THE TOWERING INFERNO 1974

"Did you leave a cigarette burning?"

Here in L.A., one of our tallest downtown skyscrapers has an attraction that allows visitors to ride a slide from its 70^th to 69^th floor: an enclosed, apparent glass slide attached to the outside of the building. In other words, one gets to pay for the privilege of crapping one's pants 1,000 feet in the air.

But back in the '70s, those of us in search of less first-hand high-rise thrills were happy to content ourselves with The Towering Inferno: producer Irwin Allen's $14 million follow-up to his wildly successful The Poseidon Adventure (1972). It was 1974, and the disaster film craze was in full swing. October saw the release of Airport '75 ("The stewardess is flying the plane!"); November gave us Earthquake ("In Sensurround!"), and we saw the year out with the big  December Christmas release, The Towering Inferno.

Everything about The Towering Inferno was a one-upmanship of the standard disaster film. It was adapted from not one, but two novels (The Tower by Richard Martin Stern & The Glass Inferno by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson); it boasted two directors (John Guillermin for the acting, Irwin Allen for the action); and was such a massively expensive undertaking that it brought about the historic collaboration of Warner Bros. and 20^th Century-Fox (successfully circumventing a replay of the "Dueling Harlows" situation of 1965 when competing studios raced to release two films about actress Jean Harlow at the same time). The Towering Inferno was to be Hollywood's heavily-hyped holiday season release, promising to be the ultimate "Big, Bigger, Biggest!" cherry atop the disaster film catastrophe cake.

And, as it turns out, The Towering Inferno—which garnered eight Academy Award nominations and became one of the year's highest-grossing films—did indeed represent the genre at its peak. Its sheer scope, star-wattage, and pull-out-the-stops excesses signifying perhaps the most to which the genre could ever reasonably aspire. Its ambitious scale and overall professional (albeit, old-fashioned) competency standing as something of a bellwether for the genre's eventual decline into oversaturation, mediocrity, and unintentional self-parody.

"It's out of control and it's coming your way!"

Truer words were never spoken. On the evening of the gala dedication ceremony for The Glass Tower—San Francisco's newest skyscraper and the tallest building in the world—an electrical fire breaks out in a utility room (Building developer: "You're not familiar with the many modern safety systems we have designed into this building"); faster than you can say "Titanic," all hell breaks loose…literally. To quote the film's ad copy, "One tiny spark becomes a night of blazing suspense" as 300 well-heeled revelers in highly flammable '70s synthetics become trapped on the building's top floor with nothing but Maureen McGovern for entertainment, and ever-diminishing options available for escape. What to do? What to do?

Panic at the Disco

Well, what The Towering Inferno does (and very well, thank you) is to let this open-flame potboiler play out in a manner not dissimilar to that of an old Busby Berkeley musical. The tried-and-true pattern for those films was to introduce the players, hastily establish their superficial-to-inconsequential interrelationships and conflicts, then spend the rest of the movie interspersing the formulaic narrative complications and resolutions between musical numbers of intensifying extravagance and excess. A little plot, a musical number...a little more plot, a slightly bigger musical number, etc.; …all leading to a big, splashy finale featuring multitudes of people until, finally, all ends well with a romantic clinch at fade-out.

The Towering Inferno follows this pattern pretty closely…only with explosions, falls from great heights, and gruesome, fiery deaths taking the place of production numbers. The result is a disaster film clocking in at over 2 ½ hours that, while occasionally getting bogged down in technical dialogue and repetition (eliminate all the footage of firefighters climbing stairs, and this movie would be about 60 minutes), moves at a surprisingly brisk and exciting pace.

Since the title already clues us in that the building is going to go up like a matchstick, the film doesn't waste any time trying to build false suspense by pretending to be about anything else. We're introduced to the setting, The Glass Tower: a near-literal imposing erection jutting phallically from the testicular San Francisco hills. A building whose façade is shimmering gold and whose interior is an eye-strain symphony of '70s game-show orange. Residents occupy the floors above the 81^st, and lower floors are devoted to commercial tenants (including the building's developer, Duncan Enterprises—they of the Starship Enterprise interior design and bedroom-equipped executive offices). With the "where" established, The Towering Inferno moves on to introducing the "who" by means of cinema shorthand: aka clichés.

Paul Newman as Doug Roberts - "The Architect"

First, we get the hero architect (Newman). We know he's the hero because while everyone else wears suits and ties, he's the lone maverick in orange and suede. Cut from the same iconoclastic mold as those confrontational individualists in the Winston cigarette ads of the day ("I don't smoke to be like everybody else" was typical ad copy). Newman and his trademark squint play a sun-bronzed Thoreau ready to say goodbye to his lucrative career so he can live the simple life in Mendocino County and "Sleep like a winner."

Faye Dunaway as Susan Franklin, "The Girlfriend"

The curvy speedbump preventing Newman from beating as hasty a retreat to the good life as he'd like is magazine editor Faye Dunaway. The movie poster identifies her as "the girlfriend," and that's precisely the breadth, scope, and function of her role in the film. Randy Paul Newman wants to runaway with Dunaway to a place where their hypothetical children "…can run around and grow and be free." But post-afternoon delight, the career-minded Dunaway informs him that she's just been offered a much longed-for promotion ("That's nice…," is his invalidating response). Newman wants her to be with him (and do what? we ask ourselves), but Dunaway, perhaps anticipating what lies in store for her in Network, is not keen to give her executive promotion the kiss-off so soon. Guess which one of the two isn't placed in the position of having to make a decision?

William Holden as James Duncan "The Builder"

The tempter to Newman's antagonist is boss William Holden. He tries to persuade Newman to stay so that together they can build bigger and better firetraps—I mean, skyscrapers…all over the world. But Holden is a man of questionable integrity with dollar signs in his eyes. Something we can all easily observe for ourselves thanks to his ginormous eyeglasses.

Steve McQueen as Michael O'Hallorhan "The Fire Chief"

Once things start to heat up, good guy fireman Steve McQueen arrives on the scene as the film's moral mentor. His duty is to deliver a lot of common-sense, life-saving fire safety advice to the audience, finger wag at the corporate bottom-liners, and serve as the occasional big prick to Newman's vulnerable, exposed, quivering conscience.

Richard Chamberlain as Roger Simmons "The Son-In-Law"

The villain of the piece is electrical contractor Richard Chamberlain. The big bad guy tipoff being that within minutes of his entrance, he delivers a Neely O'Hara-ish speech about not needing God or anybody else's help, and how he didn't get through life on a pass because of his good cheekbones and damn classy looks. (Although, in truth, Chamberlain's snare-drum-tight face has been pulled so taut, his exceptional cheekbones genuinely look in danger of cutting straight through the flesh.) Chamberlain's snakish character is written as such an unrelentingly rotten ol' meanie; at any moment, one expects him to materialize in a cape and top hat, twirling a mustache.

Susan Blakely as Patty Simmons "The Wife"

To make him seem even meaner, Chamberlain is given a Good Woman (Susan Blakely); a beautiful but unaccountably loyal spouse given to hurt looks, aqueous glances, and a knack for saying precisely the wrong thing at the wrong time. That she also happens to be the boss's daughter adds a backstory of guile and purpose-fucking to Chamberlain's already slimy resume.

Now we come to the supporting characters. The ones who exist primarily to drum up additional human interest, boost the potential body count, and attract the ancillary demographics necessary to make a movie this costly into a hit. 

O.J. Simpson as Jernigan "The Murderer"...oops! I mean "The Security Man"

For ethnic appeal and to draw the athletic supporters, there's football player, would-be Hertz pitchman, and future felon O.J. Simpson as the tower's chief of security. On the plus side, at least he's not one of those noble, self-sacrificing, first-to-die Black characters Hollywood holds so dear. On the minus, the man gives a performance of kindling-level woodenness. 

Jennifer Jones as Lisolette Mueller "The Widow"
Fred Astaire as Harlee Claiborne "The Con Man"

For the classic Hollywood fans, we have Golden Years love interests, Fred Astaire and Jennifer Jones as an adorable, twinkly-wrinkly couple. He's a fraud bonds salesman, so Astaire gets to mine the charming chicanery of Airport's Ada Quonset (and, like Helen Hayes in that film, win himself an Oscar nomination in the process). Playing a good-hearted widow with lots of dough, Oscar-winner Jennifer Jones, last seen on movie screens embarrassing herself in the youth-flick exploitationer Angel, Angel, Down We Go (1969), gets to mine the selfless sympathy factor of The Poseidon Adventure's Belle Rosen (Shelley Winters). 

Robert Wagner as Dan Bigelow "The Publicity Man"
Susan Flannery as Lorrie "The Secretary"

And what would a disaster film be without a dose of sex=death guilt retribution? Overemployed non-entity Robert Wagner plays an executive who goes to great (read: fatal) pains to conceal the far from earth-shattering fact that he's boffing his secretary (Days of Our Lives star Susan Flannery). The high degree of secrecy these two engage in doesn't make much sense. They turn off their phones, lie to co-workers, and do not tell anyone where they are. Why? Neither appears to be married, it's the sexual revolution '70s, and Wagner's company obliges by outfitting his office with a big ol', tackily decorated bedroom. It would make more sense for this couple to dispense with all the needless extracurricular subterfuge and simply put the sexual overtime on their time cards.

Rounding out The Towering Inferno's parade of potentially soon-to-be-incinerated stars is the equally-innocuous Robert Vaughn (far right) as a senator, and, balancing a tower of her own, Irwin Allen's paramour of 14 years (and soon to be Mrs. Allen) actress Sheila Mathews as the mayor's way-too-many-close-ups-for-the-size-of-her-role wife.

Did I mention there are also children and a cat? Yes, children and animals are as inevitable in disaster movies as Oscar-bait theme songs (this film's "We May Never Love Like This Again" actually hooked the prize). As the ubiquitous pet in need of rescue, we have Elke, the cat. And as what appear to be the only children in the entire building, there's Bobby Brady (Mike Lookinland) and a little girl who has trouble not looking into the camera lens (Carlena Gower). 

As a side note, I have to say I'm personally indebted to that little camera-staring girl. Had Jennifer Jones not been obliged to hoist that tyke around on her hip in take after take for weeks upon end, the late Miss Jones wouldn't have developed the enduring lower back problems that necessitated her seeking out my services as a personal trainer in the '90s. Jones' back ultimately improved, and I got the opportunity to briefly know one of my favorite movie stars. So…thanks, kid!

Once the cast and conflicts are assembled—honorable mention going to the two buddy cops and Carlos, the bartender who never takes a break (Sanford & Sons' Gregory Sierra)—it's just a matter of rolling out the catastrophes and conflagrations. Something The Towering Inferno manages rather spectacularly and as regularly as clockwork.

The bulk of The Towering Inferno is comprised of variations on the following:

1. Hey! There's a fire!

2. Deny, deny, deny.

3. Get those people outta there!

4. No, not that way!
5. Boom!

6. Is it me, or is it really hot in here?

7. Climb, climb, climb!

8. Whoops! There goes the stairwell/elevator/helicopter/breeches buoy.
9. Faye Dunaway consoling terrified guests (i.e., extras) by ensuring their heads are turned well away from the terrifying gaze of the camera.

"There, there...I won't let that nasty old cameraman get at you." 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

"For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like." 

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie 

Amended: If you like disaster movies, The Towering Inferno is one of the best examples of the genre you're likely to find. Thank you, Miss Brodie.

If asked to pick the disaster movie I get the biggest kick out of, The Poseidon Adventure gets my vote for pure entertainment and camp value—it's like the Valley of the Dolls of disaster films. But when it comes to genuine drama, breathtaking stunts, spectacular effects, and the kind of larger-than-life scale that makes you feel like a kid oohing and ahhing over the sheer magnitude of the undertaking; The Towering Inferno really delivers the goods. 

Seeing it now, it's a good deal talkier, tin-eared, and over-infatuated with the detailed minutiae of firefighting than I remember; but its clear-cut objective is so simple there's almost a purity to it. It simply wants to be one of the biggest, most exciting, star-studded, thrill-a-minute adventure spectacles ever committed to film. And it succeeds!

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

In the cynical, serious, often dark, frequently downright bizarre atmosphere of New Hollywood '70s cinema, you have no idea what a breath of fresh air these mindless disaster movies were. They were Hollywood at its most formulaic and old-fashioned, and that's precisely what I loved about them. 

Being a San Francisco kid (teen, actually), I was especially excited about the release of The Towering Inferno because news of its production came out about a year after the completion of the controversial Transamerica Pyramid, then, at 48-stories, the tallest building in the city. 

The San Francisco skyline was changing—The Embarcadero also had a 45-story high-rise and more on the way—and there was great concern as to the soundness of so many tall buildings in a city as earthquake-prone as S.F. (I remember a local radio station promoted itself with the slogan "The city that waits to die listens to...." Yikes! That always bothered the hell out of me).

Like many films that achieve success by striking just the right chord of anxiety at the right time, The Towering Inferno had the feel of immediacy about it. A feeling I latched onto and ran with.

I was so taken with this movie I made a point of making sure I'd read BOTH novels before the film came out; I tacked up homemade posters promoting the movie on the bulletin board in my high school's library; I bought every movie magazine that had even the most minor article or photo about it: and when I walked home from school, I always went the route that took me by the movie theater with the advance posters and lobby cards on display.

The Towering Inferno had its West Coast premiere at San Francisco's Alexandria Theater on Thursday, December 19th, and a friend and I desperately wanted to go to gawk from the sidelines (Lights! Music! Stars! Celebrities! Television! Radio!), but that idea was nixed because it was a school night. We eventually saw The Towering Inferno during its opening weekend and were absolutely floored. Even then, there was no mistaking it for a great film or anything, but it was one of those eye-popping "event" movie experiences I'll never forget. I saw the film at least four times over that Christmas holiday, and for many years after, I kept the souvenir program I'd purchased at the first screening.

PERFORMANCES
When people get prickly over criticism of their favorite disaster movies, a typical defense is that no one goes to these movies to see great acting. Well, that's not altogether true. You may not go expecting Sarah Bernhardt-level emoting, but you do rely on a certain level of competent credibility in the performances to heighten the experience and draw you into the narrative. In the same way that believable stunts and convincing special effects enhance a film's thrill, actors capable of making sketchily drawn characters seem real enough to care about are invaluable assets. If you don't think so, take a look at Irwin Allen's The Swarm sometime.

For my money, Faye Dunaway stands out as the most overqualified for her role, Steve McQueen the most compelling, and Paul Newman is just a pleasure to look at...period. But by and large, I think everyone in the film acquits themselves nicely, with Academy Award-nominated Fred Astaire being a sentimental favorite.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
As big a fan of the genre as I was in the '70s, disaster movies hold a curious place for me now. When I'm not enjoying them purely for their camp and/or nostalgia value, I'm struck by how quickly they went from being entertaining action/adventure films to being these somewhat morbid "body count" spectacles. Latter films in the played-out genre seemed to exist solely to showcase the means and number of elaborately-staged deaths. 

On a purely personal, subjective note, one of my favorite things about The Towering Inferno is its setting. The tower itself is genuinely impressive, what with all those flames shooting out of it at dazzlingly photogenic angles. And the interior decor is so hideous, it's actually something of a pleasure to see it all go up in flames. The glam fan in me loves that this high-rise catastrophe takes place during a ritzy formal function. The result: the film is a virtual symphony of billowing chiffon, feather boas, clunky platform disco shoes, and towering hair sculptures.

Given a nothing role, Faye Dunaway and her legendary bone structure (and that
amazing dress) still effortlessly managed to upstage everything else

From a film buff's perspective, it's also a great deal of fun seeing if you catch and count which stars in the film have worked with each other in the past (hint: Love is a Many Splendored Thing) or would again in the future (hint: Airport '79).
The Towering Inferno endures for me as the last of the genre to be sincere enough to play it straight and attempt to balance human drama with spectacular action.

BONUS MATERIAL

The Towering Inferno - 1974

Angel, Angel, Down We Go -1969

A regular reader of this blog (Thanks, Wille!) brought to my attention that the gown Jennifer Jones wears in The Towering Inferno (top image) bears a resemblance to an outfit she wears in 1969's Angel, Angel, Down We Go (bottom image). Jones' Towering Inferno gown was designed by longtime Irwin Allen costume designer Paul Zastupnevich. The outfit she wears in the lower photo is actually an evening pants suit with a tunic top designed by five-time Oscar-nominated costume designer Renie (pronounced Renay... wouldn't you know it?). You can see costume sketches for The Towering Inferno by clicking on the link to The Irwin Allen News Network below.

The internet offers a wealth of sources for those interested in reading about the production, the rivalries, and all manner of behind-the-scenes trivia regarding The Towering Inferno.

The Towering Inferno Archive
The Irwin Allen News Network

Gossip: Paul Newman Meets Steve McQueen

Poseidon's Underworld: The Towering Inferno

The film was so popular a student drew from it
 for audition material in Alan Parker's Fame (1980)

Burn, Baby, Burn
Gotta love that this movie inspired the 1976 disco classic Disco Inferno by The Trammps

Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 20016

ANGEL, ANGEL, DOWN WE GO 1969

In my previous post about the James Cagney / Doris Day film Love Me or Leave Me, my praise for Doris Day's remarkably accomplished, against-type assaying of the dramatically intense role of Jazz-Age songstress Ruth Etting was followed up by a lengthy harangue about stars who play it safe and fail to venture very far beyond the narrow parameters of their carefully crafted images. An extremely talented actress and singer, Day's choice of film roles certainly helped sustain her career (she worked that fresh-faced, girl-next-door thing well into middle age). But in sticking so closely to type, there's no denying that the sugary-sweet sameness of so many of the characters she played hardly tapped into her obvious versatility and dramatic range. Doris Day is so effective in playing a not-so-nice character that it led me to further lament the perceived cultural loss of her having turned down the role of Mrs. Robinson (that sexually predatory, chain-smoking alcoholic) in Mike Nichols' The Graduate.

Of course, all this tsk-tsking about the failure of image-conscious Hollywood stars to take creative risks is a stance nurtured exclusively by memories of those instances where said risks actually paid off. Eternal ingénue Audrey Hepburn performed best in her career as a disillusioned wife in Stanley Donen's sophisticated Two For the Road (1967). And perennial sex-kitten Ann-Margret's moving portrayal of an aging party girl in Carnal Knowledge (1971) was so unexpected it garnered her an Oscar nomination.

My guess is that this was Jennifer Jones' mantra throughout
 the entire filming of Angel, Angel Down We Go

What tends to fade from memory are the far more plentiful instances wherein actors, in a sincere attempt to break from type, inflict untold damage to years of hard-won legitimacy and respect by taking on thankless roles that end up making them look more ridiculous than courageous.
One such doozy of a miscalculation is the aptly titled Angel, Angel, Down We Go, a film that sees Oscar-winner and member of old-school Hollywood royalty Jennifer Jones extend herself so far out on a wobbly limb that the only trajectory can be downward.

Angel, Angel, Down We Go is a marvelously loopy artifact from the age of culture-clash psychedelia, and a primo example of that weird transitional period in motion picture history (roughly 1966 through 1970) when it appeared at times as though Hollywood had completely lost its mind. How else to explain the green-lighting of a film that casts classy Jennifer Jones as a former porn star unhappily married to a gay industrialist (Charles Aidman); saddle her with an unwanted, overweight teenage daughter (Holly Near); and has her seduced by a Jim Morrison-esque rock star (Jordan Christopher)?

Released by American International Pictures (the Drive-In exhibitor's best friend) and penned by the same writer who delivered the 1968 sleeper hit Wild in the Streets; Angel, Angel, Down We Go is an exercise in youth-rebellion exploitation that didn't pay off back in 1969 but reaps considerable dividends today for being an astonishingly weird product of a time when Hollywood was seriously grasping at creative straws.

Jennifer Jones as Astrid Steele

Jordan Christopher as Bogart Peter Stuyvesant

Holly Near as Tara Nicole Steele

Charles Aidman as William Gardiner Steele

Rock star/mogul/cult leader Bogart Peter Stuyvesant ("My mother went into labor pains during a Bogart flick...she almost dropped me in the lobby!") first deflowers, then insinuates himself into the life of the unloved, overweight debutante, Tara Nicole Steele. Stuyvesant and his motley band of sky-diving cultists (an uncomfortable-looking Lou Rawls; obligatory pregnant flower child, Davey Davidson; and an underutilized but probably just-happy-not-to-be-wearing-monkey-makeup, Roddy McDowall) see in Tara a symbol of overindulged American excess. In her decadent parents, they see the personification of older-generation corruption and greed. 

Bogart Peter Stuyvesant & Co. have plans for this family, but beyond, perhaps, talking them to death, it's difficult to know just what the endgame is for the seriously unhinged young man. We know it has something to do with youth rebellion, but as to what form that rebellion is supposed to take, your guess is as good as mine. "You're insane!" people keep shouting at him, as though we hadn't noticed.
All I know is that along the way, Bogart sings a passel of pop/rock songs written by the Oscar-nominated songwriting team of Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann (Somewhere Out There), spouts a lot of anti-establishment gibberish, and in the end, winds up seducing mom, dad, and daughter. Not necessarily in that order.

"We say hip, hooray, hip. hip hooray for fat!"
The newly liberated Tara dances to Bogart's ode to corpulence: "The Fat Song." Barely considered chubby by today's Big-Gulp, Super-Size standards, 19-year-old Holly Near, making her film debut, gained five pounds for the role (the studio asked for 20). 

Angel, Angel, Down We Go is the screenwriting/directing debut of Yale graduate (so much for higher education) Robert Thom. Thom adapted the screenplay from an unproduced 1961 play he wrote for his wife Janice Rule. Yale's resume as a screenwriter is a mixed bag representing the good: All the Fine Young Cannibals: the bad: The Legend of Lylah Clare: and the unseen (by me) Death Race 2000. In speaking of what he intended with this film he explained he saw Angel Angel Down We Go as: "A far-out version of a  'The Green Hat'  (Michael Arlens) kind of play about a wild girl heading for destruction…a present-day type of F. Scott Fitzgerald heroine." (Source: Jennifer Jones: The Life and Films by Paul Green).

That it was adapted from a play certainly explains the film's talkiness (you've never encountered a lippier group of flower children in your life), but the rest of that quote is a bit of a stretch. Anyone detecting even a note of F. Scott Fitzgerald in this monumentally disjointed morass has likely gone the way of Zelda. Angel, Angel, Down We Go was Robert Thom's debut/swansong as a director.

Pills with an alcohol chaser accompany Jennifer Jones' explanation for why she named her daughter Tara. Meanwhile, David O. Selznick (Jones' recently-deceased real-life hubby and Gone With the Wind producer) can be heard spinning in his grave.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

The economic power of the newly-emboldened youth audience of the late '60s really threw old-guard Hollywood for a loop. Long out-of-touch and more concerned with capitalizing on the counterculture zeitgeist than trying to understand it; Hollywood during this period produced some of the oddest, most out-there films in the annals of cinema history. Angel, Angel, Down We Go is an unholy marriage of studio system aesthetics trying to pass itself off as an underground, college campus youth-rebellion flick. 

The result is a work of pandering insincerity that manages to alienate two potential audiences in one swing. Young people, the movie's principal target audience, must have found it "challenging" to have a movie about the morally corrupt over-30 set try to pass off 40-year-old Roddy McDowall and 35-year-old, receding-hairlined Lou Rawls as agents of an impending youth revolution. And the older movie-going public, those old enough to know and appreciate the name Jennifer Jones, must certainly have gone into apoplexy when confronted with so much profanity, drugs, sex, and bad rock music.

The Mild Bunch
(L.to R.) Soul singer Lou Rawls makes his embarrassing film debut as Joe. Jordan Christopher fronted the rock group "The Wild Ones" and was married to Sybil Burton (Richard's ex) at the time. Holly Near is a well-known folk singer and activist. As pregnant "teen" Anna Livia, Davey Davidson is known to fans of the sitcom Hazel, as Nancy, Mr. B's virginal niece. Roddy McDowall, as Santoro, was friends with director Robert Thom and must have owed him a favor.

For fans of bizarre cinema, however, all of the above are merely ingredients that went into creating one of the most obscenely entertaining train wrecks from a major studio. The kind of film that could not have been made at any other time in cinema history. Get a load of this dialogue:

Jennifer Jones shouting at her husband- "Oh, you're out of your Chinese skull!" (He's not Chinese.)

Jennifer Jones playing the truth game- "I made 30 stag films and never faked an orgasm!"

Jennifer Jones to her masseuse- "Stop it, Hopkins, you're hurting me. You're a bloody, sadistic dyke!" 

Jennifer Jones in a moment of self-reflection- "In my heart of hearts, I'm a sexual clam."

Jennifer Jones rebuffing the advances of the man who just bedded her daughter- "There's a word for you, but I don't think I even know what it is."

Yes, Miss Jones has the lion's share of the film's quotably bad dialogue. However, she delivers it with so much gusto and bite, one wonders if perhaps she thought she was appearing in another absurdist hoot like John Huston's Beat the Devil (1954). Unfortunately for her, Robert Thom is no Truman Capote.

Only in the Sixties 
My favorite film of five-time Oscar nominee Jennifer Jones is Madame Bovary (1949). Who would guess that 20 years later, the 49-year-old actress would appear in a film requiring she rest her head near the crotch of a 26-year-old, naked balladeer?

PERFORMANCES

Jennifer Jones in Angel, Angel, Down We Go is less an instance of against-type casting so much as it is "What the hell was she thinking?" casting. If you can get over the shock of seeing the star of The Song of Bernadette wallowing in the sordid gutter of sex and drugs exploitation, you can catch glimpses of a sensitive performance that never had a chance. She's particularly good in a scene where her character revisits the Santa Monica Pier cotton candy stand she worked at as a girl. Alas, the quiet moments in this film aren't allowed to last too long. 

The ever-refined Astrid Steele responds to her daughter complimenting
 her on being "The most beautiful woman in the world."

Watching an actress as good as Jennifer Jones in a film as crude and intentionally vulgar as this, you never get a chance to applaud her "bravery" in breaking out of her Selznick-Shell. Why? Because not only is the film so far beneath her, but you're never quite sure whether she's in on the joke. Her participation feels a little like it's part of a secret put-down, and you feel a little embarrassed for her. Angel, Angel, Down We Go joins the ranks of the many Hollywood films from this era that made it their business to present former leading ladies of the silver screen in as unflattering a light as possible: Lana Turner, The Big Cube (1969) / Eleanor Parker, Eye of the Cat (1969) / Rita Hayworth, The Naked Zoo (1970) / Miriam Hopkins, Savage Intruder (1970), and Mae West, Myra Breckinridge (1970).

"The Biggest Mother of Them All!"
Astrid builds up a head of indignant steam listening to Bogart's newest insult composition, the sprightly ditty, "Mother Lover." In the meantime, Tara nervously waits for the shit to hit the fan.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

One of the niftier byproducts of Hollywood's embracing of the economic potential of the sexual revolution was the industry's fascination with homosexuality, bisexuality, and narratives in which opportunistic young men sleep their way through entire families (Entertaining Mr. Sloane - 1970, Something for Everyone -1970, Teorema -1968). As I first saw Angel, Angel, Down We Go when it came out in 1969 and I was just 12 years old, what made the biggest impression on me, and contributed to my seeing it at least three times that summer, was the surprising amount of male nudity. It's one of those rare exploitation films where the women remain dressed and the guys doff their clothes left and right. The movie made absolutely no sense to me then (nor now, for that matter), but with all that male skin on parade, who was I to complain?

How can you hate a film whose first four minutes feature a girl's voiceover narration praising her perfect parents, only to have the idealized father appear in the shower with a young man! 

The ever-game Roddy McDowall shows that his celebrated boyish charm didn't stop at the neck. Co-star Lou Rawls threatened to walk off the production when asked to appear nude, telling the director to take it or leave it - "I worked ten years to get where I am, and I'm not going to destroy that image in 10 minutes."

After seducing the daughter and the mother, Bogart  (Jordan Christopher, bottom tier)
 literally takes the place of Mr. Steele's previous boy-toy (top tier, actor unknown).

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Filmed in February of 1968, Angel, Angel, Down We Go was released in August of 1969, the same month as the Manson murders. This was the film's title when I saw it at San Francisco's Embassy Theater in early 1970 on a double bill with Easy Rider (2 New Youth Hits! the marquee read). A year or so later, I'd heard it was redubbed Cult of the Damned and re-released in a tasteless effort to capitalize on the film's eerie similarities to the Manson case, whose trial was underway. 

Jordan Christopher was just one of several actors (among them Christopher Jones and Michael Parks) that tried hard to work a James Dean vibe in late '60s exploitation films

A bomb under either title, Angel, Angel, Down We Go, has more or less disappeared into what some might call well-deserved obscurity. But for those with a taste for the bizarre, a taste for the jaw-droppingly weird, a taste for the clumsy collision of old Hollywood and the shape of things to come…well, Angel, Angel, Down We Go is a psychedelic mind trip well worth taking.

Much of Angel, Angel, Down We Go was shot at a Beverly Hills mansion that once belonged to Marion Davies. 

Literally high on drugs, Tara finds she can't get down from the ceiling
(I told you this movie was weird).

NAME DROPPER'S CORNER

In the mid-'90s, I worked as a personal fitness trainer for the late Jennifer Jones. She had developed a lingering back problem from hoisting a little girl up and down many flights of stairs in The Towering Inferno (1974 ) and she worked out 5 days a week to keep strong and stay in shape. I remember her as an extremely gracious lady with a wonderful sense of humor and terrific discipline when it came to exercise. 

She lived in a high style not at all dissimilar to the character she played in this film (her home was a veritable museum of priceless art. She had a round-the-clock staff of security guards. And she had her hair done every day, her personal hairdresser usually arriving as I was departing). After working with her for some time, I found the courage to tell her that Angel, Angel, Down We Go was the first film of hers I'd ever seen. Laughing, her response to me was, "I'm sorry to hear that. I'm afraid I might owe you an apology." When I said that it inspired me to see her other films, told me, "I'm glad of that. But I hope you've forgotten about it...I certainly have."

As much as I wanted to bring the subject up again over the next few months (I wanted to know what everyone wants to know when they see this movie, "What possessed you?"), I nevertheless erred on the side of caution and kept my mouth shut on the topic. It felt like the polite and professional thing to do, but it certainly did nothing for satisfying my film-geek curiosity.

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