THE CHILDREN'S HOUR 1961

*Spoiler alert. This essay gives away key plot points

Much in the manner in which Warner Bros. cartoon character Elmer Fudd is compelled to use words teeming with the very Ls and Rs he's unable to pronounce (his Owivia DeHaviwand being a particular favorite); Hollywood during the Production Code era (1934-1968) just couldn’t keep away from “adult”-themed projects it had no reasonable hope of adequately interpreting.

Dramatist and screenwriter Lillian Hellman had her first major theatrical success in 1934 with the banned-in-Boston stage hit The Children’s Hour: a shocking-for-its-time play in which the two headmistresses of a tony girls’ boarding school have their careers and lives ruined by the spread of the malicious rumor that the pair are in fact illicit lovers in a lesbian relationship. 

When William Wyler first adapted Hellman's play for the screen in 1936, the show's scandalous reputation was such that not only was a title change mandated (The Children’s Hour became These Three), but "the lie with the ounce of truth" was changed from the whisper of lesbianism to the more socially palatable rumor of heteronormative adultery. Instead of an accusation of being in love with each other, the two women were now accused of (yawn) being in love with the same man. And lest one think this a Hollywood cop-out of the highest order, know that it was Lillian Hellman herself who approved and adapted the screenplay of the 1936 version for the screen.

Hellman's almost word-for-word-faithful adaptation of her play for Wyler confirmed her oft-repeated claim that The Children’s Hour was not really about lesbianism so much as the pernicious power of a lie. "The bigger the lie, the better," Hellman affirmed. A point of view she would gain a great deal of first-hand experience with when, in 1952 she was blacklisted in Hollywood for refusing to name names to the House Un-American Activities Committee; and later in 1979, charged with falsifying the details of her memoir, Pentimento. (Author Mary McCarthy [The Group] on Hellman: "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'!")

Mademoiselle de Maupin by Theophile Gautier
A salacious seed is planted in the minds of the  girls when they read the scandalous 1834 French novel in which a woman disguises herself as a man and has affairs with both sexes

In 1960, in an effort to rectify the compromises he felt imposed upon him by MGM and the Hays Code in 1936, William Wyler returned to The Children's Hour vowing to make a more faithful version of the play. Taking advantage of the permissive atmosphere of the times, Wyler even went so far as to say he’d be willing to release his film without the MPAA seal of approval if need be. (Many newspapers at the time refused to carry ads for films lacking the Production Code seal. Similarly, many theaters wouldn’t exhibit non-approved films.)

Whether it was due to Wyler’s pronouncement that his remake was to be “A clean film with a highly moral story!”, or the casting of ladylike Audrey Hepburn as the fem half of the whispered-about duo (Wyler:“We don’t want bosoms in this!”), the studio heads ultimately relented and The Children’s Hour was green-lit for production. Provided, of course, that the word “lesbian” never be uttered, and that there be no demonstrative sexual contact of any sort. Yep, certainly sounds like those 1936 compromises were put to rest by 1961. 

Audrey Hepburn as Karen Wright

Shirley MacLaine as Martha Dobie

James Garner as Joe Cardin

Fay Bainter as Amelia Tilford

Miriam Hopkins as Lily Mortar

Coy as it seems today, The Children’s Hour was written at a time when it was illegal to even make mention of homosexuality in a Broadway play. The show’s ultimate success somehow surmounted public moral outrage, allowing for it to become one of the first Broadway plays to feature a LGBTQ character. Similar honors went to Wyler’s 1961 film adaptation, with Shirley MacLaine being one of the first major stars to play a gay character in a motion picture; albeit just barely. Change was obviously in the air in the early '60s, as several other gay-themed films arrived in theaters within months of The Children’s Hour’s release: Dirk Bogarde’s Victim, Otto Preminger’s Advise & Consent, and Tony Richardson's A Taste of Honey with Brit fave Murray Melvin making his film debut as a sympathetically portrayed gay teenager.  

The Hateful Eight...er, 12-year-old
Making her film debut, Karen Balkin as Mary Tilford

Karen Wright (Hepburn) and Martha Dobie (MacLaine) are two college chums now partnered in the ownership and operation of a girls’ boarding school. After years of struggle, the school, catering to the adolescent daughters of well-to-do families, appears at last to be up on its feet. So much so that Karen, engaged for the last two years to local doctor Joe Cardin (Garner), at last feels free to marry. A decision which doesn’t set well with Martha, who outwardly expresses her displeasure as simply the fear that marriage and motherhood will lead to Karen’s abandonment of the school.

The pair’s heated discussions and platonic entreaties of love and loyalty on the topic are overheard and misinterpreted by Mary Tilford (Bakin), a troublemaking student whose compulsive lying and disobedience has made her the frequent object of discipline. In spiteful retaliation for one such upbraiding, Mary tells her grandmother (Bainter) that Miss Wright and Miss Dobie are lovers, and that she has seen them kissing and engaging in all manner of nocturnal hanky panky.

Before long, the lie concocted merely to avoid the consequences of a rule infraction mushrooms into a scandal which closes the school and makes a shamble of the lives of three innocent people.

These Three

Given the director, it comes as no surprise that The Children’s Hour is a handsome, well-crafted, and finely-acted film of almost irresistible watchability (like All About Eve, The Children’s Hour is one of those movies impossible to channel surf past, no matter how far along into the story I catch it). I don't know if there is such a thing as a "William Wyler movie," as he has always struck me as one of those industry professionals devoid of an identifiable style, but he is noted for producing consistent quality work.
Auteur or not, I do know that William Wyler movies occupy a lot of space on my DVD shelves: Roman Holiday, The Heiress, The Little Foxes, Funny Girl, The Letter, and of course, The Children’s Hour; a film whose every frame supports his reputation for vivid storytelling and extracting superior performances from his cast. The Children's Hour was the no-win recipient of five Academy Award nominations (supporting actress, cinematography, costume, art direction, sound).

Children Will Listen

For all its technical distinction (the lighting, editing, and shot compositions are really something to be applauded) and the high-drama content of its plot (as stated, the film is compellingly watchable), it's still difficult for me not to feel as though The Children's Hour suffers a bit from Wyler's very obvious efforts to deliver a “clean” and “highly moral” film about a subject that is a great deal more than mere sensation. In his well-intentioned desire to grant the story the solemnity and respect, I'm sure he felt was its due; Wyler falls prey to adopting a tone of such unyielding good taste and decorum that it feels at times almost airless. The result is that The Children’s Hour vacillates between stagy soap opera and overheated melodrama precisely at moments calling for the raw intimacy of emotional honesty. 

It's during these moments when The Children’s Hour calls to mind for me the character Mary Tyler Moore played in Ordinary People - it becomes a film determined not to draw attention to itself by making a scene.

Veronica Cartwright as Rosalie Wells
One of the best criers in the business

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

“It is incredible that educated people living in an urban American community today would react as violently and cruelly to a questionable innuendo as they are made to do in this film.”  - Bosley Crowther's New York Times review of The Children’s Hour March, 1962

Obviously, movie critic Bosley Crowther needed to get out more. In the face of homophobia and bigotry, incredulity like Crowther’s seems sophisticated and liberal in that it superficially gives people credit for being more civilized and intelligent than a film like this suggests. But in reality, to ignore and deny that gay lives are ruined every day in America by the very same rootless bigotry and baseless homophobia The Children’s Hour dramatizes, is head-in-the-sand blindness. A subtle and privileged means of refuting and denying the suffering that is the day-to-day reality for many LGBTQ individuals even today.

Indeed, one of the contributing factors to my not having even seen The Children’s Hour until recently is due to almost everything I’d read previously about the film corroborating Mr. Crowther’s position. I avoided The Children’s Hour because I assumed it was going to be another dated Hollywood exercise in homosexual self-loathing masked as liberal discourse.

When I finally did see the film, I was happily surprised that, regardless of how dated the surface trappings were, the message of the film felt timeless. Remove the old-fashioned acting, starchy language, and that '60s censorship straitjacket (à la Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) necessitating characters verbally dance all around an issue without ever saying it plainly, and you’ve got a story that plays out in all corners of our country today. Set Hellman's story in the present, trade a girls' boarding school for a Boy Scout troop...would anything play any differently? America harbors such strange delusions about itself. I don't know how anyone could look at this film and say with a straight face "This could never happen today!" No, the themes Lillian Hellman sought to address (how truth and facts are often no match for willful ignorance) remain contemporary and unchanged.

Careless Whisper
In this, her last film, Fay Bainter garnered The Children's Hour's sole acting Oscar nomination, and deservedly so. She's a forceful and dynamic presence in every scene. In the role that won Bonita Granville an Oscar nomination in 1936's These Three,  Karen Balkin (who sometimes bears an unfortunate resemblance to Charles Laughton) gives an outsized performance that wouldn't be out of place in a comedy like The Trouble With Angels. Still,  I wouldn't say she's exactly ineffective in the role, as by the third act you're apt to find the character she plays loathsome in the extreme. She makes The Bad Seed's Rhoda Penmark look like Shirley Temple

If The Children’s Hour has a credibility problem at all, it lies not in its depiction of the swiftness with which the community condemns the women on baseless innuendo (these days, inciting the public to overreact to unsubstantiated hate-mongering has practically become an official GOP political platform); but in anybody not being able to see through little Mary’s broad-as-a-barn-door lying and bullying tactics. Barring this, I think The Children’s Hour presents one of the screen’s more accurate and cutting indictments of hysterical bigotry.

The ever-likable James Garner is solid as always,
but isn't called upon to do much more than stand around looking all hetero and stuff

PERFORMANCES

I have no idea how 1961 audiences responded to Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine appearing in this “daring” film, but these days when a straight actor takes on a gay role, the public practically awards them a medal of bravery. Everyone, gay and straight alike, carries on as though the actor had just crawled through the foxholes of war-torn Iwo Jima with an orphan on their back.

Nevertheless, back in 1961, it was no doubt a big deal for two such high-profile stars to appear in a film with a lesbian theme. But (not to diminish the risk-taking of either actress), Hepburn had just played a prostitute--or Hollywood’s idea of a prostitute--in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and was eager to shed her ingénue image, while MacLaine had a bohemian “kook” reputation (yes, even as far back as that) which lent itself to character roles (aka, women outside the mainstream). And politically speaking, it certainly didn’t hurt that both women were at the time married with children. One source I read speculated on the unlikely chance an unmarried actress would have taken on either role. 

Audrey Hepburn, who got her start and an Academy Award in Wyler’s Roman Holiday (1953), is an enduring favorite of mine and her performance here, while not particularly showy, is one of the strongest of her early career. Clearly cast (at least in part) for her lack of an overtly sexual screen persona and for having an image that adhered to traditional notions of femininity; one can only imagine how provocative The Children's Hour would have been (something Wyler wasn't interested in, it seems) had she been cast in MacLaine’s role.
Miriam Hopkins, who actually did play the MacLaine role in These Three opposite Merle Oberon and Joel McCrea, is a hammy delight as Martha's affected, self-dramatizing aunt.

Playing an overly-theatrical B-level stage actress, Miriam Hopkins is seen here clutching the mementos of her career. In this instance a glamour portrait that is actually a publicity pic of Hopkins from the 1936 film, Becky Sharp.   

As someone once commented on this site in relation to an earlier post about the movie Hot Spell, Shirley MacLaine can come off a little shrill in scenes requiring displays of anxiety or excitability. But like many gifted comic actors, she can really deliver the dramatic goods when playing hostility and pique. In a film that codifies lesbianism as simply an absence of glamour, MacLaine is really very good (this is where the film in its own small way is rather progressive) and grants her sympathetic character a depth and humanity refreshingly devoid of caricature. She resorts to no gimmicks or tricks to signify Martha's latent homosexuality, playing the role honestly and without artifice. In recent interviews about The Children’s Hour, MacLaine likes to relate how Wyler got cold feet during the making of the film, resulting in several non-explicit scenes of Martha showing her affection for Karen (brushing Hepburn’s hair, ironing her clothes, and cooking) ending up on the cutting room floor.

I’m not altogether sure how the inclusion of those sequences would have helped a film whose big dramatic payoff is an 11th-hour “self-realization” scene (which for my money MacLaine pulls off very well in spite of it being a tad overwritten). Besides, such demonstrativeness to me would appear redundant given how well she already successfully conveys her deep love for Hepburn’s character through a dozen subtle looks and gestures.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

The Children’s Hour has always been controversial for the part it played in kickstarting the tired movie trope of the doomed/suicidal homosexual: an overworked cliché born of a warped morality, homophobic societal norms, and the Hollywood Production Code. 

For the most part, gay characters in films tended to be used for comic relief, easy sensationalism, or a glib, short-cut bid to signify sophistication or wanton liberalness. From the start, studios and censors gleaned that the death of a the gay character in the final reel not only satisfied the movie mandate requiring “sinners” pay for their transgressions, but presented, at fadeout, a symbolic “return to normalcy” for viewers, calculated to reassure and secure their faith in the enduring indomitability of heterosexuality and triumph of the status quo. 

Problematic as the ending of The Children’s Hour is for many (MacLaine’s character hangs herself), anecdotally I’ve always felt it presented a situation more complex for Martha than mere homophobic self-loathing. In the scene precipitating her suicide, Martha comes out to Karen at precisely the same moment she comes out to herself. She falls apart in a stream of consciousness monologue in which she tries to sort out her feelings about herself amidst paralyzing confusion and guilt over the role her lack of self-awareness may or may not have played in the destruction of so many lives. Including her own.

It's arguable and certainly up for debate whether Martha's self-disgust ("Oh I feel so damn sick and dirty I can't stand it anymore!") is wholly related to her discovery of her true sexual identity, and not, at least in part, also attributable to genuine guilt-based self-recrimination. 

Martha's vocal and frequent emotional outbursts--ill-temper with Joe, her impatience with her silly Aunt--all brought on by her repressed feelings for Karen, are what the children overhear. What arouses their suspicions. For me, it makes both psychological and emotional sense for Martha to be just as wracked with guilt over bringing harm to the woman she loves as she is plagued by internalized homophobia and self-loathing. 

It's not an either-or situation, it's a combination of complex, combatting emotions brought about by abrupt self-confrontation and self-realization. I think it trivializes the story and the character to reduce the cause of Martha's suicide to "Because she realized she's gay." 

So, while there's no denying Martha's suicide is an extreme response to her suffering from a particularly acute case of "gaynst" (gay-angst); it can also be perceived to be the final, selfless act of love her character intends it to be. This is to say that within the confines of the narrative (the last we see of Martha alive, she's not brooding intently upon herself, she's looking lovingly at Karen from a window) Martha's love is such that she commits an act of martyrdom by killing herself, thereby freeing Karen.

Of course, Martha might have achieved the very same thing by merely hopping on a train (which Martha actually does at the end of These Three), but as I said earlier, this is Hollywood, and it would be several more years before the movies would grant any gay character a happy ending.

..and if you found a pun in that sentence, shame on you!

BONUS MATERIAL

A production still of the libel suit courtroom sequence that was deleted from the final film. 

The theatrical trailer for William Wyler's These Three (1936)

In this clip from the 1996 LGBTQ documentary, The Celluloid Closet, Shirley MacLaine talks about making The Children's Hour.

The Children's Hour had its title changed in the UK

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2015

THE FAN 1981

At a time when most of her industry peers were retired, forgotten, or guesting on episodes of Fantasy Island and The Love Boat, 56-year-old Lauren Bacall was enjoying a career resurgence and public visibility rivaling that of her 1940s heyday when she was known as “The Look.”  The year 1981 saw Bacall headlining in the Broadway musical Woman of the Year; topping the bestseller charts with the paperback release of her 1978 memoir By Myself; shilling everything from jewelry to cat food in TV and print ads; and, most remarkably in those pre-Meryl Streep/Helen Mirren years of elder-actress marketability, starring in a nine-million-dollar major motion picture release.

The Fame Game

The Fan, a suspense thriller based on Bob Randall’s 1977 epistolary novel about an aging Broadway star stalked by an obsessive fan, gave Bacall arguably the biggest role of her career. Certainly, the first to require her to carry an entire film on her own.

Filmed on location in New York from March to July of 1980, The Fan was poised for release at the most opportune time to take marketing advantage of Bacall’s already-in-motion Broadway and bookshelf publicity. Unfortunately, as The Fan’s PR-friendly release date of March 15, 1981 neared, several real-life, obsessive fan-based tragedies occurred (targeting John Lennon and then-President Ronald Reagan), conspiring to make this fame-culture melodrama seem more an exercise in bad taste than a film of ripped-from-today's-headlines relevance.

Lauren Bacall as Sally Ross

Michael Biehn as Douglas Breen

Maureen Stapleton as Belle Goldman

James Garner as Jake Berman

Hector Elizondo as Inspector Raphael Andrews 

Kurt Johnson as David Barnum

If musical theater geeks, Glee habitués, and folks capable of making it through an entire Tony Awards broadcast ever longed for an '80s slasher film to call their own, then The Fan more than fills the Playbill. This unappetizingly bloody, yet oh-so delectable/derisible blend of backstage musical, 1940s career-woman soap opera, slasher-flick, and woman-in-peril melodrama, is high-camp movie nirvana. An upscale cousin of the hagsploitation genre of the '60s, The Fan might have substituted seasoned glamour for the usual grotesquery, but in keeping with the requirements of the sub-genre, The Fan's raison d'être remained the prolonged persecution and victimization of a mature star from Hollywood's Golden Era. 

When The Fan opened in theaters in the spring of 1981, the film...to borrow a line from one of the hooty Louis St. Louis (Grease 2) show tunes sung in the film..."Got no love” from either audiences or critics. Patrons old enough to be enticed by the film's elder cast risked having their blue rinses turn stark white at the sight of the movie's copious bloodshed and some of the blunt, Bogie-wouldn't-stand-for-this dialog: “Dearest bitch, see how accessible you are? How would you like to be fucked by a meat cleaver?” Similarly, the teen demographic ordinarily drawn to slasher films weren't quite sure of what to make of a movie set in the middle-aged, Sardi's and cigarettes world of New York legitimate theater.  A wholly uninspired publicity campaign only added to the film’s troubles.

Had The Fan been a play, it would have closed in Boston. Whisked off screens within weeks of its release, The Fan resurfaced with some regularity on cable TV venues like HBO and Showtime throughout the '80s before ultimately disappearing into relative obscurity. Obscurity so complete that Robert De Niro's unrelated but same-titled 1996 sports-themed film has totally eclipsed Bacall's The Fan in the public's memory.
Happily, The Fan's recent release on DVD has rekindled awareness of this very '80s curio. A glimpse back at a New York still atmospherically seedy. A vision of a world populated with record stores, typewriters, payphones, legwarmers, and heavy smokers. All with nary a Starbucks in sight. And while it's no undiscovered classic, The Fan does have its merits (most of them camp-related, I'm afraid) that make it a movie worthy of rediscovery. Not the least of them being Lauren Bacall, a smoking, drinking, tough-as-nails star of Broadway and the silver screen, playing a smoking, drinking, tough-as-nails star of Broadway and the silver screen. And convincingly, too!

The psychological subtheme of The Fan

And the audience LOVES me! And I love them! And they love me for lovin' them and I love them for lovin' me. And we love each other. And that's 'cause none of us got enough love in our childhoods. 

And that's show biz, kid!  - Fred Ebb

No low-budget, body-count slasher flick featuring nondescript teens stalked by a masked phantom, The Fan was conceived as a stylish, A-List, Hitchcockian thriller along the lines of Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) and Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980). The latter a sleeper hit that garnered '50s sexpot, Angie Dickinson, some of the best notices of her career. 
At least that's how things started.

Produced by movie/music mogul Robert Stigwood on the downturn side of a '70s winning streak that included youth-centric films like Jesus Christ Superstar, Saturday Night Fever, and Tommy; The Fan was Stigwood’s most expensive film to date and first stab at cracking the grown-up ticket-buying market. To this end, he amassed a distinguished cast of New York actors and pedigreed Broadway composers (Marvin Hamlisch and Tim Rice collaborated on two–fairly terrible but nonetheless irresistible–original songs). On the production end, he secured the talents of up-and-coming first-time director Edward Bianchi (from TV commercials and music videos) and choreographer Arlene Philips (Can’t Stop The Music, Annie).

If you've ever seen a Lauren Bacall musical, you know that her being lifted and carried about is a choreography requisite. I was surprised at the number of online reviews that questioned Bacall's "believability" portraying a Broadway musical star in The Fan. Reviews that later expressed surprise upon learning that she was indeed a musical theater star in real life. Bacall was the Best Actress Tony Award winner for both Applause - 1970 and Woman of the Year - 1981.

But as the saying goes, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and somewhere between screenplay to movie-house, The Fan transmogrified into a film beset by:
1) Bad decisions -  Friday the 13 became a hit during The Fan's post-production, prompting Paramount to order reshoots to ratchet up the violence. 
2) Bad timing and bad decisions - Three months before The Fan's release, John Lennon was killed by an obsessive fan outside NY’s Dakota apartments (as it happens, also the home of Lauren Bacall), after which it is said the film's original downbeat ending (if true to the novel) underwent some 11^th-hour tinkering and reshoots.
3) Bad luck -  Bacall's idea of promoting The Fan was to express to the press her disappointment in the finished product. Making matters worse, three weeks into The Fan's less-than-illustrious release, an attempt was made on President Reagan's life by a Jodie Foster-obsessed fan. Suddenly, a film very few people were interested in in the first place began to look to everyone like an exercise in exploitation and bad taste.

Bacall the Buzzkill
Bacall: "The Fan is much more graphic and violent than when I read the script."
Anna Maria Horsford (who appeared in Stigwood's Times Square in 1980) as detective Emily Stolz

Stigwood severely scaled back his usual bombastic pre-release publicity for The Fan (STD results have been released with more fanfare), while Paramount added a disclaimer to its theatrical trailers claiming The Fan was in no way inspired by the tragic death of John Lennon. The latter decision prompting the outspoken Bacall to declare to People magazine: “I think it’s disgusting, revolting, and exploitive!”

In the end, it didn't really matter, for The Fan wound up being one of those rare films capable of offering audiences simultaneously contradictory experiences–none of them satisfactory. Stylishly shot, overflowing in chichi urban gloss, and embellished with a chilling Pino Donaggio score (Carrie, Don’t Look Now) The Fan ultimately failed to find an audience because it clearly didn't know who the hell that was. Classic movie fans familiar with Lauren Bacall thought the film was too classy to be so trashy; slasher fans thought the film wasn't trashy enough. Gays had their own problems with the film.

Strangers in the Night

The Fan did itself no favors by alienating the very audience most receptive to a film offering up ample doses of musical theater, backstage drama, show tunes, tight male bodies in various states of undress, and Lauren Bacall in full Margo Channing mode. On the heels of Windows (1980), a stalker thriller about a lesbian psychopath, and Cruising (1980) a crime thriller about a gay psychopath; many members of the gay community felt The Fan's closeted theater-queen stalker was one gay psycho too many.

None of that applied to me, however. I was a presold audience in and of myself. I’d read The Fan back in 1978, intrigued by the way the book used the thriller genre to comment on the odd love/hate relationship between stars and their adoring public. I was also a longstanding fan of Lauren Bacall from her old movies with Bogart on The Late Show, Applause (the 1973 TV broadcast, anyway), and Murder on the Orient Express; so I was thrilled when I heard she'd been cast.  

Actress Dana Delany making her film debut in The Fan

Adding to my anticipation was the fact that Edward Bianchi was hired to direct and Arlene Phillips was to do the choreography. Bianchi & Phillips had collaborated on a series of eye-popping Dr. Pepper commercials in the late '70s for the advertising agency Young & Rubicam. Commercials I had been inspired by and borrowed from for a couple of my film school projects. When I also learned that Broadway great Maureen Stapleton had joined the cast and that Bacall’s rumored real-life paramour, James Garner, was also on board, The Fan swiftly became one of the most eagerly-awaited films of the year...for me, anyway.

I saw The Fan on opening day at Grauman’s Chinese Theater where the smallish audience of young people in attendance (clearly in search of a good scare) was underwhelmed. I, on the other hand, felt as though I’d died and gone to camp film heaven. Not since Eyes of Laura Mars had I seen such a slick-looking thriller. On capable of being enjoyed on so many levels at once. I wound up seeing it a total of three times before it disappeared from theaters.

Shot on location, The Fan provides many great glimpses of 80s-era New York.
Here the famed Shubert Theater is the site for Sally Ross' opening night in Never Say Never; the fictional musical providing The Fan with so much of its camp appeal

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

What brings me back to The Fan time and time again are its many sequences depicting the behind-the-scenes creation of the fictional Broadway musical, Never Say Never. Much is made of it being Sally Ross’ singing and dancing debut, a point we in the audience don't doubt for a minute. Bacall's foghorn baritone and reliance on chorus boys to lug and lift her about give the scenes a comic authenticity. 

Populated with recognized Broadway dancers, shot in actual NY rehearsal studios with a knowing attention to procedural detail; the show in question may look terrible, but these sequences are really rather marvelous. The '80s vibe is irresistible (all those short-shorts, spandex, legwarmers, and Arlene Philips' trademark Hot Gossip choreography), and the risible music ("No energy crisis, my professional advice is...") gets caught in your head like an earwig. Of course, it certainly doesn't hurt that I saw this film during my early days as a dancer and that in 1983, when I took my first trip to New York, I took classes at Jo Jo's Dance Factory, the studio used in the film.

All the Boys Love Sally

UK Choreographer Arlene Phillips wouldn't actually choreograph for
Broadway until 1987's Starlight Express

Call Her Miss Ross
Broadway dancer Justin Ross (l.) appeared in the film version of A Chorus Line,
and dancer Reed Jones (r.) originated the role of Skimbleshanks in Cats 

 PERFORMANCES

If you’re going to make a film about the kind of old-school, glamorous, show-biz diva capable of inciting the flames of obsessive fandom, you couldn’t do much better than landing all-around class-act, Lauren Bacall. Her gravitas as a full-fledged movie star from the golden era gives The Fan a shot of instant legitimacy every time she appears. In one of the largest roles of her career, Bacall is not always filmed as flatteringly as you'd expect, but the effect is rather refreshing. Her face looks terrifically lived-in, and her still-striking looks serve as a welcome change from the botoxed mannequins we've grown used to. Playing a role that isn't perhaps much of a stretch, awfully good. So good in fact, that I kept wishing the film would just allow the story's natural character conflicts (an aging star grappling confronting loneliness, self-doubt, and vulnerability) play themselves out minus all the genre machinations.

Bacall's appearance on Garner's TV show The Rockford Files in 1979, followed by their re-appearance in Robert Altman's HealtH (1980) and yet again here in The Fan, really had gossip-columnist tongues wagging about a romance between the two

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

The '80s come vividly alive in the film's Broadway musical sequences, which are sort of Solid Gold meets Can't Stop The Music. As would be the case with the Broadway musical numbers in 1983s Staying Alive, it's near-impossible to imagine just what kind of Broadway this could be, as the numbers look more appropriate to a Las Vegas revue. But they left me wanting more. not less. (I feel safe in saying I'm likely the only person who felt that way.)

A Remarkable Woman

Hearts, Not Diamonds

Disco Bacall - Has to be seen (and heard) to be believed

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I've never considered The Fan to be as bad a film as its reputation has led people to believe. Its screenplay is clichéd to be sure (the stage doorman is actually named “Pop”) and the violence needlessly gruesome for such a visually distinguished and stylish film (Bianchi’s music video background is in full evidence), but with a provocative theme and talented cast, The Fan has quite a bit going for it even with its flaws. 

One might have wished for a little more finesse in the areas of motivation and character, but I seriously have a soft spot in my heart for this movie...mostly centered around the Broadway setting, the images of a still gritty and grimy New York, and reminders of my early years in dance. And, of course, it really is great to see late-career Bacall–with that amazing Gena Rowlands-like mane of hair–command the screen once more. Who was it that said, "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be"?

BONUS MATERIAL

THE QUEEN OF BROADWAY
The Fan opened in theaters in May of 1981, Bacall's Broadway musical return in Woman of the Year (granting her a second Tony Award win following her Tony Award-winning turn in Applause in 1970) was in March. For a brief time, Bacall enjoyed the rare distinction of having her name appear on side-by-side marquees. (photo: Walter McBride)

"Deep Brewed Flavah!"

During the '80s Lauren Bacall's commercials for High Point instant coffee were the stuff of lampoon legend. In honor of The Fan, here's one of her most Sally Ross "theatah"- themed ones. HERE 

Before "Be a Pepper!" became the company's slogan, Dr. Pepper was sold as "The Most Original Soft Drink Ever." Edward Bianchi directed this stylish and award-winning commercial from 1975. HERE

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2015

THE FAN 1981

If theater geeks and Glee habitués ever longed for their own 80s slasher film, then The Fan fits the Playbill, so to speak. This unappetizingly violent, yet oh-so delectable blend of backstage musical, slasher-thriller, and woman-in-peril melodrama (to borrow a line from one of the Louis St. Louis [Grease 2] showtunes crooned over the course of the film), “Got no love” when released in the spring of 1981, but is deserving of rediscovery. 

And the audience LOVES me! And I love them! And they love me for lovin' them and I love them for lovin' me. And we love each other! And that's 'cause none of us got enough love in our childhoods. And that's showbiz...kid!
(This Fred Ebb lyric pretty much encapsulates the psychological backstory of The Fan)

No low-budget gore-fest populated by a cast of nondescript teens stalked by a masked phantom, The Fan was A-List all the way. It had then-hot-as-a-firecracker producer Robert Stigwood (Grease); a sizable budget; great Manhattan locations and a distinguished cast of New York actors; and pedigreed Broadway composers (Marvin Hamlisch and Tim Rice contributed two songs).
It also had and up-and-coming creative team comprised of TV commercial/music video director Edward Bianchi (making his feature film debut), and choreographer Arlene Philips (Can’t StopThe Music, Annie). The production was conceived as a stylish, Hitchcockian thriller along the lines of Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) and Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980).

Lauren Bacall as Sally Ross

Michael Biehn as Douglas Breen

James Garner as Jake Berman

Maureen Stapleton as Belle Goldman

Hector Elizondo as Inspector Raphael Andrews

Unfortunately, somewhere along the path from screenplay to movie-house, The Fan transmutated into something which simultaneously confounded and confused. Star Bacall claimed the final film turned out to be bloodier and a great deal more graphic than the initial screenplay indicated, thereby turning off her audience base. Meanwhile, the typical youth-based demographic for slasher films like Halloween and Friday the 13th had a hard time relating to The Fan’s largely middle-aged cast and theater world setting.

Of course, what proved most grievously detrimental to The Fan’s ultimate public reception was the December 1980 shooting death of John Lennon by an obsessed fan (The Fan, having wrapped that summer, was already in post-production). This tragedy was followed by the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in March of 1981 by a fan obsessed with actress Jodie Foster. This happened just two months before The Fan's May 1981 release date. Further compounding the whole reality vs. fiction creep-out factor of all this was the fact that Bacall, portraying a Broadway star opening in a new musical, was at the time indeed opening on Broadway in the musical, Woman of the Year (March, 1981). As if that wasn't already too much too-close-for comfort coincidence, Bacall happened also to be a resident of The Dakota apartments, the very site of Lennon’s fatal shooting (and the birthplace of the Antichrist in Rosemary's Baby; but let's not confuse fantasy with reality any more than we have to at this point).

 The Fan makes use of a great many terrific Manhattan locations. Here, the famed Shubert Theater serves as the site of Sally Ross's opening night in Never Say Never, the fictional musical that provides so much of  The Fan's camptastic eye candy

Depending on how cynical one was, the general atmosphere at the time couldn't have been better or worse for the release of a film about a star drawing the homicidal attentions of an obsessed fan. Paramount, perhaps to its discredit, chose not to postpone the release of The Fan and instead instead distributed theatrical trailers featuring a disclaimer stating that in no way was The Fan inspired by the tragic death of John Lennon. An act which actually served to  to remind people of the Lennon tragedy under the guise of distancing itself from it. Whether seen as sensitive or in poor taste, in the end it didn't really matter.

This starkly simplistic (aka: cheap) graphic looks more appropriate to an Italian gaillo cheapie

Torpedoed by probably one of the worst posters in recent memory and mixed to pan reviews, The Fan continued on its inexorably jinxed, undeserved course to obscurity. 

Alienating the very audience that might most be interested in seeing a film offering up healthy doses of musical theater, showtunes, tight male bodies in various states of undress, and Lauren Bacall in full Margo Channing mode; The Fan drew the ire of many Gay Rights groups with its self-loathing, not-so-latent homosexual stalker. After the release of Windows in 1980 - a film about a lesbian psychopath, and Cruising in 1981 - about a gay psychopath, nobody was really waiting with bated breath for another film which portrayed gays as slice-'em-dice-'em psychos

Celebrity and fan obsession is a compellingly intriguing topic for a thriller. The whole codependent, love/hate, need/resent, fear/envy aspect of the “relationship” between the famous and the adoring public is ripe fodder for film treatment. The connection between celebrity and fan is a "relationship," by design and necessity, doomed forever to be one-sided: the fan feels an intimate kinship with someone who doesn't know they exist. Perhaps because of this imaginary, essentially hungry, connection, it's no surprise then how quickly fawning fandom can change to bilious hate if the fan’s attentions are even marginally rebuffed.

I’m reminded of a scene in Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy (a marvelously dark black comedy about fan obsession that would make a great double-bill with The Fan) in which talk-show host Jerry Lewis is walking down the street. When asked by a fan at a public phone to say a few words to her friend on the line, he politely demurs, claiming that he's running late. At this point, the seconds-ago adoring fan flips to bile-spewing enemy, shouting “You should only get cancer! I hope you get cancer!” Yikes! 
But such is the mercurial, frighteningly delicate line between love and hate that is fandom and celebrity obsession. Had The Fan set its sights on examining this already terrifying dynamic in the form of a strict psychological thriller, it had the potential for providing an insightful, genuinely chilling look at our increasingly celebrity-obsessed culture. In going the slasher/stalker route, The Fan cheapens and sensationalizes the material, making the events appear more remote and unlikely than in reality they are. 

Anyone who has ever attended a celebrity autograph convention or looked at the crowds outside of a movie premiere knows how Day of the Locust-like and unnerving celebrity-worship feels. There are so many things The Fan does right (depicting the many ways in which the famous are vulnerable to the public, conveying how the promise held forth by fame-culture fuels a never-to-be-satiated hunger in fans) but in not trusting the inherent, subtle creepiness of the material as is, misses a terrific opportunity to scare us with a bracing look at ourselves.

The Celebrity Conundrum
Nothing angers a worshipper of celebrity more than listening to the famous gripe about how much they hate all the attention that comes with celebrity

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

What brings me back to The Fan time and time again are its many sequences depicting the behind-the-scenes creation of the fictional Broadway musical Never Say Never, which is to be star Sally Ross’ singing and dancing debut. What with its use of recognized Broadway dancers, NY locations, and knowing attention to procedural detail; the feel is very authentic, very 80s, and very stylishly evoked. I find these scenes a bit camp to be sure (what with all those legwarmers and Arlene Philips' trademark Hot Gossip choreography), but I have to say all of it contributes to giving us a refreshingly novel backdrop for a suspense thriller. Silly as they may be, they are also terrifically fun. Of course it doesn't hurt that I saw this film during my early days as a dancer, or that in 1983, when I took my first trip to New York, I studied dance at Jo Jo's, the studio featured in the film.

Cheek to Cheek
That's Kurt Johnson providing literal backup to Lauren Bacall as she sings " A Remarkable Woman," one of two Marvin Hamlisch/Tim Rice compositions introduced in the film

All The Boys Love Sally
Broadway dancer Justin Ross (l.) appeared in the film version of A Chorus Line, and dancer Reed Jones (r.) originated the role of Skimbleshanks in the original Broadway production of Cats 

PERFORMANCES

If you’re going to make a film about the kind of classic Hollywood star capable of inciting the flames of obsessive fandom, you can't do much better than all-around class-act, Lauren Bacall. Her gravitas as a full-fledged movie star from the golden era gives The Fan a shot of instant legitimacy every time she appears. In one of the largest roles of her career, Bacall is really very good at portraying a character not very far removed from what the public perceives her to be. She is so good in fact, that I kept wishing the film would just allow for the basic character drama of this ageing star grappling with loneliness, self-doubt, and vulnerability, play itself out minus all the genre machinations.

The charmingly lived-in romance of James Garner and Lauren Bacall is a welcome change from the  usual blank-faced couplings of callow youths typically found in slasher films 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

The '80s come vividly alive in the film's Broadway musical sequences, which are sort of Solid Gold meets Can't Stop The Music. I don't care if I enjoy these sequences for all the wrong reasons, they're a hoot and absolutely fantastic!

A Remarkable Woman

More Like Hot Flash, Baby, Tonight
I saw The Fan the night it opened at Mann's Chinese Theater in L.A., and I swear,  the entire audience did a collective spit-take when Ms. Bacall launched into this hilariously inappropriate disco-ditty.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I've never considered The Fan to be as bad a film as its reputation has led people to believe. Its screenplay is clichéd to be sure (the stage doorman is actually named “Pop”) and the violence needlessly gruesome for such a visually distinguished and stylish film (Bianchi’s music video background is in full, glossy evidence), But with a provocative theme and talented cast, The Fan has quite a bit going for it even with its flaws. One might have wished for a little more finesse in the areas of motivation and character, but I seriously have a soft spot in my heart for this movie...mostly centered around the Broadway setting, the images of a still gritty and grimy New York, and reminders of my early years in dance. Who was it that said, "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be"?

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2012