when dramatic, could only look at youth through the prism of struggling-to-adapt adults (The Arrangement and The Happy Ending ),  or when comedic, settled into a kind of out-of-touch smarminess that mistook smirking sleaze for daring: a la Prudence and the Pill and The Impossible Years, both released in 1968.

One of the better films to emerge from this cross-generational limbo is Cactus Flower; a farcical bedroom comedy that in less capable hands could have come off as little more than an expanded episode of the TV program Love, American Style (whose brightly-lit look it shares). However, this somewhat routine generation gap comedy (a cousin of the tepid but similar in tone 40 Carats) avoids that fate chiefly through the efforts of its appealing and talented cast. Truly, this film is a shining example of how charismatic and resourceful actors can turn run-of-the-mill dross into gold.

Walter Matthau as Julian Winston

Ingrid Bergman as Stephanie Dickinson

Goldie Hawn as Toni Simmons

Jack Weston as Harvey Greenfield

Rick Lenz as Igor Sullivan

To keep from giving his much-younger girlfriend, Toni (Hawn), any matrimonial ideas, confirmed middle-aged bachelor Julian (Matthau) pretends to be the married father of three. When a suicide attempt (always good for a laugh) prompts the Park Avenue dentist to propose, Julian asks his devoted nurse Stephanie (Bergman) to pose as his wife and reassure Toni that she is not a home-wrecker and that their divorce is mutually desired and amicable. Of course, this being a farce, nothing goes as planned and all manner of Neil Simon-esque comic complications arise before the not-unexpected happy fade-out.

Walter Matthau and Goldie Hawn are each so adorably asexual that their May/December romance (there's a 25-year age difference) never crosses over into gross-out territory. The rubber-faced Matthau is one of my all-time favorite actors and I just think he's hilarious in this film. The inherent likability of the actor goes a long way toward preventing his character from coming across as loathsome as written

Based on the 1965 stage hit which provided Lauren Bacall her Broadway debut, Cactus Flower is an artifact from the “tired businessman” era of theater when breezily escapist musicals and plays were concocted for the benefit of NYC businessmen seeking to avoid the rush hour crunch of the trains to the suburbs. Dating back as far as 1952's The Seven Year Itch, these shows offered mindless laughs and tame titillation by way of middle-aged wish-fulfillment fantasies envisioning a world populated by bland professional men on the prowl pursued by bevies of beautiful young women who live only to be wed. That marriage is presented as the end-all and be-all symbol of happy-ending bliss has always struck me as positively perverse given how prominently deception, serial adultery, and lying figure into the courtship rituals of the characters in these so-called sexually sophisticated comedies.

To my way of thinking, America in the very repressed and sexist early-'60s had a particularly ugly concept of what constituted sexy and funny in motion pictures—Under the Yum Yum Tree; The Marriage-Go-Round; Boeing, Boeing; Any Wednesday…ick! Is it some heterosexual coping mechanism that, even to this day, makes it necessary to perpetuate an image of romantic courtship as an intricacy of calculated lies and tricks leading to the altar? Only to be followed by a state of matrimony wherein the “domesticated” male can’t wait to stray, and the clinging female is depicted as an emasculating killjoy? Every time I hear that pathetic “sanctity of marriage” argument in today’s same-sex marriage battle, my mind goes to all those comedies and sitcoms that came out of this “simpler, more innocent time.” All of which treated adultery like some kind of frolicsome lark.

So she got herself all dolled up in her satins and furs,
 and she got herself a husband...but he wasn't hers
Very-married diplomat Arturo Sanchez (veteran character actor Vito Scotti) romances dental assistant Stephanie Dickinson, whose last big love affair was with a married man. What with Toni's year-long involvement with a man she thinks is married, Cactus Flower is like one long, pro-adultery infomercial.

Having so far lodged a case as to why Cactus Flower should be at the top of my list of most reviled films; I state here and now that no one is more surprised than I that this film ranks among my favorite comedies of the '60s. It’s a sweet-natured, laugh-out-loud, absolute delight… almost in spite of itself.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Say what one will about old Hollywood, when it was at the top of its game, no one was better at turning out these types of frothy, intricate farces. Cactus Flower has the undistinguished yet delectable visual gloss of a Doris Day movie; a sardonically funny screenplay (adapted from Abe Burrows' play) by Some Like it Hot’s I. A. L. Diamond; snappy, keep-the-action-moving direction by Gene Saks; and, most advantageously, a cast of newcomers and veterans who all know their way around a punchline.

The premise of Cactus Flower is silly in the extreme, but it’s inconceivable to me that anyone could ever devise a journey that I wouldn't want to be taken on by Goldie Hawn, Walter Matthau, Jack Weston, and Ingrid Bergman. What an absolutely amazing cast! Just the fact that they're all in the same film should qualify Cactus Flower for classic status, but watching their sublime comic sparring is like taking a master class in chemistry and timing. Their scenes fairly crackle with inspired bits of acting magic. Each is so deft and gifted a performer that together they infuse Cactus Flower with spark and wit. Maybe even more than it deserves.

Another Cactus Flower odd couple is Jack Weston and statuesque Eve Bruce (she played the Amazonian streetwalker in The Love Machine), both of whom add hilarious support to the increasingly complicated proceedings

PERFORMANCES

As Goldie Hawn’s nomination and win for Cactus Flower is the only Oscar recognition the film received, it’s a fact worth mentioning, but as an indication of merit...I'm not so sure. In considering her win over Susannah York in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Dyan Cannon in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, and Catherine Burns in Last Summer; one has to keep in mind we’re talking the Academy Awards here: an organization that first weighs in on sentiment, politics, publicity, and popularity before it ever gets around to considering performance excellence.
Hawn was the blonde "It" girl of the moment, and the public's affection for the bubble-head she portrayed on TV's outrageously popular Laugh-In factored heavily in her win. Apparently, the voting bloc of the Golden Globes felt the same, for Hawn also took that award home. I don't mean to sell Hawn short, however, for in this, her first major film role (in 1968 she appeared in Disney’s creaky musical, The One and Only Genuine Original Family Band in a giggly blond role E.J. Peaker probably turned down for Hello, Dolly!), Hawn radiates genuine star quality and holds her own against veterans Matthau and Bergman. In fact, the publicity surrounding Hawn's debut somewhat stole the thunder of Bergman's return to American screens after a 20-year absence.

Old Hollywood meets New Hollywood

With her enormous eyes and Betty Boop voice, it is difficult not to watch Hawn every second. She's so excitingly kinetic a presence she single-handedly blows the cobwebs off of Cactus Flower's rather stale bedroom humor. I think she does a marvelous job with a deceptively difficult role. She has to make Toni sweet and waiflike enough to care about, but strong and resilient enough so that Julian doesn't come off as a total jerk.

The talent and chemistry of Oscar winners Ingrid Bergman and Walter Matthau elevate Cactus Flower to high-style farce. Dick Van Dyke had initially been considered for the Matthau role, and when Bacall was passed over (or declined) there was talk of casting Lee Grant as the film's late-blooming leading lady.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Goldie Hawn's character is a clerk in a Greenwich Village record store, and the scenes that take place amongst the shelves of albums (featuring artists like Lou Rawls, The Beatles, Buck Owens, and Petula Clark) and walls of psychedelic blacklight posters feel as distant and of another time as any episode of Downton Abbey. They make me feel so nostalgic...and so old. 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Because there’s so little about Cactus Flower that actually reflects the year in which it was made, I think it plays better now than it did in 1969. In the year of Woodstock, the Stonewall Riots, Charles Manson, and the Vietnam War, America could certainly use a few laughs, but Cactus Flower's mid-life comedy must have seemed a tad out of touch. Today, it's a film that fits snugly into the vague, pop-culture mashup that is the entire decade of the 1960s (on a double-bill, Cactus Flower would not look out-of-date with 1963's Move Over, Darling), and feels charmingly corny and just a tiny bit camp (what with references to “love beads” and those stodgy Muzak-style arrangements of songs by The Monkees and Boyce & Hart playing on the soundtrack). The dialog makes me laugh, the performances are great fun to watch, and if I don't dwell too long on the whole lying-your-way-to-love subtext, I have a wonderful time watching it. This is rom-com done right.

By the way, given my oft-voiced disdain for all things Adam Sandler, it's not likely I'll be checking out the loose 2011 remake of Cactus Flower titled Just Go With It. Although I'm curious to see if they are able to update the casual sexism of the original material, I'm not curious enough to subject myself to both Adam Sandler AND Jennifer Aniston...quick, call the bomb squad!


THE AUTOGRAPH FILES

Inscription reads: "Ken, See how old and mean you get if you hang around long enough."

Back in 1995 I had the pleasure of being Walter Matthau's personal trainer (a fact which amused the legendary sloucher no end). I liked him a great deal and found him to be every bit as funny (he told the best dirty jokes!) and sweet as he appears on screen. With all the anecdotes he shared about working in Hollywood, I should have been paying him. He's very much missed.

One of the Goldie-centric newspaper ads for Cactus Flower

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2012