THE LAST OF SHEILA 1973

“Just goes to show what can be accomplished when a bunch of closeted gay men put their heads together!”                     Overheard following a screening of The Last of Sheila

In 1973 Stephen Sondheim, Anthony Perkins, and Herbert Ross—three closeted gay men working in the entertainment business who knew a thing or two about keeping secrets—collaborated on The Last of Sheila; an Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery (crossed with a touch of All About Eve vitriol) set aboard a luxury yacht on the French Riviera. 

The Last of Sheila came about after one-time choreographer Herbert Ross (Funny Girl) turned his talents to producing and directing (The Owl and the Pussycat, The Turning Point) and persuaded Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim (Company, Follies) to channel his extracurricular passion for inventing elaborate games and puzzles into a movie project. To that end, Sondheim, who at the time was working on the Broadway musical A Little Night Music, sought the help of friend and frequent game collaborator Anthony Perkins (then filming Play It as It Lays) and the two devised a brain-teasing murder mystery thrilling enough to be entertaining, and intricate enough so that audiences could play along with the characters in the film.

An early first-draft from these two first-time screenwriters had the mystery take place between business associates over the course of a snow-bound weekend in Long Island, but at Ross’ suggestion the setting was switched to the more picturesque south of France, and the game-playing participants changed from button-down businessmen to a glamorous, in-joke cross-section of Hollywood movie industry types.

James Coburn as sharkish movie producer Clinton Green

Joan Hackett as heiress and Hollywood outsider Lee Parkman

Richard Benjamin as floundering screenwriter Tom Parkman

Raquel Welch as glamorous movie star Alice Wood

Ian McShane as Anthony Wood, Alice's ambitious manager husband

Dyan Cannon as pushy talent agent, Christine

James Mason as once-famous director Philip Dexter

On the anniversary of the night his gossip-columnist wife Sheila Green (Yvonne Romain) was killed in a hit and run accident near their Bel-Air home, movie producer Clinton Green (Coburn) invites six friends –—five of whom were party guests at his home that fateful night—to spend a week aboard his yacht (The Sheila) on the Rivera. A gathering that promises to be part vacation, part memorial, and part career-carrot dangled under the noses of a gaggle of show business opportunists. Opportunists willing to subject themselves to a week of sadistic game-playing in hopes of being offered a job on the film Clinton is planning to make about the life of his late, not-exactly-lamented wife. A film to be titled “The Last of Sheila.”

This being a murder mystery, the murder half gets underway when, in the course of playing an elaborate, subtly cruel, detective/gossip game in which each player is assigned a gossipy secret the others are in a race to discover first, one of the participants winds up dead. The mystery revolves around the true inspiration for Clinton's game—the public exposure of the identity of his wife's killer—and whether or not that person or persons is willing to go to even greater lengths to keep their secret a secret. Thus, with a party of individuals gathered to an isolated setting for the purpose of unearthing who among them is a killer, the stage has been for the subsequent rise in the body count, the typical-for-the-genre tearful confessions, to to-be-expected heated incriminations, and skeletons tumbling out of closets faster than you can say whodunit.

The ability to watch and rewatch The Last of Sheila on DVD has revealed it to be a much sharper and smarter film than it was credited with being when first released. Virtually every single frame and bit of character business reveal information pertaining to the overall mystery.

The Last of Sheila is a cinema rarity: a real corker of a murder mystery that not only plays fair with the viewer, but isn't so rote and predictable that it tips its hand in the first five minutes. A nesting-doll kind of mystery in which assembled characters enticed into participating in a guessing game just for the fun of it, soon find themselves forced to employ equivalent stratagems of detection and gamesmanship to unearth the truth behind an actual murder. A clever murder mystery that we in the audience are invited to participate in solving. Sondheim and Perkins serve as our “Clinton Green”; peppering their film with visual and verbal clues which, should we be swift enough to pick up on, will guide us to the solution to the mystery.

And if, as many critics cited at the time, you find The Last of Sheila lacks the humanity necessary to make this "Agatha Christie on the Riviera" whodunit more than just an entertaining exercise in intellectual gymnastics (a common critical complaint was that the characters are all so despicable, you don’t give a hoot about trying to solve the mystery because you couldn’t care less whodunit or who it’s about to be done to); let it be known that time has been kind to The Last of Sheila.

And by that I mean, not only is it a kick to see popular '70s stars like Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, and Raquel Welch all in the same film, but the characters and their deep, dark secrets they're willing to kill to conceal are almost quaint when compared to the kind of scandals celebrities boastfully tweet about these days. Most significantly, the contemporary ability to rewind, rewatch and reexamine The Last of Sheila, a film about whose mystery critic Rex Reed observed “…requires a postgraduate degree in hieroglyphics to figure out,”  has made watching the film a considerably less frustrating experience now than it was back in 1973.

Let the Games Begin: Making The Last of Sheila was Murder
The original boat sank before filming. Original cinematographer Ernest Day (A Clockwork Orange) was fired after a week. Joan Hackett refused to say certain lines of dialogue and was nearly replaced by Lee Remick. The Arab terrorist group Black September threatened to blow up the set. James Mason couldn't stand Raquel Welch. Welch ruffled the feathers of costume designer Joel Schumacher (later the director of Batman & Robin) by arriving with her entire wardrobe already designed and fitted by her boyfriend, Ron Talsky. Welch (my, her name does keep popping up, doesn't it?) temporarily halted production when she walked off the film threatening to sue director Herbert Ross for assault and battery.

The Last of Sheila was made in the '70s, so it practically goes without saying that a post-Watergate cynicism and asserted preoccupation with exposing the ugly side of the lives of the Rich & Famous runs like an undercurrent throughout the film.

Hollywood is never at its most naïve than when it thinks it has to ratchet up the heartlessness in an attempt to dramatize for us plebeians what a phony, anything-for-a-buck business it is. The joke of course has always been that only Hollywood thinks its celluloid soul and cash register heart are well-kept secrets. Most anyone over the age of 12 has a pretty clear-eyed grasp of how unprincipled an industry it is, and after years of “seedy underbelly” exposés like: S.O.B., The Day of the Locust, Burn Hollywood Burn, The Bad & the Beautiful, Sunset Blvd., The Player, Two Weeks in Another Town, A Star is Born, The Oscar, etc.—I’m STILL waiting for a film to really capture just how callous and venal it can be. It would be thrilling (if sobering) to one day see a movie about Hollywood that confronts its own institutionalized, profit-driven practices of racism, sexism, nepotism, sexual abuse, cronyism, and boys club mentality. In the meantime, I guess we have to settle for "anything for a buck" serving as Hollywood's version of self-revelatory candor.

The Last of Sheila 
Gossip columnist Sheila Green (Yvonne Romain) moments before she
(as Christine so tactfully puts it) "...got bounced through the hedges." 

The busy work schedules of Sondheim and Perkins prevented the two from having many opportunities to physically work on the script together; thus the bulk of The Last of Sheila was done through phone calls and couriers. Sondheim devised the twists and details of Clinton's sadistic game, while Perkins worked to infuse the otherwise academic brain puzzler with suspense and a Hollywood insider atmosphere. The result, while entertaining, occasionally feels as choppy and disjointed as the process of its creation (Perkins claimed only two scenes in the entire film were written while both occupied the same room at the same time).

The Last of Sheila, is the result of the combined efforts of a composer not exactly known for his warmth; a tortured, somewhat embittered actor whose promising leading-man career was derailed and forever haunted by the specter of Psycho’s Norman Bates; and a famously grumpy director whose idiosyncratic relationship with his actors rivals that of Otto Preminger. With nary a sympathetic character in sight, The Last of Sheila, for all its entertainment value, is a unified cold front of a movie desperately in need of a few genuine genre thrills and perhaps some script tweaking to assist in raising the dialogue's high-toned bitchery to a level of wit worthy of the wizardry of Sondheim’s quirky puzzle.

Stephen Who?
With A Little Night Music opening on Broadway in February, a Newsweek Magazine cover story in April, and a June release set for The Last of Sheila, 1973 marked the beginning of Stephen Sondheim's emergence as a household name. (Center) Perkins and Sondheim on the Cannes set of The Last of Sheila.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

The cast of the film is a real eye-catcher. To have Joan Hackett, that darling of idiosyncratic vulnerability, in the same film with the magnificently constructed Raquel Welch, a surprisingly uncraggy Ian McShane, and the comically raucous Dyan Cannon, is quite a treat. But the star of The Last of Sheila is its twisty murder mystery plot and the cunning “game” motif that runs throughout the film. From the start, an atmosphere of narrative disequilibrium permeates every scene. 

All the characters are such phonies harboring ulterior motives behind everything word and action, it’s clear any number of games are already well underway long before Clinton bullies everyone into participating in what he calls “The Shelia Green Memorial Gossip Game.” Once the game gets underway, it becomes harder and harder to know who to believe, whom to trust, or who’s reality is pulling the narrative strings.  

Elaborate Clues Are Part of the Game

And if, in the end, the scenes of lengthy exposition and reenactments necessitated by the complexity of the puzzle have the effect of leaving scant room for fleshed-out performances or dimensional characterizations (in Craig Zadan's book, Sondheim & Co., Perkins conceded to he and Sondheim "writing too much" and having to excise some 100 pages of the script before filming); one at least gets to console oneself with the not-unpleasant fact that The Last of Sheila is a fun, difficult-to-solve mystery that respects the viewer’s intelligence and rewards attentiveness.

They Haven't Seen The Last of Sheila
Each of these numbered cast portraits served as a teaser ad countdown
appearing in newspapers seven days before the film opened 

PERFORMANCES

It’s unlikely anyone seeing this now 42-year-old film today knows or even cares that the characters in The Last of Sheila are based on and cobbled together from real-life Hollywood notables (equally unlikely is that anyone could identify them). But at the time of its release, the whole “Who is that supposed to be?” element was just one more of the many games The Last of Sheila set before the viewer.

Of those rumored, Orson Welles was said to have inspired James Mason’s failed director character (even the casting of Mason, Lolita's memorable Humbert Humbert, was a character clue to the mystery). Richard Benjamin was Anthony Perkins' surrogate, and the sex-symbol and pushy husband portrayed by Welch and McShane were presumed by many to be Ann-Margret and Roger Smith (Although the more popular, meaner opinion was that the filmmakers somehow got Welch to agree to play herself and her then-husband, producer Patrick Curtis. The character’s oddly unglamorous name- Alice “Wood” - being a sly allusion to the writers' opinion of Welch’s acting ability.)

However, it was no secret that Dyan Cannon was playing  super-agent Sue Mengers (Bette Midler portrayed Mengers in a one-woman show on Broadway in 2013), as the actress’s lively impersonation was a major point of publicity at a time when Mengers ruled Hollywood with her client list of Barbra Streisand, Anthony Perkins, Richard Benjamin, Ryan O’Neal, Dyan Cannon, and Faye Dunaway.

Any movie that affords the opportunity to hear Dyan Cannon laugh is a worthwhile endeavor

Like pawns in a chess game, the somewhat overqualified cast of The Last of Sheila are there chiefly to be in service to the riddle of a plot, the minimal requirements of their roles rarely rising above TV-movie competency. So even if few are offered opportunities to really shine (Dyan Cannon has the best lines and the most to work with) all are in fine form and The Last of Sheila offers up an attractive gathering of some of the most familiar screen faces of the '70s. My particular favorites are James Coburn and Dyan Cannon, with the always-terrific Joan Hackett giving the film a much-needed dose of humanity. (With this film, The Group, Five Desperate Women, and The Class of ’63, Hackett must be the queen of reunion-themed movies).

Hunting Clues In An Abandoned Monastery

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

I was 15-years-old when I first saw The Last of Sheila, dragging my family to see it the first week it opened (smug in my film/theater geek certainty that I alone among my high school peers knew who Stephen Sondheim was). I recall being very taken with the film as a whole, this being the first time I ever saw the traditional Agatha Christie drawing-room mystery setup played out in anything resembling a contemporary setting.

I’m not sure how audiences respond to it today, but in 1973, the mystery plot worked especially well because, outside of James Coburn, no one else in the cast had ever been typed as a villain. What with the Riviera setting and Hollywood types featured, it all seemed very glamorous and sophisticated to my adolescent eyes, the only dissonant chord being how old-fashioned all the onscreen name-dropping seemed. In the '70s Hollywood of Jane Fonda, Warren Beatty, and Ali MacGraw, chummy references in the script to Steve & Edie, Kirk Douglas, Yul Brynner, and Sandra Dee seemed very Old World and out of touch.

Oh, and The Last of Sheila introduced me to Bette Midler. She sings “Friends” over the film's closing credits and I so loved the song, I immediately went out and bought The Divine Miss M album. I've been a fan ever since.

Christine tries to convince Anthony that two heads are better than one

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

As much as I loved The Last of Sheila, poor advance press (it opened out of competition at Cannes to disappointing word of mouth), mixed reviews (claims of it being indifferently directed and aloof were outdistanced by critics throwing up their hands saying the whole thing was just too damned confusing!), and perhaps the overall sourness of the film's tone, kept it from being a hit. It disappeared from theaters rather rapidly and for years you could mention the title and nobody would lay claim to having heard of it, let alone seen it.

Now available on DVD and frequently shown on TCM, The Last of Sheila has developed quite a cult following. Worth checking out if you've never seen it before, worth revisiting to discover all the giveaway clues you missed the first time out.

Friends?

A fun bonus on the DVD is the commentary track provided by Welch, Cannon, and Benjamin. Cannon and Benjamin are obviously watching the film together and having a blast, while Welch (who always comes across as more relaxed and funny on the commentary tracks for her films than she does in the films themselves) recorded hers separately.

Little in the way of inside information is imparted - 42 years is a LONG time - but in its place is a nostalgia among the actors which appears to have erased memories of the troubled, over-schedule and over-budget shoot, replacing them with diplomacy (Cannon alludes to a person causing a long delay because they were dissatisfied with their outfit...one can't help but think of Ms. Welch) and fond recollections of the experience.
Everyone admits to finding the complex script very hard to follow during filming. Amusingly, Dyan Cannon (who had to gain weight for the role) can't seem to stop commenting on how fat she thinks she looks, while Raquel Welch laments that she herself looks too thin. Throughout, Cannon and Benjamin make references to Perkins and Sondheim in such a manner as to suggest perhaps the two were a couple for a time.
I certainly hope so. I'm sure that both gentlemen would be pleased if they knew their sole screenwriting collaboration still had a few gossipy secrets to impart.

Games People Play

BONUS MATERIAL

A terrific publicity featurette about the making of The Last of Sheila featuring Stephen Sondheim & Tony Perkins, and behind-the-scenes footage of the filming

THE AUTOGRAPH FILES

Ian McShane - 1980

The Last of Shiela opened in Los Angeles on Wednesday, June 20th, 1973
 at the Pacific Theater on Hollywood Boulevard.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2015

FIVE DESPERATE WOMEN 1971

This camp-tastic treasure from my culturally misspent youth is high on retro '70s fashions, bitchy dialogue, and TV-movie grade thrills.

Imagine, if you will, Mary McCarthy’s sorority sister soaper The Group, crossed with Friday the 13th, add a bit of Charlie's Angels glamour (Aaron Spelling is also this film's producer), and toss a 1960s Ross Hunter "women in peril" melodrama into the mix, and you've got a pretty good idea of what’s in store for you with Five Desperate Women (who can resist that title?). A minor entry in the beloved ABC Movie of the Week anthology series of made-for-TV movies that proliferated during the 1970s. The series produced a slew of amazingly durable motion pictures over the course of its seven years on the air, among them: Trilogy of Terror, Duel, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, So Awful About Allan, Bad Ronald, and Reflections of Murder.
These 90-minute movies, especially the thrillers, were ALWAYS the talk of my junior-high schoolyard the following day, and I recall, at age 13, Five Desperate Women being a particular favorite – its high regard aided considerably by our being too young and lacking in life experience to take much notice of the film’s timeworn clichés and obvious plotting.

Joan Hackett as Dorian

Julie Sommars as Mary Grace

Denise Nicholas as Joy

Stefanie Powers as Gloria

Anjanette Comer as Lucy

Five school chums, all graduates of Brindley, a tony private women’s college in the East, gather for a five year reunion at a remote beach house on an island with no neighbors, no transportation and no phones. Armed only with their outsized hair, over-accessorized '70s fashions, and outré Samsonite® luggage (not a wheel or designer label in sight), the friends are a virtual Who's Who of 70's television. There's sweet and mousy Julie Sommars (The Governor and J.J.) suffering a bad case of the guilts about leaving her controlling, mentally ill mother behind; incessantly gum-chewing wallflower Joan Hackett (a '70s TV movie staple, treading water a bit, having made her 1966 film debut in The Group in a very similar role); self-reliant, black-power call girl Denise Nicholas (Room 222); big-haired, big city cynic, Stefanie Powers (The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.); and dipsomaniacal southern belle Anjanette Comer (who would work again with this film's director, Ted Post, in the 1973 cult oddity The Baby).

A weekend of rest, relaxation, and rehashing the past is on the agenda for the five diverse and high-strung women, whose only other companions on the island resort are the creepily geeky charter boat captain (Bradford Dillman), and the all-business, cloyingly sincere caretaker (Robert Conrad). Oh yes, and a homicidal maniac has recently escaped from a nearby mental institution—all secluded areas have nearby mental institutions—and is stalking the grounds.

Thus, the mystery is set. Or at least one of them. The biggest one being how these five women ever became friends in the first place. Once everybody starts airing their dirty laundry and copping to the fact that none of their lives has turned out the way they had planned, the women waste little time in spending the bulk of their reunion time bitchily sniping at each other. A condition only exacerbated by frayed nerves and zero survival skills once the presence (not the identity) of the killer becomes known and the women have to learn to rely upon one another.

"Special Guest Star" Robert Conrad as Michael Wylie

Bradford Dillman as Jim Meeker

The men don't behave much better. Short, stocky, Eveready Battery spokesman/Battle of the Network Stars beefcake Robert Conrad, can't stop playing "Knock it off...I dare you!" with tall and lanky Bradford Dillman long enough to be of much help to anyone, let alone a house full of defenseless women burdened with an overabundance of hair care products and a shortage of locks on the doors. The men don't trust one another, the women barely get along, and a killer is loose. How it all end?
Viewed today, Five Desperate Women incites so many giggles at its own expense that it challenges one to imagine how it was ever conceived as a serious thriller, but I must say, as an adolescent I found this movie to be VERY gripping and terrifically suspenseful. So much for the discerning tastes of youth.

The unintentional laughs start early with a scene in which put-upon rich girl Mary Grace is emotionally battered by the passive-aggressive ventriloquist act engaged in by her silent mother and loudmouthed nurse. Hot on the heels of this comes the dockside reunion of the giggly sorority sisters wherein they sing a school song and southern-fried sot Lucy, drops racist hints about affirmative-action charity case Joy, not really being “One of us….”

The Wild, Wild West's Robert Conrad, who previously appeared with co-star Stefanie Powers in the unforgettable Palm Springs Weekend (1963), gets chummy with sweet-natured Julie Sommars. Most people recall Sommars from the TV show, Matlock, but she first caught my attention in the terrific comedy, The Pad and How to Use It (1966)

Once the women are ensconced on the island and the outbreaks of temperament erupt as regularly and abruptly as the outbreaks of violence, Five Desperate Women - clocking in at a brisk 75 minutes -  moves along so quickly one scarcely minds the minimal drama and by-the-numbers thriller plotting. What does catch the attention is the risible dialogue (statement:“I buried the dog." Response: “[cheerily] Thank you!”); not-so-surprising personal revelations; and a screenplay (written by three men) which can’t think of a way to build tension without having five fully grown, college-educated women carry on like sheltered adolescents at a summer camp.

Perpetually helpless, scared, and often absurdly overdressed (for her "escape" Denise Nicholas' character chooses an ensemble that features a cloche hat, midi vest jacket, hoop earrings big enough to throw a grapefruit through, and knee-high boots), these women quiver and quake while waiting to be victimized. They do traditional horror movie "girly" things like trip over brambles while running for their lives, demonstrating remarkably bad aim while throwing objects to ward of an assailant, and wandering off to dark places alone. They all but run around in circles, shrieking and flapping their arms. Being terrified is one thing, but these women - surrounded by fireplace pokers and butcher knives – never once resort to grabbing some common household item for self-defense (OK, at one point one of them grabs a shoe...but you see what I mean).

Posing for a fashion shoot? No, in this shot Denise Nicholas and Stefanie Powers are reacting to a grisly murder

Five Desperate Women moves at breakneck speed toward its not-wholly-unforeseen conclusion and the reveal of the killer's identity… a finale that finds one of the women being strangled while her friends have hysterics from the sidelines screaming at the manic to “Stop!” (that always works) for a good 30 seconds before it occurs to any of them that it might be a good idea to come to her aid.

If what I've written thus far has given the impression that Five Desperate Women is a film to be avoided, let me correct that error now. With apologies to TCM, Five Desperate Women is one of The Essentials: one of those rare, miraculous little films that exists simultaneously within the realm of good and bad. A film that pays countless entertainment dividends whether taken seriously (for all it's faults, it's actually better than most of what is being released in the horror/suspense genre these days) or viewed as retro camp.


WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
As stated before, Five Desperate Women is basically your average woman-in-peril suspense thriller - only taken to the fifth power. There’s literally nothing here you haven’t seen a dozen times before in movies about a mad killer on the loose in an isolated setting, the only difference: instead of one hysterical would-be victim, you have five. One might imagine this would lead to five times the suspense, but mostly it just translates to five times the screaming hysterics. Which is fine by me.

I'm not exactly feelin' it from Ms. Powers in this shot

PERFORMANCES
The late Joan Hackett as the forlorn Dorian is my absolute favorite in the film, but if, like me, you're already a fan of her work, you'll note unfortunate echoes of similar roles she played in The Last of Shelia, The Group, Reflections of Murder, and another college reunion TV movie, Class of '63. It's not that Hackett isn't excellent, no, she always is; it's just that she was horribly typecast throughout most of her career and directors rarely could see her as anything but the mousy, retiring victim. She was Oscar-nominated and won a Golden Globe for one of my least favorite of her performances, the vainglorious socialite friend of Marsha Mason in Only When I Laugh (1981), but at least she was cast against type. Her rarely exploited gift for physical comedy can be seen to delightful effect in 1969's Support Your Local Sheriff , a film for which I really think she deserved a nomination.

What really saves Five Desperate Women from complete TV-movie mediocrity is the masterstroke casting of two of the most splendidly idiosyncratic actresses of the '70s together in the same film. Joan Hackett is sensational, but Anjanette Comer (so great in The Loved One and  The Appaloosa) almost steals the film as the skittish southern belle Lucy.


THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Five Desperate Women is a video catalog of all things '70s. You won't care a whit who the mad killer is because your eyes will be popping out of your head from the fashion parade of mod MOD MOD fashions and positively enormous hairdos. You'll see minis, midis, maxis, hot pants, knickers, boots, huge studded belts, chokers, fringe, and halter tops. And lest we forget the boys, we have Robert Conrad traipsing about in his by-now-trademark ridiculously tight, bun-hugging pants and overstretched, pec-tacular T-shirts.

Smokin' & Drinkin' and Everything but Thinkin'
One of the retro pleasures of this film is witnessing how much carefree smoking and drinking goes on

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Two favorite films from my youth that are infinitely better than Five Desperate Women but nevertheless always remind me of this TV movie are: Five Gates to Hell (1959), a war film about of a group of army nurses having to fend off a hoard of Indochinese guerrillas; and John Ford's last film Seven Women (1966), about the female residents of a Chinese mission facing off Mongol bandits (featuring a kick-ass performance by Anne Bancroft). Although these "women banding together" movies  never developed into an actual action film sub-genre, they are both notable and enjoyable for providing narratives in which women not only propel the plot, but play characters whose actions are instrumental to their own survival.

Male-centric war movies and westerns always tend to bore me because of their reliance on archetypal macho posturing and one-note, stiff-jawed heroics. The need for male characters to always depict strength and assurance so as to perpetuate society's narrow definition of masculinity has resulted in one woefully monotonous, action-oriented thriller after another. Conversely, female characters are allowed (sometimes to a fault, as this film demonstrates) the dimensionality of being able to display the gamut of human emotions, from weakness to bravery, in the carrying out of heroic acts...something I always find more engrossing than stoic fearlessness in the face of all.
 Five Desperate Women goes overboard in having the women characters evince too much in the way of unfettered emotionalism (something I again must lay at the feet of the male screenwriters) , but at least it's a film in which the women eventually have to fend for themselves and are responsible for their own rescue. It looks awfully silly now, but back in 1971, the same year Helen Reddy's I Am Woman first came on the scene, Five Desperate Women (to a 13-year-old who hadn't yet discovered the self-sufficient tough cookies of '40s film noir) looked very much like a women's lib twist on the traditional suspense thriller.

Though we don't smoke and we don't drink

And though our hearts are pure

There's something about a rich man 

That's better than a poor

Rich fathers send your only sons

Rich mothers send us your pearls

Though he may be your joy

Still he's only a boy

'Til he's been with a Brindley girl

Copyright © Ken Anderson

THE GROUP 1966

The generic Hollywood “woman’s film,” those melodramatic, get-out-your-handkerchiefs – style weepies that were once Joan Crawford’s and Bette Davis’ stock in trade, underwent a colorful (that is to say, increasingly explicit) transformation during the '50s and '60s. Reflecting the changing role of women in American culture, the once romance-centric genre transmogrified into the multi-character, hand-wringing, career-girl soap operas of the sort typified by Rona Jaffe’s water cooler drama The Best of Everything (1956), in which Joan Crawford’s stock '40s shopgirl character gets an executive upgrade, and that deservedly iconic ode to Broadway, booze, and barbiturates, Valleyof the Dolls (1967).

Jessica Walter (Lucille Bluth on my favorite TV show, Arrested Development) looks "Joan Crawford fabulous" and almost walks away with the film as Libby, the least sympathetic but most dynamic member of The Group

These films dramatized, in highly glamorized fashion, the challenges facing women as they strove to balance love, friendship, and the pursuit of their dreams while navigating the patriarchally hostile waters of the American workforce. Always purporting to “blow the lid off” one taboo subject or another (in George Cukor’s The Chapman Report it was the sex lives of suburban housewives) these films offered at most a cursory nod to female independence before reverting to type and getting back to the business of subtly endorsing traditional gender roles.

Valley of the Dolls, in its exquisite awfulness, remains the gold standard by which every “sex and soap” women’s film is and should be compared. But one of my favorite forgotten examples of the genre that managed to fall through the cracks due to past unavailability (it had a brief VHS life [Thanks, Poseidon3!], was never released on Laserdisc, but is currently available on made-to-order DVD) is Sidney Lumet’s lively screen adaptation of Mary McCarthy’s 1963 bestselling novel, The Group. 

Eight is Enough
The sparkling cast of up-and-comers that comprise The Group

I don’t know who first coined the phrase “superior soap opera” but the term categorically applies to this expensively mounted, surprisingly well-acted tale of the interweaving lives of eight friends—graduates of Vassar College, Class of ’33— as each sets out to make her mark on the world. The experiences of these economically and psychologically diverse heroines reflect, in microcosm, the emergent state of (white) American womanhood in the mid-20^th century. Specifically, the Roosevelt Administration years from The Great Depression through to the earliest days of the outbreak of WW II.
As each woman embarks on the journey of realizing the American Dream that their wealth, position, and privilege have practically guaranteed them, they discover that life outside the protective bubble of college and "The Group" poses considerably greater challenges. 

With a cast of eight beautiful women all falling histrionically in and out of love, bedrooms, and careers, The Group basically takes the usual all-girl triad formula of The Pleasure Seekers and Three Coins in the Fountain (along with the aforementioned The Best of Everything and Valley of the Dolls) and merely ratchets up the stakes by moving it into territory first blazed by Clare Boothe Luce in The Women. All of which is sheer Nirvana for fans of camp cinema and movies about high-born women brought to low circumstances, but a headache for studio publicity departments and folks seeking economic ways of recounting the plot and summarizing the characters.  

The challenge presented in having to promote a film with an ensemble cast of relative unknowns is revealed in the giggle-inducing tone adopted by the film’s ad campaign; the copy of which I’ll borrow to briefly introduce the members of The Group:

Lakey: The Mona Lisa of the smoking-room…for women only!

Dottie: Thin women are more sensual. The nerve endings are closer to the surface.

Priss: She fell in love and lived to be an “experiment.”

Polly: No money…no glamour…no defenses…poor Cinderella.

Kay: The “outsider” at an Ivy League Ball.

Pokey: Skin plumped full of oysters…money, money, money…yum, yum, yum!

Libby: A big scar on her face called a mouth.

Helena: Many women do without sex, and thrive on it.

If I remember correctly, most, if not all of these lines come directly from the novel (a terrific read, I might add) and several are even repeated in the film. How anyone was able to resist such sleazily salacious come-ons is beyond me, but The Group didn’t fare too well at the boxoffice at the time and slipped quietly into obscurity after that. My guess is that it’s because the film at its core wasn’t really as trashy as its hard-sell. Well, more’s the pity, for The Group, by benefit of its remarkable cast and director Sidney Lumet’s deft handling of the wide-sweeping plot, is a step above the usual glossy soap opera.

Dottie (Joan Hackett) loses her virginity to emotionally remote artist Dick Brown (Richard Mulligan). In real life, Hackett & Mulligan were married from 1966 to 1973. They appeared together in a 1971 episode of  Love, American Style

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

As a fan of both Robert Altman’s trademark ensemble opuses and movies with overdressed women dramatically suffering in opulent surroundings, there isn’t really much to dislike about The Group. Touching on everything from politics, birth-control, lesbianism, marriage, mental illness, spousal abuse, adultery, childbirth, alcoholism, and date-rape (all in the course of 2 ½ hours) The Group has a lot of field to cover. Director Sidney Lumet (The Pawnbroker, Network, Dog Day Afternoon) keeps things moving at a rapid-fire pace that adds spark to the light comedy (Jessica Walter is a hoot as a bitchily gabby gossip) and tension to the drama. If the expeditious pacing of the story spares The Group from ever being plodding or dull, it's fair to say it also occasionally undercuts the film’s overall emotional impact. The commitment to brevity that results in Joan Hackett’s character disappearing for a protracted time in the middle of the film is a considerable flaw as far as I'm concerned, but at least it’s a flaw born of an attempt to tighten the sprawling narrative. 

An example of Sidney Lumet's masterful framing and use of space in The Group 

I generally just like the propulsive feel of The Group's visual style. I can’t remember when I’ve seen a movie that handled the staging and filming of group scenes better or to greater effect; nor can I recall a cleverer employment of cinematic devices to provide plot exposition. In rewatching the film, my attention is drawn to the many subtle character interactions and small details (like the financially-struggling Kay always wearing the same hat to every wedding) easily overlooked on first viewing due to the film’s quick cutting and Lumet’s skillful use of the foregrounds and backgrounds to relay information.

When I think of what I like about The Group, the conclusion I always arrive at is, what’s not to like?

The telephone features prominently in The Group not only as a means by which the friends stay in contact but as a handy device to relate plot exposition

PERFORMANCES

If you’ve ever harbored the notion that a film like, say, Valley of the Dolls would have been “better” with real actresses in the roles (sorry Patty Duke), watching The Group should pretty much lay that fantasy to rest. The cast assembled for The Group couldn’t be more accomplished or better-suited to their roles, but even they can’t surmount a screenplay or a basic story construct so plot-driven. The mere volume and frequency of crises and conflict in films like these reduce even exemplary performances (Hackett, Knight, Pettet, and Hartman) to “best of” moments.

Sidney Lumet cast his father, Baruch Lumet in the small role of Mr. Schneider, Polly's paternal neighbor

A standout, both appearance and character-wise, is Jessica Walter, who either annoys or enchants in a showy role that is essentially Rosalind Russell in The Women. Also very good is the highly appealing Shirley Knight. My personal favorite, however, is Joan Hackett (making her film debut along with Bergen and Pettet) whom I never tire of watching and who never seems to hit a false note.

60s lesbians were always portrayed as severe, vaguely predatory types who stood around giving each other knowing looks under arched eyebrows. Here, an admittedly outclassed Candice Bergen introduces her sorority sisters to her "friend" the Baroness (Lidia Prochnicka)

Before I finish, special mention must be made of the men in The Group. True to the genre, the men are a pretty odious bunch. Almost to a man they are characterized as weak, bigoted, manipulative, oppressive, brutalizing, or womanizing. Some all at the same time. This is of course to be expected and goes with the soap opera territory. What surprises me most is that there isn’t a single looker in the bunch. I know it’s a matter of taste and I'm taking into account that perhaps in 1966 these guys passed for handsome (so what was Paul Newman?); but to a most distracting degree, the men at the center of The Group are like a grandmother’s wish-list of desirable males. Hal Holbrook? Larry Hagman? Richard Mulligan? James Broderick? The film features such a parade of sexless, daddy-fixation types that after a while I actually started to take it as some kind of personal affront. Valley of the Dolls suffered from the same malady.

No, this isn't an image of Polly (Shirley Knight) and her father. This is Gus (Hal Holbrook) the patently implausible object of desire of two gorgeous women and one unseen wife in The Group

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
My older sister (whom I credit/blame for a good deal of my love of bad movies) got me to watch The Group on TV with her when I was a kid. A protofeminist if ever there was one, she tended to gravitate towards movies with female protagonists but lamented the fact that a great majority of these films tended to be vaguely masochistic soaps and cheesy exploitation films. 

The Group was Elizabeth Hartman's follow-up to her Oscar-nominated film debut in A Patch of Blue. As Priss, she's cast again as a victim of an oppressive relative, this time a husband.
 Sloan (her physician husband, following a miscarriage): "We'll, we can't have this again, Priss. Worst possible advertisement for a pediatrician!"

My sister (who was drawn to the bitchiness of the Libby character but identified with the self-sacrificing nobility of Polly) enjoyed the camp fun to be had at the expense of the fancy clothes, elaborate hairstyles, and frankly unsympathetic milieu of the privileged classes; but what she also responded to, and in turn helped me to appreciate, was what the film was trying to say about the challenges of maturity. The idealized vision of the world (and oneself) one can safely harbor while sheltered within the walls of youth and academia can take quite a beating when confronted by the disappointments and compromises of the real world. Is a person really failing in life if they put to rest youthful dreams in hopes of achieving some unforeseen, yet perhaps more authentic, realization of fulfillment? And how much pain does one cause oneself clinging to idealized illusions of "potential" and entitled success...all the while ignoring the possibility for happiness dressed in humbler clothing? 

Have to hand it to my sister...if she could find that kind of insight within a glossy potboiler like this, I'd say I learned about the value of "bad" films at the feet of a master.

In a role rendered considerably smaller in the film than  in the book, Carrie Nye has at least one memorable scene as Norine, a low-income Vassar classmate and outsider excluded from The Group 

Now, I’m not going to make out like The Group is some kind of profound, unacknowledged classic, but in light of what women's films have become over the years (they proudly proclaim themselves "chick flicks" and celebrate shopping as a valid expression of female empowerment), and in our current boomerang culture that doesn't encourage young people to seek and accept struggle as an integral part of the growing-up process; well...let's just say that there's something to be said for a 46-year-old guilty-pleasure movie that comes across as more progressive and perceptive in 2012 than it did in the year of its original release.

Halcyon Days
Helena's scandalous painting of The Group (that's Helena as the satyress)

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2012