NOT WITH A BANG, BUT A WHIMPER: A List of Lamentable Last Films

“This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.”   - T.S. Eliot   

It can’t be easy maintaining a film career. The practical side of the motion picture business doesn’t readily correspond with an artist's desire to work well and consistently while trying to hold onto whatever faint vestiges of integrity and self-respect are left intact after one is deemed no longer young or the pop-culture “flavor of the month.” Fans, critics, and rear-view-mirror biographers tend to speak of an actor’s career and body of work as though they are things strategically orchestrated and mapped out. Perhaps in some cases this is true, but for the most part, the cold realities of the business of fame suggests an actor’s lingering legacy is often the result of nothing more premeditated than the serendipitous meeting of talent, luck, ambition, and tenacity.

A film career of any length is bound to have its ups and downs, but if an actor is lucky, the ups outnumber (or outweigh) the bad to sufficient degree as to have little impact on time’s overall evaluation of an actor's merits. Because Hollywood films ween us on happy endings and tidy conclusions, perhaps this breeds in us an expectation (or hope) that the careers of our favorite stars culminate in films and performances worthy and emblematic of their lifetime achievements, in toto.

Occasionally it works out: as in John Wayne, dying of cancer in real-life, portraying an aging gunman dying of cancer in his last film The Shootist (1976); or Sammy Davis Jr. appearing as a revered, aging tap-dancer in Tap (1989) his final film. But all too often stars with illustrious early careers bow out in vehicles severely at odds with their cumulative talent, reputations, and dignity.
So here's a list of the less-than-celebrated last films of a few of my favorite actors. An unlucky list of 13 movies - indicative of nothing deeper than a movie fan's wish that these talented stars had been shown to better advantage in their final movie roles.
   

1. Mae West — Last Film: Sextette (1978)
The final film of screen legend Mae West turned out to be something of a good news/bad news affair. The good news being that the self-enchanted octogenarian ended her four-decade movie career in a name-above-the title star vehicle (vanity project) designed as a tribute to her image and career. The bad news, of course, is that I’m referring to Sextette: an ill-advised, fan-produced exercise in celebrity exploitation so unflattering to its leading lady, it essentially ends up being a 90-minute exercise in character assassination and idol-smashing...set to a disco beat.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: My Little Chickadee (1940) 

*****

2. Laurence Harvey  — Last Film: Welcome to Arrow Beach (1974)

Speaking in terms of equal opportunity, it’s nice to know that late-career leading men are as susceptible to the beckoning charms of the B-grade horror film as the cadre of older actresses populating that subgenre known as Grand Dame Guignol. On the heels of appearing with gal pal Joanna Pettet in a 1972 episode of TVs Night Gallery, and co-starring with longtime friend Elizabeth Taylor in Night Watch (1973); Oscar nominee Laurence Harvey (Room at the Top - 1959) went the full  slasher route in the rarely-seen cheapie Welcome to Arrow Beach. Appearing again with (VERY) good friend Joanna Pettet, Harvey underplays a military vet with a cannibalistic taste for hitchhiking hippie chicks and blowsy booze hounds. Looking gaunt from the stomach cancer that would claim his life before this film was released, Harvey also directed this bloody exploitationer which rode a short-lived 70s trend of cannibalism-themed horror movies. I remember seeing this as a teen (under the alternate title, Tender Flesh) on a double bill with the another  cannibal horror film, The Folks at Red Wolf Inn (1972). I guess we all have our low moments.  View trailer HERE

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Night Watch (1973)

                                                                         *****

3. Joan Crawford — Last Film: Trog (1970)

As a journalist once noted, the boon and bane of every Crawford fan has always been the actress’s dogged professionalism. No matter how low she'd fallen (and Trog is about as low as it gets) Crawford always emoted as though Louis B. Mayer were still breathing down her neck. Crawford’s co-star in Trog is a professional wrestler in a rubbery Halloween mask (Joe Cornelius), but by the level of her intensity and commitment, you’d think she was acting opposite Franhcot Tone. And while this trait is certainly admirable, it has the unfortunate effect of making Joan appear to be performing in a vacuum; acting her ass off independent of the tone and timbre of the scene, not really relating to her co-stars. In Trog, Joan – looking tiny and occasionally pretty well-oiled – plays an anthropologist who attempts to tame a "Kill-crazy fiend from hell!” amidst public outcry and resistance. As always, Joan is the best thing in it (on my personal Camp-o-meter, anyway), but this B-horror movie programmer is so beneath her talents it makes the schlock she made for William Castle look dignified.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Berserk (1967)

*****

4. Gene Kelly — Last Film: Xanadu (1980)

A curious inclusion given how much I love this film and how, considering what he had to work with, I actually think Gene Kelly acquits himself rather nicely.
But I have to admit I've always found my enjoyment of Kelly in this musical to be running neck and neck with a sense of missed opportunities and a disappointment in how poorly he’s served by this charming but rather weak vehicle as a whole. Xanadu is nothing if not respectful of the influential actor/singer/dancer/director/choreographer who helped shape the face of the modern movie musical; it’s just that he’s let down by an insipid script, sabotaged by editing and camerawork which fails to understand the rhythms of dance (or rollerskating...they cut off his feet!), and is left to play third-fiddle to two low-wattage leads who fail to possess even a fraction of his screen charisma. So while Xanadu is not exactly a career embarrassment (I'd say that honor goes to his direction of Hello, Dolly! & The Guide for the Married Man), it ranks as a poor representation and send-off for the genius that was Gene Kelly.

Shoulda Quit  While I Was Ahead: The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)

*****

5. Gloria Swanson — Last Film: Airport ’75 (1974)     

In this loopy sequel (of sorts) to 1970’s Airport, silent screen star Gloria Swanson appears as herself and makes up for all those mute years by never shutting up. Swanson’s not onscreen a great deal ‒ although it feels like it since, in a film overrun with nuns (Helen Reddy, for one), Swanson makes the curious choice of dressing exactly like a nun who’s been to a couturier ‒ but when she is onscreen you can bet she’s talking about herself. Ostensibly under the guise of dictating her memoirs to her self-medicating secretary (Planet of the Apes’ Linda Harrison or Augusta Summerland, who knows a thing or two about keeping quiet), Swanson, who is said to have written her own dialog, captures perfectly what it’s like to be in the company of an actor: they are always their own favorite topic of discussion.

Overlooking the suspense-killing casting of having Swanson playing herself in a fictional narrative (what are they gonna do, have her get sucked out a window?), her role feels like a far-in-advance infomercial for her 1980 memoir Swanson on Swanson. A title describing the entire thrust of Swanson's self-enamored characterization here.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Sunset Blvd. (1950)

*****

6. Dean Martin / Frank Sinatra — Last Film: Cannonball Run II (1984)

Although I tend to consider myself a child of the '60s & '70s, and therefore lay no claim to the cinema atrocities committed in the 80s; the next time I go on a jeremiad about the craptastic bros-before-hos movie oeuvre of Adam Sandler and Kevin James, someone needs to remind me that Burt Reynolds – an actor from my generation – pretty much originated the lazy buddy comedy genre. That's when you find someone to pay for you and your pals to get together and have a good time, hand somebody a camera, film it, slap a title on it, and then call it a movie.

I never saw the original The Cannonball Run (1981) but the appeal of having the '60s Rat Pack reunited onscreen in this movie (Sinatra, Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. & Shirley MacLaine all appear) got the better me, and so I watched it one night on cable TV. With this movie (and I use the term loosely) I discovered that nostalgia is no match for a film that clearly holds its audience in low regard. The level of contempt this movie has for the intelligence of its audience is palpable and pungent. Dean Martin dares you to call him on the obvious fact that he really doesn’t give a shit, and Frank Sinatra looks exactly like someone dutifully following through on a favor/obligation. Dreadful. An unspeakably depressing last film for two of my favorites.    
Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Airport (1970) / The First Deadly Sin (1980)

*****

7. Elizabeth Taylor  — Last Film: The Flintstones  (1994)    

Beyond the garden-variety complaint that Hollywood never seems to know how to properly showcase stars once they cease to be young, I’ve no objection to an actress of Elizabeth Taylor’s magnitude and reputation being cast as Fred Flintstone’s harridan of a mother-in-law (one Pearl Slaghoople) in a live-action version of the enduring 60s primetime TV cartoon show (inspired by the live-action The Honeymooners). Indeed, given Taylor’s sense of humor about herself, lack of pretension, and past success in playing shrews and shrill, fishwife types, it’s actually a pretty cool idea.
My problem lies with how dismal a comedy The Flintstones turned out to be. Taylor's role is little more than an extended walk-on, but in it, she's saddled with some strenuously unfunny material that she doesn't handle particularly well. There's so little to The Flintstones beyond the wittily prehistoric costumes, sets, and special effects (it's all concept, no content), that one is left with too much time to contemplate why the only laughs the film earns derive from how accurately the production team has captured some device or creature recognizable from the cartoon. Taylor (sporting that awful Jose Eber feathered helmet hairdo she adopted at the time) has definitely been better, was capable of better, and I only wish she had been given better.
Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: The Mirror Crack’d (1980)

*****

8. Peter Sellers — Last Film: The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980)

It’s anybody’s guess how this flat, misguided comedy ever got beyond the planning stages, but avarice likely played a role in this unsuitable-for-release trainwreck ever seeing the light of day (it was released weeks after Sellers’ death). Fandom fuels a desire to see the last professional efforts of any favored celebrity, but it’s hard to imagine any Peter Sellers fan deriving much joy from this slogging crime comedy. A film which also served as the last screen role for Mary Poppins’ David Tomlinson and features Helen Mirren impersonating Queen Mary, the grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II, whom Mirren would win an Oscar portraying 26-years later. Sellers was a comic genius who made a career out of disappearing behind impersonation, but by the '80s his extended yellowface Fu Manchu shtick was strictly cringe material. Matters aren’t helped much by Sellers (ill at the time) playing dual roles: bored & tired.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Being There (1979)

*****

9. Tallulah Bankhead —  Last Film: Die! Die! My Darling!  (1965) 

This one’s a bit of an academic call. A call resting both on the awareness of Tallulah Bankhead being an esteemed stage actress whose motion picture appearances were rare (thus branding this Z-grade exercise in Hag Horror as a film far beneath her talents); and the full understanding that no one in their right mind would care to deprive the world of Bankhead’s mesmerizingly over-the-top performance in said Psycho-Biddy gothic. Bankhead is too fine an actor for a title like Die! Die! My Darling! to stand as the representative coda to her brief film career, but as a longstanding connoisseur of camp, I can’t deny that I’m forever grateful to her for having undertaken it.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: A Royal Scandal (1945)

*****

10. Bette Davis — Last Film: Wicked Stepmother (1989) 

It’s kind of a good thing this chaotic comedy about a homewrecking witch (Davis) is so aggressively unfunny, for the sight of the frail, reed-thin, surgically tightened, post-stroke, eerily animatronic Bette Davis croaking out her lines while chain-smoking like a madwoman is a bonafide laugh-killer. A problem-plagued production that had the ailing, dissatisfied Davis deserting the film shortly after shooting began (resulting in her onscreen time amounting to slightly less than 15-minutes), Wicked Stepmother may have brought Davis a hefty paycheck and yet another opportunity to work – something obviously very important to her – but beyond the curiosity value of seeing one of Hollywood's greats in her last film roe, the whole affair has a ghoulish feel to it.
The only joke in the film that works is a brief sight gag revealing the late wife of Davis' new husband (Lionel Stander) was Joan Crawford.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: The Whales of August (1987)

*****

11. Charles Boyer — Last Film: A Matter of Time  (1976)

Charles Boyer is an interesting case. He dodged having to be shackled with Ross Hunter’s Lost Horizon (1973) as his last film by following up that misstep with the stylish Alan Resnais film Stavisky…; a fine and suitably distinguished movie to end his career. Unfortunately, Boyer dodged the Ross Hunter bullet only to jump into the firing line of Vincente Minnelli’s calamitous A Matter of Time (1976). A film which not only reunited Boyer with the director of two of his earlier films (The Cobweb and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse), but reunited him with his Arch of Triumph and Gaslight co-star, Ingrid Bergman.

Hopes couldn’t have been higher when it was announced Vincente Minnelli (making his first film since 1970s On a Clear Day You Can See Forever) was going to direct daughter Liza (in need of a hit after Lucky Lady) in a lavish costume drama. Without going into the ugly details behind a problem-plagued production, suffice it to say A Matter of Time didn’t do anybody’s resumés any favors. Boyer, as the husband of dotty Contessa Bergman, is really rather good. It’s the film that’s such a mess.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Stavisky…(1974)

*****

12. Lucille Ball — Last Film: Mame (1974)  

Mame was released with a ton of hoopla and cheery smiles all around, but once the smoke cleared (and a few years had passed) what were we left with? A star who claimed making the film “was about as much fun as watching your house burn down”; a costar (Bea Arthur) who went on record stating, “It was a tremendous embarrassment. I’m so sorry I did it,” and that the leading lady was “terribly miscast”; a discontented composer (Jerry Herman); and a marriage dissolved (according to Arthur, her husband – Gene Saks, Mame’s director – used emotional blackmail to get her to do the movie: “As my wife you owe it to me to play this part.”).

Mame was to be TV legend Lucille Ball’s return to the silver screen, but reviews and reception to the film were so harsh, this $12-million misstep was her swan song. Oops! Maybe it’s not polite to bring up singing in this context.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: The Long Long Trailer (1953)

*****

13. Barbara Stanwyck — Last Film: The Night Walker (1964) 

After playing a bordello madam (Walk on the Wild Side) and appearing in an Elvis Presley movie (Roustabout), I guess Barbara Stanwyck decided to make her career degradation complete by working for William Castle. The Night Walker is a somewhat listless, surprisingly gimmick-free William Castle melodrama that, while not doing much for Stanwyck, at least reunited her with former hubby and co-star Robert Taylor.

As always, Stanwyck and her trademark intensity are fascinating to watch and the only worthwhile elements in a film that really would have been just fine as an episode of one of those suspense anthology TV programs (although the really creepy music by Vic Mizzy is effective as hell).
Happily, with the movies treating her so shabbily, it's nice to know television provided Stanwyck with some of her finest latter-career moments (I'm crazy about her performance in The Thorn Birds).

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Walk on the Wild Side (1962)

"I am big! It's the pictures that got small."

Norma Desmond - Sunset Blvd.

Copyright © Ken Anderson

SEXTETTE 1978

“Do you have a thing about older women? That’s sort of faggoty, isn’t it?”

      Carrie Fisher questioning the elder-attraction of Warren Beatty in Shampoo (1975) 

Thinking back to those old Popeye the Sailor Man cartoons I watched as a kid, I used to think it was funny the way Olive Oyl—tall, gangly, needle-nosed, granny-voiced, and severe-of-hairdo—saw herself as this breathtaking dreamboat, irresistible to men. Funnier still was the fact that in the bizarro world of Popeye cartoons, especially in episodes featuring shapely females of more conventional appeal, not only did Popeye and Bluto pay little heed to the flirtations of more comely lasses, but, obviously sharing Olive’s delusion, fought each other tooth-and-nail for her affections. Of course, it helped that the writers and animators of Popeye were in on the absurdist joke. A factor that goes a long way in making Olive’s subversively contagious brand of self-enchantment feel more like nonconformist self-acceptance than uncurbed narcissism.

Alas, not a trace of fun or self-awareness is to be found in Mae West’s live-action feat of self-delusion titled Sextette. A film that started out as novelty, slipped into curiosity, careened into embarrassment, and, through its plodding execution and pedestrian lack of wit, leapfrogged right over camp. Its ultimate destination: Bizarre, has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed cult oddity.

Mae West as Marlo Manners the female answer to Apollo

Timothy Dalton as  Husband #6 Lord Michael Barrington 

Dom DeLuise as Manager, Dan Turner

Tony Curtis as Husband #3  Russian diplomat Alexei Karansky

George Hamilton as Husband #5 gangster Vance Norton

Ringo Starr as Husband #4 film director Laslo Karolny

Keith Moon as Roger, the excitable dress designer

Sextette takes place in a world where an 84-year-old silver screen siren is enthusiastically pursued and fawned over by throngs of amorous males; the mere sight of her inciting near-riots of inflamed masculine passion and desire. Obviously, such a place does, in fact, exist in the real world...it’s called the world of the gay fanbase. It’s the world of the camp aficionado, the admirer of the drag queen aesthetic, the diviner of covert gay sensibilities in mainstream entertainment, and the upholders of that enduring mainstay of queer culture: diva worship. Had Sextette installed itself in this world, the only world where it made the slightest bit of sense for men in their 20s to go ga-ga over a woman old enough to be their grandmother, a hint of verisimilitude might have graced this otherwise preposterous Hollywood (it can’t be helped) fairy tale.

But we're talking Mae West here. The unapologetic egoist who once told a reporter she never wanted children because “I was always too absorbed in myself and didn't have time for anybody else.” A woman so self-serious and protective of her image that she slapped Bette Midler with a cease and desist order when she saw the up-and-coming performer do an impersonation of her on The Johnny Carson Show.  A woman who adored her gay fans yet bristled at any suggestion that her appeal to them might have anything to do with camp.

And while Sextette’s existence as a film at all is wholly due to the efforts and participation of a battery of gay men both behind and in front of the camera (not to mention a gay sensibility running through it with a ferocity unmatched by any movie until Can’t Stop the Music); gays don’t really figure in the absurdly heteronormative world of Mae West, Sextette, or geriatric sex-goddess Marlo Manners (except as the setup for a tiresome, homophobic running gag).

(Above) Alice Cooper, the singing bellman, serenades Mae West on a glass piano. (Below) The glass piano - and also, by the looks of it, Alice Cooper's wig - appeared first in the 1974 Lucille Ball musical, Mame.

The world of Sextette is the world of Mae West, and in Mae West’s world, all men are straight (despite flaming appearances to the contrary), and frail-looking octogenarians mouthing puerile vulgarisms while dressed in 1890s finery are the stuff of wet dreams. Watching the film as anything other than a colossally bad joke played on both the actress and the audience is a Herculean task worthy of West's small army of porn-stached bodybuilder co-stars.
To be asked to accept the plot particulars of this wheezy sex farce while pretending to ignore the fact that the object of unbridled lust and erotic desire at its center is in serious danger of falling and shattering her hip is more than any viewer should have to take on. Small wonder that the film (completed in 1977) took a full two years to find a distributor, and then only enjoyed a brief, money-losing limited release before taking its place in the annals of misguided movie megaflops. How could it be anything but? The experience of watching Sextette is like a Vulcan mind-meld excursion into the delusional, soft-focus fantasy world of a real-life Norma Desmond.

Hooray for Hollywood
Slow-moving Marlo is welcomed to her honeymoon hotel by a phalanx of singing bellboys

The story is simple…simple for a farce, anyway. Amidst much hoopla and fanfare, movie star and international sex symbol Marlo Manners (West, who else?) checks into London’s ritzy Sussex Court Hotel to honeymoon with husband number six, one Lord Michael Barrington (Dalton). The never-to-materialize comedic hilarity arises out of the happy, horny couple being unable to consummate their marriage due to an endless stream of ex-husbands, show-biz obligations, and a world peace summit taking place in the same hotel (you can't make this stuff up).

While the wacky Love, American Style disruptions are painfully labored and unfunny, they do at least serve to keep West and Dalton from ever getting anywhere close to doing “the deed,” and for that, we can all be grateful.

Given how enjoyably smutty Mae West was in 1970’s Myra Breckinridge (the film that brought West back to the screen after a 26-year absence) I thought Sextette —made a full seven years later in the hedonistic atmosphere of disco, gay liberation, porno chic, and Plato’s Retreat —had the potential to be a fun, over-the-top, musical comedy capitalizing on everything that there was too little of in the Raquel Welch film. No such luck.

Instead of a hip, off-beat entertainment like The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) or cheesy curio like The First Nudie Musical (1976), Sextette was just a crass throwback to those smirking, sexless “wholesome” sex comedies of the '60s. All wink-wink, nudge-nudge, but for a few touches of '70s bluntness, Sextette would have fit right in among those neutered, pre-sexual revolution comedies like A Guide for the Married Man, Boy, Did I Get the Wrong Number!, or Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?.

Shot in that murky, flat style so prevalent in on-the-cheap exploitation films of the era, Sextette doesn't recall Mae West’s glory days or even the glamour of old Hollywood. It feels very '70s, very desperate, and very much an ill-conceived, opportunistic attempt to meld the nostalgia craze with the new permissiveness.The film Sextette most resembles, in both style and content, is the tawdry soft-core vaudeville of trash like The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington (1977)

Before it turned into a career embarrassment, Sextette was envisioned as something of a "best of" tribute to the career of Mae West. It was the hope that fans would delight in all the visual and verbal references to her old films. Here, West's famous Swan Bed from her 1933 film She Done Him Wrong (below) is recreated (and widened) for Sextette (top).

There would be no movie stars without their fans, but sometimes fans can be an artist’s worst enemy. Fan disapproval kept the talented Doris Day trapped in virginal, goody-two-shoes roles well past the age of expiration, and fans allowed Mae West to believe there was actually a public clamoring to see her shimmy and sashay one last time on the big screen.

I totally get how Sextette came into being: The '70s nostalgia boom was in full swing. In 1976 alone, the following nostalgia-based films were released - W.C. Fields & Me, Gable & Lombard, Bugsy Malone, Won Ton Ton The Dog Who Saved Hollywood, That’s Entertainment II, Silent Movie, Nickelodeon, A Matter of Time, & The Last Tycoon. 

That almost all were resounding flops might have raised a red flag for seasoned producers, but in 1976, two first-time movie producers in their early-20s, Daniel Briggs and Robert Sullivan (Danny and Bobby as they were youthfully known in the press) paid no heed and followed instead the clarion call of Late Show fans everywhere. Gable was gone, Bogart was gone, but Mae West, one of the last living legends was still with us, and that's all they needed to know.

Hollywood columnist, Rona Barrett
Sextette also features appearances by journalist James Bacon (the white-haired reporter in the hotel lobby), Regis Philbin, and sportscaster Gil Stratton.

Although I can’t imagine she needed much convincing, Briggs & Sullivan came to West with an opportunity to pay tribute to her career while giving her fans what they'd been clamoring for: one last chance to see their idol in all her glory. She'd trot out her old gowns, sing a few songs, recite a few of her famous lines...everybody would be happy. The idea must have seemed like money in the bank. (I suspect West always felt the failure of Myra Breckinridge rested on there being too much Welch and not enough West).

The finished product proved far more dire, of course, with Mae West's performance in Sextette evoking the out-of-control narcissism of Sunset Blvd.'s Norma Desmond making Salome. Aghast critics responded to West's elderly sex symbol act with a virulent stream of misogynist, gerontophobic insults on par with the "Old woman's p*ssy" jokes leveled at Valerie Cherish aka Aunt Sassy (Lisa Kudrow) in The Comeback.

Do Not Disturb
Although she appears to be napping here, Marlo Manners is actually helping leading man Ronald Cartwright (Peter Liapis) with a screen test. Mae West was reportedly only pleased with Dalton and Hamilton as her co-stars. She thought Tony Curtis and Dom DeLuise "too old," and was less than thrilled at the lack of sex appeal of younger stars Ringo Starr and Keith Moon. Alice Cooper likes to repeat the story that West propositioned him, but I have a feeling he means she asked him to help her out of a chair. 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Miscalculations of this caliber are rare and should be treasured. Sextette is valueless as a straightforward musical comedy, but it's priceless as a glimpse into a certain kind of insanity possible only through ego (you know who), greed (a good argument could be made for the producers cruelly exploiting West's delusions), and bad decision-making at almost every turn. Perhaps most shocking of all is that Sextette was directed by Ken Hughes, the director of the charming (if overlong) children's film, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968).

A few of my favorite things.

1. The grab bag of songs comprising this musical's soundtrack are not only odd, but sound as though they were culled from scratchy recordings made at wildly divergent points in West's career. In one scene the tinny arrangement sounds as if started up on a Victrola. Another sounds overcranked, and many of the recordings have the hollow sound of demos.
2) The ungainly musical numbers were choreographed by 60-year old Marc Breaux (The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins) and assistant, Jerry Trent (Xanadu). I would like to think the post-dubbed taps coming from the busboys on the hotel's carpeted staircase is an intentionally camp touch.
3) Mae West has exactly two spot-on perfect line readings: (Following a knock on the door) DeLuise: "Who's that?"  West: "It ain't opportunity!". The second comes at a moment of exasperation when she says (with all too much feeling) "I don't know how I got into this!"
4) In a film with so many obviously gay men playing straight, casting Keith Moon as a flamboyantly effeminate dress designer is more than a little perverse.
5) In Mae West's opening interview with the press, I love the way everyone laughs uproariously at everything she says, only to stop in unison while they await her next quip.
6) The way she just kind of slams into that table during the "Next, Next" number.
7) The weird, decidedly sexist reverse alchemy that goes on when older women are paired with men a third of their age (think Judy Garland, Martha Raye and Margaret Whiting): They don't make the woman look younger, she makes then look gayer.
8) Mae West to an athlete- "And what do you do?"  Athlete -"I'm a pole vaulter."  Mae - "Aren't we all!"
9) The way DeLuise's dialog referencing Marlow's insatiable sex drive has a way of backfiring when you realize it's in relation to a senior, senior citizen: "This is her wedding night and Marlow's going to need all the oxygen she can get." or "By the time Marlow gets out of bed there'll be a new Administration."

Mae West made her first and last film with George Raft
West made her film debut in Raft's 1932 film Night After Night. As a favor to West, he agreed to appear in what turned out to be the last film for them both, Sextette. Story has it that West didn't want Raft to wear the grey hair toupee he always wore (he'd look too old, you see), and Raft refused to wear the jet-black wig they'd picked out for him. Compromise: the hat

PERFORMANCES
Mae West made a total of twelve films, always playing a variation of the Diamond Lil character she created way back in 1928. As a writer, actress, singer, and comedienne, she's a genuine trailblazer and groundbreakingly feminist icon from early days of Hollywood. But, (unlike her quote "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!") I find a little of Mae goes a long way. I like her a great deal in some of her old movies, and she isn't without a little bit of charm even in this misbegotten horror show, but her act can feel a bit one-note without some keen support help. And W.C. Fields is nowhere in sight.

Mae doesn't bother me too much in Sextette, possibly because she is virtually impossible to take seriously. Sure, she makes you gasp or laugh at first viewing, but later you kind of have to give it up to the old girl for still being in there pitching. Also, at her absolute worst, lowest ebb, Mae West is still more talented and interesting to watch than today's no-talent Kardashians or Lohans.

In 1964 Mae West made an appearance as herself on the popular TV sitcom, Mr. Ed. She wore the same gown in that episode (below) that she wears in the final scene of Sextette (above). If you've never seen this episode, I recommend it. Five minutes of it are funnier than the entire running time of Sextette.

Mae West never carries on a conversation. People feed her straight lines, she delivers the gags. This leaves the other actors adapting an every-man-for-himself approach to the material. Every "guest star" doing their bit independent of what anyone else is doing, and then disappearing to the sidelines. George Hamilton comes off perhaps best, with Dalton achieving the near-miracle of escaping the whole mess unscathed. There's a curious prescience in Sextette in casting Hamilton as a mafia lug (he would appear in The Godfather:Part III in 1990), and Dalton playing a spy (of course, he became James Bond in 1987).

Keith Allison of the '60s pop group, Paul Revere & the Raiders

In spite of the film's aggressive-but-unconvincing heterosexual thrust (Hmm, sounds like a West-ism), the casting of Sextette veers more to the gay-friendly. Sextette's entire cast of extras and dancers looks like gay pride weekend in West Hollywood. Timothy Dalton first came to my attention playing gay/bi-sexual roles in The Lion in Winter and Mary, Queen of Scots. Dom DeLuise always had a kind of comedy style that seemed very queer as well. And then of course there's the whole bodybuilder thing which has always seemed more gay than heterosexual in its appeal.

"They're flushin' my play down the terlet."
Mae West speaking to companion Paul Novak as overheard by Ringo Starr  

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Images of Mae West surrounded by bodybuilders were used extensively in advance publicity for Sextette. Her gymnasium musical number promised to be more outrageous that Jane Russell's beefcake-heavy "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love" number in 1953s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Unfortunately, like everything else in Sextette, the end result was a disappointment. While there is plenty of eye candy on hand, the entire sequence is little more than a lot of guys standing around feeding West straight lines for her familiar comebacks.
Like my own high-school locker room experiences, this scene is awkward, uncomfortable, full of exposed male flesh, and you'll want to avert your eyes but find you can't.

Former Mr. America Reg Lewis was an alumnus of West's 1954 Las Vegas act 

To the left is Cal Bartlett as the coach of the US Athletic Team. Front and center is Ric Drasin. Recognizable to fans of '70s physique porn as Jean Claude.

Roger Callard (aka Stacy) is another 70s alumnus of Colt Studios, a studio specializing in nude male physique photography. At the center is Denny Gable, to the right, former Mr. USA Cal Szkalak.

That an Olympic team has for its "mascot" a blow-dried and dewy-eyed male starlet (Rick Leonard) is a far more provocative concept than anything Marlo Manners had to offer. Here Leonard greets Miss West with his best Gloria Upson (Mame) straight-arm handshake. Next to him is Mr. Olympia, Jim Morris

THE STUFF OF DREAMS 
Those musical numbers....

Love Will Keep Us Together

Baby Face

Next, Next
This upbeat Van McCoy disco composition was a replacement for the ballad "No Time for Tears" which Mae West vetoed for being out-of-character

One might have thought that the best way to deal with Mae West's age is to not make reference to the subject at all. Perversely, most of the songs seem to go out of their way to bring up the topic. There's "Happy Birthday, 21" ; a disco version of "Baby Face"; and the reworked lyrics of "Love Will Keep Us Together"  - "Young and beautiful, your looks will never be gone!"  Um...OK.

Walter Pidgeon as the chairman of the World Peace Summit.
To the right is Van McCoy, composer of the popular disco classic, The Hustle, and contributor of  Sextette's "Marlo" theme song, and the finale "Next, Next." Some sources list him as the film's musical director.

BONUS MATERIAL
Alice Cooper wrote a song for West to sing in the finale, but it was vetoed. The song "No Time For Tears" was declined by West herself because (as everyone knows) Mae West never cries over any man.

A 1976 interview with Mae West by Dick Cavett. Not really an interview, he feeds her a lot of lines, and she says the very same quips you'd expect. However, there's one terrific moment when she talks about the loss of her mother where you get a fleeting glimpse of a real person and not an image. See it on YouTube

Miss West and the boys bid you goodbye
I'm not exactly sure why an international sex symbol chose to bundle herself up like this, but note that she was savvy enough to have the standing bodybuilder help to both cover and cinch in her waist. 

Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 2015

MYRA BRECKINRIDGE 1970

Although Myra Breckinridge was a movie that thoroughly captured my adolescent imagination and attention in 1970, it was also one of the few films my parents absolutely forbade me to see. My folks were usually obligingly (and conveniently) in the dark about the many age-inappropriate matinees I traipsed off to on Saturday afternoons, but Myra Breckinridge proved an inopportune exception. Behind it all was the fact that my parents owned a hardback copy of Gore Vidal's satirical novel (which my sisters and I snuck clandestinely, barely comprehending, peeks at). Thus, they weren't about to let their Catholic School-attending, 12-year-old son see a movie whose much-touted set-piece and raison d’être was the strap-on rape of a young man by a transgender woman in a star-spangled bikini. Good parenting will out!

Needless to say, all of this failed to quell my fascination with the film. On the contrary, it fueled it. The hype surrounding Myra Breckinridge (the words"disgusting" and "obscene" almost always in attendance) set my hormonal teenage mind racing at the thought of Hollywood making the first big-budget, all-star, dirty movie. And here I was, a young man fancying himself a mature-beyond-his-years cineaste, present at what looked to be a seminal moment in the cultural shift in American motion pictures...and I wasn't allowed to participate in it. Life can be so unfair.

"It's going to be treated importantly. It's not going to be dismissed."
A sweetly delusional Welch speaking about Myra Breckinridge on The Dick Cavett Show

Well, as we all know, once Myra Breckinridge hit the theaters, that anticipated cultural shift turned out instead to be but a brief detour into a blind alley. Myra Breckinridge tanked stupendously at the boxoffice, taking with it, Mae West's unasked-for comeback, Raquel Welch's already tenuous legitimacy, and director Michael Sarne's entire career (every cloud has a silver lining). Following months and months of pre-release hoopla, Myra Breckinridge swiftly dropped out of sight, and by the time I finally got around to seeing it, I was 21 years old. It was showing on a double bill with Beyond the Valley of the Dolls at the Tiffany Theater in Los Angeles (a Sunset Strip revival house just blocks away from the site of that iconic rotating cowgirl billboard).

The Sahara Hotel billboard on Sunset Blvd with the iconic rotating showgirl atop a silver dollar.
 The billboard was erected (if I can use that word in a Myra Breckinridge post) in 1957 and, at one time, included a pool and bathing beauties. It remained in that spot until 1966. 

The billboard became a landmark, showing up in films like William Castle's The Night Walker - 1964 (bottom) and the Joanne Woodward movie The Stripper - 1963 (top) as a kind of visual shorthand for Hollywood's artifice and merchandising of sex.

The billboard was recreated for the film. Myra, the symbol of the new woman.

Obscene and disgusting are certainly in the eye of the beholder, but it's my guess that this sexual revolution comedy was a good deal more shocking at the start of the sexual revolution than during its last gasps. I saw Myra Breckinridge in 1978, and by then, the New Hollywood was on the verge of obsolescence, the underground films of John Waters and Andy Warhol had practically gone mainstream, disco was on the wane, Linda Lovelace had found religion, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show was the latest word in gender-bending camp. In this atmosphere, Myra Breckinridge's legendary irreverence seemed almost quaint. With nothing to be shocked about in its content, all that was left to respond to was the freakshow spectacle of movie stars--who should have known better---making absolute fools of themselves. This may not sound like much, but in the days before reality television, celebrities humiliating themselves was a rarity, not a nightly prime-time attraction.

If you don’t count a thoroughly delightful episode of Mr. Ed (!) in 1965, Myra Breckinridge was Mae West’s first time in front of the cameras since 1943’s The Heat’s On. Top-billed and paid more than twice Raquel Welch's salary, West insisted on singing several songs in the film, although it really made no logical sense for her character, who was a talent agent, of all things. But nobody went to Myra Breckinridge looking for sense.

Observant fans recognize Mae's nightclub as the surgical arena used for Myron's operation at the film's opening. Whether this was a budgetary compromise or an early, intentional indication that the movie we're watching is playing out as a hospital fever dream cooked up in Myron's head, scarcely matters. Since the movie as a whole makes almost no sense.

Much like when a little kid learns his first words of profanity and proudly struts about shouting "Fuck...fuck...fuck...," with no comprehension of what he is really saying; Myra Breckinridge's so-called sexual effrontery is peculiarly naive, and thus, uproariously funny...but in almost none of the ways intended.

Behind Myra Breckinridge's convoluted fantasy about a homosexual movie buff (a typecast Rex Reed) transitioning to become the Amazonian Myra Breckinridge (Welch) in order to destroy masculinity and thus realign the sexes (!?!), there lurks a rather cynical and misanthropic film devoid of subversive convictions, sexual or otherwise, beyond doing anything it can to attract a young audience. At this time 20th Century Fox was so keenly feeling the sting of mega-flops Star!, Doctor Dolittle, and Hello Dolly!, they would have released a widescreen epic about aluminum siding installation techniques if they thought it would be a hit.
Myra Breckinridge is beautifully shot, and splendidly costumed, and I really thought the use of old movie clips was quite inspired; but the casting, script, and performances are downright surreal. I couldn't wrap my mind around this being a film a major studio actually thought audiences would turn out to see. Even by the screwy standards of '70s gonzo cinema (see: Angel, Angel Down We Go) Myra Breckinridge is bizarre beyond belief.

Raquel Welch as Myra Breckinridge

Mae West as Leticia Van Allen

John Huston as Buck Loner

Roger Herren as Rusty Godowski

Farrah Fawcett as Mary Ann Pringle

Introducing Rex Reed as Myron Breckinridge

Although Myra Breckinridge ranks rather high on my roster of favorite cult films, I've put off writing about it until now because, unlike flawed films which actually work for me on some level (like Xanadu or Valley of the Dolls), Myra Breckinridge is a rarity in that it is one of the few films I take pleasure in precisely because it doesn't really work at all. I know that sounds odd, but Myra Breckinridge is such a misguided oddity—from concept to execution—that it commands a kind of respect. You marvel at how anyone involved in getting it to the screen ever thought there was any hope for the film at all. It's not a film I laugh with (outside of John Huston's note-perfect performance, this is one of the least funny comedies I've ever seen); it's a film I gleefully laugh at.

I'm reminded of the 1955 Frank Tashlin comedy, The Girl Can't Help It, a movie that appears on the surface to be a celebration of rock & roll but is actually a scathingly satiric, anti-rock & roll diatribe. Myra Breckinridge sets itself up as a contemporary sex comedy out to skewer America's sexual hypocrisy and lampoon Hollywood's repressed gender images; but at its core, it's a staunchly anti-sex film, borderline homophobic, and deeply embarrassed by itself. A sexual fake-out promising a more progressive experience than it's capable of delivering.

Something is definitely wrong with an X-rated film that puts Raquel Welch and Farrah Fawcett together in the same bed and doesn't know what to do with them.

Starting with the bait-and-switch casting of Ms.Welch herself (what else but a perverse sadistic streak would inspire the casting of '60s sex symbol Raquel Welch in an X-rated movie, only to have her be one of the most overdressed members of the cast?), the people behind Myra Breckinridge not only appear to have had little to no understanding of the book, but seem to have harbored an outright contempt both for its subject matter and the young audience whose favor it hoped to curry. Every frame has the feel of 20^th Century Fox communicating its resentful vexation at having to stoop so low in order to appeal to the base sensibilities of the suddenly indispensable youth market that kept American movie box offices in a stranglehold during the '60s and '70s.

It's not for lack of bread, like The Grateful Dead
Michael Sarne (l.) played a director on the set of Myra Breckinridge. Donald Sutherland (r.) who had a small role in Sarne's first film, Joanna, played a Michael Sarne-esque director in 1970s Alex in Wonderland. 
Listen to Michael Sarne's 1964 pop hit, "Come Outside" HERE  

Alfred Hitchcock and Cecil B. DeMille may have worn a suit and tie while directing, but by 1970, long hair and a beard were considered standard equipment if you wanted to be taken seriously in Hollywood. Michael Sarne was a former British pop star with only one other film to his credit (Joanna, a film I actually liked) before being handed the $5 million reins to a movie at one time pitched to talents as diverse as Bud Yorkin (Start the Revolution Without Me) and George Cukor. Michael Sarne has continued to work as an actor, appearing in a small role in 2012's Les Miserables, but the debacle of Myra Breckinridge effectively ended his career as a director of any note.

In spite of  (or perhaps because of) the high-profile nature of his role in Myra Breckinridge, actor Roger Herren virtually disappeared from film and television work within ten years of the film's release. He passed away in 2014 at the age of 68.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

The only people I know disappointed in seeing Myra Breckinridge for the first time are those expecting it to live up to its notorious reputation. Always a very tame “X”, Myra Breckinridge is nowhere near as explicit as its rating would suggest, ideologically dated, more asexual than sexy, narratively jumbled, not particularly funny, and arrives at its cult appeal mostly by way of having its laid-on-with-a-trowel attempts at intentional camp land with a resounding thud.

Calvin Lockhart, the handsome star of Michael Sarne's Joanna, portrays the flamingly effeminate Irving Amedeus, a perennial acting student at Buck Loner's Academy. In a film with so many people to offend in a mere 94 minutes, Lockhart's overbroad caricature saves time by being simultaneously offensive to both Blacks and gays.

So what does work about the film? To enjoy Myra Breckinridge, one has to accept that its greatest value is as sociological artifact. In the staunchly conventional world of moviemaking, Myra Breckinridge is an oddity that could not have been made at any other time in the history of motion pictures...not even today. Its weirdness is almost exhilarating. You may not get it, hell, you may not even enjoy it that much, but to watch this film is to gaze into the very heart of the panic, chaos, and desperation that was Hollywood in the transitional sixties and seventies. With cinema icons John Huston and Mae West relegated to the roles of dirty-old man / dirty old woman; sexpot Raquel Welch used as the uncomprehending butt of the film’s sole sex joke; and a glossy, $5 million production built around pissing on the entirety of motion picture history, Myra Breckinridge is a big monster truck rally face-off between Old Hollywood and New Hollywood.

In a role originally intended for Mickey Rooney (I shudder at the thought) John Huston gets into the absurdist spirit of things and is terrific. Mae West (here looking more than a little like Nancy Sinatra) is, unfortunately, more crass than sass when her legendary talent for comic innuendo is replaced by blunt coarseness.

PERFORMANCES

No actor gets to choose the role for which they will always be associated and remembered. Sometimes, as in the case of Mia Farrow and Rosemary’s Baby, it occurs at the start of a career and establishes a difficult-to-live-up-to standard. When the fates are not kind, it can happen mid-career with the taking on of an embarrassing role that unjustly overshadows all the quality work that came before (think Faye Dunaway and Mommie Dearest). Raquel Welch, a breathtakingly beautiful actress whose career...if one were to base such speculations on talent alone...could well have gone the way of Edy Williams, has in Myra Breckinridge—for better or worse—one of the best roles of her career. Certainly, it's a role that offered something of a challenge for the actress after a long string of "decorative starlet" leads and walk-ons. 

Myra: A Simple Girl With a Dream
I can't imagine a major actress taking on this role today. Had the film been successful, what kind of "better" parts did Ms. Welch hope would come her way? As for the vulnerable Mr. Herren, he wisely dropped off the face of the earth after this.

And that is by no means a put-down. While I think the filmmakers cruelly exploit Ms.Welch’s limited range and artificial appeal to create a campy portrait of an affected woman whose image, behavior, and speech patterns are inspired by old movies, Welch is nonetheless surprisingly good. In fact, she’s rather winningly committed to the silliness of it all and shows more life and spirit in the role than she usually does onscreen. She is the only reason the film remains so watchable for me after all these years. Displaying a kind of amateurish aplomb in the face of truly cringe-inducing scenes, Welch is both vivacious and engaging while never coming across as quite human...which, oddly enough, works perfectly for this movie. I still think she gives her best screen performance in The Wild Party (1975), but much in the way I could never envision anyone but Jane Fonda as Barbarella, Raquel IS, and always will be Myra Breckinridge for me, and I applaud her in the role.

Rex Reed: Man of Many Talents 
Homophobic but desperate-for-work British director Michael Sarne (who, in the documentary about the making of the film, actually says "Ick!" when describing the book) complained to producers about Rex Reed using the words "faggy" and "prissy." 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Two things: Myra's wardrobe, and Raquel Welch's looks. The late, great costume designer Theadora Van Runkle (Bonnie & Clyde, New York, New York) channels her inner drag queen and comes up with some outrageously outré '40s-inspired fashions for America's most famous trans woman. Welch, who has gone on record as saying that her costumes are the only happy memories she takes from the making of the film, is a solid knockout in the looks department, and for all the weirdness she's engaged in, she's probably never been photographed more flatteringly.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

Raquel Welch was 28 when she starred in Myra Breckinridge, and in 2016, she'll be exactly the same as co-star Mae West's age when they clashed so famously during the film's production (West was 76). With those kinds of statistics, small wonder that I find subjective nostalgia subtly influencing my feelings about Myra Breckinridge each time I revisit it.
It's hard not to sigh at the lost opportunities (for Vidal's novel is quite funny), but when I watch the film now it is with a lighter spirit and a forgiving perspective born of having lived long enough to see what has become of the reckless instincts that spawned Hollywood's interest in Myra Breckinridge in the first place. In light of today's Hollywood of market research, endless franchises, and bottomless remakes, the foolhardiness which prompted the greenlighting of Gore Vidal's arguably unfilmable novel looks positively courageous by comparison.

BONUS MATERIAL
Not to be missed: A YouTube clip of Raquel Welch on The Dick Cavett Show in 1970. Welch (who has since lightened up quite a bit) is heavily into her "I'm a serious actress!" phase, thus, watching her espousing at pretentious length Myra Breckinridge's merits makes for riotously fun rear-view TV viewing. Bonus laughs materialize when Welch finds her self-serious pomposity continuously deflated by the gentle directness of Janis Joplin. (See it HERE)

You know you've found true love when your partner supports  (if not exactly encourages) your obsessions. There are Tippi Hedren Barbies, Audrey Hepburn Barbies, and Marilyn Monroe Barbies. But my talented partner decided what the world lacked was a "Raquel Welch as Myra Breckinridge" Barbie and came up with this remarkable creation.

Also, the DVD release of Myra Breckinridge has just about the best bonus feature commentaries I've ever heard. Director Michael Sarne talks on one side of the disc (pretty much absolving himself of all blame and settling a few scores), but the best is Raquel Welch talking about the film on the flip side. Gone is the 1970s pretentiousness, and in its place, a hilariously straightforward incredulity at what she got herself into so many years ago. She's self-effacing, truthful, and very, very funny. It redeems the film's sins tenfold just to hear Raquel exclaim, "What was I thinking?"

Myra- "God bless America!"              Leticia- "God help America!"

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2013